There’s a sharp pain in my ass cheek as she locks her teeth in, and I let out a hiss of pleasure.
“That’s right, little mama.Take your bites.”
When I make it to our bedroom, I toss her down on the mattress and climb on top of her before she can escape.I anchor her wrists in my hand and pull her arms over her head as I cage her in with my thighs.
Her eyes go hazy as she freezes.Before she gets locked into the fear, I lean down until my lips brush against her ear.
“It’s just me, little mama.I’m not him.You’re safe.You’re here.”
She cracks her head against my cheek as she shoves me away from her.“You’re not him, but you’re still an asshole.”
“I know.”Sighing, I rest my forehead against hers.“I’m sorry, baby.I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.I won’t put up with that bullshit, Apollonos.I won’t ever be dismissed again.There are other ways to hurt me besides putting your hands on me.Do you understand that?If this is going to work, you have to realize that.You also can’t keep shutting me out.That didn’t work in the past.All it did was tear us apart.It has to be different this time.”
With a sigh, I move off of her and climb to the head of the bed.I pat the spot between my thighs.“Come here.Seems there’s a lot of shit we need to talk about.”
“The kids?”
“Are fine for now.Kraken, Savior, and Tomcat are sitting on them at the gate.”
Once she settles her back against me, I wrap my arms around her and rest my chin on the top of her head.I let the quiet settle around us for a bit as I prepare myself to let her into the dark part of me.
“The first time they passed me off to someone for a party, I was eight.There were things that happened before then.Little touches that were passed off as innocent but were really preparing me for what was to come.”
The breath stills in her chest at my words, and I brush my lips against the crown of her head in a silent order to breathe.
As the story unfolds, it gets easier to tell.Her tears drop against the skin of my arm as her heart breaks for the kid I was.I try not to go into too much detail.No fucking way do I want my woman to have those fucking visions in her head.Just enough for her to understand my story and why I never talked about it in the past.
I tell her how I escaped that hell when I was sixteen and how I burned it down days ago.
I tell her how seeing her changed fuckingeverythingfor me when I was sixteen.
Birdie became my lifeline, my breath, the fucking reason my heart pulsed with each beat.
When my thoughts became heavy, she was the light I sought out.When the memories were too much and I’d find myself wanting to eat a bullet, she gave my life meaning.
Birdie gave me my life back and she never even knew it.
Until now.
She scrambles away from me to turn in my arms and climb back into my lap.Birdie stares into my wet eyes, her own filled with devastation.Then she makes an odd noise in her throat before burying her face against me as she cries.
Her tears scald the skin of my neck as they wash away my pain, my anger, my fucking shame for what was done to me when I was a kid.
Once again, Birdie’s light banishes my darkness.
“Promise me,” she stresses, when she leans back to peer up at me.“Promise me that if you ever feel like that again, you’ll come to me.”
I cup her cheeks, using the pads of my thumbs to wipe away the tears that fall down her beautiful face.“I promise, little mama.But you don’t have anything to worry about.I love living too fucking much.They were thoughts of a young man who didn’t know how to cope with what happened to him.You and our kids are fucking everything to me.I’ll fight my demons every damn day just to have one more with you all.But know this, baby.If there’s ever a time when my demonsdowin, I went out with your name on my lips.”
With a sob, she crashes her mouth to mine, tangling our tongues together as if she can suck my soul into hers to protect it.
When we pull away, we rest our foreheads together.
“There’s something else you need to know.Cypher found out the connection between me and Frankie.”
“What is it?”
