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39

Fane

After

I just rounded the bend of the street, the house almost in view, when I did a double take at the person sitting in the car right across from me.

I’d never seen the car before, but that didn’t mean much. What got me was the plume of cigarette smoke that poured out of the open driver’s side window.

“Should I be worried about why you’re out here watching the house?”

A smug grin curled his lips, his eyes a silvery shade in the moonlight. “She refused to go inside and fell asleep on the porch. I figured I’d keep an eye on her until you got home. Lest we forget the events of last night.”

The mention of it sent a pang of nausea rolling through me. It made my body lock up tight, like at any moment I was prepared to bolt right back to the woman apparently asleep on the porch.

I didn’t say anything, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to talk.

“We couldn’t find you. For four hours, I couldn’t fucking find you.” He took a long drag of his cigarette, the glow briefly illuminating the sharp edge of his jaw. “And then I got the news that you’d killed someone in Artington on Thursday. And that Beverly hauled you in without so much as calling it in properly.” His voice had dipped, almost murderous.

“Who the fuck’s Beverly?”

“Detective Dozen.” Ash said his name like he thought the guy was as ridiculous as I did.

“I figured it was a little off when the lawyer I was promised didn’t show up.”

“The detectives have already been dealt with.” His voice carried an edge that made me glance at him.

“What did you do?” My words came slow, deliberate.

Ashton’s eyes sliced to me, sharp as the moonlight catching on glass. He didn’t need to say more. I already knew.

“I told her we couldn’t find you.”

My stomach dropped. I pushed off the car. “What? Why—”

“Because she was waiting for you to come back,” he cut me off. “She wasn’t sure that you would, and still, she sat on that porch and watched for you.” He stepped out of the car, grinding his cigarette under his boot. “Figured it’d be better for her to know your absence wasn’t by choice than let her think you’d pulled the pin again.”

“I never pulled the pin.” I crossed my arms and frowned at him.

“I know that, and you know that.” He gave me a little shove, but his voice softened. “She didn’t.”

He wasn’t wrong. The fact that she thought I might not come back to her after what had happened fucking killed me, and for that I knew there was no one to blame but myself. That it would take more than a few months together to make her believe I wasn’t going anywhere. To convince her to love me like she used to.

“Jared found your truck.” He gestured to where it was parked a few cars back from his.

I nodded and then frowned at my boots, taking a beat before I spoke again. “Declan took photos of Cali.” I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “Photos of the two of us together.”

Ash’s eyebrows shot up at the rolled manila folder I pulled from the back pocket of my jeans.

“I took the physicals they printed, but…”

“Consider them dealt with.” His voice left no room for doubt.

“Thanks.” I nodded at him, keeping my eyes locked on his. “For keeping her safe.” He knew I meant more than just now, but just like Cali, it was never hard for him to understand what I was trying to say.

“Yep.” He nodded, and then he pulled me in for a hug that I didn’t expect. Ash wasn’t a hugger. He was probably the opposite of a hugger, but the way he gripped onto me spoke volumes, coming from this man who hated to be touched.

“You okay?” I asked, hugging him back.

“Glad you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere.” And then after another second, he added, “Would’ve been lost without your sad boy smolder.”

“You should write for Hallmark,” I mumbled.

Ash pulled away with a laugh that shook his shoulders, giving me a shove to the chest before climbing back into his car.

“Whose car is this?” I asked, nodding toward the unfamiliar vehicle.

“Sammy’s,” he said with a shrug, like it wasn’t a big deal.

Well, that was new.

A second before he pulled away from the curb, he tossed my phone out the window, fully charged. The last time I’d seen it, it had been dead and slid into the pocket of one of the detectives.

“Keys are in the truck,” he called, and then he was gone.

Without the rumble of his car interrupting the silence, I was left standing in the middle of the street, my breath coming in visible puffs against the October night air, but I wasn’t cold.

My heart was thrumming. Pushing blood around my body so fast that it made my face tingle, and then I was standing on the sidewalk outside of Cali’s house— our house.

She was there, wrapped in a blanket, her head resting against the banister. Her chest rose and fell in steady, even breaths.

I saw the peek of a bandage on the side of her neck. The side of her face that was shrouded in the light of the moon looked bruised, the darkest shadows pooling around her eye and jaw with a little bandage just beneath her eyebrow.

