“Everyone who works with me will absolutely volunteer to come in and give the women haircuts and stuff,” Ripley offered, “Pamper them a little and do whatever we can to help the victims start feeling human again.”
Dillon glanced up at Nasa to find him smiling a smug, happy smile. She couldn't believe the immediate support from the women, just from Dillon sharing something she hadn't truly committed to.
Listening to them generously offering to utilize what talents they had to help out people they didn't know, supporting Dillon in making a place here among them, was incredible.
“That sounds like a damn fine use of all your talents, girls.” Top told them with pride. “And you can count on Perdition to get behind locating whatever family there is to find if the women and kids do want to go home.”
She'd had to fight tooth and nail to get Patti to agree to move into the women's shelter in Dallas. It hadn't been a fun process, and there hadn't been anyone offering to donate their special talents to help make it a success. It left Dillon feeling run down and unappreciated. Resented, even.
Now? There wasn't a doubt in her mind she could pull off this shelter for trafficking victims, and not a single person at the table had anything negative to say about it.
Dillon settled into the idea of building this halfway house with the ease of putting on her favorite sweatshirt fresh out of the dryer. It felt warm and reassuringly comfortable. Really, there wasn't any reason to deliberate or waste time deciding.
Tomorrow, she'd start looking for properties and get in touch with the Monumentally lawyer to tell him about the changes. If he didn't like it, she'd find someone else to handle the legal side.
This felt right, and she wasn't doing it out of some manic need to control anything, or making decisions based on fear. There was a need, Dillon had the skills, and the support of a family.
In the most serious tone she'd heard Duke use yet, he looked at her from across the table with painful gravity. “You don't even know how big of a difference a place like that would make for the people we bring back.”
Tobias nodded in agreement, simply saying, “You build it, without question, we're on board.”
It was the right choice, and so was starting something new. This was her home, and these were her people.
Nasa lifted his hand from her thigh to wrap his arm around her shoulders, his lips cruising across her temple. “Seems like the Universe has spoken.”
“It's really weird when you talk about yourself in the third person,” Ruckus commented dryly.
*****
With her hair plastered to her scalp and mascara running down her flushed cheeks, Nasa watched Dillon come apart at the seams, certain he'd never seen anything so utterly beautiful in his entire life.
Truly, he'd only intended for them to have a relaxing shower before bed. Dillon said she couldn't do a bath without falling asleep the second she was horizontal in the hot water, so they changed it up.
But as soon as she set her soapy hands on him, lovingly caressing every inch of his body with this look of worry on her face, he realized they both needed more.
He understood her need to touch him. To reassure herself that he hadn't been toughing it out this whole time and hiding an injury.
When Nasa got to washing her in return, it felt like a dance. They moved together, breathed together, skin slipping and gliding together in one of those deeply intimate moments of connection that had nothing to do with sex.
Of course, it became about sex not long later, but the intimacy remained, and here they were, shuddering and panting together as they languished in the aftermath.
Literally, it was the perfect ending to a fucked-up day.
Once Dillon's pussy gave up the exquisite vise-like grip on his dick, Nasa groaned and let her feet drop to the floor.
She made those sweet noises of regret he loved hearing when he pulled out and kept her cuddled close as his knees re-solidified.
Swaying slightly on his feet, he grabbed one of the facial cloths she liked and got it wet, working it in his hands to build the lather before gently washing the remnants of her mascara.
She laughed softly and tipped her head back for him. “Do I look like a raccoon?”
“I was gonna go with masked crusader.” He chuckled, turning with her so she could lift her face into the spray. “Thank you for trusting me today. At the shelter,” he clarified when she scooped the water off her cheeks and looked at him with a frown. “It took some kind of guts for you to stand there behind me and not do something.”
“Guts?” She scoffed. “Right up until he said there was a woman upstairs with a bag of C4, I was doing everything I could think of not to pass out or start screaming. I hate how his voice has the power to trigger such panic in me.”
Nasa felt her shudder and saw the way her skin pebbled despite the heat of the shower.
“That Ghost got close like that is on me. I was in a rush to find the drive and I didn't clear the building or bring in Duke and Tobias, like I should have. I put everyone else's needs above yours, and I fucked up.”
The look she gave him in response was gentle and yet unimpressed. “I was in a rush, too, and if you'd said you wanted to clear the building and bring in Duke and Tobias, I would have shut you down because I was willing to put everyone else in the shelter's safety above yours. We fucked up, and we won't make that mistake again.”
He bent to rest his forehead against hers, assuring her that no, they would definitely not.
“It happened, and because you're a sneaky genius, we survived and got what we were after.”
Dillon made a fair
