Chapter 37
LUCY
Certainty fills every fiber of my being as the tension between us releases like an exhale. It’s not exactly relief in Hatter’s sagging shoulders, but something more raw and fragile, like he’s a man who’s been bracing for a tidal wave that never came.
“Please remember that for me,” he whispers.
Then he kisses me, slower this time, the tenderness of it making my throat ache. I taste myself on his tongue, and him, and salt air, and our desire, and I finally stop trying to separate any of it. This moment is just us, and all I need is him.
He pulls me with him as he moves out of the shallow tide that’s rolled in, his hands gently cupping my cheeks while he clumsily walks backward from the incoming tide, stopping when his back hits a piling.
The frigid water still climbs the shore behind me, reaching mere feet from our toes, but he’s given us a safe distance from the cold.
“This should be good for now,” he murmurs, reading my mind.
He releases me then to slide down the weathered wood and settle onto the dry sand with his legs stretched in front of him. Then he looks up at me, and my heart twists.
The moonbeams fall through the slats to highlight his upturned face. His scars, tattoos, the dark ocean blue of his eyes, and the careful eagerness in his expression takes every coherent thought I have and scatters it like the foam on the tide.
He reaches for my hand. An offering.
“Come to me, Lucy.”
It’s an echo of everything we’ve said tonight, and I smile as I take his hand to lower myself into his lap.
My knees settle into the damp sand on either side of his hips and my shins press against the hard outer muscle of his thighs.
I can feel the heat pulsing off his hard, thick cock just inches away from my bare sex, an almost shocking juxtaposition against the cold night air.
I reach behind me to unlatch the bralette I’m wearing, and once it falls, he helps me take it off in one fluid motion, leaving me completely bare in the cold air. He drops it beside us and just looks at me for a long second, his tatted chest rising and falling, his jaw tight.
It’s the same look he’s given me all night, like he’s afraid what’s between us is so fleeting, I’ll disappear. Like he’s trying to memorize me.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful it hurts,” he says quietly, the rawness in his voice makes my throat dry.
I cup his face in both hands, feeling the stubble and the small scars along his jaw, and whisper, “Then let me make you feel better, Hatter.”
He moans a curse and turns his head to press a warm kiss into my cold palm. The gesture’s so breathtakingly gentle compared to everything else about him that my chest hurts.
When I shift in his lap, his hands fly to my hips and grip hard enough to bruise, a rough sound escaping through his clenched teeth.
“Lucy,” he warns gently. “We go slow. If it hurts—”
“I know.” I press my forehead to his. “I’ll tell you.”
He nods, swallowing hard, and one hand leaves my hip to reach between us. I feel his knuckles brush my inner thigh as he positions himself, the blunt, thick head of him pressing against my entrance, and every nerve in my body fires at once.
I tense. I can’t help it. My fingers dig into his shoulders and my breath goes shallow, because as much as I want this, it’s still the unknown.
Everything before this—our kisses, his mouth on me, the way his hands roamed my skin—all of that felt like instinct, like our bodies already knew one another somehow.
But this is the threshold, and no romance novel prepared me for how enormous and real it feels to be in the arms of a man who cares enough to kill for me, poised to take him inside me for the first time.
“Hey.” His free hand comes up to cradle my jaw, tilting my face until I’m looking at him. “Eyes on me, baby. It’s just me.”
The steadiness in his dark gaze anchors me. His thumb traces my cheekbone, and he just… waits. We could stop right now, and he’d be okay with it. I certainly wouldn’t be, but there’s something deeply comforting to know he’s leaving this all in my hands.
“Just breathe,” he murmurs.
I nod, inhale salt air and his driftwood, bonfire scent, exhale my nerves… and then I lower myself onto him.
And yet the first stretch of him entering me steals all the air between us completely.
A curious, unfamiliar pressure fills my core as my body opens around him.
I sink down slowly, letting gravity and my own courage do the work, building and building the fullness.
My fingers dig into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks as I take him inch by inch, breathing through the new sensation.
