Chapter 3 #2
And it always went the same way. The pretty, lost little toys he found always bloomed under his hands, but they didn’t offer much care in return. They were good at taking. They were great at coming. They were selfish as fuck, and he always ended up emptier and grimmer for it.
But he was reformed now. He taught anyone who came to his gym how to protect themselves, no more and no less. He was no one’s hero and damn sure no champion.
A stint in prison would do that to a man. It was on him that it had taken so long after his release to learn the right lessons.
Zachary pushed back from the window, deciding he would go for a long, hard run along the Bay Trail. Always extra spicy at night, but nothing scared him much these days. He couldn’t tell if that was because he was that powerful—or that numb.
Maybe the real truth was that he was afraid he knew the answer.
Still, he took one last look at the marina before he went. And stopped moving. Because he could see her, climbing off her boat and onto the dock with her head down, some kind of hoodie on, and her hands shoved in her pockets.
Zachary knew immediately that she was having the same kind of night that he was, and she was heading out to walk it off.
Like the dumbass she was. A guaranteed mess. There were so many red flags it was a goddamned parade.
And tonight he was not in the mood to shadow her and make sure she was okay, the way he’d done more than once before and left her none the wiser.
Tonight he had other things on his mind.
And red flags had always been his favorite.
So he headed out, jogging down to the alley and rounding the building, making it to the gated entrance of her marina right as she was coming up the walkway from the docks.
He waited for her to close the gate behind her.
He watched her look—involuntarily, he thought, if he was any kind of judge of people’s expressions and as it happened, he was—down the line of buildings like she was looking for lights in the gym.
He could have stepped out of the shadows. He didn’t.
Instead, he watched her blow out a breath, shake her head slightly, and then turn toward the old Port building.
“Hey,” he said then, moving out of the shadows. “Don’t you think you’re forgetting something?”
He could tell she knew exactly who was talking to her before she turned. And her amber eyes were wide when she swiveled back around, confirming it. Zachary had the great pleasure of watching her cheeks stain red.
“Um,” was what she said.
He moved closer, not sure if she would run—but she didn’t. And maybe that was a disappointment, he could admit, because he was already so hard he ached.
“Name?”
He didn’t really ask her. It was an order.
And he watched her eyes change. He watched her cheeks get redder. He could see the way she shifted on her feet.
Not that he’d had any doubt. But she was proving him right just the same.
“Romily,” she said. “Romily Sargent.”
It sounded like a song to him . He’d never heard that name before, but he thought it suited her.
He understood then that he was going to wreck himself on this woman. That it had always been leading straight here. That this had been completely inevitable since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her months ago.
There was a kind of liberation in accepting it.
“Zachary,” he told her.
“Zachary London?”
She said it like she was putting puzzle pieces together. “You can read.”
He watched her swallow, hard. “I want to apologize—” she began.
“Oh, baby girl, it’s way too late for that,” he said. Maybe he almost crooned it, there in the thick dark.
He moved closer and, finally, he indulged himself. He pushed her hoodie back from her face. She had to tip her head way back to keep looking him in the eye and he liked that. He could see her pulse go wild in her neck and he liked that more.
Zachary reached over and slid his hand along the line of her jaw, then curled his fingers into her hair. It was silky and warm. She smelled like jasmine.
Night-blooming. His favorite.
He thought his dick might explode.
So he hauled her to him and got his mouth on hers.
And he didn’t play.
He kissed her filthy. He kissed her deep. He ate at her mouth and he didn’t take it easy on her. He kept kissing her until she was making hot, sweet noises in her throat and when he pulled back, she looked a lot like she’d come again.
Though he knew better. Coming close wasn’t coming.
He was something of an expert on that sliver of space and sensation in between.
Her pupils were dilated. Her mouth was sloppy from his. She was gripping his t-shirt like she wanted to climb him.
“Something you should know about me, Romily, is that I don’t let a woman come without my permission.” He nipped at her lip, just hard enough to make her flush a darker pink. “And certainly not twice.”
“What… how can I make it up to you?” she asked, and her voice was husky. A little bit wild.
Zachary knew surrender when he tasted it.
So he held out his hand and waited for her to take it. “Let’s call it a do-over,” he said. “We can see if you know how to behave.”
Romily didn’t pretend she didn’t know what he meant. She swallowed again, hard, at what might have been the same images of the two of them fucking in her head that he had in his. If her expression was anything to go by. “And if I don’t?”
But Zachary didn’t answer that. He just smiled. And kept his hand outstretched.
Romily looked past him, like she was judging the distance to her boat. Or her likelihood of getting tossed over his shoulder, which was currently pretty fucking high.
She didn’t run. What she did was lick her lips, which he thought might kill him.
Then she reached out and slipped her hand in his.
“Okay,” she said, though her voice still gave her away. “Let’s do this.”
“Call it what it is, baby,” he told her, and that, too, was a command.
Her whole body came to attention. She had to blink a few times.
“Okay,” she breathed. “Let’s go fuck.”
“And?”
Romily made a soft noise of something that sounded like distress, but he knew it was more textured than that.
He could feel it him, too.
“And let’s see,” she said, so prettily, like she was made for him, “if I can make it up to you.”