One arm stayed wrapped around my waist, helping in his quick movements, and the other hand gripped at my hair and pulled until I was staring at the ceiling. I gripped at his shoulders, digging my nails into his skin and earning a growl from him in my attempt to hold on. Each breath that came from me was rough and on the verge of being a moan, and my eyes fluttered shut as another orgasm slowly built.
“I can’t,” I cried, and continued to dig my nails into him even as my fingers moved from his shoulders to his chest.
He jerked on my hair, and a shiver moved through my entire body.
“Come on, Briar.”
“I can’t.” A mixture of a cry and a moan left my throat as he moved deeper, harder.
The shaking started from my stomach and exploded to my fingers and toes. He freed my hair as soon as I cried out and drove into me harder still until he found his own release inside me.
Other than pulling me forward so I could tuck my head against his neck, we didn’t move. I clung to him as our chests moved roughly against each other’s in our own kind of perfect rhythm. I was his air, and he was mine. He gave and I took, and vice versa—so like our complicated relationship.
My body was still shuddering with little aftershocks long after our breathing had slowed—each one earning a faint brush of Lucas’s lips against my head, each one a gentle reminder that our night had been real. One of his hands made light trails up and down my back, keeping my skin covered in goosebumps and lulling me to sleep when all I wanted was to make this night go on forever.
It felt like I’d run a marathon. I felt shaky, weak, exhausted, and like I’d never been more alive.
“You are incredible, Blackbird. Everything about you.”
His words warmed my chest as my heavy eyelids finally slid shut.
I had given my heart to a man who had no intention of giving his to me. As much as I wanted to believe that he could, I wasn’t sure he was capable of such things.
Because he is darkness.
He is the devil . . .
. . . and I love him.
Devastating.
Chapter 27
Day 71 with Blackbird
Lucas
This girl was going to be the death of me. Literally. I couldn’t see an outcome for us that didn’t end with me staring at the barrel of a gun—and I didn’t care. I would take every day with her until that death came, and I would welcome it when it did because they would take her from me. And of everything and everyone that had been taken from me during my empty life, Briar was the only person I couldn’t live without.
She stayed.
My eyes darted over her sleeping face as I replayed the night before in my mind, and my heart thundered in my chest. She’d been in the city, surrounded by dozens of people she could have reached out to . . . and she’d stayed.
The rest of our lives wouldn’t be nearly long enough. Not after how much I’d come to care about her—and definitely not after last night.
I wanted last night forever.
My blackbird had been beautiful when she’d let go for me, and I would never get the image out of my head of her moaning and fighting against me when it had become too much.
This girl made me want impossible things.
I was disturbed and twisted in more ways than she would ever understand. She was fragile and so innocent to my world and the sickening darkness that touched it. But I embraced her life and she embraced mine even though each other’s lives went against our very being.
I traced the line of her jaw and suppressed a smile when she curled closer and mumbled something in her sleep. Her full lips parted slightly, and I dipped my head to taste them, unable to stop myself.
When I pulled back, green eyes were watching me. “Morning,” she murmured, her voice thick from sleep.
“Good morning.”
She looked away from me for a second to glance around the room. “Are we in your room? That’s against the rules,” she said when I nodded, as if she were informing me.
My lips curved up into a smile. “So is everything else we’ve been doing for months.”
A smile crossed her face before she hid behind her hands to cover a yawn. She giggled when I kissed her hands, pressing them to her face.
“I’m gonna call the driver, have him bring food.”
“Okay, I need to go shower.” But though she said the words, she didn’t move from her place in my bed . . . and I didn’t want her to. She stretched lazily for a few seconds before rolling over to climb out, and I pulled her back.
“Use my shower. Come find me when you’re done.”
Seconds passed as she stared at me. “Find you down here? Really?” Her excitement abruptly faded. “Was last night a test to see if I was ready to be down here? When we were in the city?”
“Briar, no. I was . . . Christ.”
How could she not understand what she meant to me? What more could I do for her to not think everything was a test?
“I was sure I was going to lose you last night,” I admitted. “But I was frustrated and you wouldn’t even look at me, so I was trying to help both of us. I just don’t always think about what I’m about to do with you until it’s too late—and last night was one of those times.”
I knew she wanted to believe me, but there was still doubt in her eyes and on her face.
“Come find me once you’re done,” I repeated, and kissed the corner of her mouth before climbing off the bed.
I had showered and put on a pair of sleep pants the night before, after Briar had fallen asleep, so I grabbed a shirt out of the closet then walked back through the bedroom to call my driver.
My smile couldn’t be contained when I saw Briar lying on the bed playing with the ends of her hair, smiling to herself. It took reminding myself that we had slept until noon and I needed to feed my blackbird in order to keep walking instead of climbing back into bed with her.
I walked into my office to make the call and check a few e-mails even though it was the weekend. I had been expecting them the night before, but I obviously hadn’t wanted to deal with them once we’d arrived home.
Everything was taken care of within a couple minutes, and I moved the cursor up to shut the computer down . . . and paused.
I hadn’t checked in weeks, and even then, it had been sporadic for the two weeks before, but I had been thinking of nothing but that since last night.
Watching her breaths deepen, her body reveling being outside the house . . .
She’d looked free.
Full of life.
A side of Briar I’d only glimpsed, but a girl I’d seen before. In pictures from another time—another life. And that girl who’d stood before me? She’d wanted me. Chosen me.
I needed to know what updates on Briar had appeared on the news—if any—or if the media interest in her disappearance had died down.
I quickly pulled up the Internet and went to Facebook, and grinned smugly when I’d finished with Briar’s page and went to Kyle’s. His pictures were the same as they had been most of this time: The large banner about being old and gray, and the profile that matched Briar’s—them together. No, his pictures hadn’t changed, but the girl in them had. She was no longer the Briar who was trying to get back to Atlanta to be with him. She’d had that chance and had chosen me instead.
But as soon as that thought entered my mind, my grin fell as something all too familiar settled in my stomach.