I swallowed and sat still as Anderson’s fists imploded my father’s face. His violent punches crushed my father’s breastbone, and his ruthless brutality took my father’s very last breath.
I watched. I sat in silence, forcing my eyes to see every single bit of Anderson’s rage. I witnessed the end with a full heart, Anderson’s declaration telling me what I had always suspected. That he loved me.
A smile rested on my lips as Samantha Rowan was finally laid to rest.
This time it was me who bathed and cared for the man who granted my soul peace. He was quiet and subdued, lost in his own thoughts as I was lost in mine.
Water trickled down his chest when I squeezed the sponge over him. He sat between my thighs, the warmth of the water around us breaking through the chill that had settled in our bones.
“You think it’ll ever be over, Kloe?” Anderson asked, unexpectedly.
“Only if you let it. They’re gone now. All of them. There’s only you and me and our child left to dictate where our lives go from here.”
He nodded. “And where do we go from here?”
“Anywhere we want to. Judd and Samantha have been laid to rest. It’s about time we honoured their short lives. Don’t let their pain become worthless.”
He turned, sliding onto his knees before me. The water splashed around us when he grabbed me and pulled me onto his thighs and straight onto his hard cock.
Air rushed from my lungs as pleasure ran through my veins. My head fell back and Anderson captured the flesh on my neck with his teeth. When blood started to trickle down my skin he caught it on his tongue and kissed me with a passion that would soon overwhelm me.
The taste of Anderson and blood on my tongue made my whole body tremble with need. His tongue twisted around mine as his hands gripped my waist and he lifted and lowered me slowly onto him.
My heart swelled with the look of tenderness in his eyes, his gaze fixed on every bit of the pleasure he was granting me.
He made love to me for the very first time, and I never wanted it to end. I wanted to feel the closeness of his soul forever. I wanted to feel his heart beat alongside mine for eternity.
“I love you so much, Anderson,” I whispered, begging that he felt every bit of my declaration in his soul.
His hands moved from my waist and slid up my sides until he framed my face. I took control, moving over him just as slowly as he had directed me. The gentle friction of his cock inside me brought my orgasm quickly and sharply, the tremble in my bones making me cry out his name.
He thrust hard and deep, spilling inside me with my own name rushing from his lips.
His face buried into the crook of my neck as my arms slid around him. “Kloe,” he whispered, and it wasn’t until his body started to shake that I realised he was crying.
Grief had a funny way of showing itself at the strangest of times. And Anderson’s rocked him with a ferocity that took the breath from his lungs and the strength from his soul.
I held him tighter, holding onto him while he let go. I pleaded with him to use me, to take what I offered him.
“You’re okay,” I told him. “You survived this. You survived it all. The future is ours, Anderson. It’s all ours, and we’re going to live it.”
He lifted his face to mine, his beautiful glistening green eyes reflecting back the love he would never speak of. His thumb swiped at my own tears, and he placed it to his lips and tasted my love in its most physical form.
“Marry me,” he whispered.
Shock didn’t actually cover it. I stared with huge eyes as a smile took his misery and annihilated it.
“You speak of our future, Kloe, and all I see is you and our baby. That’s my future. Family. When you walked into my hospital room four years ago I felt it then, the connection we had. Our souls had always been linked with a bond that proved to be unbreakable. And once again we found each other. Our souls are never complete without one another, and they will forever hunt for each other.”
“Yes,” I whispered. I hadn’t even had to think about it. My soul had already decided for me.
His smile turned into the widest grin possible, lighting up his handsome face. I soaked the image up, using it to fuel my heart.
“And then you can take me somewhere hot and tranquil,” I informed him with a huge smile of my own. “God damn, I think we deserve a holiday.”
He laughed, nodding in agreement. “That we do, my little wolf. That we do.”
Present Day
P
ERFECTION.
The soft light skipped over her pale skin, highlighting each scar and making them dance for me. Her soft but full body swung in the ropes before me, her large round belly caressed in my hands, my fingers spread over the stretched skin.
My boy kicked me, telling me he knew I was there.
Kloe smiled, the blue of her eyes glistening with tears of delight. She was so amazingly beautiful when she was happy. And I’d given her that. I was the one who had filled her womb with what she craved, what she had once only ever dreamed of.
Crashing my mouth to hers, she moaned into me, the small puff of air flickering across my tongue and making me hunger for her even more.
