Chapter 8
Trigger
Sex with Sadie is beyond even my wildest imaginings, incredible.
I can’t quite believe it happened. After that first, frenzied time, we move upstairs to Sadie’s bedroom and have sex again, slower, but no less passionate.
Afterward, we lie in bed talking, the conversation flows as easily as it does over text.
If she notices that the personality traits the other guys usually bring to the conversation are missing, she doesn’t mention it.
Dawn is breaking when she finally drifts off to sleep, her head resting on my chest. She apologetically mumbles something about me needing to leave before Owen wakes.
I know I should go. She’s right, it would be confusing for Owen to find me still here.
But I just want to watch her, to savor the moment and hold her for just a bit longer before I leave.
***
I groggily wake, confused, to the sounds of small, frustrated noises outside the bedroom door. The rattling of the handle, the scrabble of tiny fingers. A small, wheedling voice. “Mommy?”
My eyes snap open instantly. For half a second, I have no fucking idea where I am. The feel of her warm skin tangled with mine, reminds me that last night wasn’t a dream.
I turn to look at Sadie, the soft curve of her body illuminated by the morning light spilling through the pale curtains.
Memories of last night flood me, her mouth against mine, legs wrapped around my waist, the sounds she made under me half the goddamn night.
My cock twitches, ready for action again, a soldier standing to salute the sun.
The bedroom door rattles again. “Mommy?” Owen whines.
Shit.
Sadie jerks awake against my chest so suddenly her hair smacks me in the face. Panic flashes across her expression as she sits upright, tangled in blankets and sleep. “Oh, my God.”
I scrub a hand down my face hard. “Fuck.”
The digital clock beside the bed reads 8:12 AM. Sunlight spills warm gold across the rumpled sheets and the pile of clothes on the floor. Sadie’s panties were ominously absent among the hastily retrieved pile we gathered before rushing upstairs like teenagers sneaking in from a party.
The door handle jiggles again. “Mommy, why’s the door locked?”
Sadie makes a strangled sound beside me.
“It’s never locked,” Owen says suspiciously.
I sit up too fast, immediately regretting how little sleep I got as my head pounds.
“Shit. Baby, I’m sorry.” Sadie’s voice comes rough from sleep. “I didn’t mean to.”
Sadie pushes messy hair away from her face, still blinking sleep from her eyes. God, she’s beautiful like this. Flushed cheeks. Swollen lips. Bare shoulders peeking out above tangled blankets.
Mine.
The thought comes instantly again, a dangerous fucking thought.
Outside the door, Owen now knocks dramatically. “Mommyyyyy.”
I’m already reaching for my jeans off the floor. “I can leave.”
“How?”
“Window?”
She turns to stare at me. “We’re on the second floor.”
“Right.” I’d jump out of a plane if it made her happy.
The door rattles again. “Mommy! What’s taking so long?”
Sadie bites back a laugh despite the panic. “Yes, baby! One second!”
I shove my shirt over my head quickly while she scrambles out of bed, looking adorably disoriented.
Last night crashes back through my head in flashes—Sadie underneath me, Sadie laughing breathlessly against my mouth, Sadie wrapped around me in the dark while we talked until sunrise.
I’ve had sex before. A lot of sex, with a lot of women, none of it felt remotely like that.
Which is a fucking problem, because somewhere between the texts and the talking and the way she looked at me last night, I crossed a line in my own head I can’t uncross now.
I’ve fallen for this woman. Hard and fast, yet undeniably real.
That should scare the hell out of me. I know what happens when I let myself get too close.
The door rattles again. “Mommy!”
Sadie opens it just enough to peek out.
Owen immediately squints at her suspiciously, wrinkling his nose. “Why’s your hair messy?”
I nearly choke trying not to laugh.
“Because I just woke up.”
“Oh.” He accepts that immediately because he’s four. “The thunderbike man is still here?”
Every muscle in my body stills. Sadie freezes, too. Slowly, painfully slowly, she turns toward the bedroom window. I already know what she sees. My bike. Parked right in front of the damn house. I might as well have left a damn sign advertising my presence.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.
