Chapter Thirteen
Serena
“Please leave.”
The words scrape out of me colder than the winter outside. They are all I have left to defend myself with.
He does not flinch. “You know I can’t do that, baby.”
His voice is soft, unbearably soft, the kind of softness I used to live for.
I move past him before my chest can crack open again.
My legs carry me to the kitchen on instinct, to the place where I once sat between two people who pretended to be my parents.
We used to eat dinner here like we were a normal family, like love lived inside these walls. It never did.
I sit. I breathe. I try not to fall apart.
“Hear me out. Please.”
He sits across from me. Too close. Too familiar. Too dangerous.
I feel the heat of him even from across the table. The weight of him presses against every memory I fought to bury in that cell.
“Fine,” I whisper, exhausted.
He moves closer, slow, cautious, and then his hands cradle my face. His palms are warm, gentle, and reverent. It makes my throat ache. He holds me like he is terrified I might disappear again.
“You don’t know how many times I whispered your name into empty rooms, wishing I could take it all back.”
His voice fractures. I notice the shadows under his eyes, the hollowness in his cheeks. He looks like he has not slept in months. Because of me. Because he was looking for me. Because losing me destroyed him.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” I try to pull back, but his hands hold me steady. “You might think you did it for the right reasons, but it was wrong. And I will never forgive you.”
He leans in until his forehead rests against mine. My eyes close on their own, betraying me. His breath mixes with mine, and suddenly I am trembling.
“I don’t care if it takes years,” he whispers. “I’ll earn every inch of forgiveness until there’s nothing left between us but truth. And when that day comes, I’ll hold you the way I’ve held you in my dreams, only this time you won’t disappear.” His words hit me like a bruise forming under skin.
Warm. Deep. Dangerous.
I force myself to look straight into his blue eyes. “I don’t love you anymore.”
It is a lie.
A heavy, suffocating lie.
One that bruises my ribs the moment it leaves my mouth.
His expression doesn’t break. It hardens with something fierce. “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life earning you back,” he whispers. “I don’t know how to stop loving you.”
“That’s not how it works,” I whisper. My voice trembles. My resolve wavers.
“I will be good to you,” he vows. “Better than I have ever been. Just give me one more chance. Let me prove that I am worthy of being the father of your children.”
He says your children. Not ours.
He doesn’t force the claim, even after everything I threw at him. He respects the line I drew, even though we both know the truth.
“You know that’s not possible,” I say, even though part of me aches to believe him. “You killed my father. And then I was kidnapped because of you.” The bitterness tastes awful, even to me. “Is that what you want to happen to our babies?”
My voice softens. “Do you want them growing up in fear? Do you want me living every day wondering if one of your enemies will decide to take another shot at your attention and use them to do it? What if they don’t come home from school one day?”
His face changes. His eyes darken with something like heartbreak.
“You know that will never happen again.”
“You don’t know that,” I say quietly.
He takes a slow breath before answering.
“The only reason they were able to get to you was because I was doing the one thing you asked me to do. I was trying to give you space.” His voice lowers, like confessing a sin.
“You didn’t answer my messages. You didn’t answer my calls.
I thought you needed time to grieve Thomas.
I didn’t want to push you. I checked your house for three days.
There was no activity. I thought you were inside and ignoring me. I didn’t know you never made it home.”
The realization falls between us like a stone in water, heavy and sad.
I stare at him, unsure what to say. His gaze drifts down to my mouth, and my heartbeat jumps painfully hard. I can barely swallow.
“Fuck giving you space.”
Before I can breathe, he grabs the back of my head and his mouth crashes against mine.
The kiss is wildfire.
The kiss is everything I swore I didn’t need and everything I spent months dying for.
His lips devour me, desperate, hungry, starved. His breath mixes with mine and something inside me snaps loose. I try to push him away, but it’s useless. My body betrays me the second he whispers against my lips.
“Let it go, love.”
Love.
The word hits me harder than his mouth. I melt. I break. I give in.
I kiss him back with the same desperation that kept me awake in that room. All the loneliness, all the terror, all the nights I told myself to stop missing him. . . it all pours out of me and straight into him.
