Page 33 of Tethered

“None of this is making any sense.”

“I know. It’s just…”

“You don’t want to tell me.”

“I don’t want you to look at me differently.”

He swallows hard before he reaches up and slips his eyepatch off. I take in the empty socket and the angry scarring. It looks like someone scooped his eyeball out with a piece of jagged glass. “I get not wanting to be looked at differently,” he says softly, before putting his patch back on and adjusting it. “I’m in love with you, Opie. I’m never going to not see you through heart-shaped lenses.”

I swear I nearly swallow my damn tongue.

He grins, the asshole. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

I open my mouth and close it again, not wanting to make liars out of either of us.

“You don’t have to say it back. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why?” I croak out.

“Because when you say it, I’ll know it’s because you’re one hundred percent ready. Not because you felt pressured, or coerced, or because you worried I might not stay if I didn’t hear those words in return.”

“What if I’m never ready?”

He crowds closer, his hands sliding around my hips, pulling me tight against him. “Just like you knew I loved you before Isaid the words, I know,” he says, kissing me before I can protest, short-circuiting my brain in the process.

He pulls back. I have to give him something. He’s right that I’m not ready to tell him I love him yet. What I feel right now is a tangled mess that I haven’t taken the time to unravel. I won’t lie, part of that is fear. If you dig deep enough into someone, even if that someone is yourself, you are always going to find elements you don’t like. I guess a part of me worries that the darkness inside me wasn’t caused by my upbringing but is a byproduct of the blood running through my veins. It’s easy to be righteous when you’re the injured party. But the second I killed Dale and started plotting Porter’s demise, I’ve struggled with those parts of myself. Not because I hate myself for succumbing to the darkness, but because I crave it.

I pull away and look up at him. My heart skips a beat at how nervous I am. “When I say I can take care of myself, I mean it,” I whisper, taking a step back and bringing my hand up between us. If he can make himself vulnerable in front of me, then dammit, I can do the same.

He frowns and looks down at my hand. I focus, and his eyes widen, his lips opening in surprise as sparks fly across my hand. I make them dance across my skin in a recurring pattern before they skip and jump.

He reaches out to touch one, bouncing back when he gets shocked. “Holy shit.”

I grin, letting the sparks die away as I wait for him to say something. As the silence grows between us, the worry creeps in. My smile slips, and I’m about to move away, when he yanks me to him and slams his mouth down over me. I whimper in surprise against him, not resisting when he yanks open the button of my denim skirt and slips his hand down the front.

“Knew you were fucking special before you showed me that.”

“The sparks turned you on?” I pant as he slips his fingers inside me, making me groan.

“No, though you did look sexy as hell. Your trust in me turns me on. I know that shit isn’t easy for you, so consider this your reward.”

“I do like rewards,” I murmur. He spins me around and yanks my skirt up over my ass before shoving my underwear down my thighs. I hear him fumble with his jeans as I slowly remember that we are not alone in the house.

“Shit, Riggs, what about Dawn and Hannah? They might hear us.”

“Better be quiet then, Opie, because nothing is stopping me from slipping inside you.” And true to his words, I feel his hard cock at my entrance a moment before he surges in.

I rear back. The man is smart enough to cover my mouth with his hand, which is just as well because I scream from the force with which he takes me. He feels so deep from this angle, and he’s savage in his fucking, so much so that it’s borderline painful. It’s perfect and yet not enough. I swear this man could crawl beneath my skin, and I’d still beg for more.

His free hand slides under my T-shirt and yanks the cup of my bra down so he can pinch my nipple as he thrusts into me over and over. “I’m going to fill you with my cum, and then you’re going to call the asshole and have him take you to town. I want him to sit beside you in that truck of his and smell me on your skin. He won’t say anything, but he’ll know that my cum is painting your thighs and soaking through your panties. You want to go spend your day with another man who can’t stop thinking about being inside you? Then you’ll do it wearing my cum, and my brand.”

His brand? But then his teeth sink into the skin of my neck on the opposite side of the mark still visible from Shepard. I can’t help it. Wearing the bruises and teeth marks of twodifferent men sends me into a tailspin. I scream into Riggs’s hand as I come all over his cock, soaking us both. His breathing becomes ragged, and his thrusts falter until he plants himself inside me as far as he can go. And then I feel it, the warmth of him filling the deepest parts of me.

A sense of awareness washes over me, and I yank myself away from him, pulling my panties up and my skirt back down. I fasten the button before slipping my boob back into its cup. Riggs reads my reaction correctly. He tucks himself away with a grin before walking over to the sink to wash his hands. My breathing is still too fast as Hannah walks in holding the teddy bear with the bow around its neck in her arms.

“Can we have pancakes for breakfast, Riggs?” she asks before her eyes land on me and light up. “Can we plant flowers today?”

“I have to go to the post office first, but I do have some plants that need transferring from their pots to outside if you want to help me later. And then I’ll take you to one of the flower patches, and you can make a bouquet for your mom if you like.”