Chapter 27
Kara - Present
“We need to talk.” I barge into the guest bedroom with the grace of a drunken herd of elephants.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, towel wrapped round his waist, head in his hands.
I slow.
“You okay?” I ask.
He snorts, rubbing his hands down over his face as his eyes meet mine.
“Are you serious? Am I okay?” He shakes his head. “No Kara, Lucy, Cookie, whatever fucking name you go by now, I’m not okay.”
My defences come up quicker than you can say hello, my muscles tensing against his next hissy fit.
“What are you getting pissy at me for?”
“Because it’s your fault.”
I baulk at his statement, and something lances through my system, hot and uncomfortable.
“How is any of this my fucking fault?” I throw back, marching towards him as he storms across and meets me in the middle of the room.
His chest heaves in angry breaths, droplets of water from his shower cascading down his body, settling into the peppering of chest hair.
Okay, I shouldn’t be looking at his chest right now. Or how trim he is under his suits. Or the fact he’s only in a towel, the body heat coming from him heightening my senses. I also shouldn’t do what I did this morning and jump him instead of having a conversation.
Like a grown up.
“You’re the one who found yourself entangled with Luca fucking Knight,” I remind him.
“He’s a friend!” he shouts. “For the record!”
“He’s a criminal!” I shout back at the same intensity.
Okay, this is not what we should talk about. But let’s neither acknowledge what we really need to talk about and continue to skirt around the real issue here.
“So are you!”
I pull back as though he physically hit me. “Says the man who takes funding from the Covenant.”
He points at me, his finger coming aggressively into my face. “Not the fucking Covenant,” he seethes, teeth gritted. “Do not tarnish me with that brush. The money Luca gave me came through his legitimate businesses. Nothing to do with the Covenant.”
“Guilty by fucking association, Owen. You think the press will give two flying fucks when that piece of information comes out?”
“It won’t,” he replies cockily, “because, like I said, it’s legitimate.
And let’s not beat around the bush here, Lucy.
” He says my name with a bite in his voice.
“This has nothing to do with Luca Knight, and everything to do with the fact that I’ve become the people you blame for our shitty childhood. ”
“Shut up,” I say, pushing at him, but his hands wrap around my wrist.
Anger pulses through my body like liquid lava. My heart crashes behind my rib cage, and he leans forward.
“You blame me. But it was not my fault.”
“You left me. You fucking left me!” I scream in his face. “Of course it was your fault.”
Something strange happens then. Something that I’m not familiar with. Not when I’ve spent years upon years training to be a ghost.
Trained to compartmentalise, to bury the emotions.
So, when something splinters from my chest, pain along with years of pent-up emotion bursts to the surface. It leaves me breathless. I don’t know what to do with it.
My knees buckle and I sink to the floor. I’m having a weird fucking out-of-body experience, because it’s as though Kara has stayed upright, but Lucy has fallen.
Owen falls with me. One hand grips my cheek, the other going into my hair, holding my face so that my eyes meet his. My eyes that are full of tears as he comes to the floor with me, with Lucy.
“And I hate myself for it, every day. Every fucking day, Cookie.”
The anger shifts from the room, replaced with a defeated sadness.
“I’m so sorry, so fucking sorry,” he says over and over as he places kiss after kiss on my forehead, and I grip onto his forearm.
Grief, regret, shame, every emotion I have ever pushed inside explodes out of me in a painful torrent. Tears stream down my face, sobs erupt out of me, my chest burns with pain and sadness, and Owen apologises over and over and over again.
His lips trail from my forehead onto each cheek as he kisses away my tears, kisses away the sadness of it all. His mouth is getting closer to mine, and I’m desperate for it.
The intimacy, the comfort, the need for him to wash away the memories that threaten to drown me.
His lips meet mine, and I don’t pull back.
I should.
I should pull back, I should gather myself, I should process this, we should be having a conversation and planning our next move. But I don’t make good decisions when I’m around Owen. I’m distracted, I’m conflicted, and I want him.
More than I want anything else in this entire world.
More than my deal with Andrews. I want him more than I want to punish him.
I just want him.
He goes to pull back, but I moan against his lips, a noise between a wounded animal and a moan of contentment.
But he gets the idea.
His tongue delves into my mouth, breaking the seam of my lips as the kiss goes from a tentative peck to a passionate dance of tongues, teeth and groans.
Our mouths move in perfect synchronisation, two broken souls destined to find each other to mend our shattered, broken past.
My hands reach out and tug at his hair, he growls his appreciation as he pushes me onto my back.
Thank God for fluffy carpets.
My hands roam over his shoulders, arms and back. I can’t touch him enough, can’t get him close enough.
