Chapter 47
KATE
Idon’t know what time it is when I wake.
An empty chocolate wrapper sits on the bedside table, so I know Cole fed me.
Two empty plastic bottles lie on their sides, so I know he gave me water too.
The rosemary-sage scent of arnica gel tickles my nose, so I know he tended to the bruises on my wrists and ankles.
But he couldn’t do anything about my full bladder.
He growls when I slip out from under his arm. The oak-patterned floor is warm on my bare feet; it’s heated gently from below. I step around the abandoned spreader, padding across the room to a luxurious bathroom I haven’t used since the dungeon was rebuilt.
I’m not ready to think about the hooks built into the shower walls or how the jets could be used in the luxury bath. I don’t want to dwell on the angle of the mirrors or the precise placement of the towel bars or what might happen over the grate in the floor.
Instead, I use the toilet and I wash my hands and I dry them on the softest towel I’ve ever felt. When I come back to bed, Cole is propped up on one elbow. He holds up the sheet, and I scramble up beside him, curling as the little spoon to his big spoon.
My fingertips stroke the arm he folds across my belly. He rumbles against my back and pulls me even closer.
I should be sleeping. We both should. We have weeks of work ahead of us, sorting Malloy’s takeover of the Crew, and the Tarasov bratva beheaded, Lone Wolf, and my work for Fiona, and all the rest.
But I don’t want to sleep.
I twist under Cole’s arm, so we’re lying face to face. He cups my jaw with his palm. “You’re okay?” he asks. “That wasn’t too rough?”
I shake my head, because sometimes it’s still hard for me to find words. Sometimes the wild thing inside me still grabs hold. It strips away all the lessons I’ve learned—how to plan, how to act, how to talk like a normal human being.
But the thing inside me doesn’t want to fight right now. It doesn’t want to flee. It wants something else—every bit as old, every bit as basic, as essential to human survival.
The thing inside me wants to fuck.
It doesn’t want any of Cole’s power games—not this time.
It doesn’t need to hand over all my decisions to someone bigger and stronger and more in control.
It doesn’t have to sandblast my soul into a timeline where the Bad Men never happened, where Pyotr Tarasov never took me to the Cold Room, where my life was never changed forever by choices and choices and more choices.
The thing I want is simpler than all that. And because of that, it terrifies me.
Reaching between us, I find Cole half-willing to try. I close my hand around his cock. I squeeze once, twice, three times, until he twitches hard against my palm.
I roll onto my back, pulling him with me. His chest against mine is rough with hair. I raise my knees, giving him access to the needy space between my thighs.
My hands close around his biceps. I arch my back, welcoming him in.
It’s shocking, when he fills me. We fit together like we’re meant to be one. He rests against me, neither of us moving, and I memorize the perfect weight of his body.
“I love you,” he says, pressing his lips against mine.
The words whisper to my wild thing. They tell me I’m safe. They tell me I’m precious.
I turn my head enough to murmur against his cheek. “Oh God, I love you too.”
He begins to move then, calm and easy. My entire body molds to his. We rise together. Sink together.
He claims me with his lips against my temple. He names me with his words against my throat. He tames me with every slow thrust into my body. “Kate,” he says. “My sweet, sweet Kate.”
He knows me. He wants me. He loves me. I am his, and he is mine.
This time, when I come, there’s no shouting, no sobbing, no rattling the spine of the universe. Instead, I simply melt beneath him. My heartbeat joins with his, inside and out of both our bodies.
When we’re done, he holds me. Neither of us speaks. We don’t need words.
And finally, the wild thing sleeps.