Chapter 53
FIFTY-THREE
SILAS
“How is it possible I got you in my life?” I lay playing my fingers through Brinley’s hair, her head nestled on my shoulder, the night long as we just…talked.
Staying mostly off the hard topics and instead whispering about her hopes and dreams.
Unfortunately, her dreams had amounted to basically the hope of bare survival since her mother had gotten sick when she was fourteen.
Her teen years every bit as rough as mine.
I was going to see to it that she finally had room to dream again. Give her room to chase after every single thing she’d ever wanted.
Crazy as fuck that a big part of what she wanted was me.
My mind was still struggling to come to terms with it.
To accept that this was true. That she was mine and she was always going to be.
I had to wonder if the draw toward each other was because we had so many similarities.
Losing our mothers and the burden of caring for our families falling onto our shoulders.
It had shaped our lives in different ways, but in the end, it’d made both of us fighters.
I watched through the shadows as a soft grin kissed her lush mouth. “I guess you’re just lucky like that.”
My chest expanded. “I guess I am just one lucky motherfucker, aren’t I?”
Her fingertips fluttered down my chest. “Oh, yeah. I’d say you are.”
My soul did that buzzing thing. Frantic and flailing, still not sure what I was supposed to do with the magnitude of what I was feeling.
The lightness bled into emphasis. “I was terrified of this, Brinley. Terrified of letting myself go. Of loving a single person again,” I admitted.
I’d spent so much time hating myself. The choices I’d made. Who I’d become.
Regret was Karma’s most powerful friend.
And I had so much of it that it’d stunted any growth or healing. But lying there with Brinley in my arms, I couldn’t regret what Crimson Crows had become.
It was fucking important.
I knew to my soul that it was.
Our means might have been criminal, but expunging the slime from the earth counted as something.
I needed to find a way to tell her. Convince my crew that she needed to be on the inside. I didn’t think I could keep it from her for long, even if they overruled me.
Not when she had become the most important part of my life.
She shifted so she could peek up at my face. “You’re amazing, Silas Mercer. I see the care you have over every person on this property. But more than that, for your family. There is no question of your love.”
“It’s always felt like my intentions end up hurting the ones that I love. I try to protect them from it, but…”
Her head shook, and her fingertips kept playing over the words tattooed over my heart. “They all adore you. I’m not sure if you realize the way they look at you with respect and adoration.”
“That’s when Elena doesn’t want to kick my ass.” I put as much lightness into it as I could.
Brinley’s smile was soft. “Well, you are kind of overbearing. You can’t blame her.”
“I just want her to be happy. To live a normal life.”
“And you think being here is stopping that?” she whispered.
“She’s right, it’s basically a prison.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
My insides coiled. “Once this job is finished, I’m going to try to make it right. Fix some of this fucked-up mess that I have us in.”
A frown pinched her brow, and she softly ran the pads of her fingers over my bottom lip. “Well, don’t fix it too much because there’s love here, Silas. There’s joy and safety and belief. Even if you have a hard time seeing it.”
“You really believe that?”
“I wouldn’t be lying here if I didn’t.”
Emotion pulled tight across my chest, and I forced out what I’d been struggling with for months.
“I was afraid of bringing Kai here. Afraid that I’d be trading one nightmare for another for him.” I paused, then admitted, “I was going to ask my hacker friend to fake a birth certificate for him so he could be adopted. Find a good family for him who would love him the way he deserved.”
“Silas.” It was a wheeze. A question. An accusation.
Pure understanding.
She pushed up onto her elbow. “I get it. The panic. The fear. But he is so loved. That child…”
Her voice drifted off, no need for the words when her love for him was palpable.
Exuding from her spirit.
I reached up and touched her face. “I couldn’t do it, Brinley. I’ve tried to build myself up to it for the last two months, and I just can’t. I didn’t want to love him, just like I didn’t want to love you.” I hesitated, then asked, “Did you mean it? That you love him?”
She breathed out a shaky sigh. “I think I fell in love with him the moment I met him.”
Significance sharpened the air, and I let my thumb roam the angle of her cheek. “I want us to raise him, Brinley. As ours.”
“What about his mother?”
Hatred shook my head. “She’s as bad as my father. I’ll see to it that she has no rights remaining.”
Tears blurred her eyes, and her throat bobbed. “That would be my greatest honor.”
Overcome, she climbed up to straddle my waist. Weight on her hands as she gazed down like it was the first time she was really seeing me.
