I grasped his shoulders, gripping the heavy layers of muscle there and digging my nails into his skin. “Eagle.” I practically snarled his name.
He paused and pulled back a fraction to stare down at me. “I never told them my name,” he said.
Confused, I blinked up at him.
“Only Jeffers knew, and then later, Liv. But I never told anyone. They started calling me Eagle, you know, because of my tattoo, and then E for short.”
“Adler,” I whispered, remembering when Liv had said his name.
He stared at me and as he did, his eyes darkened, taking on a faraway look. Then he nodded slowly. “Adler.” And the way he said it, it sounded as if he was reminding himself. Reminding himself that he’d been someone before the world had died.
I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Adler’s kind of a weird name.”
He blinked, then slowly smiled. “It was my grandfather’s,” he said, half laughing.
He fell silent after a moment. We both did, with him propped up over me and me pinned beneath him, neither of us moving.
“Autumn,” he finally said, shocking me.
Autumn. My name. Expecting to feel all the ugly memories of Autumn’s life rise to the surface, I dug my fingers deeper into his skin and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the onslaught.
“Autumn,” he said again, and my eyes opened. Gritting his teeth, he shook his head. “I won’t be ... Ican’t begentle.” His voice was gravelly, rough, and shaky. And hearing him like this, when he was usually so crass, so strong, so capable, it wasn’t just shocking, it was beautiful.
The warmth came back, the slow burn in the pit of my stomach, rising, rising ...
“I don’t care,” I whispered, breathless. And I meant it. I didn’t care.
I’d just barely finished speaking when he pressed his body against mine, fusing our mouths and kissing me again. Messy, hard kisses grew in urgency, faster and harder, and then he slipped a hand between our bodies. Over my stomach and then further, lower and lower, until I gasped as he slid a finger up inside me. A strangled groan tore free from his throat, and suddenly our kisses grew furious, fast to the point where I couldn’t keep up, no longer wanted to keep up. I just wanted to lie there and ...feel this man.
And I could feel everything. Suddenly I was hyperaware of every little thing happening to my body. Every stroke of his finger and touch of our bodies, every hot breath of air blown against my skin.
“Autumn,” he said, my name a mere growl in his throat.
He cupped my jaw, his big hand holding my cheek. And then he kissed me, a powerful and unforgiving kiss that was as brutal as it was breathtaking. Releasing my face, his hand grasped my hip, his fingertips digging brutally into my skin, and I felt his hardness where I needed it most of all, nudging against me. His jaw locked, he pushed slowly at first, his big body held rigid over mine as his black eyes blazed, the veins in his muscles bulging, straining against his skin.
I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly shut at the intrusion. It hurt, and yet it didn’t. There was pressure, so much pressure, and stretching as well. But above all that was the fullness, a foreign sensation that slowly ebbed away, no longer a sense of being full but of being complete—being whole again.
The kisses resumed, long wet strokes of his tongue over mine, while he remained still inside me. Then he began to move and I gasped into his mouth, but he wouldn’t relent. He continued to kiss me, his kisses broken and messy as his hips picked up speed.
I tried to be quiet, to lie still and just let this happen, but my body began to respond of its own accord. A pressure built inside me; my skin and my mind, they felt ablaze with need, wanting and itching to react. I grabbed at him, my nails scoring his skin, and my legs locked around him, my hips lifting as I arched and ground myself against him. Releasing my jaw, he grabbed hold of my hair, fisting it, while his grip on my hip turned bruising.
It wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be, but then, nothing ever is. And this was so much more than I’d ever thought. Maybe because I’d gone so long without the touch of another person, maybe because ... because ...
I cried out, my mind blanking as each of his thrusts hit me deeper. Ripple after ripple of something hot and needy fluttered through me, growing and growing. I cried out again and again, my cries the soprano to the bass of his groans and grunts, feeling as if I was on the precipice of something truly magnificent, something without a name, something I couldn’t begin to describe or explain. I was chasing a rainbow with everything I had, needing to find the secrets at the end of it.
With one final thrust of his hips that made me yelp in both pleasure and pain, his body went still and rigid, a harsh breath rattling free past his lips. Releasing my hair, he rolled to his side. He wrapped an arm around my waist and brought me with him, nestling me in the crook of his arm.
Breathless, my heart racing, my body trembling, I buried my face against his neck.
“You ever run again,” he said, his deep voice cracking. “I’ll ki—”
My head jerked up and I pressed my mouth to his. I kissed him hard, not wanting to hear his anger or his violence. I didn’t want to see the monster this world had made him; I wanted the man beneath it all. The man who’d lifted me from the grass, bleeding and scared, and carried me to his home. The man who’d nursed me back to health, who’d put himself on the line for me—a stranger.
I kissed him slow and soft, urging his lips to move. When they did, when I felt him relax beside me, I kissed him harder and faster, telling him without words that I wasn’t going to run.
This was where I wanted to be. This was home now.
Hewas home.
