Chapter 12
SOPHIA
Iwake to the smell of apple and cinnamon, and it’s the familiarity that hits me first. For a second, I’m back in the mountain house, waking up in that cold room the first morning. So scared. Panicked. All my thoughts pointing in one direction. Escape.
It’s almost surreal how things have changed, how different everything is now.
For a long moment, I don’t move. I just lie there, cheek pressed to the pillow that still carries the scent of his skin, letting the ache in my body speak.
My thighs are deliciously sore, my neck bears the faint sting of his teeth, and between my legs there’s a deep, tender throb that reminds me exactly how many times he took me apart and put me back together again.
Every mark, every ache, every place he kissed like he was trying to memorize me… they all sing the same quiet truth.
I’m ruined for anyone else. And he’s insatiable.
I slip from the bed and pull his black shirt over my bare body. The hem brushes my thighs like a secret, and it smells like him—leather, smoke, and that faint trace of winter even in the middle of a Paris summer. I bury my nose in the collar, inhaling deeply as I pad to the bedroom door.
The kitchen is bathed in that soft, morning Paris light, the kind that feels like melted honey. Everything seems brighter, and I’m certain I’ve never seen this shade of morning before. Like the sun breaking through after months of rain.
Reth’s standing at the counter, sleeves pushed high on his forearms, flour dusting his knuckles, the buff back in place. My chest tightens at the sight of him—quiet, focused, baking like it’s the most natural thing in the world for a man who once told me he wasn’t capable of gentle things.
He doesn’t look up when I lean against the doorframe, but I know he feels me. He always does.
“You’re baking,” I say softly.
His hands still for half a breath. “Yes.”
I pad closer, bare feet silent on the cool floor. “It’s barely seven. Did you sleep at all?”
He measures sugar with the same precision he uses for everything else. “No.”
I stop right in front of him, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body.
“Why not?”
He sets the bowl down. For a moment, he just stands there, broad shoulders tight, then lifts those winter-blue eyes to mine.
“Because I’m too busy counting seconds with you.”
Well, shit. There goes my heart, my soul, and everything in between. I don’t have words for what that does to me, so I don’t try. I simply reach up, hook my fingers under the edge of his buff, and slowly drag it down below his chin, below that scarred, beautiful mouth I love so much.
He goes perfectly still.
I rise onto my toes and kiss him—slow, deep, and aching. Not the frantic kind from last night, but the kind that says I’m here. I’m still here. Stay.
Our tongues touch, and his hand comes up to cradle the back of my neck, thumb stroking my jaw like I’m something infinitely precious. The kiss deepens, softens, becomes something that makes my toes curl against the cold floor.
When we break apart, his eyes are darker than before, hungry, and his gaze falls to a spot on my neck, his finger barely touching it. “I hurt you.”
“You did a lot of things to me last night, but hurting me wasn’t one of them.”
“Promise me you’ll tell me…if I cross a line. I don’t want to hurt you.”
I brush a streak of flour from his forehead with my thumb, then let my fingers trail down the side of his face, tracing the scar I now know by heart.
“You’ll never hurt me,” I say. “Not my body, anyway.”
He bows his head, closing the distance until his lips graze the bruised skin with infinite care, his breath warm, his voice wrecked. “It’s only—” a kiss, “ever—” a gentle lick, “been you.”
Those words penetrate bone every time.
I let him press soft, reverent kisses up the slope of my neck, a heat gathering behind my ribs and radiating out to all the bruised, fragile parts of me.
For all his violence, this is the side of Reth that unravels me the fastest, the infinite gentleness threaded beneath the threat.
And for a second, I’m impossibly close to falling apart again.
When he finally pulls back, his closeness lingers—like a pressure, a warmth, an ambient charge that vibrates between us. He turns his attention back to the baking, and I instantly develop a love-hate relationship with apple-cinnamon muffins.
I hop onto the counter beside him, his shirt riding up my thighs, and I catch the way his gaze keeps drifting to my bare legs. I reach out and take his left hand in both of mine, turning it gently.
The tattoo across his knuckles. I noticed the new ink last night but filed it away for when we weren’t trying to fuck each other into a stupor.
“This is new,” I say, easing my fingertips over it. East. West. North. South. A shattered compass, glass fractured, needle broken—but the remaining piece points straight toward his ring finger. North.
