Chapter Forty-Six
I t was four fifteen in the morning when I woke up.
The red numbers on the digital clock stared back at me defiantly, daring me to try to go back to sleep. My whole body felt drained and deflated. My stomach growled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.
I rolled to the edge of the bed, about to plant my feet on the floor, when I noticed a large, dark shadow draped across it. I squinted. It looked like a piece of furniture, or maybe…
Tate.
It was my husband. He was sleeping on the floor next to my bed. But…why?
Because you told him you wanted to sleep alone, and he respected that, but he also didn’t want to be away from you.
My heart cracked in two, warmth flooding my chest. Tatum Blackthorn, the most formidable man in all of New York, was curled into a fetal position on the floor by my bed, like a gentle Great Dane protecting its owner.
Reaching down, I placed my palm on his shoulder so not to startle him. Tate was a light sleeper.
He rolled over and blinked up to me in the darkness.
“Do you, uh, want me to leave?” His voice was thick and raspy. “I thought it was okay, since I’m not technically in your bed.”
“No,” I said softly. “I was just about to get myself something to eat. Come to bed. I’ll join you in a bit.”
He straightened, sitting up with his back pressed against the nightstand. “What do you want? I’ll bring it to you.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to tell him I could do things for myself. But I knew Tate derived pleasure from doing things for me. It made him feel better. He could never love me, but he could take care of me.
“You know, what I’d really like is beans on toast. I have a few Heinz cans in the pantry.”
“Stay here.” He scurried out of the room, and I sat up against the headboard, praying that he wouldn’t burn down the kitchen. Tate wasn’t what I called a natural nurturer.
He came back fifteen minutes later with two charred pieces of bread, unevenly warmed beans, and a glass bottle of Diet Coke. I thanked him and ate in my bed. He took a seat on the edge, watching me. I turned on a bedside lamp.
“I’ll make things right with Callaghan,” he said out of nowhere. “I’ll stop the bloodshed. I’ll seek therapy. I’ll go on meds. I’ll do anything.” He paused. “Just please don’t leave.”
I put the burnt toast back on the tray. I’d already made up my mind to stay. I would take the cheap, sugar substitute for love he offered me—the synthetic sweetener—if it meant being by his side.
Cal and Dylan were right. Tate and I had always been inevitable.
I put the tray on the nightstand and crept forward on my knees to where he sat.
He watched me through half-lidded eyes. I pressed my lips to his collarbone, then kissed my way down his bare torso.
I wanted warm flesh against my own, to feel his heartbeat, the vitality of his nimble muscles.
I wanted to remind myself I was still alive and that I had much to live for.
His black joggers tented, his cock jerking against the fabric, demanding to be freed. I tugged his waistband and bent down to give it a lick, root to tip. He threw his head back, hissing.
“I want you to fuck me so hard and so dirty that I forget my own name,” I rasped against his velvety shaft, enjoying the goose bumps that chased one another to the heat of my breath against his muscular thighs.
My lips skimmed back up his abs, catching his lips.
“I want you to treat me like a nobody,” I murmured as he gobbled down my voice.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I spoke.
He gave me a shove, pinning me down to the mattress. I gasped as he pulled at the knot on my robe. His eyes glazed over, empty and hard.
He was going to deliver on my request. First, because he always fucked me rough. But also because he never denied me anything I’d requested from him.
After unknotting my robe, he flicked it open so I was bare in front of him, then scooped up my wrists, pinning them against the headboard. He shoved his face in mine, holding my wrists tight in one hand, taking his cock in the other, angling it between my legs.
Then he froze completely. “You’re crying.”
“Ignore it.” I rolled my hips. My center met his throbbing, hard cock.
“Can’t.” His hold on my wrists loosened. He cupped my face instead. Firmly but gently.
“My tears have nothing to do with sex,” I argued. “I want—”
“I can’t treat you like a whore,” he growled in my face. “Even if I wanted to.”
I huffed. “You always fuck me raw.”
“Yes, and tomorrow, I can still fuck you like a whore if that’s what you want.” He kicked his pants down roughly, crushing me under his weight. “But tonight, I’m going to make love to you. Whether you like it or not. Because that’s what you need.”
I was about to protest when he buried himself inside me.
I arched my back, moaning, but the sound was swallowed in a sweet, tender kiss.
His mouth followed mine, licking, biting, exploring.
