Chapter 20 #2
He's trying to find the flaw in what I just said.
He can't find it.
So instead, I cross the room without thinking, the tile cold under my feet.
When I reach him, I sink to my knees, hands sliding down his chest, his abdomen, until my fingers hook into the waistband of his pants and tug them down.
I want to show him that even when Ian’s the one who can calm me in sleep, it’s Reth I want. It’s him I love. Crave. Always him.
His cock springs free, already thick and heavy, twitching under my gaze.
“Sophia—” His hand catches my wrist, voice rough with warning. “Get up. You don’t—fuck.”
I drag my tongue up the underside of his shaft, from base to tip, savoring the velvet heat of him. A broken growl tears out of his throat. His fingers fist in my hair, not pulling me away, but holding on like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to this earth.
“I’m here…on this island, in this room…on my knees in front of you because I want to be here.”
I lick him again, slower, tracing every vein, swirling my tongue around the swollen head until his thighs start to tremble. Then I slide my lips over him, taking him deeper, inch by inch, until he bumps the back of my throat. I breathe through my nose and relax, swallowing around him.
His hips twitch, fighting the urge to thrust. “You have no idea how dangerous you are to me.” His grip tightens in my hair, guiding me now.
I moan around him, the vibration pulling another throaty sound from his chest. I start to move—slow, wet pulls, hollowing my cheeks on the way up, taking him deep on the way down.
Spit drips down my chin. My eyes water. But I don’t stop.
I worship him with my mouth, my tongue, every hollow and stroke telling him what words never could.
I’m still here. Still yours. Even when you hate yourself.
I take him deeper, until my nose presses against his pelvis and I hold there, throat working around him. His head falls back against the wall with a dull thud, a raw, broken moan ripping out of him.
When I pull back for air, strings of spit connect my swollen lips to his glistening cock. I look up at him, eyes glassy, and whisper, “I love you like this. Lost. Mine.”
“No!” His hand fists in my hair and pulls. Hard. Drags me off him with a wet sound, and I gasp, looking up at him with watering eyes. He spins me, my back hitting the wall hard enough to steal my breath. "I don't come unless I'm inside you."
Then his hands are everywhere — my hips, my thighs, lifting me, pulling my panties to the side — and I wrap my legs around him on instinct and he slams inside me in one brutal stroke that punches a cry from my throat.
I’m clutching around his neck, so tight, and he’s saying my name, tearing it out like a wound. Like I’m a curse he can’t quit, or a prayer he keeps swallowing back down until it bleeds through anyway.
Forehead against mine, both of us breathing like we've been running, he moves. And something’s different.
This isn't the reverent lovemaking of the living room floor.
This isn't even the desperate reunion in the SUV on the Greek road.
This is something beyond both — something that has come loose in him, some last tether snapping, his hips driving into me with a rhythm that is equal parts fury and worship and something that has no name.
“Halloween night,” he says against my ear, low and rough, each word timed to a brutal thrust. “The night you came crashing into my life with those ridiculous lollipops.”
Breathless, my thighs clamp around his waist. My spine arches hard against the wall as pleasure spikes through me like lightning.
“There was a woman.”
Something changes in his voice. I feel it before I understand it.
He’s so deep, so thick, stretching me open with every punishing drive of his hips. For one blinding second, all I feel is heat and need and the raw ache of being claimed by him.
“She was a witness.” Another savage thrust. “Wrong place. Wrong time.” His teeth scrape down my neck. Bites. “She had a son.”
“Nazareth—”
His hand clamps over my mouth, fingers digging into my cheeks as he fucks me harder, like the confession is fuel and he’s burning us both alive with it.
“Said he was waiting for her at home.” His hips snap forward, cock dragging against that spot inside me that makes my vision spark white. “Said she was all he had.”
Lust is still flooding my veins, hot and liquid, but something colder is creeping in at the edges. A slow, sick twist in my stomach.
“She begged me.” He keeps moving, relentless, eyes wild and glassy like he’s half-mad, and I don’t know what’s happening. “She fucking begged me, crying, pleading for her life.”
“Stop,” I try to say against his palm, the word muffled and broken.
He doesn’t stop.
More brutal thrusts, each one driving me harder into the wall like he’s trying to fuck the truth into my bones. “You know what I did?” His eyes catch mine—wild, empty. Like the man I love is no longer home. “I killed her anyway.”
I shove at his chest with everything I have. “Stop!”
He pulls out of me so fast the sudden emptiness hurts. My legs give out. I crumple, sliding down the wall, tears exploding down my cheeks in violent, ugly streams. My body is still throbbing for him, still aching and wet, but my soul is shredding itself apart.
Reth staggers back, chest heaving like a wounded animal. His cock is still rock-hard, flushed dark and glistening with me, but his face—God, his face. Eyes too wide. Scar pulled tight. Hands shaking as they clench and unclench like he doesn’t know whether to destroy something or destroy himself.
“Why are you telling me this?” My voice cracks into a sob.
“You need to know what you love, Cherry-red.” His voice is wreckage—hollow, manic, splintering at the edges. “You need to know the full, rotting picture of the monster you keep spreading your legs for.”
“Don’t you fucking dare ruin this. Not us,” I spit back as I get on my feet.
But he doesn’t even register it, doesn’t hear me.
"I tried to make it right." He laughs — hollow, terrible, nothing funny in it.
"Made sure the boy got a good home. Made sure his new family had enough money.
Did everything right." He presses the heel of his hand against his eye. "You know what happened?"
I wait, shivering, even though the air is warm. Humid.
"Valeria found him. Almost had me kill that boy.
A child whose mother I took." He looks at me with those storm-dark eyes, stalks closer.
"And here's the kicker, Sophia. Here's the part you need to sit with.
" His jaw works. "If it came down to it.
If it was a real choice — his life or yours. " He holds my gaze. "I'd choose you."
My heart beats impossibly fast and loud.
"Every single time. Without hesitation,” he grinds out. “That's what I am now. A man who would choose you over an innocent child." His voice drops to almost nothing. "So when you say you love me — make sure you know what you love."
I look at him for a long moment. Feel the edges of my heart go brittle, my stomach turned inside out.
I know what he's doing, speaking the language of someone who has learned that the fastest way to end something before it can be taken from you is to destroy it yourself.
Push hard enough, and they'll leave on their own terms. Make yourself the villain of the story so the ending feels like justice rather than loss.
It's a defense mechanism so old and so practiced that most people who use it don't know they're using it.
He's trying to make me hate him.
Because hate would be cleaner than this.
Hate would give him a reason to walk away that doesn't require him to admit he's terrified.
Hate would mean he doesn't have to sit with the possibility that someone could know the full, unvarnished truth of what he is and choose him anyway — because that possibility is more dangerous to him than anything Valeria has ever done.
Being loved completely is the thing Nazareth Hale doesn't know how to survive.
I wipe my tears. Steel my shoulders. “I need some air.”
But his hand grabs my elbow, pulls me close, his forehead against my temple. “I don’t know how to love you without hurting you.”
My heart doesn’t just crack—it shatters.
“I know,” I whisper, voice destroyed. I meet his gaze. “And I’m asking you to let me love you anyway.”
I walk out.