Page 40 of Not Her Day to Die (Star-Crossed #2)

“ I f she doesn’t wake up soon, we’re taking her to the hospital.”

“So then the FBI can know she was there, so she can be interrogated and thrown into a fucking cell away from us? So she can go away for Mark ? Just get oxygen delivered or get a home nurse or some shit. We’re in modern times, why can’t we bring the hospital to our house?”

A warm hand is squeezing mine and the smells surrounding me are familiar. My head hurts , but it is manageable.

My body feels as if I have been compressed into a tiny foam ball and is slowly expanding back to where it needs to be. The sensation is nearly cathartic.

Blinking a few times, I find myself in my room at the O’Brien’s house. Axel and Grayson are at the foot of the bed arguing, but Darius holds me wrapped in his secure embrace. It is eerily familiar to so many months ago when I woke up just like this.

“The purple strands are gone,” I say, my voice cracking. They were a comfort, and I feel bare, lost, without them. A wave of unease and anxiety circulates through me.

Darius squeezes his arm tighter around me and Axel and Grayson whip around to face me.

Their faces are coated in concern, pinched brows, flattened lips, clenched jaws.

“I’m okay,” I say. “We’re okay. ”

Axel clearly doesn’t believe me, but he remains silent. Watching me with a critical intensity instead.

“No, you’re not okay, Sunday.” Grayson stares down at me.

“Come on Wildflower, let’s get you cleaned up.” Darius readjusts, helping me out of the bed.

Neither of the other brothers move an inch, allowing Darius to physically lift me out of the bed, to carry me to the bathroom.

He sets me gently down on the counter, but I stretch out, grabbing hold of his shirt.

“Don’t leave me.” I’m scared.

Not of Darius, but of what will happen if I’m left alone.

But I don’t voice that part. I don’t want to admit it out loud.

Darius brushes my hair behind my ears, gathers my cheeks in his hands and stares directly into my soul.

“Sunday, I am never, ever going to be separated from you again. I love you, Wildflower. You are so brave and strong and you are everything I never hoped to dream of. But we need to get you cleaned up, get you out of these clothes. Are you sure you’re okay if I help you with this part?

After…after what happened?” His eyes turn glassy as he speaks.

It’s my turn to lift my hands up and cup his cheeks. “Darius, you made an impossible encounter as good as it possibly could be. I will never blame you for that. Never blame you for who your father is. I love you.”

He breathes out, heavy and long. As if he were holding the air in his lungs waiting for me to abscond him of his guilt.

He drops his hold on me, but I focus on his eyes. How deep and dark the circles are under them, how he is clearly exhausted. “But you should blame me. I’m a Thorne. I fucked you on a stage in front of–”

Leaning forward, I cut him off with my lips. Pressing and pushing as much as I can into the kiss. My feelings, my emotional turmoil, how much I care about him, how I don’t blame him at all. And when enough time passes that I feel I have gotten the message across, I pull back.

“We’ll just have to do that again. Under better circumstances,” I say. Glancing down at myself for the first time, I see that I am still in the silky pajamas I was in before. Except now they’re sprayed in blood.

Darius follows my gaze and his lips hook downwards. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

It takes several beats to realize what he means. Even more to remember exactly what I had done. There is a thick cloud between the memory and me. As if I wasn’t myself in that instance, but someone else entirely.

“Can I get cleaned up now?” I ask in a small voice.

Darius doesn’t answer, instead helping me off the counter.

He turns to start the shower and I discard the offending clothes off my body.

I understand why they might not have wanted to change me while I was unconscious, but I almost wish they had.

The clothes themselves are an unwelcome memory and the blood spattered across them is even more so.

When Darius twists back around, I don’t think he expects me to be fully naked, and his mouth opens in surprise.

“Wildflower,” he warns. “What are you doing?”

“Shower with me?” I reach forward slowly so that he can stop me and tug up on his shirt.

Darius eyes me warily. “Okay, but just because I don’t trust you to not fall in here. Since you have a habit of it.”

A soft chuckle escapes me at the memories.

He’s not wrong.

Shedding the rest of his clothes, he helps me into the shower, and I do my best to keep my attention on his face. I want more than anything to rewrite my first encounter with Darius, to supersede it with a hundred better ones, but right now I just want to get clean. To wash away the blood .

Mark’s blood.

“I killed Mark,” I say levelly. Testing the words as they leave my lips.

“You did,” Darius confirms, lathering his hands in soap before using them to begin cleaning my body, massaging my muscles, wiping away the horrible memories.

“Carrie was killed.”

Darius flinches. “I was afraid she had been. Veronica was expecting her to return, and she never did.”

“Veronica? Is she okay?”

Darius’s attention flicks above my left shoulder. “She is. She and William escaped before the FBI showed up.”

His words land uneasily in my stomach, but then he’s cleaning the apex of my thighs and it draws my attention.

Humming my appreciation, I lean further into his touch. I watch as his cock hardens to attention, as my body affects his just as much as his affects mine. It is a heady realization, but I push it down.

Later.

We will have endless time later.

But isn’t that the same thought that caused Darius and I’s first time to end up the way it did?

“Luna was caught in the loops too,” I say.

I expect shock, but instead his lips twitch. “That explains what she said.” He shrugs a shoulder, the water bouncing off his skin.

“I think we have finally escaped the loops. All of the threads are gone. I think…I think they were different strands of fate I was following.”

Darius smiles but doesn’t answer, as he continues cleaning me.

His cock presses into my belly, my attention shifts to it. To how girthy and difficult it was to get in, to how deliciously full I felt when he was inside of me, to how we deserve to rewrite our first encounter .

Tentatively my fingers reach out on their own, finding the tip.

Darius hisses between his teeth. “Sunday.”

