27. Wren #3
Cresting at the top of it, he drives into me one final time. His pelvis grinds against my clit, his cock hitting that sweet spot inside me. My body clenches around him, and I cry out my release. I feel him finish inside me, his groan of pleasure making me smile as I sink into the sofa.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, barely able to put voice to the words. “I don’t know if it was because I really needed that, but that was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
Lucian snorts, lifting off me so he can peer into my face. “Please, that was all me, baby.”
Huffing a laugh, I roll my eyes. “Cocky bastard.”
Scoffing, he says, “Give me five minutes and I’ll prove it to you.”
Shaking my head, I lift my hand, brushing my fingers through the dark strands of hair just above his ear. Searching his eyes, I ask, “Feeling better?”
He sighs, some of that weight from earlier sinking back into his expression, deepening the lines and shadowing his features.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“No,” I agree quietly. “They don’t.”
With another heavy sigh, like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, he shifts onto his side, wedging himself between me and the sofa.
Grabbing a throw from the back of it, he drapes it over us before pulling me into his arms. I cozy up against him, running the tips of my fingers back and forth across the moth tattoo on his pectoral.
He doesn’t look at me when he finally starts talking, instead staring at a point in the rug. “I was fourteen the first time my cousin assaulted me.”
I force my body to remain relaxed. My fingers to continue their soothing path across his skin.
“He was seventeen, and I looked up to him like he hung the moon. He was always looking out for me, buying me shit my parents wouldn’t.
He’d let me hang around with his friends.
I was always treated like an inconvenience at home, like I was constantly getting in the way, but he… he treated me like I mattered.”
His voice cracks on the word before he exhales a bitter laugh.
“And then one night, he offered me a beer. I thought it meant something that he saw me as a grown-up. That I was one of ‘the guys’ now. That I could fit in with his friends.”
He swallows.
“I wasn’t drunk, just…buzzed enough that I didn’t question it when he put his hands on me.
” My stomach twists, acid burning my throat.
“He said he was going to teach me what sex felt like so I didn’t make a fool of myself with some girl.
Told me I should thank him. That every guy wished they had someone to show them the ropes. ”
My throat closes up. My vision blurs. The quiet fury that unfurls in my chest is nuclear.
Hot, searing, and protective in a way I’ve never felt before.
I want to reach through time and rip that moment away from him.
I want to kill the version of his cousin who touched him and then laughed about it.
Who handed him trauma and called it a gift.
Glancing up at his face, Lucian is staring at nothing. Like he’s back there, watching it happen all over again.
“I didn’t know how to say no.”
Reaching up, I cup his cheek. He shifts, pulling me impossibly closer.
“Did you ever tell anyone?” I ask, voice quiet. It’s a rich question coming from me, but given his outburst today, I’m curious.
He shakes his head, jaw tight. “No one would have believed me. I was the angry screw-up, the kid always in detention, the one who couldn’t go a day without throwing a punch. Meanwhile, my cousin was the golden child. 4.0 GPA. Track star. He was going somewhere, and I was…a mistake.”
The way he says it, like it’s a fact, like he’s already accepted it as truth…it makes something in me break. I want to reach into him and carve that belief out by force. Instead, I lean in to press my forehead against his chest and rasp fiercely, “You could never be a mistake, Lucian.”
He goes quiet.
I run my fingers down his neck and over his shoulder, the motion light and soothing.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“I didn’t want to be touched after that,” he continues after a few moments.
“But I didn’t want to feel dirty either.
So I started fucking around. Started…pretending as though I liked it.
That I chose it. I made it a joke. A game.
Like if I could laugh about it, it wouldn’t own me.
If I acted like it never touched me, then maybe it didn’t.
” He laughs humorlessly. “And now I don’t even know what the fuck I want anymore. ”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper. “None of it.”
I don’t think Lucian knows how to cry. He’s never permitted himself to do so. But he shudders, and for Lucian, that’s practically the same thing.
We lie there, quiet and tangled. His arms locked around my waist. My fingers against his chest. Our bodies wrapped up together.
When his breath finally evens out, he leans into me like I’m the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
And I promise him silently: I’ll hold him together as long as it takes.