by Lake, Keri
His eyes flicked back and forth from beneath his bowed head, like those of a cornered animal. “Staying with me will get you killed.”
“And what about you?” I asked, wiping the irritating, watery shield that covered my eyes. “He’ll kill you, too. You die, I die. Remember?”
He kept his gaze cast from mine.
“Do you still want me?” I asked.
“This isn’t about me, Lucy. It’s about you. It’s about doing everything in my power to make sure no one ever hurts you again.” He shook his head. “I can’t get the fucking visuals …. I see it every day. Every day on repeat.” His lip snarled, as tears filled his eyes, which turned cold and out of focus. “I was weak. I should’ve protected you.” His distant expression blinked to one of sadness. “I’m nothing but a worthless bastard, Lucy. I never deserved you.”
“Why do you think you have to earn everything at your own expense? Love is unconditional, Jase. Everyone deserves to be loved. Even the ones—” I shook my head. “No, especially the ones who think they don’t deserve it.” Inching closer, I placed a hand on his chest, and when he cringed away, I gripped his wrist, wrapping my arms around his stiffened body, as he trembled against me. He didn’t return the embrace, but I didn’t care. His muscles stiffened in my hold—still hard as steel on the surface, but beneath all that was vulnerability, pain that mirrored my own. “You can try to push me away, but I won’t let you. Whether you love me, or not, I love you. You were never weak.”
His body shuddered in my grasp, and I held him tighter, kissed his jaw.
“You killed him. Conall. You killed the demon that haunted me. And I’m not afraid to take on yours in return, Jase.”
He rested his forehead against my shoulder, the tight line in his muscles sagging beneath my palms, as his chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. We stayed that way for a couple of minutes, just breathing. When his arms finally wrapped around me, pulling me into him, I allowed the tears I’d held back to fall.
I breathed the scent I’d missed in the warmth of his embrace. Even as fragile as he looked, his arms still enveloped me in strength, and for the first time in months, I truly felt safe again.
I’d had guards outside of my room. Eyes watching me every hour of the day, but there on the rooftop, overlooking the city, with the January winds whipping against my face, I’d never felt more sound.
* * *
Dusk had fallen by the time we climbed back down through the building, to where Jase’s Camaro waited for us on the side street behind the Metropolitan.
I fell into the passenger seat, while he held the door open for me. Aside from the embrace and helping me back across that harrowing beam, he hadn’t touched me. Hadn’t kissed me.
My thoughts drifted back atop Broderick’s roof where he’d told me he was no good for me. God, did he honestly believe that?
Once mobile, he drove us down Woodward Avenue, without so much as a single word, nor glance at me.
“Jase … please pull over.” I needed a place he couldn’t walk out of, or back away from me. I needed him to know what I needed from him, and damn it, he would listen.
His head whipped toward me and back to the road. “Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. Please. Just pull off somewhere.”
He turned the car onto a side street, stopping at the curb, where construction equipment littered an open yard beside a half-renovated building.
“What are we doing?” He glanced around at the mostly empty neighborhood, save for a few cars parked in the lot about a football field away from where we sat. His gaze fell on me again, wide with urgency as he looked me up and down. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“Yes. Something is wrong.” I grabbed his hand, tugging against the stiffness of his muscles, and placed his palm to my face, taking in the roughness of his skin against my cheek. Eyes closed, I imagined only months ago, when he'd touched me willingly. “You won’t touch me.”
His thumb brushed across my lips, and I opened my eyes to his riveted stare.
“I need to feel you again. I need your touch.”
His eye twitched, and his gaze dipped from mine. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want you. Right now.”
His hand slid away from my face. “Here? Lucy, I’m—”
“Don’t you dare tell me you don’t deserve me, or that you’re no good, or whatever bullshit’s going through your head.”
“I want to. Jesus, you’ve no idea how badly I want to touch you right now. These months without you have been a slow and painful fucking death.” He shook his head, his sad and tired eyes shifting away from me. “If I hurt you …”
“The only way you could possibly hurt me right now is if you don’t touch me.”
His big body left little room between him and the driver's seat, but I awkwardly climbed over the console until straddling his lap, as he slid the seat back.
Hands gripping my arms, he resisted when I leaned forward. “Wait. Lucy, we can wait. I can wait. For you. However long it takes.”
Twisting my arms from his grip, I pressed into him, holding each side of his face, and brushed my lips across his before fusing our mouths in a kiss. “I’ve waited long enough, Jase.”
“Are you …okay, though?” he asked.
With his face caught in my palms, I shook my head. “No. I’m not. But that’s why I need this. I need to remember how it felt to be touched out of love. I need to feel you again.”
Forehead pressed against mine, he kissed the inside of my palm and shook his head. “It’s too soon for you. After what he—”
“Don’t you dare treat me fragile. Not you.” I frowned, tears springing in my eyes. “Don’t you dare treat me like I’m some breakable porcelain doll. He didn’t break me.”
“He didn’t, mia Luce. You’re too fucking strong.”
