Finale
HATCH
The next day
“Hatton!”
My head shoots up from the sketch of the tattoo I’m still perfecting—furiously, I might add, pun intended. Lucy gave a reverse ultimatum, and I’ll be damned if I’m the one being the hold up on whether Lucy McKennon marries me. Never again.
“Yeah?” I call back, trying to squint through the closed curtain. “What’s up—”
A gorgeous strawberry blonde starfish bursts through the curtain-door, leaping and falling with a thump onto me, and I grunt.
“—oof.” Then chuckle as I brush back her hair from falling in her face. “Well hello to you too, baby.”
“Hatton Fury, I have a proposition.”
I snort. “Well you know I love your propositions. Does this one involve honey again?”
Her whole face reddens with the reminder.
Good. That’s what the little tease gets.
The memory of what we did in the galley a week ago will forever live rent-fucking-free in my mind—her laying on the pull-out counter, my mouth on her throat, the honey for her tea that she suggested would be a great little addition to her nipple now completely covering our naked bodies in a hot sticky mess, my fingers buried inside her while she tried to stay quiet and not wake up the entire bay, of course failing spectacularly at it.
I smirk into my teacup and take a sip.
Her eyes drop to my lips before she shakes her head and seems to snap out of it.
She shifts on the mattress, letting my shirt ride higher on her thigh—I’m really fucking digging these new uniforms we’ve got going on. Her in my shirt and a thong, me in sweatpants. The access to making my future wife feel good has never been fucking easier.
“I have a better idea.”
I snort. “Better than sex with you, bunny? You’re outta your goddamn mind.”
She rolls her eyes, then clumsily climbs up the bed to kneel at my side.
“Want to read with me?” she asks, hope in her tone as she holds up her e-reader.
I feel my face soften for her. “Of course, baby. You know I love listening to you read. Hold on. Let me just put these away.”
Today marks thirty days since Lucy let Castle go, and she’s been getting increasingly more anxious waiting for him to make good on their bargain.
Apparently, my girl spends most of her anxiety pretending to be in another world entirely.
Fantasies of dragons, and found families, and apparently hot stalker kinks?
When I found out that one existed, I’d asked how come the fictional man could do it and I couldn’t.
That’d earned me a swat to the chest, which had in turn earned her a pretty red ass, and then one thing led to another and we were covered in honey and I was fucking her senseless.
It was a really fucking good day.
But if she doesn’t want a repeat to take her mind off of Castle, I don’t mind that either. Spending any kind of time with her is my favorite time to spend.
I tidy up my sketchbook, slotting it on her bookshelf, and climb out of the bed to leave my teacup in the sink. Meanwhile Lucy shoos the cats to the window. Which is… curious. She usually loves reading to them.
Chessy must think it’s strange too, because he meows like a man being wrongfully evicted, then squeezes himself out the porthole with Dinah right behind him.
A little tuft of fur floats out the window, and I wrinkle my nose on instinct, but not as dramatically as I used to.
I only need one shot a week now, my body finally getting used to my meds.
Fewer sneezing fits makes Dinah impossibly more adorable and Chessy almost tolerable.
I climb into bed beside Lucy and scootch so my back is against the headboard in my usual spot, and open one arm for her automatically.
She settles against me, fitting perfectly in the space with her cheek on my chest and one leg thrown over my lap.
The sun spills through the windows and paints everything gold, and for a second I get hit with that increasingly familiar, still achingly happy realization that this is what peace feels like.
“Alright, what’re you reading me today, bunny? What’s our ‘MMC’ like? A bad boy with tats, tragic backstories, and burn scars? Eyebrow piercings? A banging bod that just won’t quit?”
I laugh, expecting to hear her groan, but she bites her lip.
“Actually…” She hesitates. “I was thinking you could read to me.”
I tense before I can stop it. My brows pull together and my mouth tightens. I kind of hate the warning that leaks into my voice.
“Lucy, come on. You know I hate—”
She cuts me off with a squeeze to my thigh. “Trust me?”
Her voice softens the initial suggestion that inadvertently felt like a blow.
“Fine, but if this sucks, we go back to the honey thing.”
She squeals her excitement—which feels a little dramatic since we’re just talking about reading, but okay—then flips through settings until she finds something. I watch her for a second, unable to hide my curiosity. When she seems finished, I let out a put-upon sigh and wiggle my fingers at her.
