Stolen Life (Beauty in the Stolen 2)

She stills. Frozen with her upper body midway in the air, she gives me a wide-eyed look from over her shoulder. That look on her spurs my fear. I’d been rough. Did I hurt her? Tear her? I slide a palm up her inner thigh and stop dead. She’s coated in wetness, too much to account for her arousal. The reason for the thumping of my heart changes from physical excitement to panic. I pull my hand away, expecting to see blood, but cum coats my palm. I look down at my softening cock. Fuck. I broke the rubber.

She twists around between my legs and stares at the damage. Her lips part with a frightened gasp. “Ian.”

“It’s nothing,” I say in an even tone, keeping my voice reassuring as I discard the condom and grab a handful of napkins from the basket.

“Ian,” she says again, her eyes large in the twilight.

I use a napkin to wipe up the spillage between her legs. “I’m clean.”

She stares at me. That’s not what bothers her. The fact that it doesn’t bother me is more than a little disconcerting. The realization jars me. I pull away from her to clean myself.

At long last, she pushes out the words hanging between us. “I’m not on birth control.”

All I can give her for now as I zip myself up, is, “It’ll be all right.”

“You don’t know that,” she says in a shocked whisper.

Irrationally, a part of me is angry with her for caring. I don’t want to think about the reason for that. Anyway, we’re not done yet. Gripping her jaw, I find another perfect place for purchase as I kiss her. Her lips are tight and unyielding at first, but I’m patient. I explore with my tongue and nip with my teeth, enjoying the curve and contours of her mouth as if discovering its shape for the first time. After a while, she melts against me and parts her lips to give me access. I steal inside and take what I want while I work hard on making her forget, but when I finally let her breathe, she says, “You have to get me the morning-after pill.”

Fury rages inside me as I think about screwing with her hormones like that. It’s twisted and fucked-up, but the idea of a child in her belly—my child—doesn’t scare me half as much as fucking with her natural cycles.

“Ian,” she says, threading her fingers through my hair and making me meet her gaze.

Her eyes are imploring.

I kiss the corner of her mouth. My promise is half-hearted, undecided. “Of course.”

It soothes her though. She relaxes in my grip, and I hug her to me.

Night falls fast in these parts. It’s almost pitch-black dark. I help her get back into her jeans and lift her inside the Jeep. Once I’ve wrapped her up in the blanket I keep on the backseat, I pack up the remnants of our sundowners.

The tension that coiled through my insides at my inappropriate thoughts remains as I drive back to the main road. It won’t leave me alone. The idea has been planted, and no matter how hard my conscience tries to uproot it, the darker part of me is telling my conscience to take a hike. I’ve always taken what I wanted. I’ve never asked for permission or let morals get in my way. However, Cas is a person, not a possession. I know that, but I also know I’m thirty-five years old, and for the first time in my life, I’m aware of my age.

I don’t take the road to the main building, but veer off on the dirt track and park at my bungalow. She protests when I lift her from the seat and carry her inside in my arms, but I need to do this. I need to still the beast in me that feels overprotective, especially now. It’s unlikely that she’d conceive at the first slipup, but the concept of her as a woman, a mother maybe, is not a vague image in my head. Her vulnerability and all the things that can happen to a woman in a cruel, hard world are real.

I make her take a warm shower with me and wash her hair and body. To appease her, I wash between her legs. When she smells of my shower gel on every inch of her body, I wrap her in a towel and pat her dry. I take her to bed, but I don’t fuck her again. I kiss and hold her. It settles me. Her body wrapped around mine calms me.

I tell her to stay in bed and call the kitchen to order supper, which Shona delivers promptly. We eat in bed—dips and pita bread for starters, followed by minestrone soup.

When I replace her empty bowl with a glass of wine, she says, “You’ll remember to get the pill, right?”