Chapter 32
DOVE
A few months ago, when I was looking for an escape, I went to the eighty-third floor of the Empire State Building.
But over the last couple of months, I’ve realized that what I was looking for up there wasn’t an escape, but an exit.
A permanent one.
That need to close my eyes, spread my arms and just fall isn’t there anymore. It’s not lurking in the dark corners of my thoughts or dogging my every step like a shadow I can’t shake.
In a twist of supreme irony, I’m pretty sure it’s the dark, broody storm cloud of a man I married who’s chased those other storm clouds away. Who has cleared the shadows and pulled me—at times quite forcefully—back from that edge.
The same man who knew without asking that I needed this.
To get away from life in general.
It’s been four nights since we got to èze. That first night, without luggage of any kind, all we had was the clothes on our backs and my meds, which he’d remembered to bring.
Obviously, the clothes came off our backs fairly quickly.
Bane had a couple of suitcases of things overnighted to the gorgeous stone villa above the Mediterranean. But we’ve barely opened them.
I mean…why would we? Who needs clothes when all they’re going to do is get between a firm hand and an eager backside? Also, Bane’s destroyed enough pairs of my panties. I don’t need to have new ones shipped to France just so he can add to the trail of destruction.
I’m not naive. I’m aware that this is a temporary escape, not a permanent one. Eventually, I’m going have to face the music, and try to find answers to the questions I’m still not sure how to ask, never mind answer.
What really happened that night?
Why is my DNA all over the handle of the knife that was used to slice open the throat of my best friend’s killer?
And there’s an even bigger, louder, more pressing question: why am I okay with falling in love with the man SHE loved?
What the fuck does that say about me?
The air grows a little cooler at night. But I’m still more than comfortable in the bikini I’ve been wearing all afternoon, sunning myself on the veranda that looks down on the cliffs below.
I’ve been trying not to think about it. I’ve been trying to put it on the list of “things you don’t need to worry about here”, along with the charges against me, the confusion in my head, and the lurking, lingering fear that I might be far more fucked up than I think.
But honestly, I wish I had her diary here. I’d been trying to pace myself with it—not because I didn’t want to devour the whole thing in one sitting, but because each entry revealed another candid snapshot of my friend. Another side. Some of them were familiar, and others weren't.
And I’ve needed space to absorb it all.
To remember.
To try and give myself a little grace, and to atone for falling for her love.
But with no diary to read, I’m tracing a fingertip over the leather-bound books in the library, a silk sarong wrapped around my waist, when I hear the floor creak behind me.
“There you are.”
A smile creeps over my face as I turn, gasping as Bane surges into me. I moan softly against his mouth when he kisses me, his hands skimming around my waist and pressing me to the bookshelves at my back.
My breath catches when I feel the thick throb of his erection against my center through his shorts and my sarong and bikini. As I inhale the scent of him—woodsmoke and leather, mixed with a clean almost citrusy smell that turns me to putty in his hands.
I open my mouth for his tongue, mine dancing with his as my leg lifts to his hip, my arms winding around the back of his neck as I roll my hips against him.
“Hang on,” he growls.
I shake my head, holding him tighter. “I don’t want to hang—”
“I need to show you something first.”
He pulls away and takes my hand in his. He leads me out of the library, into the living room, and then out to the stone veranda high above the ocean below.
“Bane!”
My heart jumps into my throat as he casually steps up onto the stone parapet at the very edge of the veranda, which immediately drops away on the other side. Bane’s face is calm as he turns to offer me a hand.
“Come here.”
I pause, then take his hand, letting him pull me up next to him. A terrifying and yet familiar and comforting feeling sizzles through my veins as I glance down at the dark abyss below, at the bottom of the rocky, jagged cliffs.
The air suddenly feels colder, and a violent shiver tightens my muscles as my spine snaps straight.
My toes curl against the stone. My breathing slows and turns shallow.
