The Finisher (Dark Verse Book 4)

Zephyr

The fact that the killer was the same man as the one who’d given her husband partial blindness and a wicked scar chilled Zephyr more than she let on. It meant whoever it was, he’d been holding a vendetta against Alpha for long enough to try to kill him, and when that had failed, to kill others and frame him for it.

Alpha didn’t talk much about this Shadow Man character, and Zen hadn’t even known someone had been there though she’d been watching the entire time. But if he were to be believed, shit was hitting the fan.

Alpha had been on the edge since the meeting, darker, quieter, with a cloud hanging over his head that she didn’t really fault him for. Up until that moment, he’d had the hope that his injuries had been the cause of some freak accident. But now knowing that it wasn’t, that it was deliberate, knowing that someone else knew about it while he didn’t remember, it was eating him alive, and she felt for him.

Even her mother had noticed and been concerned that he’d been off when they’d come for dinner, and her mother didn’t like him at all.

Zephyr watched at him as he lay on the bed, the netting partially covering his shirtless form, phone on the speaker at his side, his eye staring off into space.

“Well, Vin did find something,” Dante’s smooth voice said through the speaker. In the background, she could hear a baby’s gurgles. He must be talking with Tempest around him. That was cute.

“Listen,” Dante said after a little pause. “I was thinking of flying down there on the weekend. Discuss this in person. Especially with the Shadow Man involved. We don’t know how he knows what he knows, and it’s best to be careful, especially since we don’t know what game he’s playing. It’s not a coincidence that he’s been in touch with Morana and now he’s coming at you with helpful but selective information. I don’t trust him.”

Alpha nodded, curling a hand behind his head, his bicep bulging with the move. “I agree on that. I have a fight this Friday,” he informed Dante, his eye coming to her to see her reaction. She kept her face neutral, her stomach in knots over his upcoming fight.

“Cool,” Dante quipped. “I’d like to attend it.”

“Sure,” Alpha agreed, and Zephyr was happy listening in, realizing that though tentative, the brothers were working around each other to find some common ground without being obvious about it. Men.

“Morana has been hounding Tristan about visiting your place, by the way,” Dante chuckled. “She’s been obsessed with honeymoon resorts lately, and Tristan told her your place looked like one.”

Alpha grunted. “It’s not a fucking honeymoon resort.”

It kind of was. Not that there was a lot of honeymoon part happening. Mooning, yes. Honeymooning, no.

Tempest blabbered some nonsense in baby talk and Dante blew her kisses before coming back to the line, the grin in his voice evident. “That was my polite way of telling you she won’t let Tristan come on his own this time. I’ll also bring”—Dante spoke in a baby voice, clearly to his daughter, and Zephyr melted—“my adorable little princess. I have separation anxiety these days. That means my baby mama”—Dante yelled in the distance, clearly to Amara—“my wife will also be coming with us.”

“You’re whipped,” Alpha huffed a laugh.

“Happily too,” Dante agreed, no shame in his voice whatsoever. “So two couples, two kids, and five security guys. We’ll land Friday afternoon.”

“I’ll arrange the pickup,” Alpha confirmed.

“Okay. Give my love to Zephyr.” And now he was blowing raspberries.

Alpha looked at her. “I’ll give her your greeting.”

“I said, my love.”

“Fuck off.”

Her husband hung up with Dante chuckling.

Zephyr grinned, climbing into bed and adjusting the netting as Alpha turned the remote-controlled lights off.

He was still on the edge, his face a dark cloud of apprehension, his mind preoccupied with too many things he did and did not remember.

She climbed on top of him.

She had felt herself open up to him again, bit by bit, her reservations going down with everything he’d been dealing with over the days, and still reassuring her that she wasn’t going anywhere. She didn’t want to. And she wanted it to be one less thing he worried about. Since she’d come back, things between them had evolved. With him knowing the truth about their past, even limited as it was, and her accepting and becoming completely okay with the fact that he would never remember it, things had become better. Though he tried to pry and ask about their brief but powerful relationship from a decade ago, Zephyr made him understand that maybe it was best left behind, especially since his mind had deliberately forgotten certain things, most probably due to trauma. She’d told him to trust her on that, and though he had trust issues, she could feel him trying to let it go.