Spurred on by his reaction I continue my exploration up his length, and then back to the tip, tracing the end with my fingertips.

Darius is no longer washing me. Instead, his hands find my hips, squeeze onto them. His fingers digging into the bones there.

The feeling is exquisitely grounding. A reminder that we are alive. That we are here, together .

“Darius.” Releasing him, I look up at him through my eyelashes, the water from the shower catches and I blink it away. “I want you. I want to show you how much, without a crowd, without the pressure, without the force. Just us.”

Darius leans forward, his lips pressing to my forehead. “You don’t need to prove anything.”

“Darius,” I expel. “I can't exist on your words. They fill me up with air, with wants and desires. But it's you who I need. I need you in a way that transcends the chaos that enshrouds us.”

Darius groans. “What happened, Sunday? How did this all change so fast? When I left you were a grieving teenager and now? Now you’re ready? Don’t you understand why I wouldn’t believe you?”

Averting my attention, I focus on the tub; it's clean, the porcelain unblemished, a stark difference to the one in my childhood home.

The one where I first processed through my grief.

"But it wasn't quick or sudden. I think the lifetimes, the loops, it all caught up to me.

I still don't remember everything, I can feel parts of myself missing, but time has warped. It's stretched and extended. Auggie’s and Tripp’s deaths are both a recent and distant memory.

But I know in my heart that I'm not doing wrong by either. That maybe this isn’t normal, but my love for you?

For Axel? For Grayson? It was inescapable.

After all, doesn't it feel like in some ways that's the only reason I'm alive?”

Darius's lips brush against mine. "Maybe you're right. But still–"

"No! I'm not playing this game with you anymore, Darius. I know you are sweet and kind. But I also can feel your cock pressing into me. Know that you want me. So be honest. Tell the truth, I fucking need to hear it!” The shower is blinding me, heating my icy veins, but it is Darius who ignites it. Who frays and tangles my nerves.

"You want the truth, Sunday?" And then he's on me.

The smooth tip of his cock pressing harder into my skin, his long fingers wrapping around the back of my neck.

“The truth is that I enjoyed every fucking second of your cunt soaking me. Of stretching you. Of your little moans and whimpers as I forced my way into you. Of breeding you . Of my cum filling you up. The truth? I wanted to run off that stage and pluck out the eyes of every person who caught a glimpse of you. The truth?” He slams his lips into mine, painful, harsh.

“I want more than anything to take you again. To have you here and now.”

His confession is both shocking…and relatable.

Axel wears his crazy on his sleeve, but just as he said, they had to all be half mad to endure the time loops.

Darius may not portray it outwardly, but it is in his energy, the way his eyes never leave my form, the humming of his body as it leans further into mine.

“Then do it,” I taunt him, rocking upwards, attempting to find the desperate relief I crave. “Fuck me, Darius. Exactly how you want to.” I don’t know where my courage comes from. But once the words bubble up, I mean them. “Use me. Freely. You have my consent.”

“Wildflower,” Darius warns. “You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.” He cups my cheek with his hand, turning the water off behind me .

Instinctively, I know that if this moment ends, some fundamental part of our relationship will be flawed. An imbalance of power. A lack of equilibrium.

Darius will forever be guilty for what he did…and so will I.

We rescued countless victims so I can’t truly regret it. But I can acknowledge I’m the reason he was forced to lose his virginity on a stage. I’m the reason everything went sideways. I’m the reason for his guilt.

With the water gone, we are just two naked adults standing skin to skin. Pushing from the wall, further into him, I jut out my chin.

“I do,” I advise. And I do. I understand that allowing Darius to freely use me is terrifying, but it is also exhilarating . It is a gift I want to provide, it is a step in the correct direction.

A way to find our way back to each other without any of the guilt. A lifeline in an otherwise rocky boat.

“Sunday.” Darius’s fingers find my chin, he tips my head left and right, examining every piece of my face. “Fuck, what are you doing to me? I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Narrowing my eyes, I stare as directly into Darius’s as he allows. “You are nothing like that man. This is consent. I am giving it. And if I say stop. That means I am taking it back.”

Darius pulls away and turns to get out of the shower.

Rejection and anxiety twist a deep knife in my stomach. I didn’t realize how much I expected– needed –Darius to agree until he doesn’t.

He quickly dries off before twisting around with a towel, offering it to me.

Reaching out to take it, he catches my wrist, his eyes darken. “You say stop, or you tap me three times, just like this.” He offers a sample to my wrist.

Heat furls deep and heavy into me. A relief so sweet I nearly implode .

I jerk my head.

It’s all he needs, and then Darius drags me unceremoniously out of the shower, into the towel, into his arms. He wraps it around me, drying me, his strong hands repeating the motions of before when he washed me.

Except this time the intent is completely different. He is harsher, more sensual in his movements.

He pauses between the apex of my thighs, he watches me with a fierce intensity as he drops the towel to the ground.

As the rough pads of his fingers find my sensitive skin.

As his other hand moves to my ass, stroking it before digging his fingers into me and dragging me to him.

“Sunday,” he groans, cupping my cunt. “Do you know what you do to me? Do you know how much I have wanted to trace every piece of you, to memorize every blemish, to kiss away every bad memory?” Dropping to his knees and burrowing himself between my thighs, he plunges a finger into me.

Arching into him, I let out a mewl. My nails find his shoulders, digging into the skin there.

Darius is the sweetest, the softest of the brothers. But in some ways he is the most broken, the most ruined. He has taken on the weight of a world that does not deserve him, on the guilt of his existence, and he has treated it as a challenge each and every day.

It is why he will always be my safe place.

It is why I trust him as he pushes another finger into me.

It is why I am able to relax even as he readies me for him.

And it is why I will always, always love him.