I crashed my mouth against her, kissing her as the world watched, making up for all the times I’d loved in secret. It was furious and gentle, and it wasn’t enough. I wanted to swallow all of her. Her lips, her tongue, her soul.
I broke on a groan. “I need to get inside you right fucking now.”
Thirty-Eight
ABIGAIL
“I’ve always wanted to fuck you on this beach,” Theo said, voice low at my ear. “There were times I wanted to drag you back here and make you pay for finding me, and there were times I wanted to worship you in the sand for saving me.”
My lips parted. “What do you want to do now?”
He grinned. “Both.”
Theo bit my ear, dragging at the lobe, swirling his tongue along the shell. He was so strong and he held me up as if I weighed nothing—I knew that wasn’t true. His focus was on my neck, then my ear, my collarbone.
I got lost, my head falling back.
Then I saw them.
“The paparazzi are still here,” I said on a sigh.
From their perspective, I was hugging him. He ignored me, popping the button on my jeans with his free hand. He slid his hand under my panties, fingers cool from the beach air, my skin hot. The fact that people—cameras—were feet away only made me hotter.
His jagged groan ricocheted like shrapnel through my body. I gripped his shoulders for support. “If I wanted to fuck you right now, you would do it.”
God help me, I would.
“I won’t give that to you, Reject. I don’t want anyone to see you but me.”
He slid out of me, and I missed him like my own blood. He let me go, and I clung to him, sliding down his body. He grinned down at me, cocky, pushing hair out of my face with the hand that had just spread me.
Then he turned to the paparazzi, smile evaporating. “Fuck off.”
“That doesn’t work with them,” I said. If anything, it fueled them.
Sure enough, they stayed put.
Theo rolled his shoulders and closed the distance between us and the paparazzi. He focused on the guy with the video camera, grabbing the lens, smashing the thing to the sand. I was reminded of when he’d first come back to me, the very first times he’d stuck up for me. They yelled something about a lawsuit, cameras flashing with more vehemence. Theo laughed.
“Unless you want your exclusive to disappear like sand, get the fuck out.” He growled the last bit.
When they didn’t immediately move, he reached for another camera, and that had them scattering. He looked so intimidating, so Theo.
They took a slew of photos as they left, and I wondered what they were going to print now. Something about how Abigail Crowne had found someone just like her, maybe. Married a man with no regard for civility, aggressive and rude.
What a pair they were.
That worry vanished as Theo came back to me.
He picked me up, grabbing my thigh and lifting me up, wrapping my legs back around his waist. He buried his face in my neck, biting and sucking.
“First I’m going to fuck you against the pier, then I’m going to fuck you in the sand. If you’re good, maybe I’ll let you suck my cock.”
“Splinters,” I managed to breathe against his intoxicating lips.
He laughed. “Sweet girl, you should be worried about more than splinters.”
He moved us underneath the pier, but when he backed me against the column, he took off his zip-up hoodie, draping it over my shoulders. I had a very good cushion against splinters.
My Theo barked, and he bit hard, but when it came to me, he was always so protective.
My fingers glanced down his chest, to his jeans, unzipping him. I pulled him hot and hard out of his boxer briefs, into my hand. He hissed, tightening the hoodie around my shoulders.
“I don’t have a condom, Abigail,” Theo said, voice rough.
“I don’t have any birth control.”
Our eyes locked. This was my out.
I wrapped my legs tighter around him, pushing him closer to me, just barely spreading myself.
“Fuck,” he groaned into my neck. “I’ve missed this pussy.” His teeth found my neck, biting. “I’m going to mark you.” He dragged his teeth along my collarbone. “I’m going to drip down your pussy.”
He slid a hand up my shirt, palming my breast—bruising.
I arched on the rough, wooden pole as he pushed deeper but not deep enough. Not nearly.
“Where you saved me all those years ago, now you’re going to give me everything. No more barriers, no layers between us, nothing hiding that I’m yours and you’re mine.”
Theo lifted his head enough to find my eyes. The ocean breeze blew soft chocolate strands around his face, softening the hard lines.
“You might be the artist, but you’re my masterpiece,” he said. “All my life I’ve been painting you on a canvas, and now I’m going to unravel you thread by thread.”
He captured my lips at the same moment he speared me on his cock.
The world disappeared into Theo.
The water nipped at our toes, my head on Theo’s bare chest. I dripped down my thighs, dripped him.
“I need to clean up,” I murmured into his hot skin.
In response, Theo cupped me. He stared up at the wood pier, the stars peeking through, lazily spreading his come all over my lips. One finger, then two, slid back inside, pressing it back inside me. The movement was enough to get me hot and prickly.
“I like feeling me on you,” he said casually, still staring up at the slatted sky.
I couldn’t breathe.
His free hand came to my chin, gently tipping it up, until my eyes met his. His head was tilted slightly, eyes narrow, drinking me in as he pressed in and out, in and out, a delirious rhythm. He watched me like he had the first night, only now I was wet with him. Marked—covered—in Theo.
I was still sore from Theo, but his fingers transmuted the pain into a delicious need. Soon I was working myself against his fingers. Theo using his come as lube was boiling my blood.
