It’s a threat, a promise, and a warning all rolled into one.
God help me, it only makes me wetter, my pussy throbbing painfully.
“Fuck me, Ryker,” I whisper, placing my lips directly beside his ear. “I want you to fuck me.”
“I don’t have a condom,” he warns, as if the thought only just occurred to him.
“I’m on birth control.” I want nothing more than to feel him bare inside me.
With a guttural growl, Ryker lines his cock up with my entrance and thrusts up into me at the same moment I lower myself. The stretch is instantaneous and almost painful, and I gasp, tossing my head back and pushing my breasts into Ryker’s face.
Almost immediately, his teeth clamp down on one of my aching nipples.
“Fuck!” I cry out. He takes that as permission to move his hips, keeping my bouncing breast in his mouth.
His pace is fast, relentless, damning. I know this is more than just fucking—it’s ownership and possession. He’s weaving himself with my very genetic makeup until it’ll be impossible for me to tell the difference between him and me.
He bites down sharply on my nipple, and I gasp in pain, but then his tongue is there, countering the sting with flicks of pleasure. He twirls his tongue around the aching nub as I struggle to not fall apart into a million intricate pieces.
“Yes, oh god, yes,” I scream, wanting to taste him. I tug at his hair and force his head off my breast. Our lips meet like two stars colliding. Galaxies shake. Black holes form. Entire universes are created and destroyed within seconds.
I can’t hold back the impending orgasm.
With a cry, I bite down on Ryker’s shoulder, sparks shooting through me and darkening my vision. Only his hands around me keep me upright.
Ryker mutters something too low for me to hear, and then he, too, is coming inside me, a raspy growl escaping him.
This moment is beautiful and perfect and ours.
And no one—not The Divine One or POP or anyone else—will take it from us.
14
ELLIE
The next morning, the four of us head downstairs to find Aria in the kitchen.
Wearing an apron.
Dancing.
Cooking breakfast.
Clothes miraculously arrived in suitcases outside our bedroom door, so I changed into a pair of leggings and one of Dom’s shirts. I originally had one of my own picked out, but Dom had angrily grabbed it out of my hands and exchanged it with one of his own. The navy-blue fabric falls just below my knees, resembling a baggy dress.
But it smells like him—even washed—so I love it.
I fiddle with the ends of that shirt now as I watch my biological mom dance around the kitchen, humming under her breath.
I exchange a “what the fuck” look with Beckett, who’s standing closest to me. His mismatched eyes are shadowed and rife with confusion…and maybe even a bit of fear.
This is a side of Aria we’ve never seen before, and it’s even more terrifying than her icy impassiveness.
Fischer sits at the dining room table, his head lowered, nursing a mug of coffee. He doesn’t even glance up as we approach, his shoulders bunching slightly. I wonder if he’s hungover, which would honestly surprise me. Fischer wasn’t much of a drinker, mainly because he struggled to balance his full-time job with taking care of me.
I barely recognize the shell of a man before me now, with hollowed-out eyes and sunken cheeks.
“I hope you like pancakes,” Aria trills, spinning toward us with her spatula raised. “I made buttermilk, chocolate chip, and blueberry.” A beatific smile spreads on her face, but like in the study, it doesn’t reach her eyes. They remain as devoid and empty as two abandoned tunnels, a fathomless expanse of nothing but darkness, even if they are pale in color.