Page 91 of Claws and Feathers

Nothing was ever easy.

“My grandmother paid him ten-thousand dollars a month for twelve years,” Abby said, tears brimming in her eyes. “They made a deal. Nana would cover Chad’s medical bills as long as she was living, and Larkin would remain silent. He wouldn’t talk about the accident.” Cooper approached her, but she stepped back. Abby tried to pretend like she didn’t see the wounded look on Cooper’s face. “Then Nana died,” she continued. “She died, and then Chad died, and Larkin had nothing left. No wife, no child, no money, no hope. All he had was me.”

“Abby, stop.”

She didn’t stop. She could never stop. “How can you even look at me?” she asked, her voice dipping, her head swinging back and forth with outrage. “How can you still want me after what happened to James? To your sister?”

“Because I fuckingloveyou!” Cooper stormed over to her, giving her no chance to protest. He grasped her face between his hands again and pulled her close. “I love you, Abigail Stone. There’s nothing you could ever do to make me stop loving you.”

All she could do was cry. Tears flowed freely, coating her cheeks, her nose, and her quivering lips.

Cooper kissed her forehead, then pressed his own against hers. “I know your heart. It’s beautiful and kind and compassionate and raw. You are not the person you think you are, Abby. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.”

Oh,God. His magical words. Why was he making this so hard?

Why was he making thisimpossible?

She shuddered and sobbed as he held her, his thumbs wiping the tears from her cheeks. Abby looked up at him then. She looked into his eyes. She saw her reflection in them, and there was a moment – a moment so pure, so fleeting – where shedidsee the girl he spoke of. Abby was sixteen again, carefree and spirited. She saw herself dancing in her parent’s backyard, twirling around in a circle, her arms outstretched and as light as a feather. She had nothing heavy to carry. Abigail Stone was untouched. She was untainted. She was unaware of the tragedies that loomed on the horizon. She could almost smell her father cooking barbeque chicken on his favorite grill, while her mother’s laughter trickled out through the patio doors.

But then Cooper blinked, and she was back on the dock. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She would never be that girl again.

Cooper must have sensed a shift in her, so he leaned down to place a kiss against her mouth. It was their first kiss since the hospital. It was soft and sweet, and it made her body rise to seek more contact. Cooper pulled back slightly, his eyes dancing over her face, his eyessearchingfor something.

Abby noticed a familiar tingle ignite deep in her belly when she felt the mood between them deviate. The somber haze began to disintegrate as a new haze swept through.

He wanted her. She could see it his hazel eyes as they burned into hers. She could feel it in the way he gripped her closer,tighter. She could hear it in his heartbeat. Anddear God, she wanted him, too. Abby leaned up and kissed him hard, reaching behind his head and pulling him in. A groan rumbled deep in his chest as Abby intensified the kiss with a trace of desperation. There was something reckless and urgent in her need for him. Their tongues crashed together as Cooper’s hands trailed down her backside and pressed her fully against him, their groins grinding together, her body arching into his.

“Inside,” she murmured into his mouth, out of breath and hardly able to remain standing.

Cooper lifted her with ease, with careful, gentle ease, and carried her across his yard and through his back door. He brought her to the nearest piece of furniture, and they collapsed onto his couch with Abby straddling him, already tugging at his belt. Her hands were frantic, shaking,yearning. Cooper’s eyes were like embers, searing right into her and making her burn. She needed more. She neededallof him.

There was so much going on – hands everywhere, mouths sloppy and full of haste, clothes being yanked off and thrown across the room. There was something primal between them. Anache. A void that needed to be filled. Abby had looked death in the eye and Cooper knew that. Her own mortality had hung in the balance, the striking possibility they would never touch each other again. Never feel each other’s warmth, or flesh, or beating hearts. It fueled their fire as he pulled at her hair and she nibbled his neck. Tasting, feeling,needing.

Cooper began to lift her dress over her head, but Abby faltered, grabbing his hands to halt his attempts.

“What is it?” His voice was full of gravelly lust, and it made her whimper as she swiveled her hips into his lap. He moaned and tried to pull her dress up again.

“No,” she breathed out, stopping him once more. “I don’t want you to see me.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate through his fog. Cooper blinked, then slowly ran his hands up under her dress like he was memorizing every curve, every dip, every bend. Like he was cherishing every single piece of her. Abby melted into his touch, forgetting her insecurities, forgetting her fear that he would be repulsed by her battle scar.

Cooper lifted the dress over her head, his gaze landing on the healing wound in the middle of her chest. Abby stiffened, unsure how to proceed – unsure of what he was thinking.

She swallowed. “It’s ugly.”

Cooper’s eyes raised to hers, perplexed, and flickering with audacity. “There is nothing about you that’s ugly, Abby.” He leaned forward and placed a feather light kiss against the evidence of her trauma. “Your scar will be a testament to all you’ve been through. All you’ve overcome. There is only beauty in something like that,” he said. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her forward, kissing her again, relighting the fire.

Abby squirmed against him, scratching her nails down his chest and relishing in the sounds he made. Their mouths remained fused together as she lifted herself up and sheathed herself onto him. She broke away, their eyes locked, and began to move. She rocked up and down, savoring every inch of him, savoring the heat, and the magic, and the undeniable forces that made her crave him in a way she had never craved anything before in her life.

She enjoyed taking control – she enjoyed the moans she evoked from his mouth and the way she brought him to his knees with a twirl of her hips. Abby had little control over anything in her life, but she had control over this moment. It was enough for now.

Cooper’s arms were encircled around her, his hands gliding up her back as she moved and swayed. His fingers threaded through her hair and he kissed her soundly, the tension and heat building and swelling inside them. They peaked together, and it was powerful, and soul-shattering, and almost too much to bear.

Abby fell against him as the shocks rippled through her, and then she broke. With her face pressed up against the curve his neck, she buried her nose into his cedar-scented wisps of hair and purged her grief like a violent rain. She clung to him. She held him close. Cooper’s hands were running along her hair and her back as he whispered sweet words of consolation into her ear.

He knew she needed this release as much as she’d needed the physical one. He knew she was teetering on the edge of a breakdown she may never recover from. He knew her heart was fragile.

What he didn’t know was that she was grieving forhim.

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