Chapter 19
REGAN
Ipull a small loaf of banana bread from the oven and drop it onto the stove. I stand back and admire the light brown crust and the smell of fresh baking.
God, I love this stuff.
It works, almost every time, and it’s forgiving. Too much flour? No worries! Too few bananas? It won’t be great, but hey, it’ll still be bread. Good enough is good enough and that’s what I like so much about it.
I’m never wrong.
Even tonight, when I’m bored out of my mind, I can find some simple pleasure in taking raw ingredients and turning them into something good.
Idly, I wonder if Liam will eat any.
Probably not. I doubt that man’s ever so much as looked at a carb in his life based on the state of his body.
Unless he’s one of those lucky bastards who can eat whatever they want.
I’m humming to myself, cleaning up the dirty dishes, when the door rattles. I dry my hands. “Liam? Is that you?” He’s not supposed to be back yet. There’s a party tonight, a gathering of all the men at one of the Whelan family’s establishments.
I walk to the front hall, a towel over my shoulder, when the door slams open.
“What the—“
I take a step back, hand flying to my chest, as Liam storms inside.
“Regan,” he says, snapping my name out like it’s an attack. He slams the door behind him, closes the bolt, and slides in the chain.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
He turns and comes at me. I yelp, stumbling backward, but he grabs me and pulls me into him. His hands move over my body like he’s making sure I’m not wounded, and holy crap, a surge of desire and adrenaline pours into my core. My mouth hangs open and I can’t quite make words form.
That’s when I notice the blood.
“Stay right here,” he snarls, releasing me and striding into the apartment.
“Liam? What’s happening? Are you hurt?”
I ignore his command and follow. He’s manically searching the place, peeking behind the couch, checking all the closets, like he’s trying to play a game of psychopath hide-and-seek.
It might be funny if he weren’t covered in blood.
“Liam!” I grab him by the wrist. He pauses only for a moment.
“It’s not mine,” he says, answering my unspoken question, before pulling away to finish his search.
I stay behind, head ringing.
Not his blood.
But there’s a lot of it…
Someone’s hurt, and they’re hurt bad.
Worry creeps down my spine.
Dad and Luke were at that meeting.
“Slow down,” I say, catching up with him in the bedroom. He’s finished with his sweep of the shower and now he’s checking under the bed. “Would you hold on and talk to me? Is my dad okay? What about my brother?”
“Luke’s fine.” He gets to his feet, apparently satisfied that there aren’t any monsters lurking. “I’m not sure about your father, but I didn’t see his—“ Liam stops before he finishes that sentence. His face tightens and he looks down at his hands. He flexes them and lets out a breath.
“Liam… what happened?”
He touches my cheek. I feel a smear of something cold under his fingers. He tugs me closer, hands brushing down to my neck, before he crushes his lips to my mouth in a blistering, hungry, terror-inducing kiss.
The taste of him sends a shiver through me.
I whimper against his lips, wanting more, but needing to hear him talk.
Instead, he touches me, drags me to the table, shoves off silverware and papers sending them clattering to the floor, and lifts me up.
I wrap my legs around his hips as he rocks forward, tongue against mine, devouring me, and I feel his anxiety and his need peak as his hands roughly tug at my hair.
“Liam,” I moan, begging. “Please—“
He yanks hard, making my back arch. I grunt with pain as he nips hard at my neck and my throat.
He pulls up my top, hands palming my breasts.
I’m not wearing a bra and part of me wishes I was.
My nipples are hard and it feels good, letting him touch me like this.
He bends down to take one bud between his teeth and licks, sucking, making my hips wriggle with pleasure as I yank his hair in return.
“There was a shooting,” he says, kissing lower, sucking and biting as he goes. I lift up and let him slide my jeans off. “It was bad, love.”
“I have to… we have to…”
“I came home to take care of you.” He looks up as he kneels, mouth kissing my hips, around my panties. My core goes wild and my heart pounds into my skull, making me dizzy. “Let me take care of you, Regan.”
I hear it then, what he really needs. This isn’t only about me.
He wants this too, desperately, like touching me will somehow bring him back to reality, somehow ground him.
And now that he’s kissing me like that, how can I deny this?
How am I supposed to stop it when the most terrifying and beautiful person I’ve ever met wants to make me feel good?
Desperately, with an intensity that’s frankly insane?
