Page 105 of Torched Spades

“Johnny!”

“Fuck!” He sucks air through clenched teeth. “I wish I could be who you need me to be. I’ll never deserve to touch someone like you, and you’ll never deserve to be cursed with a man like me. I wish you’d never walked by me that day at the courthouse. I wish I could’ve saved you from becoming just another torched spade.”

The words linger as he fucks me hard. I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. All I can do is scream his name as he loses control.

“You’re mine,” he hisses, punctuating each word with a slam of his hips. “Mine. No matter where you go or who you’re with, you’ll always belong to me.”

The finality in his voice is my undoing. My breath catches on a sob as a powerful orgasm overtakes me, and my body splinters all around him. I chant his name like an unholy prayer as I break apart.

My release triggers Johnny’s, and he buries his face in the hollow of my neck, his body jerking as he spills inside me.

Then the storm subsides.

The room stills.

The air thickens with unalterable fate.

We say nothing because although words cut can deep, silence is the sharper weapon.

Johnny’s breath is hot on my skin as he pulls out and slowly lowers me to my feet. However, my toes barely touch the floor before he’s sweeping me into his arms and carrying me down the hall toward my bedroom. I start to ask how he knows where to go, then immediately swallow the words.

I already know how. He’s watched me sleep for eight weeks.

As he places me on my bed and crawls on top of me, I realize he never chased the boogeyman away.

He replaced him.

* * *

I’m draped across Johnny’s chest, tracing and memorizing every tattoo on his bare skin. After two months and countless forbidden liaisons, I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen him fully naked.

Every stolen moment in my office was so frenetic and rushed, he only undressed enough to free his cock. But now, as we both lay exhausted and content in my bed, I gaze at all of him, especially the canvas of hard muscle littered with colorful ink and silver scars.

My gaze wanders to the nightstand. “It’s three a.m.”

“The Devil’s hour,” Johnny murmurs sleepily. “How appropriate.”

Deciding I don’t want to know what that means, I return to my exploration, dipping my finger in an older mark on his ribcage, then trailing it up to his shoulder where a newer wound mars his smooth, olive skin.

Bullet wounds.

As the daughter of a highly decorated cop, I’ve seen more than my fair share. Most men like my father and Jack wear them as badges of honor, but Johnny seems unaffected by them. Almost as if they’re as insignificant as a freckle.

I circle the scar again, frowning when he grits his teeth. It must still be healing, which means it’s fairly new. I start to ask but let the words die on my tongue.

Some things are better left unknown.

Besides, my attention has been diverted to the bright red tattoo on his right pectoral muscle. At first, my stomach clenches when I touch the fully bloomed rose, my lips forming the silent words I can’t bear to give voice to… Dagger piercing a rose. But the closer I look, I realize there’s no blade. The only weapon piercing the crimson flower is a snake.

I drag my finger down the coiled outline of the serpent, as mesmerized as I am revolted. “What does it mean?” I whisper.

“Temptation,” Johnny says solemnly. “The concept dates back to the Garden of Eden. A rose is the quintessential symbol of innocence, and the snake represents its destruction. It seduces the rose into a willful ruin of all by giving into temptation and corruption.”

“Blinding passion,” I murmur. “The snake tempted Eve into destruction with a simple bite of an apple.”

Johnny smirks. “Sound familiar?”

I let out a nervous laugh. More than familiar. I think of the apple I was holding in my hand the first moment I saw him punch that courthouse wall. The furious and impressed look on his face when I threw it at him. The mesmerizing way we both watched it roll across the floor, leaving a sticky trail in its wake. My mind spins back to our second appointment when he smugly set an apple in the center of the coffee table, his eyes daring me to comment.