Page 19 of Unleashed (Dark Sovereign #11)

ISAIA

She’s in Chicago.

Here. In my city. My streets. My air.

And instead of running to me, she’s sitting in some rundown diner like she doesn’t know what it does to me to see her. Like she doesn’t feel me watching.

It makes me want to put my fist through the glass, drag her out by the wrist, and remind her who the fuck she belongs to. It makes me want to bare my teeth at every person who so much as breathes in her direction.

The second I found out she’s in town, I lost my fucking mind. I tore through a bottle of bourbon, smashed a glass against the wall, ripped the goddamn curtains off my window because the thought of her breathing the same air as me and not being in my arms drove me insane.

I was ready to throw caution to the wind.

To forget everything Nicoli said to me, every warning.

All I wanted—all I still want—is to be by her side, between silk sheets, with my hand on her belly, whispering promises of how I’d be the best dad I can be to our child.

The best husband to the only woman I’ve ever loved so deeply, it’s the color of my blood.

The only thing that stopped me was Nicoli’s voice still rattling in my skull. Better she hates you and lives than you hold her hand while someone lines up the shot.

I hated him for saying it, hated myself more for hearing it.

Hated the fact that I can’t be with her.

But I couldn’t stop myself from being close to her, at least. So I’m here.

In the shadows. My nails digging into my palms, blood pooling in crescents where skin splits, because it takes everything I have not to rip those doors open and drag her home.

Every word Nicoli said, every ounce of discipline my father has ever beaten into me, I’m clinging to it like it’s the only rope keeping me from drowning.

And still—it’s not enough.

Because I’m here anyway. Watching her. Breathing her. Starving for her.

My pulse hammers as I drink her in through the window, neon light painting her skin in flickers of red and white.

She’s smaller than I remember, but sharper too.

Like grief and fire carved her into something even more dangerous, even more beautiful.

And all I can think is that she’s close enough to touch, close enough that I could step out of the shadows, cross the street, and have her pinned against that booth before she even gasps my name.

I clutch the vial I still wear around my neck when Molly walks in and rushes toward her.

And I’m fucking hissing at the ache in the pit of my stomach as I watch Everly burst out in tears.

Her pain rips me open. I see it in the way her shoulders curl, the way her hands tremble when she grabs at Molly like she’s drowning and finally found something solid to hold on to.

That should be me.

I should be the one holding her together when she falls apart. But I’m not. What if I’ll never be? What if she won’t ever let me touch her again? What if this—the shadows, the distance—is all I’ll ever have left? Fuck! This is all on me. Every ounce of her pain is my fault.

Because of me, she’s smaller. Because of my lies, she’s breaking into pieces in some dingy diner instead of wrapped in my arms, where nothing could ever touch her.

She’s too fucking beautiful to cry. Too precious to be carrying a heart this heavy.

And too mine to ever feel like she’s alone—yet she’s sitting twenty feet away, just across a fucking parking lot, and I can’t touch her.

Guilt tastes like blood in my mouth, metallic and sharp.

I clench the vial tighter until the chain cuts into my skin, a reminder of every choice that brought us here.

She’s my wife, goddammit. We said vows before God.

Danced in the dark. Fucked in the storm.

Now she’s carrying my child, and I’m a husband barred from his own family.

I should go. Turn around. Drown myself in bourbon until I forget the way she looks under neon light. But I don’t. I stay in the shadows and watch. Because if this is all I can have—her pain, her longing, the fragile thread of her without me—I’ll fucking take it.

I tell myself I’m just making sure she’s safe. That I’m only here to keep eyes on her, to protect her from a distance like Nicoli ordered me to. But I know that’s a lie. I’m here because I can’t not be.

The way her lips move as she speaks, the way they part slightly when she takes a hesitant breath, every flicker of emotion that crosses her expressive eyes—it all twists a knife in my gut, a bittersweet symphony of pain and desire.

It hits me harder than any bullet ever could, and I wonder what she’s telling her friend.

I want to hear every word, every sob, every crack in her voice.

I want to know if she’s talking about me—or worse, if she isn’t.

Is she telling Molly everything? Is she cursing my name, vowing she’ll never forgive me?

Or is she whispering the truth I can still feel in my soul—that she still loves me, that even after all my sins she still fucking aches for me?

Every time she leans closer, I feel like she’s giving away a piece of me.

Every shake of her head feels like she’s erasing me.

I can’t stand not knowing what her words taste like when they’re not mine.

God, her taste.

The thought alone makes my cock throb against my zipper, hard and aching, and I want to rip myself open for it.

For her. I shouldn’t be turned on by this, by the sight of her splintering, but I’ve been aching for her for fuck knows how long now.

I’ve been jerking off in showers, rubbing my cock against silk sheets pretending it’s the soft skin of her inner thighs, biting into my pillow as I come, imagining it’s her neck, her shoulder.

Right now, my body doesn’t know the difference between her pain and her pleasure.

And that’s the sickness of it. That’s the crux of my obsession with my wife.

I’m so fucking desperate for her, I’m watching the woman I swore to protect shatter into pieces, and all I can think about is how it would feel to bend her over that booth, to fuck the heartbreak right out of her until the only thing she remembers is how good it feels to belong to me.

To lick the salt of her tears off her lips while she sobs into my mouth, to brand her so deep she’d never feel alone ever again.

I light a cigarette, inhaling deep, letting the smoke burn as my craving for her spirals darker. The diner melts away in my head—no neon, no clatter of forks, no nosy friend watching her crumble. Just her and me in a locked world, four walls keeping her mine.

I remember her pussy—tight, wet, perfect, gripping me so hard it felt like her body was trying to keep me inside forever.

The way she clenched when I pushed in deep, the way she broke apart when I bottomed out, desperate and ruined and begging for more.

I can still feel the slick heat of her, the way she squeezed like she was made only for me.

And, my God, the way she thirsted for my cum, needing it, a climax ripping her apart whenever I gave it to her. My little cum-worshipper.

If I had her now, there’d be nothing gentle left in me.

I’d fuck her like a man starved, savage and merciless, until she forgot what it was to cry.

I’d pin her wrists above her head, tear her apart with every thrust until her throat was raw from screaming my name.

I’d fuck the air right out of her lungs, pound into her until she couldn’t breathe without the shape of me inside her.

Until her sobs turned to cries of pleasure, until her body forgot how to hurt and only remember how to come for me.

“Fuck!” I curse, kicking at the dirt. This woman is my madness. The kind you don’t cure—you feed it until it devours you.

I’m hard for the woman I love while she’s inside that shitty diner, hurting because of me, because of what I did. But she’s always been this for me—my ruin and my resurrection, my goddamn sin and my only salvation.

I shift closer, staying in the dark where neon can’t reach me. I could cover that distance in seconds. Kick open the diner door, rip her out of that booth, and every single one of those tears would dry the second my arms locked around her.

But I don’t.

Instead, I stand here bleeding inside my own skin, watching her fracture and knowing it’s all on me. Knowing I lied. Knowing I let silence build a wall between us that I can’t punch through, no matter how many times my fists curl like they’re breaking bone.

I wonder if she knows I’m here. If some part of her, the part that always felt me even before she admitted it, can sense me in the shadows. Because when her eyes drift to the window, I swear it’s like those beautiful mismatched eyes are searching for something she can’t name. Searching for me.

And I’m right. Fucking. Here.