I feel numb, and it all feels like it’s hitting my senses through a wall of gauze as I slowly lower my gaze to the plunging abyss dropping away inches from the edges of my toes.
Everything is quiet and still.
All I can hear is the sluggish, heavy thud of my heart echoing inside my head.
“Bane—”
“Do you still want to?”
There’s a flat, distant edge to his voice, devoid of any emotion. Like he’s removed any trace of the pain that comes with asking that question.
Do I still want to jump.
Do I still want to die.
The world around me slows to a crawl. I can hear the wind swirling around my ankles and teasing over my skin. I can feel the weight of every thought that grins lasciviously at me from the shadows. Taunting. Prodding. Daring.
Do I want to die.
I draw in a shaky breath, staring into the jagged rocky blackness far below.
“Why…”
“Just answer the question,” he whispers.
I turn, expecting to find his eyes on me. Instead, I tremble a little more when I see he’s looking down into the darkness too, like he’s waging the same battle.
Like he’s got the same demons taunting and daring him to just take one last step and be done with it.
“If you go…” Bane murmurs. His gaze is still down, staring into the blackness, as he nods his chin up and down. Then he turns his head, his dark eyes glinting in the moonlight as he looks at me. “Then I go.”
I drag in a broken breath. “Why would I go?” I whisper.
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head, looks back down past our toes again. “But if you go, I’m coming with you.”
A shiver ripples up my back as his hand finds mine. Our fingers entwine, and I squeeze tightly as a vicious tremor wracks my body and I stare back at the drop.
The whole world shrinks to the head of a pin.
To two heartbeats.
To the feel of his fingers laced with mine.
And then slowly, the breath I’ve been holding in for longer than I can remember releases, taking with it all the pain, shame, self-betrayal and self-destructiveness.
The desire for any of this life to end.
I shudder as my fingers clench his tight.
“I don’t think I want to anymore,” I whisper, my voice breaking as a tear rolls down my face. A laugh chokes through the tears.
“I’m too fucking happy.”
Without a word, he’s yanking me to him and crushing my mouth with his.
“I had to know,” he groans, his voice rough. He kisses me so hard that I see stars and have to choke back a whimper.
His eyes are still locked with mine as he pulls away.
“…because I love you.”
Bane scoops me against him, lifting me off my feet as I gasp into his lips, knowing only the feeling of kissing him and losing myself in that kiss. He steps down from the edge of the parapet and onto the veranda, then we’re crashing onto one of the chaise lounges.
I moan as he flips us, pushing me down onto my back and kissing me fiercely as he pulls away my sarong and bikini. His mouth slides down my neck, over my collarbone, nipping and sucking down the slope of my breasts until he finds an aching, pebbled nipple.
I cry out as he bites down, his teeth sending both pleasure and pain ricochetting through my core. His hand pushes between my thighs, forcing them apart before he cups my throbbing pussy.
“Fuck!”
I moan loudly when he swirls his tongue around my nipple and sinks two fingers into my slickness, teasing against my g-spot as I writhe and shudder.
His mouth trails down my body, licking over my stomach as it caves beneath his tongue. He keeps his fingers deep inside me, scissoring them, stroking in and out before he shoves my legs apart and lowers his mouth between them.
Oh shit…
A broken, needy sound tumbles from my lips when Bane’s tongue swirls over my clit. He sucks on it, dancing the tip of his tongue over the swollen nub as I arch my back, screaming in pleasure. My fingers tangle in his hair, my face scrunched up in sweet agony as he devours my pussy.
His fingers saw in and out, stroking against that one spot over and over, until my legs are shaking and my stomach is clenched so tight it almost hurts.
My head lolls back, my mouth open, my eyes shut, my hands gripping his hair as Bane devours my fucking pussy.
I come so quickly it takes my breath away. The orgasm explodes through my core, spreading through my veins until I can feel it in the tips of my fingers and toes. Down my spine. In my bones. In my fucking teeth.
