I come to a halt right in front of her. Her eyes search mine, swirling with a thousand silent questions and fears. Slowly, deliberately, her hand rises and turns my hat around. Her touch shatters my self-control. My arm shoots out, fingers wrapping gently around her throat, not to harm but to ground her to me. I hold her steady as I lower my head, our lips crashing together with desperate, bruising hunger. Our tongues tangle instantly, speaking a wordless language of need and release.
Fuck, I could spend the rest of my life just breathing her in. There’s a rightness to this, a settling of the gears in my soul that finally makes sense of the world.
Marigold belongs to me. She has been mine since the instant she entered my orbit. Now I get to claim her, to show everyone she’s the only one who can rein me in. Marigold is the beautiful upheaval in my ordered world, but she’s also my anchor. Only she can quiet the storm inside me with her own wild, magnificent chaos.
If you haven’t seen the darkness she hides, you’d swear she’s too bright for this world. Her laughter would fool you into thinking she’s fragile, that the club’s cruelty would shatter her. But they don’t know her as I do. They miss the iron beneath her velvet. My little shadow. They’ll never realize it’s not hersurrendering to me. It’s me surrendering to her. She’s my Queen of the Darkness.
My hands grip her hips, lifting her easily. She wraps her legs around my waist without a word as I move us inside and kick the door shut. Temptation claws at me to take her right here, pressed against the wood, but tonight I want us tangled in sheets first.
A few seconds later, I’m dropping us both onto her mattress.
We’re both panting hard when I finally pull back. I rest our foreheads together, staring at her, marveling at the fact that I’m here. That she’s finally, fuckingmine.
“You doing okay?” I ask softly.
Her body moves under mine in a non-committal shrug. “Sure.”
“Don’t lie to me. You can hide behind that mask with everyone else, baby, but not me. It’s okay that they hurt you.”
“I’m not denying that. They did,” she whispers. “But I’ve been to hell, Axton. Met the devil. Smiled to his face while I shoved a blade into his chest. It hurt, but I’ll survive. Just like before.”
“Gave them hell after you left,” I admit, wanting her to know she wasn't alone in that room.
Her eyes widen, and that beaming, electric smile covers her face. “You did? What did they say? Were they surprised? Did you hurt them?”
I chuckle, the sound low in my throat. “Wanting a little violence, eh?”
She purses her lips, but her eyes are twinkling with that old mischief. “What? Of course not. That’d be barbaric.” She sighs, her shoulders dropping. “Okay, fine. Just a little blood. Surely a girl could ask that much from her lover, right?”
Irresistibly fucking cute.
“Let’s save the bloodletting for another date. I think I have something more fun for tonight.”
“Yes.”
I lift a brow. “You don’t even know what it is.”
“Don’t care. My answer is yes.”
“Okay. Great. Come on. Let’s go make some popcorn and watch a movie.”
I pretend to move off her, but I don’t get far before her legs tighten like a vice around my waist. “Wait. What?”
“You don’t want to watch a movie with me?” I ask, poking out my bottom lip in a mock pout.
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. But like… I thought you meant somethingmorefun.”
Humming, I lean down and run my tongue up the sensitive line of her throat before nipping at her earlobe. “Did it happen to involve a mask?”
“Yep. Uh-huh,” she moans, before her eyes snap open and she shakes her head. “Wait. No. No, of course not. That’d be a terrible idea. Wouldn’t want you turning me into your dirty little slut so soon.”
With a wicked chuckle, I start stripping us both out of our clothes. “Oh, baby. It’s way too late for that.”
I flip her over, the smack of my hand against her skin echoing in the quiet room before I notch myself against her and slam home.
An hour later, we’re tangled in a sweaty, exhausted heap. My fingers trail over the smooth skin of her back while hers brush over the marks on my chest. The silence stretches, emotions rising in my chest until they threaten to spill over. The truth claws at me, impossible to hold back any longer.
“Look at me,” I order, my voice husky and thick.
