The Resurrection (Unlawful Men)

“No,” he gasps, shaking behind me.

“Yes!” I slam back onto him, yelling at the glass, fogging it completely.

“God damn you, Beau.”

“More,” I goad. “More.” Another desperate slam. “More, James.”

“Fuck!” he roars, crushing me into the window, his hips starting to piston back and forth wildly. “You want more?” he bellows, smashing on, his force brutal, his pace inconceivable. I’m helpless, and it’s exactly how I need to feel, because I’m helpless for the right reasons.

“More,” I exhale calmly, my body out of control, jerking, banging into the glass, my insides in chaos, but my mind so incredibly calm. I close my eyes and float away with James pounding into me like a rabid animal, his shouts primal, a mixture of pleasure and despair. “More,” I whisper, letting the ecstasy take me in their healing claws and indulge me. “More.”

The force of my cheek to the glass doesn’t hurt. The area of my gunshot wound doesn’t hurt. My wrist doesn’t hurt. My empty womb no longer hurts. My heart doesn’t hurt. My scarred arm that always burns is scorching for another reason, along with every other molecule of me, as I accept James’s punishing taking. I peel my eyes open and stare across the room to the tableful of weapons. And I smile. Because not one of them is as deadly as the man currently fucking me like an animal.

His passion-fueled yell of release is muffled, the feel of his cum filling me blistering hot. I exhale and hold my breath, ready to grab my orgasm and let it ruin me, but before I get the opportunity, he’s pulled out, dropped to his knees, and pushed his face between my legs. “Shit.” I gulp, the sensation of his mouth encasing me making my knees rickety. I fight with the bonds, my heartbeat frantic, my breasts slipping across the glass. It hits me like a wrecking ball, pleasure ripping through me unforgivingly, making me collapse against the glass. “More,” I murmur, dizzy with the feel of his frenzied tongue lapping me greedily. It’s too much, my nerves shot and sensitive. “James,” I murmur, my voice broken. “James, stop.”

But he goes on, hungry and deranged.

“James!” I yell, wriggling, fighting the leather securing me. “Kellen, stop!”

But he doesn’t.

And I realize.

“Enigma!” I yell, and he immediately frees me of his torture, taking my hips and catching me when I fold to the floor. We’re both breathless, both of our bodies rolling uncontrollably, and I ache. But my mind? That’s clean. It’s a temporary fix, we both know that, but it’s a fix for now.

Enigma.

A reminder that he is still, in fact, the man I met.

“I love you,” James whispers hoarsely, releasing me of the bonds and shifting to get his back against the glass. And then there’s this new side to him. The soft side. He pulls me onto his lap. “With everything I have, Beau, I fucking love you.” He forces my face to his, and I crumble on the inside at the sight of his anguish. “Broken, fixed, happy, sad, I love you. If you do anything, just remember that.”

I nod as best I can in his hold, running my palm over his slick chest, my gaze following it, unable to sustain his eyes while they’re so despairing. “I need to be stronger for you. Like Rose is.”

“She’s had far longer to heal, Beau.”

“I know that. But I feel like I’ve put her back a few years.” I look up at him. “She’s still strong.”

He smiles, as if I’m missing something, and it makes me wonder if he knows things I don’t. Does Danny talk to him about things like that? Am I just seeing an exterior to the warrior queen? “My dad called me again.” I rest the side of my head on his pec and let him hold me. “He’s offered me an apartment in the new block he’s building.”

“That was good of him.” The hostility in James is rife. “He doesn’t even know who I am and he’s trying everything he can to get you away from me. Imagine if he finds out I kill for a living.”

I smile at his misplaced joke, nudging him with my shoulder. “If I’m going to be forced to endure my father, you have to endure him with me.” I feel James’s body harden beneath me, and I pull out to gage his expression. It’s somewhere between smiling and grimacing. I purse my lips over my smile. “What happened between you two when I was in hospital?”

“You know what happened. Your ex threw around some careless statements, and now your father thinks I’m physical with you in ways that don’t involve bonds and my cock.”

I chuckle. That’s misplaced too. I saw James’s reaction to those careless statements. It wasn’t anything to laugh about. “Not when I broke my arm. I meant when I was unconscious.” When I was shot. When I lost our baby.