Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
Reid
His cabin is small. Sparse. A bed. A desk. A single chair. Nothing on the walls.
This is where he’s lived for years. Alone. Isolated. Trying to become something different.
I turn to face him. “Show me who you are now. Not who you were. Who you are.”
He closes the door behind us. Locks it. The click feels significant—shutting out the world, the cameras, the past. Just us.
“Reid.” My name sounds like a prayer. “Are you sure?”
I cross to him. Put my hand on his chest. Feel his heart hammering. “I’m sure. Are you?”
“I choose this.” His eyes hold mine. “I choose you.”
He kisses me. Soft at first. Testing. Then deeper as I open for him.
His hands find the zipper of my dress and slide it down slowly. He pushes the fabric off my shoulders and it puddles at my feet. I’m standing in front of him in just my bra and underwear.
God, the way he looks at me. Like I’m precious. Like I’m everything.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes. “I’ve thought about this every night since the hotel.”
My hands go to his shirt. I don’t wait to start unbuttoning. “I was so angry that night. I wanted to hurt you the way you hurt me.”
“I know.” He helps me push the shirt off. “I deserved it.”
“But this—” I touch his chest, feel his heart hammering under my palm. “This is different.”
“Yes.”
I push him toward the bed. He sits. I stand between his legs.
He looks up at me. Vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen him.
“Mea carissima,” he whispers.
He reaches behind me. Unhooks my bra. Slides it off slowly. His breath catches.
His hands cup my breasts. Thumbs brushing over my nipples. I gasp—they harden immediately under his touch.
“So perfect,” he breathes.
Then his mouth is on me. Hot and wet. He takes my nipple between his lips, sucking gently at first, then harder. His tongue circles, flicks, teases. His hand kneads my other breast, thumb and forefinger rolling the nipple.
I arch into him, hands fisting in his hair. “God, Sulla—”
He releases one breast with a wet sound and immediately lavishes attention on the other. Sucking, licking, gentle teeth scraping. The dual sensation has me trembling and making sounds I barely recognize as mine.
“I’ve dreamed about this,” he murmurs against my skin. “Your taste. These sounds you make.”
He kisses the valley between my breasts, taking his time. Kissing. Tasting. Worshipping.
When he pulls back his eyes are dark with want. “Lie down.”
I do. He remains standing as he removes his jeans. Then my dress. We’re both in just underwear now.
He kneels beside the bed. Trails his fingers down my side.
Stops at a scar on my ribs.
“Old wound?” he asks quietly.
“Iraq.” A beat. “Long time ago.”
He doesn’t ask more. Just leans down and kisses it. Like it deserves to be honored even without its story.
He moves to another scar on my shoulder.
“This one?”
“Training accident. Stupid mistake.”
He kisses it. “Beautiful.”
He keeps moving down. Lips tracing the curve of my waist, the plane of my stomach. Taking his time. Like he’s memorizing me by touch.
When he reaches my hips, he hooks his fingers in my underwear and draws it down slowly, watching my face the whole time. Then he settles between my thighs and looks up at me with absolute devotion.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
His mouth finds me and I stop thinking entirely.
He takes his time — long, slow strokes of his tongue that make my hips roll toward him.
Learning what makes me gasp, what makes me grab the sheets, what makes me say his name like a prayer.
When he finds the right rhythm he stays there, relentless, until I’m shaking and desperate and completely undone.
When I finally shatter, it’s with his name on my lips and his hands gripping me like an anchor.
He doesn’t move immediately. Just rests his forehead against my thigh. Breathing. Letting me come back to myself.
Then I reach for him.
His control slips. It’s in the way his grip tightens, in the rough edge of my name. “Reid.”
My turn. I sit up and push him onto his back. Trail my fingers over his chest, down to his abdomen.
“Turn over,” I murmur.
He does. The whip scars on his back are thick. Numerous. I trace them with shaking fingers.
“These are from…” I can’t finish.
“The Ergastulum. Domina’s punishment.” His voice is steady, but I hear what it costs him. “Long time ago.”
I lean down and kiss each scar I can reach, my mouth moving slowly, deliberately. Someday he’ll tell me. Someday I’ll know the boy who endured this, the man who survived it, every piece of what made him into who he is now. I want all of it. Every dark chapter.
Something fierce and aching rises in my chest. Not pity. Never that. Just the overwhelming need to protect what no one protected then.
“I’m sorry anyone hurt you.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Don’t be. The men I hurt after—they deserved that sorrow far more than I do.”
I turn him back toward me. Cup his face in my hands. Look at him until he meets my eyes.
“I know,” I say quietly. “Perhaps… there’s enough sorrow to go around.”
Then I kiss him. “Tonight you’re just mine. Just a man I love.”
He pulls me down on top of him. Hands cradle my face. “I love you too. So much.”
We kiss for a long time. Slow. Deep. Learning each other again.
He removes his hands from me long enough to pull off his underwear.
We’re bare now. Skin to skin. Nothing between us.
“Can I—” I reach down, wrap my hand around him.
His breath tears out of him. “Reid.”
“I want to touch you.” I stroke slowly, learning the weight of him, the heat. Smooth skin over steel. “You’re so hard.”
“For you. Always for you.” The words come out rough, scraped from somewhere deeper than arousal.
When my thumb brushes over the tip, finding moisture there, he shudders.
“I need you,” I whisper. “Inside me. Now.”
