by Lily White
She tries to pull from my grasp, but I clamp my fingers down harder.
“I didn’t say you can move away, killer. If you want me to let go, then do what I said. Otherwise, you need to get it through your thick head that I’m here, and I’m never leaving.”
Emily stares at me for several seconds, a hundred different arguments flying behind those eyes, but not one of them is that she doesn’t love me.
I have no doubt in my mind about that.
When she doesn’t answer, I move closer, my mouth brushing hers.
“That’s what I thought.”
Still, her stubborn ass fights me.
“It doesn’t matter that I love you, Ezra. There is too much standing between us.”
Emily can think that all she wants.
It’s my job to show her she’s wrong.
Emily
I don’t like the look on his face. Instead of listening to reason, Ezra is taking my every word as a challenge. His eyes have that lazy, molten thing going, his cruel mouth curling in a way that drives pure heat through my body and weakens my knees.
He’s weaving again, a slow movement like a damn cobra entrancing me before he strikes so quickly that I have no warning to move away.
His breath is hot against my cheek, the tip of his nose running the line of my jaw. I shiver at the feeling.
Ezra reduces me to cornered prey when he gets like this, my body submitting easily to the threat of violence, to the raw, masculine energy that rolls off him in waves.
This man is standing squarely in the center of the battlefield, his eyes locked on me, that damn arrogant smirk of his stretching slowly into place. I can circle him as much as I want, but there is no possible way he’ll let me walk off.
It’s either fight...or surrender.
“My loving you,” I say, my voice stern and rising as I talk, “is only one factor in this equation. But love does nothing to excuse the way you’ve treated me recently. It does nothing to excuse the fight you had with Damon right in front of me.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, desire skimming across his stare.
“I’ll handle Damon. And I already apologized for the way I treated you.”
My teeth clench at that.
“One apology means absolutely nothing.”
When his eyes flick back up, my heart thuds against my chest.
“If I have to apologize every fucking day for the rest of my life just to have you, then that’s what I’ll do. But I’m not letting you go, Emily. It’s that simple.”
Jerking my chin away, I take a step back, but the bastard just moves forward again, impatience and frustration rolling across his expression as he kicks my feet out from under me and drops me back onto the bed.
He’s on me before I can move away, his weight holding me in place as he captures my wrists and shoves my arms above my head.
“Let me go.”
“No.”
Ezra’s hips shove my legs apart, and when he rocks them against me, I gasp.
“You don’t act like a woman who wants to be let go. If anything, you act like you want more. Like you can’t fucking breathe if I’m not touching you.”
My eyes close, the truth of his words sinking beneath my skin.
He rocks his hips again, and pure need drives through me, his brand of violence, his level of control, calling to every feminine part of me.
Yes, I can finally breathe when he touches me. And I’m destroyed when he’s gone. But it’s a fight he can’t win, regardless of how he makes me feel.
Running soft kisses down my cheek, Ezra traps my bottom lip with his teeth, his fingers clamping down harder on my wrists that he continues to pin above my head.
“Tell me you wouldn’t be with me if none of the barriers existed. If it wouldn’t hurt Damon. If you weren’t engaged to Mason. If there was nothing standing in our way, would you still refuse to give this a chance?”
Breath shudders from my lungs when he moves his hands to hold my wrist in one while brushing the hair from my face with the other.
His fingertips trail softly down the side of my face, a touch so gentle that I know he’s worshipping me, treating me like I’m the most precious gift this fucked up life has given him.
Ezra’s thumb presses to my lips, a silent reminder of the secrets we told each other, of his promise to protect me, of the surrender I’ve always given him in return, even when I didn’t know that was what I was giving him.
Pushing past my lips, he runs the pad of his thumb over the sharp edges of my teeth, breath bursting from his lips when I bite down.
A growl low in his chest, his hips rocking again, slow and hard.
“That‘s my girl,” he whispers against my ear. “Hurt me as much as you want. But it won’t chase me away.”
Another shiver races down my spine as heat blooms in all my forbidden places, my insides clenching tight in need of what he gives me.
“Always my queen,” he murmurs, an idle observation and nothing more.
I laugh at that. “I’m hardly a queen.”
Low male laughter bursts against my cheek.
“You have no idea what you are. What you’ve always been.”
I shake my head, but my back arches when I feel the ridge of his erection between my legs.
“I’m weak.”
More low laughter.
“You’ve held my leash since the night you kissed the bruises on my chest. And it wasn’t the tenderness that tamed me. It was the violence in your eyes. The rage.”
His hand sweeps down my body, brushing the side of my breast before he grips his fingers on my hip to hold my body still beneath him.
It’s just like Ezra to control this dance. To tease me with ironclad patience until I’m begging for more.
“I’ve been on my knees at your feet for ten long years, killer. And only a woman who stands as strong and tall as you is worthy of that type of devotion.”
Memories assault me. So many bursting to life in my head. Ezra used to watch me all the time when we were in school. Study me. Even from across crowded rooms, Ezra held me in place by an amber stare that called to me on a sensual whisper.
