by Ace Gray
I started pacing my room, letting my fingers drag over the spines of my books, the cut of my crystal. There were memories attached to each item, flashes of the life I’d built here in Hell. Emmett had been a friend. Well, not really, but here in this room, his ghost was. He’d been a voice that answered in the dark, something to prop me up, someone to heal the broken pieces. My father had been a monster, but he’d taught me everything I knew and let me want for nothing.
Nothing but love.
“We don’t have to go, Brye.” Filly’s voice was soft behind me, not tentative or wavering, just the sturdy and consuming hug I’d come to know my girl was. “I mean it. Fuck what my dad says. Even what my uncle is trying to with his good intentions.”
“They’re right, Filly.” I turned to find her leaning up against my doorframe. She was so casual with her arms crossed accentuating her beautiful chest, her long legs easy even though they were coated in blood. “I just…” don’t know how to put this into words.
She studied me for a moment in that way Filly had, that way that cut through me and saw sorrow and chaos and something good despite it all. Her brow crinkled and her ever-shining smile tipped downward.
“You’re sad he’s gone.” Her words were a little choked. Her eyes went wide and though she barely moved, I saw the way she pressed her hands into her skin to hold herself together. “Oh God, I didn’t even think. He was your only friend. Even after everything. And I killed him.” When her breath ticked up and her chest started to heave mine did too.
I was striding toward her before I even thought about it. “No,” I cooed into her hair as I wrapped my body around hers. “I’m just off-kilter. What am I now? Who am I?” I offered up my greatest fear—my only vulnerability—to her. “I love you more than words can say but will you still love whoever I turn out to be?”
Her hands wound around me, and her fingers played with the ridges of my scars.
“Someday I’ll teach you to sculpt,” she spoke into my chest; I was starting to love that timbre of her voice the best. The way it shook me. “You’ll learn there’s beauty in the raw clay, in the final form, and every shape and line in between.” She pressed her lips so tenderly to my left pec. “Sometimes you scrap it all in the end, but the way you get to dig your hands in, feel the cool of the clay and the way it crusts and coats your hands…” Her voice trailed off as she stepped back to look up at me.
Her sea glass eyes were a color I wanted to learn to paint, the shape of her lips, something I could imagine sculpting.
“I can’t see the future, Brye, but I can’t see a life without you either. I want the journey, whatever it ends up being.”
Everything that had happened downstairs had reshaped me. It was the single tear falling from down my cheek that confirmed it. But the way she looked at me, the words she spoke, they made me grateful that they had.
I wordlessly turned from her and tried to swallow back the emotion. I would put this behind me. I’d find my footing and I’d be a fucking better man for it. For her.
Almost nothing meant much to me in this house when I thought about it like that, so I stuffed clothes into a bag and threw my gun in there too. I reached for the first painting I’d ever done, the one of Filly that was really just the first reincarnation of my heart. I took one more sweeping look around and couldn’t find anything that needed to come.
Filly sensed it and walked toward my bookshelf. She grabbed a single, heavy, leather-bound book.
“A reminder of where we’ve been,” she said as she handed me my copy of Romeo & Juliet.
I rubbed my thumb across the supple leather and felt something bloom in my chest. Something that was the soft pinks and yellows of sunrise. Something that held the warmth of a world unfolding new. I was a little uncomfortable with the full feeling in between my ribs, but it was hope, and with that hope, I understood the real meaning of love.
Fuck me if I wasn’t going to use it all to love Filly for as long as she’d have me.
“I’m going to murder him,” Brye said through gritted teeth and I noticed the telltale clench of his fists and bunch ofhis shoulders. “One more time, you mother fucker,” he swore under his breath, “I dare you.”
I brushed the back of his hand with my knuckles and he barely unwound his hand to hold mine. But he did. I leaned into him and tried to swallow my smile as I looked from him to Uncle Conrad where he was pretending to be immersed in the painting hanging in front of him. The corner of his smirk turned up and the light in his eyes told me just how amused he was with his latest filthy limerick he’d whispered in Brye’s ear.
