41. Charleigh

FORTY-ONE

CHARLEIGH

Work passed in a blur of nerves and uncertainty. Unsure of where I stood or where I was supposed to go.

Because while logic told me I should have finally packed up my things and left last night, stop this insanity, my spirit whispered its gratitude that Raven had intercepted me instead.

At just after five, I grabbed my things from my locker in the breakroom, slung my purse over my shoulder, and headed down the hall and across the lobby.

My nerves quivered where I stood at the door, the vestiges of the fear I'd felt yesterday when I'd left buzzing in my ear. Warning me that I was being careless.

Inhaling a steadying breath, I pushed out into the late-afternoon warmth of the summer, praying for peace.

For rest.

To find a way when it felt like every direction I turned brought me to a dead end where I'd have to pick up and run the opposite way.

I paused just outside the door, attention dragging across the near empty lot as I searched for any sense that I might be being watched. Searching for a monster lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect time to strike .

Butterflies scattered when I saw what was really waiting for me.

He might be a monster, but my heart both rattled and leapt at the sight.

This dark, dangerous demon who leaned against his bike on the other side of the lot. Tattooed arms crossed over his massive chest, wearing his signature uniform.

Black jeans and black fitted tee and black motorcycle boots.

My stomach toppled over with the memory of the way he'd looked beneath those clothes last night.

The carved, sculpted beauty of his ferocious body. Covered in ink and misery. The way he'd touched me. The promises he'd made.

And I wondered if it could be exactly as Raven had suggested. That two souls could recognize the other without really knowing the person.

He pushed from his bike, towering in the distance, that rugged, vicious face carved in possession.

I gulped around the uncertainty and slowly edged his direction. I stopped three feet away, the sun blazing down, burning me up. The knot in my throat was so thick I couldn't speak. Or maybe I just had no idea what to say.

Because the relief I felt at finding him there was staggering, but that didn't change anything, did it?

"Think we need to talk." The words rumbled over me, and I tried to swallow around the barbs in my throat.

"I'm not sure?—"

His hand came out, and some piece inside myself shifted when I didn't flinch. When I realized how much I truly trusted him.

Heat blistered where he set his palm on my cheek. "Please…just fuckin' talk to me, Charleigh. Can't leave things the way they ended last night."

I wavered, fighting this war inside me.

His thumb brushed the hollow beneath my eye. "Told you if you ran, I would only chase after you. Thought it was going to have to be across the country, but you didn't seem to get very far. Think that says something, yeah? "

Gulping, I gave him a bare nod, and he took my hand and led me the couple steps to his bike. He swung over the black metal, the man looking as if he were carved from the machine, or maybe vice versa.

I guessed maybe he had the power to break me after all because I allowed him to guide me to climb on behind him, and I wrapped my arms around his powerful frame.

I pressed my nose to the fabric on the back of his shirt.

Leather and ink and wickedness.

I inhaled it deep.

He kicked the motorcycle over, and the engine grumbled, roaring as he took to the street.

He headed down 9 th , and it was less than a couple minutes later when he was pulling his bike into the parking lot beside my building.

He killed the bike, and he took my hand and helped me off, and I somehow couldn't look back at him as we began to climb the stairs.

But I could feel him. His presence rolling over me from behind.

His power. His strength. His ferocity.

I shuddered beneath it, wanting to turn and sink into it, allow myself the fall.

I could barely squeeze air into my lungs by the time I turned the key in the lock and let us into my apartment.

It felt even smaller than normal with him in it.

Everything about him was overpowering.

As if he were gravity.

Everything drawn into his orbit.

Inhaling a staggered breath, I slowly turned around to face him where he stood just inside the door.

His hands were in fists, the tattooed Ss on the back of his hand clenched, the skull on the other thrashing.

"What I saw last night…" His voice was gravel. Shards of the aggression and splinters of care.

My chest tightened. "I can't give you that part of myself."

His expression raged, and his jaw ticked as he clenched his teeth. "Just need the confirmation that's who you've been running from."

I stalled, blinking at him as I toiled with what he was asking. God, was I really giving him this? Apparently so because I couldn't stop the feeble, "Yes."

His head nodded a million times as if he already knew but still had to come to terms with the truth of it. He itched in uncertainty before he spoke.

"Is it wrong that I want to protect you?"

"I can't go back to that time, River."

"Yet you're still looking over your shoulder."

I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, my words trembling. "I can't just erase it, but I am trying to move on. I am trying to find a new life. Can't you understand that?"

"But you're hiding things, Charleigh."

I blinked at him. "And you need to allow me that."

His thick throat bobbed, like what I was asking him was hard to swallow.

