Page 97 of Born for Lace

“You like your Shadow’s thick cock?” I growl, possessive as all hell over this little flower and her sweet, tight pussy.

I know I’ll have to go easy on her, not fuck her or touch her every second of the next few days on the way up to the community, but it’ll be hard.

I’llbe hard.

That is all I have with her—two or three fucking days before I leave her forever. I must leave. They don’t allow Xin De in the community; even so, I could never be a part of a… A fucking Collective. I wasn’t designed for companionship. I was engineered to be a loner, able to leave at any moment, drop everything and take an assignment for my Meaningful Purpose. I may no longer be an active Shadow, but it is what I am made of.

She has to be safe from… The outside world and the deep, volatile darkness within me. It’s all I care about anymore. All that truly matters.

My new Meaningful Purpose is to ensure she is safe. And perhaps, it always has been. Leading up to the moment I met her, all the events formed a path before me.A way to her.

The hell I endured at the hands of The Trade, the breakdown, the fall, the deaths, cum and blood, and Tomar, fucking Tomar with his will to save people—all of it. All I am and all I’ve done have been stones in the bloody path that led me to the Shadow baby and toher.

To find her.

Not to keep.

But to save.

ChapterThirty

Dahlia

The comfort of his warmth is unparalleled. The heavy drum of his heart against my cheek is grounding, a reminder that I am alive and that there is another caring for me.

A resting smile moves to my lips as a sense of security bundles me up. I understand sleep better than I ever have before. I am never the one awake while another person sleeps beside me.

I see now that the embrace of slumber is when we are most vulnerable, quietly existing inside our bodies, not outwardly living in them.

Lagos is stunning when he is asleep, and even though I can feel him inside me—inside my heart and a pulse between my thighs—right now feels even more personal.

Deeply personal.

I reach up and coil his chest hair around my finger, following the thick black patterns of a tattoo.

Spero fusses from the room opposite this one, and so I try to lift the heavy arm embracing me, but to no avail. “Lagos…”

“No,” he murmurs, voice gravelly and hoarse.

I smile, and a little ease passes over me. He doesn’t want to pretend that last night didn’t happen.

“I have to go to Spero,” I whisper, nudging him again.

A sleepy groan of annoyance rumbles from him, but he lifts the weighty arm, allowing me to slide out.

I go straight to the bathroom, pee, and quickly wash my hands. There is a rectangular bar of soap on the basin, which is already wet. Lagos has used it. So, I feel quite comfortable that it’s not old or last used by a stranger. I wash between my thighs with cold water from the faucet and the bar of soap.

Within a few minutes, I’m a tiny bit cleaner, have changed Spero’s cloth nappy, and am walking into the dusty old kitchen with him in my arms.

My breath catches when I see Tomar’s hunched back bent over, his head in the cupboard, hands sorting through cans and items.

Did he hear?Yes.I heard Spero, so he definitely heard me last night. The conversation between us, the one I rammed down and said I would forget, comes crashing back on waves of discomfort.

“Tomar?”

He bashes his head in the cupboard, trying to pull it out. “Fuck.” Rubbing the back of his skull, he stands and faces me.

“Hi,” I manage to say.

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