Chapter 8
eight
. . .
Winny
I say the only word that matters.
“Stay.”
One syllable. Quiet. Certain.
His face does something I’ve never seen before—something breaks open, something raw and vulnerable and completely unguarded, and the toughest man I know looks like he might collapse.
I cross the living room. Put my hands on his chest. Feel his heart hammering under my palms, wild and irregular, and the power of that—of reducing Clayton Holloway to a trembling mess with one word—sinks into me like warmth.
“I choose you,” I say. “The cameras. The growling. The breeding. All of it. I choose you.”
His hands find my waist. Not gripping. Resting. Like he’s afraid if he holds too tight, I’ll disappear. “Winny. Baby girl. Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” I rise on my toes. Press my mouth to his. A soft kiss. Nothing like the desperate, consuming ones we’re used to. This is something quieter. Something that tastes like a beginning rather than a claiming.
He kisses me back with the same care. His big hands framing my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones, and when he pulls back his eyes are wet. Actually wet. I watch a single tear track down the scar above his eyebrow and something in my chest cracks wide open.
That night, something shifts.
The desperate energy that’s defined us—the frantic fucking, the tearing clothes, the wall sex and the counter sex and the everywhere sex—settles into something slower.
More deliberate. I initiate. Climb into his lap on the couch while he’s watching some true crime thing he’s not paying attention to, and kiss him with a patience I didn’t know I had.
His hands settle on my hips. Steady. Warm. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I kiss the corner of his mouth. His jaw. The pulse point below his ear that makes him shudder. “Take me to bed. Slow this time. I want to see you.”
He stands with me in his arms—effortless, the way he always lifts me, like I weigh nothing—and carries me to the bedroom. Sets me down on the edge of the bed. Kneels in front of me.
We undress each other slowly. No tearing. No urgency. His hands push my sweater up my torso with a care that makes my breath catch. I unbutton his shirt one button at a time, feeling the warm skin underneath, the scars, the hard muscle of a man who’s carried too much for too long.
When we’re naked, he lays me back on the bed and covers me with his body. Not the crushing weight of before. Something gentler. His weight balanced on his forearms, his face above mine, and his eyes—those dark, hungry eyes—holding mine.
“Look at me,” he says. Not a command. A request.
I look. And he pushes inside me—slow, so slow I feel every inch, the stretch, the burn, the perfect fullness—and we both breathe through it together, eyes locked, and something passes between us that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the thing we’ve been too afraid to name.
Love. Real love. The messy, complicated, terrifying kind.
He moves inside me with long, deep strokes that build a different kind of heat—not the frantic, clawing need of before, but something deeper. A slow burn that starts in my belly and radiates outward until my whole body is humming with it.
“My good girl,” he murmurs against my lips. “My perfect girl. Taking my cock so fucking perfect.”
The words hit different tonight. Not possessive. Devoted. Like he’s worshipping something precious.
I wrap my legs around his waist. Pull him deeper. My hands find his face, thumb tracing the scar along his jaw, and I say the thing I’ve been too scared to admit, even to myself:
“I want your baby, Clayton.”
He goes still. Fully seated inside me, his cock pulsing against my inner walls, and his eyes search mine like he’s looking for doubt. Finds none.
“Say that again.” His voice is wrecked. Rough.
“I want your baby. Not because you’ve talked about it.
Not because you’ve pressured me. Because...
” I swallow. The truth feels too big for my throat.
“Because the only place I’ve felt safe since the accident is in your arms. And I want something that’s mine.
Something permanent. Something that ties me to the only person who’s made me feel alive when everything else felt dead. ”
Something breaks in his expression. His forehead drops to mine. His breath comes hot and ragged against my lips, and when he starts moving again it’s with a tenderness that undoes me completely.
“Gonna give it to you,” he promises, each word pressed into my skin like a vow. “Gonna fill you up, baby girl. Gonna put my kid in this perfect belly and watch you grow round with it and know you’re carrying part of me everywhere you go.”
I come with his name on my lips, my body clenching around him, and he follows—deep, pulsing, filling me the way he’s promised—and something happens I’ve never seen before.
He trembles.
His big body—the solid, unshakable wall of muscle I’ve leaned against for weeks—actually shakes. His arms buckle. His forehead presses to my shoulder and a sound escapes him, low and broken, and I realize he’s crying. Actually crying.
I hold him through it. My arms around his broad back, my hands in his hair, and I whisper things I didn’t know I had words for—that he’s mine, that I’m not going anywhere, that the cameras and the growling and the obsession aren’t scary anymore, they’re home.
He rolls us to our sides, still inside me, his come leaking around where we’re joined, and holds me against his chest with a gentleness that belongs only to me. His hand strokes my hair. His lips press to my forehead.
“I love you,” he says. Simple. Certain. “I’ve loved you since the moment I walked through that door and saw you in the corner. I’ll love you until I stop breathing.”
“I know.” I press my face into the hollow of his throat. Breathe him in. “I love you too. Even when you’re ridiculous. Especially then.”
He laughs. A real laugh, rough and warm, and the sound of it settles into my bones like something I’ve been missing without knowing it.
We fall asleep tangled together, his hand splayed over my lower belly like he’s already protecting what might grow there, and for the first time since my parents died, the future doesn’t feel like an empty room I’m afraid to walk into.
It feels like his arms. Steady. Certain.