Chapter 35
End what I started…
How can I when it would be the end of me?
I just stood there, the rain sliding off me in rivulets.
I watched the blood drip from his neck while he tried to keep himself upright.
He looked like he was swaying with every gust of cold wind.
The bow slipped from his hand into the mud, and he didn’t bother picking it up.
That told me everything I needed. He wasn’t out here to hunt.
He was running.
From her.
From himself.
From me.
“You can’t, can you? Do you only kill for your daddy?”
I growled, slamming him harder into the tree, my body keeping him on his feet.
“You don’t even know where you’re going, do you?
” I said, throwing the glass away from us, letting it shatter against another tree.
The storm nearly drowned my voice. “Just stumbling around like a fucking ghost, huh, Sunshine? What’s the plan, Shiloh?
Fall face-first in the mud or get gored by a boar? ”
His lip curled, a shadow of his usual defiance, but it faltered quickly. “Why do you fucking care, Killer?” His words were slurred together, but painfully clear at the same time.
“Why?” I barked out a laugh, sharp and ugly.
“Because I know you better than she ever will. Because I’ve been watching you play house with my fucking sister.
A woman you don’t want. You’re waiting for the day you finally snap, or she does.
” I leaned in, my mouth near his ear, the heat of him intoxicating even through the stink of whiskey on his entire body.
“And maybe I care because I’m the only one who knows what you really need, what you fucking want, Shiloh.
And it’s not being a coward and killing yourself. ”
He shivered, but not from the cold. His eyes slid shut like he hated how my voice clung to him. Like he hated the truth but couldn’t deny it.
“I don’t—” he started, but the words tangled in his throat, broken by the storm and the liquor in his blood.
I put my hand on his jaw, forcing him to look at me. His skin was slick from rain and blood. His thick black lashes clumped together with sleepiness. His pupils were blown wide, and not just from the drink, but from me being so close.
I see you, Sunshine.
“You don’t what?” I pressed, my thumb dragging across his cheek. “Don’t want me? Don’t think about me when you’re fucking her? Don’t lie to me, Shiloh. Not out here in our sanctuary. Not when I’ve watched you moan my fucking name when she can’t see.”
He tried to shake his head, but my grip held him steady and unmoving. His breath caught, his chest rising and falling like he had just run a marathon, but we both knew all he’d done was stand there and drown in his own pity.
“You’re drunk, Sunshine. You’ve tried your best to fade away,” I murmured. My thumb slid to his mouth, tracing the tremor of his lips. “But that doesn’t change the truth, does it?”
His eyes fluttered shut again. “This isn’t real. You aren’t real. Carrington left me.”
I laughed low in my throat. “Technically, you left me in another fucking state, but is that what you tell yourself when you wake up sweating and fucking hard for me? That it isn’t real.
That’s just your dreams. Just ghosts of the past. But I’m real, Shiloh.
I’ve always been real. And I’m standing right here in front of your pathetic, whiskey-smelling ass. ”
His hands twitched uselessly at his sides, like he didn’t know whether to push me away or reach out to touch me.
I didn’t give him the chance to choose.
I slammed him back against the tree, the impact muffled by bark and rain.
His gasp ripped through the storm as my hand tangled in his soaked blond hair, yanking his head back so his throat was exposed for me.
My mouth hovered there, my teeth grazing over the broken skin, tasting the rain, blood, and whiskey, feeling the heat pulse beneath my lips.
He moaned, a broken noise between a protest and a plea not to stop. God, it nearly undid me. Hearing his moans again. Feeling his resistance crack like ice.
“You hate me,” I whispered against his throat. “But you need me more. Isn’t that right, Sunshine? You need me to break you…you need my darkness.”
“Carrington—” his voice cracked on another moan, and his dick pressed into me.
I pulled back just enough to see his face, his eyes wild and unfocused, glassy from the alcohol. My chest ached at the sight of him. He was so far gone, and I should’ve stepped the fuck away. I should’ve left him to wallow in his fucking misery.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
He needed me. And I needed him.
I pressed my mouth harder to his, rough and claiming, dragging a groan from somewhere deep in him.
He tasted like the whiskey and rain, bitter, sweet, and everything I’d craved every day of missing him.
He didn’t kiss me back at first, too drunk and lost, but he didn’t stop me either.
His hands fisted weakly in my shirt, holding on like I was the only thing keeping him from falling.
He had no idea I was the one about to collapse.
The kiss broke with a sharp pull of breath. His lips were so swollen, his eyes still glassy. He swayed against me, his forehead knocking into mine like he couldn’t hold himself steady any longer.
“You don’t want me,” he whispered, weak and almost childlike.
I laughed low and cruelly because if I didn’t laugh, I’d break down. “Don’t tell me what I fucking want. I need this. I need you. I want you to want me too.”
My hand slid down his chest, feeling the way his body shook, the way his hips jutted forward despite his persistent denial.
His fingers flexed at my sides, useless and resistive. “I’m drunk,” he muttered. “You aren’t real.”
“I know.” My lips dragged across his jaw, tasting the rain on him, soft and cold, and then the warmth beneath it, a quiet burn that I ached to devour.
“Makes it easier for you to pretend, doesn’t it?
Tomorrow, you can say it wasn’t real. That Carrington was just another nightmare you couldn’t shake. ”
I bit down on his neck, not gentle this time, claiming him in a way Xanthy never could. He gasped, his head falling back against the tree.
“Tonight, I’ll show you how fucking real I am.”
Tugging my shirt over my head, I pressed my body flush against his, pinning him to the bark, and letting him feel every ounce of me against him. His breath stuttered, catching in his throat, and a sweet sound of surrender slipped out of him, no matter how he tried to swallow it.
