by Ace Gray
Her hands started tracing the tattoos blanketing my skin and it was my turn to moan. I threw my head back and relished her each and every trace and touch. Her tiny fingers skated across my left pec then pressed flat to search for the beat of my heart. It went a little wild when she flexed her hand against the muscle.
“I like that sound.” Her words were soft and slight, but it was the soft hum of pleasure that followed that broke down any shred of control I had left.
I fiddled with my belt, letting my fingers wander against her thighs before I unzipped my fly. Her hand stayed at my chest as mine shoved a little at my jeans. It stayed against the ink coating my chest as I climbed up the grill and onto her.
“You’ll feel it better this way,” I said softly as I pulled her hand from my skin and kissed her palm, then the scar below it.
I pressed my chest down against hers as I slid in. She screamed, and while there was a tiny bit of terror it was mostly passion.
“Are you okay?” I murmured as I nuzzled into her neck.
“I will be.” Each of her words dripped with the same mixture of tears and temptation.
I rolled my hips gently against her, feeling every inch of skin that pressed to mine, every inch inside her that hugged me. The same small cry was warm against my ear and I twisted to kiss her neck, my hips still moving at their leisurely pace.
“It beats for you, Ladylove,” I spoke in time with my thrusts. “Elle, Elle, Elle,” I repeated her name as if it was the blood thumping through my veins. “I couldn’t stop it if I tried.”
“Cole, Cole, Cole,” she whispered back and her hands wrapped up around me as she surrendered completely.
I twisted, bringing her slight body up on top of me where the sunrise could shower every inch of her pale skin in gold. She froze again but I was able to coax her hips up and down. Her dress fell further down her body and her breasts bounced beautifully with the simple rolls. The sun kissed every inch of her body as it moved in a familiar rhythm. Everything was framed in the brilliant hues of sunrise, everything felt right, everything except her hands awkwardly fighting at her side and the way she gnawed on her bottom lip.
“Here, Ladylove. Always here.” I pulled her hands to my chest and let my heart hammer as I watched how it pressed her breasts together and tipped her forward, sending her golden locks to wave in a perfect curtain down toward me. She kept that bottom pout trapped by her teeth but behind it split a beautiful smile.
Her hips started moving up and down on their own. The way she rode me was fucking perfect, slow and leisurely like the dawn breaking over the horizon itself. When her nails dug in, I knew she was enjoying herself. I thanked God for it, too.
I let my hands skate up her thighs. Her movements slowed but they didn’t stop. The longer I stroked on her scars, the easier she fell back into the moment. Soon enough she melted into the sun behind her, a flash and halo of gold.
My thighs were bunched, my body aching for release. Sex with her was always fucking hot but this was more. This was her coming alive again, this was her remembering the light. This was magic.
The pad of my thumb moved from her scar to her clit and started circling. Her breath got caught in her throat a few times before she cried out. None of the hesitancy, none of the hurt was there, just the pleasure. Just my little bird cooing as the world rippled around her.
Her perfect pussy gripped and milked on my dick then the world exploded into the most violent colors. I grabbed her wrists roughly and brought them to my face. I bit down on the marred tattoo as I came deep inside her.
When my lips had feeling again they kissed up and down her arm wildly. I couldn’t stop them if I tried. They just found more skin to travel as I wrapped my arms around and sat up off the car with her latched on tight to me. Her beautiful dress was rucked up, we were still connected, and my hold was tight enough to split her bones. I wouldn’t ever lessen it.
My nose traced her jaw. My breath mingled with hers. Our hearts hit against one another as I kissed the corner of her mouth. I tasted cherry and the flavor made my dick twitch inside her. But none of that was what made the gold of a bright new day sparkle and shimmer.
It was that Elle finally cracked a genuine beautiful smile.
Epilogue
Elle
I was trapped. My ankles and wrists ached where I pulled on them but the only thing that moved was my hair where it rustled in the warm breeze. The fan moved lazily above me, whump, whump, whump. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. Nothing except dark black feathers covered in blood. I choked on the feathers and my desperate heaves quickly turned to vomit. Just like when the old woman fed me broth except blood poured from the corners of my mouth and coated my throat. I tried to breathe, but blood seeped into my nostrils too. I was going to drown in it and I couldn’t even scream.
“Wake up, Elle.” A voice bubbled up through the puddle filling up around me. “Wake up!”
Cole shook me and my eyes shot open. There was a wicker fan pushing the sea breeze around the outdoor patio but it was my patio. Cole crushing me to his chest was the only thing restraining me.