“What does this mean?”
He stares down at our joined hands for a long moment before answering, “It’s a promise.”
“To who?” I wait.
“Myself.” Gaze catches mine. “And you.”
“Me? What promise?”
His throat works, and there’s a subtle shift in his shoulders, like a wall slowly creeping back up. I don’t want it to, so I don't push. Some things are said loudly enough in silence. I just hold his hand for a moment longer, then set it back down and watch him finish folding the batter.
“How many times have you made these?”
A pause. “Enough.”
“For me?”
He doesn't answer immediately. Transfers the batter to the tray in slow, even portions. “I made them before you knew I existed.”
The words land quietly. I sit with them—with the image of him in some other kitchen, in some other city, making the one thing he knows how to make for a woman who didn't know he was alive.
“Reth.”
“Mm.”
“That's the saddest, yet most romantic thing you've ever said to me.”
He slides the tray into the oven and closes the door and turns to look at me. Really look—the direct, unguarded version that I still don't entirely know what to do with even after everything.
“They're better now,” he says.
“The muffins?”
“Yes.”
I hold his gaze. “Why?”
The corner of his mouth moves. Just slightly. “Because you're here to eat them.”
He steps between my spread thighs like the entire kitchen was built for this moment alone. The morning light pours over us, soft and golden, but the way he looks at me is anything but soft. It’s dark. Hungry. Reverent. Like I’m the only thing in the world that makes sense to him.
Without a word, he hooks his fingers under the hem of his shirt I’m wearing and drags it slowly up my body.
Cool air kisses my heated skin as he pulls it over my head and drops it to the floor.
His gaze drags over every inch of me like he’s memorizing me all over again—lingering on my breasts, the curve of my waist, the way my thighs are already trembling around his hips.
“Hands on the counter,” he orders. “Either side. Don’t move them.”
I obey instantly, gripping the edge until my knuckles whiten. He wants me displayed. Open. Offered up like a meal he’s going to savor.
He leans in, nose nudging under my chin, forcing my head to tilt back and expose my throat to him. For a long, agonizing second he just breathes against my skin, letting the anticipation coil tighter in my belly. Then his mouth descends.
The first slow, wet drag of his tongue down my throat makes my back arch.
He licks me like he’s tasting something sacred—long, deliberate strokes downward, then from my collarbone all the way to just beneath my ear.
When he reaches the sensitive spot that always undoes me, he sucks gently, then harder, pulling the delicate skin between his lips with a low, hungry groan that slithers straight down between my legs.
“Reth…” I whimper, already breathless.
He doesn’t answer with words. He answers with worship.
His mouth trails to just below my jaw, over my pulse-point. “This spot right here…I can feel how fast your heart’s racing.”
I quiver as he licks all the way down…down…
so achingly slow, until his hot breath fans over the swell of my breast. He pauses there, eyes closed, like he’s breathing me in.
Then his tongue circles my left nipple in lazy, teasing strokes—slow, sensual, maddening.
Round and round, never quite giving me what I need, until the peak is tight and aching, glistening with his spit.
A broken sound escapes me. Only then does he close his mouth over it.
He sucks me deep, tongue flicking and swirling, pulling my nipple against the roof of his mouth with devastating patience.
The wet heat, the rhythmic suction, the way he groans like my taste is addictive—it sends sharp pulses of pleasure straight to my clit.
His hand comes up to cup my other breast, squeezing gently, possessively, rolling the neglected nipple between his fingers until I’m panting, hips rolling helplessly against nothing.
He switches sides, giving the other nipple the same torturous devotion—licking, lapping, sucking until both my breasts are flushed, shiny, and throbbing. Every pull of his mouth sends another rush of heat between my thighs.
“Take out my cock, Sophia,” he murmurs against my breast.
My hands are trembling as I reach down and tug his zipper open. The sound he makes when I wrap my fingers around him is almost nothing. Almost. It moves through his chest and into mine and stays there.
A rush of air escapes me when he snakes one arm around my waist and yanks me right to the very edge of the counter. The blunt head of his cock nudges my soaked entrance, teasing, coating himself in my slick. Then he pushes in, stretching me open inch by thick inch until he’s buried to the hilt.
We both moan, and my fingers grip the counter’s edge hard, trembling with the decadent ache of being so full.