Page 44 of Raiden

“You don’t deserve what happened to you. You didn’t deserve any of this. Your father sent you here, and whatever his purpose was, we should have kept you safe. I’m your husband. I should have been there with you today.”

She tilts her head and studies me. Fat tears cling to her lashes and are still dripping off her chin. “It might have turned out differently if you or Gunner or anyone else had been with us. Whatever they wanted, they would have done anything to get to us. I’m glad we’re okay, but I- I knew it was them or us, but it- I just keep seeing them lying in the gravel like that. Same as that night when I had to- to… it just becomes the bodies and the blood. I feel… dirty. It feels wrong. I don’t deserve you here with me, taking care of me, comforting me.”

“Like fuck you don’t!” I snarl incredulously. “I’m so sorry that you had to kill those men, but you’re right. It was them or it was you. I’m fucking glad it was them. If I didn’t have you safe here with me right now, if Lark wasn’t safe with Gray…” Therecan’t be an if. I don’t want to even put it into words. “We’ll make it go away. No one will know it was you. No one’s going to be coming for you.”

“That’s not what makes me feel dirty. I’m bloodstained. I’m amurderer, Raiden.”

Fuck. Fuckfucking Zale Grand for interfering in her life. For not just leaving her alone. For using her, if that’s what he’s doing, but for getting her involved with this kind of life even if he isn’t.

“Both times you had to kill it was either kill or be killed. That’s self-defense, Ella.” I tip her chin up and make sure she’s looking at me. “I should have been there. I wish I could tell you that nothing will happen to you when you’re with me. I wish I could promise that I’ll always keep you safe.”

“I feel like the stains are never going to come out.”

She’s pleading, begging me silently to do something. I wasn’t there, but I’m herenow.

I can’t do anything to wash the pain from her soul, but I can wash her body. I can make sure that physically, she’s clean.

I get the bottle of bodywash and squirt some into my palm. I lather them together and run them down her arms, staring at her shoulder, going all the way to her hands. I soap each finger. She’s breathless watching me. I run my hands over hers, getting them full of soap, then tilt them in towards her breasts. Her bra is still in place, but I don’t want to touch her where she might be uncomfortable, especially when she’s so fragile.

I trace her waist and skim down her legs, soaping her knees, her calves, her ankles, the tops of her feet.

I’m so careful, concentrating so hard, that when I look up at her and find her eyes devouring my every movement, her pupils blown wide and her lips parted while she breathes hard, that it shocks me and then turns my blood to molten heat. I’m instantly hard, my skin throwing off all the heat that can’t be contained inside of me.

I straighten slowly, making no sudden movements. “Widow…” This is exactly what I wanted to avoid.

“I know… it’s like a funeral. Fucking to feel alive, but I want you anyway. You’re worried I’m not in my right mind and that I’ll regret it later, but I won’t. What I want isn’t to be left alone. I- I want to feel you. I want to feel treasured. Like- like it matters that I’m still here. Like you’re glad it was them and not me. I want to feel you like you’d move the world to keep me safe. Like I matter to you.”

“Ella…”

She plants one hand on my naked chest, curling her nails to bite into the skin and her face twists. “If you can’t fuck me like you want me, then fuck me like you hate me. Either way, it’s the emotion I want.”

I don’t know what I feel about this woman. It’s beyond complicated. Not on her end, but on mine. I have too much shit to wade through before I can even hope to get down to the buried and savaged heart of me, but a feral beast rears its head at her raw need.

Our faces hover less than an inch apart. “I don’t hate you.”

Her tugs me close, her nails scraping along my scalp. “Then want it is.”

Chapter 15

Ella

Imight be broken, but so is this man.

Even if we’re just a jumbled mess of ragged edges and torn up pieces, we can be whole this way, with each other, right now.

Raiden doesn’t take my mouth. He kisses my throat, scoring me with his teeth, biting a path that singes my skin until he gets to my bra. He unclasps it and tosses it aside. His mouth is immediately on one nipple, suckling it to a heard peak. His hand hooks under my panties and he tears them off so fast that I don’t feel the sting until after.

He splays one hand around my hips to press me back into the wall and then reaches past me and shuts the shower off.

His coffee hued eyes are dark and blown out. Espresso. The only coffee worth drinking.

The air is cold when he opens the shower door, but he has me wrapped in one of those huge black fluffy towels he must buy for himself because he also has them at his house too.

He lets me follow him to his bed, which is made up so tight that he must have to use brute force to get into it. That makes me wonder who outfitted this place. A bunch of leather wearing, foul mouthed, rough bikers in the home stores picking out furnishings makes me smile.

“I don’t think I did anything to earn that, but I’m glad to see it.”

He strips off his soaked boxers, his cock so long and thick that it rises up against his stomach. He spreads out on the bed, letting the black comforter soak up the moisture of his body. He’s so beautiful spread out on the bed, naked and inked, a gloriously muscled statue of a god, that my mouth waters.

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