Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
CLOVER
S tunned tears stung my eyes as I tried to absorb Damien’s words. Tried to make sense of the way he was touching me, looking at me. I didn’t want to believe him. Boys had told me things like that before, when no one was around, but their rough lips and punishing, impatient hands had always revealed the truth.
But not Damien’s. His kisses were sweet and slow and saturated with emotion. They made me feel cherished, seen. They gave instead of took. And they turned my blood into tingly, silvery moonlight—the same color as his eyes.
Pressing my forehead to his, I tried to process what was happening between us, tried to slow my racing heart and savor the connection I felt, pulsing just beneath my skin. I didn’t trust his words—I didn’t trust anyone , not entirely—but I trusted that feeling. And I wanted more.
So, I did what I should have done the second his lips first met mine—I tilted my head, and I kissed him back.
Damien held perfectly still as I sealed my mouth over his, but the moment my tongue slid along the parted seam of his lips, he thrust his hand into my hair and devoured me with a hunger that made it clear that food had not been the sustenance he was craving.
Lightning arced across my skin as his commanding tongue swirled and sucked, licked and teased. He tasted like vanilla and chocolate and cinnamon-dusted apple tarts, but the rest of him was anything but sweet. His body felt like hot stone—chiseled and solid. I wanted to wrap myself around it, cling to it until the storm of emotion and desire I was feeling passed.
Pushing up onto my knees, I straddled Damien’s outstretched legs, but he grabbed my hips before I could sit. I froze mid-kiss, the heat of rejection slithering up my neck as he held me still. Then, releasing me with one hand, Damien unbuckled his belt and slid the leather strap and holstered gun out of his belt loops in one fluid motion. He set the deadly accessory on the floor beside us. Then, he guided me to sit.
With the contraption gone, my thighs slid into place around his hips, and I gasped into his mouth as his erection pressed against my exposed clit. A rush of fizzy tingles cascaded over my body, and it reminded me of our first night in the cave, when I’d given him mouth-to-mouth. There was something about this man’s touch that affected me like no one else’s. Some magical spark that chased away the darkness. And I wanted to feel it everywhere .
Reaching up with trembling fingers, I unbuttoned Damien’s blazer and let it slide off my shoulders and pool on the floor. I expected to feel the vulnerable caress of cool air on my skin, but instead, all I felt was the welcoming heat of Damien’s body, beckoning me closer, like a crackling fire. Pressing his forehead against mine, Damien gazed down the length of my naked body and swallowed hard.
“Touch me,” I whispered.
“Thank God,” he replied.
Sealing his mouth over mine in another dizzying kiss, Damien let his hands roam up my tender ribs to cup the swell of my breasts. The warmth and weight of his palms sliding over my skin soothed everything in their path, including my heart. I felt grounded. I felt safe. And when his thumbs rolled over the tight, sensitive peaks of my nipples, I felt an incredible, insatiable need begin to build.
Tearing his mouth away from mine, Damien kissed his way down my neck and along my collarbone as I dropped my head and peered into the shadow between our rolling bodies.
“Am I hurting you?” I rasped, realizing that his bullet wound was probably only a few centimeters above my thigh.
Ignoring my question, Damien pulled one straining nipple into his mouth, and I threw my head back on a silent gasp. Hands kneading, tongue swirling, teeth grazing, Damien reduced me to a mindless, writhing, ravenous thing. I wanted to lose myself in that connection, sink to the bottom of it and never come up for air. As I reached for the button of Damien’s trousers, I let my fingers slide along the length of him, just below the fabric. And Damien followed my lead. Dragging a massive hand down my back, over my arse, and between my legs, he traced the tender seam of me with two thick fingers, and suddenly, I wasn’t in the bakery anymore.
Flashes of feelings, sights, and smells tore through my bliss like bullets.
The scent of fish.
The sting of plastic cable ties cutting into my wrists.