“I mean how am I supposed to focus on anything but how gin would feel on my dick.”
The big brash laugh I’d been holding back cracked out, echoing off the silent halls of the gallery. More than a few people turned to stare at me and I felt Brye puff up beside me at their disapproval. I simply twisted into his body and laughed into the valley of his chest that was marked forever as mine.
“You think it’s funny?” He bent a little to whisper in my ear. “Because I’ll do exactly what he told me.”
“Put vermouth on there too and shove yourself in my mouth?” I couldn’t help but tighten my grip on him as I thought about the taste of him, the soft velvet hardness of him.
“Chroí,” he warned me with my nickname in his softly chastising, equally encouraging voice.
I made eyebrows at him and used my hold to pull him down the hall, away from Uncle Conrad, past the eyes of so many disapproving art lovers and out into the secret garden. I heard Conrad’s laugh drift in the background.
Brye knew the language of my want and the syllables of my desire and had me against the ivy-covered wall behind me the moment we tasted fresh air. That single taste of crisp Paris autumn air was all I got before he filled my senses with his all-consuming kiss. From the first moment I’d tasted Brye he’d been the only thing I craved, his kiss the thing I was ravenous for. I was here—we were here together—because of it.
I surrendered to the kiss of my fate as he leaned his bulky body against me, barely pressing each of the stones behind me against my body. His tongue swept along the seam of my lips, his hands along the curve of my hips. My body bowed forward his until he flattened his hand and shoved me back to the stone.
He growled just before his big hands slid under my sweater dress, palmed my ass and lifted. His hands slid down the back of my legs and coaxed my knees up around his hips. When his lips slid from mine and explored the territory it had already claimed days, weeks, even months earlier. I leaned back and let him kiss along my neck and then the groove of my collarbone.
I could count the number of days since we walked out of that Chicago house and hadn’t showered each other with affection on my fingers and toes. I hadn’t taken my spot at the Art Institute in San Fran choosing instead to show the things to Brye that he deserved to see. The world, museums, sunrises. A family. Love.
“Tell me no now,” he snarled as he pinched my ear between his teeth and pulled.
My big soft-hearted man was asking, testing how comfortable I was, to find out if he was treating me right. At first, I thought it was something sexy that I wasn’t meant to deny, but all too quickly I realized he was asking because he didn’t know. He’d admitted that he was off-kilter that bloody night and I wasn’t sure if he’d found his balance yet. He looked to me for guidance in a world of love where he still walked on Bambi legs.
I nodded my head letting my skin brush against the scruff of his closely cropped beard and he knew. Just like he knew my body and the interworking of my heart.
The sly unzip of his pants made my mouth water and my heart slam against my ribs. There was always a little fear that we were going to get caught but it had slowly turned from a reminder of his past to pride in our future. Let them watch I thought as he pulled the lace of my thong aside and slid into me.
I rolled my head back and moaned, rustling the vines hanging close overhead as he started to thrust into me
. Brye shifted my weight and clapped his hand over my mouth. My eyes fluttered shut and I let loose another primal groan that broke against his skin. He breathed his answering stilted breath against my ear.
My hands slid from his shoulders, encouraged by the way he rolled against my body and found their way to my chest. I always tried to keep hold of him but the way he took me, reformed my insides every time. I wanted to claw down to my heart and show him what he did to me.
“Knock that shit off, Chroí,” Brye snapped as his hand left my mouth and batted my hands from my chest. “Claw me. Mark me.” He punctuated his words by shoving into me that much harder. My hands flew to his shoulders. “Dig down to my insides. They’re fucking yours anyways.”
I whimpered as I dug in. He winced, but it turned into one of his deliciously haggard mewls. His pace faltered for just a second but then he arched his chest into my hands and tipped his head back. Had we been in our bed, he would have roared. And loud enough to rattle the stars.