Through a blur of tears, I stared down at him. “I’m still here. And every part of me still craves you. I won. He didn’t break me.”
Raising his head, he slammed his lips into mine, crushing our mouths together with frantic breaths. I trailed my hands down his chest, between our thighs, and when I gripped hold of his stiff length, a growl rumbled from his mouth, vibrating against my lips.
“I missed you,” he said, guiding my hands toward my shirt, where I lifted the fabric and peeled back my bra, offering him a moment to suckle my sensitive nipples. With his hands gripping my sides, each draw of his lips had me lifting from him, while his tongue flicked against the hardening peaks, stoking my arousal.
I needed him. I needed to feel his scars against mine, the bleeding wounds between us that never had a chance to heal. Only his touch could bring me back from the chasm into which I’d fallen, the dark hell that played whenever I closed my eyes. Only he could save me from those nightmares.
“Goddamn, I’ve missed you so much.” He murmured against my skin as his hands frantically gripped my breasts.
I squeezed my thighs around him, stomach tight with each tormenting suck, the anticipation burning low in my belly as his moan rumbled across my skin. A whimper escaped me when he unleashed my flesh, rubbing the pads of his thumbs where he’d just lapped with his tongue. “I need you inside of me. Right now.” My hoarse voice spoke of the desperation beating through me, the desire to feel him again.
I unfastened the button of his jeans and mashed myself against the roof of the car to allow him to push the pants down to his knees.
His eyes stared back at me with the most carnal, sexually charged glint I’d ever seen in them. Like a thirsty man eyeing a single shot of water.
The lust-tight clench of his jaw eased, as I sank down on him, impaling myself on his rock hard length. He tipped his head back on a long exhale. “Fuuuuck!”
Hips circling beneath me, he teased at first, eyes studying me, planning, heating my body with lethal anticipation, before he drove upward, making me gasp.
This. In conversation, words often got lost
, or somehow escaped me. Having him inside of me told me everything neither of us needed to say aloud.
My eyes rolled back. My spine stiffened. I’d touched myself for weeks, imagining the sound of his voice in my ear, and when he finally let out a tortured groan, I felt the first twinge of orgasm tighten my belly. That same torture pulsed through me then, the desperation of having him inside of me and wanting more, never wanting that sensation to end.
“I’ll make love to you later, Luce, but right now, I need to be so fucking deep inside you.”
With one hand plastered to the cold window, I rocked against him, while his hips slammed into mine, like two objects colliding with brute force. As our skin beat out a cadence of fast and furious sex, never losing pace or intensity, his fingers bruised my thighs. We were raw and gritty. Impatient. He filled me, and my body took him, hungry and desperate in the confined space.
Sweat coated my skin, and glistened across his face and throat. Like warriors, we stared at each other, waiting for the other to surrender.
“C’mon, baby. Come for me.”
“You first,” I choked out, but my body protested, edging closer to climax with the sound of his voice.
His scent invaded my mind, that spice mixed with arousal. Like a sweet poison, it dulled every other thought racing through my mind. Only him.
The steering wheel beat into my back as he upped the speed and pulled me into him, gripping tight to my hair, as I pressed into his chest. His pants of breath beat against my face in the same tempo that his dick slammed into me.
Still, I held out, traipsing a thin wire of control that could snap at any second.
The grip at the back of my head tightened. “Can’t get enough of you.”
I opened my mouth to retaliate, but all I could muster was a quiet whimper. My stomach wound into a tight coil, as my muscles burned, knees bruised. I cried out, and a long droning moan vibrated inside my chest. Higher and higher, I climbed, mentally willing myself to hold out, but losing to the desires of my body.
“I lost my fucking mind without you, Lucy,” he gritted out, his voice hoarse and angry.
Lips parted, brows drawn, I took him deeply, felt his pain, the suffering of having lost himself in those months apart. The loneliness, yearning, and frustration, it pounded into me with every punishing drive of his hips.
In return, I gave him my own. I clawed at his scalp and bit his neck, silently chiding him.
Bastard, why didn’t you come for me?
He struck back, fingers spreading my ass as they dug into my cheeks with his furious thrusting, as if to answer: Why did you stay away? Angry lines of tension warred across his face, battling the occasional lift of his brow that confessed a split second of ecstasy.
For a moment, we weren’t Jase and Lucia, but elements of fire and ice, light and darkness, charging the particles of air around us into a cataclysm of destructive energy.
I breathed, but couldn’t catch my breath. I felt, but couldn’t feel enough. The more he touched me, the more I needed him to touch me. I was frantic to come, but unwilling to lose the sensation of having him inside me.
His grunts hastened, and a tug of my hair tipped my head back, the intensity in his eyes holding me captive. “You’re mine, aren’t you Luce?”
On a harsh swallow, I nodded, breathless with every thrust. “Yours, Jase.”
Our sweat-slicked bodies pounded against each other in a relentless pursuit of climax. My head swam in a fog of bliss, while the man destroyed me from the inside out. I’d been primed for his voice, his scent, his body, and with one touch, I’d shatter at his command.
