“I’ve got you, Gidge,” he promises, and I throw an arm over my eyes, trying not to let his words dig too deep. “I’ve got you. We’re in this together from now on.”
“I don’t understand,” I whisper as Beast pauses, lifting up just enough so that when I drop my arm from my face and look down, I can see him watching me. “Why? You had the club. You’re supposed to put the club above everything else. I know you care about Cat, respect him. I know what this life means to you.”
Beast scoots up just enough that he can rest his chin on my lower belly.
“So why?” I ask again, not questioning his devotion or his promises, just asking. Because I want to understand. I need to understand.
“Because I finally found what I was looking for,” he says, watching me with an intensity that’s almost uncomfortable, like I truly am his be-all, end-all, not just a stop along the way. Not just a partner. Everything. Fucking everything. “I grew up alright. Poor, but happy. My family is what you’d call blue-collar.” He sits up, looking down at me with a face that could—and probably has—made angels cry. There’s a harshness, a realness, to his sort of handsome that makes him impossible to resist for someone like me. “My father ran an auto body shop. Worked there for a while after high school, but I was miserable.” Beast reaches up and pushes his hair back with both hands. “I started wandering, Gidge. I looked everywhere for happiness.”
He pauses again, studying me like he’s committing my sweaty, aching form to memory.
“What about your MMA career?” I ask, but he just smiles at me. It’s an understanding smile, but it’s just a tad patronizing, too. Like I should understand this already, but he’ll explain it to me anyway.
“It was easy for me to carve that belt up to make your rings,” he tells me honestly. “I left that life behind for a reason. It was nothing to me; it meant nothing.” Beast curls his fingers around the waistband of my panties and drags them down and over my feet, stuffing them into his pocket to save for later. I won’t soon forget that he wore my red thong like a pocket square to our ill-fated reception. “I moved from place to place until I found myself here.” He sighs again and offers up a smile that absolutely shatters the last shield of cynicism that I have in place to guard against him.
This is it.
If Beast fucks me over, I’ll never have another chance to trust anyone ever again.
“Even then, I knew it wasn’t enough. I still hadn’t decided what, exactly, it was that I was looking for.”
My breath is coming more quickly; it’s easy to see with the way I’m lying there, my upper half relaxed into Beast’s pillows, my cunt bare to him, his huge body between my thighs.
“I was with the club, sure, but I was still wandering.” His mouth quirks to one side as he rubs a hand over his jaw. “Until I found you.” The smile fades from his face, replaced with that terrifying intensity. “The club is irrelevant. The other men are irrelevant. My only loyalty is to you.”
I’m having trouble keeping my emotions in check.
Reaching up two fingers, I actually find that my cheek is wet with tears. I stare at that glistening liquid on my fingertips, and I’m just completely dumbstruck by it. Piece by piece, I’m coming apart and reforming into somebody new. I don’t want to be just bitter and broken anymore; I’m a fighter. I deserve better than that. I can fight for more than that.
“Don’t you dare break my heart,” I whisper, meeting Beast’s eyes. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“You have to trust me with it first,” he says, tilting his head slightly to one side as he studies me. “Do you, Gidge?”
“I do,” I whisper, and Beast gives me this devastating smile, readjusting himself so that he can put his mouth between my legs. He shudders at that first taste, flicking his tongue over my clit.
“Tell me again,” he murmurs, his lips moving against my sensitive folds as he brushes his stubble against my pussy, and I cry out, reaching down to dig my fingers into his hair.
“It’s yours,” I promise him, and he makes this satisfied rumbling sound as he sucks the hardened bud of my clit into his mouth. This is such a bad idea, I think, but it’s too late. I’m tumbling down into unfamiliar darkness. Never in my life have I given myself up the way I’m doing now. If Beast wants to hurt me worse than I’ve ever been hurt before, he now has all the tools to do it.
“Again.”
His scorching tongue slides down my folds as my labored breathing turns to harsh pants and my fingertips dig into his scalp. He doesn’t seem to mind, bathing my core with heat as I struggle to find the words he wants me to say.
