Promise

Briar

I woke up sometime that night to an empty bed, covered in sweat with tears staining my cheeks. I nearly screamed Lucas’s name, but was thankful when my scream came out as nothing more than a hushed song when I heard deep voices talking outside my room.

After using the bathroom to freshen up and changing into a clean set of pajamas, I walked back through my room and slowed as I reached the hall that led to the living area of the top floor. I didn’t know if I was supposed to hear the conversation, but I couldn’t stop from going toward the voices.

I could hear him, but I needed to see him.

Lucas couldn’t lose me—he’d made that clear. However he didn’t seem to grasp that the thought of losing him crippled me too. And after enduring nightmare after nightmare of him being the one I’d watched die this afternoon, I needed to feel him.

Both he and the driver looked up when I walked into the large room, and their conversation immediately stopped.

I tried to stifle the relieved sigh that rushed from me, seeing my devil alive instead of lifeless on his bedroom floor, and cleared my throat. “Um, I can—”

“Leave,” Lucas demanded, and my heart clenched at the cold tone. But before I could move or let the ache in my chest spread, I realized the order had been for the driver when he turned and headed for the stairs, and Lucas strode toward me.

He hauled me to him, pressed his mouth to mine in a firm, possessive kiss, then leaned back to study my face. “Are you okay?”

Not wanting to go into the nightmares I was trying so hard to push away, I just said, “You weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry,” he said gently, his eyes tightening as he took in the redness of mine. “Tell me what’s going through that mind of yours.”

“You weren’t there,” I repeated, my words now forced as my throat tightened. My eyes burned and tears threatened as I tried to push back the image of his lifeless eyes.

“Blackbird . . .”

“You weren’t there. I can’t lose you.”

Shock and confusion swirled in those dark, dark eyes, and I tried to focus on the mass of emotion in them, tried to focus on the fact that he was holding me, and he was warm. “Lose me?”

“I thought it was you,” I choked out. My next words were rushed and frantic as I explained everything to him while trying to force my tears back. “I know I didn’t imagine your voice, I thought you were on the other side of that door. Then everything happened so fast that all I could comprehend was I had heard your voice, and then I heard a gunshot, and there was someone bleeding out on your carpet. And it took too long for me to absorb that you were standing in front of me and not on the floor. All I could see when I slept was you where he had been, and I can’t lose you.”

One of Lucas’s hands moved to cradle my cheek as he tried to quiet and soothe me, and by the time I had finished talking, he was fighting a smile.

“How are you finding this funny?”

“I’m not,” he said honestly. “What you saw today, what you thought and your fear . . . I would do anything to take that away, Briar.” His mouth suddenly pulled into a devastating smirk despite how serious his tone had been, and humor danced across his face. “I’m just trying to decide if I should be offended that you think I’d let someone kill me.”

“Lucas, if this is truly the world you’ve put yourself in—if you really lived this growing up—you have been so incredibly lucky. You’ve been shot and you’ve been stabbed numerous times, that luck will eventually run out . . . especially if you think you’re untouchable.”

“Untouchable? I’m good at what I do. I’ve had to be. But, untouchable? Hardly. There have been times I was sure it was my last day. My last hour.” His humor faded, and his warm eyes pierced mine. “But I would never let someone take me from you. Not while you’re mine.”

I trailed the tips of my fingers down his cheek and across his full lips. My voice wavered when I asked, “Promise?”

He kissed my wrist then whispered, “Swear to you.” His head dipped, leaving a trail of feather-soft kisses to the sensitive spot behind my ear while chills skated along my skin. “Forever, Blackbird.”

My heart soared as those two words echoed in my mind over and over again. Yes, I wanted forever with this man. I wanted an eternity with his beautiful, clashing heart. I wanted the darkness and light that fought within him. I wanted it all.

“Get us through these two months,” I whispered breathlessly as he nipped at that spot on my neck. “Let me help you destroy this world, and then let me have that forever with whoever you are.”

His hands went to my thighs and lifted me into his arms as he walked us back into my room. His lips brushed my ear when he said, “Our forever started that first night you decided to stay.”

The heat that filled his eyes sent a warm shiver down my spine when he set me on the center of the bed. The possessive way he held me and the predatory smirk that covered his face already had my ragged breaths deepening and a warmth pooling low in my stomach and spreading through my veins.

“Need to feel you. Need to convince myself you’re here the same way you need to.” He tipped my head back and kissed me softly, teasingly. Then his voice dropped, the tone so carnal I nearly came undone right then. “Show me, Briar.”

Lucas’s fingers tightened around my chin as his mouth devoured mine. Taking and taking in his way that always felt like too much, yet not nearly enough. Swallowing each whimper and moan and leaving me with the word “more” on the tip of my tongue when he bit down on my lip, only to back away so he could slip my shirt off my body.

Eyes dark with need and lust met mine before taking in my body again as he laid me back on the bed—the look in them making me feel beautiful and powerful and sensual all at once.

His large hands drifted down my body to grip at my shorts, a moan sounded in the back of my throat when his mouth pressed low on my hips. And in one slow, torturous movement, he pulled my shorts and underwear over my hips and down my legs—his mouth following the material with hot kisses and teasing bites. Each kiss had my thighs clenching, my hands gripping at the comforter, my back arching, and my body aching . . .

