Free Unbeautifully by Madeline Sheehan Page A

ago.
    Sighing, he climbed off the bike and headed for the door. He didn’t have much of a choice. He had to make a run to Manhattan; Preacher wanted proof that business was going bad on the west coast, that his boys out there were double dipping off his profits. Audio proof that ZZ had recorded on a disposable cell phone he’d been keeping in his bedroom safe.
    Upon entering the house, he found the downstairs dark and the house quiet. Relief filled him. Maybe she wasn’t home. Maybe Kami had picked her up, maybe—
    At the top of the stairs, he found Eva laying Ivy down in her crib. Leaning over the railing, softly stroking her hair, she kissed their daughter good night and whispered, “I love you.”
    Watching them, his woman and his daughter, Deuce’s chest started to ache. He missed them both. He missed all of it. Coming home to his family, watching his kids interact with each other, the laughter, the bickering, even the yelling, just taking it all in and enjoying everything he hadn’t had growing up. Then later, after Ivy was asleep, Danny in her room on her phone and Cage gone for the night, he would take Eva upstairs, strip her naked, and fuck the hell out of her.
    “You’re home.”
    His eyes flew open.
    “So are you,” he said, hating that his words came out sounding like an accusation.
    “For some reason Danny hasn’t been going to the club at all lately,” she said softly, nodding toward Danny’s closed bedroom door. “And like you said, she shouldn’t be home all alone.”
    Guilt swamped him. He’d said that and yet he’d done nothing about it.
    “Are you leaving?”
    He glanced back at Eva.
    “Yeah,” he muttered. “Demon delivery.”
    “Is everything okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    She waited a moment, expecting him to offer up more information, and when he didn’t, she nodded and turned away. He followed her down the hallway and into their room, watching as she bent down to pull open her bottom dresser drawer. She emerged with a pair of ratty sweatpants and an old T-shirt, both his, tossed them on the bed, and started undressing.
    He kept watching until she was naked, taking it all in. The flower tattoos down her arm, the natural slope of her heavy breasts, the hills and valleys of a body he’d never tired of, the slight bow of her stomach, the ring through her belly button, the tattooed stars encircling it, her perfect, heart-shaped ass.
    Everything hit him at once: the little girl he’d met in the family visiting room at Rikers, singing Janis, wearing Chucks, stealing what was left of his broken-down, battered heart. And when she was older, listening to her ramble on about Halloween costumes, thinking no kid as sweet as she was should be living in this life, and wanting better for her. After that the memories changed, as had his feelings for her. Fondness and adoration turned to lust and he’d taken that first kiss, that first taste and touch. Two years later, lust turned to need and he took that pussy first too. Four years passed, and he claimed not just her body but her. Because need had turned to love.
    He had her now, he owned her—her body, her baby, her future—it was all his and knowing that, having that, had made every chance meeting over the years, every fuck, every fight, every letdown…
    It had made it worth it.
    Deuce was rock hard by the time she’d finished dressing. Hard and aching for her.
    She took one look at him and knew, she always knew. Those damn beautiful eyes traveled down his body, flaring with heat when she came to his hips. Those juicy lips parted, sucking in a sharp breath, a sound he knew very well. A sound that made him crazy.
    “I miss you,” she whispered.
    “Babe,” he said quietly. “Yeah.”
    She took a small step forward, then stopped. “Can…can I touch you?”
    He didn’t like this version of Eva, this timid, unsure woman who was nothing like the quirky, outgoing kid she’d been, or the teenager who didn’t give a fuck about what other people