21. Christian
CHRISTIAN
T he first thing I notice when I wake up is how fucking hot I am.
The second is Mila grinding against my rock-hard cock.
“ Fuck ,” I breathe, blinking up at the ceiling while Mila shifts over me, trying to adjust in her sleep. Looking down at her, the bright sunlight streams through the windows in the front, highlighting her hair in a million different shades of golden wheat. Her lashes sit heavily on her cheeks, her soft lips pouty and so fucking kissable, I reach up, brushing my thumb over them to tug her bottom lip from her teeth.
She moves again, and the friction would bring me to my knees if I weren’t lying down, her laying on top of me, our legs tangled together, and her arm wrapped over me.
When she stirs, letting out a soft little moan in her sleep, I can’t help myself, gripping her hips to still her.
Mila’s eyes blink open when I press my lips to her forehead.
“If you don’t stop grinding on my cock, little devil, it’s going to be your problem to deal with.”
A shiver slips through her and she lifts her head, her cheeks darkening when her eyes find mine.
Fuck . . . those eyes. I could get lost in those fucking eyes.
My hand slides down her back, resting just above the curve of her ass, the soft skin tempting and warm.
“Good morning,” she breathes, uncertainty in her gaze. We haven’t ever slept together. Not even before. It’s a big step. Probably not one either of us is ready for, but I haven’t slept that well in years.
I reach up, brushing the hair back from her face and ending with my knuckles slipping over the blush down her cheek.
“Good morning,” I murmur, my voice rough with sleep and the need to go take care of the problem pressed between us.
I’ve stroked myself off every day since I brought her home. It’s just her. Having her in my fucking space. Especially when she fought me. I’ve always loved her fucking fire, but now, after being denied it for nearly a year, I’ve become an addict.
“I need you to get off me, Mila.”
She swallows over the lump in her throat, her hand resting on my chest. I hope to God she can’t hear how fast my heart’s beating.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”
Fucking hell.
I still her before she can climb off me, guilt washing through me. I wanted her here. I’m not sure I would have given her up, even if she had tried to get up.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Oh . . . then . . . what’s wrong with you?”
She shifts again, and I grip her hips hard, holding her in place.
“My cock’s rock fucking hard, and I’m trying to do the right thing with you, for once.”
Normally, I wouldn’t be so forward about it, but with her looking at me with soft puppy-dog eyes, I need her to understand it’s not because I don’t want her.
Fuck, she’s all I’ve fucking thought about for the last six months.
Probably longer.
She draws her lip back between her teeth.
“What if I don’t want you to do the right thing?”
How the fuck am I supposed to navigate this?
“Mila,” I grit, my hands tightening on her hips when she shifts against me again, deliberately grinding her bare pussy on the ridge in my jeans.
“Shhh . . .” she whispers, slipping a little further down the couch. “You didn’t . . .”
“Didn’t what, Mila?” I’m taunting her, trying to force her to say it with her words rather than implied reasoning.
“You didn’t come.”
Fuck.
Neither of us move for a moment, the sound of her breathing heavy and mixing with mine.
“This wasn’t about me.”
Something flashes in her gaze, almost like a challenge, and I’m not sure I’m fucking prepared for the patience it’s going to take to deny her. My self-control is barely holding on as it is.
With her gaze on mine, Mila reaches between us, her palm finding me through the jeans I fell asleep in last night and her fingers wrapping around me as best she can.
I grit my teeth to stifle the groan that rumbles up my chest, the friction on my cock enough to drive me fucking insane.
I can see the thoughts racing through her head. How unsure of herself she is. I know this is too fast for her. I also know Mila, and we won’t ever get anywhere if she thinks she’s cheating me.
“Fuck,” I grit, pulling away from her. I stand from the couch, and Mila falls back to her ass, her gaze on the rug I’m pacing on top of.
“I’m sorry,” she rushes, her voice soft, higher pitched than usual.
It feels like I’ve been kicked in the dick, despite how utterly fucking hard I am.
“I don’t want you doing something because you think it’s what I want, Mila,” I murmur, voice gruff even if I try to smooth it over.
She doesn’t respond and when I look back at her, a tear slips down her cheek.
Fucking hell.
“Hey,” I try, forcing a gentleness into my voice I’m not accustomed to.
This shit is new for both of us. After everything that happened, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever want to be touched again.
I cross the space between us, sinking down to my haunches in front of her. She doesn’t look at me, so I take her chin in my thumb and forefinger and force her gaze to mine.
“Damn near all I can think about is you,” I murmur, deciding a little bit of the truth might not fucking hurt for once. “I jerk off in the shower every fucking morning like a goddamned teenager because I can’t get your soft little moans out of my head.”
She finally chances a look at me, those soft eyes glinting with tears in the morning light. So fucking unsure of the hold she has over me.