She brushed his hair away from his face, straddling him, taking the eye patch off, exposing the scarred tissue underneath. She loved that he let her see him like that, at what he felt was his ugliest. Idiot man. His ugly was her beautiful.

As she did each night, she pressed little kisses on his scar, starting from his hairline, going over his eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. Usually, he turned and took over her lips at the point, but Zephyr had had enough of him trying to keep their lovemaking contained. She wanted him, as he was, brutal and raw, and she would have him.

Bypassing his lips, she lowered herself, following the scar with her lips, going down the side of his neck, lower, over his muscular, sparsely-haired chest, right to the end where someone had twisted the knife in his side. She kissed it, giving it all the love and attention it deserved, wishing she could’ve been with him when he’d had to heal. Her tongue flicked over his nipple and she heard his breath catch, his boxer shorts tenting slightly.

Smiling, Zephyr went lower, following the line of his abs, muscles he’d worked his body into acquiring over the years, both with fighting and training. She licked down the line, making sure her hair trailed over his torso with her motion, adding sensation for him. His hand wrapped it once in a loose fit, not stopping her but letting her know he could.

She felt his hard length against her boobs, and shook them, letting him feel them move around his cock.

“Fuck,” he grit out, his hand tightening a bit around her hair, and she smiled, repeating the action. Her hands pulled his shorts down, her tongue trailing down his prominent oblique, down where he jutted up, long and thick and hard, a vein prominent on the underside.

Zephyr squeezed him between her ample breasts, knowing he loved the visual, and his hips moved automatically, sliding in the space she’d created. On one of his upward movements, she kissed his head, letting her boobs go, and gave the vein on his shaft a long lick, her mouth salivating to taste him as his other hand came to her hair, flexing as he let her set the pace.

She took a hold of him, taking the head into her mouth, licking the slit where he was already dripping, tasting his essence for the first time. And then she took him down her throat.

He groaned, and she looked up, seeing his neck cording as his head dug into the pillow.

It was a heady sensation, seeing this beast of a man come undone by her lips.

She closed her eyes and began giving him the blowjob of his life, adding hands to the up and down motion, alternating between twisting and swallowing, sucking and licking, giving him the most sensation she could, driven on by his hands in her hair or the rumbling noises leaving his throat.

One of his hands left her scalp, and she opened her eyes, watching him as he touched her ass, his fingers finding her folds where she was already wet. She’d wondered what it had been about giving head that aroused her so much, was it the feeling of power or a simple biological response, mental or physical? Zen had told her there was a nerve that went straight from the roof of a woman’s mouth to her vagina, and maybe it was just extra sensitive in her case because giving her husband a blow job had her clenching.

Suddenly, he pulled her with the strength of a single arm, and before she could blink, she was straddling his face, his cock in her mouth, his hands spreading her over him.

It was hot.

She’d never 69d before.

He tugged her down over his skilled mouth, his facial hair rubbing the insides of her thigh in the most delicious friction, his tongue slurping over her with a loud, obscene noise that made her moan around him. It was odd but incredible, feeling him do something to her, reacting to it, and feeling him react to that by doing something else, like an endless loop of sensation, ending where she began and ending where he did. A sexual yin and yang.

He spread her cheeks, his thumb stroking her rosebud as he ate her out, making her clench hard around him.

“Has anyone been here before?” he asked into her thigh, biting the inside of it as she pulled up for air.

“No,” she panted.

He went back to devouring her, fucking her with his tongue and rubbing her clit alternatively, making her mewl and moan around his cock, the vibrations of her throat pushing his arousal higher.

She didn’t know how long it went on, how long they stayed like that, connected by their body and minds, reacting to the other’s responses, stimulating and being stimulated simultaneously. But after a while, he pushed his thumb in her ass while sucking on her clit, and she came, feeling full and invaded and owned, the sensation strange and taboo, her nerve endings on fire all over her body. She pulled her head away from his flesh, screaming at her orgasm, her nails digging into his solid thigh muscles, her own muscles jerking and squeezing around his head as she slowly came down from the high.