He catches my wrist gently. “If you keep doing that, this will be over before it starts.”
“Then don’t wait.”
He rolls us, settles between my thighs, looks down at me with eyes full of love and want and something that looks like awe.
“Te amo,” he whispers. Kisses my neck. “Anima mea.” My collarbone. “Cor meum.” My breast.
“What do those mean?”
He lifts his head. Meets my eyes. “I love you. My soul. My heart.”
“You told me mea lux in the bothy. My light.”
“Yes. But it’s more than that.” He kisses me softly. “You’re not just my light. You’re the light that guides me home. The only light I see in darkness. The thing that makes me want to be better.”
I’m crying now. Good tears.
“Say them again. All of them.”
He does. Latin and English, moving down my body, worshipping with words and touch.
“Mea lux—my light, my guide, my hope.”
“Mea vita—my life, my reason for breathing.”
“Mea carissima—my dearest, my beloved, my heart.”
“Te amo— love you more than I’ve loved anything.”
“Anima mea—you’re my soul, the part of me that was missing.”
“Cor meum—my heart beats only for you.”
He’s between my thighs now.
“I need you,” I breathe. “Please.”
“I’ve got you.”
He moves up. Positions himself. Our gazes lock.
“Don’t look away,” I say.
“I won’t.”
He pushes forward slowly. Just the tip at first. I’m wet, ready, but he’s thick and the stretch is intense.
“Oh God,” I breathe.
“Okay?” He’s trembling with the effort of going slow.
“Yes. More. Please.”
He pushes deeper. I can feel everything—the drag of him, myself stretching to accommodate him, every ridge, every vein.
“Goddess, Reid.” His voice breaks. “You feel perfect.”
“Keep going. Don’t stop.”
He slides in fully. When he’s as deep as he can go, we both go still. Just breathing. Just feeling. Mine, I think. Mine and I am his and nothing has ever been this simple or this true.
He starts to move. Slow withdrawals that make me whimper, then deep swift thrusts that have me crying out. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer.
“Harder. I need more.”
We find our rhythm. It’s different from the hotel—that was fury and breaking and purging.
This is healing. Choosing. Building something new with full knowledge of what we are.
“Talk to me,” I say. “I want to hear you.”
And he does. Broken fragments. Rough and ragged and real.
“Te amo—” Thrust. “Goddess—” Deeper. “Mea vita—”
“Everything. You’re everything, Reid.”
“Don’t deserve you—” His breath humid against my neck. “—spend my life—mea carissima—”
“Mine.” The word torn out of him. “Reid. Mine.”
Latin and English dissolving into each other, into breath and motion, this taciturn man who barely speaks pouring out everything he’s held back his entire life.
I respond in kind. This thing I never do—this openness, this surrender.
“I love you. So much it scares me.”
“Yours. I’m yours. Nothing changes that.”
“I see who you’re becoming. I love all of you.”
The rhythm builds. Faster. Harder.
I push on his chest. “Wait.”
He stills immediately.
“My turn.” I push him onto his back and straddle him without breaking the connection. The angle shifts—different, deeper—and we both gasp.
“I want to watch your face,” I say. “When you come.”
His hands settle at my waist, loose. Not controlling—just anchored. Eyes dark and wide. “Then move.”
I do. Setting the pace now, lifting and sinking. My hand goes to my breast, touching myself the way he did.
His gaze is locked on me. Something reverent in it.
“Reid.” Just my name. Just that. Like it contains everything.
I move faster. The pleasure coils tight and low, winding with every stroke.
“I’m close,” I gasp. “So close—”
“I can feel you.” His voice is wrecked. “Come for me. Let me feel it.”
One more thrust and I shatter. My whole body seizes and releases in waves. He follows seconds later, groaning my name as he comes, his hands finally gripping hard, holding me against him while he pulses deep inside.
We’re both shaking.
I collapse onto his chest. His arms lock around me immediately.
For a long time neither of us speaks. Just breathing. Just this.
Finally he tucks my hair behind my ear and looks at me.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“We try. One day at a time.”
“What if I have a bad day? What if I’m angry again about what you kept from me?”
“Then I’ll be patient. And we’ll work through it.”
“What if I can’t trust you completely yet?”
His hand cups my face. “Then I’ll keep earning it. Every day. For as long as it takes. Forever if necessary.”
I look at him for a long moment. This man who ran across a failing bridge for me. Who held Trevor through a panic attack with more patience than I’ve ever managed. Who has been quietly, stubbornly becoming someone better with no audience and no guarantee it would matter.
“I know,” I say. “I already know.”
I kiss him. He pulls me closer.
When we break apart we’re both smiling.
“The bothy,” I say quietly. “That night in the storm. That’s still just ours, right?”
“Just ours. No cameras. No witnesses.”
“One night that was just us. Before everything fell apart.”
“I’ll never forget it.” His hand strokes my hair. “Watching you sleep. Realizing how deeply I loved you.”
“I told you then. Remember? ‘I’m in love with you too.’ Meant every word.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not scared anymore, Sulla.”
He pulls me close. I rest my head on his chest. Listen to his heartbeat.
“Stay,” he whispers. “Tonight. Tomorrow. As long as you want.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’m staying.”
We drift off like that. Wrapped around each other. Safe. Whole.
This is real. This is just the beginning.
One day at a time.
Together.
Finally.