59. Angel
FIFTY-NINE
ANGEL
"Is there permanent damage, Surgeon?" Rowan leaned over my shoulder and poked gently at the scar tissue as the Surgeon studied it through his bifocals.
"Move, boy, you’re in my light," he muttered in annoyance, slapping Rowan on the forehead with the back of his hand. "Looks pretty well healed, actually. I don’t think you’re gonna have any issues going forward." His eyes lifted to mine, the seriousness heavy in them. "You got lucky, man." His gaze dragged across the room slowly, following my line of sight as I stared at the person I took that bullet for. "But not as lucky as her, I reckon."
"I’d do it all over again to save her," I muttered, making the slightly older man chuckle.
I would, too. I’d take every bullet life fired her way if that was what it took to wake up to that fucking woman every day.
I’d been too stubborn to let myself enjoy it. To admit to myself and her that I’d never stopped loving her. That I’d fallen for her in the first place.
Taking that bullet felt like the only way I could show her what I really felt inside.
I couldn’t get out of my own way. I had to put my life on the line to break through the fucking shell I’d crammed myself into. What a fucking mess.
It was worth it, though.
"Any lifting restrictions? Kinda hard to do solo jobs if I can’t lift over twenty pounds."
"Nah, you’re good, as long as it doesn’t hurt. Obviously, listen to your own body." He blinked down at his watch, taking my pulse for good measure. "So, you tell her how you feel yet?"
I watched Rowan as he stepped away to give us privacy to chat, fiddling with the button at the end of my sleeve to buy myself some time.
No, I hadn’t told her yet. Sure, she probably knew. The whole die-for-you thing was a dead giveaway. But unlike the other two, our relationship was still a bit . . . tame.
I shook my head, and the other man frowned.
We were more like roommates with an undeniable attraction than two people in love.
I planned to change that very soon. Like today soon.
"A question, if I may, man to man?" I turned to the Surgeon with wariness, far more embarrassed about this than I should be at my age. "Am I able to . . . I mean, can I?—"
"Are you seriously asking me if you can have sex?" He blinked slowly, watching me with a smirk. "Boy, if your dick works, you could have had sex weeks ago."
My jaw went slack. "Weeks ago?"
Well, shit.
Surgeon zipped up his bag and shook my hand, dragging a promise to take it easy on myself from between gritted teeth. "Don’t be stupid anymore, Blackwood. No more bullets, no more knives to the chest, no more house calls. I’m starting to get tired of seeing your ugly mugs."
"I’ll keep them on the straight and narrow; don’t worry," Harper called out, making me smile. She was adorable, thinking she could keep any of us contained. But Nash especially. That girl could spend her whole life herding him like a cat, and she’d still likely lose that battle.
"You’d better," Surgeon replied, chuckling quietly. "Be good to her," he directed at me and then took his leave with a nod in Rowan’s direction.
The commons grew quiet in our little section of the Guild. Suddenly, with the neutral man gone, none of us knew what to say.
Bless her fucking soul, Harper broke the ice with a little giggle I was growing far too fond of.
"So, I was thinking about our living arrangements, such as they are." Rowan glared at her, but she returned the stony stare with a fiery one of her own that seemed to scream just fucking try me. "It’d be nice to have my own room?—"
"Why do you need a room when we already have three?" Nash butted in, indignation lacing his words. "You can sleep with me any time, Harpie girl."
"What if she gets tired of looking at your ugly face?" Rowan called out, dripping with smug satisfaction. "I sure would."
These days, Nash didn’t seem to mind the jokes about his face. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to think Harper started teasing him about it to make it feel more normal. Typical guy jokes were no longer off the table to protect his sensitive mental state. Hell, he hadn’t broken a mirror in weeks.
Almost as long as we’d been back from the hospital.
We had her to thank for that.
He was still a little weird, though.
"Aw, get fucked, Ro. You’re a blanket hog. I know because when she leaves your bed, cold and angry, she comes looking for me, her personal space heater." He tapped his chest in challenge, winking at Harper, who just rolled her eyes and hopped off the couch, heading for the kitchen.
