Epilogue

Noah

Capturing Killian on canvas was like trying to pin down a wild animal. I'd tried to sketch him from the fragments in my mind: his serious mouth, his killer's eyes, and those pissed-off wrinkles that sometimes gathered at the corners of his lips. But putting all that together to paint the man had proven impossible.

I swept the brush across a new painting again now, and narrowed my eyes at the silhouette on a whitewashed background. No. Still not fucking right.

I'd trashed three attempts in three days, while Killian had been busy with the business— his business. He had balls to try and steal the family legacy, but it was going to take more than bullying my father to rule the Back Bay Mafia as a king. If anyone could do it, Killian could.

I had my ear to the ground, I heard the chatter. Most everyone talked in the clubs, ignoring me. Thinking I didn't matter. Just the boss's waste-of-space son. But I heard it all, heard how Killian was making moves, and people were taking notice. Some good, some bad.

I dashed the canvas with a few more brush strokes. No, still not right. Fuck.

It was no use. I needed the man himself in front of me to paint him right. But there was no way the big gorilla would volunteer to model.

Scooping up my new phone with paint-stained fingers, I tapped out a text message.

Need u

What's wrong?

Noah?

I'm coming over.

Twenty minutes later, his heavy-handed knock sounded at my door. "Open up."

God, I loved that growl. If I waited, he'd kick the door in. But as I didn't want the hassle of replacing it, I opened up and found him with one arm braced against the frame, sunglasses shielding his eyes, and that mouth tightly pinched with a frown.

His gaze roamed, checking for whatever that fixer-mind of his looked for. Weapons probably. Then it landed on the paintbrush in my hand. "You didn't reply."

I shrugged and sauntered back into my loft apartment, stepping into the sunlight pouring through the tall wall of windows. "Needed to get you here, didn't I?"

"What's so urgent?"

"I'm lonely. Bored. My arm hurts. I wanna see you. Pick one."

He closed the door behind him and crossed the living area. Then he shrugged off his jacket and searched for a spot to toss it that wasn't covered with half-finished art, pots of old, rigid brushes, or my discarded clothes. "Jesus, you ever clean up?"

"This is clean." Back behind the easel, I dipped my brush and watched him from the corner of my eye.

He dumped his jacket between two unfinished portraits and flicked off his sunglasses. When his gaze skipped to me, it landed like an electrical spark. I'd always mistaken that heat for hate, but it had been hunger all along. I smiled back, and welcomed his gaze roaming over my chest, under the untucked shirt and down my hips, hidden by low-slung sweatpants.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

"You."

His right eyebrow arched. He started making his way over. "Can I see?"

Nerves fluttered, making me swallow. As I mostly socialized with assholes and murderers, nobody much cared to see my work. A few one-night stands had gushed over some older paintings, but the praise from meaningless hook-ups had been just as empty.

Killian stopped beside be, folded his arms, and fell quiet. More quiet than his usual stubborn brooding.

I eyed the art and tried to see it as he would. The rough, sweeping brush lines and dramatic strokes had captured his grumpy seriousness but I'd tried and failed to catch his secret softness too. Mostly because it was as elusive as his smile.

"You're good, you know," he finally said.

"You mean I have enough shitty father issues and childhood trauma to make a go of being an artist?"

"We'll work on that," he said, mouth ticking.

I snorted, then eyed his likeness in the painting. I never much cared for what anyone thought of my art. They'd mostly used the veiled compliments to get in with the King family. Until now. It mattered now; it mattered what Killian thought. It always had. "You really like it? You're not just saying that?"

"Why the fuck would I stroke your ego, when we both know you do that all by yourself."

I laughed—asshole—and in retaliation, swept the brush across his cheek, painting a black swoosh on his jaw. He gasped, snarled, and scooped me into his arms, then dumped my ass on the cluttered countertop in one smooth movement. Paint pots toppled, spilling paint. Killian wedged himself between my knees, stabbed his thick fingers into a pool of green paint and drew something on my chest.

I looked down. "What the—" He fingerpainted a line down my nose, then used the same paint-slick fingertip to lift my chin, and smirked.

"Neanderthal." I batted his hand away and tried to squirm out of his grip. His heavy arms closed around me, and the growl that rumbled in my ear ended any attempt to fight him off. Yes, this was what I needed, what it was all for. When I'd found myself lost and scared in those woods, I'd wondered what the fuck the point of anything was. I knew the answer now. This was what I lived for. Killian's arms around me, his breath in my ear, his bare skin on mine. The feeling of coming alive. A feeling only he ignited.

Warm, soft lips skimmed my jaw, then shifted lower, mouthing my neck. I sighed, shivered, and tightened my grip on his arms, holding him close instead of trying to push him off.

"Are any of these paints and shit precious because I'm about to fuck it all up."

"Yes, don't—fuck." I flung an arm around his shoulders.

