Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Catherine
Isaw myself in the blown-out window. Saw the mess of my hair, the dried blood on my neck, and the way my suit was torn at the shoulder.
I looked like a survivor of domestic abuse.
Seneca stood in the kitchen, pouring water from the tap, his hand steady for the first time all night.
He wasn’t wearing his cut anymore. He’d laid it over one of the kitchen chairs.
Now, he just had on a black tee that clung to his chest, dark with sweat and someone else’s blood.
His jaw twitched when he drank, and I realized he was waiting for me to tell him what to do.
I didn’t want to think. I wanted the rush back, the clean panic of combat, the total clarity that comes with adrenaline.
Instead, I walked over, grabbed the glass from his hand, and drained it, water spilling down my chin and onto the ruined shirt.
I wiped my mouth, and he watched the movement suspiciously.
“I should be dead,” I said.
He considered, then shook his head. “Not tonight.”
I looked at him, really looked, and saw something I hadn’t let myself notice before.
The scar wasn’t the only thing that defined his face.
There were a thousand tiny lines around his mouth, the kind that come from biting back every scream and every joke.
His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, but he kept scanning the room.
“We need to get upstairs,” I said. My voice came out wrong, higher than I wanted, but he just nodded.
The house felt different. No longer a fortress, but a place where you went to get patched up before the next round.
I took the stairs two at a time, Seneca close behind, his boots leaving a trail of blood drops from a cut on his calf.
The hallway was littered with drywall dust and shattered glass.
My bedroom door hung crooked, one hinge blown.
I should have cared, but all I cared about was the way he looked at me in the blue wash of the police lights still rotating outside.
Inside, the bedroom was untouched, cold and perfect, bedspread still tucked, nothing out of place. I wanted to ruin it. I wanted to make it as wrecked as the rest of the house, as wrecked as I felt inside.
I turned on him as soon as the door was shut. He barely had time to set his jaw before I slammed him back against the wall, palms flat to his chest. He didn’t flinch, didn’t resist. He just let me, eyes locked on mine, like he was testing to see how far I’d go.
I said, “You can leave if you want. This isn’t—” but I never finished, because he cut the space between us with a snap, grabbed my wrists, and spun me so it was my back to the wall.
He was stronger than I’d expected. Not just physically—though the muscle under his tee was solid as concrete—but in the way he held me, as if he’d been waiting a lifetime to do it and wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.
He pressed his body into mine, pinning me with his hips, and his hands went to my face, thumbs rough against my jaw.
He didn’t kiss me at first. He just breathed, slow and deep, so I could taste the heat of him, the metallic tang of blood and whiskey and whatever it was that kept men like him alive when they should’ve been dead a dozen times over.
Then he kissed me, and it wasn’t gentle. His mouth was hard and insistent, teeth clashing against mine, the kind of kiss that bruises lips and scrapes skin. I bit him because I didn’t know how not to fight, and he only kissed me harder, using my own violence as permission.
He let go of my wrists, and his hands went down, grabbing at the buttons of my shirt, popping them one by one with methodical precision.
I did the same, shoving his tee up, fingers digging into the meat of his ribs, feeling the slick heat of his skin.
He broke the kiss only to pull the shirt over his head, and when he did, I saw the tattoos.
There were more than I’d expected. Black ink, layered and overlapping, some military, some club, some that looked like they were done with a prison needle and zero anesthesia.
His left shoulder was a collage of skulls and numbers; his chest had a pair of dog tags inked right over his heart.
A scar ran from his collarbone down to the midpoint of his sternum, angry and pink even under the tattoos.
I ran my hand over it, and he shivered. It wasn’t from pain, but from the contact.
He ripped my shirt down the back, the fabric giving with a sound like a zipper on a body bag.
He pushed the ruined blouse off my shoulders and ran his hands over my arms, up to my throat, then down, mapping every inch of skin as if cataloguing evidence.
I wanted to say something—about the neighbors, about the consequences, about how this was a terrible fucking idea—but the words wouldn’t come.
