Page 102 of Boy of Ruin
I remember the glass he threw at my head. The coke on the table. His hands wrapped around my throat. “Shut the fuck up,” he’d told me, more than once.
He’d hurt me.
He’d hurt my brother more.
Not to mention Jeremiah’s hand, trembling in my grasp.
Nerve damage.
Permanent.
Lucifer could’ve stopped it, but he didn’t. He fucking didn’t.
I move closer to Jeremiah, and he slowly picks his head up, his gaze wary, as if he’s scared of what I’m going to do next. There are so many ways I’ve let him down. So many ways I’ve rejected him, it’s a miracle he even still wants me. Even after what we did, even after how he marked me in the kitchen…I saw the fear in his eyes when I told him he wouldn’t have to live without me.
Did I mean it?
I don’t know.
But as I straddle him, knees on either side of his hips, his groin pressing between my thighs, I know that I mean it for now. Someone needs to heal him. He’s achieved so much. He’s capable of so fucking much.
But his heart needs to be taken care of.
Me and Lucifer are done. I think we’ve been done a long, long time.
He fucked up my family.
His own family.
He put coke and women and everything else before me. I know he needs help, too. Healing. But he refuses to get it, then he flees to Julie. Fucking Ophelia.
Fuck. Him.
Jeremiah’s hands are on my waist as he leans back on the couch, looking up at me while I cup his handsome face, tilting my head down, my lips inches from his.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
He swallows, averting his gaze for a second, his fingers digging deeper into my skin. I shift on top of him, rubbing against him and he bites his lip like he’s holding back a moan as he looks back up at me.
“Don’t be,” he tells me, and he looks like he means it. “I was always just trying to get back to you, sis.” He smirks at me, his eyes gleaming in the dim lights of the living room. It probably shouldn’t but hearing him call me that makes me want him even more. “Always. The rest of the shit we suffered along the way? Fuck it.”
Without another word, he grabs my hips, picks me up and spins us around, so he’s on top of me on the couch.
“God, I’ve wanted you for so fucking long.” He brushes a lock of hair from my face and I shiver at his light touch. “Having you now…” He bites his lip. “I won’t hurt you, baby,” he says softly, and there’s nothing sly in those words. Nothing…cruel. But then his lips tug into a smirk, his eyes flashing. “Unless you want me to again.”
I swallow down the lump in my throat, don’t take my eyes from his.
“I do,” I whisper, my voice hoarse.
He sits up, pulling me onto his lap so I’m straddling him again. We’re closer together now, and my eyes finally break with his, taking in his sculpted, tan muscles. His body is perfect, tightly wound muscle and rippling abs and…
The scar on his left side.
Raised skin, white and lumpy.
He lets go of my hands as I bite back a gasp, staring at where Lucifer stabbed him. I knew it. I’ve seen it. But now, in this moment, it feels different. My fucking husband stabbed him, knowing what it would do to me to lose Jeremiah.
He laces his fingers through mine again. When I meet his gaze, there’s pain there. I look down again, see the vertical lines on his forearm.
