Chapter 13 Reva #3
Thunder cracks overhead. I jump on instinct.
He stills immediately, palm warm against the inside of my thigh. “You with me?”
I nod too fast.
His hand comes up, cups my jaw. “Reva.”
I force the air back into my lungs. “I’m here.”
“Good girl.”
The words light me up like a struck match.
He sees it and his eyes darken with intent. He kisses me once, deep and filthy, then drops his mouth to my throat while his hand goes back between my legs.
The room narrows to rain, thunder, the blue-white spill of his phone, and the drag of his fingers building me higher.
I glance toward the nightstand once when lightning flashes. The lamp is still dead. The phone light still burns.
Shiloh follows my line of sight and presses a kiss just under my ear. “You’ve got light, darlin’. I’ve got you.”
Something inside me gives over.
I come harder than I’m prepared for, shaking and clutching at him, face buried against his shoulder so I don’t hear how broken I sound. He talks me through it in that low velvet voice—praise and heat and softness laced with rougher words that make my body spark all over again.
When it passes, I’m boneless and raw in the best and worst way.
He brushes damp hair off my forehead and searches my face. “You okay?”
No one ever asks that like they mean it. No one I can afford to trust, anyway. I nod.
His gaze drops to my wrist. The rubber bands left red welts and one angry raised line. His thumb ghosts over the marks so lightly it barely counts as touch.
He doesn’t ask. That almost undoes me more than the rest.
He hooks his fingers into the hem of my sleep shirt and waits. “Can I?”
I should say no, but instead I lift my arms.
The shirt goes over my head and disappears into the dark. Cool air skates over my skin. His gaze drags down the length of my body and back up, slow enough to feel like a hand, somehow both greedy and reverent all at once.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, voice rough and low.
The answer sits behind my teeth, split in two.
I want information.
I want revenge.
I want Deacon dead.
I want this man out of my bed before he tangles himself into places I can’t cut him from cleanly. But my body is traitorous and honest where my mind denies the truth.
“I just want you,” I whisper.
His eyes close for a beat like my admission costs him something.
He kisses me again, slower than before, and shifts between my thighs. One hand braces by my head. The other finds mine and laces our fingers together against the sheet.
The intimacy of that almost makes me pull back, but he tips my chin up so our eyes meet, and he waits.
When I give him a small nod, he lines himself up and pushes in, slow and careful and devastating in a completely different way than the first time, never once taking his eyes off me.
I gasp and his mouth is there to catch it.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Breathe. Take what you need.”
No one has ever said it like that.
Take. Not give. Not earn. Not deserve.
Take.
I grip his hand tighter.
He waits until my body softens around him before he moves again, measured at first, all restraint and tension.
The storm pounds at the house. Thunder rolls through the floorboards.
Every time lightning flashes, the room strobes silver-blue, his tattoos shifting beneath my palms as I touch him and touch him and can’t seem to stop.
This is not anonymous. That’s a problem.
He says my name.
He watches my face.
He kisses me when my breathing goes ragged and slows when the thunder gets too loud and speeds up when I drag my nails down his back and bite his shoulder because I need something sharp to balance the ache opening in my chest.
This is sex, yes. But it’s also comfort. And that is the thing I don’t know how to survive.
“Look at me,” he says when I close my eyes, and I do.
His expression is open—desire, restraint, something warmer I refuse to name. I can’t afford to name it.
My legs tighten around him. The pressure builds too fast, too bright, made raw by fear and adrenaline and the awful relief of not being alone in the dark.
“Shiloh—”
“I know.” His thumb strokes the inside of my wrist, right over the fresh red marks. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
I do.
It tears through me, hard enough to make my vision spot. He follows with a rough groan against my throat, hips stuttering once, twice, then stilling as thunder cracks so loud the windows shiver in their frames.
For a long moment we stay like that. Rain. Breath. Heat. The weak blue pool of phone light beside the dead lamp.
Then he eases some of his weight off me, turning on his side and pulling me into him, his hand smoothing over my side, up my ribs, down again like he’s reminding both of us where we are.
Here.
Now.
Together.
I stare at the nightstand and the two lights that define the whole room tonight—the one I count on and the one he gave me when it failed.
I came to New Orleans to kill a man.
Instead, I’m in bed with one of Noir’s monsters, letting him hold me through a storm because the dark still turns me into a little girl in a closet.
And the worst part—the most dangerous part—is that when he tucks me against his chest and keeps that phone light burning beside us, I feel safe enough to close my eyes.