Owen gasps loudly from the hallway. “He is.”
Sadie closes her eyes briefly, pinching the bridge of her nose, as if she’s reconsidering every life choice that brought her here.
Owen pushes past her into the room before either of us can stop him. His little face lights up instantly when he sees me. “Thunderbike man!”
I stare at him for half a second. Then glance at Sadie helplessly. What the fuck am I supposed to say to this tiny, excited human?
Sadie looks horrified. Owen looks thrilled. Meanwhile, I’m sitting half-naked on her bed, trying not to look like the exact kind of man mothers warn their kids about.
“Uh,” I say intelligently.
Owen points at me excitedly. “I know you.”
“Do you?”
“You came last night. My daddy was being nasty, and you told him to let me go. Are you living with us now?”
Jesus Christ.
Sadie makes a choking noise behind him.
I cough violently into my fist while Sadie turns bright fucking red.
“Okay!” she says quickly. “Breakfast!”
Owen immediately loses interest because, apparently, children are basically raccoons with smaller shoes. “Pancakes?”
Sadie tries to keep a straight face. “Maybe. If you’re good, let Kane get ready in peace.”
Owen studies me then, as if only now realizing my state of undress and the fact that I’m in his mom’s bedroom. I hold my breath, expecting the worst. Instead, he tilts his head to the side and asks, “Who drew on you?”
“Huh?” I’m still half asleep and trying to figure out how not to make this situation any weirder.
“Your skin. Someone drew all over you,” he innocently says, pointing to my tattoos.
This time, Sadie laughs, sounding worlds more relaxed and the sound is music to my ears.
“Those are tattoos, Owen. You know, like the ones Aunty Dani and I got in college.” She flushes a little at the mention of her lower back tattoo, which she’s ashamed of.
I didn’t get a proper look at it. She turned away, saying it was stupid and reckless, when I tried to inspect it last night.
I intend to prove to her just how sexy it is, if she’ll let me.
The answer doesn’t seem to fully satisfy Owen. “Why has he got so many? Daddy says they’re for stupid people.”
Sadie looks pained, wincing. A bark of laughter erupts from me, and relief floods her face.
“Well, I guess I can be kinda stupid sometimes. But once you get a tattoo, it’s pretty much there for life, unless you want to spend a lot of time and money to remove it.”
Owen nods thoughtfully, as if contemplating a big adult subject, which to him, I guess, it is.
“Owen, what did I say? If you want pancakes, quit pestering and go downstairs,” Sadie says, a mix of exasperation and amusement in her tone.
“Okay!” He takes off running toward the kitchen.
Silence settles over the room. Sadie groans into both hands.
I know I should apologize. I let her down by falling asleep. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m just so stupid.” I start laughing before I can stop myself, which only makes her glare harder.
“This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny. He’s a funny kid.”
“Oh God. What’s going to happen if this gets back to Ethan,” she grumbles, but her smile says otherwise. That maybe she’s secretly pleased that jumped-up prick will find out she’s moved on.
“Thunderbike man will save the day!” I declare, placing my hands on my hips and puffing out my chest, making her laugh. I pull her into my arms, and she lets me kiss her softly before pulling away to finish getting dressed.
I pull my clothes on while watching her move around the room, grabbing clothes off the floor. She mutters under her breath as she tries to find her sweatshirt. I wonder what it would be like to wake up to her every day. This should feel awkward, but instead it feels dangerously natural.
“I can still leave,” I offer.
Before she can answer, Owen yells from downstairs, “Mommy, the thunderbike man needs breakfast too.”
Sadie closes her eyes, trying not to laugh, ignoring my amused expression.
“Well,” I say with a grin. “Guess that settles it.” I like the kid already, especially if it means I get to spend more time with Sadie.
Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting at Sadie’s kitchen counter drinking coffee while Owen explains garbage truck mechanics to me with the intensity of a man delivering classified military intelligence.
