Page 97 of In the Light of Sin

“It’s me,”he mouthed when he noticed slight panic set in. I tried to breathe in through my nose and out my mouth, but it was hard when I was concentrating on his moving mouth and the way his cock was stretching me with each push of his hips. His lone eye was locked on me. I didn’t have to hear them to feel the finality of his words as I read his moving lips through my blurry vision.“It’ll always be me.”

I didn’t want anyone else but him.

I couldn’t look away even as my body began to shiver, and the urge to throw my head back into the pillows overwhelmed me. My walls clamped around him as I watched his teeth grit together, his eyes closing as his steady thrusts started losing control. A few rough, jagged thrusts tipped me over the edge, his hot cum filling me. His body dropped, propping himself on his forearms, careful not to crush me. My hands came around to his back, soothing the smooth and uneven skin on either side of his shoulder blades.

After a few moments, his hands palmed my cheeks, which were slightly damp from the excursion. His lone eye was hooded, looking at me with swirling emotion I’d never seen from a man, let alone a brute like Sarge. The dark brown around the iris was soft, the thumb on his non-mangled hand brushing against my cheek. The softness he was presenting to me now was such a contrast to the roughness he showed me just moments before.

In the beginning, Sarge treated me like I was his nightmare.

Now, he was looking at me like I was his dream.

After three orgasms and the stars he made me see darkening my vision, my brain was shutting off. He literally fucked me senseless. He was right. Tonight was different. It brought us closer together. I trusted him more than I ever did before… And I think he felt the same.

My brain began to fog, sleep taking me as I smiled against his left pec that was my pillow for the night. I looked at the black ink amongst pale pink. My face lifted, and my mouth caressed the raised skin. He flinched under my kiss, and his breathing stopped from the rise and fall of his chest stilling. My mind was too muddled by our intense sex session, my vision lining black as I snuggled back into his chest, my hand resting over his heart where his new tattoo lay. As consciousness faded, I could’ve sworn he pressed his against my forehead, moving softly.

“That’s my fuckin’ girl.”

Chapter 24: Sarge

I hated going out in public.

I’d rather go through boot camp again than deal with idiots in public. But here I was, going out twice in one week. My eyes narrowed at the one who dragged me out of the comfort of our cabin, wearing a yellow crop top that showed off her stomach with baggy blue denim jeans as she was bent down at her knees, which I wanted her on at a different angle, as she looked at the various flower seeds this store had.

“Does it really take this fuckin’ long to pick out flower seeds? Can’t you just go buy the shit at Poppy Oaks?”

“No. It won’t mean as much if I just go buy the shit at Poppy Oaks,” she mocked. Her eyes, narrowed and angry, shot over to me. Pretty lips in a sneer as she spoke, “It’s gotta match the theme of the cabin.I have to make the outside match if you have the interior yellow and green. Maybe with some complimentary colors? Oh! I wonder if they have some magnolia seeds?”

I swear I could listen to her voice all day, but when it came to flowers, I couldn’t listen for more than a second. The thought of anything bright and floral on the perimeter of the cabin I built with my own two hands to be a dark and secluded place until my brothers found me dead in my recliner? Criminal.

“Don’t you worry,” she said brightly, standing up with a pack of seeds and waving it around. “I got some dark violas. Even if it doesn’t match the house, it’ll match your personality.”

Christ, this woman had a mouth on her. I stalked up towards her, the knowing look in her eyes telling me she wanted this reaction. She was a little minx, trying to get me riled up to take her pretty cunt in any public place we walked into. Poppy Oaks was just the beginning of the risqué play that made both of us hot, but if she kept that mouth of hers up, we’d be fucking right in the middle of this garden section.

“You know exactly what you’re doin’, Sunshine.”

She stepped forward, a hiss leaving my lips as her thigh brushed against the hard-on she was currently giving me. She grinned at my reaction, bringing her leg up to work me over. “Is it working?”

She knew it was. The hardness she was brushing up wasn’t my fucking thigh. A growl ripped from my throat as I grabbed her wrist, making her drop the flower seed back before beginning to tug her away to a spot to fuck that smart mouth of hers shut. Thank fuck that the garden center was secluded with no one besides us—

“Darin Huxley?”

I froze. Who the fuck knew my name? I could count the number of people on one hand who knew who I was, and one of the two currently had my hand wrapped around their slender wrist. I looked in front of me.

A woman, probably no older than twenty, was standing there with a pissed-off look. How the hell would she even recognize me? I sure as fuck didn’t remember her. “Who are you?”

“Figured you wouldn’t remember me. It’s been what, six years?.” Six years? Dread seeped into my bones as time slowed, a fog forming over me. “I’m Dan Crook’s daughter.”

Six years ago, my life was blown up, leaving nothing but ash and smoke-filled days ahead. I focused on her face, piecing together every detail. The brown hair. The blue eyes. Heat flamed my skin as I dropped Joslyn’s wrist, arms hanging by my side as my head flashed with memories of a past I was doomed to remember. My head was swimming, pain fleeting in as I sucked in a breath. A bone-deep regret that kept me awake at night now here in the flesh. “Maddie Crooks.”

She laughed, but it was feigned. “So you do remember.” She wasn’t happy to see me. The last time I saw her… I closed my eyes, trying to block out that horrid fuckin’ day and all the days that came after it. The healthcare team assigned to my care pushed my tattered body toward the closed casket. I remember her endless tears, the way her mom was on her knees sobbing over the twenty-one-gun salute.

I remembered the way the way her fourteen-year-old eyes looked at me. Worn down from grief but fueled with hatred. I couldn’t look at her—I didn’t even want to be there. There were five proofs of my failure before me, reminding me of how unfortunate it was that I was living. I still remember her as I sat in my wheelchair, unable to do anything but sit there and wallow in self-pity while families around me had just lost a husband, father, or son.

Madison was young then, too young to experience a tragedy such as losing her role model, and she was fierce. Her blue eyes rippled as they shouted at me, words that have echoed in my head since the way she uttered them.

“It should’ve been you. It should’ve been you!”

No one corrected her. I couldn’t turn my head due to my broken neck, forced to stare forward. I couldn’t talk due to my injury, but I silently told her. Trust me, kid. I wish my casket was alongside theirs.

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