He filled me and filled me, his heart running in jagged, erratic beats.
Mine raced and my head spun and my body conceded to the power of his.
He took me hard.
Desperately.
Urgently.
Brazenly.
He grunted and gripped and drove.
Never letting go.
The way he’d promised. The way he’d promised.
“Don’t let me go.” I whispered it as I gasped. As my fingers clutched in the locks of his hair and my spirit writhed and leapt and called out to meet with his.
Trent took me whole.
Devoured and destroyed.
I felt myself flying away.
No longer touching the ground.
The pleasure too beautiful. Too staggering. Too great.
Gathering and building.
Driving me to the highest high.
I lost myself there. In the peaks of paradise. Where I split apart. Where I floated through ecstasy.
Wave after wave.
Trent met me there as he came, as he grunted, “Heaven. Heaven.”
And I clung to him as our bodies bowed and jerked and blazed with this thrill. With the driving sensation. With the bliss that streaked and boomed and sang.
But it was bigger than that. Brighter. This place where we met. Far, far above the middle. In a place that only belonged to us.
My arms curled tight as I slumped against his body.
The two of us drenched, panting, trying to catch our breaths and still breathing the other.
“Heaven,” Trent murmured again.
I hugged him so tight.
As fiercely as he was holding me.
Because I wanted it for him.
Heaven.
Peace.
For him to look in the mirror and not see a monster.
To know he was far more than just redeemable.
I wanted him to know.
To know he was precious to me.
Twenty-Seven
Trent
Los Angeles – Fifteen Years Ago
Deke shoved the man onto the concrete floor. He skidded on his side, crying out as he scrambled to get onto his hands and knees. Blood dripped from the cut on his mouth and spilled onto the stained floor.
Hatred filled Trent’s being. Heart. Body. Soul.
His sight was blurred by the rage. The only thing he could see was the profile of the man’s face and the patch sewn on the back of the vest he wore.
Demon’s Day.
The same man who’d climbed onto his bike and rode away like it was nothing after he’d slaughtered Trent’s mother.
In cold blood.
In front of her four children.
“This the bastard?” his father hissed at his ear. Cutter as he was known. His voice was as vile as the blood that pumped through Trent’s veins.
Chills skittered across Trent’s flesh, and his mouth watered with venom. “Yes,” he managed to say.
His father pressed the gun to his hand. It felt cold and heavy. As cold as the hole burned in the middle of his heart.
“You get to do the honors.” Cutter’s words were close to a laugh.
The man thrashed. “What the fuck? Cutter, you piece of shit. Let me go.”
Deke kicked him in the face. “Shut the fuck up, Demon. No one is talkin’ to you.”
“Do it,” Cutter instructed.
Trent’s arm shook like crazy as he lifted the gun. His sight blurred and his heart hammered and his soul screamed in chaos.
He killed my mother.
He deserves it.
You can’t.
Don’t.
Don’t.
Don’t.
Run. Just fucking run.
Turn your back and never look back, just like Mom said.
A vicious voice caressed his ear. “Do it.”
Trent gulped, and his arm shook harder, the gun jumping all over, so heavy he thought it would slip from his fingers and clatter to the ground.
“You remember, son, what he did? You remember your momma bleeding out on the lawn? You remember her smile? Way she loved you?”
Sweat dripped from his hair, or maybe it was just tears that were leaking down his face.
“Just pull the trigger, and all the pain will go away. Do it, do it. It’s who you were meant to be. No turning back from it now.”
Trent did.
He pulled the trigger, and he prayed with it, it would wash away the pain. The price paid. Justice done for his mom.
But the man slumped to the ground and the hole just got bigger.
With it, Trent’s rage only multiplied. The pain growing deeper. The vacuum sucking him under.
His father grinned. “Ghost.”
It was the day he gave himself over to the hatred.
To the thirst for retribution that could never be sated.
And Trent kept pulling the trigger.
Ghost.
Ghost.
Ghost.
Wearing that patch in the name of Iron Owls, thinking one day, one day, it would be enough.
That one day, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
But hate made you forget what you were supposed to be fighting for in the first place, and the shame reminded you that you’d already condemned yourself.
Until you woke up one day realizing you weren’t any better than the man who’d taken her life.
Twenty-Eight
Trent
“Dad, Dad, Dad, wake it up, we got a surprise for you!”
I rolled over just in time to find Gage jumping on the edge of my bed before he flew into a swan dive, coming right for me. No caution because the kid knew I would catch him. Wrap him up. Hold him tight.