“It was just a dream, Ladylove, just a dream.” His hands rubbed up and down on my back, soothing so sweetly on my naked skin.
“I was chained down again. I was choking on blood.” I’d started talking to Cole about the nightmares about six months after he saved me. I hadn’t wanted to but he turned the most deathly shade of white and something went listless behind his eyes when I woke up panting, sweating or screaming. In the past two, it had actually started to help. “I thought I was drowning,” I managed weakly.
“I’d happily fuck you in the pool but I will not let you drown.” He ran his nose along the edge of my ear, then nipped on my earlobe. I couldn’t help but smile.
Cole had jumpstarted my heart that morning on the cliff but it had been a long road to here. Him touching my scars still made me jump from time to time, but he hadn’t stopped, and for that I was grateful. He saw me and he worshiped me just like he’d promised. He’d healed me just like he swore. Every day he worked harder at it.
“Perhaps I’ll just go down on you right here…” He collected my hair into a loose ponytail and wrapped it around his wrist. “Right now.” He pulled hard and my head tilted back, my neck opened to him.
His big, strong hand stroked down my throat then he grabbed and squeezed. I sagged into his grip and let him take my breath away. Surrender hadn’t been easy after Mickey. The first time Cole had choked me, I’d kicked him in the crotch and clawed at his hand so hard I left a scar. When he’d gotten back the ability to breathe, he gently kissed me and simply cradled me.
We’d worked back up to the gasping, cracked lips and tunneling, dark vision that now grounded me. It grounded me to Cole. Now he edged the nightmares out and breathed fresh life into me.
Today he used his grip to push me back onto the sun chair I’d been lounging on. The high wall around our small home and beautifully rippling pool let me lay out naked. A fact that Cole took full advantage of as he let go of my throat and disappeared between my thighs. I sucked in a wild breath at the same time he folded his tongue around my clit. The sensation was almost enough to set me off right then and there.
He kissed one scar, tongued it, then moved back to my sex. His tongue darted in and out of me before he showered affection on my other mark. When his mouth came back to the apex of my thighs he wound and wove his tongue both inside and around me. I remembered what he’d done to whiskey the first time I’d met him and marveled at what seemed like a lifetime of memories, a lifeline woven of sex.
Over and over he rimmed around me then darted in. He lavished attention on my clit then shoved inside me. None of it was apologetic, none of our love had been. It simply was. We were together come hell or high water and it was simple as that. Particularly because we’d seen hell and high water. He still ate me as if he couldn’t decide whether this was the first time tasting me or the last drop he’d ever get.
/> “Cole, you’re killing me,” I groaned.
“Never you, only for you.” His words tickled my most sensitive spots.
I bucked my hips up when he started sucking again. His tongue flicked where he had my little nub trapped and before I knew it, he shoved me over the edge of a liquefying orgasm. I cried out as I quivered, bright patches of sunlight searing behind my eyelids.
When my fingertips got their feeling back, I threaded them into Cole’s hair and I pulled. He knew what I wanted and crawled up my body and let his lips crash into mine. Cherry milkshakes and the salt of French fries smothered my lips. I smiled as I continued kissing him, wrapping my arms and legs around him. He settled in between my thighs then kissed down my neck then my breastbone. He reached for my left hand and kissed the only new tattoo I’d gotten since we’d come to Puerto Escondido—the simple outline of an origami crane on my left ring finger.
“Better?” he asked as he settled onto my chest, his ear resting against my heart to listen to it beat.
“Always with you,” I murmured as I started running my hands through his hair.
“I’m always with—”
A phone ringing inside the house interrupted us. But it wasn’t the ringing that made us both freeze and tense up. It was which phone was ringing.
Between Cole and I we had seven things that tied us to our past life in Chicago. We hadn’t been able to get rid of the Charger despite how easily it could tie us to some of the darker stuff. We figured with all the girls rescued and Mickey’s organization dismantled thanks to Cole and the unknown source that sent the ledger to the FBI, no one was looking. The paper crane I’d folded for Cole sat next to the lone horse figurine that had traveled with us, both back on our headboard. My white dress and our matching Chuck Taylors sat in the closet.
Then there was the cell phone.
The cell phone Cole left plugged in and on in the hopes that someday Horse would call it. The cell phone that seemed a terrifying direct link to the past I was desperately trying to forget. I’d only accepted it when I accepted that Cole would go to the ends of the earth and the depths of Hell to save me and I was okay with that.
“Is that…?” Cole partially pushed up from me.