The wall and vines behind me grit at my shoulders and put pressure on my low back. My hips twinged at the width of him and the ferocity of his thrusts. My hands started to pull away from him. I wanted to rip my heart out. I’d give it to him.
“Carve your name in my chest, Chroí. Brand me as your own,” he commanded, and the words were my undoing.
Those flashes of the night he fought for me—killed for me—came crashing back. Being tied up. Being touched. Being saved. That was the night he became human to me. The first night I knew the truth about him and wanted to save him right back.
It was the emotion that pushed me over the edge.
I always saw colors with Brye, bright shimmers and iridescence. My mouth hung open as my breathing slipped and tripped out of my lips. My head dug back into the ivy behind me while the rest of me froze. Well, except for the way I clenched and tugged on his cock inside me.
The chill of the air shoved into my lungs and filled me up, reminding me to breathe even though he’d stolen my breath. My bones were unhinged, my body was his to break or build. Even my heart tuned to his thrusts as he used my body to finish.
My hands found his wings, a shape I traced in my sleep and felt almost tattooed on the pads of my fingertips. Brye shuddered when I reached the tips and let my head fall back to the wall. I surrendered to the thump of my body, the crash of my heart.
A strangled groan barely preceded him shoving in and stilling inside me. Every muscle, every vein of his neck was rigid, his skin the most beautiful shade of rouge. The heat of his orgasm spread inside me as he gasped and fell into the curve of my neck.
The world stilled when he did. The birds and breeze stopped to watch as we caught our breath, the traffic of Paris quieted and the only people in the city were us. I relished those moments when the universe stopped and stared. At us. At what we’d become.
“The only thing I love more than your pussy is your heart,” Brye said with a husky chuckle as he nudged his hips against mine.
“If you had to choose, I think you’d pick my pussy,” I answered with the same rough laugh.
He squinted a little and pretended to search the recesses of his mind. Finally he closed them and pumped himself up into me once, twice. But then he froze and bent down to kiss the swell of my breast over top of my heart.
“I will never choose. I will keep you safe and whole and mine,” he snarled and sent shivers down my spine and a smile spreading across my face.
He gently unwound my legs from his hips, letting his fingertips brush along my skin for a little too long as he pressed his chest to mine and kissed me slow and hard. His tongue slid in between my lips as I felt his cum drip down my inner thigh. As soon as he let me up for air, I groaned.
“Tell me now.” This time it was a command with all the edge still sharp within Brye.
“Your cum is dripping down my leg and it makes me want to fuck all over again.” I was a mess. Brye always knew how to wreck me.
“And…?”
“And I’m yours,” I murmured.
“Again.”
“I’m yours.”
“Yeah, you are.”
He smiled wide as he crouched down and inched my skirt up and kissed the brand I’d insisted on him giving me. The one that matched his that he’d taken for me, seared in his chest. Nothing had hurt as bad as my flesh burning except for the few minutes that I’d thought I’d lost him. He reached up for the waist of my thong at my hips and pulled it gently down my legs.
My cheeks turned fire engine red when he looked down at the scrap of fabric that had been between my legs.
“Conrad should tell filthy limericks more often. Got me all worked up.” He was staring at his jizz pooled in my panties.
“Let’s not talk about Conrad right now.”
“Fair.” He laughed as he used a clean spot on my underwear to tidy up anything left between my thighs.
When I was cleaned up, he kissed my marked skin again then smoothed my dress back over my hips. As he stood, he shoved my panties in his pocket sending that blush roaring back across my cheeks and chest.
“You’re beautiful right now, Filly.” Brye reached his hand out and pulled me from the ivy. Each of the branches clung to me, pulling at the soft gray knit of my dress and the wisps of my hair. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.” He gently turned me, and I felt his deft fingers in my hair, pulling a twig here and there from my long locks. “But Horse may kill me if I bring you back like this.”