"I’m serious, Ro," she mumbled from inside the fridge. I was half-hard just watching her bent over, searching for who knew what. "I need my own space. If I get mad at all three of you and need to be alone, I need somewhere that’s just mine to retreat to." She gave him a pointed look over her shoulder. "It’s either that or I’m moving in with the Neons?—"
Nash cleared the counter in a single jump, covering her mouth with his hand as he wrapped her in a hug from behind. "Aaaaand that’s enough of that line of thought. I’ll call the damn contractors myself if I have to. We’ll make you your own space."
Rowan’s brow darkened, the perfect storm forming in the lines of his forehead. "And how the fuck do you think we’re going to pay for it?"
Nash looked down at the captive girl in his grip and laughed. " Our little sugar mama here can pay for it herself. She’s rich now, isn’t she?"
Harper’s eyes bugged out as she mumbled behind Nash’s hand. I started the countdown as they did their little song and dance, him dodging her feet as she tried to slam a heel down on his instep. Her squirming as he ground his hips against her. An eye roll. A groan of pain.
Nailed it.
She elbowed him in the gut, and he doubled over as she danced away from him, right into the safety of my orbit.
"Angel, save me; Nash is gonna kidnap me and take me away to do all sorts of vile, unspeakable things?—"
"Oh, keep talking; I like where this is going, Harpie girl," he sassed, stalking her but staying just out of my reach as she hid behind my chair, her hands on my shoulders. "What sort of unspeakable things do you think I’m gonna do to you?"
"Alright, Nash, leave her be," Rowan grumbled, crossing his arms. "We have to go check in with Lilly to see if there’s anything on the board to be done. You’ve been healed long enough to do some more work. I can’t float us forever."
"Yeah, and we’re not floating on Harper’s money. At least not until the lawyers untangle it from that fake death certificate."
She leaned over my shoulder and stuck her tongue out at Nash as he rifled through the cabinet, produced a chocolate bar, and waggled it in triumph before taking a bite. "There better be another one of those in that fridge, Nashville Blackwood."
"You’ll have to go look for yourself, Harper Daniels."
He disappeared into his room like the summer breeze disappeared on a hot day. Rowan shuffled off, mumbling to himself about construction and the money associated with it, already forming a plan in his head.
You can take the dog out of the fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the dog, I suppose .
"If there isn’t, Harper, we can go for a little ride and grab one for you."
Harper’s eyebrows shot through the roof as she turned her head and looked at me like I’d grown a horn. "Are you out of your mind? Do you think I’d let you put me on the back of your bike right now? You just got cleared, sir. Don’t go pushing your limits so soon."
"I’ve ridden the damn thing since I’ve been home," I pointed out, but she clearly gave zero fucks about what defense I had for my offer. "Besides, it’s not like I can’t take the Torino if I want. It’s all of ours."
"It’s in Rowan’s name, technically," she pointed out, and I had to fight back a grin as I remembered the conversation Rowan and I had the other day about putting it in her name as a birthday gift. I had my suspicions that she wouldn’t want it, but if he was going to fail, I might as well let him fail on his own every now and again. It was his plan to fail at, not mine.
Maybe eventually, he’d learn that not everything needed a plan.
"Well, Harper, that leaves just you and me," I pointed out, grinning like I was the snake that swallowed the mouse. "And I have something I wanna show you."
I stood so fast she didn’t have a chance to run away from me. Her middle folded in half over my shoulder as I carried her off like a fucking caveman, throwing her legs over the other side like I was posing for a Jesus and the Lost Lamb painting or something, Red Light District Style.
"Angel, put me down; I can walk, dammit!"
She squirmed on my shoulder, and I tried not to wince as she kneed me in the jaw on accident. "Can you hold still for five seconds, woman?"
"One," she started counting, going completely still on me. "Two," she said after a long, drawn-out second, and I rushed for my bedroom door, rolling my eyes despite the smile on my lips .
I hadn’t felt this alive in a long time.
"Threeeee," she mumbled as I threw her atop my huge, comfortable bed, glad I hadn’t bothered to redo all the buttons on my shirt after Surgeon visited. "Four," she said with a pout, rolling onto her back in the center of the one piece of furniture I wasn’t about to let her move off of for the foreseeable future.
