Page 19 of My End (Iron Fiends #10)

Stretch

I hadn’t seen Tilly all damn day.

And yeah, that was probably my fault.

I’d kissed her with everything I had, but then she’d said it, Jake.

And I’d felt it in my chest like a brick to the sternum. Because I wasn’t Jake. Not really. Jake was the name on my fake ID and the one Gibbs barked out like a command. Jake was the lie Boone paid for. But Stretch… Stretch was me.

And she didn’t know him. Not yet.

I could’ve handled it better. Hell, I should have. Instead, I kissed her like I owned her and walked away like a damn ghost. No excuse. No goodbye. Just left her standing in the hallway with lips swollen from my mouth and confusion in her eyes.

Now it was nearing midnight, and I couldn’t take another second of waiting.

If she wasn’t going to come to me, I’d go to her.

I moved through the second-floor hallway with the ease of someone who knew every creaking board and blind corner. Her bedroom door was open, dark inside. Empty.

But halfway down the hall, the door to the art studio was shut. A thin bar of golden light spilled from underneath.

Bingo.

I knocked once. Just loud enough to be heard.

It took a second, but then the door opened, and there she was. Tilly in an oversized shirt splattered with streaks of paint, her hair pinned messily on top of her head, and that same startled softness in her eyes.

“Uh… hi?” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

She stepped aside and motioned for me to come in. “Come on.”

The second I crossed the threshold, the smell of turpentine and oil paint hit me like a memory I’d never had.

Her studio was small but alive. The walls were lined with canvases stacked and leaning, bursts of color in every direction.

A short loveseat sat in the middle of the room with a coffee table in front of it, a fuzzy throw blanket crumpled on one side of the couch.

Her paint cart was parked near the easel by the window, and the curtains were pulled back to let the moonlight in.

And then I saw it.

The easel.

The canvas.

I took a step closer, and my heart did something weird in my chest.

Holy shit.

“Is that…” I trailed off as the words died in my throat.

Tilly moved up beside me. “Um… yeah. That’s you. The first day we met.”

I looked at it, really looked at it.

She’d painted me in bold strokes. Bright oranges and cobalt blue contrasted the sharp lines of my jaw. My eyes, painted deeper than anything I’d ever seen, seemed to stare right through the canvas.

“You painted me the first day we met?” I asked.

She nodded and twisted her fingers nervously. “Yup. Things get stuck in my head, and they demand I paint them.”

“And me…” I didn’t even know what to say. My throat felt thick.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s fucking amazing, Tilly. I don’t even know what to say.” I turned toward her. “This is what you’ve been doing? When you’ve been holed up?”

She nodded with a smile on her lips. “Yeah. Adam wasn’t kidding when he said that when I’m painting, that’s all I can see.”

Goddamn. She had more talent in her little pinky than I had in my entire body.

I moved slowly around the room and took in the rest of the paintings.

“You did all of this?” I asked, stunned.

Tilly laughed and brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Yup. I don’t really let anyone in here, so… it’s all me.”

The portraits varied; some were animals, abstract in style, yet hauntingly expressive. There was an up-close of a leopard’s face done in neon orange and magenta, another of a woman’s face covered in dripping pinks and greens, like her emotions were leaking out of her skin.

“Like any of them?” she asked, leaning against the wall.

I pointed at the leopard. “I can’t even figure out how you did that.”

She laughed and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just always loved to paint. And luckily, I’m good at it.”

“Luck ain’t got nothing to do with it, sweetheart. I can see how talented you are from fifty fucking yards away.”

I walked back toward her, slow and deliberate.

She stood up straighter, her chest rising a little faster.

“Sorry about yesterday,” I said quietly.

“What about yesterday?” she asked, brow furrowing.

I chuckled low. “How I had my way with you… and then walked off without a word.”

“Oh,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “ That. Yeah, that was kind of… off.”

I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my chest. She melted into me like she’d been waiting for it.

“Sorry, sweetheart. Things are just tense right now. I just wanted to see you, and then it hit me that you’re the only bright spot in my day.”

She looked up at me, lips parted slightly. “So you just walked away?” she laughed.

“Yeah. Not my best moment.”

She leaned up and kissed me, soft and sure.

“How about you make it up to me?” she asked, mischief curling around her voice.

“How can I do that?” I asked, my hands already exploring the dip of her back.

She took my hand and pulled me toward the couch.

I wrapped my arms around her from behind, burying my face in the curve of her neck. She smelled like paint and lavender and something that had quickly become home.

I kissed her there, just beneath her ear. She moaned softly, and my body answered immediately.

“I missed you today,” I said between kisses. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

She turned in my arms and pushed me down onto the couch. She sank down on top of me with knees bracketing my thighs.

“I thought you were avoiding me,” she whispered.

I shook my head. “No, sweetheart. I was avoiding myself.”

She cupped my face. “That’s stupid.”

“I know.”

I surged forward and kissed her like I hadn’t tasted her in weeks. She opened to me with a soft sigh as her fingers dragged through my hair.

I gripped her hips, rolled mine against hers, and the feel of her heat through that thin shirt had me nearly losing my damn mind.

She gasped when I nipped at her lower lip, and I moved to her jaw, down her throat, licking and biting my way across her skin like a man starved.

Her hands slid under my shirt and traced every line of muscle. When she lifted it over my head, I helped, and her eyes darkened the second she saw me bare.

“I’ve never wanted anything more,” she whispered.

“Then take it, sweetheart.”

She peeled her shirt off slowly, no bra beneath, and my breath caught.

She was fucking perfect.

I kissed every inch of her I could reach, as I lavished her breasts with attention until she was writhing in my lap. I slid my hands up her thighs, gripping tight, feeling the tremble in her as I slid her panties to the side.

I sank two fingers into her, and she cried out, clinging to my shoulders. She rode my hand, her mouth hot and open against mine.

“Tilly,” I groaned, “I need you.”

She pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes.

“Then have me.”

I lifted her and laid her down on the couch. Slipping off her panties as she watched me with heavy-lidded eyes. I dropped my pants and knelt between her legs, kissing the inside of her thighs like a goddamn prayer.

I licked her core slowly and deeply until she was begging with her hands fisted in my hair as she shook beneath me.

Then I climbed over her and slid into her heat in one long thrust that had us both gasping.

“God, Tilly,” I breathed. “You feel like fucking heaven.”

She moaned and arched as her legs wrapped around me.

We moved together like we’d been made for it. Like the world outside that room didn’t exist. I kissed her hard and deep as I drove into her, with her cries and my groans blending into the sound of us falling apart.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized something terrifying and real.

I wasn’t leaving her behind.

I wasn’t walking away from this.

From her.

This wasn’t just a mission anymore.

She was mine .

And someday, I was going to tell her everything and pray she wouldn’t run.