I barely have a chance to catch my breath before Bane rolls me over. He shoves my legs apart, making me cry out as he slaps my ass hard over and over until I’m sobbing in pleasure and pain and never wanting it to stop.
I shudder, moaning as Bane’s knees move to either side of my hips, keeping me prone on the lounger. His hot, swollen cock sinks between my thighs from behind and the head pushes against my slick opening. His hand wraps my hair in a fist, tugging my head back just as he thrusts into me.
Hard.
Rough.
Deep.
I let out a wrenched sob of pleasure as his palm cracks down on my bruised ass again. He draws out, then rams right back in as he tugs my head back again, dragging his teeth over my neck and the shell of my ear.
“You don’t get to fucking jump,” he chokes into my ear as his muscled hips crash into me. “Not now, not fucking ever.”
My eyes roll back as his gorgeous, delicious cock rams deeply into me, every thick, swollen inch stretching me to my limit in a way that has my skin on fire and my toes curling.
He smacks my ass and tits, pinching my nipples and then spanking me again as he fucks the shit out of me.
Even after what we just shared on the ledge, he knows this is what I need. It’s not that I want this over “making love". It’s that to me—to him, to us—this is making love.
A violent, chaotic, brutal love that hurts so good that it tattoos itself across your soul.
A love to shatter the darkness that can’t be stopped by whatever came before.
A love that doesn’t run from the past, but knows the past is how we got here.
“I fucking love you, baby,” he groans into my ear as he bites down on my lobe.
His fist yanks on my hair, making me scream in delicious, twisted pleasure.
“I love you, and if you ever do jump, you better fucking know that I’ll be right behind you, raising hell and burning down heaven to drag you back to me. ”
This is the love I’ve always wanted. A love that’ll follow you over the edge to drag you back to safety.
A perfectly beautiful, mad, bloody, messy fucking love.
Bane’s fist twists my head around. He crushes his mouth to mine, devouring my lips and thrusting his tongue past them as I scream into them. My hips roll, ecstasy snaking through my core as I thrust my ass up to meet his punishing thrusts, until sweet black oblivion drowns me.
When I come, it’s a shattering, consuming, otherworldly release. I cry out into his lips, twisting and writhing and shaking so hard my vision goes dark. Bane groans, pounding deep and rough and hard until all at once he’s there with me.
He explodes into my pussy as my second orgasm thunders through me, his hot cum pumping deep as he feasts on my lips. He keeps thrusting in and out, coating my thighs with both of us until we collapse into a panting, exhausted pile.
I’m vaguely aware of him picking me up and carrying me inside.
Then I’m kissing him softly as the warm shower rains down over us.
Lifting my knee to his hips. Whimpering as he picks me up, slides me onto his thick cock, and fucks me again slowly against the glass of the shower, his lips never leaving mine.
Later, he carries me naked into the bedroom I’ve been sleeping in every night and tucks me into bed. My sluggish mind is already forming the word “goodnight” when he slides in next to me and pulls the covers over both of us.
Wait.
What?
We've fucked almost every way two humans can. But we’ve never done this.
…We’ve never actually slept together.
“Bane—”
“I’m tired,” he growls quietly, rolling me onto my side and pulling me so I’m snuggled against his muscled body, his still mostly hard cock pressed to my ass and his arms circling me.
“I’m tired of telling myself that I can’t go there with you.
That I don’t deserve to,” he murmurs against my hair.
“But mostly, little bird,” he exhales, “I’m just tired of not doing it. ”
I twist my head, looking at him over my shoulder.
“I’m tired of that, too.”
“Damn,” he grunts with a lazy grin. “I was almost hoping you’d fight me on that so I could just keep you pinned in my arms all night.”
I giggle. “You can do that anyway.”
His arms tighten around me, pulling my back against his strong chest.
“Way ahead of you, little bird,” he murmurs. “Way ahead of you.”