Chapter 31 #3
I let out a defeated sigh, repositioning myself to sit on the floor beside him.
“Alright, buddy, but just one,” I say, draping an arm gently across him in order to stroke his little forehead with my fingertips—a trick we discovered when he was a baby.
Fortunately, it still works and never takes long for him to fall asleep.
“The Knight story,” he insists, and although it’s one of his favorites, the request only reminds me of Legion’s Morning Star comment.
I keep my voice low, my words slow, watching his blinks as they stretch longer…
and longer…until finally, his eyes remain closed and his breath evens out.
I wait a few minutes more, just to be sure he’s really down for the count, then inch by inch, I lift my arm from him and move away.
Standing, slowly and cautiously, I walk around the couch and head for the bedroom.
“Took you long enough,” Vanna teases, her voice warm and inviting. She’s already discarded her pajama pants, wearing only her underwear and my faded Sturgis t-shirt, already in bed.
I grin, quietly closing the bedroom door and twisting the lock, just in case. “ Worth the wait?”
She sits up and slowly slides her panties down her legs, then drops them over the side of the bed. “ Let’s find out,” she purrs.
I’m already hard in the seconds it takes to shed my clothes and jump into the bed with her. The springs creak beneath me when I land on my knees at the foot of the mattress, and she giggles as I cage her beneath me.
“ Shhh!” she whisper-scolds, a finger pressed to her lips before she reaches up to stroke my jaw, coaxing me down to her.
I slowly lower myself against her, studying her face in the dim glow of the tableside lamp, and gently smooth a whisp of hair from her forehead.
“What is it?” she whispers. “Why are you staring like that?”
“Just committing this expression to memory,” I murmur. “I don’t want to forget it.”
“Forget what?”
“The way you look at me when it’s just us.”
Her playful smile softens. “It is just us.”
“The way your hair spills down your shoulders,” I go on before she feels the need to elaborate.
“The way my shirt hangs off your body like it’s always belonged there.
” I let my fingers trail up her side, brushing bare skin beneath the hem of the fabric.
“The way you make me feel like I’m the luckiest man in the world, just by loving me. ”
She tips her face up to kiss me, soft and slow, her lips moving against mine.
I settle between her parted legs and kiss her back deeper as her hands slide up my chest, into my hair, pulling me closer.
The shirt slips higher as I move against her, baring more skin.
She doesn’t stop me when I grab the hem and pull it off of her, tossing it over the side of the bed, and she arches into the kisses I trail down her neck and to her breasts.
A soft gasp escapes her when I take a pebbled peak into my mouth and suck.
She writhes beneath me, attempting to rub herself against my hardened length.
She whispers my name, hot and needy. I claim her mouth once again as her legs slide up mine, heels anchoring against the back of my thighs.
Her thighs part wider, inviting me in. She holds my face between her palms, eyes locked with mine, and I can see it.
The fire. The trust. The history between us.
Everything we don’t need to say out loud.
Her breath catches when I push inside her, eyes fluttering closed, but only for a moment. She wants to watch me, too. I move slowly, giving her everything, and she meets me with every breath, every thrust, every whispered plea.
W hen we finish, I shift off of her and she curls into me, resting her head against my shoulder, palm pressed against my racing heart. I hold her tightly against me, skin warm against mine. Neither of us wants to part, but my gaze shifts to the door.
“I should check on Ace,” I whisper, before pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
She lets out a sated little moan, reluctant to part. “Alright. I’ll meet you back in here.”
While I pull on my flannel pants, Vanna grabs a robe from the closet and quickly tiptoes to the bathroom. I pad quietly down the short hallway, barefoot against the cool boards.
I peek over the back of the couch. Ace is curled on his side, facing the fireplace, still tucked inside his sleeping bag. The soft, orange glow of the fire dimly illuminates his little face. He looks peaceful. Safe.
I return to Vanna, leaving the bedroom door slightly ajar this time, and slip beneath the covers, the mattress dipping as I pull her back into my arms. She melts into me instantly, her body warm against mine, and I breathe in the scent of her hair.
Outside, the light breeze rustles the pine trees and swirls the thin layer of snow across the roof of the cabin, somehow making everything feel cozier, and I’m grateful she talked me out of selling this place.