“You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly as he leaned forward to press one last kiss to my stomach.

I watched in fascination as he stood and began undressing himself—as if it was the first time he was baring himself to me. Because I had never seen this man before. His scars and tattoos were stark against his tan skin, and now that I knew more about the man behind them, they fit him. The muscles that tensed and rippled with every movement now screamed dangerous and protector—exactly like the contradiction that Lucas was. The good that fought with the bad within him now meant more than ever. Anyone less would have abandoned the good inside themselves long ago if they’d lived his life, but Lucas only gripped tighter to it. Fought for it.

He knelt on the bed and settled between my knees—a wicked, knowing grin tugging at the corner of his mouth when I tried to get closer to the tip of his length, barely brushing against where I ached for him.

I reached for him, needing to feel his body on mine, his mouth taking from mine in a synchronized dance only we knew, but I paused and shuddered when he fisted himself.

With his free hand, he intertwined the fingers of both of my hands and softly passed his lips across each of my wrists as he slowly pumped up and down his long length—his heated stare on mine the entire time.

My eyes fluttered shut as each stroke from him brushed against my sensitive skin, and my voice came out as nothing more than a breath when I begged, “Please.”

Instead of the immediate, hard response I’d come to expect from him, he took his time leaning his body over mine—my hands still in his—and pressed our joined hands on the bed above my head. “Please what?”

I tried to lift my hips, but he only released himself long enough to push my hips back down onto the bed before resuming what he’d been doing. I forced my eyes open, frustration and need leaking through my next “Please.”

His answering smile was pure sin, and I wanted to scream at the torture he was putting me through.

He bent his head to tease me with a barely there kiss, and when I tilted my head higher, he backed away. His eyes grew darker and darker with every soft whimper that sounded in my throat from each faint brush from him, and then the brushes were gone altogether, and he was leaning back to place kisses down my chest.

When he spoke, his voice sent warm shivers down my spine.

“I like the way you crave that bite of pain to bring you higher and higher and beg for more,” he said as he bit the underside of my breast.

When I gasped, he growled in appreciation, and the hand that had been the cause of my previous torture began teasing where I was aching.

“I like the way you shatter beneath me.” He slid a finger deep inside me and placed a kiss on my stomach as he removed it, then pressed two in.

“Oh God,” I breathed, writhing against the bed.

“I like bringing you to the height of another orgasm even when you think you can’t give me another.” He left a trail of warm, teasing kisses up my body until his face hovered above mine, and the hand holding mine to the bed tightened. “I like the way you fight me,” he said in a dark, seductive tone, and dropped his head to give me another barely there kiss—to bring us back to where we’d begun—and his eyes locked with mine. “And I love the way you look at me like it will never be enough.”

“Luc—oh!” I gasped when he suddenly pinched my clit then slid his fingers back inside me, driving them in harder and harder as he kept his thumb pressed against that sensitive knot.

I ignited, immediately responding to his touch and craving more—just as he’d said. I gripped the hand holding mine down as my stomach warmed and twisted, and my body begged for the release that was so close.

As the tremors began, Lucas backed off. His movements slowed, the pressure lessened, and that wicked smirk grew more and more profound until I was ready to beg him for the bliss he kept just out of my reach.

Just before I could cry out in frustration when he backed off again, he said, “Tell me what you want.”

“Mor—” The word died in my throat, got lost in the nothingness when he pinched down on me again, and I was immediately wrapped up in warmth and darkness as wave after wave of pleasure rocked through my body.

His fingers rode me through my orgasm, tormenting and pleasuring until I no longer felt like I was floating but was trembling as he pushed me toward another.

And it was too much . . .

And everything felt too sensitive . . .

And my body reflexively shied away from his touch while I thrashed against his strong hold. But for the first time, I was also begging him not to stop.

“There you are,” he rumbled, and his mouth fell onto mine.

His tongue moved against mine slowly but surely. The pacing and the sweetness of the kiss was so opposite from what his hands were doing to me, but so perfectly him—so perfectly us.

Light and dark.

I came with a silent moan and cried out against the kiss when he suddenly grabbed my hip and forced his thick length inside me.

His hand tightened against mine as he drove into me, the muscles in his arms straining, his hips rolling with each fluid, forceful movement. He released me suddenly and sat back on his knees, gripping my hips as he moved deeper and deeper, each stroke slower, but no less powerful, than the previous—and my heart clenched watching the man above me.

So beautiful and destructive and dark . . . the look in his eyes so raw I wanted to cry.

Every scar and every haunting memory that made my devil was on full display, every dark part of him so beautiful it hurt. And he was looking at me as if he’d found the only person who could make it all go away . . .

Tears burned my eyes, and he bent toward me at the same time I reached for him, needing to feel all of him. Because this was it—that moment I had craved all those months ago but hadn’t been able to comprehend before now.

This was the wake of our war.

And I did—I wanted to stay in the moment forever.

“I love you. I love you,” I whispered over and over again when he found his release inside me.

“Forever, Blackbird,” he vowed against my lips. “Forever.”