27. Bindi
TWENTY-SEVEN
BINDI
I wake up drowning in warmth.
Cassidy’s body is wrapped around mine, one arm slung tight around my waist, his leg tangled between mine, my thighs pressed right against the hard muscle of his stomach.
The room is quiet. No engines, no sirens, no running, just the hum of electricity, the faint whine of cicadas outside, and his heartbeat, wild and stupid against my breasts.
I should move.
I should process what the hell just happened. Instead, I close my eyes again and smile like some smug little slut in a love song.
I shift slightly, and the slow leak of cum between my legs makes me groan.
“Shit,” I mutter.
Cassidy stirs. “Hmm?”
“I’m not on birth control.”
“So?” he says.
I blink back. “So?!”
He shrugs, dragging his knuckles lazily down my stomach like I’m already pregnant. “You let me come inside you, Firefly. That’s yours to own.”
“You’re not even a little freaked out?”
“Nah, if it happens, it happens.”
“You want me knocked up, Cass?”
He kisses my collarbone. “I want you to be mine, in every way I can have you. You carrying our child? Yeah. That’s what I want too.”
I don’t answer, just lie there with my hand resting on his forearm, staring up at the cracked ceiling like it might explain why I let my feral foster brother fuck me raw in an abandoned shack.
Because he’s Cassidy, that’s why.
Because five years without him didn’t erase a single thing he carved into my bones when we were kids. Because the way he looked at me tonight? Like he could crawl inside my body and still not be close enough? I wanted that. I wanted him. Every fucked-up, violent, obsessive piece of him.
He rolls me onto my back, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. Then again—higher, this time—inching toward the curve of my neck. His hand slides down my hip, lazily, possessive. And I think maybe we’re just gonna drift back to sleep like this?—
“I want to mark you.”
My brain fumbles. “Like . . . ?” I open my eyes and find he’s already propped up on one elbow.
He’s holding a knife and I stare at the dull edge as he runs his thumb down the blade, then up to meet my eyes. My stomach flips. Not in fear, not even in panic, just this wild, animalistic thing clawing its way through my chest. He’s serious. He’s dead fucking serious.
“You can’t be serious . . .”
He brushes the back of his knuckles along my bare thigh. “I’ll be gentle. I’m not going to go deep, just enough to scar. Just enough that it’s mine forever.”
“You already came inside me. Pretty sure I’m claimed. ”
“Not enough. I almost lost you. I can’t—I can’t take chances, Binx. If anything ever happened to you and I wasn’t there . . . if someone touched you?—”
“You’d kill them,” I say flatly.
“And I’d still never feel like it was enough.”
I look down at my thigh, then at the blade. I know it’s fucked up; I know normal people don’t do this.
But Cassidy Reyes has never been normal.
Neither have I.
“You’ll do it?” he whispers.
“Only if you let me do you next.”
“You want to claim me?”
“Yeah. My name. On your thigh. Same place.”
The sound he makes isn’t human. It’s a half growl, half sob. His forehead presses to mine. “Say it again.”
“My name,” I whisper, lips brushing his. “You’re gonna wear it.”
His lips curl into a devilish smile before he leans down, catching my lip between his teeth and biting down so hard the metallic taste of me blends into our kiss as he devours my mouth. I squirm beneath him, but he grabs my chin with his hand and breaks the kiss.
His eyes—light gray and stormy, like a moon-filled sky before it splits open—bore into mine. And in all the years I’ve known Cassidy Reyes, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look quite like this. So . . . happy.
I’ve known him for ten years. I knew him when he was just a boy—scared, hungry, stubborn as hell, trying to claw his way out of a world that didn’t give a fuck whether he lived or died.
I watched him fight like a rabid animal just to survive.
I fell in love with that boy. The one who made me his whole damn world before either of us knew what love really meant.
Maybe I thought it was the kind of love forged in shared wounds—a trauma bond. Something messy and codependent and hard to define.
But the moment he kissed me—back in that room when I was sixteen—I knew better. I’ve never recovered from it. That kiss didn’t just shake me, it ruined me. It told me everything I ever needed to know about what I meant to him.
There’s not a single soul on this planet who would go to the lengths Cassidy Reyes does for me. No one else would kill for me, burn down the world for me, mark my skin with his name like a vow.
And what scares me the most is . . . I think I’d do the same for him.
Maybe I already have.
He positions himself at a more optimal angle to watch the carving. Finding a piece of tender flesh high on my outer thigh. Unless you see me naked, you’d never be able to tell that I was marked.
And that makes it even hotter.
His knife-less hand splays firmly on the leg, holding it steady. I tense, embracing the fact that I know this is going to hurt like a motherfucker.
He forces himself to pause, looking up at me. “Keep your eyes on me, Binx. I love you, and I’m not going to apologize for hurting you. Not this time.”
My stomach flips. I nod and bite down on my bottom lip hard enough to sting. My skin prickles as his hand slides higher, fingers finding my clit—still raw and swollen, still sticky from both of us—and holy fuck , he’s really about to do this.
Fuuuck . I gasp as his fingers draw small circles around my clit, pleasure blooming in my gut again.
Only then does Cassidy press the knife against my skin. The first press of the knife meets slight resistance, then a thin line of crimson wells up around the blade. A strangled cry slips my throat, but Cassidy quells it, his thumb rubbing my clit more insistently .
“Good girl,” he praises. “Goddamn, Firefly . . . doing so fucking good for me.”