He trembles beneath me, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles jump, while his fingers lay loosely on my hips. The reality of it almost makes me laugh.
This man killed for me tonight. Now he’s letting me take him on my own terms, despite the fact it’s clearly costing him the very last painful remnants of his restraint.
And he’s doing it all just so I can feel safe.
Hatter makes me feel like the world around him is safe, and I haven’t felt that with anyone, anywhere in a long, long time.
I inhale his scent again, and on my next breath, something deep inside me releases—a tension I’ve carried in my chest and shoulders since I was a child and realized no one was coming to save me.
But Hatter saved me.
That breaks through the last wall I have, and I sink the rest of the way down. We both gasp when I’ve taken him to his hips, and my forehead falls to press against his.
“Fuck,” he breathes, his fingers flexing hard against my hips. “Fuck, baby.”
I hum my agreement. I’m so full of him I can feel my own pulse in my core, every heartbeat squeezing us closer together.
I hold still for a moment, my body adjusting to the size and heat of him, my hands braced on his chest where his rose tattoos gleam beneath my palms. His heart thrums under my fingers, its fast and desperate rhythm keeping time with mine.
“You okay?” His voice is hoarse as he tucks a hair behind my ear.
“I think… I think I’m ready to move.”
His lips quirk up. “Then by all means, Lucy. Ride me.”
I bite my lip… and begin to move.
It’s tentative at first, small, careful rolls of my hips as I test what I like, similar to the low-flow and floorwork motions I do on stage.
Every shift stokes sensation in my core, then ripples it outward, not quite pleasure yet but getting really freaking close.
My body slowly figures out this new choreography the way I’ve learned every other dance.
By feel and instinct, letting the music lead.
And there is music here. It’s the tide and our breaths, our heartbeats and the rough, agonized moans he bites back every time I rock forward.
I really, really like the sound of that moan.
His hands rest on my hips, guiding but not controlling, letting me find my own pace while his thumbs draw circles over my hips. When I shift the angle slightly, he hisses and something lights up inside me so suddenly I cry out. His grip instantly tightens and his eyes go dark.
“There?” he asks, voice rough.
“Mhm. There. Please don’t let me lose it.”
“Don’t worry, baby. I’ve got you.”
He quickly adjusts beneath me, planting his feet in the now-wet sand for leverage, and tilts his hips up to meet my next roll. The angle is overwhelming, flooding pleasure through me so violently my vision whitens.
“Look at me, Lucy.” He tips my chin down to face him, gaze like burning coals searing us together. “Never take those pretty fucking eyes off me, got it?”
“Yes, yes. Eyes on you, Hatter. Only you.”
That instinct from earlier comes roaring back, taking the reins, and my body rises and falls over him with increasing confidence, finding the rhythm that sends heat cascading through me with every stroke.
He matches me perfectly, reading me, adjusting with every shift and breathy moan that escapes me, until we’re moving like this is a dance we’ve rehearsed thousands of times
“Chase it, Lucy. Fuck, yes baby,” he moans. “You can do it. Make yourself feel good.”
The praise compounds the pleasure, and I brace my hands on his chest to ride him faster, emboldened by the sounds he’s making, the way his head falls back against the piling and his throat works as he swallows a groan.
I love this. The power of it, being above him, controlling the depth and speed, watching the most dangerous, protective man I’ve ever met come undone beneath me.
His eyes stay fixed on mine, burning obsidian, and I hold his gaze because I understand it now.
I get why he keeps asking me to look at him.
Eye contact with him feels like the most intimate part of all of this.
More than physical. More than sensation.
We’re two people seeing each other without masks. Not a single thing left to hide behind.
“Fuck, that swirl thing you’re doing at the end? Goddamn. You keep moving like that and I’m not gonna last,” he warns through gritted teeth.
“Yeah? Well maybe I don’t want you to last.”
I do it again immediately and smirk as he curses.
“Well, I do.” His hands tighten on my hips, and he slows me down deliberately, pulling me into long, deep grinds that drag him against every sensitive spot inside and out.