I always assumed it was because he enjoyed trapping me in place. I never imagined it was because I’d trapped him.
“But that still fixes nothing-“
My back arches, and my thoughts are lost when he rubs his cock hard between my legs, his hand sneaking up my shirt to take possessive hold of my breast. Pinching my nipple from over my bra, he nips at my throat when I arch into the pain.
“You let me take care of the details, Em. Just make me a promise again, and this time, keep it.”
His eyes lift to capture mine, so much pain swirling behind them. Years of it. But within the regret, the sorrow, and the battle he will never stop fighting, I see something in his eyes I haven’t seen since the night I first made him a promise.
I see hope.
And it rips the ground out from under me.
Ezra’s head drops to gently bite the side of my breast from over my shirt, his hips moving again in a slow caress that forces my eyes to flutter closed, wet heat blooming where our bodies meet.
“Promise to be mine.”
Moving to the other breast, he bites me again.
“Only mine.”
I’m trembling beneath him, a chasm of desire and need, my mind barely able to hold on to a single thought.
When he lifts my shirt and kisses a trail up my stomach, my wrists break free of the loose hold he has on them, my fingers diving into his hair to demand a harder touch, to seek the pleasure and pain he gives me.
“Just us, Em,” he begs before his teeth sink down on a sensual kiss. And then he’s speaking against the sting. “Promise to have faith in me for once.”
Tears leak from the corners of my eyes because I want this so much.
Yes.
A hundred times yes.
A million times if that would be enough to hold on to this man.
<
br /> My mind traps me with fear that it will never happen, while my heart pounds like a war drum and the certainty that it can.
He closes his mouth over the tip of my breast, a hiss blowing over my lips, my head rolling back as I fight a battle within myself.
“Don’t you trust me, Em? Don’t you know that you own me? That I’ll do anything for us to have what we want?”
I nod my head, but can’t find the breath to tell him that’s exactly the problem.
There’s no doubt he’ll do anything, destroy anything, unleash the violence inside him to make this happen. And I can’t bear the thought of another bruise or scar on his body that happened because of me.
“Please, killer. Just promise to let me try.”
His hips rock one more time, and I cry out, my thighs tightening together, my body oversensitive to his touch.
I’ve already lost the will to fight, and now he’s slowly causing me to lose my mind.
That’s par for the course, I guess. I’ll give him everything, do anything, because he already holds my heart.
“Yes,” I whisper, the sound so soft I’m not sure he heard me.
Ezra goes perfectly still, and for several seconds he says nothing, does nothing, just stays in place.
“Say it again.”
I smile at the memory, at the way he did this to me ten years ago on a beach where fire licked the sky.
“I promise.”
He shudders, his entire body trembling. This strong, carnal man that instills fear in everyone around him actually trembles at my words.
“Fuck, say it one more time.”
Tears stream down the sides of my face.
“I promise, Ezra.”
He pushes up so fast that the breath catches in my lungs, his hand locking over the back of my neck as his mouth crashes on mine, his lips demanding, his tongue hot and wet.
There are no words after that. No promises. No arguments. No insults, no apologies and no excuses.
It’s just us, a man untamed and a woman surrendering, a fight that has lasted ten long years finally drawing to an explosive close.
Neither of us won this war, we just finally laid down our swords and realized we’ve been fighting the wrong opponent all along.
“Damn it, Em. Thank you,” he says as his hands move to quickly strip my clothes from my body, a rushed frenzy to touch my skin, to have nothing between us any longer.
I can’t hold it against him, I’m rushing just as much, my fingers fumbling over the buttons of his shirt as his mouth runs down my neck to bite and tease, lick and kiss.
Barely unbuttoning his shirt to mid-chest, I squeak when Ezra pushes to his feet and rips my jeans down my legs, pure hunger in those amber eyes as he stares down at me.
He watches me as his deft fingers are quick to unbutton the rest of his shirt, his muscular shoulders moving in a tease as he pulls it off his strong body. Dropping it to the ground, he stills in place, one word rolling off his lips.
“Mine.”
He says it like he can’t believe it, like he doesn’t deserve it, like beautiful things can’t happen to him.
It breaks my heart because he does deserve all the beautiful things in life. He just refuses to see it.
His eyes lift to lock with mine, a question flickering behind them.
“Yours,” I promise him.
That arrogant smirk stretches his lips, the lying dimple indenting his cheek. But then he drops to his knees, grabs my legs and drags me to the edge of the bed.
I cry out when his teeth sink down onto the inside of my thigh, his lips closing over the skin to mark me as his.
He always has to mark me, that possessive nature of his running bone deep.
Fingers sneaking beneath the sides of my panties, he pulls them off as he stands again, his eyes molten as he unbuttons his pants and lets them fall down his legs.
“First time fast, Em. I can’t wait. And I’m not patient.”
He shoves off his boxer briefs, and the sight of him traps the breath in my lungs.
Ezra is carved to perfection over every inch of his exquisite body.
Fighting to speak, I ask, “First time?”
