47. Eighteen years after that cocky bastard tried to kill me, failed, and I ended up giving him my life anyway
Eighteen years after that cocky bastard tried to kill me, failed, and I ended up giving him my life anyway
“How many?” he asked. It was more urgent these days, edged with fear. It had been a year since I’d had contact with him outside texts and phone calls. Too fucking long. I kissed him and remembered how much I loved the taste of him, but he shoved me away.
“How many, Austin?” When I said nothing, he pushed me a second time. “Answer me!”
“This is the last one,” I said softly. His eyes went wide and I could see every freckle and wave in his sapphire irises.
“Then you better fuck me like this is the last time,” he said.
“It’s not.”
“Do it anyway.” It wasn’t like his normal commands—firm and sure. This time his voice cracked.
It was always like this with us anymore, sex first, then each other’s company, if we stuck around long enough. Each year that passed made it hurt more to see him and then lose him again, and I wondered if he felt the hurt too.
When he fucked me this time, it was face-to-face, slow and yearning.
It was soft touches and the patient, steady trek to release.
He’d lost all passion and haste to a quieter need.
His hands were everywhere as his cock plunged inside me in languid strokes, rubbing that tender spot inside me that made my dick pulse and my balls ache.
His need to touch me, like I might disappear, made me question if I would—if Rook was the only person still holding me to this earth.
Afterward, we dressed and he headed for the front door of my penthouse with no words of comfort or a goodbye. I clutched his arm to stop him.
“Wait.” My heart pounded like drumbeats, but if I didn’t say this right now, tonight, I knew I never would. “Marry me.”
His jaw dropped, and I would have laughed at the reaction if I hadn’t been so terrified of what he might say next.
“What?” he asked. His eyes searched my face, and I hated the way he frowned.
I reached into my pocket, opened my fist, and slipped the ring into his hand. “I’m not good at surprises and flowery words. Just marry me.”
“No.”
The room tilted, but I bolstered myself. I would not let him leave until he said yes or we broke this off for good. There were no other options anymore.
“Fucking hell! I don’t want to do this anymore—sneaking around, keeping it all a secret, getting together and breaking up. I just want you. Neither of us has lives to spare anymore, and I don’t want to waste this one regretting not having you.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t drop the ring. He didn’t give it back or throw it at my face. Instead, he opened his palm and examined the gold band with inlaid diamonds.
“You’re serious.” He glanced at me and rubbed his thumb over the ring.
“I’m going to retire. Immediately. We’ll have a ridiculously small wedding because neither of us has any friends, and then I’ll go anywhere you want.
I’ll sweat in the fucking sun, on a sweltering beach, with sand in every crevice of my body if that’s what you want.
I love you. I love you. I can’t do this anymore.
I’m too old and I’m too lonely and everything but you means fuck all to me. Please marry me.”
He was silent for a moment, but then he bit back a smile. “That’s the worst proposal ever.”
My lips twitched. “Of the two of us, you are the romantic.”
“What about Death?” he asked.
“I’m never going to find her again,” I said.
Maybe we would meet again at the end, if I was deemed fit to move on and didn’t get stuck here like the spirits that still followed me everywhere like lost puppies.
Perhaps when my time came, I would see her again, and we would meet with respect instead of antagonism.
Wasn’t this the lesson she wanted me to learn? To love again?
“I’m wasting my time searching for her,” I said, “and I don’t have much of it left. I’d rather spend it with you.”
“Okay.” He nodded vigorously.
“Okay?”
“I mean, yes,” he said, slipping the ring on his own finger. “Yes, I will marry you.”
I fell to my knees in front of him, though I thought I was supposed to do that part before I proposed to him, and wrapped my arms around his middle. I kissed his stomach and buried my face in the fabric of his shirt.
“I’m yours,” I said.
He tilted my chin with one finger and grinned down at me. “And I love you.”
I was never under the illusion that either of us were good men. We had far too much blood on our hands. But we were good together—messy, imperfect, but wholly each other’s.
Sometimes villains never die. We’d sure tried and failed when it all started between us. We’d chased each other’s deaths almost as hard as I’d chased Death herself. I’d built an entire empire on lives that had escaped me and left little meaning in their wake.
Except for him. Always him.
Sometimes villains never die.
And sometimes they just live like everyone else, and that’s enough.