“But I also don’t want you pushing yourself too hard.”
“Can we . . . try something?”
Lead fills my chest, my cock pressing hard against the zipper of my jeans. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to try something. I’d fucking try anything if it gave me even a moment of goddamned peace.
Standing from her, I drop my hand and step back.
A look of defeat crosses her pretty features before I push the coffee table back across the room and grab the armchair from the corner.
“What are you doing?” she asks softly when I place it right in front of her, sinking down into the worn leather and spreading my knees on either side of hers.
“Compromising.”
She stares at me curiously when I scoot in front of her, nodding to her legs.
“Place your feet on either of the armrests.”
Her cheeks instantly darken, her eyes widening. That lip goes back between her teeth, and she hesitates.
“You going to make me do it for you?”
I wouldn’t force her, but the challenge is enough to push her into motion.
Eyeing me with defiance, she places one foot on either armrest beside me, swallowing over the thick lump in her throat.
Not that I’m much better. The sight of her pretty pink folds glistening in front of me has my teeth grinding, a tremor moving through my hands when I unbutton my jeans.
Mila’s breathing grows shallow, and she watches as I pull my cock out. I’m so hard I could shatter fucking diamonds across my dick.
I lean back in the chair, getting comfortable, and Mila’s eyes follow my hand when I stroke my cock once, biting back a hiss through my teeth at the friction.
“Show me how you make yourself come, Mila.”
She looks up at me, striking gray eyes wide underneath thick lashes and her breathing shallow. Fuck, she’s so pretty. My mouth waters to taste her again. Touch her. Make her let out those pretty sounds that keep me awake at night.
I’m not blind. I can see the way I get under her skin. How even though she can’t stand the touch of a man, the touch of the devil, she craves.
She lets out a shaky breath, her eyes flicking from my cock to my gaze, growing half-lidded and hazy. A shiver moves through her, and her cheeks flame, but her hand slides down her stomach, over the material of my T-shirt she’s wearing, to slip along her folds.
“ Fuck ,” I breathe, stroking myself slowly in time with her circling her clit. She watches me, her eyes rotating between mine and my hand on my cock. “Tell me how you feel, little devil.”
A tremble moves through her, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.
Fuck me.
This is a big step. Getting her to trust me again. Making her need me as bad as I fucking need her.
Showing her that the words carved into her stomach mean nothing between us. She’s mine, and I’m hers, and the man who defiled her isn’t worthy of licking the ground she walks on.
“Good,” she says, voice breathy and soft, filled with lust that goes straight to my cock.
“Are you here with me, Mila?”
She nods her head, her fingers dipping inside herself to gather her wetness on her fingers. When she removes them, they’re glistening with her come and visions of last night flash in my mind. Her on her back underneath me. Her thighs clenched around my head when she came.
Her moaning my name and grinding herself against my tongue.
“Feel how wet you are, sweetheart?” I rasp, stroking my cock harder, my chest rising and falling with my rapid heartbeat. She swirls her fingers up to her clit, her back arching off the couch and her eyes locking with mine. “See how fucking hard you get me?”
“Christian,” she mewls, her eyelashes fluttering on her cheeks and a flush working up her neck.
“Forget about everything and just be here with me, Mila. Feel me.”
Her eyes tighten, her fingers working her clit faster. I speed up my pace, a groan passing my lips as heat lances up my spine.
“Feel good?”
“Yes,” she whimpers, her breaths panting between each stroke of her fingers on her pussy.
“That’s my pussy, Mila. And when I fuck you, you’re going to feel me for days. You won’t be able to come without me inside you. That what you want? To be at my mercy.”
“Christian,” her head kicks back, and I can see she’s so close to coming, she can fucking taste it. Good thing, too, because I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out.
“You want my cock? Fucking you until you can’t think of anything but how good it feels inside you?”
She clenches her eyes shut, and all I can do is grin savagely as her perfect little body tightens in front of me. Writhing with the need to come.
“Fuck, I can’t wait to watch you take me,” I growl, and she moans, the sound damn near sending me over the edge. I lean forward, my eyes transfixed on her as she makes herself come. “You going to be a good girl and come for me?”
“Yes, please, Christian . . .” she moans, even though she’s the one controlling this. She needs me to push her there.
“Come for me, Mila. Let me see you let go,” I grind out between my teeth.
She moans, her head falling back against the cushions, her fingers moving faster, harder until her body tightens, the orgasm ripping through her.
Finally, I let go, coming so hard I see stars behind my eyes and squirting into my palm with a feral groan. When both of us float back down to reality, her eyes lock with mine.
Then she fucking giggles.
I cock my head to the side, the sound doing something to my chest. “Are you laughing at me, little devil?”
She grins, and I realize this is the first time she’s smiled at me in a year. A real fucking smile.