An eternity with her wouldn’t be enough time to show her everything I wanted her to see. Tell her everything in my soul that I needed her to know.
But it would have to do.
"Five," she whispered as I crawled up the bed from the bottom, stalking her like a panther in the night. "Angel, what?—"
"Can you make me a promise, Harper?" I asked quietly, laying on the bed next to her, our eyes level with each other, though that left me hanging off the bed a bit since I was taller. "I need you to listen to me and not talk for, like, the rest of the night. And I know that’s a huge ask, but if you agree and you keep up your end of the deal, I’ll give you something I know you’ve wanted for a long time."
"A tiger?" she teased, twirling a stray strand of my hair around one of her fingers. "I’ve always wanted a tiger."
"No tigers, unfortunately. Lilly would kick us all to the curb in a heartbeat if we tried to smuggle a tiger into the Guild."
"Not me. She likes me," Harper retorted, jutting out those pretty lips in a pout I wanted to kiss off her face.
It was true. St. Clair had taken a strange interest in our girl after the whole ordeal with our father. It was uncanny how often I found the two together, likely up to no good, knowing them. But sometimes, they’d meet with her ex-husband, the cop, and it made me wonder what was really going on between the three of them.
She’d tell me when she was ready for me to know.
"Promise me, Harper?" I asked again. "Don’t make me beg."
"I might like it if you begged, Angel. "
She had no idea the appeal that idea had. "I won’t."
"Shame." She rolled onto her back again, closing her eyes like she expected me to believe she planned to go to sleep.
I hadn’t let her in my bed since I came home. That didn’t stop her from sneaking in after I’d gone to sleep, pillow and blanket in hand, so she could post up on the floor in case I needed something.
What I needed right now, though, was her. And I didn’t know how to tell her. Not with words.
For the first time in my life, I was at a loss for the right words to convey a simple request.
Let me love you.
How fucking hard was it? Yet every time I opened my mouth, the words got stuck in the back of my throat.
How could I expect her to see me as a man if I couldn’t even talk to her?
"Angel," she started, a smile on her lips, eyes still closed. "What do I get if I keep my mouth shut for the rest of the night?"
Just fucking do it. Just say what you need to say and fucking do it. Do it do it doit doitdoitdoit ? —
"Me."
I rolled over so that I towered over her, my arms braced on either side of her face, my hair a curtain shielding us, hiding us from the rest of the world. Her eyes snapped open and searched mine, trying to find the joke, the catch in the offer, but there was none.
"Angel," she whispered, a hand lifting between us to trace the outline of my jaw. "I?—"
"The only things I want to hear coming out of your mouth are the noises you make when I touch you, my name, and the pretty pleas you make when it gets too intense."
"Fuck." Her lips parted on a sigh, and I captured them with my own, kissing her like I’d wanted to do for years now. I put everything I couldn’t say into that kiss, all the words that wouldn’t come out right, all the emotions and feelings she put me through. My tongue prodded at the seam of her lips, and she groaned and let me in, her leg hooking around the back of my calf as she rubbed herself on me like a cat in heat.
She was silk and lace and all the best things in life, and she tasted like everything I’d ever dreamed she would and more. Her cherry lip gloss left me reeling. The smell of her vanilla body spray tickled my nose.
I felt the exact moment she realized how much she affected me. Her whole body pressed against mine, and she arced into my embrace as I rolled us over, setting her atop me to let gravity do most of the work.
I might have been a mostly healed man, but I wasn’t against making things easier on myself.
"Bring that pretty mouth down here and let me taste you again," I commanded, letting my fingers tangle in her hair as she practically fell on me with an eager squeak, her teeth nipping my lower lip playfully.
She let out another squeal of surprise when my free hand came down on her ass with a quiet smack.
We made out like teenagers going at it for the first time, all tongues and teeth and no finesse at all, but I didn’t care. I needed her like I needed air to breathe. Like the desert needed rain. Like a fish needed water.
And I intended to have her.