It felt like an hour passed before he nodded. "I get you don't want to give me details, but that doesn't mean I am not going to do everything I can to make sure you're safe. Because that's all I want for you. Want you to find this new life. For you to fuckin' live and live right."

My heart battered. A banging so loud at my chest that I could hear it echo in the room.

One second later, he was in front of me, both hands on my face. He stared down at me for the longest moment before he said, "And fuck, I want to do it with you."

I gasped his name.

"I do. I fucking want to do it with you," he said. Right before he angled down and took my mouth in a searing kiss.

My mind spun with his words while my body burned with his kiss.

A fist wound in my hair, and he tilted my head back as he licked into my mouth like he wanted to taste every inch of me.

He pulled me flush, and a big hand splayed out over my back as he plastered me to his front.

Intensity swelled, brimming at the connection.

Our tongues twining and begging .

He hiked me into his arms, and on instinct, I wrapped my legs around his waist.

He grunted at my mouth. "That's right, gorgeous. This is right where you belong. Wrapped around me, either on the back of my bike or in my bed."

Then he dove back in.

My mind bent at the power of his kiss.

Possessive, dominating, and greedy.

Heat seared down my middle, and my hands curled into the back of his head as I struggled to get closer.

Kissing me and kissing me, he carried me into my room.

"Where's Nolan?" I somehow managed through the frenzy, and he edged back for one beat. "Otto's picking him up. Told him I had something important I needed to take care of."

Then he smirked, and God, my stomach tumbled with what I felt for this man.

"And what did you need to take care of?" I played into his hands. Exactly where I wanted to be.

"You, Little Runner, I needed to take care of you. Don't think I can wait a minute longer to get inside this body."

His kiss grew more urgent as he pressed me to the interior wall of my room. He let his massive hands wander.

Cupping my butt through the thin material of my scrubs and riding up my sides. He took fistfuls like he'd been tormented with the idea that he might not be able to touch me again.

"Nearly went out of my ever-lovin' mind last night," he rumbled. "Letting you walk out that door and not goin' after you. Took every ounce of willpower I possessed. Think you should know I won't be letting you go this time."

"I'm terrified of how badly I don't want you to."

He edged back and brushed a lock of my hair behind my ear, stormy eyes flitting over my face. "We're going to figure this out. You and me. But in the meantime, know you're safe with me. I promise you."

"I know."

I didn't know how I knew it, but I did.

I trusted it.

With my affirmation, he hoisted me back into his arms, and he plundered my mouth as he took the two steps to the end of my bed.

He dumped me in the middle of it.

I bounced on the mattress, and I couldn't help the bit of joy that erupted from my throat. The spark of happiness that had lit.

River remained at the end of the bed, every bit the dark destroyer where he watched down over me. The cyclone in his gaze promised that Raven had been right.

He wasn't ever going to look away.

Of their own accord, my hips bucked.

"Look at you, sweet little vixen. So needy." He was all arrogance then, sex and hunger roiling from his flesh and pounding through the air.

He peeled his shirt over his head, and the oxygen raked from my lungs at him standing there. Rays of sunlight slanted in through the window and amplified the vicious beauty that he was.

Cast him in a spotlight.

His shoulders were obscenely wide, and the designs that covered his flesh jerked and twitched over his bulging muscles, arms and chest and abdomen.

"I never knew someone could make me feel this way." My confession was breathy, riding on the motes that played across the room.

One side of his mouth hitched. "You don't have the first clue the way I'm going to make you feel. The ways I'm going to have you."

My tongue stroked out across my suddenly dried lips. "Show me."

"Exactly what I plan to do. Again and again. For the rest of my fuckin' days."

Turbulence rolled through me at his words. How he kept speaking of forever. And God, how perfect it would be to rest in his eternity.

"I trust you. I want you."

Greed emblazoned the storm in his eyes, as if my saying it was the best thing I could give him.

"You have me, Charleigh."

River reached out and pulled my tennis shoes from my feet, and he let each of them drop to the rug beneath the bed with a thunk. I wiggled my toes, then sighed when he leaned in and peeled my socks from my feet. He left little pecking kisses along my ankles as he reached up with those long arms and hooked his fingers in the sides of my scrub bottoms.

He hissed as he dragged them off. "Love these legs. Going to love them more when they're wrapped around my waist."

He rode his mouth up my left calf, kissed the inside of my knee, my inner thigh. Tingles raced, and my legs spread wide in anticipation as little juts of air ripped from my lungs.

"Going to take care of you, Charleigh," he murmured as he kissed up to my belly. To my belly that had the tiny, silvered scars that ran upward above my pelvis. I knew they were visible in the light, and I flinched a little when he paused for the fraction of a second.

