By the time I get them out the door, it’s nearing midnight. I carry her bridal-style up to the shower. She still has splatters of him on her, and when I finish unwrapping her, she is on me, kissing me and ripping at my clothes.
“Whoa, whoa, baby.” I stop her and take her face in my hands. “What are you doing?”
Her eyes well with tears, and she whispers. “You saved my life. And I want to make love to you. I don’t care about his blood. I need you.” And that has my chest swelling with twisted desire.
“To be fucked while wearing the blood of your fallen enemy?”
She nods, and suddenly we’re tearing at each other. She claws at me, trying to get as close as possible. It doesn’t seem to be enough. I lift her up on the counter and violently spread her legs, slamming into her—her fully naked and me still fully clothed but my cock free.
“Oh God, yes. Theo! Don’t stop! Fuck me, please!” She’s humming, begging for praise and freedom.
“Take it like a good slut. Like your keeper’s good little slut.”
She brings her head forward again and looks down, watching my cock disappear into her repeatedly, animalistically.
We reach the highest euphoria together, fucking with foul words and loud moans.
“I would die for you, but what’s more is I would kill for you. Anyone who would ever dare to— Fuck!” She clamps down on my cock. “If they ever dare to touch or hurt you, I will be their ending,” I tell her, using one hand to squeeze her breast, the blood smearing a bit. My free hand then pinches her clit, and she comes in that instant, but I don’t let up. No, I keep going and going until she’s had enough to beg me to stop. I finally give in and come.
“Fuck. Take all of it. Each drop. Good girl.” Her pussy sucks me dry, and when we’re done, I move us to the shower. I wash her clean of him.
The water goes cold eventually, and we have to get out, then I towel us dry.
“Theo?”
“Yes, baby?” My voice is low and deep.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Saving me. Loving me.”
I smirk. “I don’t just love you. I fucking breathe for you, Hanna.”
“I love you so much,” she whispers, running her hands through my hair as I drop to my haunches and dry between her legs and down to her feet.
She lets me tend to her. Aftercare but with a whole new meaning. I watched a man nearly pull the trigger on her and take away the most precious thing I own. I make a vow to never let anything or anyone make Hanna walk in the shadows again.
I will make the shadows fear her. She’s learned so much already under my touch, but my puppet—God, my sweet puppet—still has so much to learn. And I have a fucking lifetime to show it to her.
EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
Staring in the mirror, I look myself over, surprised that I’m here now. Standing in front of it in a lacy baby-pink bodysuit, which is see-through and showing every inch of my body that once offended not only the world around me but myself too. I’m brushing out my curls, giving my hair volume, and I start applying my makeup.
How am I here? How did I learn to love my body? To see it as a force to be reckoned with versus a sore sight to my eyes? I want to credit it all to the man who showed me how to open up intimately and explores my curves like they were crafted by Picasso. As if I’m his muse, painted in a way only a real man could see worth in a real woman.
I was never a real woman. I was deemed a waste. It’s the truth. The honest to God truth. No one can tell you different. Even the most confident women in bodies like mine have had to fight to love their bodies. All women, in fact, not just ones shaped like me.
But in my case, in scenarios like mine, women had to fake it ‘til we made it. We were never enough, so we loudly became enough for ourselves. That’s never an easy feat, and many may come and try to help you in the journey to love yourself, to see yourself as sexy, beautiful, and as a woman, but the real work has to come from within.
Theo gave me the tools, but I had to give myself the grace. The faith. The courage. And now, I stand her, in all my flaws, loving them and having them loved by a man I can never see me being without.
I see him enter, not saying anything as I apply my bronzer. He looks me up and down. Usually, it’s in a predatory way, but there is something deeper, a longing for me. He steps up to me without a word, taking his arms and wrapping them around me.