Page 95 of Beautiful Ruins
That stung. She wanted normal. I wanted numb. I suppose going to funeralswasnormal in our world. But that’s not what she meant, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to pretend our lives weren’t on the verge of destruction.
I cracked one eye open. Sadie was a dark silhouette, hair up but wild around her unsmiling face.
She flicked her gaze around the room, then it landed back on me. “I’m not kidding, Rowan. Get up, or we’re going to be late.” Then she sniffed, wrinkling her nose like she’d smelled something rotten. “And shower. You smell like you jumped into a barrel of motor oil.”
A grin widened across my lips, despite the pounding in my head and the coiled tension in my stomach. Marcus might have been dead, but Snake wasn’t, and he was more a threat the longer he stayed hidden.
Still, I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing when I hooked an arm around her waist and spun us with a practiced ease, the mattress bouncing under her as I landed above.
My weight pressed down on top of her, pinning her just enough to remind her I could. She glared at me with those hazel eyes, her hands braced against my chest as though she wascontemplating shoving me off. Sunlight sliced through the blinds, catching the strands of her wild hair as it came loose from her forehead.
“I thought you liked it when I was dirty, Firefly,” I said, lowering my head to breathe her in and rub the stubble on my jaw over her cheek.
I pressed my nose to the spot just under her jaw, where her pulse always raced, and inhaled deeply. She smelled of vanilla and something a little bitter, like burnt sugar. It made me want to eat the world alive.
Or, more like, it made me want to devour her. The ache in my dick sharpened, demanding more than just the press of her hips.
“Ro.” She whispered my name but didn’t push me away. Instead, she ran her hands up my bare chest and threaded her fingers into the hair at the back of my neck. She ground her hips up, a small whimper escaping her lips. Then she stilled, her eyes narrowing. “No. We have to be somewhere, and I’m not going to let you distract me with your dick, Rowan.”
I groaned and rolled off, landing on my back against the mattress. I stared up at the oscillating fan as it struggled to push any air around the room. I’d replace it one day. “Funerals are a fucking knife to the ribs, Sades.” I swallowed hard, my heart pounding.
The last one I went to was my old man’s a couple years back. And before that—Logan’s. That old wound pulsed deeper than any bruise—his smile, his last words, the echo of a promise I never kept. Fuck.
So, the last thing I wanted to do was to attend one for people I’d barely known.
Not that I really had a choice. I wasn’t going to leave Sadie alone out there, and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I know,” she murmured, tracing the edge of my hairline,grounding me like she didn’t know she was holding my pieces together.
Every time she touched me, she was stitching me back together with the same needle and thread she’d used to sew up her own wounds. I was a patchwork of old scars and fresh guilt, barely holding it together at the seams. But her hands always found a way to make me whole, even for a split second.
She planted a hard kiss to my forehead, more a command than a comfort, and rolled off the bed, the mattress shifting. “But you’ll do it because you’re a good man, Rowan Knight. And I love you. So, get your arse up. Now.”
I shivered, but it had nothing to do with the cold where her warmth had just been. It was the fact she could say something like that, drop the L-bomb with zero fucks given, and leave me gasping for air while she moved on with her day like nothing happened. Like she didn’t know she was loving a man one mistake away from burning it all down.
Sadie straightened the wrinkles I’d just created out of her tight black dress. It clung to her hips and thighs, and when she bent to pick up her boots from the foot of the bed, I glimpsed her bare arse in a G-string. My brain short-circuited. I was supposed to be the big bad wolf, but she was the one with the teeth.
My heart rate was already ticking up, probably because I knew I’d do whatever she asked. I was a lot of things—self-destructive, an arsehole, a walking punchline for irreparable fuckups—but with her, I was a helpless wreck. She said “jump,” and I was already halfway off the ledge.
Sadie glanced back at me, eyebrow raised. “You planning to gawk all morning, or are you hoping I’ll climb on top of you?”
A man could dream.
I grunted, making a show of rolling over like it took every ounce of strength to sit upright. I swung my legs over the edgeof the bed and scrubbed my hands over my face. My head pulsed with that greasy hangover ache, even though I hadn’t touched a single drop the previous night.
Memories of Marcus’s body sprawled in the dirt, face missing, threatened to overtake everything else. Instead, I focused on the moment. Sadie. The morning. The way she stood there, hands on her hips, daring me to fight her on something as pointless as getting ready for a burial.
I laced my fingers behind my head, stretching until my shoulders popped. “So, what do I get in return?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll give you anything you want.” She said it like a challenge, a tease, the kind of bait that always made me snap.
She stepped between my legs, grabbed a fistful of my hair and tugged, not gently at all, so I had to look up at her.
I smirked, refusing to let her see how badly I needed the contact. “Anything, huh?”
“Anything,” she repeated, and this time her lips curved in a way that made it obvious she was picturing something already.
I ran my hands up the outside of her thighs, under the dress, and let my fingers play along the curve of her hips. She was soft in some places, hard in others—a contradiction I’d never tire of tracing. Ducking my head, I pressed my mouth to the inner side of her right thigh. She gasped as I bit down on her soft skin, not enough to leave a mark, but enough to make her a promise for later.