“I think it is.” My breathing was short, it felt as if he was still resting his full weight on me.
He unwound from on top of me, his shorts hanging loose on his perfectly sculpted hips. Adding surfing to his fitness routine hadn’t hurt one bit. I tried to picture him cutting back or waves rolling against the sand as he held out his hand for me. We both noticed how hard I shook as I reached to take it.
“Whatever it is, it’ll be okay, Ladylove. I’ll wage war against the heavens themselves for you, you know that.” I swallowed the jagged lump in my throat as he pulled me off the lounge and toward the house.
All the wooden doors between the house and the pool were thrown open and the breeze blew as easily in the palm trees scattered about the house as it did out by the pool. Every single surface of our house was art. Bright color, hand-painted tiles, canvases, sacred hearts in metal and found objects. All of it was warm and reflected back in punctured tin mirrors.
The phone started ringing again as soon as we walked into the studio. Cole had to brush aside close to a hundred origami paper cranes to find the device. My fingers curled into his so hard he shot me a look and stretched his hand a tiny bit in mine. He planted one small kiss to the cap of my shoulder before he swiped the phone right and clicked speaker.
“Hello?” Cole answered gruffly.
“Cupcake? Is that you?” Horse sounded like death had drowned him then tried to wring him out. I gasped. “Fucktart, you there too?”
“Are you okay?” I asked, shoving closer to the cell.
“Um, about that.” He laughed but it wasn’t big, brash or homey like Horse usually was. “I need you guys. Conrad needs you guys. Please.”
Cole’s eyes found mine, worry creasing the corners. His fears, his questions were written plain across his face. He didn’t know if I could take it, he didn’t know what the stress would do. Honestly, I didn’t either. Something bubbled and rolled inside me, but the fact that there even was a me, that I existed, was thanks to Horse too.
“What do we need to do, Horse?” I asked as Cole wove around me, his lips finding my temple and his fingers finding my crane tattoo, both desperate to show me affection.
“Pack the Charger, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”
We left the next morning at dawn. My hand rested on Cole’s thigh as I watched our house fade behind us. We stopped by the shop for one thing, the US twenty dollar plate hidden behind a picture frame in the bathroom. The cash it afforded us had already been mostly cleaned out from under the floorboards of our garage.
The highway climbed out of town, winding here and there, up toward the cliffs. Cole pulled abruptly off the road to the same spot where he’d really saved me all those months ago.
“You’re really okay with this? I mean, that day, that day when they cut you, I swore to myself I wouldn’t do anything that put you in danger again. Not even for Horse. I love him, but you… It’s something bigger. It’s something indescribable. I can’t… I won’t…” His face scrunched up behind his sunglasses
“Watch the sunrise with me, Cole,” I said simply.
“One last time?” His voice shook.
“No, just because it’s beautiful. It’s us.” I shrugged and leaned across the console to rest my head on his shoulder.
“You aren’t worried?” He adjusted so his arm was around me, holding me tight to him.
“Of course I am, but not about a happily ever after.” As soon as the words started coming out, I felt the truth of them in my bones. “Heroes always win, knights complete their quest, angels don’t lose their wings.” I traced the matching crane on his left ring finger, his colored black and closer to his fingernail but meaning exactly the same. “Besides, when I folded my thousand cranes, I wished for you, for forever with you, and I know firsthand that sort of thing works.”
The world faded from dark to a bright and brilliant light.
About Ace Gray
Ace Gray is a self-proclaimed troublemaker and connoisseur of both the good life and fairy tales. After a life-long love affair with books, she undertook writing the novel she wanted to read, which culminated in her first release, STRICTLY BUSINESS, and has become a deeply rooted obsession.
When she’s not writing, she owns her own business teaching rehab Pilates and works in craft beer. She loves rainy days, shellac manicures, coffee shops and bourbon—all of which are bountiful in her adopted home of Portland, OR where she runs amok with her chef husband and two huskies.
Other Works by Ace Gray
Strictly Business (Mixing Business with Pleasure book 1)
Bad For Business (Mixing Business with Pleasure book 2)
Family Business (Mixing Business with Pleasure book 3)
Twisted Fate (A Twisted Fairytale book 1)
Twisted Death (A Twisted Fairytale book 2)
Anthologies
Because Beards
Brothel: The Magnolia Diaries
Coming Soon
A Twisted Love Story
Finding Home For Christmas
How to Kill A Lady Boner
Mixing Business with Pleasure book 4
The Muse Series
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
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Epilogue
About Ace Gray
Other Works by Ace Gray