Page 58 of Mischief Mayhem
“Of course, V. Why would I—” I cut off when she pulled her shirt up again, revealing the glass jar with the lumpy, uneven chunk of metal inside. “What is it?”
“It’s . . .” She cleared her throat and clenched her eyes shut. “It’s a piece of the bullet they pulled out of my chest.”
“What?” My brain went blank. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. A piece of the bullet? From the night we’d gotten shot together? From the night we’d almost died?
“I . . . uh . . . I asked Selene to see if she could get it.” V still didn’t look at me while she talked, as if meeting my stare would reveal something she had no desire for me to know. “She called in a few favors at the hospital. Some of her old surgeon buddies, I guess.”
“Okay.” That made sense. “Why are you wearing it around?”
V opened her eyes and took a deep breath, gliding her fingers up my torso to the spot four inches above my heart where that very bullet had gone through me and into her.
“It reminds me . . .” She sighed and gave me a look full of vulnerability and deep abiding affection. “It reminds me there are people out there who would sacrifice themselves for me, that I’m not alone, even when I feel like it.”
My soul shattered. There was nothing she could have said that would have broken me so easily and completely. My heart clenched and I leaned down to bring my lips to hers, unable to resist the temptation of her mouth any longer.
“It reminds me you care for me, Hudson,” she whispered. “That we’re connected by more than family or relationships or whatever we’re doing here. You and I share a life debt. You saved me, and I’ll never be able to repay you for that.”
She clenched her eyes shut again and tears slid down either side of her face.
“V,” I said, blinking my own burning eyes as I cupped her face and swiped my thumbs across her cheeks to clear away her sadness. “It was my honor to save you, and I’d do it again. In a heartbeat. You don’t need to repay anything.”
She wrapped her fingers in my shirt and pulled me close, leaning up to kiss me, nudging her tongue against my mouth so she could get inside. I let her, melting against the contact as she devoured me whole.
Sure, our relationship was built on kink, and I loved when she tied me up to make me beg and bleed for her alone. But this was different, and it rocked my fucking world.
“Can I be inside you?” I whimpered in between breaths, running my hands along the side of her body so I could tuck my fingers under the waistband of her pants.
“Please,” she said. “Please.”
I yanked her shorts down to her ankles and shoved mine down to my knees, lining myself up at her entrance before surging home in one thrust. She gasped and arched into it, and my arms shook under my weight as I tried to hold myself up. But fuck. After her confession, my pulse hammered through my veins and my muscles trembled so hard that I could barely see straight, much less keep from crushing her.
She wrapped her fingers around my neck and pulled me down, linking her feet together at the small of my back to urge me on.
“Fuck,” I said as sparks of joy lit up my bloodstream, coursing through my body like I was being set on fire. Even though this was vanilla-ass missionary, sex had never been so mesmerizing. I pushed farther inside her like I was trying to get my soul in there, too. And she rocked against me, inhaling my exhales, groaning in answer to my moans, like she knew what I was trying to do and wanted our very existences to merge.
We were magic. Together . . . like this . . . even without the leather and the whips and the honorifics. She slid her hand up my stomach and planted it over the spot where I’d been shot, where my life had nearly ended to save her. As I connected our bodies harder and deeper, I found her scar with my fingers, covering it the same way she did to me.
“Promise me you’ll stay safe, Matty,” she said. “Promise me you won’t leave me.”
The only person in my life who called me by my Christian name these days was my mother, but hearing it fall from her lips in that precious moment stunned me more than anything else she could have done. We were stripped down of our societal roles, of the MC and what it meant to be a part of it. There in that room, it was just me and V and our skin and our souls and our blood and how desperately connected we were.
“I won’t,” I said, grabbing her hand from my chest to intertwine our fingers. I rested my forehead against hers as my climax started to rise, surging up the back of my knees and into my spine. “I promise, I won’t.”
“Fuck, I’m close.” She closed her lips over mine, sealing my oath with a kiss, before she tightened her internal muscles down on me, spasming with the height of her euphoria. It set me off, and I jerked into her two more times before my orgasm dragged me under.
The world stopped, and everything in it hung suspended for that one perfect moment. We were together. We were safe.
I lay on top of her and panted down the high while she idly ran her fingers up and down my back. We didn’t say anything for a long time because what words could possibly top what we’d just experienced? Eventually, she tunneled her fingers into my hair and pet my scalp, causing me to tilt my chin so I looked in her eyes.
“I have a confession to make,” she murmured. “And I’m not sure how you’re going to take it.”
Uh-oh.
I tried not to jump to conclusions, especially when her features dropped.
“When we were in high school, we both went to this party, and they were playing a round of Seven Minutes in Heaven.” As she talked, I put the pieces together in my mind, remembering the night in question. I’d thought I’d been hooking up with Becs, but when I brought it up later in the night, she’d looked at me like I’d grown a second head. When no one confronted me about it, I figured she must have been drunk and forgotten.
“That was you?” I pushed myself back on my haunches and smiled down at her.