Chapter 42
Chapter forty-two
Eden
“A Soft Place to Bleed”
Time was unreliable when you were in a place like this. Not just this actual place, but in a situation where you were waiting to wake up and find someone next to you dead. Where sleep was a dare because he might not wake up.
Halo had been more active than I wanted him to be.
He was restless, haunted. He paced from window to window as he watched for threats.
He should have been unconscious, tethered to machines or high on painkillers, but he wasn’t.
The same man who'd been more corpse than body, just days ago, acted like he’d never been shot.
He chewed a few hydrocodone a day and acted like it was all he needed.
I hadn’t recovered. Not even close. Not mentally, not emotionally. Every time I looked at him, I still saw the hollow version: the version barely clinging to life.
I sat on the edge of the cot and watched him as he came out of the bathroom.
His shoulder looked like shit. I hadn’t done a very good job sewing it up.
The lines were puckered and red, but it was holding fairly steady.
The “shower” was nothing more than a concrete corner with a faucet and a drain.
No curtain, no privacy. Just another reminder that comfort had long since left the equation.
But it was something. Still, we couldn’t stay here. Not much longer.
My eyes lingered a second too long. Just enough for him to notice.
Halo approached with the towel still slung low on his hips, steam clinging to his skin like a second atmosphere. Underneath his eyes, shadows pooled. He looked like a man dragging months of stress in his bones.
“What’s wrong?” His eyes found mine, and they looked like they’d been through war. His voice was soft but not gentle, just calculating and even.
“Just worried about you.”
He sat down next to me and tilted his head, studying my own face. I knew I had seen better days too: the bruises were healing in bursts of color.
“I’m fine. Thanks to you.”
“You’re not. You’re pretending. Are you done?” I asked, voice faint. “Can you be done?”
His face went blank, and I knew he’d put up those walls again to keep me out. I watched the way he disappeared into himself as the fortress was rebuilt, brick by brick.
“Halo, I—”
He kissed me before I could find words, like kissing me was easier than hearing the truth in my voice. It was slow, deep, hesitant. A question and an apology wrapped into one motion.
I melted against him, threading my fingers into his dark hair. He pulled away from me, and at first I was afraid he would retreat, but instead he pulled me closer. I kissed the wound on his shoulder, soft and cautious, like maybe tenderness could be medicinal.
“When?” I whispered into his shoulder as he pulled me against him.
“Soon,” he responded, “I have to find them before they find us.”
“You aren’t ready.”
“Life rarely waits until we are. You’re going to be fine, Eden.”
“But what about you?”
He pulled away far enough to look me in the eyes, and I thought I saw an edge of regret and longing in them. Like I was already gone. It felt like a goodbye, but the kind you read in a letter left behind.
“One more time. One last time,” he whispered. His voice was so quiet and held such sadness that I wanted to cry. I nodded at him, and without breaking eye contact, I reached down to tug the towel around his waist free.
He undressed me in silence. No rush, no frantic edge, just unwrapping, undoing armor.
His skin was warm against mine, and when he laid me back, it wasn’t with dominance or aggressive frenzy; it was with reverence.
He settled between my legs, forehead against mine.
The head of his cock rested at my entrance, pressing so close that the ache I felt was unbearable.
I wrapped my arms around him and gave him another tender kiss.
His hips rocked slowly, just once, a test. Then he pressed in deeper, filling me in aching, perfect increments.
I inhaled deeply, legs shaking. If he didn’t give me everything, it was going to kill me.
He acted like he hadn’t fucked me from behind just days ago. This was… different.
“Eden,” he whispered my name, and when he looked at me, he looked scared. Terrified.
I didn’t answer with words. I answered with my body: hands on his hips, drawing him deeper.
He groaned low when every inch of him was inside me, a curse barely audible as his hand fisted into the sheets beside my head.
The other trembled at my hip, uncertain.
Every thrust was slow, deliberate. Like he was trying to memorize something he thought he’d never get again.
He wasn’t fucking me. This wasn’t just sex.
It was total surrender. He was remembering me.
Committing the shape of me to muscle memory.
He moved with aching precision, like he was mapping my body through every movement.