His lips curl.
“Second through fifth time, we’ll go much, much slower.”
“Fifth?”
The word is lost as he grabs my legs and spreads them, his cock sinking inside my body as he growls, “Fuck, killer. Thank you.”
My body arches over the bed to be filled so fully, the muscles stretching to accommodate his length and girth, both pleasure and heat driven through me so fiercely that I’m melting when he grips the back of my head, fists his hand in my hair and tugs me up into a blistering kiss.
Speaking against my lips, he apologizes on a whisper, his hips beginning to move so hard and fast that stars burst behind my eyes, a rush of blood thundering through my head so loud that I can barely hear what he’s speaking against my neck with every thrust.
I love you...
I’m sorry...
I don’t deserve you...
Thank you…
You’re mine.
Over and over and over until my body falls apart on a bone shattering orgasm, until his mouth crashes against mine and he joins me.
Ezra
I barely let Emily sleep all night. Not that I could help it. One thought kept repeating, one phrase that was so impossible that it woke me up almost every hour, which led me to need her again.
I promise...
Fuck, those words have the ability to tear me apart, to make me believe it’s possible I can somehow make things right.
Me. The man who only knows how to fuck people up, the person who is sent in when things need to be broken, has to fix something for once.
How the hell will I do this?
Emily is asleep next to me, her red hair fanned over the pillow. I’ve been awake for the past hour, my gaze studying her sleeping face, my hands unable to resist touching her.
At some point, I wrapped my arms around her body, and when my fingers brushed against the engagement ring on her finger, a vein of jealousy unfurled inside me. Not just jealousy, but the need to rip the ring off and toss it away, the need to stop her marriage to Mason before it tears us all to shreds.
Obviously, I’m not worried Mason will want the marriage anymore than Emily and I do. He’s happy with Ava, so in love that I know he’s working to find a way out of the arrangement made for him and Emily before they were born.
Still, it hangs over them like a shroud. And now it hangs over me because I’m part of this.
My grand gesture isn’t even close to finished. I have barriers to break down, problems to torch and burn.
Fuck that ring.
I’ll be tossing it back to Mason eventually.
But for now, my first task is dealing with Damon.
As soon as I move, Emily whines in complaint, her arms holding onto mine tighter. I plant a soft kiss against her temple.
“I have to go.”
“Why?” she mumbles, her eyes closed and her mind still half-asleep.
Laughing softly, I press my mouth to her ear.
“Your beast has battles to fight. Someone has to help you hold up that crown.”
“Not a queen,” she murmurs into the pillow before falling back to sleep.
Emily has no idea what she is. I have every intention to not only make her see it, but to never let her forget it.
Groaning to have to let her go, I push myself up, get dressed and turn to look at her again before leaving.
Mine, I think, all while knowing it will be a fight to keep her. Especially where I’m going.
Forcing myself out the door, I leave Emily’s house and walk out to my bike. Before pulling my helmet on, I notice the dent in her car again, my brows crashing together. I need to ask her about that, but it can wait until later.
The ride home is fast with very few cars on the road, the engine of my bike screaming as I race down one street and anoth
er.
Pulling into the driveway of the house I share with Damon, I wonder how any of this shit is going to work.
I want Emily with me. Permanently at this point. But her parents would lose it if she tried to move out of her house, and I’m not sure how Damon would react if I demanded she live here. It’s one thing for him to know she’s with me, but a whole different story to have it in his face.
Sitting back on my bike, I stare up at our place, a house of cement, steel and glass, utilitarian like us. Sleek lines without any of the fancy, highbrow bullshit Tanner and Gabe prefer.
And I’m fucking stalling by just sitting here.
It’s not that I don’t want to tell Damon, it’s that we’re not the type to talk. It’s going to be a fight.
Knowing that, I roll my head over my shoulders to loosen the muscles, my hands stretching out to ease the tension in my fingers.
I climb off my bike deciding how I’m going to go about this, my steps heavy, stride quick as I walk up to the house and let myself in.
Running up the stairs, I glance in Damon’s room to see if he’s still sleeping, but his bed is empty.
We haven’t spoken since he attacked me at Tanner’s, an entire week of angry glares and shoulders slamming together when we passed each other.
It’s a non-verbal language basically meaning we have to work this crap out one way or another, but it won’t be a heart to heart conversation.
That’s why when I find him in the kitchen, I storm his direction, knock the bottle of water out of his hand, and wrap my fingers into his shirt as I slam him up against a wall.
The asshole bares his teeth immediately, using his weight to shove me forward, something falling to shatter against the floor when my back hits a rack.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Twisting so that I can break away, my head spins right as his fist cracks my jaw, pain shooting through my skull like an explosion.
I throw a punch back, the hit knocking him into a set of cabinets, his body angling down as he comes at me again to grab me around the middle and drop me to the floor.
Now is as good a time as any to tell him the truth.
“I’m with Emily.”
His fist cracks me in the nose hard enough for blood to splatter.
“Just thought I’d let you know,” I say on a groan.