“‘Kay. Give it here, baby.”
Again, she lights up like I just handed her the moon and presses it into my palm. Jesus, if me suffering makes her this happy, maybe she’s got a little sadist streak in her. I might have to look into something for the club…
“Are you doing it?” she asks, nearly vibrating with excitement. “If you’re doing it, do it out loud!”
“Alright, simmer down now, baby. It’s not a damn orgasm.” I grumble, already annoyed.
I swear I hear her mutter, “Not yet.”
But then I’m looking down at the screen…
I blink.
“The font is… weird.”
She nods eagerly. “It’s supposed to help with dyslexia. I thought… I thought maybe it could help you too.”
Heat climbs up my neck so fast I nearly throw the damn e-reader overboard. My jaw clenches so tight, pain shoots out from my molars.
But I breathe deep, telling myself that it’s okay. That she doesn’t realize just how much I fucking hate being bad at something everyone else seems to find so fucking easy.
I mean yeah, I’m good at numbers and people. Counting cards is my jam and I’m funny as fuck. Not to mention ridiculously good looking.
But reading? Blech.
I’ve never told her that, though. I’ve never told anyone how much it bothers me. The only person who ever figured it out was my momma. So now I’ve got to suck it up because Lucy is innocent in my self-loathing and I agreed to trust her.
I tighten my grip on the e-reader, just in case I get so pissed off I decide to actually toss it out the porthole and settle it in my lap.
“Alright. Let’s see what this miracle font can do.”
She nestles closer, tucking herself under my chin, and press a button to bump the font size up a notch.
“Yeah, sure,” I mutter and squint at the page.
Then I freeze.
The words sit still.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “I can actually… the letters make sense.”
Not perfectly or magically. It’s not some bippity-boppity-boo now-you-can-read-too shit. But they’re still enough that I can actually track them without feeling like I’m fighting a school of live fish with my bare hands.
“Go on,” she whispers, grinning against my chest.
I sit up a little straighter and clear my throat, trying not to let it show how weirdly wrecked I am by this.
Then I start reading.
It’s slow-going at first. Halting in places.
But it comes easier than it ever has in my life.
And after a few pages about this guy who’s secretly a total simp for a girl who’s secretly a total simp for him—I mean, really, what’s the conflict here?
—I settle into a nice little rhythm and actually start to enjoy myself.
“She smiles up at me with doe eyes and begs, ‘Please, I want you. I need this. I need you. I need your co—” I choke and look down at the screen, then down at Lucy.
“Uh… you sure you want me reading this, baby? I’m, um—” I clear my throat. “I’d be happy to come back in with the assist.”
Her eyes lock on mine and her voice goes a little breathless. “Keep reading, Hatton.”
Well, fuck me.
I swallow and force my eyes back to the page. “She slides her hand down, her lips parting, tongue flicking over my nip—”
My breath stutters.
Because Lucy has climbed between my legs and is sliding back on the bed, trailing kisses down my chest. My mouth goes numb as my eyes dart between the book to her, watching her mouth drag down my sternum.
Her lips are warm against my ink and scars, and she’s working so thoroughly it’s like she’s learning the terrain of me.
Curiosity has never looked so fucking sexy.
But when she twirls her lip over my nipple, every coherent thought in my body abandons ship.
“Fuck.” I begin to put the e-reader down, but she quickly stops me, wrapping her hand around mine.
“Keep. Reading.”
The heat in her eyes scorches through me, and I give her a helpless little nod and go back to the best homework I’ve ever been assigned. And boy does my teacher know how to motivate her student.
Every time I falter, she pauses too. Waiting. Letting the tension build until I either keep reading or die.
Eventually, after a careful nip at my side, I growl and tangle one hand in her hair—not guiding, just holding on for dear life—while the other grips the e-reader hard enough that I’m genuinely concerned about its structural integrity.
“She… she takes out my—fuck, they really do love gray sweatpants in these, huh?”
She giggles. “Keep reading. Unless you want me to stop?”
“Oh hell no. Fuck that.”
My eyes flit between the screen and her as she settles at the foot of the bed between my legs, the mattress dipping under her knees.
She rakes her nails lightly down my chest, fingertips tracing ridges of muscle and scar, mapping me.
Then she slips beneath the waistband of my sweatpants, unhurried, inch by deliberate inch, and the second her fingers curl around me, my whole body locks up.