She smiles at me.
Eat shit, Collin.
“I just realized Phantom got the whole bed to himself while we slept out here on this tiny couch.”
I chuckle under my breath, tucking myself back in my jeans and rising from the chair.
“Fucking dog’s got it better than most humans.”
I’ll admit, I didn’t like the little fucker at first. But . . . like everything on this damned island, he’s growing on me.
I head to the bathroom and clean up, cutting the water on for Mila to take a shower before I head back out to the living room. When I return, she’s curled up on the couch, in danger of nodding off again.
Stooping down, she lets me lift her up into my arms, carrying her to the bathroom, a breathless laugh leaving her lips.
Somewhere along the way, the lines between us became blurred. Instead of thinking about how I’m going to get her safe and back to her family, I’m suddenly thinking about ways to keep her here.
It’s dangerous. Stupid fantasies that will never come to light.
When I sit her on her feet, though, and there’s a moment where both of us are breathing the same air, my dick telling me to kiss her despite her pushing me away before, and my head telling me it’s for the best if I don’t . . . those lines might as well be nonexistent.
“Take a shower. I’ll start breakfast.”
Levi: We need to talk.
I ignore my brother’s text as I have every day for the last three weeks and watch Mila clean out the greenhouse below.
Not that anything will grow inside with the cold coming soon, but I’m happy to see her find something to do with her time while I’m in the office.
I was finally able to get ahold of the footage from that night at the hospital. The car that dropped her off was a blacked-out Volvo SUV.
They pulled up to the curb by the road and barely stopped before they pushed her out onto the sidewalk, leaving her there to bleed out.
If it weren’t for the homeless man sitting against the side of the building who alerted the hospital, who knows how long she would have laid there, waiting for help while she bled out?
It pissed me off. Seeing her like that, broken and bloody and all fucking alone. I want to skin the men who did this to her alive and leave them in a field to rot on wooden spikes in the hot sun.
Sometimes, I sit and think about all the things I’m going to do to them when I find them. How I’m going to make them bleed. Cry for their mothers and beg for mercy.
It won’t come, though. I’ll let them choke on their own blood, slowly downing themselves until they aren’t alive to hurt anyone ever again.
Especially not her.
I’m standing at the window, watching Mila cart out a bucket of old vines and leaves, when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out, gritting my teeth when I see the name, but I answer it anyway.
“I told you I would call.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line, and I cross the room to my chair, my eyes going to the photograph I’d pulled out of my wallet still laid out on the desk.
Absentmindedly, I rub the ache in my chest. Fucking bullet.
“You’ve found her.”
“I did.”
“And? Does she know?”
“No.”
“Fuck,” the man on the other end of the line sighs. “I’m coming up there.”
“You have a wife to think about. Your mother needs you.”
“ She needs me too,” he growls. “It’s my job to protect her.”
“Not anymore.”
He chuckles darkly. He knows what I did. Shortly after he married his wife, I changed the course of both our lives. I don’t regret it. He may not like it, but I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
“You don’t get to make that choice,” he grits.
“I already did.”
“You remember what I said if you hurt her?”
His voice is menacing, and if it were anyone else in the world, I’d probably laugh. Mason Carpenter isn’t one to fuck with, though.
“Because I have to say it,” he says, holding his wife’s hand as she lays in her hospital bed, passed out from being shot only hours before. “I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt her.”
“I’m doing this for her.”
“Kill me, and there’s no guarantee she gets out of this alive.”
“Fuck,” he grits, letting out a deep breath. He’s silent for a moment, and I almost think he hung up when he speaks again. “Hannah’s pregnant.”
“Congratulations.” I mean it. Mason’s gone through some shit, but he’s a good man. Loyal. Big as a fucking linebacker, but he deserves this. So does Hannah.
“Thanks,” he says dryly.
“Honeymoon faze over, already?”
“Fuck no,” he murmurs.
At one point, Mason and I were close. Like brothers. He’s the reason I started working for Parker in the first place.
We all wanted the same thing: Parker dead.
“So what’s the problem?”
“You’ve met me,” he murmurs. “I’ll find a way to fuck that kid up.”
Mason doesn’t talk about his feelings. Most men don’t, but he may as well be a fucking closed door, chained shut. I can relate. Feelings aren’t something I fuck with, either.
“Kids don’t know it’s your first time being a dad,” I say, remembering something my mother once said. “They just want you to be there and to try. You’re going to be a good father, Carpenter. Hannah’s going to be a good mom.”
He’s silent for a moment. “She’ll be the best.”
“I’ll call you when I need you,” I tell him, standing from my desk. “If you show up here unannounced, I’ll shoot. I even see the whites of your eyes.”
“Christian,” he says before I hang up and I pause. “Bring my sister back.”