Page 94 of They Break Beauty

I couldn’t leave her warmth yet, couldn’t break the connection.

“That was…insane,” she breathed into the pillow.

“Beyond even my most vivid fantasies about us.”

She chuckled, then relaxed against me.

Mine.

I stroked her dandelion tattoo on her right upper back that was concealing something only the two of us knew about—a gunshot wound she’d taken there from the demons. Trying to save us. Trying to save me.

I grimaced and forced those thoughts from my mind, focusing on the moment. On her. She was here with me now.

Safe and protected.

And we’d finally come together the way I’d craved for so long.

The way I’d needed us to.

Tonight had been more than just her surrendering to me.

It was us surrendering to each other.

In a way that would stay with me forever.

I tightened my hold on her and breathed into her hair, “My Wildflower.”

20

~Brianna~

A repetitive buzzing forced me awake.

Groaning, I turned toward the sound, only to smush myself into a wall of warm, hard muscle. I jolted and looked to see Levi still here and wrapped tightly around me, his arm around my back and one of his big, muscular legs thrown over both of mine that were slightly curled.

Levi Knight was in my bed.

Warming my sheets. Warming me.

That masculine sandalwood scent that had become synonymous with him for me infused my senses.

Even in his sleep, his hold around me was unyielding and possessive. Protective and needy. And it made me feel… cherished.

As fucked up as it was and with the twisted way it had come about, not to mention how things had started when he’d come at me in his maniacal way, he made me feel safe and free at the same time. Being with him made me feel alive for the first time ever.

I didn’t have to pretend with him either.

I didn’t have to pretend that I wasn’t damaged.

Because he was too.

But when we were together, in each other’s company, it became something else.

It soothed it, all that pain we carried around with us.

It was solace.

As the buzzing thankfully stopped, I eased away a little to take Levi in.

---