Ty and I bid good night to the guys and moved to our bathroom. The walls pulse around me, the unforgiving lights leering with warning, the slate-tiled floor glinting with an intuitive censure.
It’s been ten minutes since I uttered Jax’s name. The wrath and disappointment radiate off Ty. It doesn’t matter that I answered him. All he’s focused on is that I hid it, drawing countless wrong conclusions for my reasoning at this point. But I’d prefer to wait until he’s regained some semblance of tranquility, relaxed. Maybe when we crawl beneath the covers and he sees me as a gateway to solace again.
He’s got waterproof bandages on his freshly tended wounds and a determination to sulk in a hot shower, so when I swing open the glass door and step inside, he follows.
Silent and broody. He’s stuck. And that feels like failure, like I’ve fucked up at being part of this family when I fought so hard for the opposite outcome.
Without a word, I lather him up, trying not to gag at the pieces of flesh and body matter I pluck from his hair and skin. This is a prime example of why he was begging me to stay away, probably why my brothers were disturbed by the marriage. It’s a far cry from being the Noire princess—the smiling face of hospitality that never glimpses the gore behind the curtain.
But there’s no place I’d rather be, so my instincts to leap with Ty were spot-on.
Even if we did escape the Grim Reaper by the skin of our teeth tonight, we made it back to our blueberry fields.
After he soaps me up in return, his hands start to roam—roammight not be the most fitting word. He desperately peruses my body, like he’s committing every curve, texture, cell to memory.
Seeking. Searching.
“You are my first priority.” His voice cracks through the heavy steam, slicing it with an imploring vulnerability. “My everything. How many goddamn times and ways do I have to say it for you to understand there’s nothing I won’t do for you?”
It seems rhetorical, so I don’t answer, providing the space for him to verbally vomit his despondence. That alone is a milestone for Ty. He used to bottle everything up. So, I’ll gladly be his unloading station.
He leans into me, pressing me against the marble wall to crowd me the way he likes. One arm rests above my head while his other hand teases my opening, tantalizing dips and swirls. “Loveis not even a strong enough word for what I feel for you.Obsesseddoesn’t cut it either. You are … life. I can’t breathe if you’re hurt.Anypart of you. I will do anything and everything to keep you whole, Rena. Fuckinganything. So, of course, I’d protect your brothers. They’re a part of you and my friends—my family too.”
For a stretched-out beat, I say nothing, choosing to make him wait because as disappointed as he is in my supposed lack of trust, I’m as irritated that he doesn’t see who we’ve become. That he doesn’t grasp that I have a much bigger picture in mind for all of this. He’s the one who taught me to hold on, and yet it eludes him.
My fingers curl around his steel cock, working him over to release some of that rage he’s carrying. Maintaining the rhythm he enjoys, I finally lock on to those cognac embers that harbor so much anguish. “I know you’d do anything for me. You could never say it again, and I would still know it.”
He shakes his head, blowing out a stilted breath, dismissing my confession. But he doesn’t speak. He grunts as he hoists me up to his waist and thrusts inside me with an unrelenting piston of his hips. It’s not his playful ownership over me, his passionate domination, or the soothing cuddles and cock warming he generally offers.
Every touch and slam and plunge is a reckoning. Maybe directed at us both. Punishing himself is how Ty copes. You’d think he’d be too spent, too sore and weak for this level of rigorous decimation. But he melds my body to his, plasters my spine against the sticky tiles so that each vertebra declares its presence, and covers my mouth with his, blowing several puffs of air into me and rendering me heady.
It’s one of the safer forms of breath play, limiting my oxygen intake to accelerate my body’s danger response, in turn producing an endorphin rush—something I’ve always been curious about.
My nipples harden even more than their traditional resolute state, the bars instantly tighter. My hips rock, mining for the friction I’m ravenous for, managing to angle enough that my clit is met with a titillating cadence. And this steam-filled box jostles around me. I purr my retort to his puffs, my senses enhanced, anawareness of every pore in my body seizing me as the humid air abandons my lungs. Lightheaded and hazy.
His eyes coast over my face, gauging the response as he continues his savage pumps, inflicting my sentence for a transgression he’s wrongly accusing me of. “You don’t trust me. And I don’t know how to—”
I cut him off, veering toward my climax, but unwilling to tip with that allegation hanging over me. “You’re wrong. I trust you more than anyone.”
His eyes go wild, be it the blood loss, the pain meds, the stress, or his chagrin, but something snaps. He wraps his hand over my throat, his thumb and index finger biting into my flesh in a prove-it gesture.
Well,fuck me. I think I mentioned once that I wanted to be choked, soteach me my damn lesson, sailor.
My brows arch for the dewy ceiling in a you-don’t-have-the-guts challenge. “Do it.”
With that, he sticks the loofah in my hand—something to drop if things go awry—tethers us closer with an arm snug around my lower back, plants his crazed gaze on my face, and squeezes the sides of my throat, pinching off my airway while his fervid tempo of punishing thrusts prevails. Within seconds, my vision spots and blurs, lashes fluttering as my body suddenly feels weightless. Warring urges to fight and flee surge through me.
Every sensation heightens while also seeming distant and jumbled somehow. I dig my nails into his taut back muscles on the opposing side from his wound, branding him with crescent moons that cause him to hiss as the loofah scores my palm, taunting me to give up.
“Eyes on me.” His demand is an echo from beyond, curling around me like the clammy droplets of condensation and the rebuking stream of trepidation raining down on me.
So, I affix myself to the only destination that I’ve ever been truly me—not a name or an empire. Not a trophy or a flighty girl.The place where I matter, the only soil I want my soul to bloom from. No matter how many graves lie beneath it.
And as that world goes dark, Ty releases his grip, and everything flies back to the light at a million miles a second. Shooting rockets of silver soar between us. My clit and pussy thrum, muscles and bones throb, veins and nerve endings vibrate. Not plummeting off the euphoric cliff—floating in ecstasy, leaping from the precipice into a cloud of rhapsody. A strained scream rips from the depths of my depleted lungs—fierce and gravelly and utterly deranged—ricocheting off the marble and glass, slate flooring and brass fixtures, to cocoon us in the symphony of my climax.
“Fuck,” Ty wheezes, gaping at me in a reverence I want emblazoned on my every waking moment. Never forgetting who this man believes I am.
He hammers into me with equal measure ferocity and love until his cum shoots inside me. Even my inner walls rejoice at his offering, sucking up every drop of him.
