Page 25 of Savage Obsession
I hear the words, but tune them out and turn inward for a few heartbeats. I’m still too thirsty for blood to speak right now. Willow is telling Roman something about the men with the snake tattoos, but I gently pull her away. I give a chin nod to Roman and I know my brother understands. We can catch him later.
She grips my hand and that small pressure is the first warm thing I’ve felt since the fight started.
“Come on,” she whispers, sensing I need a minute alone with her so I can get my head right, I guess. She tugs me off a short distance under a drooping willow. Its branches are laden with snow, but holding. Under its branches, it feels like we are cocooned away from the rest of the world.
I watch through the icy limbs as Reaper and Beast haul Drudge to his feet. He groans and spits more blood. He knows what is coming, and it isn’t a soft bed and warm meal. Roman is behind them as backup. He has zip ties already in his fist and ready to use them.
Alone, I pull her into my arms and hold her to me. I could have easily lost her tonight. It’s a damn miracle none of us took a hit.
“Are you okay?” Willow looks up at me and there’s genuine concern in her pretty blue eyes. I brush the hair from her face and press my lips to hers. The heaviest snow has lightened to a lazy drift just outside our bubble. A few random flakes that make it inside the limbs, catch in my snow angel’s hair like stars and I fall deeper in love with a woman I can’t live without.
“What’s wrong, Venom? You’re scaring me.”
I cup her face in my hands and press my forehead to hers. “I just needed you to myself for a minute.” I cut a glare past her shoulder toward Roman, who’s too good at seeing things he shouldn’t. “Fuck Roman. He can get his own snow angel.”
Her smile wraps my heart in a warm embrace.
“Is that what this is about?” She huffs, almost laughing despite the fire behind us and the bodies cooling in my yard. “You heard him tell me he might steal me away, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.” Honesty sits right on my tongue with her and I give it to her. “I don’t like the way he looks at you. He likes your light too much.”
She kisses the tip of my nose, defusing a bomb with something soft and lethal in its own way. “I love you too, Silvan Mercer.”
It hits me like a round to the chest.
There’s a knowing smile in her eyes, and I swear to God, this woman can read me better than any medic’s chart. “It happened when I threw myself out the front door and went head on against the Vultures,” I admit, voice rough. “I knew I loved you then.”
I pause.
“I knew it when I found you nearly frozen to death.”
Tears shine at the edges of her eyes, and I want to kill every man who ever made her cry before me. I drop to one knee in the snow and wrap my hands around her middle like I’m anchoring myself to the only true thing I’ve ever known.
“I knew I would love you until my last breath the second I put my gun to your father’s head,” I tell her, the truth scraping up my throat like it has claws. “I was willing to do the one thing no one should have to do to make the love of their life safe.”
She takes my face in her hands and the tears I saw in her eyes freely fall down her cheeks. I brush them away a second before she lowers her lips to mine. “I never want you to carry that heaviness. You are not responsible for me and my protection.”
“The hell I’m not.” I stand, hauling her against me, fitting her where she belongs. “You’re mine. I’m fucking obsessed with making your light part of my world. If you fade away, I will too. There’s no you without me. We are linked, snow angel. I took your virginity, and you brought me back into the world of the living. You shared your light with me and looking at you, touching you, kissing you, loving you makes the darkness in me a little less bleak.”
I don’t care who hears me when I say it. “I love you. You have my heart and soul. I have nothing in this world except you. You are the reason I breathe from here on out.”
She places her hands over mine where I cup her cheeks in the palms of my hands. Her smaller frame molds to my larger one and we touch everywhere possible.
Her sweet lips move softly when she speaks her heart to only me.
“Venom, why do you think I broke all the rules and came to that bookstore?” she asks, voice a warm whisper. “I’ll tell you why. Icame there to see you. To feel you near. To know you were in the same place as me was everything to me some days. We are not supposed to want each other but I couldn’t help it. I still can’t. I’ve loved you long before you even knew I existed.”
I lift her and take her mouth with mine. I fuse the love I feel into our connection and hope she can feel it. For the first time in years, I feel like I won't die a lonely sinner in a savage world. I have someone to lend their light to me so I can see the path forward. For the first time in years, I can see a road in front of me that isn’t paved with names I failed.
Behind us, my little cabin collapses inward with a huff, shooting ash and embers into the night like fireflies reaching for the stars. There I go again thinking like a poet. Last week I ripped Ash and Storm for all the love I saw in their eyes for their new ladies, and here I am one of them now.
Reaper and Roman haul Drudge toward the trees where a blacked-out SUV idles. They’ll take him to where they can question him without interruption. It won’t be pretty but I don't want to think about that right now. My rest of my brothers peel away, headed for the main house.
With a light touch, Willow draws my attention back to her. “I’ll share all my light with you,” Willow promises with her lips against mine. “And you can teach me how to navigate the darkness. I need to see the dark to know how to help you and keep us safe too. I’m not scared. And I’m not naïve. I know there is a bigger fight ahead and I know it’s because of my family.”
“I don’t know what the future holds for us,” I admit, shifting her in my arms, fitting her legs around my waist because carrying her feels like the most natural thing I’ve ever done. “But I knowyou and I are a forever thing. I’m obsessed with having you in my arms and that won’t change now or ever.”
I carry her across the scarred yard toward my truck while the snow drifts to mix with ash. The cab light glows when I open the door, just as the sun brightens the night sky. I set her in the passenger seat and tuck the oversized hoodie around her to help fight off the cold.