There’s no other option.
I spread my legs wide and pull his mouth to my pussy.
He moans with delight as he shoves my panties aside. His tongue laps me, licking up and down, sucking and smacking in the obscenest way I’ve ever heard. He yanks my panties down after a moment, gets them off, and continues with more space to work, and it’s magical.
I lose my mind. He slides two fingers deep inside and it hits me like a lightning blast. I arch, grinding into his mouth, greedy and pulsing for everything he can give.
“Fuck, Regan, you should have seen them—“ He sucks my clit and fingers me deep. “Broken. Destroyed.”
“Why… why are you telling me that… right now…”
“I don’t know,” he admits, going faster, sucking and licking me with a wild fervor.
God, it feels so good, he could sing the national anthem right now and it wouldn’t matter.
“I keep seeing the blood… hearing the gunshots…” He snarls and stands, jerking to his feet.
I gasp, leaning forward as he rips his jeans off, kicking them to the side.
I get his shirt unbuttoned, the blood still soaking the cotton as he tosses it on the pile.
Naked, gorgeous, hard as hell and throbbing.
I pull him to me, kissing the whirls of scar tissue on his chest, kissing the tattoos, the muscle, tasting the sweat on his skin, the sharp acidic bite of something else.
Gunpowder? Ashes? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
He fists my hair and kisses me hard as his cock swirls up and down my slit.
“Fuck baby,” he says, the tip sinking inside, agonizingly slow.
I whimper, wanting more, but he holds me back.
“When it was happening, this is what I was thinking about. Isn’t that fucked?
My world was falling apart, and all I could picture was you. ”
“Liam, I want it,” I whisper, leaning forward to bite his chest. “God, please, I want all of it.”
“I know you do, baby.” He gives me an inch more. I moan in frustration. “I don’t know how many we lost tonight, but I swear… to you, to the world… I’m going to kill them all. I’m going to hunt them down and ruin them.”
“Liam.”
He thrusts himself inside and I gasp, bliss exploding behind my eyes as he fucks me.
The table shakes and wobbles. Liam’s not kind and he doesn’t seem to care if he shatters the whole building.
He slams into me with a reckless need, plunging in deep and snarling like a beast, kissing my neck, praising my body as his mouth finds my tits and his big palm wraps around my throat.
I become his, all his, my body glowing and burning with the ruin he brings to me, the way he fills me and fucks me, the way he makes me filthy and builds me whole again.
As he grips my hair, his cock plunging in deep and soaking and incredible, I know this is what’ll ruin me, this right here, the way this man makes me feel, both alive and terrified of how much more I want from him, the way I can’t get it out of my head either.
He’s all I think about, all I want, as he drives himself inside me.
“When you finish… I’m going to fill you… and then I’m going to taste it. So please, love, finish fast, because I’m not strong right now.”
“Liam, keep going.”
“Faster, love. God, I’m going to fucking come inside of you. I’m going to fill you to the brim.”
“Oh my god, don’t stop.” I grab his hips as he hammers me and I can’t take it anymore. He moans and as I feel his warmth fill me, my triggers pull and I explode. I shatter, breaking, coming, gasping, sweating, grinding, greedy for every sensation, every spine-destroying moment, every inch of him.
As promised, with a gasp, he pulls out, drops down, and licks me.
Licks my cum-filled pussy with a greedy snarl.
“Perfect,” he says, eyes and lips shining.
He kisses me, making me taste the swirling combination of our sex.
And god, I’m sick, but I love it.
We stay on the table for a minute, breathing and coming down, until he leads me into the bathroom with him.
Wordlessly he turns on the shower and we get in together.
Streams of blood turn the water pink at first. I lather and soap him, washing anywhere blood might be hiding, until the water runs clear.
He starts to talk. He tells me about the meeting, the attack, saving my brother, coming to find me. I can’t imagine what he went through and how he came out of it on the other side, but I’m immensely grateful for what he did.
“You saved him,” I whisper, water running down our faces as he kisses me. “You didn’t have to, but you did anyway.”
“I knew you’d want me to.”
“Thank you.” I hug him hard, pressing my eyes shut. “I don’t know… what I would have done…”
“You don’t have to find out.”
He holds me in the warm water, the strength of him, his solid body, his mass of muscle, comforting me even though it feels like the steady, perfect, understandable world I thought I knew crumbles all around me.