Page 35 of Monk

The sharp, violentslamof a screen door.

I turned, and there she was—coming at me like a storm breaking loose, her eyes lit with fury, her hands balled into fists at her sides.

She didn’t slow down. Didn’t hesitate. She marched straight up to me, her face flushed and her chest heaving, and slapped the fuck out of me.

The crack of her palm against my cheek echoed across the empty farmyard as my head snapped to the side, the sting sharp and immediate.

For a second, I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Then I turned back to face her, slow and deliberate, and met her gaze.

“What the hell happened seven years ago?” she demanded, her voice shaking with rage and something that sounded too much like grief. “I thought you died. I wasthere. I saw the bodies. I saw?—”

Her voice cracked, and she stopped, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

I stared at her with my jaw locked and my hands flexing at my sides. She thought I was dead. She’d gone to the clubhouse. She’d seen the massacre and walked away believing I’d been left among the dead.

I didn’t let her finish. I caught her wrist and yanked her toward the barn.

“John!”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t slow down. I pulled her through the barn doors into the dim, dusty interior that smelled of hay and leather and horses, and then I grabbed her face with both hands and kissed her. Hard. Desperate. Claiming. She made a sound. A half gasp, half moan, and then her hands were in my hair, pulling, gripping, holding on like I was the only solid thing in the world.

I backed her up against the barn wall, my body pressing against hers, as my hands slid down to her hips. The rough wood scraped against her back through her shirt, and she arched into me, her breath coming in sharp gasps.

“John,” she gasped against my mouth.

“Shut up,” I growled, my voice rough, barely human. “Just shut the fuck up.”

I kissed her again, harder this time, my tongue sliding against hers, tasting her, devouring her. She tasted like coffee and something sweet, something I had forgotten and remembered all at once. My hands gripped her hips so hard Iknew I would leave bruises, and I didn’t fucking care. I wanted to mark her. Wanted her to feel me for days.

Seven years. Seven motherfucking years without this. Without her.

The thought made me insane.

My hands moved to the hem of her shirt as I yanked it up roughly, desperately, like I couldn’t get it off fast enough. She lifted her arms without hesitation, letting me pull it over her head in one swift motion. I tossed it aside, not caring where it landed. It could’ve ended up in horse shit for all I cared, as my eyes raked over her hungrily, taking in every inch of exposed skin.

Her bra was simple, white lace, nothing fancy or elaborate, but it didn’t matter. The sight of her standing there, vulnerable and wanting, made my pulse pound in my ears. Her chest was heaving, her breasts rising and falling with each ragged breath she took, and I could see her nipples straining against the delicate fabric.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, the word coming out rough and strained. My hands went immediately to her jeans, fumbling clumsily with the button like some inexperienced teenager. My fingers were shaking—actually fucking shaking—and I couldn’t get the goddamn thing open no matter how hard I tried. The button felt impossibly small between my trembling fingers, my coordination completely shot to hell.

She pushed my hands away gently, a small smirk playing at the corners of her lips despite the heat in her eyes, and undid the button herself with practiced ease. Then she shoved her jeans down her hips in one fluid movement, wiggling them past her thighs. I helped her kick them off the rest of the way, along with her shoes, nearly tripping over myself in my eagerness. And then she was standing there in just her bra and panties, her skinflushed and warm, her chest heaving with anticipation, her eyes dark and glazed with raw, undeniable need.

I couldn’t wait another second. I grabbed the waistband of her panties with both hands and ripped them down her legs in one rough motion, the delicate fabric tearing slightly in my grip, the sound of it barely registering in my lust-fogged brain.

“John.”

“Mine,” I growled, my hands sliding up her thighs, gripping her ass, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. My fingers dug into her soft flesh possessively. “You’re fucking mine. You’ve always been mine. From the moment I first saw you, you belonged to me.”

She wrapped her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck, holding on tight, almost as if she never wanted to let go. I pressed her back against the wall, pinning her there with my body, my hips grinding against hers with a desperate urgency I couldn’t control. I could feel her heat through my jeans, could feel how wet she was even through the layers of fabric between us, and it made me fucking insane. My brain short-circuited. Nothing else mattered but this—but her.

Seven years. Seven years without her. Seven years I’d lived in a hell of my own making, drinking myself numb, picking fights I didn’t care about winning, fucking women whose names I never remembered.

I fumbled with my belt, like I were some virginal teenager instead of a man who’d had more women than he could count. But none of them were her. None of them even came close. I finally got my jeans open, cursing under my breath, and shoved them down just enough to free my cock. The relief was immediate. I was so hard it hurt, had been hard since the moment I saw her standing in that hospital hallway, alive and breathing and real.

“Look at me,” I demanded, my voice rough and raw, barely recognizable as my own. I gripped her chin, forcing her eyes to mine. Her eyes met mine, wide and dark and filled with something I couldn’t name. Fear? Need? Grief? Longing?

All of it. Everything we lost, everything we could never get back, everything that still burned between us like a wildfire that refused to die, and then I thrust into her, burying myself in one brutal stroke.

Hard. Deep. All the way to the hilt.