Page 47 of Secrets That Bind Us

Verity

Present Day

Dean watches me with what looks like a mixture of anger and disbelief.

“You know I went to brunch for them that morning, thinking I would see you because Evan told me you would be there, since you were unofficially the official Maid of Honor.

I was so sure it was you that I'd slept with, and I was hoping we could talk in the morning once the masks came off, but I'd fallen straight to sleep. If I'm honest, I hadn't been that tipsy since high school. But I kept drinking to take the edge off. I was so nervous about seeing you again, you know? So I kept tipping them back the longer the night wore on and I hadn't seen you. When I woke up alone, it all felt like a weird dream.” He sighs and I nod along because yeah, had I not run back to my room, I would have said the same. “But once I got downstairs they said you’d left during the party early due to some… emergency and…” He shakes his head again. “Verity… it’s like we’re on this weird fucking course, or some alternate timeline and we keep being led to each other.”

I grin, and nod. “I keep thinking that, too.”

“What made you realize I’m Noah’s father?”

I blush something crimson and look away.

“Oh, now you gotta tell me.”He chuckles.

I groan into my hand. “The way you just fucked me. It was like you shook up this core memory for me, and it didn’t just take me back to that night, it took me back to every single time we’ve ever had sex." I blink a few times, watching the way his smile widens. “Dean…”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t know how to fast track this with the kids. They still… they have to get used to you and seeing us together.”

He shrugs. “Verity, we can go at your pace, I won't fight you on it. I just… I want to get to know them, too. Help with homework, making dinners, I want to show up for school functions. I want to do life with you. Them. Let’s just let this happen naturally, okay? You showed me some of the ugly, but I know that’s not all of it.

I want the good, the bad, and all the precious moments.

I want to hold your hand in this life and in the next. ”

“It’s not always glamorous, you know.” I retort.

“What’s it like, then?”

I swallow. “For a really long time, it was lonely. Yeah, Savannah and Noah are a huge part of my life, but they’re in school.

And even though yes, sometimes, I have meetings and I’m crunching on time to write.

There’s book tours… a lot of those moments…

I was alone. Really, really alone. I would be in a sea of people, crowded, taking pictures with fans, and talking to them, and…

and then I would go back to my hotel room and be…

alone. You’d think I would be grateful for quiet time after being in loud spaces, but the truth was, I didn't have anyone to celebrate a good day with. Big milestones, yes. But just a regular good day? A day where I could say, ‘I wrote a whole chapter today instead of staring at the wall or second-guessing myself after each paragraph. ’ or I’d get an idea in my head and I'd want to talk about it with someone so much, but… it felt like nobody cared. Nobody but Eli, but he doesn’t usually like to hear about an idea until I at least have a prologue and five chapters ready. ”

Dean takes my hand in his, and guides me while laying us down, keeping his eyes steady on mine.

“I want to know every thought in your head. That may be lame, but, in school you were so… mysterious. You always looked like… like you had so much to say and all I wanted to do was hear you talk to me about it. It’s why I stared at you so much. I wanted to lean over so bad and ask.”

“I put you in every book I wrote,” I confess.

“I know,” he grins smugly, eyes closing. “I read every single one of them.” He has scruff on his face, but goddamn, he looks so peaceful while he's asleep, a sliver of moonlight peeks through the curtains, and even though my own lids are growing heavy, I can't help but admire him.

Beautiful. But he was always beautiful. Now he's… he's here. He's home. I’m home. He’s in my home… and he's mine .

I squeal inwardly, wanting to kick my feet like a schoolgirl that just got her first kiss.

Dean Carson… is in my bed.

And he looks and fucks like a god.

I can’t take my eyes off of him.

I feel like I'm looking at a mirage. How many times while I was pregnant with Savannah did I pretend he had been in bed with us just like this, with his hand laying on my stomach protectively? How many times did I wish I could come back to Adelaide just to be beside him once more?

It doesn’t matter anymore.

After one last look at him, my eyes droop once more… and I accidentally fall asleep on my back.

It smells like smoke.

That’s the first thing I think of when my eyelids flutter open.

My room is blurry, trapped in shadows save for a soft, dim glow of the small night light in the hallway.

There’s a weight on my stomach, heavy and firm.

My brows furrow together, and I blink a few more times, the small panic fading when I remember I’m next to Dean.

My Dean.

I turn my head to face him, to look at the love of my life, my soulmate, the man God seemed to have made just for me - the one I’m addicted to loving, the man I am meant to fall for over and over and over again.

But when I turn my head, the scent gets potent, permeating in my nostrils, and I realize what I'm smelling isn’t smoke.

It’s burnt flesh.

