Page 82 of Villains Never Die

Not because caring for him was safe, but because my penthouse was filled with memories of Gray lounging on my couch and raiding my fridge. I couldn’t stay here, and if I didn’t stay here, I had nowhere else to go.

Nowhere but Rook’s.

He answered the door sleepy and surprised, and pulled me inside without a word, wrapping me in a hug that kept me from completely losing my grip on my emotions. I kissed him, pressing him back into one wall, and let his gasp of pleasure fill my ears, drowning out my thoughts of self-loathing.

“Come with me,” he whispered. All the lights were off, but I caught glimpses of his life in the shadows. I’d expected a place that was messy and thoughtless, but Rook’s home was as straightforward as him—minimalist, but with things that mattered crammed on shelves where anyone could see them. I wanted to see them, wanted to stare all of him straight in the face in the light, but he led me toward the bedroom and laid me out on the bed in the dark.

The mattress bounced slightly. He threw himself down next to me with a lack of grace completely opposite to the way he fought.This was the real Carter, not the Rook who trained fighters with an iron fist. He threw an arm across my torso and pulled me to him until there was no space between us.

“I’m glad you’re here. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m always alone.”

“You’re not right now.”

The breath I released shuddered against the skin of his neck and I pressed my lips there to avoid thinking about it. I needed him closer and further away at the same time—physical, but far away from the tumult of emotions choking the life out of me.

He tilted his head, lengthening his neck and giving me more skin to distract myself with. My mouth opened slightly, my tongue dragging against the pulse at the corner of his jaw. His breaths stilted, and he grabbed my face between his fingers and turned it toward his, our lips colliding at a crooked angle before we adjusted on the bed to align.

His fingers threaded through my hair and he moved my head back to place messy, frantic kisses along my throat, down to the dip between my collarbones, then lower, kissing each inch of skin he revealed as he tore my shirt open. Buttons littered the bed, and for once, I didn’t care. He reached the waistband of my pants, his tongue tracing the exposed skin just above it as he untucked my shirt. I lifted my upper body so he could shove it off my shoulders. He pulled my pants and underwear down my legs and discarded them like an inconvenience.

Then he licked the length of my cock, his tongue hot and wet and exactly the distraction I craved. He kissed me from base to tip, eager and open-mouthed. I groaned as I twitched against his lips. He wrapped his hand around me and took me deep into his mouth, all teasing forgotten as he jammed me all the way down his throat, moaning around my length. I fisted my hands in the remains of my shirt. I propped myself on my elbows to watchhis head bob as he sucked me, then scrunched my eyes shut and tried to hold off my release.

“Carter.” His real name was glass on my tongue, ready to shatter and cut me to pieces. We were treading into dangerous territory, that perilous emotion throbbing inside me again.

He sat up and his lips glistened.

“I need to be inside you,” I said.

He let me fuck him slowly, taking my time, drawing out the countdown to when the physical distraction ended and my chest would collapse from sorrow again.

Afterward, we were a ball of limbs twisted together, with my head on his chest, glued together with sweat and exhaustion. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to, and the sun had risen enough to chase off some of the shadows in the room. I let my eyes take in his space lazily, noting the polished chess trophies on a shelf along one wall and a tower of DVDs that nearly reached the ceiling, most of which were action movies I’d never heard of. Clothes were thrown over a chair and in a pile in a corner, mountains of untouched laundry that should have been off-putting, but only made me love him more for this one place where he was fully himself.

My heart paused in my chest, a silent, frozen moment to allow me to realign myself around the word.

Love.

I pushed up on my hands and made for the edge of the bed, but my legs were wedged between his. He tugged me back against his chest.

“Where are you going?”

“Work,” I lied.

“No. You’re going to stay here and sleep.”

I couldn’t tell what time it was, but it might have been mid-morning. I’d stayed too long.

“I can’t.”

He stroked his fingertips along my spine like a sedative and I melted against him.

“There is nothing you need to do that can’t wait until later, Austin. Please stay.”

That ‘please’ was a drug, intoxicating and irresistible. I didn’t acknowledge his win, just scooted up the bed and buried my face in his neck.

“I love you,” I whispered. This might be the only place safe to say it, to even think it.

“I know. Just sleep, okay?”