I couldn’t see them, but I knew there were more from whatever happened in the seconds, minutes, hours after he’d called me. When I could hear her struggling on the other end, and I felt a crack boom through my sanity.

Picturing her on the other end, an onslaught of images had raced through my head, replacing my mother’s face with Cali’s. Replacing my father with Declan. The only difference was I hadn’t been silently sitting in the corner, terrified. I had been fighting against it with everything I had. When I promised him, calmly and without a hint of hesitation. that he was going to die. That if someone didn’t get to him before me, I’d make sure that his last breaths were painful, pathetic things. That there would be nothing left of him in the end and no one would ever remember him.

No, I wasn’t a violent man. But for Cali, I would become a savage.

I would do whatever it took to keep her safe. To keep her happy. To keep her whole.

My boots were silent on the pathway that led to the house. She didn’t stir when I dropped to my knees in front of her. When my hands reached for her, but instead of making contact like I’d been desperate to, they hovered. Shaking in the air between us because I didn’t know if I could touch her.

I didn’t know what happened, where she’d been hurt, how she’d been hurt.

How she’d react.

My eyes darted over her blanket-shrouded body so fast it made me dizzy. When I finally dragged them back to her face, I found her hazel eyes open and fixed on me. The golden flecks in them caught the moonlight, reflecting it back like the stars of all the wishes she’d captured.

“Hey, baby.” My voice was a pained croak between us. It held the way I’d fallen short in doing enough to keep her safe. I knew that what happened wasn’t my fault. I knew that.

It didn’t stop me from wishing I’d been here. Done more.

In an instant, Cali launched herself off the porch steps, her arms wrapping around me, legs around my waist, head tucked into the crook of my neck.

Her blanket fell to the ground when I stood up, carrying us up the stairs. Shifting her weight to one arm, I punched in the four-digit code to the new alarm system.

“H-how do you know the code?” she asked between shuddering sobs.

“I picked it.”

I closed the door behind us and started heading for our bedroom when I stopped.

“Seven six seven three?” She pulled back, hair sticking to the tracks her tears had made down her flushed cheeks.

I swallowed thickly, reaching up to tentatively move a strand caught in her eyelashes. “Rose,” I rasped.

She looked at me for a second longer before sinking her hands into my hair and kissing me. Cali pressed her body to mine in the sort of desperate way that made clothes seem like one of the worst things mankind ever created. The way her mouth moved against mine was desperate, relieved, devouring.

“Take me to bed,” she whispered against my lips.

“Cali—” I started to shake my head, but she pulled back just enough to lock her gaze with mine.

“Take me to our bed, Fane.” Her words were calm, deliberate. She leaned in again, her lips brushing mine as she added, softer but no less commanding, “Take me to our bed and fuck me.”

Her words were irrevocably linked to a certain part of my brain that made my body fill with warmth. Made my grip on her seem too light, too inadequate, like I couldn’t hold enough of her in my hands at any one time.

Her hands were still in my hair, pulling, entwining the growing strands in her delicate fingers, but I still didn’t know where to touch her. If I’d hurt her.

I set her down on the bed, and slowly she pulled off the sweater she had been wearing. My sweater.

My jaw clenched so tight it cracked. My heart stopped beating altogether for what felt like eternity when I saw the bandage over her collarbone. The bruising around her right breast and the nail marks left behind. Each one of them was shadowed by dark purple bruising.

I must have made a noise. It felt like my chest was being cleaved apart, not something I could contain inside myself. Cali’s hands found my face, her touch soft and warm. She kissed me, her lips brushing along my cheeks, gathering the tears I hadn’t even realized were there.

“Fane,” she whispered, her voice a gentle tether pulling me back to her. “Come back to me.”

Her words landed softly, but they hit like a command. She pressed them into my skin—against my jaw, the hollow of my throat, my eyelids—each kiss anchoring me further.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I rasped.

“I want you to.” She looked at me with determination. “I want to feel your fingertips pressing into me. I want to wake up and see shadows left in the wake of what we did the night before. I want to hear you speak to me, talk to me. I want to feel the way you stretch my body when you push inside me. The way it always feels like it’s too much, but you keep going, telling me how well I’m doing, how I was made for you.” Her chest was heaving now, but her eyes didn’t flick away from mine. She didn’t hide from me the way she had before.