He grumbled some more disgruntled noises, then captured my ass and hauled me off the countertop. I locked my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, clinging on as he stumbled about my chaotic mess of an apartment to find the bed. Which he eventually did and dumped me unceremoniously on it.

Bracing my arms behind me, I ignored the twinge of pain from the mostly-healed gunshot wound, spread my knees, and eyed Killian through my lashes. "So fuckin' romantic. You sure know how to make a guy feel special."

He snarled, crossed his arms over his chest, and tore his t-shirt off, over his head. "If you wanted romantic, you should have found a poet to fuck." He prowled up the bed, like that wild animal I'd tried to tame on canvass, and captured my mouth in a kiss. He was rough, and brutal, and sometimes fuckin' cold-blooded. But in this kiss? I'd found the softness I'd searched for in his portrait.

Prying his lips apart, I danced my tongue with his, and felt the killer melt away. That side to him never went far though, and came roaring back when he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head, pinching them together under one hand. His other hand went to my dick and groped through my sweatpants. I arched, gasped, burning up in the best way.

He abandoned my wrists, but only so he could bite at my ribs. I grabbed his shoulder and shoved him down. He went willingly, yanked on my waistband, jerking my pants away, and swallowed my dick.

"Fuck," I choked. How was his snarling mouth so damn soft and hard at the same time? He spat, sucked, and mixed it up with his hand getting in on the action too. I was at his mercy, always had been. My killer.

"Noah." He gasped, then reared up and worked at his pants, tugging them undone. "I need to fuck you into this mattress." He reached across the bed, tore open the drawer, and dug out the lube. I chewed on my lip, and writhed, primed and so fuckin' eager. Killian, on his knees, squirted some lube into his palm, and made a show of oiling his fingers, knowing damn well what the wait was doing to me. "Nothing to say?"

"Just to hurry the fuck up. You're not getting any younger."

His sideways smile cut my heart in two. But there wasn't time to enjoy it. He scooped an arm under my back, flipped me onto my front, jerked my ass in the air, and spread my cheeks. His finger was in. Pleasure trilled up my spine. I gasped and grabbed at the headboard. But Killian wasn't messing around. When he wanted something—right now, my ass—nothing would stop him.

Barely prepped, and all the better for it, his dick replaced his finger, and thrust in, lighting me up. I blew out a hard breath, but at a shift in angle, the discomfort faded, turning to brilliant, electric friction. My dick jumped with every one of his grunting thrusts. I clung onto the headboard, needing it as Killian grabbed to my hips and fucked hard. He was wild and brutal and every-fucking-thing I needed, because under all that vicious, ruthless, stone-cold-killer, was a man whose heart had been broken, but who still had the courage to share its pieces with me. Did he know I'd forever keep them safe?

He shoved my shoulders down, my ass up, shifting his angle again, and fucked like this was his whole reason for living. I was close to coming, so damn close that a few more slaps from behind and I'd be done for.

The ruthless pounding stopped, its absence just as startling. His hands skimmed from my hips, up my ribs, and drew me upright, my shoulders against his chest and my straining dick jutting like a pole. Fluttered kisses skimmed my shoulders. He'd gone from violent fucking to heartfelt tenderness so fast it left me lightheaded.

"Noah…" His firm fingers gripped my dick and began slow-pumping.

"Hm?"

"Whatever happens, it's you and me, right? Just you and me."

I swallowed and had no words left to speak. So I nodded instead, and croaked out an unpoetic, "yeah."

He gave a snort, snarled in my ear, and pumped my dick with the same ruthlessness as he attacked everything else.

I didn't stand a chance. "Gah, fuck!" Trapped in his arms, I bucked as he fucking tortured the few final shudders out of me. I'd barely come down when he dropped me forward and in three slamming thrusts, he came too, seated so goddamn deep I forgot how to breathe.

"Jesus," I panted. I was going to be feeling the marks he'd left for a while. "You should come with a warning sign, Killer."

He wrapped me in his arms again, and we collapsed among the tangle of sheets together, thoroughly fucked and wrecked, but in the best way.

We weren't out of the woods yet. Him and me. Not until my father was dead. But knowing Killian like I did, it wouldn't be long before Val King was on his knees, looking up at the man who'd come for vengeance.

That day couldn't come soon enough.

When Killian's breathing slowed, I crawled out from under his heavy limbs and headed to the bathroom. There, the sight in the mirror stole my breath.

It wasn't the green line of paint down my nose that stunned me. Although, it did tug a smile to my lips. On my chest, Killian had painted a messy green heart. I traced a fingertip over the crusted paint. Beneath all that surly machoism, he was a romantic. And my heart was his.

I knew what I had to do.

Sneaking from the bathroom, I grabbed my brushes, a new canvass and frame, propped it on the easel and with Killian lightly snoring, tangled in bedsheets, his hair a mess and half his gorgeous body exposed, I began to paint.

The End