A gun digging into my temple.
A cock burrowing into my mouth.
And two thick, rough fingers, belonging to unseen hands, shoving into me from behind.
My stomach lurched, and I pushed away from him, afraid I was going to be sick. I scurried backward across the cold tiled floor until my back hit the cabinets behind the display case. Then, I pulled my knees to my chest and stared at Damien’s horrified face, which I was sure mirrored my own.
“Clo?”
My breaths were coming loud and fast. I could hear them, but the air wasn’t getting in. It wasn’t getting in!
“Fuck, Clo. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I shouldn’t have … ”
Tightening my arms around my knees, I cried out in pain when my hands closed around my wrists. Shaking, I lifted one arm and saw a deep red slice encircling it and stripes of dried blood trailing from my wrist to my knuckles.
A scream lodged in my throat.
Damien said something else, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything but a chorus of men shouting at me in Russian.
Lifting my other hand, I found a bloody gash matching the first. It throbbed under my sudden attention, alerting me to the fact that this was no nightmare. This was real.
It had all been real. The attack in the field. The helplessness. The terror. Liv and Sophie. Mr. McCormick. The dehumanization. The violation. Damien speaking Russian. Damien killing.
And killing.
And killing.
“I was too late.”
His voice pulled me back to the present, but my heart was still pounding, my throat still suffocatingly tight. I tried to focus on his face. I watched it harden in the shadows just before the side of his fist shot out and slammed into a cabinet door.
I jumped, squeezing my eyes shut and hugging my knees as I willed myself to breathe normally.
“I was too fucking late!”
I shook my head. It was the only reassurance I could give him. I wanted to smile, to put on a brave face, but I couldn’t move. And when I finally opened my eyes, all I could see were my bruised legs disappearing into a pair of boots that looked just like theirs .
Damien was one of them.
And not just because his father had made him join. There was a dark, violent need in him that I’d seen in those men, and I was seeing it all over again as he stalked toward me on all fours. His wrathful gaze roamed over my injured body as his lip curled into a sneer and his muscles rippled with every stride.
“You weren’t too late,” I sputtered, scooting away from him in vain. “I’m fine. I just—”
Grabbing one of my forearms, Damien lifted it into the air as his glowing gray eyes bored into mine. “Fine?” He shook my arm in anger. “Does this look fine ?” Then, he lifted it even higher and pointed at my blackened ribs underneath. “What about this?”
“Damien, stop it.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“You saved me before anything happened.”
“They beat the shite outta you, Clo!”
“I know!” I snapped, snatching my hand away from him. “I was there!”
“And I fucking wasn’t!”
I flinched at Damien’s sudden outburst, my heart galloping in my chest as I slammed my eyes shut and braced myself for the smack—the crack of skin on skin that would ring in my ears, taunting me, laughing at me long after the blow.
But there was only silence.
Lifting one eyelid, I found Damien sitting back on his heels—lips parted and eyes wide, as if my reaction had physically punched him.
I couldn’t reconcile the wounded man I saw kneeling before me—shoulders hunched in shame, brow furrowed in remorse—with the salivating beast who’d murdered a room full of men, some with his bare hands, just hours earlier. It was as if there were two men sharing the same skin—Damien Hughes, the sweet, selfless Irish boy with a hidden dimple and a talent for drawing; and the lieutenant, a commanding, merciless killing machine, forged by the Russian Mafia and destined to rule over it one day.
Damien would never hurt me. I knew that. I did.
But the lieutenant?
He hurt everything he touched.
Damien finally opened his mouth to say something, but the sound I heard next wasn’t human. It was the groaning of weight on an old wooden floorboard, and it came from the stairwell in the corner of the bakery behind me.
Damien’s eyes darted over my shoulder to the pitch-black doorway, and when they returned to mine, they were harder than gunmetal and twice as deadly.
The lieutenant was back.
And I hated how relieved I was to see him.