“Hey… baby .” Micah taunts, the bile makes its way up my throat, and I hold back a gag. His face is an amalgamation of glowing embers and his charred flesh, a thing of nightmares. Half his face is gone, melted, like a wax figurine, onto his bones and I whimper. “Shhh shhh shhh…” he quiets me down.

But then a noise upstairs captures my attention.

A jingle of a belt buckle, and then thud, thud, thud.

Daddy .

I blink, the weight on my stomach growing hot. I whimper again, trying to get my mouth to work, to scream for help. For Dean.

I look at the version of Micah my mind has conjured again, and he leans in closer, the hold he has on my stomach burns.

It burns so fucking bad, like claws penetrating the wall of my stomach, reaching deeper to get to my womb.

“Please,” I moan, but I don’t think it comes out right.

My mouth can’t move even though my chin trembles, drool slipping from the side, and a tear leaks free.

“It ain’t so bad, Ver,” Micah looms closer, his lips so close to me, I can smell his rancid breath.

Rot.

Decay.

Thud, thud, thud.

I shiver and close my eyes. Daddy’s coming down the stairs.

This is a dream. It’s just a dream.

“Want to know a secret?”

I whimper, unwilling to open my eyes.

“I told your daddy about what you did in the loft…”

My eyes snap open to look at the monster beside me. I don’t… I don’t know what he means by that. But it doesn’t matter. The light in the hallway is snuffed out by the large, dark form in the doorway, elongated limbs with claws for fingers.

“Verity... Verity... Verity… you were a bad, bad girl…” Micah’s chuckling rasp sends chills all over my body..

“No!” I scream as the form runs toward me, Micah’s dark laughs sound and feel like dark whisps of smoke in my ear. “NO!”

“VERITY!” the form above me roars. “VERITY!”

I open my eyes to face the monster above, but it’s Dean, shaking me awake.

My arms wrap around him, tugging him to me, needing to feel his weight on me. “Dean!”

It’s a rush. It’s everything I need. Wrapping my legs around him, I fumble, grasping all of him, needing him closer.

Inside of me. I need to swallow his every moan, every breath, and he doesn’t fight me although his eyes are filled with concern.

He’s hot, hard, like velvet steel in my hands, but I need him.

He shoves into me. “Christ Verity, you’re shaking.”

“Dean, please! Take it away. Please, please, please.” I sob, but he doesn’t move. Like he knows I don’t need the friction, I just need him as close to me as I can have him.

“I’m here, baby. I’m not leaving.” He finally pistons his hips, and I call out his name. “That’s right, baby. I’m here. Just us, pretty girl. All mine, aren’t you, Verity?”

“Yes!” I moan, I reach down and grab his hips, moving my hips to meet his every thrust, needing him closer, grinding down, feeling him so deep, filling every void I’ve ever felt, suffocating without him. “I love you, Dean. I love you,” I breathe .

He barely moves, letting me take what I need, chasing the high, feeling his flesh under my fingers.

I kiss his chest, lick over every line tattooed on his body I can reach, licking up the dried salt off his skin, frenzied, hungry, satiating every need I’ve ever needed because this man…

fills me. Every void I’ve ever felt is obliterated.

My hands go from his ass to his shoulders, around his torso, pressing him closer, pulling him in the undertow with me, to get carried away with me, to

drown,

drown,

d r o w n.

But he doesn’t let me.

With a masculine groan, his thrusts grow hard, brutal, arms going under me to grab my ass, and he spreads me, only to pummel deeper, harder, growing as frantic as I am. “Yes, Verity. Is this what you needed?”

I’m insane. I should be cowering from my nightmare, trying to recover, but I can’t. Not when my dream is above me. “Take it from me, Dean, please.”

“I’ll take all of it, baby. So be my good girl and give it to me.”

I angle my hips, letting him power into me, but chasing every motion, every zing and spark that scatters through me, reaching up to the nape of his neck, feeling the hair there.

I grasp, bucking back, fucking back, until I’m nothing but frazzled nerve endings, my legs tighten around him.

I cry out his name like it’s the most holiest of names, presenting myself like a sacrificial offering, ready to be slain, and then a tortured gasp fills the dark room as it goes

s i l e n t.

There’s a strike of lightning so bright that I can see us, as if I’ve been projected onto the ceiling. Not even the sound of reckoning thunder above or the pelting of rain against the window disturbs this moment.

We are a sculptured masterpiece; our likeness caught in moratorium.

Entangled limbs, parted lips gasping praises, a silver string of souls entwined for eternity, destined, surrounds us.

He cries out my name in a devastating, tormented cacophony, and I am ruined .

Nothing more than a marble statue as it hits the ground, shattering into a million little pieces…

Then he kisses me…

And puts me back together again.

Some of the pieces aren’t mine…

They’re his.

They were always his.