Page 147 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

Her right arm flies up so she can grab my hair, and I see the wince that motion causes her but I can’t fucking stop right now, not when she just pushed through pain to claim me and definitely not when her pussy starts to throb around me and her moans are in my ear and she’s yanking me down to devour my mouth in an act of such possession that my thrusts turn erratic and I pull back to hold her gaze, my voice cracking on her name as I pump her full of my cum.

In the trembling, sweaty, gasping aftermath, I end up sprawled across the bed with my head pillowed between her breasts and her fingers still in my hair.

“You moved,” I slur into her skin.

“And you take up too much space,” she mumbles.

It’s like she tossed a stone into a pond, the ripples expanding outward until they slap against me on a far-off shore.

“Are you”—I lift my head off her chest and say hesitantly—“are you still not used to it?”

She laughs. “Are you kidding? I love it.” She closes the distance I just put between us. “I love it, Hugo. Your shoulders, your legs, your height. At my mailbox, messing with my routines, cracking open my secrets.” She pushes me onto my back. “Thank you for being so… you.”

Her hand stays splayed on my chest, right over my heart where it beats for her.

“So you’re telling me that all I had to do to come home and find you in my bed, to strip you naked and touch your skin and listen to you call me yours, was annoy you with my fake glasses for six hundred and forty-one days, find out you’re a murderer and that one of your kills went sideways, then spend the worst hours of my life racing all over the city, believing I’d lost you forever?”

Her crooked grin gives way to a vulnerability that scrapes over my skin and leaves me raw.

“Felicity said I was acting like our mom, just pure chaos and bad instincts. She wasn’t wrong, but I don’t think that’s all it was.” She presses her cheek to my chest. “It was also love, Hugo. It was love that I didn’t recognize for way too long.”

Love. She loves me.

I don’t know how or why. I don’t know what I did to deserve it. I just know I’m the lucky bastard who gets to keep her.

“I love you.” I nudge her chin up. “You’re the first person I’ve ever said that to.”

“Good.” She smiles sweetly up at me. “And I’d better be the last.”

Did I say sweet? There’s a hint of murder in her eyes, but before I can tell her that my loving anyone else is a laughable idea, her gaze drops to my leg, and she sucks in a breath.

“Is that…?” She touches the edge of the small pink line on my right thigh.

“Where you stabbed me the night we really met? Yes.”

She lights up with feral possessiveness. “That’s my mark on you.”

“Yeah, baby, it is.” I squeeze her to me, trusting her to tell me when it hurts. Then I sigh and ease her back so I can force myself out of bed. I leave her on her stomach, the strong, sexy lines of her back and ass undulating along my sheets.

“Don’t go,” she says plaintively.

I press a kiss to her head. “I need to check on Cosmo, but I’ll bring back water, bananas, and animal cookies.”

At her adorably confused look, I rest my hand on one of her biteable butt cheeks. “The water’s for hydration, the bananas are for energy, and the animal cookies are for you.” I swat that cute little ass. “Our night’s just getting started.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Rue

I’m on the edge of sleep after my fifth orgasm of the morning, Hugo at my back and Cosmo at our feet, when he says, “Who would your one phone call from jail have been to?”

“Mmm.” I stretch and pretend to think about it. “Pell, probably. He’s got the best infrastruct⁠—”

There’s a growl and a pounce and a displaced dog, and I finally fall asleep after my boyfriend gives me orgasm number seven.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Rue