Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SHILOH
Stay…
He wants me to stay.
I’m so caught up on the words that I can barely think.
“What are you doing?” My voice comes out soft and a little breathy when Donovan pulls me from the shower and gently towels me off before leading me to his room.
I’m still in shock that he’s okay with this, that he’s letting me stay.
I was ready to die here, to die for him.
I was ready to die in little pieces every day for the rest of my life if he turned me away…
I’m not sure if I ever really thought he’d want to keep me.
I’m drowning in the way he’s looking at me, in the fact that even though he’s seen the monster I am, there’s still a part of him that seems to see more.
I want to be that more. I want to live in that place between his expression and the soft curve of his lips as he presses me against his cool sheets.
“Has anyone ever taken care of you, Shiloh? Has anyone tried to show you how special you are?”
My brows knit together as he crawls onto the bed with me, his big body hovering over mine.
Has anyone ever taken care of me?
I’m sure people have tried. I’m sure my mother took care of me when I was small, even though my memories of her are stained in red.
But judging by the way Donovan’s looking at me, that’s not really what he’s asking. Even with him, most of the time when we’ve been fucking I’ve been on top.
“I’ve never trusted anyone enough to really let them.” I breathe out the soft confession, and he nods once… twice… and then drops his lips to press them against mine. He kisses me softly, one gentle swipe of his tongue before he moves to the curve of my jaw.
“You deserve to be taken care of, Shiloh.”
His mouth moves to my neck, and I know he can feel how hard my heart is hammering.
“I don’t know if that’s true.” My head is reeling from all this honesty, but something about it feels good… almost like I’m bleeding poison from beneath my skin.
“Can I show you that it is? Will you let me show you?” Even now, when I owe him everything, when I could just as easily have died beneath the knife he had pressed to my throat… he’s asking.
“Always.” It’s the only answer I have, and I think when he presses his lips to the little cut he left on my collarbone, I can feel them trembling.
I can’t breathe around the knowledge that I’ve hurt him, that knowing what I was brought him pain… but maybe I can make up for it now.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, but he cuts off the apology with the swipe of his warm tongue along the ridge of my nipple, gentle heat that demands I keep my words to myself.
“No, Loh. You don’t have to be sorry. Just be here now. Move forward with me.”
Forward.
He wants a forward. He wants to take me with him.
He wants to keep me, and it’s enough to split me apart. I feel fresh tears stinging at my eyes and catching in my lashes as I nod.
“Okay.” It’s all I can do, all I can say.
I want to promise him everything, but my words are trapped somewhere between the depths of my lungs and his lips as they tickle down my ribcage. All I can do is watch him and wonder if he can see all the promises in my eyes that I can’t speak aloud.
His lips trail a line across my hip, careful kisses pressed to scars that I’ve never let anyone touch. Each tiny brush flays me alive, tearing me open and leaving me raw for him. Every kiss is me giving over, giving myself to him…
And even though it hurts, even though I keep waiting for memories to flood back… the warmth of Donovan’s mouth keeps the demons at bay as he breathes promises into my skin that I can be more than what these scars always told me I had to be.
I can be his. Really and truly his.
“Donovan.” I half whimper his name, and he slides his tongue along the length of the butterfly one more time before dropping down between my legs. At first, I think he’s going to take my cock between his lips. I’ll probably fall apart before he’s even started…
But he bypasses it completely and spills down, pressing my thighs back gently and spreading my legs. The warmth of his breath against my ass makes me shudder.
“I want you to feel good, Shiloh. As good as you are, as good as you can be. Let me show you.”
I’m about to ask him how he plans on doing that when the heat of his tongue presses against my hole, and my entire body jerks.
If Donovan’s hands weren’t on my hips, I’m pretty sure I’d fly off the bed.
As it is, I can do nothing but squirm underneath his hold—that strength that keeps me anchored when all I want is to fly apart—as he licks slow, deliberate lines against my ass until I’m melting beneath him.
I’ve never felt anything like this before.
Then again, every sexual experience I’ve ever had has been with Donovan.
Still, there’s something about this—the way his tongue laves against my hole over and over again, the tip stiffening and circling—that leaves me breathless.
This feels like something more than sex, more than desire…
It feels like worship, like confessions and promises written into my shattered soul.
He moans, the vibration of the sound sending little shockwaves of pleasure through my nervous system.