He started moving inside me in one, smooth, never-ending wave, caressing my body from head to toe.
He touched me everywhere, so affectionately I wanted to scream.
My thighs. My breasts. My back. My soul .
Tears continued running down my cheeks. Tate chased them away with his tongue.
“Don’t cry.”
Kiss.
“I’ll do anything to make you happy.”
Kiss.
“Rearrange constellations.”
Kiss.
“ Pluck the moon from the sky.”
Kiss.
“I’ll buy you the fucking sun, Apricity.”
Kiss.
He hooked his hand around the back of my right knee, slinging my leg over his shoulder, kissing the inside of my ankle while maintaining eye contact with me, his pupils blazing with heat.
I shuddered when he swirled his tongue along the sensitive spot of my medial malleolus.
He brushed his fingers gently over my outer thigh, leaving tingling sensations everywhere.
I shook uncontrollably as his thrusts grew deeper and more erratic.
He hit my G-spot again and again. It felt different.
Not as chaotic and depraved but no less intense.
The way we stared at each other, with hunger and anger, with cloying desperation, felt like we were conceiving something new and whole that made us intertwined forever.
The climax climbed up my body like a vine, gripping me by the toes, all the way to the crown of my head. Our bodies melted into one another, and it was exactly what I needed. This skin-to-skin reminder of my own mortality—and the vibrancy of my existence.
I can smell.
I can see.
I can hear.
I can touch.
I can feel .
Tate dipped his mouth to meet mine, catching my bottom lip between his teeth.
“My real name is Gabriel,” he croaked, his silken voice coming from the depth of his soul.
My heart stopped.
“Gabriel Doe. And he—I— we love you. We’ve loved you from the first moment we saw you.”
Sweet, tantalizing delirium seized me. I was a flame, soaring up in the air, dancing in the wind, climbing impossible heights.
Gabriel.
My body tightened, my breath catching. My climax felt different this time.
Not like a tsunami thrashing me into the deep sea but like gentle waves rocking me to sleep.
I could feel all of my husband now. The vein throbbing in his cock as he spilled his seed into me.
The sweat gluing our bodies together like two pages in a book.
The pleasure was unbearable. I tried wriggling away. He pinned me down with his entire weight, forcing me to ride the orgasm until the end, kissing my lashes, the tip of my nose, my pulse thrumming in my neck.
“I love you so fucking much,” he said. Sadly.
Dejectedly. Like he’d fought a war and lost it.
“It sickens me.” He ripped himself away from me at once, scurrying to the end of the bed like I’d caught on fire.
His back was to me, bare and moving wildly with his breaths.
He gripped his hair, elbows pressed against his knees.
“I can’t stand it. When I love someone, I lose them. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t lose me.” I flattened my palm to his damp back. “I mean…you will, eventually, to death, I suppose.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he muttered. “You’d be surprised at the sum I’m willing to pay to make sure you’re immortal.”
His words spread across my body, warming my bones.
“Tate?” I asked.
“Apricity?” His back was still to me.
“How do you know it’s love and not obsession?” I perched my chin on his shoulder, peering into his face. “What’s the difference?”
“Because I used to put my happiness before yours and thought I’d never let you go. I am now willing to let you go if it’s what makes you happy.” His head hung between his shoulders. “Your happiness comes before mine. You can leave if it suits you. I won’t stop you. I’ll sign the papers.”
It felt like I was choking on my own heart, I was so overwhelmed with emotions.
I felt his cum drip down my inner thigh as I kissed his shoulder. I wrapped my arms around his neck. His eyes met mine.
“I love you.” I held his jaw in my hands, enunciating each word slowly.
“I’ve always loved you. You are my White Rabbit.
I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth and back, no matter how terrible and awful the world you led me to is.
I think there’s something wrong with me.
Because even when I tried to convince myself I hated you, I never could walk away. ”
“And you’re my Alice.” A rueful smirk tilted his lips. “Brave, adaptable, curious, confident. I knew it from the beginning, but hating you was so much easier than loving you. Because loving you meant admitting I might not get the one thing I ever truly wanted.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead, and I closed my eyes, relishing the moment.
“No more pretending.” Tate clasped my chin. “This twisted game of cat and mouse stops here. You’re my wife. You understand?”
I did. Like Through the Looking-Glass , the tide had turned. The shift had completed. Fates had been made.