He growls, and I dig my nails into the muscle cording his neck and shoulders. Then he starts to fuck me, powered by the confusion, the vulnerability, the confessions, and the honesty.
"Iwouldhave locked you up," he admits darkly, gripping my arse and thigh with one hand and using my pelvis to meet his hard drives. "I would have thrown away the damn key. You’re right. I wouldn't have seen reason. I wouldn't have taken a chance. Not with your life." Deep grunts fall from him with each punch of his hips. "Not with you. Never you."
His lips slide up to my mouth and I gasp into them. He fucks my mouth with his tongue as he ruthlessly thrusts into me. Fucking the truth from himself, the hatred, blame, stoicism, and control.
Breaking off from our bruising kiss, he smothers my small body to his formidable, packed muscles, my head to his chest, held there by his fingers wrapped around my wet blonde strands. His hips never relent, battering me hard, rutting into me without caution.
My arms envelop his waist. I hold on as his powerful muscles roll and tighten beneath my clutching hands.
"I worship you, Fawn," he goes on roughly. "I fucking worship you, and I won't always be reasonable, but give me the damn chance to be! I'll learn. Give me the damn chance."
He batters the end of me. I cry out as he opens up to me with his words and his hard inward thrusts that have me accepting him and then missing him so quickly one sensation overlaps with the other.
I can't keep up.
Holding on.
He groans, his cock thickening inside me. "You'll have to stop me one day. You'll have to make me see reason when I'm about to tear the world through the middle for you. If you leave me, I'll do it. I will bleed the streets. Kill them all. Nothing could hurt me more than existing without you."
The ecstasy of being full of him, of his words, of his raw lovemaking that is a trembling and desperate chase to a climax, fills my chest.
Vulnerable. Utterly open. He clings to my body, hand in my hair, fearful of any distance. He doesn't just love me. I'm hiseverything. Like he is mine.
Tears continue to stream down my face as we break through mountains and crumbling walls. As we strip off his cool façade that was no choice of his to create. Armour that protected him from questioning the evil around him. A veil that separated him from the innocent girl that affects him still.
He fucks it all out.
His pristine mannerisms.
His unreadable affections.
All the real fear, pain, and regret shine from him and it is beautiful and chaotic and devastating. And he gifts it all to me as he builds towards his orgasm in such a way that makes me feel like his home, his safe space. My body, his sanctuary. A place of redemption.
My dangerous man.
My Clay Butcher.
My number one.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
fawn
Freshly washed,fucked, and clinging to the seams of consciousness, we sit on the sofa in our master suite. Inside here, we are alone to be us. Even as the city through the window is a vast landscape of flickering lights and dashing orange lines that beckon him. Want a piece of him.
But not tonight.
I straddle his lap, my bare body on his, as I hold an ice pack to the bruising starting to colour the side of his cheekbone. He was struck during the fight at the campsite. I didn't see it happen—but otherwise, we are both nearly unscathed. It's a miracle, really. Magic, maybe. No one was going to take away my number one good thing.
He enjoys a cigar while I tend to him. Wolf or lion, the king of this damn District jungle, a wound is a wound, and it has no mistress.
He leans back in a powerful pose. One arm hanging over the top of the sofa, the other by his side, fingers playing with the ends of my hair. Sort of like I do…
The cigar balances between his lips as he draws in and out, stoking the glowing ember to flare and then darken. His clear, blue gaze watches me quietly. It's as intimate a moment as any other.
The image of my father's eyes and the creases between his eyebrows tumble into my mind. I inhale hard.
"I don't want to think about him," I say. "He didn't really look like me. Not really. But his eyes…"