She told me exactly what she wanted.

“I want you to be the last man—only man—who’s ever touched me.” Her hands slipped from my body, leaving a cold absence that made me sway closer to her, desperate to bridge the gap.

She scooted back on the bed, laying back with nothing but a pair of black lace panties on. “Please, Fane.”

With those words falling from her tongue, I was completely undone.

Reaching back, I pulled my shirt off my body, my jeans and briefs going next. I didn’t take my eyes off her when I crawled my way up to her. Our bodies fitting together so perfectly as she let her legs drop open and I settled into the valley of her hips.

She was so warm, so perfect. So fucking mine .

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said again. “Tell me what hurts.” I placed a kiss just behind her ear, inhaling her milk-and-honey scent, always so entwined with the cherry blossom notes of her shampoo.

“Just the stitches on my chest,” she panted. “And my neck. When they pull, it hurts. That’s all.”

“The bruises?” I was taking stock, making sure I knew her limits.

“They don’t hurt.” She lifted her hips up to meet mine. The soft, warm heat of her pussy grinding against my erection, pulling a groan from somewhere so deep in my chest it sounded unhinged. Felt unhinged.

“Don’t lie to me.” I sucked on the spot of her neck that sloped down into her shoulder, earning a gasp of surprise before I soothed the sting with a swipe of my tongue.

“I’m not. You won’t hurt me. I need this. Please, Fane. I need you.”

Cali’s hand moved down between our bodies, wrapping around my cock and snatching the breath right from my lungs. I watched her, my eyelids heavy with want while she watched the way her hand looked wrapped around me.

Just when I started to reach down, determined to rip the panties off her, she pulled her hand from me and moved it up to my chest.

I didn’t need more than the slightest pressure from her fingertips to move back, and with her hands on my shoulders, she moved us in the way she wanted. Confident. In control.

God, there was nothing sexier than Cali telling me what she wanted. With her words, her actions. I didn’t care.

I watched, enraptured, as she straddled me, her tits at the perfect height for me to take a nipple into my mouth, to graze my teeth over the sensitive bud in the way I knew she loved, that made her grind her hips where they met mine. Her panties wedged just inside her pussy lips as she continued to move herself against me. I could feel how wet she was. The scent of her arousal was fucking everywhere, heady and intoxicating and mouthwatering.

I reached for her again, but the moment I did, she was moving down my body, and a choking sound of need fell from my mouth.

“Patience,” she teased.

“I need to touch you,” I murmured, my eyes following her every movement. Watching her leave open-mouthed kisses along my body, a path of goose bumps in her wake.

“Me first.” Her mouth covered the head of my cock without warning. Her tongue flicked against the slit, collecting the bead of pre-cum before she pulled back with a soft, deliberate pop and a slow, satisfied hum.

“Fucking Christ,” I panted, hands fisted. I watched her, mesmerized, as she ran her tongue up the underside, from base to tip. Her hand cupped my balls, making my hips piston forward.

Cali wrapped her hand around the base of my cock again, giving one slow pump before her other hand joined the first, and she guided me into her mouth again.

I was fucking paralyzed with the pleasure she was giving me. Watching, bewitched, at the way I disappeared into her mouth. The way her hands continued to work what she couldn’t fit down her throat.

“Your mouth feels fucking perfect, Calista.” I reached out, settling a hand on the back of her head, not putting any pressure, just feeling the way she met my shallow thrusts. Eager.

“Such a good girl, baby. You’re so fucking good,” I breathed. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her. Stumped, not for the first time, that she existed. That she was mine.

I watched the way her body shuddered at my words, the way she pulled a hand from where it was twisting and pumping my shaft to slip into her underwear.

I tutted. “That’s not fair, baby.” I gripped her upper arms, pulled her off me, and dragged her up my body until she was right where I wanted her.

Cali looked down at me from where she kneeled above my face and didn’t move her eyes as I gripped the side bands of her panties and ripped them off her.

A mischievous smile started to curve her swollen lips when she spoke. “I’m going to suffocate you.”

My answering grin was wicked and hungry. “God, I hope so.” And then I pulled her down onto my mouth.

My tongue moved along her pussy, delving deep inside of her, collecting her wetness, and tracing it up to the hard, swollen bud of her clit.

