Page 19 of Boy of Ruin
But then he flips us over, pushing me back flat on the bed, propped up on his elbow as his warm, lean body comes over mine, his hand on my cheek.
“Open your eyes, baby girl,” he whispers, stroking his thumb over my mouth.
Slowly, I do as he asks, feeling unshed tears pooling in the rim of my eyes.
He shakes his head. “I didn’t,” he tells me. “I didn’t cheat.”
I feel something like relief with his words, my hands fisted in my shirt as I bite my bottom lip, his thumb brushing over my teeth, too.
Then his hand slides down my throat, over my chest, to my low belly, his fingers splayed wide. Protective.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, like he means it, and a tear falls down my face, warm and hot. Uncomfortable. He grips my tummy tighter, angling his head as he stares at me. “I’m so fucking sorry, I just…with you, I just feel like I’m going crazy every second you’re not with me.”
He dips his head down, presses his lips to my brow and holds them there for a long moment. Then he exhales a warm breath, pulls back to look me in the eyes again, his fingers still splayed over my belly, beneath the shirt I’m wearing, his thumb just under my shorts.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” he tells me quietly. “I fucking…I fucking love everything about you.” He bows his head again, and his mouth drops over my nipple, his teeth closing around it over my shirt.
I gasp, my back arching with his touch.
We know how to love each other this way, even if we fail at every other way.
My hands find his back, and he groans against me, picking his head up after he tugs my nipple with his teeth.
“You drive me crazy, baby girl,” he whispers, leaning down and opening his mouth over mine. Our kiss is wet, raw, passionate. “I just want you all to myself.” He slips his hand down my shorts, runs his middle finger down the length of me, then curls two fingers inside of me.
I tighten around him, my nails digging into his back as I stare up at him, his warm breath against my mouth.
“I want you to always be mine, because no matter what shit you throw my way, Lilith, I’m always gonna be yours. Even when you hate me.”
Ria sighs, reaching for the drink the waitress set on our table. She finishes the rum and diet and I feel a stab of annoyance that I can’t have the same.
I hope it’s not a sign that I’ll be a horrible mother already, that I don’t feel any attachment to the life growing inside me.
Because I don’t.
If it wouldn’t kill my husband, I’d end it, even now.
“More or less,” Ria says, glancing around the club, and I almost forget that I asked her if she was enjoying herself.
I force back the memories of my time with Lucifer, follow her gaze around the room. There’re a lot of women in short dresses, men in tailored pants and shirts, expensive watches. Guards with guns.
This isn’t the usual Saturday night crowd. This is for Order of Rain.
“I’d enjoy myself more if I could go home, but we both know that’s not going to happen.” She laughs, but it’s forced. No humor in it.
She was supposed to graduate this spring, a history major. She’s the reason I even know about my past. What happened to me and Jeremiah. How we were used. But that’s also the reason she’s on the shit-list for the 6. The reason she ran from Maverick’s basement when Ella accidentally let her out.
She went home.
Told her parents she’d been away, studying abroad. She had a few weeks looking over her shoulder, paranoia shadowing her every move.
Then they came for her.
The same fucking night they came for me.
She told me it’d been much the same as it had for me. Ripped away from our own homes. Used as bait for the boys.
Thinking about the whispered threats sends a chill down my spine. I was already planning to run.