He seems remorseful now that he didn’t wake me up to watch the garbage trucks do their rounds this morning.
Thankfully for me, he decided to watch the garbage trucks alone this morning, affording us a little more sleep before he woke us up.
Even so, I feel like I’m running on fumes.
Sunlight streams through the kitchen windows, warm against old wooden floors. There’s something homey about the setting. It’s… nice. Too fucking nice.
Owen kneels backward in his chair, eating pancakes vaguely shaped like trucks while asking me approximately nine thousand questions per minute.
“Do motorcycles go faster than tornadoes?”
“No.”
“What about hurricanes?”
“No.”
“What about garbage trucks?”
“Definitely faster than garbage trucks.”
He gasps dramatically. Sadie laughs softly at the stove. Fuck, that sound does something ugly to my chest now.
Her hair is piled messily on top of her head, revealing one of my hickeys that darkens the side of her neck. She’s wearing oversized sleep shorts and no makeup, and she still looks prettier than any woman I’ve seen in years.
This whole situation is dangerous. Not the sex.
Not even the shit of an ex-husband. This.
The easy warmth of the kitchen. The way Owen constantly talks over her.
The way she automatically cuts his pancakes smaller while still talking.
Domestic shouldn’t look this good on me.
But I can already feel myself getting attached to things I have absolutely no business wanting.
Sadie catches me watching her. Her cheeks pink slightly. “What?”
“Nothing.”
A lie. I should have said ‘everything.’ Because I can’t stop looking at her. Can’t stop imagining waking up here again tomorrow, or next week, or every morning after that.
Owen traces a sticky finger along the motorcycle tattoo on my arm. “This is my favorite,” he declares, adding, “You’ve got lots of tattoos.”
“Sure do.” I thought we’d already covered this, but clearly the kid has more questions.
“Did they hurt?”
“Yep.” I glance up at Sadie over my coffee mug, wondering if I should be discouraging him more.
“Daddy says tattoos suck,” Owen says casually, with no real opinion or feeling on the matter, simply parroting his dad’s words back conversationally without understanding why his dad hates them.
I stop myself from saying that his daddy sucks. Though from the glint in Sadie’s eye, she’s thinking the same thing.
Sadie points her spatula at him. “Language.”
He pouts. “You say suck all the time.”
“I absolutely do not.”
I laugh into my coffee. Owen beams at me like we’re co-conspirators now.
Jesus Christ. I like the kid. That realization hits almost as hard as the feelings for Sadie.
I don’t do kids, never wanted them, never pictured any version of my life involving pancakes and cartoons and tiny sneakers by the front door, and yet sitting here watching Owen chatter happily as Sadie moves around the kitchen feels weirdly fucking right.
Like something I didn’t realize I’d been missing.
By the time breakfast’s over, I know staying longer is a bad idea. Leaving already feels harder than it should.
Sadie walks me to the front door while Owen runs upstairs looking for a toy motorcycle he apparently desperately needs to show me before I leave. The house is quieter suddenly.
Warm sunlight spills across the hallway floorboards. For a second, neither of us speaks. Then Sadie exhales softly. “About this morning…”
I grin slightly. “Could’ve gone worse.”
She shakes her head ruefully. “He thinks you’re a superhero motorcycle man.”
“Honestly? I’ve been called worse.”
She laughs quietly. Then her expression softens. “I had a really good time.”
My throat suddenly feels tight. I cough. “Yeah,” I say honestly. “Me too.”
Too much. That’s the problem. I reach for the door but stop as my eyes land on a folded piece of paper, half-shoved beneath it. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, as if my body senses something is wrong.
“What’s that?” Sadie asks.
I crouch and pick it up—it’s a piece of paper, folded twice, no envelope, no address. Whoever sent this delivered it by hand. Something cold crawls slowly up my spine before I even open it. My instinct already knows.
I unfold it carefully, going completely still as I see the two lines written in thick black marker. The entire world narrows. Every protective instinct I have detonates at once as I read it.
YOU’RE MINE. ANYONE WHO TOUCHES YOU DIES.