I couldn’t be anything but relentless. Sucking, nipping, thrusting my tongue into her tight cunt until she was trembling above me, nothing but incoherent babble tumbling out of her heart-shaped lips. Until she started to roll her own hips, rubbing her pussy against my mouth, chasing her own release, and when it rolled through her, shock wave after shock wave pulsing through her body, I locked my hands around her legs.

I pulled her back down onto me even when she tried to lift off, continuing to thrust my tongue past the clenching muscles of her entrance. Gently dragging the flat of my tongue up to her clit before plunging back inside her, slowly, lazily, until she was moaning and lax once again. Her head tipped back in a mindless sort of extract that always brought me right to my knees.

I’d do anything for this woman. Be anything.

“I want you inside me,” she moaned again. “I want to feel you, inch by inch. I want to feel nothing but you.”

This time when she tried to move off me, I let her go, but not for long. I went with her, an arm looping around her waist while I flipped us, wasting no time in capturing her mouth in another kiss, groaning at the way her tongue lapped at the inside of my mouth, tasting herself.

I notched the head of my cock, her cunt swollen and fucking weeping , the moment I started to push in I had to fight against the desire to close my eyes. It was almost torturous, but it was worth it to watch the way her eyes rolled back, her mouth parting as her back arched off the bed.

“So fucking tight,” I panted, continuing to push into her, feeling the way her nails dug into my arms. “But you love it, don’t you?”

All she did was moan, her back arching off the bed a little further.

“You love knowing that you’re at your limit, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whimpered.

“Your greedy little cunt, so needy. Isn’t it?” I was salivating at the sight of her.

“ Yes,” she gasped as I pushed in the final inch, seated to the hilt. Slowly, I felt her body relax around me, her muscles softening at the intrusion, and the moment her hips gave a slow and knowing wiggle, I was moving.

One hand circled up and around her back, cupping the back of her neck, with my other at her waist, I tried to hold back. To be mindful of the parts of her body that were hurt and tender and sore.

“Fane,” she breathed my name, her hands reaching up to find their perch in the hair at the back of my head. “Stop holding back. I want to feel you so deep I can’t breathe.”

“You’re—”

“Yours.” She finished for me instead. “I’m yours. I want you to show me what that means.”

I waited a beat longer, eyes assessing. Then I gave in, because I always would with her. Anything she wanted, for the rest of our lives—it was all hers.

My grip on her tightened, my hips moving fast, the wet sound of our bodies meeting. And when she asked for more, when she begged for more. I pulled out of her, and with gentle hands flipped her over, grabbing a pillow to place under her before settling her down. The gentleness ended with a tender kiss to the middle of her spine and I pushed back into her without hesitation. She let out a small, shocked whimper and a choked “ Fuck,” scraped past my throat when I felt the way she clenched and shuddered around me. Her hands tried to find purchase in the sheets of our bed and came up empty.

“More,” she pleaded, and I reached down to where I was buried inside of her, coating my thumb in her arousal and bringing it back up to the tight ring of her ass. Slowly, I eased my thumb inside of her.

“Do you have any idea what you look like right now?” I panted, moving my thumb in and out of her ass while I continued to thrust. “So fucking full of me, baby. You’re taking it so well. So fucking well.”

“Fane!” Cali screamed my name along with a stream of unintelligible curse words, one hand holding her up while she reached back to grab onto me.

“God, I love you,” I pushed the words into her skin. Along the length of her spine. “I love you so fucking much.”

She pushed back into me, meeting every thrust I made, and when I felt her erupt around me, I let myself fall over that edge of oblivion, doing what I would always do: follow her wherever she went.

When we were showered, with fresh bedding and the house still too silent with Jerry’s absence, I held Cali in my arms while she absentmindedly traced the tattoos on my neck, my chest, and my arms.

“You came back.” She said it with a tone of disbelief, like she’d hoped, but she’d also prepared herself that I might not.

“Always,” I told her, and I meant it. Hoped she felt how deeply I meant it. I counted her breaths as they began to slow, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm that pulled me toward sleep alongside her.

Just before it claimed me too, I asked her the question that had haunted me from the moment I woke to our empty apartment and found her gone.

“Do you think you could love me again?”

And in my dreams, I imagined her saying, “Yes.”