His hands work up my stomach, slow and certain, like he’s trying to learn every intricate detail, tracing every inch of skin, touching the scars that I once hated. He smiles against my mouth when he hits the sensitive spot that always makes me squirm.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes bore into mine as he touches his lips.
“You’re so beautiful.” His voice rough like gravel.
But I don’t want to hear his words. Not now. I want him. His mouth. His hands. His everything.
I want to feel it all.
I tug him back down, kissing him harder, tasting my own desperation on his lips.
His lips brand me. Kisses turn to bites as he works his way along my jaw, onto my neck, and tracks down my body, which arches as he puts his hands into my trousers and pulls them down. He breaks the space between us enough so he can lay me bare.
Then turns all his attention to my pussy.
He holds my eyes in his green gaze the whole time, and I lean up on my elbows to watch the erotic moment. Our eyes break as his tongue delves between my lips and I’m a slave to the sensation.
He licks me like he’s starving, like nothing else matters but this, me. Us. He groans into me, sending vibrations up my spine. His mouth works with maddening precision, tongue fucking me deep before moving to my clit, where he sucks and bites making my thighs clench and fingers claw at him.
He’s a devil, and I’m his sin.
I flop back, unable to hold my weight as the tension between my legs coils tight. The pleasure builds and builds.
“Oh fuck.” The words fall out between an incoherent moan.
I lift my head back up, my eyes roll back as Owen adds two fingers, curling them up at the perfect angle, hitting that delicious spot inside.
My legs quiver, my stomach muscles tense, and I explode.
But still, he keeps going, fingers still pumping, mouth still working me like he’s trying to pull every last drop of pleasure out of me.
I cry out, my body an overstimulated wreck, hips jerking as another orgasm chases through me, sharper, messier, completely out of my control.
My words are incoherent; my moans are loud. I’m sure I’ve said every explicit word that exists in the English dictionary, and still Owen devours me.
“Stop, stop, stop. I can’t.”
“You can and you will,” he says, and goes right back to what he was doing.
“Fuck me.”
“Oh, I will.”
This man is a menace. Gone is the teenage boy who fumbled with my button, his hands shaking when he first did this exact act. He’s been replaced with a god.
A filthy mouthed one at that.
“Owen, please,” I beg, and he stops.
Something in my tone catches his attention. Bliss, exhaustion, and a large dose of confusion overwhelm me. Sensing my shift, he climbs up my body, his towel barely around his waist.
“What do you need?” he asks, hand reaching up and tucking my sticky hair out of my face, his mouth gleaming with my arousal.
“Your cock. In me,” I demand, wrapping my legs around his waist as he grins at me.
That wasn’t what I was planning to say. I was planning to ask for a minute, but as soon as he moved my hair out my eyes, lust took over.
I reach between us, rip his towel away, and guide him in. He’s hard and I’m tight from the multiple orgasms, but he pushes against the friction and drops his head into my neck on a deep, guttural moan.
“You feel so fucking good.” He slides to the hilt, pulls out devilishly slowly and repeats.
In and fucking out.
My legs wrap around his waist, and he fucks me with long, languid strokes. Slow, steady and the complete opposite to what the kitchen encounter was this morning.
He licks and sucks at my neck as I run my nails into his back. I hold on, my legs tightening.
Fuck me, if I was to die now, I’d die in heaven.
I feel like we are two pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle that have been lost and are now found.
I feel like home.
I feel like I belong.
I feel like the last fifteen years haven’t happened, and it’s Owen and Lucy against the world again.
We move in unison, in perfect rhythm, creating the perfect friction of his pelvis rubbing against me. His eyes burn with such intensity, with such blatant desire, hope, and dare I say it, love.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says over and over, fucking me over and over. And I know he is. He doesn’t need me to blame him, because he blames himself.
“I know. Oh God.” A wave of ecstasy has me crying out and biting his shoulder. “I know.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m going to come.
It builds like a storm, and before I can even prepare for it to enjoy the ride, I explode. I bite down harder, and he hisses out in pain as his momentum builds to unabashed pummels, and he falls over the edge on a guttural, primal roar.
He collapses onto me, and I love the weight of his body on top of mine.
His breath punches into my neck, my breathing rapid. I run my hands up and down his back, which is clammy like my own.
He pulls back and meets my eyes, and I giggle. Fucking giggle.
It builds from the back of my throat, and it comes out in the most girlish little laugh I’ve ever produced in my adult life.
He grins and places a kiss on my nose before slowly pulling out and flopping down next to me, completely, utterly, stark bollock naked.
I’ve still got my top on, but we lay side by side, letting our racing hearts ease. He reaches out and wraps his pinkie around mine, bringing his hand to my lips.
“Cookie.”
“Yeah?” I reply, looking across at him.
“We need to talk.”