“I love you,” she whispered against my lips. Her eyes were fixed on mine, the declaration of her words reflected back at me through her gaze. “I love what you do to me, Anderson. What you’ve given me.”
She waited. Like always.
Her soft lips moved with the touch of a gentle smile. “Even now.” She sighed. “Even now, after it all, you still can’t say it, can you?”
Blood filled my heart, making the next beat painful. I knew I loved her. I knew without a single doubt that she was the only thing that allowed my heart to beat. Yet my soul wouldn’t allow it. Even now.
She sucked in a breath, her eyes closing in ecstasy as I drew the tip of the blade between her breasts, slicing her with such delicacy that even the rush of blood to the surface was lazy and serene. “This….” I ran the blade over more skin, observing the fog of pleasure roll across her pretty face. “…This is all I can give you, Kloe.”
My cock slid between her closed thighs and I used the friction to give me the stimulation I needed. She swung in the harness and I lifted her legs around my waist, steadying her to me. Her huge belly pressed against mine, the trickle of blood smearing between our touching skin, but that only added to my excitement.
Kloe was mine in every way. And what she carried in her was mine. For the first time in thirty years, something belonged to me.
“You know I’ll never let you go, don’t you?” I breathed into the softness of her neck, nipping her skin with my teeth until the familiar taste of copper tingled on my tongue.
Her head fell to the side and she huffed. “And you know I’ll never let go. Never.”
She cried out, her eyes snapping open when I drove my cock inside her. Her walls gripped me like a vice, an act to verify her promise, as her legs tightened around my body. “Never,” she repeated as I started to plunge in and out of her with a fury I couldn’t keep up with.
Only when I was inside her, in the very depths of my wife, did I ever feel complete. Her love, her passion - they soaked me from the inside out, and electrified every one of my senses with feelings.
“Harder,” she cried. “Hate me, Anderson. Hate me!”
“Never!” I hissed through the clench of my jaw, my teeth catching the edge of my tongue and making me shudder.
“Yes,” she cried as she bucked her body against me greedily. “I need it. Please.”
Darkness bubbled in her eyes when I crushed her windpipe under my fingers, the frolic of her pulse beneath my palm making my balls jerk in delight.
“Yes!” she spat through the restriction on her voice box. “YES!”
Driving harder into her, a single tear seeped from the corner of her eye.
“My little wolf,” I growled as I slammed harder, shaking her in the ropes.
She winced and wrenched forwards, her face contorting in pain. She loved pain; it brought her to life, fed the need in her for retribution. Helped her to bury her past.
But this was different.
A shock of agony made her jaw drop and her eyes squeezed closed.
“Anderson…”
Her eyes rolled and I pulled out of her, quickly cutting the ropes. She fell into me, a fierce groan turning into a scream of pain as she doubled over. She dropped to her knees, her arms covering her fat belly as another horrific wail broke from her.
“Anderson…”
“Kloe?”
Blood. It was everywhere. Pooling over the concrete and spreading like a river around her, seeping over the pale grey floor and turning the basement into the epitome of hell it had always been.
“No!”
“I…” she choked out as vomit hurled from her, spraying me with the sickly stench. “Please…”
He’d won.
As I looked down at my wife losing consciousness in my arms and my son losing his life before me. I knew. I knew he’d won. After everything.
He’d won.
Even in death.
The door opened and Robbie rushed in. He was out of breath, his face puce with exertion. “How is she?”
I shook my head, once again glancing at the clock on the wall that never seemed to tick forward. “Nothing yet.”
“How long as she been in surgery?” Rob asked as he took the chair beside me and took a drink from my bottle of water.
“Three fucking hours.”
“Surely there should be some word by now! What happened?”
“I don’t know. We were fucking. We’ve fucked a thousand times, Rob…”
“Hey.” He squeezed my hand. “This isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it? I was pretty rough with her.”
“You’re always rough with her.” He smiled. “Sex isn’t at fault and neither are you. The doctors will no doubt verify that, Anderson.”
“They already did,” I grumbled. “They asked me what happened and a nurse assured me it wasn’t anything we had done, although she did look at me like I’m a fucking leper when she asked about the various cuts on Kloe’s skin. I have no doubt that when she wakes they’ll be fucking questioning her about it. Either that, or she won’t wake up and the fucking coppers will be the next to fucking question me!”
“Calm down,” Rob urged. “She’s going to be fine. She’s tough. It’s Kloe. She needs to be tough to be married to you.”