55. Watcher
Watcher
Silas
“Fuck, Caroline,” I growl, my grip tightening on her hips as I bury myself inside her. “This cunt remembers me, doesn’t it?”
She writhes around the belt between her teeth, muffled sounds of pleasure escaping her lips. But I need more. I need to hear her. Every broken moan, every desperate plea. With one swift motion, I yank the leather from her mouth and toss it to the ground.
“Tell me, wife ,” I demand. “Tell me there’s been no other.”
Her chest heaves, her walls tightening around me in response. “It’s only ever been you, Silas,” she gasps out between thrusts, voice raw with need. “Only you.”
A dark satisfaction twists in my gut. “Such a good fucking wife.”
I pull out, just long enough to spin her around, my eyes locking onto hers. Glassy and wild, her pupils blown wide, cheeks flushed deep with heat. Her lips part, swollen and begging to be devoured.
I don’t waste a second.
Lifting her easily, I drive back inside her, her legs locking around my waist as she clings to me. She trembles in my grasp, fingers digging into my shoulders, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips, her breaths coming in fluttering gasps.
I thrust deep, hard, unforgivingly. “I’ve waited for you, Caroline,” I bite out, each stroke driving my words home. “No one else. Not since you.”
Her nails rake down my back, her body arching into mine. “You’re mine, Silas,” she pants, each syllable laced with possession. “ Fucking mine. Stop running.”
Her head tilts back against the wall, her lips parting as a cry spills from her throat. I feel her tightening around me, her body on the edge, teetering between pleasure and oblivion.
“Come for me, wife,” I demand. My hand fists in her hair, forcing her eyes back to mine. “Eyes on me. Show me how you fucking fall apart when you’ve been claimed .”
Just as I think she is about to come, a shuffle of boots on gravel catches my attention. Her body stiffens beneath my hands, her eyes flying open, darting toward the stables. I follow her gaze, my grip tightening instinctively when I see him. Marcel stands frozen, wide-eyed, watching us.
Caroline’s breath hitches, her hands pressing against my chest as if she might push me away. But I don’t let her. My fingers dig into her hips, keeping her right where I want her. My voice is possessive, a growl that rumbles through my chest.
“No. You show him who you belong to.”
Her gaze snaps back to mine, her eyes wide with apprehension, her cheeks burning red. I can feel the way her body trembles, not from fear but from the undeniable pull between us.
“This whole damn ranch is going to hear you scream my name,” I tell her, my grip punishing as I start to move again. Slow and deep, making sure she feels every inch of me. “I want the living and the dead to know you’re mine, wife .”
Her lips press together, trying to muffle the sounds threatening to spill from them, but I won’t have it. Not tonight. I thrust harder, faster, my hands tilting her hips just right, and she finally breaks. A gasp, then a moan, then a desperate, needy cry.
Marcel doesn’t waste time turning toward the house, his boots crunching against the gravel as he disappears. A dark satisfaction courses through me, knowing he won’t be forgetting what he just saw.
Caroline trembles in my arms, her fingers curling into my shoulders. “Silas, that was?—”
“I don’t care,” I cut her off. “He knows his place now.”
Her breaths come faster, her moans growing louder, no longer restrained. Her body responds to mine with an urgency that has my control slipping. “I’m going to fill this cunt,” I snarl against her ear. “Have you dripping all the way to my bed.”
Her walls tighten, clenching around me like a vise. My rhythm falters as the heat twists low and tight in my spine. We struggle to stay balanced, her body arching into mine, desperate and wild.
Then she breaks.
She cries out my name, her body locking up, and it pushes me over the edge. The release slams into me like a tornado on a clear night, my vision going white at the edges as pleasure overtakes every nerve ending. I pulse inside her, each wave sending tremors through my entire body.
The world around us fades. The distant sounds of water, the rhythmic thundering of our heartbeats in my ears. I feel her in a way I never have before, as if every emotion she is experiencing is pouring straight into me. My eyes snap open, finding hers wide, filled with bewilderment and awe.
We keep moving, riding the high, stretching it out as long as possible.
Then I see it.
Tears gather at the corners of her eyes, not from sadness, but from our bond. Something that reaches back to every morning we woke up tangled in each other’s arms. Every whispered confession, every time I kissed her just because I could.
The sound of our wedding vows ring in my head. The pride and love I felt watching her body change as our son grew inside her. The way she looked fresh out of the shower. The sound of her soft breaths as she slept. The way she would know my thoughts before I spoke.
The years of our love, how we found our way to each other in life and now again in death, fall over me.
She smiles, lips curving, eyes soft, and I am undone.
I am hers. I have always been hers.
The realization crashes over me, violent and merciless, like a river that’s broken free from a dam.
It’s not new, not some revelation that crept up on me in the dark.
No, it’s always been there, buried under layers of anger, regret, and the years I spent convincing myself I didn’t need her.
That I could live without her. That I could forget.
But I never did.
Every moment apart was a slow, steady ache in my chest. Every day without her was hollow, every night haunted by the memory of her touch, her voice, her goddamn fire that burned through me like she was made to live beneath my skin.
Caroline.
And right now, she’s looking at me like she knows.
Like she feels it, too.
Her fingers brush against the back of my neck, her nails dragging just enough to send a shiver down my spine. I swallow hard, my hands tightening on her hips as I hold her against me. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I can say anything.
She tilts her head, breath hitching, and I see it all in her eyes. The past, the present, the war between us that’s never been about hate. It’s always been this. This need, this fire, this love that remained even in our time apart.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask for promises or pretty words. She just stays there, pressed against me, waiting.
And that’s when I know.
I was a fool to think I could ever let her go.