I weaved my fingers into her hair. “Then we do this together. You, me, and Kai.”
The enormity of what I was saying almost gutted me. But it was in the most exquisite of ways.
She nodded. Almost frantic. That mesmerizing gaze on me.
The air whirled. Something fierce and knowing and resolute. A weaving of frayed, tattered fabrics into something beautiful.
Fuck me. She was gorgeous.
Wild mane of brown curls kissed in honey raining around her, dripping down around her shoulders and brushing over her perfect round tits.
A vision.
An implosion to my senses.
I gripped her by the waist as she steadied herself on my chest.
Her breaths turned needy and shallow.
“I love you, Silas. I thought I was supposed to hate you, but my heart knew.”
I’d thought mine was incapable, but it’d known too.
Recognized the only one who could warm the cold that had taken over my life.
I slowly sat up, drawn to her heat.
“Forged in the fire, you and me.” I played with a lock of her hair.
“And it’s shaping into something beautiful,” she whispered.
Flames licked around us. That approaching fire I’d felt coming was no longer in the distance.
It was here, lapping up the walls and burning our senses.
Molding our souls together.
Brinley exhaled, and I swallowed it, dove in to take her mouth.
Kissed her wild.
My hands bound up in her hair and this battered heart feeling whole for the first time.
She moaned and rubbed her pussy over my cock.
“You want me again, Little Wildfire?”
She edged back, sass taking to the edges of her face. “You told me I was never going to get enough. I think we should probably test it.”
A growl ripped free.
Playful possession, and I sent her a smirk.
“You want it? Then get on your hands and knees.” I tugged her hair back a little harder, knowing it was going to light the fire inside her.
That hypothesis proved correct when surprise widened her bright eyes before a gush of desire rushed in to darken everything else.
“You want me on my knees for you, King?”
Seemed fair since that’s where she had me.
“That’s right. I want to see that ass in the air so I can get a good peek at all that sweetness dripping for me.”
She slowly slipped off my lap and shuffled around, though she kept looking at me from over her shoulder.
Soft skin glowed in the faint moonlight as she bared herself to me.
Her ass was round and full, and her slit was still soaked just like I knew it would be.
Lust smacked me in the face, and my already raging dick twitched with greed.
“You’re such a good girl, aren’t you, Brinley Webber? Way you ache for me?”
Her thighs quivered, and I slipped from the bed and onto my feet.
Rising to my full height.
She was still there, on all fours but facing to my right. She gave a tiny yelp when I snagged her by the waist and dragged her around so she was hitched to the edge of the bed in front of me.
Hips swaying in a slow, entrancing dance as she gave me the most enticing view of her beautiful backside.
The delicious expanse of skin and the mesmerizing slope of her spine.
I ran my palms up her sides and back down, gliding over the hot flesh.
“I’m going to memorize every part of you, Brinley. Explore you from bottom to top. Mark myself all over every inch. Inside and out.”
A shudder rolled through her, and she kept watching me from over her shoulder.
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
Fuck, what this woman could do to me.
My being roiled with need. The hunger she elicited insatiable.
I splayed my hands wide, gripping her by the waist and skimming down so I was palming her ass cheeks.
I spread her a little.
Exposing all that pink, swollen flesh.
“Such a pretty pussy.”
She gulped and rocked back, the tension that wound between us amplifying.
Kneading her hip with one hand, I let the fingers of the other wander through her lips, barely brushing through the folds and up her cleft.
Brinley whimpered. “Silas…what are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m showing you that you’re mine. That you’re mine to please.” I edged forward, pressing my bare chest to her back so I could mutter in her ear, “And you’re going to fucking like it.”
Another whimper, and she was pushing back, trying to grind her ass against my cock. “I already like it. I like it so much.”
“I’m only getting started with you.”
I let my lips take an eager path down her spine while my hands coasted down over her ribs and dipped into the divot at her waist.
Then I shoved two fingers deep into the heat of her cunt.
She gasped and arched.
“Are you mine?” I demanded, voice cut low.
I didn’t know why I couldn’t stop asking it. Maybe I’d just been so convinced that I couldn’t have this that I was terrified I was dreaming it.
Making this shit up because it seemed so much more unrealistic than the preposterous life that I actually lived.
“You know the answer to that, Silas. I’m yours.”
I drove them in twice, winding her up. “That’s right. You’re mine.”