“Is Ace okay out there?” she murmurs, tracing lazy patterns along my arm with her fingertips.
“Little bugger barely moved an inch.” I tighten my arms around her, pressing a kiss to the side of her neck as she presses her sexy ass against my shaft. “ Round two?” I growl.
She chuckles tiredly. “You seem to have shaken off whatever you brought up here with us,” she says, hesitating for a moment at my silence before she continues. “I didn’t want to bring it up earlier, but did Legion say something?”
“He’s always saying something,” I mutter.
“What was it this time?” When I don’t answer, she wiggles her ass against me again. “ Dean?”
I let out a sigh in an attempt to tame my rising anxiety. “Did you tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“About the Knight spell.”
“No. Why?”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. The only people who knew about it besides us, are Laura, Ethan, and Marie Delai. Why are you asking? What did he say?”
“That he owned a strip joint called the Morning Star .”
“It’s probably a coincidence.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” My gut is telling me otherwise. Especially the way he sneered when he said it.
“Legion isn’t a threat, Dean,” she says, as if she’s reminding me for the thousandth time. Maybe she is.
“He makes my skin crawl,” I mutter, “He’s fuckin’ weird, Vanna.
He’s too flamboyant and theatrical. His exaggerated gestures, like he’s always playing to an audience that only exists in his twisted mind.
The way he talks makes me want to choke him.
Everything he says is always another elaborate performance.
It’s like he deliberately does it to piss me off. ”
Not to mention the way he looks at her. I see it every time…
that glint in his eyes like a wolf circling its prey.
The way his smile tightens when she mentions my name.
And she doesn’t even see the darkness beneath his already sinister exterior.
What the fuck is it about him? How can she not?
The way his eyes linger on her, the way he speaks to her as if they share some secret…
The shit he’s orchestrated. His every word, his every move, seems carefully designed to make himself indispensable in our lives.
But I’ll never trust him regardless. He’s cunning, clever, and I know it’s only a matter of time before his true nature shows.
“I don’t think anyone’s ever given Legion a real chance to heal…to be seen for who he really is beneath all of that,” Vanna says, and I can feel her body tense in my arms as if she’s worried how I’ll react.
“I’ve seen plenty,” I grumble, but still press a kiss against the top of her shoulder to show her she has nothing to fear from me.
“That wasn’t him…and in the end, he chose us, Dean… Maybe he’s never had anyone choose him… He’s the way he is because he’s been hurt, badly…repeatedly… When I look at him now, I can’t help but see a scared little boy.”
“Alright,” I sigh. I suppose that’s better than her seeing him as a hot-blooded man… A hot-blooded man who’s desperately in love with her.
“Alright?”
“I’m choosing not to have this battle with you.”
“I don’t want to battle with you at all .”
Still, I can’t resist scoffing, “If he’s a little boy, he’s the one that appears beside your bed in the middle of the night, watching you sleep with a giant kitchen knife clutched in his hands.”
I have to press my lips together when I feel her body shaking with silent laughter before she expels a quivering breath in an attempt to compose herself.
“ Stop it,” she whisper-laughs, “you’re going to give me nightmares with that visual and make me want to lock the bedroom door every night.”
“On Ace?” I chuckle. “He would never. He may have inherited my looks, but he has your pure, kind heart.”
“No, it’s just a creepy thing to think about right before we go to sleep. It’s bad enough I’ve dreamed?—”
She tenses, and I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t. “Dreamed what?”
“Dreams I can’t remember, lately…” she clears her throat. “Watch this be the one that sticks, or I scream the next time Ace wakes me up in the middle of the night.”
“Like you did when that spider ran up your arm from the firewood?” I tease her. “I swear, someone probably heard you in Tennessee.”
After her next wave of giggles passes, it isn’t long before her breath evens out, and her body relaxes, soft and trusting against mine.
I let my own eyes drift shut to the sound of her sleeping and the wind brushing by our cabin.
The mountains can howl all they want outside, cold and relentless.
In here, I have everything I need. And as for Legion…
He can plant all the psychological bombs he can manufacture.
It won’t change the fact that Vanna is mine, and together with Ace, we have something indestructible.