“I like feeling you in me,” I admitted, breathless.
His grip on my chin tightened, eyes blazing. He flipped me on my side, hot skin flush against mine. His thick, muscled arms wrapped around me, holding me close, his lips on the back of my neck, my ear, my shoulder.
I felt him at my entrance and I pushed back.
“Please,” I managed to whimper.
“Sweet girl.” He groaned my special term of endearment, sliding inside me.
Thirty-Nine
ABIGAIL
Theo wiped a bit of sauce from my lips, licking it from his thumb.
“What?” I asked. He watched me, looking too damn smug. After Theo made true on his promises, we’d dressed and were now getting burgers.
Theo insisted I needed to be fed.
“Just picturing your lips dripping with something else.” I looked away from his green eyes, which seemed to glow in the night. “Is Abigail Crowne blushing?” he asked, sounding like a startled Southern belle.
I glared, taking a bite of my burger.
I was hungry after the pier. Theo was… insatiable.
Theo hadn’t stopped touching me. When we walked here, his arm was around me. Now he kept one hand on my shoulder, his other between my thighs. It was intoxicating, distracting, marvelous. I still wore his hoodie, and it was soft and smelled like him. I kept lifting the fabric to my nose, inhaling the musky, spicy scent.
“Not Crowne,” I said, dropping the sleeve after Theo gave me a knowing look. “Not anymore. Hound… maybe…” I chewed my lip, nervous at suggesting I take his last name.
When I looked up, a need blazed in his eyes that nearly floored me. Then a slow, intoxicating smile curved his pink lips and broke his cheeks, white teeth and all.
Oh. Wow.
“What did you tell the press?” I asked, blinking out of my stupor.
“Our story. How you saved me, how I fell in love with you despite our worlds.”
>
“Even Ned?” I wondered.
“The right thing to do would be to tell you it’s your story, and so I didn’t say a word of it.”
I looked up, peering into his eyes. “So you didn’t tell it?”
His jaw was hard, and his grip on my thigh tightened. “I’m not a hero.”
“You’ve always been my hero.”
He worked his jaw. “Maybe I knew if I told that story with your name attached, you’d be dragged through the mud, so maybe I told a different truth.”
A wrinkle formed on my brow. “A different truth?”
Theo told me how he’d painted a picture of Ned as a backstabbing coward who only wanted to marry me to get close to my money.
“Gray and Gemma helped,” he admitted. “They backed me up and said they would excommunicate him from your world.”
That would obliterate him.
He might not go to jail, but he could never show his face in Crowne Point again, or in our world. His reputation would be ruined. For some reason, we lived in a society where it was okay for men to terrorize women, but they could never be foolish, and they could never be weak.
“They helped?” I couldn’t stop the awe in my voice. Theo nodded, and I grinned and buried my face in his chest. “You’re my hero.”
He hadn’t told my story, but Ned was ruined anyway.
“He loved Abigail Crowne,” I mused. “He didn’t know what to do with just Abigail. Now he has to live as just Ned.”
“I knew he was an idiot,” Theo said, eating a fry. It was unfair how hot he looked just eating a stringy potato. All thoughts flew out the window, stuck on his pillowy lips. As if he knew what I was thinking, he grinned crookedly, arching a brow.
“Where are you living?” he asked suddenly, eyes hard.
I paused.
Oh my God—where was I going to live?
“I was sleeping at the motel. I don’t really know where I’m going to live.” I charged the room on my credit card, but my mom was going to cut that off soon.
I set down my burger.
“Abs,” Theo said. “What are you thinking?”
I could barely hear him.
What was I going to do?
I have nowhere to go.
Was this what a panic attack feels like? I couldn’t breathe. Don’t get me wrong, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’d always choose Theo, always. I just… I’m scared. My life had always been comfortable and easy. I’ve never had to worry about material things.
I was homeless.
I had no money.
“How comfortable was the beach?” I asked Theo. “It probably got cold in the winter. Oh my God, you didn’t have internet. Or maids. Or running water.”
“Of course Abigail Crowne is more worried about maids than running water,” he said.
My wide eyes found him, unable to laugh at his obvious joke. Sometimes it snowed in the winter, covering the sandy beach in a blanket of beautiful white powder. I always thought it was magical.
But not if I was sleeping in it.
“Was it warmer under the pier?” I asked.
His fingers were at my chin, drawing me to him. “Hey. We’ll figure it out. I’m not letting you sleep on the beach.”
“But—”
“I can’t promise you servants, Abigail, but I promise you will always be comfortable and always be protected.”
My heart rate slowed as I stared into his green eyes. I believed him.
“Maybe…” Theo dropped my chin, warring with something in his mind. He shook his head, and it was my turn to press him.
“What are you thinking?”
“It’s stupid,” Theo said. “I shouldn’t have even thought it.”
“But you did. What was it?”
“I wondered if maybe we can stay with my mom. She gave me her number and for a moment I thought she was going to ask me to stay with her.”
“Your mom?” I gasped. “You saw your mother?”
“Abigail Crowne?” someone said, at the worst fucking moment. To our left, a crowd of teenagers was looking over. I looked at my unfinished burger, at Theo’s barely touched fries.
