Her ferocious glare returns.
“Or I’ll just bleed out on the floor, that’s cool… but getting out of the chair would still be aces. Preferably with no stabbing.”
After another long moment of hesitation, she approaches and starts working the knots free, first the ones that bind the chair to the support post of the counter and then those looped tight around my limbs. The last rope to fall to the floor is the one that straps my impaled wrist to the armrest.
I erupt from the chair the instant it’s gone.
Pain is dulled by need as I yank the implement free and grab Sloane as she backs away, crushing her to me in a desperate embrace. And I thank every god I never pray to when she wraps her arms around my body. She buries her face into my chest and dampens my shirt with all the fears she’s kept buried.
“I thought I was too late,” she says, over and over. “I’m so sorry, Rowan. It took me too long to figure out your clues.”
I take her face in my palms and stare down into her wide hazel eyes. An ache chokes up my throat as I savor this moment to just look at her, to feel her warmth against my skin. I came so close to losing everything. But she’s here, with her ginger scent and black eyeliner smeared in streaks down her skin, her freckles dotted with specks of blood. Creases line her forehead and her furrowed brow as her gaze bounds between mine.
She’s never been more beautiful.
“Not too late, Blackbird. Right on time.”
She tries to smile, but it doesn’t come. Her dimple is only a faint depression on her skin. And I know the lies I told her are the most dangerous kind, because I weaponized her real insecurities. Even if I only said them to save her, cuts like those still run deep and heal slowly.
I lower my head and hold her eyes, keeping her face steady between my palms. “You have never been unlovable. You were just waiting for someone who will love you for who you are, not for who they want you to be. I can do that, if you’ll let me.” I press my lips to hers and taste salt and blood, but pull away before the kiss deepens. “I fucking adore you, Sloane Sutherland. I wanted you from that first day at Briscoe’s. I have loved you for years. I’m not stopping. Not ever.”
Sloane’s gaze drops to my lips and remains there. She nods.
“You might be psycho,” I say with a grin as her eyes narrow, “but you’re my psycho, and I’m yours. Got it?”
When she lifts her eyes from my lips, she finally smiles. “You’re still kind of the worst.”
“And you still love me.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I do.”
Sloane rises on her tiptoes and folds her hands around my nape, drawing me closer until her forehead presses to mine, her breath a sweetly-scented caress on my lips.
“I really fucking do,” she whispers. “And you’re going to have to try harder than that to get rid of me, because I’m not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I, Sloane.”
When Sloane pulls my lips down to hers, I know it. I feel it in every beat that throbs in my raw, bleeding flesh. That the world could turn in every direction and shatter every reality, but there’s no other life than the one we choose to build.
23
PIGMENT
SLOANE
“W e’re going to be late,” Rowan says. But he doesn’t care. Not really.
Because his hands are threaded into my hair and his head is tossed back as I swallow his cock.
“Jesus, Sloane. How are you so fucking good at this?”
I hum my satisfaction into his flesh and cup his balls with my free hand as I plunge my fingers into my pussy with the other. When I moan again, he looks down, his eyes black with desire.
“Fuck, I love watching you touch yourself,” he hisses. My eyes flutter closed as I swirl my touch over my clit. Precum threads across my tongue. “You’d better make yourself come, because I am right on the fucking edge and we need to go.”
I slow the motion of my fingers, slide my lips to the crown of his erection, and grin.
My insolence is met with a growl. Rowan’s hand darts to my throat and catches the giggle that begs to be set free.
“Are you being a brat?” he asks as I run my tongue along the underside of his erection and pin him with my most innocent eyes. His hand tightens. “Have you forgotten the last time you were a brat?”
I shrug, even though I most certainly have not forgotten. When I decided to push his buttons and disregard most of his orders while riding his cock a few weeks ago, he kidnapped me as I was coming home from drinks with Anna, blindfolded me, and strapped me down on a table in the restaurant to eat a full range of delicacies off my naked body. He edged me for hours, drizzling caramel sauce across my nipples to suck it off as he fucked me, dripping cold whipped cream onto my genital piercings before licking them clean. Every time I begged for mercy, he laughed.