Page 116 of Creeping Lily

59

TITAN

I’ve never believed in missing pieces.

Never believed in destiny, or fate, or any of that pretty bullshit people tell themselves to make the world hurt less. I believe in violence. In scars. In retribution that burns like an out of control fire.

Then there’s Lily.

Lily, who slipped past every wall I welded shut. Who looks at me like I’m not a monster built from rage, but a man she’s known her whole damn life. Maybe she has. Maybe she’s the only one who truly ever did.

She’s right for me in ways that scare me more than bullets ever could.

Because she’s softness where I’m steel, but it’s not weakness—it’s power. It’s the kind of strength I can’t touch without cutting myself. She listens when I grunt out half a sentence, when silence is the only language I know, and somehow she still hears what I don’t say.

Because she doesn’t flinch. Not from the mask, not from the scars, not from the blood that clings to me no matter how hard I scrub. I know I could come to her drenched in violence andshe’d still open her arms, still let me crawl inside her warmth, still whisper my name like I deserve to have one.

Because she doesn’t want the weapon. Lily wants the man buried underneath, and she looks at me like I’m worth saving, like I’m worth loving, even when I can’t stand to look in a mirror.

She fits the jagged edges. Where I splinter, she smooths. Where I’m sharp, she bleeds willingly, like she was always meant to. I hate myself for it—hate how much I crave her light—but I’d gut the whole world to keep it burning.

And maybe that’s what makes her mine.

Not because I chained her. Not because I stole her. But because when she presses her cheek to my chest, when her breath warms the hollow place where my heart should be, I finally feel like I’ve been found.

She’s that aching part of me-my missing piece, and I’d walk through hell again if it meant she’d be there waiting for me on the other side.

The second her body goes slack beneath mine, the second I slide out of her, I brace for it—for her to go rigid, to sit up, to put distance between us. To remember there’s no protection, no safety, nothing binding us but heat and ruin.

But she doesn’t.

She melts into me like I’m the only place she’s ever belonged.

Her face presses into my chest, her hair sticking to my skin, her body curling closer like she wants to crawl inside me. Her arms slide around me as if I’m not the monster who just fucked her raw, but the anchor she’s been searching for her whole life.

And when I hesitate—when my arms hover, uncertain, dangerous—she shifts closer still, a quiet little sound slipping out of her throat. A whimper, maybe. Or a plea.

It undoes me.

My hands move before my brain catches up, one cradling her spine, the other fisting gently in her hair. I pull her in,hold her so tight I can feel her heartbeat through both our chests. My breath saws out rough, because every part of this is wrong.

She should be panicking.

She should be regretting.

She should be afraid.

Instead, she’s calm. Sated. Safe.

Inmyarms.

The thought claws through me, violent and sharp, because she doesn’t understand. This—me—isn’t safety. It’s a cage. It’s a death sentence wrapped in leather and scars.

I tilt my head just enough to watch her. Her lashes brush her cheeks, her lips parted as her breath fans warm across my skin. She looks peaceful. Radiant, even. As if what we just did wasn’t reckless, wasn’t dangerous, wasn’t a mistake.

And that’s what terrifies me.

She’s not running. She’s not recoiling. She’s not giving me the one thing I’m built to expect—fear.