“You taste so good, Loh. All of you. Fuck… I missed you, baby.”
“More,” I gasp, a soft plea that doesn’t do justice to what I mean. I want him to eat me alive, wholly and completely. I want to live inside him, be his sustenance, his strength. I want to live in the heat of his chest, lulled by the thundering of his heart.
I’d let him devour me and thank him with every bite if he told me he missed me again.
Instead, he stiffens his tongue and slips the tip of it inside me, his big hands on my ass cheeks pulling them further apart like he can somehow make more space. He licks into me until I’m trembling, thrusts his tongue in slow little measures until it’s spearing inside me.
Donovan devours me until my world is a sweet, shining burn of need… and when his long, elegant fingers wrap around my cock and give a gentle stroke, I burst into a kaleidoscope of pleasure and infinity. I begged him to make me something new, and he said I had to do it myself… but this…
He’s remaking me one gentle touch at a time, and he doesn’t even realize it.
He’s doing exactly what I asked, except he’s doing it with lips and tongue instead of a blade.
He’s unmaking me and letting me fall apart around him, and the spear of his tongue as he licks into me catches all the pieces so I don’t dissolve into the atmosphere.
He doesn’t miss a beat when he lifts his head and starts licking my stomach clean, dragging his warm tongue along my cock as if he’s unwilling to let any part of me escape from this room, from his touch, from his demand that I let him show me.
“I love you,” I whisper again, so choked that I’m not sure he can hear.
The press of his mouth against my butterfly tattoo tells me that he did.
“You are so important to me, Shiloh,” he whispers, trailing his lips up my body. He stops when he’s pressed to the curve of my shoulder, and his next words are warmth against my thundering pulse. “I need you to know that. You are… everything. My everything.”
I’ve never been anyone’s anything… let alone someone’s everything.
“Donovan…” I don’t mind that he didn’t say I love you back. Honestly, I could spend the rest of my life never hearing that and some part of me would think it was what I deserved. It’s not about that confession… it’s just about him staying. It’s about me trying to maybe be worthy of it someday.
Worthy of Donovan. His warmth and strength, the softness that makes up a man who could have turned out the exact same way I did, but chose kindness instead.
I curl around him as he wraps me up in his arms so tight I can barely breathe.
I think he knows I’m falling apart—I think he realizes he’s the only thing that can keep me together as he hugs me to him until I feel like I could dissolve and live in bliss just beneath his skin.
We lie like that for a while, the silence interspersed with the soft sound of delicate kisses that Donovan feathers against my hair, until his arms finally relax.
They’re still around me, though, reluctant to let me loose, unwilling to let me be anywhere other than by his side.
Maybe he didn’t look hollow like me earlier, but the way he’s holding me now is proof that he felt the space between us just as much as I did these last few weeks.
I don’t want that space anymore. I just want here. Now.
It’s the only place I want to be… and as the seconds trickle by and the world narrows down to the sound of his heartbeat beneath my ear where I’m pressed against his chest, I know I have to change if I’m going to stay here.
I have to be different. Better. The Shiloh he sees.
“I’ll try,” I whisper into the darkness, half hoping he’s asleep as the words come out. Donovan’s arms around me tighten, proof that I’m not so lucky.
“Try?”
“I’ll try to be the person you think I am. The person you think I can be.”
There’s a beat of silence where Donovan’s fingers drift along the length of my spine, as if he’s trying to feel the truth of my words in the space between the ridges. He chases honesty with goosebumps and leaves me shivering by the time his big hand cups the back of my neck to turn my gaze to his.
“You will?”
“I promise I will. If it means I can be yours, I’ll try.”
“I think you’ve always been mine, Loh.” The aching chase of pain in his answer tells me he’s still not okay with what I’ve done, but he’s here now. “Even before, every part of you.”
I understand what he’s saying—that even the killer in me was his. It means more than he realizes, and I roll my body so I can bury my face against his neck.
I didn’t think it was possible for a person to feel lost and found in the same heartbeat, but I don’t know how else to describe it. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know how to be anyone other than what I’ve always been…
But for the first time, with Donovan’s arms around me, I feel like I can breathe. I feel seen for more than just my art.
I feel like being Shiloh, whoever he is outside of blood and death and pain, is possible.
For Donovan… for Donovan, I’m willing to try.