He lifted me effortlessly, and carried me to the bed.
He didn’t bother to untangle the sheets; just threw me down and covered my body with his.
I felt the weight of him, the way his hips pressed between my legs, the heat of his breath on my neck.
I wrapped my arms around his back, nails digging in, and he groaned, low and animal-like, into my ear.
He then pinned my wrists above my head, holding them there with one hand while the other explored everywhere else.
Fingers on my jaw, my breasts, my stomach, the waistband of my skirt.
He didn’t ask, didn’t wait for permission.
He just took, and I let him, because for the first time in years, I wanted to be taken.
He bunched the skirt at my waist, found the line of my panties, and yanked them aside with a snap. His fingers were calloused, the nails blunt, but he was surprisingly gentle, teasing at first, drawing slow circles just inside my thigh until I was shaking.
“Please,” I said. I hated how desperate I sounded, but he seemed to like it.
He moved down, mouth trailing after his hand, tongue hot against my skin.
He bit at my hip, then my inner thigh, leaving marks that would bloom purple by morning.
When he reached where I needed him most, he paused, looking up at me with those dark, unreadable eyes.
I tried to glare, to reclaim some of the control, but he just smiled and put his mouth on me.
It was perfect and violent and nothing like the careful, clinical sex I’d grown used to.
He was relentless, working me with tongue and fingers until I was thrashing against the mattress, biting my own arm to keep from screaming.
When I came, it felt like being cracked open, like the pressure of the last twenty years had been bottled and now, finally, it could escape.
He didn’t give me time to recover. He was on top of me again, mouth smeared with my taste, hands already undoing his belt.
The buckle hit the floor with a metallic thud, and I watched as he shoved his jeans down, not bothering to remove them fully.
His cock was thick and already slick, curving up from a dense patch of black hair.
He fisted it once, twice, and then lined himself up, holding my hips in place.
He pushed in slow, giving me time to adjust, but once he was inside, all gentleness was gone.
He set a brutal pace, using his body to keep me pinned, thrusting hard enough that the headboard rattled against the wall.
I dug my heels into his ass, wanting him deeper, needing the pain to remind me this was real.
He released my wrists, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him down so I could bite at his shoulder, taste the salt and copper of his skin. He grunted every time I did, the sound vibrating through my chest.
I clawed at his back, raking my nails down the spine, and he laughed, the sound sharp and surprised. He liked being hurt. He liked being marked.
He reached between us and found my clit, rubbing hard and fast until the second orgasm crashed over me, this one louder, messier, uncontrollable.
I heard myself scream, felt my whole body arch up, and then he lost control, hips stuttering, arms tightening as he came inside me with a groan that sounded almost like relief.
We stayed like that, locked together, his cock twitching inside me, his hands holding my face as if he was afraid I’d vanish if he let go.
My own hands traced the sweat on his back, the blood from the scratches already welling up.
We were both shaking, both half-crazy, neither one willing to move first.
When he finally pulled out, he stayed close, lying beside me on the ruined sheets, chest still heaving. I turned onto my side, legs sticky and trembling, and watched as he ran a hand through his hair, the short black strands curling with sweat.
“Your neighbors are gonna have a field day,” he said.
“Let them.”
He propped himself up on one elbow, looking at me with something like disbelief. “You sure you’re not mad?”
I laughed, actually laughed, the sound raw and unfamiliar. “I’m mad, but not at you.”
He nodded, as if that made perfect sense.
I studied his chest, the way the tattoos faded into scar tissue, the way his nipples still stood hard against the cooling air. I reached out and touched the dog tags inked above his heart. He shivered, then caught my hand and kissed the knuckles, one by one.
“You gonna arrest me now?” he asked, half a joke.
I thought about it. “Maybe tomorrow.”
He rolled onto his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. I saw the way his breathing slowed, the way his whole body seemed to relax, as if the violence of the last hour had been what he needed all along.
I sat up, sheet pooling at my waist, and looked around the bedroom. It didn’t look like mine anymore. It felt completely different with the man next to me here.