He pulled away, giving her butt a smack, making her yelp.

“Turn around,” he instructed her, and Zephyr, boneless, somehow managed to turn and face him. He pulled her legs on each side of his hip, giving her an intense stare. “Take me in.”

Her heart began to pound again, realizing that for the first time, he would let her be face-to-face with him. Before, it had all been from the back, all without truly connecting as intimately as this. He was letting her in.

Silently, she angled him and slid down, feeling the stretch in her pussy, panting as she went down inch by inch. She’d forgotten how huge he’d felt inside her, how he split her open by the time he bottomed out.

“Jesus,” he cursed, his hands gripping her hips, her head falling back as the pleasurable burn ensconced her again. Finally, he was completely in, pushing so deep she felt his pulsing match in her chest.

“Rainbow,” he called, and she looked down, locking gazes with his again, seeing the expanse of him laid out before her, scars and muscle and tattoos and man, all hers.

“Ride me.”

She placed her hands on his chest and complied, rotating her hips experimentally to see how it felt, grinding her clit on him.

So good.

She bit her lips, feeling sexy, feeling horny, feeling like a goddess as she rode him slowly, gradually increasing pace, trying different movements, understanding which brought them the most pleasure. He held her breasts, tugged her nipples, played with them. Slapped them, pulled them, twisted them, each action making her cry out and clench like a vise around him. After a point, when she got tired, he twisted positions and put her legs over his shoulders, never once separating, stretching her hamstrings until she felt taut but the angle making her see stars.

She came again.

He got her on hands and knees, pulling her hair back and hammering into her, his pace increasing, his stamina consistent, and she realized he’d never unleashed the full force of it on her.

“Harder,” she pleaded as she did before, and this time, he answered. “I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she argued, turning her neck to see him. “I’m not fragile. Now fuck me like you mean it.”

He tugged her head back, almost tilting it upside down, and kissed her, his hips picking up the pace just mildly. It wouldn’t do.

“Think of me moving on,” she deliberately used the term he hated. “Look at me now, on my hands and knees for you, exactly how you love it, and take me. Take me like I’m yours.”

“You are mine,” he growled, biting the side of her neck in a move that made her grapple for the sheets.

“Then show me. I don’t feel it.”

He snapped.

He pushed her down into the bed, completely immobilizing her, and leaned into her ear. “Don’t hate me tomorrow when you’re too sore to sit.”

And Zephyr realized the extent to which he’d been holding himself back.

She couldn’t move, she couldn’t react, she couldn’t do a thing except lie there with her hips in the air and take it, the force of his thrusts making the bed creak, the power behind each snap making her fist the sheets, the angle of each hit making her delirious as the edge of discomfort spiraled with pleasure that made her teeth chatter and body shake and mind blank. She was nothing but sensation, hanging on as he rode her, hard enough that she didn’t even recognize the sounds she made anymore.

She came again. And again. And again. Endlessly, her body jerking and blacks expanding behind her lids, her mind going completely numb to anything but the reactions in her body, her heart thundering inside her chest, her lust frantic, her love infinite, her life his.

She probably passed out, because the next few minutes were blank. She came to lying on her stomach, him at her side, his chest heaving as he looked at her with that singular golden gaze, his fingers pushing his seed back inside her body.

Damn.

‘Don’t leave me again, rainbow,’ he spoke quietly in the space between them. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever remember anything. I don’t know if what I feel is love. I don’t know what the future holds. But I know I want you by my side. I know I don’t want to forget you now.’

Zephyr melted, her heart softening. She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. ‘I’m not going anywhere, handsome. I’ve loved you as a boy and I love you as a beast. All of you has always been loved by me.’

They shared the air for a long moment. ‘Remember when I told you my heart was a dead scar tissue?’

‘Hmm.’

‘I feel it pumping again with you. My lifeblood. My little rainbow.’

And he was hers. With his words warming her to the bone, Zephyr slept with her husband by her side.