Layla
“Let me just look at you,” Sean says as he wraps a towel around me. He stands behind me in the bathroom mirror, brushing my wet hair to the side and kissing my shoulder. We’re back at my place and clean, after stopping at his house for clothes and some of his things. I don’t want to stay at my parents’ house alone, but there is already no trace of Ramos left. Sean had Boyd come over to clean and saw to that.
I’ve thought a lot about what I’ve learned over the last two hours. I think about my mother and how I am more like her than I realized—she was strong, she almost made it. Maybe she would’ve been happy after she left my father, if she’d had the chance. Ramos is a lunatic, but I know by the look in his eyes he’ll live forever with the regret of killing her, and I heard Sean tell Kai to take his hands. I remember Sean’s words: if someone steals from us, we take their hands. It does seem fitting.
Sean’s fingers trace my skin softly. “So fucking beautiful,” he murmurs as his lips find their way to my neck, my earlobe, softly biting. I whimper under his touch.
“Truth?” he asks, probably assuming what happened tonight is weighing on me.
“Truth … when I saw him there … beaten, weak …” My eyes sting as I picture the way Ramos looked at me when he said,“I fucking loved her.”I look into Sean’s eyes in the mirror as he strokes my skin softly. “I was … glad. It was like understanding my mother’s secrets and the life she hid from me for the first time, and saying goodbye to a ghost that’s haunted me for almost two years. I understand, I think, how you compartmentalize this.”
The muscles in Sean’s jaw flex. “You have to compartmentalize. You have to believe every single thing that happens is part of our path.”
“She made her choices, and it was her path to intertwine with his—to die when she did.”
“Exactly,” he says. “Andourpaths were always meant to intertwine,” he adds, kissing my shoulder.
“I thought you didn’t believe in fate?”
He looks down at me, so very much mine in this moment. “I didn’t before, but now the idea of something unexplainable, unquantifiable yet I can feel it with everything in me … your mother and father dying so you ended up working at the club, the storm that meant I found you there …”
“Not everything has to be explainable, Sean,” I offer with a raised eyebrow. He turns me toward him and looks down at me, his green eyes light.
“I know that I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”
“Philosophy from the outlaw biker,” I comment, letting a soft smile take over my face. “A Sean Hunter original?” I ask.
“Rosalia de Castro.” He smirks. “Call it fate, call it choice, but I know my path and every bump in this fucked-up road I’ve been on has led me to you, to this moment.” He continues the line of kisses down my arm. “And since you’re on this path withme now, we’ll ride it together.” I think about the blood and ruin in that room. I think about what Kai will do to Ramos.
Sean tilts my chin up to him, as if he sees my thoughts.
“And one thing you need to understand is there’s no right or wrong way to feel after fighting pain and coming out the other side of it.” He kisses my shoulder. “Just like there’s no right or wrong way to feel after retribution. Everything you think you know about your emotions is because someone told you how you should feel.”
“I just feel … grateful it’s over.” I breathe out a sigh as his knuckles slide down my arm. “I feel strong. I feel likeshewas strong,” I admit in a whisper.
Sean uses his thumb and forefinger to unhook the soft towel from between my breasts. It falls to the floor and the cool air makes my nipples harden. Tiny embers of heat ignite as I stand bare before him. He uses his hand to grasp my throat gently and lift my chin.
“This is the face of a strong woman,” he says softly, tracing his finger over the places he marked me with his blood, like it’s burned into his memory. My skin sparks as he turns my face to his and pulls me into a deep kiss filled with new passion, connection and emotion. I moan into his lips as he pulls back and turns my face toward the mirror again.
“Her world fell apart yet here she stands, on her own two feet. She’s bold.” He trails a hand between the valley of my breasts, my skin pebbling in its wake.
“She’s wild.” He pinches my nipple and presses his lips to my neck, a tiny smirk taking over his expression when he feels a quick flutter of my pulse there.
“She is so fucking beautiful.” He murmurs softly.
I stare at the woman he sees. Her eyes glassy and lust-filled, her stance is confident beneath his worshipping gaze. I see the change in myself in the short time I’ve known him. I’ve livedthrough loss for a second time and come out the other side. I’m the woman my mother never fully became. I want to be her, always.
“She was made for this life. She was made for me. She ismine,” Sean adds as his hand slips down, over the curve of my hip. “And we are infinite.” His naked body presses into mine and I feel more myself than I ever have. I’m proud of this woman before me. This woman who wants to belong to Sean Hunter in every way possible.
He grabs a brush from my drawer and carefully pulls it through my hair, taking his time to care for me after a life-changing night, and I marvel as I watch him, not understanding how this came to be, but I’m going to let our truth guide me the same way it guided him.
He came into my life as a storm, and even though he’s already taken my heart captive, the woman behind the bars is free with the wings he gave her. I should feel trauma after what I’ve seen and what I know, but I don’t. I just want to be his. A fresh new start, no cages, no boundaries, just me and him.
When my hair is brushed through, Sean pushes it around my shoulders, then he reaches down and grabs some gauze and tape from the drawer, covering his initial on my stomach. His still bleeds, uncovered from the shower, but I already know as long as I’m alive, he’ll look after me first—it’s just the way he is. Which tells me, one day, it won’t just be me first, it will be our children too.
“I have a feeling I’m gonna be sore tomorrow.” I look up at him over my shoulder.
“Your body is coming down,” he notes. I nod. After fighting Ramos, the trauma and the tension in my body is already starting to come out. My muscles ache in a wave of fatigue after the adrenaline rush.
