SWNOVELS Chapter Hitched: Epilogue
Selena
I get into the shower, tugging the old shower curtain across the rusty metal rod. I’ll never get used to showering in cold water outside. No matter how cold the water is, my heart is warm because Lex will come in to heat me up.
The curtain moves across the rod, and he’s in front of me. Naked already, moonlight illuminates his bare skin. We’ve been on our own, living away from the confines of our old lives for almost a year now. No matter how long we’ve been away from it all, my heart still stumbles the moment I see him.
He steps in the small shower, embracing me in his strong arms. “Little rabbit,” he growls. Somehow, he never reacts to the cold water, his expression stoic as the frigid droplets rain down on him. My lungs still tighten, shriveling in my chest until my skin becomes numb to the icy fingertips of the water.
Life with Lex is so different from life with my husband. My ex-husband. Gold woven sheets have become cheap swaths of aged fabric we get from the thrift store. Fancy pantsuits have become cotton shirts and denims on sale. Expensive home-cooked meals have been replaced by whatever we get on our runs to the general store on the outskirts of the park, where the sweet little owner knows us as Mr. and Mrs. Gurgen Hoffe. Instead of dining out at lavish restaurants, we visit my favorite diner, where half the time I leave pleased with more than just the food in my belly.
Lex’s hands leave my body and brush the hair from my face. When his eyes drop to mine, they darken, and my skin pebbles from more than just the cold water. I keep still, like the moment a rabbit freezes and hopes the predator doesn’t see them.
He leans into me, drawing his lips close to the shell of my ear. Seduction drips off him like the water droplets from above our heads. “I want to chase you, sweet bunny,” he says, low and smooth.
I know he does. I can tell from the way his muscles tense in his upper body. Despite her desperate attempts to freeze, he’s spotted the rabbit. He’ll chase me until I’m covered in dirt, leaves, and sweat. Or in our come.
“Run,” he growls, deep and threatening.
I know who’s out to play, and I welcome him.
Lexington.
Lex
The rabbit scurries off. I nearly lost her by trying to protect her from the darker side of me, so I force myself to stop holding him back. I give in to the unhinged side she loves as much as me, just in a different way.
Selena isn’t afraid of Lexington. Even after all she’s seen, all she knows, she still likes to call to him while on her knees, as if he won’t come out to fuck her throat until she cries.
This side of me courses through my blood like poison. He likes to tell her to run so we can chase her. Whoever catches her decides how she’ll be fucked. If Lexington catches her, she’s taken rough and hard. If I catch her, we make love until we’re covered in mud, leaves, and come.
Losing control has always been easy for me, and she knows that. There’s a trail of a bloody past that proves it. For me, keeping control is much harder. And I do try . . . for her. When I fail and the beast inside me roars for her, she doesn’t fear me, even when she should. She always takes everything I give her like the good fucking girl she is.
The way she always has.
She used to tell me I never took her from heaven to implant her in hell. She lived among the flames long before she met me. And it’s true. But there’s something so goddamn innocent about her. It’s in the way she laughs as we fall into a habit of game nights instead of robberies or murders. Or when she asks me to explore more of her body in new and exciting ways. She trusts me with every part of her body and, most importantly, her heart.
I’ll always say I don’t deserve this. Because I don’t. Someone like me doesn’t deserve someone like her. From hell or heaven, whether fallen or not, she’s an angel. She saved me as much as she saved herself.
I know the life I provide her is so different from what she’s used to. It isn’t fancy, but it’s freedom. I’m free from the confines of prison, and she’s free from the hell she once called home.
Studies have shown that sociopaths struggle with attaching to anyone. And I truly never have. I’ve never wanted to. Until her. But they also say that one sociopath could potentially form a bond with a like-minded person. So what does that say about Selena?
She’s broken through decades of antisocial and homicidal behavior. She worked her way through the layers of me that psychologists never could. She confronted my past and lived to tell about it. She meets my demons head on with her own, which makes me certain she’s so much more than I can ever begin to understand.
Maybe there’s not much more to understand.
Maybe she’s just as dangerous as me, and my kind of crazy loves hers.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I yell into the stiff and silent night. “Ready or not, rabbit, here I come!”