Twenty-Seven
Draven
W hen the outside air hits my face, I feel like I can finally breathe. This woman. This amazing, one-of-a-kind woman just told the entire fucking city she’s done bending for the whims of men, and I’ve never felt more elated.
She’s choosing one man over all the rest, and somehow I’m the lucky one. The bastard who wore that title like armor, shielded his heart with layers of mangled metal so he could pretend it didn’t exist. Somehow she’s peeled every layer away and decided she likes what she’s found underneath. More than that, she actually loves me.
I was a bastard born with nothing of his own, and somehow I’ve ended up with everything that could ever matter.
When we reach my car, I find myself happy I was coward enough to have it waiting for me out front. I didn’t know why I packed a bag and planned to run like a bitch, but I knew watching her say “I do” was going to kill something inside of me. The only saving grace being I packed some of her things too, so deep down I must have known we’d be leaving together. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.
But here we are now, and as I buckle her into the passenger seat and kiss along her face, I know we were always going to end up right here. “I fucking love you, woman.”
“You’d better. I’m afraid I’m not done asking you to risk your life for me.”
“I’d risk it all for you, little keeper. I’m sorry I didn’t prove that here, but I will. I promise.”
I close her door and rush around to the driver’s side so I can begin proving it right now, but she’s shaking her head as I start the car.
“It needed to be me. You understand that, I know you do. It needed to be me.”
I do.
As much as I’ll always hate myself for not being her hero, I know she had to do this. She had to be her own advocate, her own hero, and she had to do it like this. “Now everyone knows that’s my baby in there.”
I’m speeding a little too quickly as we leave the property, but if I don’t get her somewhere I can rip that wedding dress off of her body soon, I might lose my goddamn mind.
She’s going to be my bride and mine alone.
I won’t have to pretend to be my own child’s uncle. I can raise them myself, with her by my side, not by my brother’s.
Fuck, that’s an intoxicating thought.
“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you,” she says quietly. “I don’t think I really made up my mind until I got up there.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” My hand flies over to rub her gorgeously swelling belly. “In fact, you never have to apologize for anything ever as long as we live.” She’s the reason we’ll live at all. No matter how long or short we have, every moment we share belongs to her.
“I just knew. When Alex said ‘I do,’ I knew that we’d spend the rest of our lives in a battle we’d never win. That Ephraim would never stop, never be satisfied. I’d have rather died on that altar than give him another piece of me.”
“I know,” I reply softly. “And I’d have died right next to you without hesitation. Hell, I would have preferred it to actually witnessing...” I trail off, unable to say how much it would have obliterated my heart to see her actually married to someone else, but I don’t have to say the words. She knows. “I don’t know if I could have done it. My fingers were itching for my gun, and I don’t know what I would have done.”
She laces her fingers with mine, squeezing gently. “It’s over, at least for now. I think we have more friends than we thought.”
“Helps your dad brought backup, and Alex and I have grown closer to father’s security than he is. We’ll be alright, and if not, we’ll deal with that too. I won’t fail you again.”
Her head tilts. “You didn’t fail me. What on earth makes you think you did?”
“We should have never been there, Sullivan. I took too long to fix it.”
But she didn’t need me to fix it, and she knows that. I know that. Everyone knows it now.
“You gave me the courage to do it, Dray. You gave me a reason to. Without you, without our baby, I’d have married Alex and spent my days untouched, unloved, and unappreciated. You reminded me that life is messy and love is... chaos, but it’s the only thing worth fighting for. It’s more important than duty or reputation. It’s more valuable than money, than status. So how can you say you failed me when you’ve given me the only thing that truly matters?”
Fuck.
I swallow down the emotions that build and swerve the car off the road. The second it’s in park, I kiss her properly, the way I wanted to back there, and as my tongue slides into her mouth, I rip that fake ass engagement ring from her finger.
Her breath catches as she tries to slip over the center console to get to me, but her dress gets in the way. Frustrated, she gets out of the car and starts tearing the fabric. I don’t even hesitate to get out and help her. The sound of tearing is music to our ears, layers of lace falling from her body like she’s shedding all the weight of our past, and when she’s down to her bra and panties I rip those off too. I don’t want a piece of this outfit to survive, and once I drape my jacket over her shoulders to shield her from the cold metal, I slam her back against it and claim her mouth for my own.
I don’t care where we are, if anyone sees. All I care about is being inside of her.
Mine. My little keeper, the mother of my child. The savior of my bastard soul.
Her lips catch mine as she wraps her legs around me, unburdened and unashamed.
“You chose me,” I mumble out, my hand struggling to get my cock out of my slacks. “Proudly. Loudly. You chose me.”
“Of course I did. Why choose someone at all if you’re not willing to do it with all of you?”
With her words, I sink inside of her with absolution. “I choose you too, beautiful. Over everything and everyone. I’d burn it all for you.”
I fuck her harder than I intended to, rocking the car and making her head tip back, but she takes it. Right here on the side of the road in sight of god, travelers, and the devil himself, she takes it.
“You’re all mine now,” I growl, leaning in to bite her jaw. “Say. It.”
“I’m yours.” She clenches around me, rolling her hips and digging her nails into my skin. “Yours, Draven. No one else’s. Never again.”
“Never—” I slam into her harder and harder “—again. Fuck, you feel so good.”
I suck a purple mark on her throat now that I can publicly claim her, then another on the side of her jaw. One day soon, I’ll cover her entire body. My hands grip her ass tighter as I move faster, feeling her tight hot cunt squeezing me as she screams my name to the skies.
My name.
Not my brother’s.
Mine.
“Scream it, baby. We don’t have to hide anymore.”
Ever again.
It feels so damn good to say I hear myself whimper against her flesh without even realizing the sound actually came from me. I don’t have it in me to be embarrassed about it, and I know she’d never judge me. We’re finally free.
“Come for me, woman. Come all over your man’s cock right here on the side of the road.”
This time, she doesn’t attempt to touch her clit. She’s come a long way during our stolen nights together, learning her body and getting out of her own head. She still loves it when I touch her there, when I lick and suck and rub until she’s shaking and overstimulated, but she loves this too. Feeling me drive myself deeper, harder, faster, fucking a hole right through her and tearing her apart.
So she comes for me. Trembling and soaked, I feel her pussy squeeze my cock sending me over well before I meant to come, but it feels so damn good I can’t find it in me to feel bad about it. I stand there pulsing deep inside of her, flooding her perfect little pussy until I’m completely spent, and even then I don’t want to pull myself out of her. “Are you ready to start our life together, little keeper?”
One that is entirely our own.
She brushes a stray curl from my face and meets my eyes, nodding slowly. “For however long we have left.”
“Where do you want to go? I’ll take you anywhere in the world.”
Her lips purse as she thinks about it, but she ultimately shakes her head. “Away, baby. I just want to go far away.”
“Then let’s go.”
I have no ties to anything or anyone but her now, so if my baby wants to go far away, then we will leave this place in the dust and never look back.
There’s nothing I’d rather be looking at anyway, not when this woman is what lies before me.
The bastard really did win in the end.
AUGUST