I rolled us over again, putting her on her back with a grin. "You stay right here and let me appreciate this masterpiece that is your body."
I slid down the length of her, wrapping a hand around one ankle so I could turn it out and kiss the inside gently. She shivered beneath my fingers, and the realization that I had so much power over her was like an aphrodisiac, making me harder than I ever remembered being in my life.
"Fuck," she whispered as my lips trailed up the inside of her calf, my other hand drawing lazy circles on the other leg to mirror the trail I blazed on this side.
Unlike when I had her in the shower, this time, she opened her legs of her own accord, beckoning me between them with nothing more than my name on her lips and a whispered plea for more.
"Angel, please," she begged, rocking her hips up as she dug her nails into my bedsheets at her sides. "Please."
"That’s what I plan to do to you, Harper," I mumbled against her skin, planting another feather-light kiss against the back of her knee. "Please you."
The moan that broke from her throat was promising, sinful, and erotic.
All the things I wanted to hear from her.
"I’m going to take my tongue and put it places it’s never been. I’m going to devour you like a four-course meal. And when I’ve had my fill, and I’ve left you quaking, needy, and wet—" I paused, my lips hovering above the skin halfway up the inside of her thigh. "Well, when you’re so desperate you can’t think straight, when you need it more than you need air, then you’ll really understand how I’ve felt all these years."
"Angel," she whined, parting her legs an inch further. "Don’t tease me."
"You’re breaking our agreement," I pointed out, but she didn’t seem to care.
She had me on my back in seconds, her hair draped over my chest, her lips on my skin now. Somewhere along the way, we’d become enemies, and even now, we went to war, trying to dominate each other the only way we could.
Her fingers worked at the buttons of my shirt, baring my chest to her hot gaze.
I felt like she was burning me alive with that stare.
"I don’t care anymore," she confirmed, tongue darting out from between her lips to moisten them. "I need you, and you’re moving too slowly."
She climbed atop me and pinned me down, her hot core pressed insistently against my groin. I groaned and ground my hips into her, relishing the feel of her against my cock, even through the two layers of pants between us. "Fuck, Harper," I groaned as she swallowed my words in a passionate kiss.
All I could do was feel. The drag of her nails down my biceps as she slipped my shirt off me. The wet warmth of her breath in my ear as she licked and kissed and sucked and nibbled her way to my collarbone. The softness of her thighs around my waist. All of it served to drive me mad, and I was fast losing my patience—and my mind.
"I never said you could take over," I growled, flipping us again in a smooth move I’d practiced more than I cared to admit. "Now be a good girl and sit still for your master."
"Master?" she teased, nipping at my nose as I brushed my lips across her forehead. "I don’t see a leash and collar anywhere."
"Don’t tempt me, girl," I snapped back, pinning her hands above her head. "Now, hold still."
Her legs fell open for me, and I crawled between them like I was coming home, my eyes on the zipper of her shorts like it had personally wronged me.
With a ferocity I didn’t know I possessed, I grabbed both sides of her waistband and yanked down, dragging her shorts to her ankles in a single move. Blessed virgins, she wasn’t wearing any panties underneath, either.
I looked to the ceiling and mouthed thank you, Jesus as she smiled up at me.
"You got a staring problem?"
She shook her head no. "I didn’t know you were religious," she muttered, blushing prettily.
"Me either," I admitted, "but when heaven opens the gates for me like this, I can’t be ungrateful. "
I lowered my tongue to her clit, finding it with ease. Her soft little sighs and moans fueled me as I ground my cock into the bed, desperate to be inside her, and soon. My fingers slipped inside her cunt as I ate her out, flicking and sucking and twisting and licking until she writhed beneath my touch.
The first time she came for me, she tried to fight it. I felt her tense up and pushed her over the edge with a flick of my wrist. Her pretty pussy clenched on my fingers, desperate to be filled with something else, and my cock throbbed in response, equally as eager to fill her.
I couldn’t wait any longer for her. I couldn’t stand to be without her for another damn second, or I might come in my pants like a fucking boy.
"Harper, I?—"
"I need you, Angel," she whispered, her hand searching for mine. "Please, don’t make me wait."