“It’s Abigail Crowne and her new husband!” another said.
Theo grabbed my hand, pulling me off the rubbery chain-link table. Holding hands, we ran out of the diner. For once, the thought of marriage hadn’t filled me with dread.
Married to Theo.
What a dream.
After escaping the gathering crowd at Crowne Drive-In Diner, we walked hand in hand along bluffs, below us a sandy shore.
“So you met your mom?” I asked.
“Briefly. I got distracted by your marriage announcement.” Theo shot me a crooked grin.
I buried my face in my free hand. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
He pulled me to his warm, solid chest, back to the ocean. “Never apologize for what led me back to you.”
The wind and waves whipped a small flurry, and I buried my head deeper into his hard pecs. Was it possible I was really safe? Finally with Theo, after everything? I never wanted to move from this warm embrace, but then he spoke.
“You were right,” Theo said and I lifted my eyes to his. “About the diary. All this time, my mother was trying to find me, hoping I would find her. It was a map.”
My heart cracked like an egg for Theo. In all the years I’d known him, this was the dream I’d hope would come true. As if he could see the words in my head, Theo pulled me to him and grasped my chin.
“I should’ve listened to you, my princess and my reject, my lying, fire-starting, romantic…” He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear with one finger, eyes throbbing with tenderness. “My perfect contradiction.”
Theo was the only person in the world who knew exactly what to say to make me bloom. Which made sense, I guess, because he also knew exactly what to say to destroy me.
I stood on my tiptoes, angling to kiss him. I could taste the buzz of him on my lips, our static electricity already dancing when suddenly I remembered.
“Grim has your mom’s diary now!” I said. “My sister gave it to him.”
Theo’s brow wrinkled, but not with concern, like I’d expected. “My mom had it when I found her. He must have given it to her. She said she was given it looking for me.”
“What? Why would he do that?”
“You know the Horsemen will do any job, for the right price.”
I briefly thought to my sister, to her debt. Had she needed a job from the Horsemen?
“My mom’s wife is the mayor of Crowne Point,” Theo continued, pulling me back. “There isn’t much she can’t afford.”
That was why she looked familiar. She was one of the many faces I’d been forced to mingle with. They all blurred into one blob after awhile.
“What about you, sweet girl? Can you really give up your entire family?” He arched his head forward, eyes digging, unwilling to let me gloss over this.
“Yes… but my mom didn’t seem angry with me. She said see you at Christmas. I don’t know, she might not totally have excommunicated me.”
I could tell he was worried, unsure if that was good or bad, unsure what that meant for us.
“Whatever happens,” I said. “You’ll be with me, by my side. I made that clear.”
Theo dragged me the last few inches to his lips.
Kissing Theo was addicting. I loved everything about it. Standing on my tiptoes as his arm anchored my lower back, tugging me higher and pressing me flat against him, so I felt him. His flat abs, his hard cock.
I got lost in his soft lips and the firm pressure he applied, his skillful, teasing tongue.
The free hand he wove to the base of my neck, pressing me harder against his lips.
A smattering of raindrops fell, and I opened my eyes, breaking me out of his trance. My arms were wrapped around his neck, and I saw the bracelet he’d given me for the thousandth time that night. I realized something then, something so important I’d yet to give Theo
.
“I need to go back to the motel,” I said against his lips, breathless.
“Now?” he asked, lips at my neck, then jaw, kisses leaving a trail of fire and need.
“Now,” I breathed.
He groaned, biting my lip, but let me go.
When we got back to the motel, he eyed my room number with mild amusement.
“What?” I asked.
His lip curved. “I’m 302.”
I looked at the white painted wood number on my door: 301.
“We’re next to each other?”
Of course we were next to each other.
All Theo did was grin.
I opened my pale-blue door, and Theo followed me. I placed a hand on his chest.
“Stay here.”
He grinned wolfishly, taking another step, pushing me back into my room. I stumbled over my own feet.
“I want it to be a surprise,” I all but begged.
His eyes gleamed, but he raised his hand, stepping back onto the whitewashed porch that wrapped around the motel.
I fished around my room, looking for my box. Despite being a motel, the room was beautiful, with a weathered seaside decor, queen bed, and valet if you needed. In any other town, it would be a four-star hotel, but this was Crowne Point.
Theo was leaning against a railing overlooking the ocean, arms folded. When he saw me come out, he stood off it.
“My mom told me to take what I wanted from my room…” I said, suddenly nervous. “This is the only thing worth saving.”
His green eyes flickered from my eyes to what I held in my hands.
Too silent.
The waves too loud.
“I fixed it…” I trailed off, fiddling with the bracelet. I still felt hopelessly vulnerable. I’d fixed it without any certainty he would come through and catch me. Holding it in my hands reminded me of when my heart beat raw.
Theo wrapped his arm around my waist, thrusting me to him.
His lips were on mine, sucking my breath from my body, thrusting his tongue into my mouth. Any inch I gave him he took and demanded more. More breath. More tongue. More lips. More.
He finished with a quick bite of my lower lip.
Heartless Hero Page 30