Page 14

Bella

I woke up with the sun in my eyes and a note where Blade should be lying.

Not the best start to the day. Especially since the note said he’d be back soon and then he wasn’t.

I spent nearly two hours trying to enjoy the comfy hotel bedroom, but my mind kept getting stuck on how alone I was.

Once again. I’ve spent the last decade far away from my hometown, my family—biological and found—but I never felt as alone as I do in this town when I’m by myself. Go figure.

It doesn’t help that two-thirds of my biological family is gone too.

My dad and my brother Ricardo were killed while I was in prison.

I could’ve gotten permission to go to their funerals, good behavior and all that, but my only surviving brother Matteo told me not to even think about it and to forget them all, like they’d forgotten me. And he was the nice one.

I haven’t heard from him since.

And between Rogue’s warnings last night and my need to see if I really, truly have no biological family left, I almost called Matteo while I waited for Blade to come back.

I’d already dialed the number, all I needed was to press call.

But that small action was more than my shaking hands and quivering soul could take.

Just like each and every time I’d tried to call Blade in the last decade.

Everyone is better off without me. Everyone. I am ruin. I am the curse that destroys everything.

And right on cue, just as I think that, Blade walks in. Sending my mind into an even darker spiral, because it’s him I most want to protect from my curse.

“Where did you go?” I ask, my voice shaking so hard I’m sure I’m blushing in shame. I’m so much stronger than all this. So much fiercer. So why do I just fall apart whenever I’m faced with my past?

Good thing Ghost never got around to torturing me, or raping me, or all the other terrible things he did to his victims. He just kept me locked up in that dank basement with no food and no water until I’d hallucinated enough for several lifetimes.

None of it good. It’s why I don’t like to sleep.

Dreaming is too much like those hallucinations.

Sometimes they come when I’m wide awake too.

“I’m sorry,” he says and walks to me, reaching out to like he means to caress my face or something. I stand up before he can reach me, hating the pity in his eyes. I am not a fragile thing. Never was.

“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “How about we get some coffee and breakfast? I’m starving.”

I start looking for my clothes which somehow managed to get tossed all over the room.

No, not somehow… it happened in that whirlwind of passion that overtook us as soon as we were alone and safe in here.

I was reacquainted with so many things I’d forgotten about his body, his touch, his very soul, last night.

So many things I’d missed to the point of madness…

a point I might have crossed a bit in the last ten years.

As this morning’s freak out proves. But just thinking about last night, remembering all the pleasure and bliss is making the darkness of my thoughts fade.

“Sure, yeah,” he says. “But pack up your stuff. We’re not coming back here.”

I freeze in the middle of pulling on my shirt, wondering where the hardness is his voice is coming from. It’s there on his face too.

“OK,” I say and continue getting dressed. Maybe if I pretend everything is fine, it will be. “Where are we going? The clubhouse?”

He shakes his head. “My mom’s.”

“Your mom’s?” I ask, a laugh bursting out of my chest. A relieved sort of laugh, but also everything but. “Your mom hates me worse than anyone.”

He shakes his head. “She doesn’t hate you.

She was just mad at you, but she’s gotten over it.

Besides, you won’t be staying in the house with her.

You’ll be staying in the small apartment over the garage.

The one she had made for me when she thought I’d be staying at home while going to college.

You can even set up a tattoo studio up there.

It’s big enough. I mean, for the time being, until you get settled in and find a better place. ”

I walk over to him and lay three fingers over his mouth to silence him. Otherwise, I don’t think he’d ever stop talking. And it’s not like him to talk this much. Ever. He must’ve given this a lot of thought. Probably while he was convincing his mom to go along with it.

“I really hate this idea, but thank you for coming up with it,” I say. “And if you’re there, it won’t suck so bad. I guess.”

He cringes. “I’ll be there as much as I can. I promise.”

“You won’t live there with me?”

“Not all the time… the club…” He’s mumbling because my fingers are pressing down on his lips now. I don’t want to hear this. But there’s no running from it.

So I release him and start looking for my jacket. I’m suddenly very cold.

“Won’t your mom be in danger if I’m living with her?” I ask. “I mean, won’t she be in even bigger danger than everyone at the clubhouse? Maybe I should just go hide in the desert or something, or some dark basement alone so I don’t put anyone else in danger.”

He doesn’t say anything, is just standing there like a wonderful wall of stone, letting me rant, the way he usually would. He knows I need to get it all out and then I’ll snap out of it. I know I will too, because he’s here.

“Everything’s gonna work out, Bella,” he says, which just sends my mind spinning even harder with all the things I could, should, need to say to contradict him.

But then I look into his eyes and take a deep breath. And there it is again. That feeling of dreams coming true.

So instead of ranting I walk to him, caress his cheeks and cup them, then stand on my toes and give him one of those sweet kisses that are straight from those dreams too.

And before I know it, we’re lying in bed, clothes flying all over the place again, because fuck it, we have all the time in the world again. All the time I thought was lost forever.

He enters me with the same care he’s always shown me.

But also with an urgency that lets me know he’s chasing those lost dreams as hard as I am.

Chasing them with his kisses, his caresses, but mostly his thrusts, which never fail to hit the spot, the one where nothing but pleasure and goodness can live.

Pretty soon, I’m moaning into his wild kisses, meeting his thrusts, trying to fight the orgasm knocking at me with all the force of an approaching wildfire… just so I can hold this dream a little longer, just so I can pretend it will never end again.

But there’s no holding back those fires. Never was.

I welcome their all-erasing power, welcome the pure pleasure they wash me in, inside and out. Welcome the good. Because if bad must come, at least we’ll have this wild abandon, this pure bliss to remember.

Bad will come. It always has and always does when I’m around. It’s pretty much the only certainty in my life. As is the fact that I’ll fight it with everything I’ve got.

Just so I can get back to this. To his arms. To this wildfire love we do so well.