Chapter 33 #2
Leaning forward, she ran her tongue along the length of me, swirling at the head of my cock before swallowing me whole one more time, humming, and just when I thought I was going to explode down her throat, she released me. “Tell me what you want most.”
“You.”
Lifting an eyebrow, she asked. “Me? Not your father’s kingdom?”
I shook my head as she gripped my balls tight and pulled. That edge of my release dissipated slightly as she ran her finger along the spot between my balls and ass. My words were a moan as she played with my asshole. “It would be nothing without you by my side.”
She continued her ministrations, and before long I was teetering on the edge again. “Please, Goddess. Please let me cum.”
Her voice was laced with silk and agony. I wasn’t sure how she did it, made a sultry voice sound so depleting. “Not yet. You say you want me, but your family has destroyed my world.”
“And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.” Regret filled me for a split second before she pulled on my balls and licked through the head of me as she held my gaze. Shadows passed through her eyes as I watched the lust dance within them.
As I held her gaze, there was a darkness that pushed away that lust, and the hard swallow that followed had my blood racing.
“Goddess?” She didn’t answer, just released me, standing up tall, back straight, one hand balled into a fist, the other tight around the handle of the crop.
She took a breath as she looked down the length of me, my cock twitching at the heat that came back in that look, but then the darkness was back. “Goddess? What is wrong?”
“Why did you kill my father?” Her voice was soft, and for a moment, I didn’t see the woman I loved.
I saw the daughter who’d lost everything.
All the sadness on the surface. When her focus met mine again, she screamed, “Why did you kill my father?” She swung the crop and it landed on my cock, pleasure and pain spiking up my spine.
“You knew how much he and Rhea loved each other. How much he meant to me.”
“I didn’t!” The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“What?” Her arm stopped mid-swing. Letting out a long breath, flopping my head back on the mattress, I tried to figure out how I was going to tell her. “What did you just say, Gavriel?”
I lowered my gaze so I could look down my body and see her beautiful, devastated face.
“I didn’t order his death. I didn’t kill him.
My sister loved him with everything she had.
He loved her. My father wanted to marry her off to the Juarez family, and Joel was actively in the way of that.
So, he killed him then had his guards put guns to my head as he forced me to cut his heart out and present it to her.
” I felt hot tears welling in my throat.
Relief loosening my chest at revealing the one secret I had been keeping from my Elin. “He made me do it!”
Her head cocked to the side in confusion, as her hand squeezed my cock hard, but the way she was looking at me was not my Goddess. This was the broken-hearted daughter I had fallen in love with. “What did you say?”
Sitting up, I reached out, cupping her face in my hands, and staring straight into her eyes as I repeated the words. “I didn’t kill your dad. I didn’t kill my best friend. I didn’t kill the man my sister still loves with every fiber in her being.”
Elin crumbled to the floor, staring off into space. “No. You killed him. You carved his heart out and gave it to Rhea. She told me.”
Without thinking about it, I slid off the bed to sit on the floor with her, took her hands in mine, and squeezed them.
She needed to understand. Needed to finally know the truth of that night.
My chest felt empty as my pleasure gave way to fear of the words I was about to say.
Fear that once she knew everything, really knew, she would walk away forever.
She needed to stay. Elin Perkins was who I needed in my life.
“I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I was forced at multiple gunpoints to cut it out and ‘present’ it to Rhea as a gift. I am the Owl’s Talon. I am brutal and ruthless in many aspects, but I would never be that cruel to my own sister.”
Her gaze snapped up to meet mine. She’d wanted to know, and I was telling her.
I hadn’t been lying when I’d told her she could ask me anything and she would get an answer.
“I knew that Joel and Rhea were happy. I had been talking to Joel to see if there was a way that we could go to my father and get his blessing. You could see how much they cared for each other just with a glance. Everyone could. They were two forces pulled together, much like us. I got a text from a friend that said my father was going to Joel’s office to fix a problem, and that Rhea was with him.
When I arrived, Rhea was being held back by two guards, screaming, and crying.
I looked down and saw Joel lying in that pool of blood that you saw when you arrived later that night.
I was furious, but before I could turn on Don Azzaro, three guns were pointed at my head and I was ordered to carve out his heart. ”
“Why have you let everyone believe that you did it? Why didn’t you tell me?” She was pleading, tears streaming down her face.
I wiped them away with the pad of my thumb, hating that I was the cause of them.
“It’s better people believe I would kill my own partners or friends if they disrespect or betray the family.
There are only a handful of people who know the truth, Rhea being one of them.
She doesn’t remember much, other than Father pulling the trigger, watching Joel die, and me kneeling before her with his heart in my hands.
” My thumbs moving back and forth as her focus bounced between my eyes as I whispered, “And now you know, my Goddess . . . my Elin.” My heart hammered in my chest, relief and terror wrestling for control.
I’d finally told her the truth, and now she held the very thing that could destroy me. My heart.
I waited for her to say something. Her eyes filled with tears, and I watched sadness, disappointment, fear, confusion, and about a billion other emotions go across her face. “Elin. Please say something.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
The question hung between us like a loaded gun pointed straight at her head.
My pulse hammered in my throat as I watched her face—the slight tremble of her lower lip, the way her fingers curled into fists.
One wrong word and I'd lose her. The Owl’s Talon, feared all along the West Coast, reduced to this desperate, naked man waiting for judgment.
Shame filled me as I let out a long breath. "You were the snot-nosed daughter of my partner. I hated you. I didn't give a fuck about what you thought of me."
Her eyes widened slightly. I could see her processing, calculating, deciding whether to believe me or walk away forever. The seconds stretched on in silence.
In slow movements, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead, breathing in the scent of her hair, memorizing it in case this was the last time. "Now, I don't want to imagine my world without you, Elin. As my Goddess or as mine. I need you in my life."
The confession left me exposed in a way bullets and blades never could. I held perfectly still, hardly breathing, watching her face for any sign of what came next.
She crawled into my lap and laid her head on my chest. "I don't have to hate my pretty boy. I can let the last shred of hate go. I can have happiness and don't have to feel guilty about loving Gavriel Azzaro."
My heart jumped at that. I wrapped my arms tighter around her and kissed the top of her head. I was reasonably sure that she hadn't meant to say the quiet part out loud, and I was going to let her have her moment.
I grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around us, giving her another soft kiss on the forehead. She always took care of me, and this time, while she sorted through her feelings, her Pretty Boy was going to take care of his Goddess.