My fingers curled behind his neck; my heels dug into the bed.
Every part of me was open to him: mind, body, history.
“I’ve killed for less,” he whispered against my mouth. I didn’t know if it was a confession or a threat to the universe. It was almost as though he had said it to himself more than he had said it to me.
“Then live for this.”
And this time, he didn’t look away. He kissed me like he was scared it would be the last time and took his hand from my hip to raise one of my legs to access an even deeper part of me. I moaned his name and he put his mouth onto my neck, planting firm kisses that morphed into small nips and sucks.
“You feel… right. God, you feel so right.” He spoke the words into my flesh, thrusting into me harder now.
“Just like that. Please,” I begged, clenching around him as he drove into me.
Sweat was beading on his brow, and I felt the warm drip of blood on my chest as the wound on his shoulder opened again.
I reached up to touch the blood on my chest, smearing it across my flesh as I tried unsuccessfully to wipe it away.
My own hand left goosebumps along my flesh, and I moved my fingers down to one of my own nipples.
I teased it until it peaked, and Halo watched with heated intensity.
“Touch yourself,” he demanded.
I obeyed, reaching down to circle my swollen clit. A surge of white-hot pleasure flooded my core, and I arched off of the bed as he wrapped his mouth around my blood-spattered breast. His teeth grazed me gently, and then firmer. I cried out.
My hand moved faster between my legs, circling tight and desperate as the pressure built inside me like a scream.
I was so close, right on the edge, and he knew it: his rhythm shifting just enough, not harder, not faster, just deeper.
Every thrust unspooled me a little more.
I wanted this to last forever. My fingers slipped and stuttered over my clit as I came with a cry, the sound torn from somewhere guttural and hidden.
My body clenched around him in sharp, fluttering pulses.He groaned like he’d just tasted heaven with his bloody mouth, moaning into my skin, guttural and broken, like my climax was the answer to a prayer.
He cursed under his breath, surging deeper once, twice more, then came with a strangled sound that cracked at the edges.
His body shuddered above mine, hot and heavy, pouring himself into me like he didn’t know how to stop giving himself to me.
I wanted every drop of him. I grabbed his waist, pulling him against me as tight as I could as my entire body shook with weakness.
Halo didn’t move right away. His breath was still heavy against my cheek, his body covering mine like a shelter, like a weight I never wanted lifted.
I could feel his heartbeat where our chests pressed together: wild at first, then slowing, syncing with mine.
He was still inside me, but there was no urgency left, just warmth and the settling gravity of what was to come.
His nose brushed the side of my face, but he didn’t speak. Honestly, I don’t think he could. I ran my fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. It was damp with sweat and so was my skin, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything other than him right now.
He lifted his head enough to look at me. There was something raw and devastated in his eyes. No smirk, no armor. Just Halo, stripped down to something so fragile. It was beautiful and terrible all at once.
“You’re still bleeding,” I murmured.
His mouth twisted like he wanted to smile but forgot how. “You’ll fix it, won’t you?”
“Over and over.”
That earned me a low exhale, almost a laugh. He brushed his knuckles across my cheek.
Then he pulled out of me slowly, and I winced at the loss of him.
I suddenly felt empty and cold, like I would never be whole again without him being part of me.
He didn’t go far, thankfully. He stayed close, tucking the blanket over us like it was instinct.
We were enveloped in darkness and warmth, and I could barely make out the silhouette of his face.
Maybe this was what he really feared more than bullets. Being soft, being seen.
His hand found mine beneath the blanket. Fingers twining, gripping like he needed me. I turned toward him, resting my head against his chest. He made a low, satisfied noise deep in his throat, and his arms came around me.
He spoke after a long stretch of silence, his voice barely audible, “I’m sorry I wasn’t good at this.”
I closed my eyes, burying my face into his skin.
“I never needed you to be good. I just need you to be here.”
His chest rose and fell. One arm stayed around me, and the other pressed against the bed like he was still bracing for something to collapse, but the disaster never came.
And in the stillness, I felt him start to believe that maybe, just maybe, he could have had something that didn’t have to end in blood. That maybe he could be something other than a weapon.
And maybe I started to believe that I could be the one who reminded him how to stay human.