Page 44 of Ripple Effect, Vol. 4

“No. I shouldn’t have come.” She presses her hands into my chest, trying to break my hold on her, but I tighten it and guide her toward the sofa. Once the back of her knees hit the arm of it, she falls backward, caught by the cushions, and I straddle a thigh between her legs, pushing her arms above her head. New ink catches my eye along her forearm, written in the same script as the ink on my back, but it’s not a tattoo.

Veni. Vidi. Amavi.

“What is that?” I ask, thumbing the letters, noticing the flat surface that tells me she wrote it with a Sharpie.

“I came. I saw. I loved.”

“You loved me. Say it.” I grind my dick at the meeting of her thighs, savoring the heavy lust-drunk shutter of her lids. “Say it, Dylan. I want to hear you say it.”

Tears fall down her temples. “I loved you. I love you. I’ll love you. Always, Rip.”

Still binding her arms, I bury my face in her throat and kiss her neck, inhaling the scent I’ve craved for three weeks of sheer hell. “I thought I lost you,” I whisper. “Christ, I’ve been losing my mind without you.”

“I had to see you.”

“I’m not letting you go back to some goddamn shelter after this. I’m going to take care of you. Of everything.”

“We’re not good for each other. You said it once yourself.”

“The hell we’re not.” I press her hand to my chest, over my heart. “Feel that? It doesn’t beat for anyone else, Bandit. You breathed life back into my soul. Fuck, I didn’t even know I had one. I set you free, and have mourned you every day since, but you came back. Alive. Twice now I’ve let you go, butterfly, and each time you’ve come back to this shit-tangled web of my life. You could’ve stayed away, but you didn’t. So I can’t let you go again,” I snarl, crushing her hands in my fists. “I can’t lose you again, Dylan. I won’t. I fucking love you.”

Her muscles slacken and a tear slips down her temple. “I lied to you, Rip. I’ve been lying to you from the beginning.”

“So have I.” I let my gaze fall from hers with the disappointing truth.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve asked me about every one of my scars, but there’s one you missed.” I lift my arm between us, showing her the mark on my forearm.

Eyes wide, her fingertips trace the ruined skin where the tattoo was removed. “A butterfly.”

“All those months, I was the one watching you.”

“What?” Her brows dip and she stills beneath me. “When?”

“When you lived in the apartment. With Randy.”

She shakes her head. “That’s impossible. How … how’d you even know about me?”

“Black Monarch Society has a website. I was looking for information on Lyndsey, and I stumbled upon your picture. All of them.”

Brows pinched tighter, she flinches and there’s a shine to her eyes when they flicker away from mine. “You watched me for months. Why?”

“I found comfort watching you perched at your window. Surrounded by hell, and there you were, looking down at me like some kind of angel. I wanted to steal you away. But you took off, and I couldn’t find you until the night you got into the car with Frank.” I stare down at my wrist, my hand clenching to a fist at the memory of what could’ve happened that night. “I never planned to keep you. I shouldn’t have. A good man would’ve let you go.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t. You were the first I’d ever saved. I needed to keep you safe. To keep them from breaking you.”

Once more, her fingers drift across the tattoo. “You were a Monarch slave. That’s why you need pain. They made you this way.”

I don’t need to answer her, she can see the truth written on my face.

Her thumb presses into the raised skin, rubbing along the edges that mark the path of the laser that removed it, and she kisses the scar. “I met with Natalie. She’s the reason I don’t look like a street rat. She told me everything.”

“Then you know what she is to me.”

“Yes. I wish you would’ve told me, but I know why you didn’t.”