Chapter 6 Avery #2
His whole body flinches, tenses, then stills. A flurry of emotions conquers his face. Not once since I’ve known him have I seen him look this distraught.
But then something hits him. He softens, like a man who has finally reached the end of a long journey. He looks at me, pulls out his burner phone, and dials a number.
I think I’m going to pass out. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts, and my stomach has twisted itself into countless knots.
“Yo, it’s me,” he says into the phone. “I’m out.”
I hear a muffled voice on the other end, angry and sharp, a tone of disbelief.
“No, not just this job,” Chris continues, looking directly at me while he speaks. “The crew too. I’m done with all of it.”
Angier shouting from the phone. Then silence. Chris ends the call and tosses the phone aside. The room is silent. Blue light from outside bathes the room in cool tones.
“No strings. No attachments. Nothing that could potentially land you behind bars,” he rasps, turning away. Every muscle in his body is tense. When he turns back, there is brutal intent in his eyes. “I thought I could live that way forever, Avery. But then I met you.”
For a long time, I can’t speak. It’s like my mouth simply will not work. I’m stuck in a dream, just waiting to wake up, my head on the counter in the bookstore, a customer asking me if Colleen Hoover is appropriate for her fourteen-year-old daughter.
But here I am. Staring at Chris. His blue eyes anchored to me like he never wants to look away.
“I…I don’t care about the man you were,” I finally manage to whisper. “I care about who you are now. Who you choose to be.”
Something gives way behind his eyes. Not just the controlled discipline but a real emotion. The kind he never thought he would feel because he spent a lifetime building walls around it, never thinking someone would get through.
But I did.
Me. The tiny, five-foot-three girl from New Hampshire who works at a bookstore and wears old Converse and torn-up blue jeans.
I broke down the professional thief and made him mine. And I’m never leaving.
He reaches for me, and I welcome it.
There’s no aggression this time. He doesn’t grab me by the hair or bite my neck. He takes my face softly in his hands and kisses me so gently I barely even feel it.
His lips tremble against mine.
Chris, the enormous and dangerous and unbreakable man, is trembling. And the knowledge of what I do to him, what I mean to him, fills me with so much pleasure that I feel like my chest may snap.
“I’m sorry, Avery,” he says softly. “For the lies, for hiding who I am from you…”
“I know,” I say, sliding my hands through his hair. I bring his eyes to mine. “Now show me.”
He lifts me, gently this time, like I’m delicate and might break. He carries me to the bedroom and lays me down. Slowly, he pulls my shirt—his shirt—up over my head. I pull my panties down, feeling the moist fabric pull away.
I let my legs fall apart, revealing the pulsing desire between my thighs. He kneels between them and looks at me, his eyes shining through the darkness.
“You’re everything, Avery. Do you understand that?” His voice is a ragged whisper that buries his words in me. “I had nothing real before you. Just the job, the bag, and an exit plan. And then you handed me a coffee…and that all changed.”
I take his hand and place it over my heart. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
He strips off his shirt and pulls down his pants, exposing every scar and hard angle to me. I devour his perfection, his battered masculinity. He settles over me, igniting my nervous system, and presses his rock hard cock against my thigh.
Moisture gushes down my thighs as I feel his skin on my skin. His heat against mine. His muscles against my nipples cause me to whimper. Some deep urge inside me starts to rise up, something unidentifiable but desperate.
Take me, take me, take me, I say in my mind, over and over, as if he can hear me. And like he can, he kisses me. Slow and deep. His tongue dancing across mine with tenderness and lust that has my eyes pooling.
I’m dripping as he enters me, inch by inch. The stretch of acceptance is there, but this time, there’s no pain. My body knows him, opens for him, takes him in. And the feeling of fullness I get when he’s all the way in is everything.
Chris moans as he moves, slow and deliberate thrusts, like he’s trying to memorize me from the inside. I look down at his chiseled abs and the brutal v-taper leading down to where we link.
And for the first time since I’ve known him, Chris is fully naked before me. Not just his body, but him.
I can feel the want and lust, but I can also sense just how alone this man has been. How his code and discipline have isolated him from a life worth living. But now, I’m changing that for him.
His lips move up my neck, kissing along my jaw and to my lips, before he’s staring me straight in the eyes, sealing me in place with a new intensity.
“I love you,” he says.
The words come out rough and unpracticed, like he’s never said them before. And I know he hasn’t. This man has never told a woman he loves her in his life.
Just me. The eighteen-year-old with the too-loud laugh and dreams of being a photographer.
Joy grips me like a vise. Tears slide down my face and onto the pillow. “I love you too, Chris.”
He groans, giving himself fully to me. His strong hands slide down my body and grip my hips, angling me upward. The new position is so deep I cry out. He fills me completely, pumping faster, again and again, his forehead against mine, our lips a hair’s breadth apart.
“Say it again,” he whispers, his voice wrecked. “Please.”
I smile, crying as he fucks me passionately, my legs wrapped around him, pulling him as close as he can be, which is not close enough.
“I love you.”
He reacts, driving his hips harder, deeper, causing a tension to build inside me, a knot low in my belly that grows with every stroke. I buck back against him, inhaling his scent, pressing my tongue against his neck to taste his delicious sweat.
Violent lust sweeps through me like a tornado, causing my hips to rise up like an animal begging for more. As he grinds his body against mine, his skin massages my clitoris, enhancing the sensations, pushing me further and further.
“Oh God, oh God…” I whimper, feeling the swollen tip of his thick length find a spot within me that causes my jaw to drop.
My tightness clenches down on him as I feel him swell inside me, his girth threatening to split me in two.
That sensation comes back. Unknown. Unfamiliar. It’s primal. Something I know women are supposed to feel, but already? I know things are moving fast between us, but should I really be feeling that? Now?
“Come with me,” he growls. I nod feverishly. “I’m gonna fill you up, Avery. Put a baby in you.”
I fracture. Chris, you can read my mind.
My heart springs in my chest. My whole body seizes, my back arches, and my walls clamp down around his thick, pulsing rod. He said it.
A baby. Family.
That’s commitment to a full life with me. No turning back.
“Yes, get me pregnant,” I plead with him as I go off, my eyes wide, the blue light streaming in across the ocean as we writhe together as one. “I’ll have your baby, Chris.”
My whole body throbs with waves of love, lust, and relief. I can’t do anything but hang on for dear life as he sprays his precious seed into me, heat whipping through my veins.
Love overtakes me.
I moan his name, over and over as he finishes inside me and his body stiffens. He ruts deep, hands on my breasts, lips on mine, digging deep in me until we both finish. Together.
Sobbing, I wrap my arms around him and pull his face down to my neck. After a long moment, his breathing steadies.
“I’m going to give you that life, Avery,” he says with certainty, kissing me with pure ownership.
“You already are,” I whisper back. “Right now.”
He lifts his head and looks at me with those ice-blue eyes, finally stripped of every defense, every mask he’s ever worn. Now he’s just a man. My man. And he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world.
I pull him down on me, and for the first time since we met, he truly sleeps.