Soapy.
Slick.
Fuck.
For all that I knew I’d made a mistake, I’d keep on making it.
There had to be some advantages to being a bad man, surely?
As she bent over, soaping up her calves, a place I’d bitten, then her knees and thighs, sliding her palms inward where cum had leaked onto her, I reached up and rubbed a hand over my jaw.
My dick ached already, and it had only just left that tight snatch.
Hers was the only pussy I’d ever been in without a rubber, and while she was no virgin, I swore to Christ, hers was the tightest, the best. Snug and hot and fucking perfect.
Heaven.
It was probably the closest to heaven I’d ever get as well. Da insisted that if we confessed enough, we’d get through those pearly gates but I wasn’t as naive. Getting between her thighs was as much of a paradise on earth as I wanted.
A place I’d been wanting to visit ever since I’d fucking met her.
As she slipped her fingers between her legs, I watched as she cleaned her pussy. I knew I should give her privacy, but I was inherently curious about Savannah Daniels. Plus, she was pretty. What kind of penis possessor would I be if I didn’t get off on watching her touch herself?
When she shivered as she cleaned up, not just a slight quiver either, but a shudder as if she were still hypersensitive, it took every ounce of control I had not to storm into that shower stall and fuck her like that.
My bastard knee was the only reason I behaved. If I fell or slipped, I was screwed, and not in the way I intended when I was with her in the shower.
Mouth tightening, I carried on watching her, taking note of the sodden bandage I’d have to change before we went out, feeling rage fill me at the prospect of that fucker hurting her, making my muscles bunch up with remembered wrath, which was when she looked up, her smile telling me she knew I’d been staring at her.
"You’re a brat," I grunted.
She smirked at me, then puckered her lips, raised her wet, soapy hand before them, and blew me a kiss.
I rolled my eyes and folded my arms across my chest, trying not to think about how my filthy hands that had been covered in blood and another man’s flesh just hours earlier had touched her.
Darkness was contagious.
I didn’t want it to seep into her.
It would, as well.
It tainted everything. Stained it soul-deep.
She twisted around, grabbed her ass cheeks then squeezed them as she peered over her shoulder at me.
"The last thing you should try to do is draw attention to your ass," I rumbled.
"Why’s that?" she taunted.
"Because it’ll be the next hole I’ll fuck."
Her eyes twinkled. "Who says it isn’t the next hole I want you to fuck?"
Jesus.
She was going to be the death of me.
I wanted to ask if she was a virgin there, even though I had no right. I wasn’t a virgin. Why should she be? It wasn’t like she was eighteen, either. Both of us were definitely adults, and I liked that she knew her pleasure. I just couldn’t help wanting to own a piece of her. A part that was solely mine.
Why was I this fucked up over her? With the only consolation being that she was as in over her head as I was?
It had been like that from the start, I knew. It was why I’d gotten to my feet that night when we’d dined together and I hadn’t looked back.
I’d just gone.
I’d walked out of her life.
I’d known that one taste was enough to make me crave her for the rest of mine.
She was worse than heroin.
Better than Oxy.
Somehow, even before I’d had her, I’d known that.
Grunting at myself, I started stripping the second she turned off the water. Only then did I head over to the stall and enter it.
She pouted at me. "Why didn’t you come in earlier? I mean, I’d even waste water for you."
Her gaze slid over me, and I felt it like a caress. Like a physical touch that I wanted on me for the rest of my fucking life. Then, of course, I saw her take in the damage to my knee.
She sucked in a sharp breath as she studied the long line that was marked with stitches down the center of it, as much as if a centipede was etched into the flesh, as well as the various other tissue that made a roadmap look neat and tidy from the bullets and the various scars they’d created.
"That’s why," I said flatly. "As much as I want to fuck you in here, if I fall and fuck it up much more—"
As my words waned, she blanched. I braced myself for it, for the second that pity would slide into her gaze, but it didn’t come.
I should have known she wouldn’t respond like a regular person.
Instead, another smile danced on her lips, beaming into existence and filling up an empty space in my soul as she declared, "That’s why benches exist. "
"You’re right," I rumbled, carefully stepping nearer to her.
Hauling her into my arms, I grabbed her ass, squeezed those tight cheeks and dipped my head to press a kiss to her lips. The bottom one was still pink and red from where I’d bitten her, and the sight should have filled me with shame, but it just didn’t.
I wanted those bite marks all over her. Stamps of ownership so that any fucker outside these walls, hell, within them too, would know she was—
My mind stuttered to a halt.
I had no right to think shit like that, but fuck if I didn’t have a say in it. If my mind already knew what she was to me even if I couldn’t admit it.
"Aidan?"
I blinked at her soft whisper, the softest I’d ever really heard her get. "Yes?"
"Did you make him suffer?" She licked her lips. "I mean, really suffer."
"I skinned him, Savannah. While he was still breathing." Shame over the many misdeeds I committed in the family’s name was long gone, something I’d stopped atoning for years ago. "I think I can guarantee that he suffered."
A shaky breath escaped her. "I liked Thomas."
Jealousy whipped at my insides, then I recalled exactly who Thomas was—the friendly doorman who always sported a smile no matter the time or the weather. Collateral damage. It never got easier to swallow, especially when an innocent was involved.
"He paid for his sins." My smile was tight. "I promise you."
Her eyes were huge in her pale face, even her rosy red cheeks from the shower had died down. "Did you find out which Sparrow sent him?"
"I did."
She huffed. "Conor lied to me."
I tensed. "What?" When the hell had she spoken with Kid? Jealousy slithered its way through me again.
She’d been wearing a bathrobe when she found me in the gym. That meant Kid had seen her like that.
"He tried to make out that he was still looking into who sent the bastard after me," she groused.
"Well, I got the name of a corporation," I rumbled, my voice deep as I tried to process exactly why I was feeling this way just because Kid had spoken with her.
"What was it?"
"You don’t need to worry about that. Conor’s hunting them down."
She scowled up at me. "Are you really not going to tell me?"
"What? So you can get into more trouble?" I snapped, looming over her, well aware that she was standing on tiptoes to get into my face.