"Charleigh," he rumbled. The sound of it vibrated through my body as he held me by both sides of the waist as he littered kisses all over the stretch marks before he eased back and took me by the hand, guiding me to sit up on the edge of the bed. He stood between my bent knees as he fisted his hands in my top and pulled it over my head.

He smirked when he saw the matching satin bra and underwear set that I'd put on this morning.

Just in case.

A blush rose to my flesh as he dragged a single fingertip from the side of my neck and down to the cup. "Pink. My favorite fuckin' color."

"I would have thought it would have been black." I tried to play it coy, tipping my chin up as I rested back on my hands.

River seemed to like that, too.

The way that heated gaze licked over my flesh like flames.

"Nah, baby, I think you're the perfect accent to all my dark. A light when things always look so goddamn bleak."

My head barely shook, unable to keep up the playful front. "How is it that I look at you and see the exact same thing?"

"Oh, Little Runner, I'm not the light. Already warned you about that. It's just that I'm going to stand in front of every demon and ghost so you can stand on a pedestal and shine."

He reached out and lifted my left arm, and he leaned in and brushed his lips over the words he'd marked on my skin.

In grief we must live.

Never had I felt the truth of it more than right then.

"You're going to, baby. Live. I'm going to see to it."

Then he dove in, a big hand coming to the back of my head as he kissed me hard, his tongue licking and lashing while he angled from side to side as if he couldn't get deep enough. Like he wanted to sink all the way inside and invade.

But he was already there.

Filling up all the holes and cracks.

He reached around me and unclasped my bra, and he didn't break the kiss as he pulled it free. He tossed it to the side and then both his massive hands were kneading my breasts.

I arched and whimpered as he ran the pads of his thumbs over both nipples, teasing and playing. It sent shocks of electricity sparking through my body.

Desire flooded, this need so intense, and I was rasping for air when he suddenly broke the kiss and stepped back so he could peel my underwear down my legs.

He splayed his hand out over my chest and guided me back until I was lying on my bed, bare and spread out.

The air grew thick, alive as it swirled and twisted, the energy bashing at the walls and colliding back into us. His expression turned feral, and I shivered as he stared down at me.

"How's it I have you like this? Tempting little angel I'm going to wreck?"

We both knew that he would.

And I wanted it. I wanted him to mark me. Ruin me. Most of all, I wanted him to keep me.

"I'm yours to take," I wheezed through the need that pounded through me. My heart rate was erratic, my blood so heavy I could feel it slugging through my veins.

"That's right, Little Runner. You're mine. This needy little cunt that's dripping for me. "

He reached out and pushed two fingers deep inside me, stealing my breath, my sanity.

I arched as my walls clamped around him in a fit of pleasure.

"Fuck me. So ready. So eager," he grunted.

I whimpered in desperation when he withdrew, and one of those rough, brutal chuckles rolled through the air. "Don't fret. Just givin' you a second to think about the way it's going to feel when it's my cock filling you full."

He leaned down and undid his boots, those eyes on me the whole time, then he rose.

A fortress.

A mountain.

A hedge of both safety and desolation.

River ticked the button of his jeans, and the sound of him undoing his zipper echoed through the dense air.

He shoved down both his jeans and underwear, shucking them off, and he came to stand in front of me completely bare.

Every part of my being bowed in his direction, heart and spirit and body vying to meet with him.

A fire incinerated as I took him in.

His skin was a menacing canvas of ink, a vast expanse of death and depravity. Rippling, carved strength. Every muscle in his body was tight in anticipation.

His cock was heavy and huge and pointed for the sky, and I gulped all over again at the piece of metal that pierced him at the tip.

His tip that dripped with precum, his need so grave that I could taste it saturate the oxygen.

I should be afraid, but I'd never felt so safe.

He reached for his jeans and pulled a condom from the pocket, and the man watched me the entire time as he ripped it open then covered his cock. "And you're about to have me."

A tremble rocked me through when River set one knee on the bed, then the other, tattooed hands on my knees as he remained on his.

He towered over me.

"I need you. I didn't think I'd ever need anyone or want anyone, but it's you. It's you." The confession bled from my whimpering tongue, and River prodded me to move up into the middle of the bed.

I pushed myself back and he followed, and he planted both hands on either side of my head as he hovered over me. His cock bobbed and bounced between us, sending chills racing through me when the tip brushed my belly.

He leaned in so his mouth was at my ear, and he rumbled in that low, vicious voice, "That's because you belong to me."

He reached between us, and I felt the blunt head of his penis pushing at my center. So enormous and hard that a wave of trepidation skittered across my flesh, but River's mouth was on me again, kissing the panic away as his fingers played through my hair.