“You’re mine, Shiloh Anderson,” I breathed against his ear, gyrating against him, pulling his shirt off his soaked body. “Even if it’s only here. Even if I have to be your fucking dirty secret. You’ll always be mine.”
He whimpered, shaking his head, but his hips betrayed him, grinding forward, searching for friction.
For me.
For my fucking cock.
“God, look at you,” I growled, one hand sliding lower, gripping him through the wet denim, hard despite the buzz, and in spite of his protests. “You hate yourself for this. You hate me more. But your body, my Good Boy. Fuuuuck. Your body always remembers me.”
His knees buckled, and I caught him, forcing him back up, forcing him to bear the weight of me. My hand worked at his belt, the storm hiding the sharp clink of metal and the slide of fabric. He let out a strangled noise that tore right through me.
“Carrington…don’t. You can’t—”
“Don’t?” I bit his shoulder, hard enough to bruise, and deep enough to make my fucking sister question.
“Tell me to stop, Sunshine. Tell me to walk away. Tell me you want her.” My hand wrapped around his dick, hot and slick despite the cold rain.
His whole body jolted, a broken moan clawing out from his throat.
“I will leave. But you won’t, will you? You need me. You fucking want me…you love me.”
His answer was silence. Just a choked groan as I fisted his dick, his head falling forward against my shoulder, his body betraying every word his mouth couldn’t admit.
I stroked him, slow at first, then harder, punishing him with each drag to the edge. Each gasp from him was a brand on my soul, cementing how fucking much I needed him. How lost I was without him.
“You’ll go back to her bed tonight,” I murmured against his ear, venom curling with need in my gut. “You’ll try to be the good man, the safe man. But you’ll know, deep down, you gave yourself to me.”
He moaned, the sound muffled against my neck. It was desperate and helpless. My hand never slowed, dragging him closer to the edge, closer to breaking for me. I shoved my pants down, impatient and desperate.
God, fucking help me, I loved him like this. Drunk, ruined, pressed between me and the storm, too far gone to lie anymore.
“I love you.” I didn’t mean to say it. And I buried the stupid words with my dick, rubbing our tips together, letting him feel the cool touch of my metal piercing.
His body was fire under my hands despite the cold storm, every shudder burning through me.
He clung to me like I was the only tether left in our world, his fists tangled in my hair, and his forehead pressed hard into the crook of my neck.
The storm swallowed his groans, buried my moans, but I felt every one of them reverberate against my skin.
“Carrington—” His voice was cracked and strangled. My name had never sounded so much like a prayer wrapped in sin.
“That’s it,” I snarled against his ear, my hand working him faster, rougher, holding our dicks together, stroking them as one. “Give in to me. Don’t think, don’t fight. Just fucking break for me, my good boy. Let me hear you. I need to feel your come on my cock, Baby. Fuck. Give me it all, Shiloh.”
He bucked into my palm, as another ragged cry ripped from him. He was coming undone. We both were.
“Oh, fuck. Care Bear…don’t stop. I need you.”
He broke. Spilling hot come over my cock and hands, covering them with warmth even in the freezing rain. His whole body shook, dragging my orgasm to the head.
“Fuck! Oh fucking, God. Shiloh, only you, this is all for you, baby.”
Shiloh collapsed against me, breathless and ruined. Unsteady myself, I held him there, against my chest, trying to breathe. My dick was still rock hard and throbbed with a pain that bordered on violent. I needed to have him again.
I wanted to take him further, push him to his knees in the mud, and bury myself in him until he screamed my name into the storm.
The need was savage, clawing through me, but I forced it back down.
Not because I had mercy, but because when I tilted his head back, and I looked into his face, the truth slammed through me.
His eyes weren’t just glassy.
They were vacant.
He was gone, drunk to the damn marrow, so far under the whiskey haze he probably wouldn’t remember this come morning.
The taste of triumph in my mouth soured.
I brushed my thumb across his cheek, staring at him, knowing he was already slipping away from me.
“Fuck,” I muttered to him and to myself. “You’re going to pass the fuck out, aren’t you?”
He tried to speak, but it was a soft mumble against the storm.
Nothing coherent.
Just broken sounds.
“My Care Bear.”
My chest tightened with something I didn’t want to name.
Love.
Hurt.
Need.
Maybe all of them.
I dragged in a breath, cursing my stupid ass as I dressed myself and him. Then I gathered him up in my arms.
He didn’t fight me.
He just sagged against me like a child, limp and trusting in a way he never would’ve been sober. His head lolled on my shoulder, and his breath was warm against my neck.
“My Care Bear,” he rasped softly, each word melting into the next.
I carried him back through the woods like a damn bride. It should have made me laugh, but the rain was still pelting down, and that was a cruelty all in its own. Rain held too many painful memories now.
Every step back to my parents’ mansion was a reminder.
He belonged to someone else.
My fucking sister.
He would wake in her bed, not mine. And he’d tell himself it was all a dream, a nightmare brought on by the liquor.
By the time I reached the house, I was soaked to the bone and freezing my ass off.
Shiloh was stone-cold asleep, and my arms ached from his dead weight.
I slipped through the side door, silent and unseen.
Xanthy’s room glowed faintly with the bathroom light she always left on.
She was curled in bed, asleep with a book in her hand, waiting, her back turned toward the door like she had finally given up on him for the night.
I laid the man I loved beside her, carefully. She stirred and murmured something in her sleep, then tucked against him instinctively. He didn’t flinch. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, nestling in their slumber.
Together.
My chest felt fucking hollow, and I wiped the back of my hand against my wet, cold cheeks.
I stood there a moment longer, watching him breathe, watching her claim what was mine without even knowing it. Then I turned, slipping back into the hall, back into the storm.
I left him there, warm in her bed.
And cold in my heart.