“I want us to feel this. Every stroke.” He thrusts up.
“Every breath.” He kisses me, ending it by biting my lip. “Every second.”
He slowly does the combination again—thrust, kiss, bite—pulling a moan from somewhere deep in my chest.
“Feel us, Lucy. Feel how perfect we are together. How you were fucking meant for me.”
The words flash like wildfire in my chest, and I bite my lip as I try to obey him, focusing on the stretch of him filling me, the friction building with every stroke, his heartbeat pounding against my palms. The way the cold seawater swirls around our legs while the heat between us builds like a furnace. I want to remember every single detail.
His hand slides between us, finding my clit with his thumb, and my whole body jolts.
He massages in tight, fast circles that match the cadence I’ve set, and the pleasure that was building heavy and slow suddenly ignites into something urgent and relentless.
My movements grow desperate, grinding down onto him harder, faster, chasing the edge I can feel rising beneath me like a wave.
“Hatter, I’m close.” The words fall from my lips in a broken, breathless huff. I wish I knew his real name, but this is the only one I have, and I want him to know I’m coming for him. “So, so close.”
“I know, baby. I can feel you tightening around me. Fuck,” He growls. His thumb circles faster, his other hand gripping my hip to help me keep the rhythm as my body starts to shake. “Let go, Lucy. I’ve got you. You’re safe. Just let go.”
You’re safe.
It starts deeper than anything I’ve ever felt before, pleasure erupting from the center of me where he’s buried, and radiating outward in a wave so powerful my spine arches backward and I lose all sense of where I am.
I cry his name into the dark as my whole body locks around him, thighs, arms, core, everything clenching as pleasure crashes through me in ruthless, rolling pulses that tear the breath from my lungs.
My inner muscles squeeze him in tight contractions I can’t control, and somewhere in the middle of it all I hear him groan my name like his own pleasure is being ripped from his soul.
He drives up into me once, twice, then a third time with an unhinged desperation that makes it clear he’s been holding on by a thread.
On the final thrust, his arms crush me to his chest as he buries himself to the hilt, spreading me wide with delicious pain as he shudders his release deep inside me on a low, ragged groan.
My inner muscles clench tighter around him instinctively, wanting all of him, and making him curse as I hold him to me just as hard.
Then the world comes back into focus.
Our breaths are coming fast and hoarse, my pulse dancing with his through our skin. For one long, suspended moment, neither of us moves.
The tide breathes back with us as it swirls further up the beach around our legs.
The old pier creaks above us, and the leaves from the oak trees on shore rustle in the wind.
I can see the Spanish moss swaying overhead through the slats above us, strips of gray lace drifting in the wind.
Somewhere down the marsh, a night bird calls and gets no answer.
It’s the kind of peace I’ve spent my whole life wishing for, finally given to me by a man who’s quickly becoming the kind of person I’d risk it all to protect.
I press my lips to his temple, tasting salt and sweat. His arms tighten around me in response, pulling me impossibly closer even though there’s nowhere closer to go.
“I don’t want to leave,” I whisper before I can think better of it.
His embrace instantly goes rigid, locking me to him, as if he heard that second part too. I feel him force out a deep exhale before he can relax again.
Then he lifts his head and looks at me, eyes glassy with an emotion I can’t place.
“Then don’t, Lucy,” he says quietly, “Please, just… stay. With me.”
I wish I could.
Tears sting my eyes. I close them as I rest my head against his chest.
My mind goes everywhere and nowhere as we stay tangled together against the piling for a while after that.
Long enough for the frigid water to creep higher around our hips, long enough for my trembling to be from cold rather than pleasure, long enough for me to regret the loss of him when he finally slips out.
All the while, I stay in his lap with my head against his chest, one hand over his inked heart and the other over his scarred arm, listening to the steady rhythm of him being alive and warm and just as desperate as I am for the reality of morning to never come.
The moon has shifted behind the trees beyond the pier by the time I speak again. I’ve always been braver in the dark.
“Hatter?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I want to tell you a story.”