"I've got you," he murmured. "I promised you pleasure, and I fuckin' meant it."

The wave of anxiety rolled away, pulled back into the sea he was going to sweep me under as he slowly began to press himself inside me.

I gave and he overcame.

Tiny cries whimpered from my tongue, and my fingers scored deep into his back as I struggled to adjust to him.

To the feel of him.

To the size of him.

To the magnitude of him.

Crushing and devastating and perfecting.

While he grunted and growled as he nudged in and out, each time taking me a little deeper. Every muscle in his body was locked with barely contained control.

As if it were taking every ounce of willpower inside himself not to snap.

My head rocked back as he filled me so full I couldn't breathe, and it broke the impassioned kiss.

River buried his face in my throat with a groan.

"Fuck." It vibrated out of him in a roll of pleasured pain. "Fuck, Charleigh. You feel so good. Nothin' in this world has ever compared to you."

I gasped, panting toward the ceiling. "Nothing. "

He pushed up onto his elbows. His eyes had darkened to pitch, a toiling storm ripping through a black, endless sea, and his giant frame curled over me as he held me in the security of his massive arms.

He slowly edged back before he jutted back in.

That time it was me who was emitting the whimper of pleasured pain, so perfect and extreme and more than anything I'd ever felt or experienced.

"Knew you were going to wreck me, Charleigh. Knew once I got inside you, I wasn't ever going to want to be anywhere else. Going to live in this body, baby," he grunted as he pulled almost all the way out before he rocked in again.

Harder that time.

"Do you feel that? The way you were meant for me? Your pussy hugging my cock? Made for me, Charleigh. Made for me."

His words were coarse, scraping the air with the lust that addled the atmosphere.

The next time he thrust in, my hips rose to meet him, my chest arching from the bed and my nipples brushing against his pecs.

"Yes. I feel it. I feel you," I rasped.

Pinpricks of pleasure lit everywhere. In my core and my breasts and my spirit.

Urgency was carved into every harsh angle of his fierce, brutal face.

And the energy screamed between us. Whipping and sparking.

"You're mine, Charleigh Lowe."

Our connection thrummed, a throb that drummed in the middle of us, our hearts beating wayward and perfectly in time.

When he could sense that I'd adjusted, River began to move. Rolling his hips and picking up a rhythm of deep, powerful strokes. Filling me and filling me as I met him each time.

He kept his arms around me as if he knew I needed to feel the surety of them. Like he wanted me to understand that he had me and he'd meant everything he'd promised. Never once did he look away from my face as he took me again and again.

And that pleasure grew with each rock of his body. The friction tossed flames that licked up my insides, and the metal ball on his tip hit at a spot inside me that nearly sent me sailing with each hard thrust.

"River." My nails raked at his shoulders as the feeling of him soared. Building and expanding with every rut of his hips.

River only gathered me closer as he increased his pace.

Deeper and faster and harder.

Marking me.

Owning me.

And I began to gasp, my body moving in time with his as he ushered me toward an ecstasy unlike any I'd ever known. An ecstasy I'd never dared dream existed. A place where I could surrender to the touch of a man's hands and know those hands were only meant for my pleasure.

He pushed back enough that he could reach between us, and he swirled the tips of his fingers over my already sensitive clit.

Bliss flickered and flared.

"River…I…I'm…" I couldn't get a coherent word out. Not when I was being swept away. Lifted and propelled. Taken to another plane where it was only me and him.

"I've got you, Little Runner. I've got you."

His promise skated through my senses, amplified with every stroke of his big, big body.

The buzz of bliss hummed through my being.

"Give it to me, Charleigh. I want to feel this sweet cunt come around my cock."

And I broke in his hands, the way he promised me I was going to do.

Fracturing.

Splintering.

Ecstasy erupted through the cracks, and bright bursts of pleasure speared through my body.

And it sped and sped, the orgasm that tore through me like a summer storm. As fierce and unrelenting as his eyes.

I cried his name, and he took me harder, his massive body bowing high as he thrust as deep as he could take me .

I felt when he broke apart. When every muscle in his body went rigid beneath my fingers that were rushing to touch him everywhere.

His back and his shoulders and his chest.

"Charleigh," he growled as he spasmed and jerked, the man's arms tightening even more as he came. "Charleigh."

We stayed like that. Lifted together. Elevated to a place that I was sure only existed for us.

This man my haven.

Finally, he exhaled the heaviest breath before he dropped his weight to one elbow and his other hand came to rest on my cheek. He ran his thumb along the hollow of my eye, and for the first time, his expression was soft. "You don't have to run anymore, Charleigh. You can rest in me."