Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Titan
I carry her to the hidden overlook at the highest point of my fortress, a place I’ve never shown to anyone.
From here, you can see the entire valley without being seen—a tactical advantage I designed when I first built this place with war still fresh in my mind.
She’s quiet in my arms, her tears soaking into my chest, her body still joined with mine because I can‘t bear to separate from her even now. Even knowing what I’m about to do.
The helicopters circle below us like vultures, their searchlights cutting through the remaining haze.
So close to taking what’s mine. The beast in me roars to lock her away deeper in the mountain, to barricade us from the world forever.
But the man I used to be—the leader, the protector—whispers that cages break what’s most precious about wild things.
I settle us on the stone bench I carved years ago, positioning her in my lap so she’s facing the valley, my cock still buried inside her.
Her tears have slowed, but her body trembles against mine like a frightened animal.
My hands, which have only known how to claim and possess since she crashed into my life, now find themselves soothing, stroking down her spine, comforting in a way I’d forgotten I knew how.
“Look,” I tell her, nodding toward the helicopters. “They’re searching the north ridge today. Tomorrow they’ll reach the area where I found you.”
She stiffens in my arms, understanding dawning in those doe eyes as she turns to look at me. “Why are you showing me this?”
I don’t answer immediately. The words stick in my throat like shrapnel. Instead, I press my face into her hair, breathing in her scent—smoke and sex and something uniquely her that I’ve come to crave more than mountain air.
“In Afghanistan,” I finally say, the words feeling foreign on my tongue after years of silence, “I commanded a special ops team. Eight men. Brothers.”
Her eyes widen slightly. This is the first personal information I’ve shared beyond my name.
“Final mission went sideways. Ambush. I had to choose—save the intel that would protect thousands of civilians from an imminent attack, or go back for my men who were pinned down.” The memories flash like gunfire behind my eyes.
“I chose the mission. Got the intel out. By the time I made it back to my team, seven were already dead.”
Her hand comes up to touch my face, a gesture so gentle it feels like absolution I don’t deserve.
“The eighth—Johnson—died in my arms. Made me promise to tell his wife he loved her, that he was sorry he wouldn’t be there for the birth of their baby.
” My voice grows rough with disuse and remembered pain.
“When I got back stateside, I found out she’d killed herself from grief three days before. She was seven months pregnant.”
I feel her sharp intake of breath against my chest. Now she understands. Now she knows why her sister’s desperate messages gut me more than any knife could.
“I failed them both,” I say simply. “The ghosts followed me here. To this mountain.”
I shift her slightly in my arms, tilting her chin up so she has to look at me. “Your tears…they remind me of promises broken. Of lives shattered. And I find I can‘t add your sister to my ghosts.”
Hope flickers in her eyes, but she doesn’t speak, as if afraid her words might change my mind.
“So I’m giving you a choice,” I continue, the beast within me snarling at every word. “Tomorrow, I’ll guide you to where the rescue teams will find you. You’ll have two weeks to help your sister through the birth, to get her settled.”
Her breath catches, but I’m not finished.
“Then you come back to me. Voluntarily. Back to this mountain, back to this fortress. Back to my cock and my seed and the babies we’ll make together.” My fingers dig into her hips, emphasizing each word. “Two weeks. Not a day more.”
“And if I don’t come back?” she whispers, her inner walls clenching nervously around me.
I smile, and I know it’s not a kind expression.
“Then I come for you. And this time, there won’t be any choices, little mama.
I’ll take you in front of your sister, your friends, anyone who tries to keep you from me.
I’ll breed you right there in whatever soft city bed you’re hiding in, and then I’ll bring you back here where you belong. ”
Fear and something darker—excitement, desire—flash across her face. “You would do that? Let me go, knowing I might not come back?”
“You’ll come back,” I say with a certainty I don’t entirely feel. “Your body knows who it belongs to now. Your pussy is shaped for my cock. Your womb is waiting for my seed. You can run, little mama, but you’re already mine.”
To prove my point, I lift her slightly and then bring her down hard on my length, watching her mouth fall open in pleasure despite her tears, despite the seriousness of our conversation. Her body betrays her every time, responding to me with an honesty her mind might still fight.
“Two weeks,” I repeat, establishing the rhythm of our coupling. “To say goodbye to your old life.”
“And if I do come back?” she asks between gasps as I hit that spot deep inside her that makes her eyes roll back.
“Then we begin our life together. Properly. No more tears, no more guilt. Just you and me and the family we’ll build on this mountain.” The thought makes my cock swell even further inside her. “The first of many babies already growing in your belly, perhaps.”
She moans at the words, her inner muscles fluttering around me. The idea excites her as much as it does me, even if she won‘t admit it yet.
That night, knowing it’s our last before she returns to the world below, I take her with a desperate, emotional intensity I’ve never allowed myself before.
I worship every inch of her body with my hands and mouth, memorizing the taste of her skin, the sounds she makes when I lick into her core, the way her back arches when she comes.
For the first time, I make love to her facing me, her legs wrapped around my waist, my eyes locked on hers as I push inside her welcoming heat. No more mounting from behind like a beast claiming its mate. Tonight I need to see her, need her to see me—the man, not just the mountain monster.
“Look at me,” I command softly when she tries to close her eyes against the pleasure. “See who’s filling you. Who you’ll come back to.”
“Titan,” she whimpers, and my name on her lips sounds like a prayer and a plea all at once.
“That’s it, little mama. Say my name. Remember who owns this sweet pussy.” I grind against her clit with each thrust, determined to brand her with pleasure so intense she’ll feel the ghost of it during our separation.
When she comes, she cries through her orgasm, her body clinging to mine while tears stream down her face. I catch them with my tongue, tasting the salt of her conflict—the pleasure of being with me warring with the relief of being able to fulfill her promise to her sister.
I fill her one last time, emptying myself so deep inside her that I half-expect to see her belly swell with it. As we lie tangled together afterward, my hand splayed possessively over her lower abdomen, I whisper against her hair.
“Two weeks. Then either you come to me, or I come for you.”
She nods against my chest, her breathing evening out as sleep claims her. I stay awake all night, memorizing the weight of her body against mine, the rhythm of her breathing, the exact shade of her hair in the moonlight filtering through the high windows.
Tomorrow I’ll guide her out of the fortress, down the hidden mountain trails to where the rescue teams will find her. I’ll watch from the shadows as she‘s taken back to civilization, to hospitals and phones and all the comforts my fortress lacks.
For the first time in five years, I’ll let someone walk away from me. Let someone carry a piece of my savage heart with them down the mountain.
And I’ll pray to gods I stopped believing in long ago that the mountain lets her choose me.