He and Horse had some understanding, a respect for each other even, and when the whole crew arrived in Paris three days ago, I swore he smiled at my uncle. He had hugged my mom in one of those all-consuming hugs as he lifted her off the floor and started a dirty poetry battle with Conrad.
He hadn’t spoken to my father.
Not outside of brisk monosyllables. I still held my breath when they walked into the same room. And that time I’d found them toe to toe, chests heaving, I thought I might actually have to pick between them and help hide the body of the loser.
Brye started braiding my hair and I forgot about anything except how he made me feel. He let the loose plait fall on my shoulder then turned me back around. His hands found my cheeks and he used them to tip my face up to his. For a split second, he kissed me, but then he bit my lip and pulled my bottom pout with his teeth.
Then there was a subtle clearing of a throat and a pleased as punch laugh interrupting the sound of us just before Conrad asked, “Did you do it?”
“Did you do it?” Filly asked, her whole body tense even though I had her hands cuffed to the headboard.
“Not yet, Chroí. You’d know,” I answered as I eyed the whole scene again.
A very large part of me hated it and hated her for talking me into it. I’d cuffed Filly’s hands for safety, but all I saw was the steel as it had dug into her wrists in the basement. I almost heaved. But then there was the soft hiss of the metal in the small fire beside me. That had me swallowing acid over and over.
She’d formed the brand herself, diligently working at all hours in her mother’s workshop just across the garden. And when I’d come to take her from the forge to bed one night, she told me all the reasons she needed me to mark her. I’d fucking fought her tooth and nail until she said the words that haunted me.
“I need the pain to remind me that the pleasure is real.”
So I notched myself on top of her thigh and used my whole weight to press her legs open and down to the bed. If I was going to do this—and fuck if I wasn’t the worst kind of scum for even considering it—the sensitive skin close to the apex of her thighs, the skin that would only ever be mine, was going to hold my mark.
“I was fucking with you, Brye.” She laughed at me and nuzzled against her outstretched arm. “I know it’s going to hurt. I want it to hurt,” she begged. “Hurt me like this and never any other way.”
I grabbed the long handle of the steel, closing my eyes in the hopes that it would erase the sizzle of the heat, the delicate
skin I was about to ruin. I watched as the metal faded from red hot to soft gray and I knew this was the moment. I could turn back…
“Tell the whole world I’m yours,” she whispered and that was what did me in.
My soul had moved in with hers, everything about her was my home. And I did need the world to know. When the world got dark and I waited in Mantua for word about my beloved, I needed to know. So I pressed the burning hot steel to her skin and branded my soulmate so every God, even the demons I’d been so acquainted with, knew Filly Ryan wasn’t a Ryan.
She was mine.
That was the moment I’d really proposed to her. She didn’t know it, and I hadn’t said it in so many words, but my soul spoke to hers.
Today was a formality.
She would marry me without her parent’s permission—I trusted that now—but the colors she saw would brighten if I asked. So I called her parents and asked them to come to Paris when I hadn’t asked them for anything. And I wouldn’t ever again.
“You want to marry my daughter? You?” Cole Ryan sneered. “What makes you worthy?”
“The same fucking shit that made you worthy of Elle.”
“Don’t you dare talk about things you don’t know.” He stepped toward me and I rolled my shoulders back in response.
“That goes double for you.” I cocked my head to the side and eyed him. “He would have killed her, ya know? And not just to hurt me but to spite you. Her blood would have been on your hands, but it’s not because I’d never let anything happen to her.” My snarl was slowly ratcheting up.
“You watch your fucking mouth, son.”
“I’m not your son.” I stepped closer.
“If you marry my daughter you might as well be.”
My bastard-ass retort was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it. If. He’d said if. Not over my dead body or a simple fuck off.
“Not such a smart ass now, are you?”
