My heart shifts in my chest. It becomes…well, it becomes hers. I could lie and say a million other things, but I know they’d all be exactly that. A lie. My heart is hers. I’m hers.
She fists the back of my shirt and my hair, and I kiss her as I lift her off the rocks and up into my arms.
She tucks into my chest, and I kiss the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her soaked in rain. The rocks are a motherfucker. The incline of the earth is too. It’s slippery, and this storm is no joke. But I don’t care. I shouldn’t be here with her. I don’t know who or what’s compelling her. I know it’s something. No one cries the way she was crying on their own. Someone did that to her.
She’s not here by accident.
That should have me staying a million miles away from her. But I can’t. I just…I can’t. The scars on her back and the way she is with Bellamy and the kids and how she was losing her mind tonight. Hers is a heavy, tormented heart. A broken heart. But her soul is there. I know it is. She’s fighting me, but she’s not. She wants to push me away, but she doesn’t.
She’s conflicted, and if she didn’t give a shit, that wouldn’t be the case.
I kiss her head again. “I’ve got you, baby.”
She sniffles and holds on tighter even as she says, “Don’t be good to me.”
“Marcella, I’m starting to realize that’s all I want to be. Let me be good to you. Let me take care of you. It’s okay to put your faith in me. I won’t hurt you.”
She shakes her head against me, but then we’re walking inside, and I’m still carrying her, and this palace is huge, and we’re dripping water everywhere, but so be it. I don’t take her to her room. I want her in my bed tonight. I’m too big to share a double bed anyway, and I want to sleep with her. Not just fuck her. I want to hold her.
We reach the third floor, and her chin tilts up as if she’s finally coming to and realizing where we are. “What are you doing?”
I smirk. “You’re mine tonight, mia stella.”
“Rowan. No.”
Except it’s too late because we’re at my suite. “This way you can smell my pillows without having to sneak around about it.”
I shut the door behind me and walk us toward my bathroom, but she wiggles, trying to get out of my arms.
“Put me down. I can’t be in here.”
I don’t put her down. I walk us into the shower and turn it on to hot. She shrieks when cold water hits her, but I press her against the wall.
“I’m not letting you go.” I take her mouth with mine, instantly splitting her lips with my tongue and tasting her once again. Her kisses are becoming something I can’t give up—just like her.
“That’s not going to be your choice.”
“It’s not going to be yours either.”
The water turns warm, and with it, she melts against me, the tension in her muscles relaxing. I toe off my ruined shoes and kick them to the corner, then remove my shirt. Hers is next, and I have to pick her up again to get her shoes and socks off.
It’s ridiculous and difficult with how wet everything is. She laughs when I struggle with her pants that are now stuck on her hips.
I growl in frustration. “This is impossible.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that, but you don’t want to listen.”
I chew on her bottom lip. “Still don’t. Take them off. I need to be inside you.”
“And if I don’t? If I walk out of the shower and never look back?”
I spin her around and force her hands up against the shower wall, my mouth coming down to her ear. “I’ll chase you. Then I’ll spank you for running.”
I press my chest into her back and grip the sides of herpants before I yank them down her legs. I pull one foot out, then the other, until I have her naked before me.
I kiss a trail down her neck and along her back. Her breath hitches when I kiss and lick along her scars, but I continue down to her ass. I bite one supple cheek, followed by the other. She yelps as I do it again, harder this time, and I smack my hand over the indent of my teeth before I trace them with my fingers.
I want to be rough with her. I want to brand myself all over her skin. I want to fuck her so hard she feels me for days every time she moves. She makes me savage, and I like it. I like this feeling. This version of me. It’s one I’ve never had with anyone else before. It’s not charming or manicured. It’s crude and unpolished.
