12. Donovan
DONOVAN
The heavy silence of the brownstone shatters with a single word.
"Mommy?"
The demand in my blood halts. I pull my mouth away from the pulse point jumping at the base of Elisa’s throat.
I turn my head slowly, fighting the stiffness in my neck.
A small figure stands at the oak staircase.
He wears an oversized, faded yellow pajama shirt. One small fist rubs sleep from his face. The ambient golden light from the foyer reaches the landing, illuminating the dark, thick curls sleep-tossed against his forehead.
He drops his hand.
My chest simply stops moving.
The light catches his irises. The exact shade of bruised forest green. The soft, rounded curve of his jawline—a miniature, undeniable replica of the face staring back at me in the mirror every morning.
Four years old. My son. That boy in the ambulance was my blood.
I turn back to Elisa. Our eyes meet and I see the truth in hers.
A dark, terrifying possessiveness floods my chest. I pin her against the wooden banister.
"You let me believe you had a family," I whisper, the sound a raw scrape of gravel meant only for her ears. "With someone else."
She doesn't shrink. "I protected him. I protected myself from the people that dragged me out by my arms and threw me into the street."
I press my chest into hers, the freezing, wet cotton of my dress shirt soaking into the emerald silk of her robe. "Was there anyone else?"
"No." The admission punches at me straight, fierce and absolute. "Never. Just you. Only you."
The loyalty in her dark eyes burns right through me.
Small, hesitant footsteps pad down the wooden stairs.
Derick stops on the third step, his small hands gripping the railing. He tilts his head, the green eyes—my eyes—studying the soaked stranger trapping his mother.
"Mommy?" The small voice wavers slightly. "Who is he?"
I go rigid. The muscles in my back lock. I stare at Elisa, the demand vibrating off my skin. Tell him. Give him to me. Her dark eyes plead, a frantic negotiation. Not now, Donovan. Please.
I swallow the instinct burning my throat. I step back, creating a single foot of space, and lower myself into a slow, deliberate crouch until I am eye-level with the boy.
"I'm a friend of your mother's," I say, forcing the formal cadence to soften. "A very close friend."
Derick looks at Elisa for confirmation.
"Yes, baby." Elisa’s voice trembles. She steps around me, climbing the stairs. "He's an old friend. What are you doing out of bed?"
"Thirsty."
Elisa scoops him up. The sight of her lifting the boy—the boy carrying my blood—strikes a heavy blow directly to my chest. He wraps his small arms around her neck, burying his face in her shoulder.
"I'll get you some water. Let's go back to sleep."
She carries him up the stairs, disappearing into the dark shadows of the second floor.
I stand alone. The rainwater drips from my hair, pooling onto the rug.
Five years. The late-night feedings. The first uneven steps across this hardwood. The terrifying rush to the pediatric emergency room the other day. Every milestone, every breath of my son’s life, stolen.
Catherine Swanson, the woman who gave birth to me, manufactured this void. She carved this hollow, rotting cavern into my chest. The vow to dismantle her empire, to leave my own mother destitute, solidifies into certainty.
A floorboard creaks at the stairs.
Elisa descends, her bare feet silent. The emerald silk clings to the lines of her collarbones. The devastated, beautiful woman who survived a war she never asked to fight walks back down to me.
She stops on the bottom step, putting us at eye level.
"Are you alright?" she whispers, her gaze tracking the tension corded in my neck.
"Is it that obvious?" The moisture burns my eyes, an excruciating pressure I will not let fall.
She steps off the final stair. The devastated, beautiful woman who survived a war she never asked to fight stands in front of me.
She steps into my space, wrapping her arms securely around my neck and pulling my face down to her shoulder.
I place my face in the crook of her neck.
The soft, feminine scent of her overrides the cold.
I shudder against her, a violent tremor bleeding into her skin.
I press open-mouthed kisses against the frantic pulse jumping beneath her jawline, the grief suddenly mutating into a desperate, clawing need to feel her alive against me.
A soft sigh escapes her lips as I brush my mouth against hers, snapping the remaining tension in the hallway.
My large hands bracket her jaw. I part her lips, my tongue sweeping inside, tasting the dark, frantic heat of her mouth. I back her up, driving her across the narrow hallway toward the staircase.
"Upstairs," I rasp against her mouth, my hands gripping her waist.
We stumble up the dark wooden steps, consumed by the aching need to bridge the five-year void Catherine carved between us. She leads me into her bedroom, the heavy door clicking shut, plunging us into shadows.
I grip the knot of the emerald sash at her waist. I yank it, the silk pooling open to reveal the breathtaking expanse of her deep espresso skin, clad only in a matching chemise.
I drop to my knees in front of her. I press my face against the smooth, flat plane of her stomach as she leans back against the mattress. The faint, silver lines of stretch marks map the skin just beneath her navel.
"I wanted to see this," I murmur, the vibration of my voice humming against her flesh. I drag my nose along the silver lines. "I wanted to watch your body change. I wanted to be there."
"I looked like a whale," she whispers, her fingers tangling in my wet hair.
"You are beautiful." I trace the marks with the flat of my tongue, tasting the salt of her skin. "Always. Mine."
"Stop." She shivers, her thighs trembling against my shoulders. "You don’t know how much I’ve wanted this. If this is real, Donovan... just fuck me."
A groan tears out of my throat. I rise, gripping the hem of her silk chemise and dragging it over her head, hurling the fabric into the shadows.
My hands drop to my waist, violently stripping off the heavy, freezing cotton of my soaked dress shirt and trousers. The demand for skin-to-skin contact shatters the last shred of my restraint. I kick the wet clothing aside.
I haul her up by the back of her thighs, pushing her into the center of the bed.
The collision of her burning skin against my bare, rain-chilled chest sends a blinding rush of heat flooding my veins, erasing the freezing rain in a single heartbeat.
She wraps her legs around my waist, her heat pressing directly against my rigid arousal.
My large hands map her hips, finding the slick, desperate heat between her thighs. She is completely undone by the exact same devastating memory consuming me.
I align our bodies in the dark, and I sink into her.
The perfect, agonizing friction of her body stretching to accommodate my size strips the final shred of civilization from my brain.
Elisa throws her head back against the pillows, a sharp, broken moan tearing through her lips. "Donovan."
"So damn good," I rasp, burying my face in her neck. "God, I missed this. Us."
She digs her heels into my thighs, anchoring herself against the punishing rhythm I set on the bed. The sex turns hard. Visceral. An explosive, unapologetic war against five years of isolation. Every heavy thrust is a violent demand for the time we lost.
She matches my aggression, her hands mapping the heavy muscles of my bare back, her short nails biting half-moons into my shoulders. She takes every inch, her internal muscles clenching tight, pulling the devastation right out of me.
"Look at me," I demand, my grip tightening on her hips as I drive into her.
Her dark eyes fly open, locking onto mine in the dim shadows.
"Mine," I grind out, my control fragmenting. "Only mine."
"Yours," she cries out, arching her back off the mattress. "Donovan!"
Her body bows rigidly against the bed, an internal cascade of spasms crushing around me. The sensation shatters my control. I drive into her one final, brutal time, my own climax hitting like a high-speed collision, a heavy, agonizing flood that empties the darkest depths of my grief into her.
We separate slowly, the physical severing an excruciating loss.
I pull her flush against my side, dragging the heavy duvet over our cooling bodies. My bare chest heaves against hers as we pant heavily into the silent room.
I lift my hand, bracketing her face. I press my mouth to her forehead, the kiss a fierce, uncompromising brand against her skin.
"You are never keeping me from him," I vow into the quiet dark, "or from yourself."