My orgasm crests quickly, though whether it’s because of the adrenaline or because of Jonas in general, I can’t say.
I also don’t care.
The consequences of my actions will still be here, long after I come.
“Fuck, love. You look so bloody perfect on top of me. Keep going, just like that.”
Obeying, I grip his shoulders tight, using it as leverage. Rocking up and down, back and forth, I feel sweat bead on my forehead, and then Jonas is gritting his teeth again and fisting my hair, tugging my head back.
“Say you love me,” he commands, forcing my pace to slow. His cock drags against that sweet spot inside me, and my entire body feels like a single pulse point, on the very verge of bursting.
I moan, my pussy spasming around him. “Why?”
“Because I know you do, and I want to hear it.” He licks a path up my neck, nipping at my jaw. “Don’t come until you’ve said it.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to stave off and ride through my climax before it hits, hoping he comes first. But then he shifts, dropping a wet thumb to my clit and adding counterclockwise motions to the brutal pounding of his hips from below.
And I just can’t hold it in any longer. “I love you,” I cry, my world exploding into thousands of tiny blissful shards, some glass and some wooden, and all just as dangerous.
“Fuck,” he hisses, and this time when he goes to move me off of him, I lock my knees and stay put.
“Come inside me,” I whisper, my lips on his ear, and he follows me right over the edge. He pulses, emptying himself, and I feel his hot cum flood my pussy, drawing a second wave of euphoria from me.
We’re a mess of sweaty, tangled limbs as our collective high wears off, and I can feel the despair from before trying to settle in. Running my fingers through his hair, I sigh.
“I do, you know. Love you. I don’t think this relationship has been fake for a while.”
Chuckling, Jonas gently pulls me off of him, and I try not to whimper at the loss, even as his cum runs down my thigh. “I’m not sure that it ever really was.”
He’s right, in a way. It started off completely unconventional, and maybe a little cold at first, but there has never been another person I’ve felt such a strong, visceral connection to.
No one else has ever been willing to save me, when it was all I ever really wanted to begin with.
That unconditional kind of love that you’d risk your life on a battlefield for.
We sit there quietly for a long time, until sirens can be heard in the distance. Pushing up, I glance over at Preston, who seems to have fallen asleep—or maybe passed out since there’s a massive stab wound in his side that I didn’t see until now.
It’s no longer bleeding, but he’s still covered in blood, and I wonder if he’s even alive.
Sliding off of Jonas’s lap, I pull my T-shirt down and walk over slowly, trying to reconcile this man with the one I thought I knew for three years. How could I have gotten it so wrong?
Then again, my father was once my absolute best friend, so I suppose you can only know a person as well as they want you to.
Preston’s eyes flutter open as I bend down in front of him, looking at the myriad of weapons laid out like a buffet. I feel Jonas come up behind me, his presence warm at my back.
“I thought you might want to decide how he dies,” he says, and my heart swells ten times.
That shouldn’t be romantic, but goddamn.
The man just gets me.
Picking up a long, slender kitchen knife, I grip the handle tight in my hand and sigh, looking over my ex one last time. Disgust and anger boil inside me, blocking out any other emotions right now, and I cock my head to the side.
“Any last words, Mr. Covington?”
His cuffs clink together as his hands move, and I smirk when he lifts his middle finger.
“Yeah,” I say, reaching down and pinching his dick between two fingers, bringing the sharp edge of the blade to the underside of the crown. “Fuck you, too.”
EPILOGUE
“The face that launched a thousand ships.” Lenny frowns, moving backward across the room as she taps a brush against the corner of her mouth. “That kind of sounds like an insult, don’t you think?”
I don’t look up from the floating shelf I’m working on mounting, though her every movement registers in my peripheral anyway. Ever since the night I found her at Primrose Manor months ago, covered in her father’s blood, I can’t stop paying attention.
“Girl started a whole war just because she was pretty.” Lenny shakes her head, holding her thumb up for reference to the wall where she’s painting a Helen of Troy mural. “Tell me that’s not the most dramatic thing you’ve ever heard.”
“More dramatic than the time you decided to renovate the entire beach house out of boredom?”
Hands on her hips, she turns to me with narrowed eyes. Gorgeous, seafoam-green that I wish I could deep dive into and drown in.
“You told me to pick a passion project for my portfolio. I fail to understand how you didn’t see this coming.”
Fair enough. Especially since the only reason she decided to start community college courses was because I encouraged her to.
The events at Primrose Manor sparked a huge wave of controversy surrounding her family, even though the bodies inside were given manufactured fates, per the request of Mrs. Primrose. According to official records, Tom suffered a heart attack and died peacefully in his bed, while Preston went missing during a yacht outing.
His body has yet to be recovered, but only because I burned him alive after Lenny made him a eunuch.
The press cared far less about either of the deaths than we anticipated; in fact, most of the controversy came when Mrs. Primrose put the compound up for sale and hightailed it back to Savannah, leaving her three kids behind without a word.
Since I’d already been there, done that, I suggested Lenny explore her newfound freedom.
After weeks of watching her sob into her pillow every night, sometimes only showering when I picked her up and made her, and an endless stream of Elena or her brothers stopping by to keep her company, she finally went to therapy.
A few weeks later, she’d enrolled in some online courses for an interior design program, stating that she wanted to try and combine her love of shopping with that of art.
Which is why I’m standing in our spare bedroom building a bloody bookshelf instead of fucking her on the couch downstairs, or on the kitchen island, or on the back porch in celebration of my mum finally moving out.
She’d technically already moved to a cottage on the south side of the island some months ago, but she retrieved the last of her things from the crawlspace today.
Things between us aren’t what she was probably hoping for, but I am trying, at least. It’s more than I think she deserves, but I’m limited on family.
And if, by some bloody miracle, Lenny decides she ever wants to bear my children, I think they deserve to have a grandmother in their lives, even if she couldn’t be the mother in mine when I needed her.
Still, my intention upon returning from my pub today was to christen as many surfaces in the house as possible in celebration of our official engagement.
Alistair, surprisingly, was the one to goad me into doing it. He’s become something of a sap over the last few months, and I dare say I know why, although he’s yet to admit it.