When she said it like that, how could I possibly deny her?
I slipped a hand down and undid the snap on my jeans, kicking them off clumsily as I tried to figure out how I wanted to do this. She wasn’t just a quick lay. She wasn’t just any girl. This was Harper, the girl I’d dreamed of since I knew what love was.
She deserved the best.
And suddenly, I was afraid I wouldn’t measure up.
She must have seen the hesitation in my gaze because the vixen reached between our bodies and grabbed my cock like it was the most natural thing in the world, guiding it to her core with a tender smile on her lips. She stopped at her entrance, the head of my cock slipping along her wet folds as I fought back the urge to just bury myself in her in one stroke.
"I don’t have any condoms," I pointed out, searching her eyes for disappointment.
Instead, all she had to offer me was laughter. "Angel, I know what birth control is. And I’m on it." She rolled her hips, and the head of my cock slipped inside her, eliciting a groan of pleasure from me as my balls tightened. "Now either fuck me, or I’ll fuck myself on you while you watch."
"This isn’t fucking," I whispered as I slid in another inch, hunching over her body, caging her in. "What you do with Nash is fucking. What you do with me is so much more."
I set a steady pace, rolling my hips as I dragged my cock in and out of her, both of us panting with need and arousal, sweat-covered and needy and desperate for each other in ways we couldn’t vocalize. She yanked at her top angrily, and I rolled us so she was on top to make it easier for her to take it off.
It sailed across my room in a flash of pink, and just like that, my hands were on her tits, caressing them, thumbs brushing over her nipples as they hardened beneath my touch.
"You’re beautiful, Harper," I whispered, like a prayer to a god I didn’t believe in. "So fucking beautiful."
"So are you," she teased, her hips rising and falling as she moaned and stretched, running her fingers through her long, black hair. "I bet we’d make gorgeous babies."
A flash of worry ran through me at the idea of having kids. Hitmen didn’t get to start families. You couldn’t raise a child in this kind of place. But then her earlier words came back to me, and I realized it had been a joke.
A joke that hit me harder than I thought it would.
"Yes, we would," I agreed, already imagining the kids I’d never have with her in my mind. "But right now, all I want to think about is your body on mine. I wanna feel your pussy clench down on my cock like it did my fingers."
"Oh, fuck," she moaned, bouncing on me with excitement. "I wanna feel you inside me, Angel." She gripped my thighs and leaned back, baring her pussy to my gaze as it swallowed my dick whole. "Wanna feel you fucking blow inside me, fill me up."
"You keep talking like that, and I won’t last long enough to make it worth your while," I breathed, sitting up so I could bring her body against mine. I needed her closer, needed to hold her, feel her as she fell apart. "Fuck, Harper, ride me. Take what you need. I’m with you. I’m right there with you."
She leaned in and put her lips on mine, her fingers gripping my hair at the base, tangling there, as she bounced on me and I rocked up into her, my arms around her back, holding her tight, my tongue tangled in hers, the taste of her still lingering there.
Fuck, I wanted to drag her to the edge of nirvana with me. The pressure built in the back of my spine, my balls tightened up against my body, and I broke our kiss just long enough to gasp her name in warning as she clenched down on my cock and shouted my name to the ceiling. She damn near pulled half my hair out as her teeth came down on my throat and she bit me, marking me like a damn animal as I came inside her, dragged over the finish line by the way her cunt clenched down on my dick, milking me of all that I had to offer.
I’d come plenty of times before today. But spilling myself inside the woman I’d decided was my soulmate so long ago was like reaching the peak of enlightenment. If heaven were a place on earth, it would be her arms.
She was my shelter, my home, my everything.
And I’d almost lost it all.
"I’m never letting you go, Harper," I mumbled into her hair as she softened in my embrace. "You hear me? The others can fight me for you, I don’t care. You’re mine now."
"Angel," she muttered softly, exhaustion claiming her as I laid us down on the messy sheets.
"I’m here, Harper," I promised, pulling the covers over us both as she drifted off to sleep. "I’ll always be here for you."
Always.