24. Bindi #2
He’s the one who taught me how to fight. How to lie. How to lift a wallet and a car key in the same breath without blinking. He gave me the tools, then vanished, and I used every single one to stay alive.
I became someone without him.
So why the hell does he still make me feel like that same scared girl from the foster house? Like I need him to breathe?
I turn to the window, watching the blur of trees fade into the night. My pulse won’t slow, my hands are still trembling. There’s blood on his sleeve and maybe some on mine too, and I can’t tell where the line is between horror and relief. Between fear and . . . something uglier.
Because if he’s doing it for me . . . killing for me . . . maybe it’s okay. Maybe I’m safe.
That’s the fucked-up part—the part I can’t seem to scrape out of my chest.
And somewhere deep inside, where I’ve buried the worst parts of myself, a voice whispers the question I’ve been trying not to ask.
What if this isn’t love? What if it’s just trauma in a prettier dress?
I want to believe it’s love—this ride-or-die devotion, this feral loyalty. I want to believe he’d never turn that blade on me.
But I’ve seen what he does when he thinks I’m in danger.
And God help me, part of me wants to see it again.
The road is quiet again, just the hum of tires as Cassidy drives like he’s running from hell itself. Maybe he is. Maybe we both are.
I stare out the passenger window, my body still vibrating from the aftermath of what almost happened back there—the gas station, the knife. It should be a blur, but it’s burned into me in perfect clarity.
Cassidy unhinged.
Cassidy violent.
Cassidy ready to slit a man’s throat because he thought I was in danger.
And here I am, still trying to decide if I should be horrified or turned on.
I touch my lips. They’re dry, cracked, and the adrenaline has left a bitter film in my mouth. I should be furious—I was furious.
I was begging him not to kill that man, practically in tears.
I thought I hated that part of him.
But now, sitting here in the dark, my body says otherwise. My thighs are pressed tight, my breath is shallow, and my pulse thumps in places it shouldn’t.
God, what the fuck is wrong with me?
His hands are tight on the wheel, his shoulders hunched. He’s ashamed, I think. Or maybe not. Maybe he just doesn’t want to face me. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll look at him like a monster.
He is a monster. But he’s my monster.
I watch him from the corner of my eye. The way his jaw flexes, the way his fingers twitch. The shadowy light from the dashboard paints his face in harsh angles and a soft glow. He looks like something carved from stone—wild and bruised and beautiful.
And mine.
That last part hits me like a punch. Mine . He’s mine . No matter how twisted that sounds, how wrong it should be. Cassidy didn’t attack that man because he was losing control. He did it because he thought he saw danger. He thought someone was going to hurt me, and he snapped.
For me.
There’s something darkly intimate in that. Some raw, brutal logic that’s making it hard to breathe. Cassidy’s violence isn’t random, it’s deliberate. It’s obsessive. He’s not a rabid dog, he’s a guard dog with blood on his teeth.
And somewhere in my gut, I love it.
I shift in my seat as the car bumps along the road. I can’t keep this feeling bottled up any longer. It’s crawling under my skin, setting my nerves on fire.
“Cass.”
He doesn’t look at me.
“Cassidy.”
His jaw tenses, like he’s expecting me to lay into him. And maybe I should. But that’s not what this is—that’s not what I want.
I slide my hand across the console, fingers brushing his thigh. That gets his attention. His head snaps toward me, eyes flashing with something between confusion and alarm.
“What are you doing?” he asks, low and hoarse.
“Pull over.”
“Bindi . . .”
“Now.”
He hesitates, just for a beat. Then he jerks the wheel and steers the car off the road into a patch of gravel beneath a canopy of trees. The headlights cast long shadows before he kills the engine.
We sit in the dark; the only sound is our breathing.
“Are you going to yell at me? I’m not in the mood for a verbal lashing.”
I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn to face him. “I might still do that . . . but, later.”
His eyes search mine. “So, why are you?—”
I don’t let him finish. I climb into his lap, straddling him in the driver’s seat, my knees braced on either side of his hips. He stiffens, shocked, his hands hovering, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch me .
“Because, you almost killed a man for looking at me wrong.”
“Bindi, what the hell are you doing?”
I don’t answer, just lean to the side and grab the lever behind me.
The seat drops back with a hard jolt, sending both of us slamming into a semi-recline. His hands instinctively grip my thighs.
His breath hitches. “You’re insane,” he says hoarsely.
“So are you.”
Then I kiss him. Hard.
Not gentle. Not careful.
Cassidy groans into my mouth, like the taste of me wrecks him.
His hands grip my hips like he’s trying to keep me from vanishing, thumbs digging in.
His hips buck upward instinctively, and I roll against him, gasping into his mouth.
His cock grows instantly hard and I can’t wait to feel it in my hand, in my mouth, inside of me. God, I want it inside of me.
“You scared me, but not because of what you did. Because of how much I fucking liked it,” I pant against his lips.
His eyes flash, then he grabs my jaw, thumb swiping over my lower lip.
“You’re mine. Always have been.” His forehead presses to mine, breath hot against my lips.
“From the moment we were thrown into that shitty little house together, when you looked at me with those scared eyes and still had the nerve to mouth off, I knew.” His hands tighten on my thighs.
“They always called you my little sister.” A bitter smile ghosts his lips.
“Tried to make it sound wholesome. But I always knew better. You were never my sister, Bindi,” he says, and there’s something feral in the way he says my name. “But you have always been mine .”
My breath hitches. His words shouldn’t make me feel the way they do—lit up and undone from the inside out.
“You belonged to me the second I taught you how to pick your first lock. Then when we ran from that group home in the rain. When you slept next to me and I stayed up all night counting your breaths, making sure no one touched you. And then I lost you. I waited for five fucking years with nothing but the thought of you and what I’d do when I got you back. ”
I don’t speak—I can’t.
“So don’t act surprised—don’t flinch when I say it. You’re mine, Firefly. In blood. In bone. In every fucked-up way that counts.”
“And you’re mine,” I breathe, rocking into him again, grinding just enough to make his jaw clench. “So don’t you ever apologize for protecting me.”
His hands flex on my hips, rough and possessive, with a look in his eyes . . . like I hung the stars just to watch him burn under them.
“You hear me? I don’t care what you do to keep me safe—what lines you cross. What bodies drop. I’ll take it. All of it.”
I kiss him, slow this time. He groans against my lips, and I pull back just enough to smirk.
“You think I survived five years without you just to come back and be a damsel? You think I don’t like what you did back there at the motel?
” My nails drag lightly down his chest, right over the spot where his heart is hammering through the fabric.
“You killed a man for wanting to take what’s yours.
” I lean in closer, lips brushing his ear. “It was fucking beautiful.”
His whole body goes rigid beneath me, like I flipped some internal switch. And maybe I did.
He kisses as if he’s trying to crawl inside me through my lips. His hand fists my hair, pulling my head back so he can kiss down my throat, biting hard enough to mark me, and I moan—needy and reckless and shameless.
I want it. All of it.
His violence, his love, his ruin.
Because for once, I don’t feel like a victim .
I feel like a fucking queen on her throne, seated beside a king ready to go to war in my name.
“You and me against the world, Firefly. That’s all it’s ever been,” he growls against my skin.
His hips thrust up, grinding hard against me, and I gasp again.
“Then let it bleed for us, Cass.”
We are just two monsters in love with the reckoning.