“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Lauren,” he choked out. He still didn’t move. Still let the distance yawn between us in order to make us closer than I’d been with any other human in my life.
He let me live in that moment. The one where I’d told him one of the most harrowing and painful things that had ever happened to me, the thing that defined and broke me in a way I’d never be whole again, and he stayed standing in front of me, worshipping me with his eyes. With everything that was broken within him too.
I had not had many truly beautiful moments in my life. Not for the years I’d been living without David. I made sure to eliminate risks, the possibility of pain—but doing that meant I took away the possibility of true happiness, of beauty.
Because happiness and beauty were never possible unless one accepted that risks, pain, and ugliness had to be part of your life too. Had to mix perfectly with all the good things, so the beauty could outweigh the pain.
And then came Gage.
With pain.
Ugliness.
And true beauty.
That’s what this moment was. After I had just laid my broken, severed, and utterly ruined soul in front of him—one of the most horrible things I’d had to do because it was the first time I was seeing it for myself—and my reward was him.
The moment was so delicate, so beautiful, I was scared to breathe, to blink, because I was terrified I’d alter it, pollute it, and it would crumble away into obscurity.
But delicate things were made to be broken. And I wanted this one broken. Because that would mean Gage was about to break me.
And he did, surging across the space between us.
I expected him to take my mouth, to run his hands all over me. I needed his mouth on mine so I could breathe. Needed his hands on every part of me—inside of me—so my heart could beat.
One of his hands clasped my bare hip. The other clutched my neck, yanking our heads together so our mouths almost touched.
Almost.
“I’m not gonna be a hero, babe,” he growled. “Because heroes, their playbook is narrow. Limited. They’re predictable. Play by the rules.” His mouth brushed against mine as he rasped the words. Then his hand left my hip, traveling downward, over my sensitive clit and then going inside. Right inside.
I cried out a little, my knees weakening at the beautifully brutal intrusion.
Gage’s eyes flared. “And you know as well as I do that this is a world where the rules don’t mean shit, and the heroes are the only ones who don’t know that. That means they lose. No matter what shit you read about in the books, the villain always wins.” His fingers moved in a violent rhythm, coaxing me to climax, yanking me to the edge. “’Cause their playbook is endless. ’Cause they have no rules. Heroes lose everything. Villains get it, and they get it bloody. And I’ll be a villain one hundred times over because I’m damn sure not losing everything, not again.” The grip on my face was painful, his fingers inside of me pure nirvana. “And just so you know, baby, you’re everything.”
And just when my heart was about to explode, when I was about to explode, his fingers left me and I sagged, almost crying with the loss of him. With the loss of what promised to be one of the most intense climaxes of my life.
I wasn’t disappointed for long.
Because, eyes still on me, Gage lowered and knelt at my feet. His large hand circled my proportionally tiny ankle and lifted so my knee hooked over his shoulder.
I let out a harsh breath at the angle, at how open, how exposed I was to his eyes.
But then I didn’t think of that, because his mouth was there, right there. And I didn’t say anything.
I screamed.
I fell over the edge.
He caught me.
Ten
I was late to work the next day.
Really freaking late.
The reason was obvious, if Abagail’s sly grin was anything to go by as I passed reception. She had been warmer to me after her initial shock at me, of all people, being with Gage. Not that she was cruel about it in the beginning; she just didn’t have that in her. She didn’t have the tact to keep the hurt of her surprise from smarting though.
I’d forgiven it, because she had no malice, only youth.
“Morning, Lauren,” she said, sipping her coffee.
I smiled wide. “Good morning.”
“Late start?” she prompted, eyes wide and knowing.
“Oh no, very early start,” I said with a wink and a tone that I didn’t recognize.
The way her eyes popped out of her head, Abagail didn’t recognize it either.
And the start to my morning was early. The sun was only just kissing the horizon when Gage’s heated half woke me. Then the hardness pressing into my hip really woke me. And I decided to do something I had done but not enjoyed up until then—wake Gage up with my mouth around him.