Epilogue #3
“I got in early and wanted to surprise you,” he says, as if that explains anything. “Flight landed a few hours ago and drove right over. But I saw some shitbox car in the trees, and no lights inside. It felt wrong. Then I heard the barking—”
“And decided to make an entrance,” I say, because some part of me is still bratting even with a dead man cooling ten feet away.
He huffs a humorless little laugh. “Decided people don’t walk into my house, hit my boy, and think they can touch what belongs to me,” he corrects. “Not while I’m breathing.”
The words “my house” and “my boy” do something to me I’m not equipped to deal with in this moment. My pulse jumps, heat pooling low in my stomach. I am one hundred percent concussed and turned on by homicide. Fantastic. There really is no salvation left for me.
He glances past me at the cottage. “You call anyone?”
“I tried,” I say, glancing at where my phone probably still lies on the floor. “Got as far as picking my phone up before everything went sideways.”
“Good,” he says, and there’s that fucked up part of me that thrills at the approval even now. “Less explaining to do.”
He lifts his phone with his free hand, thumb flying over the screen. His voice shifts when he speaks into it, going flat, practical.
“Yeah. It’s me. Had some unwanted company at the cabin.
Two. One inside, one out. You’ll find them easily.
” A pause. “No. They’re not going anywhere.
Brendon’s fine.” Another pause, then a rough chuckle.
“You’re not wrong about my timing.” He hangs up, shoves the phone back in his pocket, and finally, fully, looks at me.
He slowly wipes his knife again, eyes raking over my face. Then his gaze drops lower, to the way my T-shirt has ridden up, to the way my thighs are pressed together.
A slow, filthy smile curves his mouth.
“You’re hard,” he says, like he’s pointing out the weather, eyes glinting. “You’re actually hard.”
I feel my face flare hot. He’s right, of course. Fear, adrenaline, and arousal have tangled up into one messy knot inside me. There’s no point pretending otherwise. Not with him.
“You just killed two people on our property,” I say, voice unsteady. “Of course I’m hard.”
He laughs properly then. It’s dark, delighted, and does nothing to help my problem.
“You’re such a sick little thing,” he says, stepping into my space until my back hits the doorframe.
His knife hand lifts, and my breath catches when he uses the flat of the blade to tip my chin up, the metal cool and impersonal, his gaze anything but. “Watching me work gets you off, huh?”
“It’s not new,” I manage, breathing faster when he cups my cheek. The night air is cold on my skin; he’s hot everywhere we’re touching. “You’re hot when you’re homicidal.”
He laughs low in his chest, the sound rolling through me like another kind of storm. His hand slides from my cheek to the back of my neck, fingers curling there possessively, pulling me closer until there is no space between us, just heat and blood and the knife cool against my chin.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, voice a rough purr. “My pretty little Christian boy gets off on monsters. Good thing you picked the worst one.”
“I want you,” I say, clear and simple. “I want my Beast.”
His eyes darken. The knife drops from my chin; he flips it in his hand with lazy precision and slides it back into its sheath at his belt like he’s putting away a toy, not a murder weapon. His now-empty hand comes up to cradle my jaw, thumb stroking the bruised skin with obscene gentleness.
“Fuck, I missed you,” he mutters, leaning in until our foreheads touch. I can feel the tremor still running under his skin, the leftover energy from the fight, the kill. “You have no idea how many idiots in LA have tried to touch me like they had any right.”
Some petty, vicious surge of satisfaction curls through me. My fingers curl in his shirt, pulling him closer. “They don’t,” I say, voice low. “You’re mine.”
He growls, a pleased, awful sound that vibrates against my chest. His other hand slides to my throat, fingers wrapping just right, not squeezing yet, just reminding me where I belong. “You know what I’m going to do once Seth comes and takes the trash out?”
My hips jerk involuntarily, traitors that they are. “What?” I whisper.
He kisses me finally, a rough, claiming press of mouth on mouth that tastes like metal and salt and months of missing him. I gasp, and he takes advantage of it, tongue sweeping in, hand tightening at my throat just enough to make the edges of my vision sparkle.
When he pulls back, we’re both breathing hard.
“I’m going to take you inside,” he says slowly, his forehead resting against mine.
“I’m going to put you where I want you, and I’m going to remind every inch of you who keeps you breathing.
And every time you look out at that spot—” his gaze flicks past me to the patch of dark earth near the tree “—you’re going to remember how fast I come running when someone tries to touch what’s mine. ”
A shiver runs through me so hard my teeth almost chatter. My fingers tighten in his shirt. The fear from earlier has twisted fully into need—thick, pounding, shameless need.
“Please,” I whisper, because pride is for people who don’t have a Beast like mine.
He smirks, that awful, beautiful expression that hooked me the first night I saw him over a body, and kisses my bruised cheek.
“Get your pretty ass inside before someone drives past and sees us making out over corpses.”
I laugh, a shaky, disbelieving sound that turns into a groan when his hand tightens on my throat again, steering me back toward the warm dark of the cottage.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about security cameras and reinforced locks. Tonight—under the roar of Dominic’s heartbeat and the hush of the forest—we exist in the aftermath: blood on his knuckles, marks on my throat, and a promise as old as the first sin between us.
He keeps me breathing.
I keep him human.
Behind us, the night swallows the yard and the dead. In front of us, the doorway frames the only future I can see—one where my monster comes home bloody, and I open my mouth for him anyway, over and over, grateful that his soft spot just happens to be me.