Page 51 of The Loves We Lost

“What?” I ask. The implication that I, in some way, gave a vague or indirect instruction for him to do whatever he did tonight infuriates me. “Whatever this was has nothing to do with me.”

Miles soaps his body quickly. The water runs down him in rivers. It’s hard not to look at him while he scrubs. When he’s rinsed, he turns the tap off forcefully and whips the towel off the hook.

“The bad men. The two Avery was hiding in a shed from? You’ll never see them again.”

His words make my knees shake. “You ... ?”

He tugs the towel around his waist and walks over to me, backing me up against the bathroom counter. “I did what needed to be done to make sure you and Avery are safe. We found someone who could tell us who they were. Then we dealt with them. And now Vex has their phones, and all traces of you are being deleted. And the club has reached out to the women who posted pictures of us from your book signing to take the images down, which they have. We’re cleaning up the trail so you can sleep at night. Because that’s what I do.”

His words are whispered angrily.

I place my hands on his cheeks. “Miles.”

“What, Vi? Tell me what you want.”

Without thinking, I tug his mouth to mine and kiss him violently. Our tongues clash. The steam of the bathroom warms us. Miles’s hands slip into the back of my shorts and tug them over my ass, gripping my cheeks firmly as he does so. Then he lifts me onto the counter.

Reaching between us, I tug on the towel so it drops away.

This is all so reckless and foolish, but I dismiss the thought as I see his cock lengthen and thicken. My life is reparable. I’ve fixed myself after loving Miles Graydon once before. I can do it again.

In the morning, we’ll go back to normal and pretend none of this happened.

But now, in the safety and cocoon of Miles’s bathroom, I want us. I want this. I want to thank the man whose morality allows him to do things I could never dream of, in the name of keeping Avery and me safe.

The two loves he lost.

And yet he killed for us anyway.

Something about that feeling of safety spurs me on, even as it’s in complete contrast to how I feel about the MC life.

I kiss him deeply, pull him to me harder, and eventually, whatever was making Miles hold back evaporates, and he takes over. He pushes me back against the mirror, his hand around my throat.

Miles reaches between us and eases his cock inside me, and I gasp at the intrusion. He feels so big, so hard. I feel every inch of him. “Wasn’t this how it was?” Miles asks finally. “Pinned up, my cock so deep inside you that you wonder if you’ll ever feel full again?” My book. He’s recreating the moment I wrote in the kitchen. “You want me to squeeze your throat so tight that when you come, you pass out?”

The desire in his eyes nudges me higher. He’s right. I write what I’d like to experience. I get a contact high from sending characters into a space I never get into myself.

I nod. “Please.”

“Fuck,” Bates says as he thrusts in and out of me. “You want me to stop, you saymermaid. Or grip either of my wrists.”

“Bates,” I gasp. “I wantBatesto be my word.”

His forehead meets mine, and his grip on my neck eases. “My road name as your safe word?”

“Please.”

Miles’s lips hit mine, and I’m lost.

His hand closes around my throat. My pulse races as I start to panic at the loss of air. I can still breathe, but the world is getting blurry.

But everything I’m feeling coalesces at the point where we are joined.

What if I pass out before my orgasm? What if it happens after? I find myself focused on coming. On the way Miles smells, the way he feels, the way his cock drags through my lips. Miles spits on his finger and then circles my clit.

“You feeling this, Vi? You feeling the way my hand is squeezing your throat? The way my cock is owning you right now? Is this how you thank me for killing those men for you tonight?”

“God. Yes,” I gasp.