Page 59 of Monk

I hated him for it. Hated that he could still command my body like this. Hated that after everything, after seven years of raising our daughter alone, after the pain and the betrayal and the rage, I still wanted him with a desperation that terrified me.But I couldn’t stop. My body was chasing release like it was oxygen, like it would die without it. “John!”

“Say it,” he demanded, his thrusts becoming erratic, his control slipping, his cock swelling even thicker inside me. “Say you’re mine. Say this pussy is mine.”

“I—”

“SAY IT!” he roared, slamming into me so hard the headboard cracked against the wall.

“I’m yours!” I screamed as my orgasm slammed into me like a freight train, like a tidal wave, like the end of the fucking world. My entire body convulsed, my inner walls clamping down around him, milking him, my pussy pulsing and fluttering as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through me. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but feel as John roared, his hips slamming forward one last time as he came, burying himself as deep as he could go, spilling inside me with a force that made his entire body shake.

I could feel it, the hot pulse of his release flooding me, filling me, marking me from the inside out. “Mine,” he groaned, his face buried in my neck, his teeth scraping against my skin. “All fucking mine. This body. This pussy. You.”

We stayed like that for a long moment, both of us trembling, both of us gasping for air, our bodies still joined, his cock still twitching inside me. I could feel his cum leaking out around his softening length, could feel the mess we had made between my thighs.

Slowly, the haze of pleasure began to fade, replaced by the crushing weight of reality.

What had I just done?

I let him fuck me. Let him claim me. Let him make me admit that I was his. After everything. After seven years of raising our daughter alone. After he accused me of betrayal. After he let that bitch slap me. The tears came before I could stop them, hot andsilent, sliding down my temples into my hair. John lifted his head, his eyes meeting mine, and I saw the exact moment he realized I was crying. “Lina?”

“Get off me,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

He pulled out slowly, carefully, and I felt the rush of his cum spilling out of me, felt the emptiness he left behind as he rolled to the side, his hand reaching for me.

I turned away, curling into myself, and wrapped my arms around my stomach, trying to hold myself together.

“Baby?”

“Don’t,” I said, my voice shaking. “Don’t call me that.”

The bed shifted as he moved closer, his hand settling on my hip, warm and heavy. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough. “For everything. For accusing you. For not believing you. For letting Ruby touch you. For?—”

“Stop,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Just stop.”

We lay there in silence, the weight of seven years pressing down on us like a physical thing. I could feel his warmth behind me, could feel his breath on my shoulder, could feel the evidence of what we had just done leaking out of me, sticky and warm between my thighs, and despite everything, despite the anger and the pain and the betrayal, I didn’t move away because God help me, I was still his.

I had always been his, and I didn’t know how to be anything else.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Monk

I lay there in the darkness, listening to her breathe.

Lina had finally fallen asleep. Her body was exhausted, loose and heavy against mine in that way that should have brought peace, but all it did was make something sharp twist in my chest. Tear tracks had dried on her cheeks hours ago, but I could still feel the echo of them. I could still hear the break in her voice, the fury in it, the grief. I could still see the way she’d looked at me when I realized Tatum was mine—as if I had shattered something just by beingin the same room with her.

Her breathing was slow now, even, her face turned toward my chest, one hand curled near my ribs like some fragile instinct in her still trusted me enough to reach.

That trust felt too sacred for a man like me to touch.

I should have been sleeping too. Should have been out cold after everything—the fight, the sex, the way we had ripped each other open and spilled seven years of blood and poison all over my room.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

My body was worn out, my head pounding from the strain of holding myself together, and still my mind would not shut the fuck up. So I stared at the ceiling, one arm wrapped around her waist, feeling the warmth of her body pressed to mine, and all I could think about was everything I still hadn’t told her.Everything I should’ve told her seven years ago. Everything I should tell her now if I were any kind of man at all.

My real name. My real past. The fact that John Smith wasn’t even my fucking name, just a placeholder handed to me by the U.S. Marshals when they shoved me into WITSEC as a kid and told me to forget who I used to be. The fact that my father had worn a Golden Skulls’ patch before he turned state’s evidence and got himself killed for it. The fact that my mother had been raped by the man who murdered him, had carried my sister to term with all that horror growing inside her, and then put a bullet in her own head because the pain was bigger than she was.

The fact that I had spent my whole goddamn childhood being moved from town to town, state to state, taught over and over that roots were dangerous, and truth was a liability and love was the kind of weakness that got people killed. The fact that the Vasquez Cartel wasn’t to blame for the massacre the way everyone believed, that the blood on that clubhouse floor came down to one bitter, weak bastard who couldn’t stand the truth and set everything on fire because of it.