He smelled like sin and ruin, and fucked me like a wrecking ball, knocking down my walls, until we collapsed in the aftermath of our own destruction. Rolling in the debris, still fighting. Still yearning for each other.
My stomach wound tight, muscles stiff and ready, every cell in my body prepared for an explosive finale.
“I love you,” he whispered.
That was all it took.
A flash of light hit the back of my head and exploded into tingles of rapture that shot through my limbs and down my spine. I threw my head back and called his name, my ass grinding out the last of my orgasm, while his fingers burrowed into my hips. “Oh, God, I love you!”
When he came, he made a deep and delicious sound at the back of his throat, like an animal conquering its mate—so powerful and sexy, it made me want to rewind the last few seconds just to hear it again.
He pulled me into his body, smashing our mouths together, and his greedy kiss softened with his slowing breaths.
Foreheads pressed together, we breathed, his kisses still feathering across my cheek, my lips, my jaw. There was nothing soft or gentle about what we’d done. It was raw and painful, but beautiful in the way we battled each other, taking what we'd needed from the other. Feeding each other what we craved most.
“I love you, Jase,” I said between panting breaths.
In a moment of quiet between us, I took a deep breath and swallowed hard, not realizing the next words would be so difficult to push out. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I wanted to smile, but didn’t. “I’m pregnant.”
The furrow in his brow deepened. For a brief moment, I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
His gaze lowered toward my belly, and I watched as his eyes glassed over in a wet sheen, even though his body remained stiff as a board, chest rising and falling with fast, even breaths.
“Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
“A baby,” he whispered, and the corner of his lips lifted, as if he tried to hold back a smile, as if something inside his head told him he didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve to be happy.
My heart ached for what the last few months had done to his mind. I reached to touch him, but his grip around my arms held me in place.
A battle of war and peace raged across his face. With his softened eyes and clenched jaw, I couldn’t tell which thoughts were winning. Did he want the baby? Did he want me? The unknowns clashed inside my head, until at last, he lifted his head and leveled his gaze on mine.
The grip of my arms intensified as his brows knitted. “I want you to know, I will not rest until I find Tesarik, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not ever again.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“I do. And I will. I can’t let you go again. I’ll put you on a pedestal and worship you every fucking day, if it means you’ll stay with me, Lucy.”
“I don’t want you to put me on a pedestal, Jase.” Stroking his hair, I smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. “I’m happy just to be beside you.”
“La mia Luce, giorno e notte sogno solo di te. Il mio cuore è solo tuo.” His gravelly voice gave a sexy edge to the words I couldn’t understand.
“What did you say?”
“That you’re mine. Always have been. Always will be.”
* * *
Back in the apartment, I lay in bed beside Jase. We’d made love, as he'd promised, slow and beautiful.
Tracing the winged tattoo on his chest, I kissed the scar beside his heart, thinking how strong it must’ve been to have survived a bullet and, subsequently, the despair of having lost so many people that he loved.
I’d never let his heart suffer again.
“My father says we have to leave,” I told him quietly. “Get as far away from Detroit as we can for a while.”
Sliding his arm beneath his head, he pulled me closer and stared down at me. “If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?”
I smiled at the memory of the two of us from childhood, lying in the grass, dreaming things that seemed so far away from where we were. “Here. With you. What about you?”
“Paris.” The corner of his mouth lifted into a half smile. “Are you with me?”
Smiling, I kissed him, before I lay against his chest, where his heartbeat drummed in my ear. “Always. Let’s go to Paris.”
The boun
ce of the bed had both of us lifting our heads toward where Dagger, the Pitbull Jase had rescued, nuzzled himself between our legs.
I smiled, wrapping my arms around Jase’s neck, and as he pulled me in for a kiss, it occurred to me in that moment, how fickle fate could be.
I’d always believed that I could drive fate, and that whatever I chose would come with rewards, or consequences, as a result of my actions, my own decisions. Sometimes fate did let us take the wheel, and we steered in its lap like a child sitting on her father’s, thinking we were in control, unaware of the much larger force that refused to let us crash.
I'd had a lifetime of decisions, good and bad, but regardless of the direction I thought I was going, fate had led me back to the beginning, back to where I needed to be.
It led me back to Jase.
Back to love.
As much as we wanted to control it, love was not a choice, but merely a destination, and fate was the map it followed.
Our love wasn’t pretty and polished. Sometimes it was brutal and raw, ripping us open and sewing us back together with rusted needles and imperfect stitches. Sometimes, love was harder than being alone, when fate’s path was paved in blood and sacrifice. Love didn’t always heal our wounds, but it was often the only thing that could reach through the darkness and protect us from the harsh light of truth. When life left us in ruins, love allowed us to see the beauty through the destruction and the strength behind our ugliest scars.
Even in the moments when we thought we’d mended our pain and forged a new path, love brought us back to that day in the woods, when a young boy saved a young girl.
66
Roman
Roman sat in his chair, gazing out of the large picture window that overlooked the lawn of the mansion. A property far too big, too much for one man alone.