He continues to etch the letter “C.” Blood slicks the knife’s tip and trickles in a slow path down my hip and settles onto the mattress.
Cassidy leans down, his tongue swiping at the trail of my blood and a deep growl erupts out of his chest. Meanwhile, I’m turning into a fucking sopping mess right now.
My hips move instinctively to chase my orgasm, trying to escape the pain.
He starts on the “A,” and his cock grows in length.
I can’t help but look at it and marvel. I’ve seen a handful of cocks, but he has the prettiest fucking dick I’ve ever seen.
Long, veiny, heavy at the base, and slick at the tip from earlier still.
Curving just enough to hit deep inside you.
Cassidy Reyes is unholy, divine, and filthy in a way saints only dream of.
And he’s mine.
I won’t dare tell him, though. He’d probably get an ego about it.
The curve of the “S” hurts like a bitch.
The blood beads up in little rivulets along the cut, and I feel them trace down my thigh, warm and wet. Tears leak from the corner of my eyes, but not from fear, I’m fucking overwhelmed. From the fire on my thigh and the slow circles he rubs against my clit, I’m going to explode.
“Almost done, Firefly, just breathe for me and grind against my fingers like a filthy little whore . . . Fucking hell.”
I’m panting, my brain’s short-circuiting. All I can think about is his eyes and the way he looked at me when he licked the welled-up blood from the wound. His cock, still thick and hard, is flush against my leg.
I glance down to find his name—CASS—inked in red, right into my skin.
It’s fucking beautiful.
I love it, the way it throbs, the way it feels like I belong to him in a way no one else will ever understand. He pushes the handle of the knife into my pussy, and I lose it.
“Cassidy!” I scream, my back bowing off the mattress, my thighs clamping around his wrist, trapping him right there.
He hisses, which means I probably cut him.
But it doesn’t matter. Pain and pleasure twists up into a single, ferocious high that wrecks me completely.
My vision whites out as another orgasm slams into me and I sob through it.
No shame, no filter, just a raw, aching release.
He tosses the knife away, gathering me up and kissing the tears off my cheeks. His fingers brushing through my hair and I’m still gasping, still trembling. The feeling is euphoric but terrifying. My body doesn’t feel attached to my soul.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, kissing every square inch of my face to keep me from going into shock. “I love you. I love you. I love you,” he chants. And every time he says it, he holds me tighter.
I glance down at my thigh, my hand reaching down to trace it, but his hand shoots out and catches mine. He lifts it to my mouth and licks the blood off my fingers.
Reaching around to his neck, I pull him down, crashing his mouth into mine. The taste of iron, salt, and obsession coats my tongue. He groans into it, his tongue pushing through my parted lips and tangling with mine.
When I finally pull back, I can’t stop the grin that splits my face. “You’re fucking insane.”
“Only for you, Binx.”
I press my hand flat to his chest. He stiffens as his tongue drags against his lips, savoring the taste of us.
“Lie down.”
God, that power. That blind fucking loyalty. The way Cassidy Reyes goes soft when I tell him to.
His breath hitches when I swing my leg over his and settle on his hips.
His cock twitches between us, already hard again, resting thick against his stomach.
His hands twitch like they want to touch me, to grab, to pull, to worship.
But I catch his wrists before he can move, pinning them down into the mattress.
“Stay.”
He nods, his cock jumping against my core.
I reach for the knife where he threw it, never looking away from him. He watches every move like he’s memorizing the shape of my madness, like he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but beneath me while I’m like this—wild, wrecked, soaked in sweat and blood and power.
“What’s mine is mine,” I say, echoing his own words back at him.
“You gonna mark me?”
“Damn right I am.”
“Do it.”
I don’t need to be told twice. I shift down his body and settle on his thighs, steadying the blade in my grip. He spreads his legs for me, open and willing, the way no one else has ever been for me. I pick the spot right above the dip in his hips.
My hands shake a little, then he’s, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the knife with me, forcing me to look up at him. “I’m yours, Binx. Always have been.”
With a single exhale, I press the blade in.
Blood wells instantly, beading on his skin and dripping down, pooling into the mattress.
I carve the “B” slowly, his abdomen flexing, breathing my hand.
The entire time he watches me, every intake of breath, every time, my hand repositions itself with the knife.
Next comes the “I.” The pain must be a lot as he sucks in a low sound through his teeth, but he tries to play it cool.
The “N” makes tears well in my eyes as I realize no one else will ever have this part of him. No one else will ever love him like a brother and a lover, like a partner in crime. No one else will ever see this blood and know that it’s mine.
He gave me his body and I’m giving him my name. Fuck rings. Fuck white dresses. Fuck every girl who thinks an Instagram wedding means she’s claimed someone. This? This is the real shit. This is the kind of devotion that lasts.
The final stroke of the “X” is a blur. When I finish, I drop the blade.
Cassidy’s hands fly up, grabbing my wrists, and he yanks me down into his chest. I collapse on top of him, breathing hard, his blood painting my thighs and smearing between our stomachs. He’s trembling, panting, but he’s smiling, a dazed, delirious grin.
Did I break him?
“Some would say this type of love is sick,” he says.
I press my lips to his. “Only ‘cause they’ve never had it crawl under their skin and take root.”
Because what we have isn’t flowers and vows and happily ever afters. It’s rot and wildfire. It’s a sickness, and I never want to find the cure.