His hands grip my waist and lift me effortlessly, setting me on the kitchen table like I weigh nothing. His body moves between my legs and the heat of him steals the air from my lungs. Every inch of me is trembling, too sensitive, too overwhelmed, too starved for touch.
He kisses me deeper, slower for a second, then rougher, like he’s learning me again. Like he’s furious at himself for forgetting even one detail. His fingers slide up my spine and I arch into him, a soft sound escaping me before I can stop it.
He groans, low, guttural, possessive, like my voice is something he’s been craving.
His mouth trails to my jaw, to my throat, barely touching, and my breath shatters. It’s been so long since anyone touched me with something other than cruelty. So long since I felt safe. So long since I felt alive.
I cling to his shoulders, pulling him closer, letting him take, letting him reclaim every inch of me my nightmares tried to erase. For one impossible moment, I forget the blood, the fear, the betrayal. I forget who we are and what we’ve done to each other.
I just feel him.
His warmth.
His strength.
His need for me.
His forehead presses against mine, both of us panting.
“Serena. . .” His voice is rough, almost broken. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“You’ve lost me.”
My voice comes out wrecked, breathless, as I grind myself against his hard cock. My body betrays me instantly, pushing toward him like it’s been starving for him for months. I can feel his smile against my skin, dark, satisfied, hungry.
He grips the fabric at my waist and rips the dress off me like it offended him. It tears so easily it feels like it was never meant to stay on my body in the first place. Good. I hated every piece of clothing they forced on me. I hated the life attached to them.
“You can be lost, stolen, or buried,” he whispers, teeth grazing my throat. “I’ll still take you back.” he murmurs, low, feral, like a vow carved into my bones, and then his mouth is on my throat.
Heat detonates through me. I lean back instinctively, giving him my neck, my breath, my pulse. My breasts bounce free in front of him, fuller, heavier, sensitive as hell from the pregnancy. His eyes drop to them, darkening like he’s about to devour me.
“Fuck. . .” he breathes out, and then he grabs one, big hand covering almost all of it, and sucks my nipple into his mouth.
My vision sparks white.
My head falls back with a strangled moan.
I can’t help it, not after months of nothing, no touch, no comfort, no warmth.
He sucks harder, teeth scraping, tongue circling, and every nerve in my body pulls tight.
My hips start moving on their own, grinding my pussy against his cock through the last scraps of fabric, desperate to feel more. Desperate to feel him inside me.
The pressure builds so fast it’s humiliating; I feel like I could come from his mouth on my breast alone.
He lifts my leg, hooking it around his waist, and thrusts himself against me. A deep, slow grind that sends another shock through my spine.
And then horror slices through my haze, sharp, cold, mortifying.
I’m not shaved.
I freeze, my breath catching in my throat.
He feels it immediately, my hesitation, my panic, the way my body stiffens.
He lifts his head, eyes heavy with lust and something unbearably soft.
“Don’t ever hesitate with me,” he growls softly. “There’s nothing about you I don’t crave.” His voice is rough velvet.
My legs are already wrapped around him, my body already surrendering, and he drags his hand up my thigh to my hip, squeezing like he’s grounding me back into him.
His hand moves lower, slow and deliberate, spreading warmth over my swollen belly.
The touch is so intimate, so possessive, so Lorenzo that my breath catches and I bite down on my lip hard enough to sting.
No one has touched me like this in months.
No one has touched me like him in what feels like a lifetime.
His hand drifts even lower. When his fingers brush over the thin fabric of my panties, a soft moan escapes me before I can stop it.
“Always ready for me, aren’t you, love?” he growls into my ear, his breath hot against my skin as his fingers trace the edge of my entrance.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I pant, lying through my teeth, “I haven’t been touched in three months. Anyone will do.”
He lets out a low, dark chuckle against my neck, like he knows every cell in my body is betraying me.
“Anyone, hmm?”
He pushes my panties aside and slides one finger into me, slow and teasing. I arch into him immediately, hips searching for more, for deeper, for him. He adds a second finger, stretching me open, and white heat explodes behind my eyes.
“Huh,” I manage, breathless, trying not to beg.
He reads me too easily, the bastard. He pulls his fingers out of me and licks them clean, his tongue dragging over them like he’s tasting something he has every right to devour. The smirk he gives me is cruel and satisfied and so fucking beautiful.