Page 87 of Last Man Standing

Sebastion turns his face and presses a gentle kiss onto my wrist. “A final kick while he was already suffering. To let Richard believe the very act that had killed her was a mere simulation of the act he’d committed against her a dozen times already. She hoped it would haunt him. She hoped it would destroy him. And then she and Paul, and Uncle Bas, too, and a few other men, set out to find a new life. A new beginning. On my mother’s orders, Uncle Bas told Richard he knew the coordinates to Arabella’s grave, amongst other information the old man would send himself mad trying to find, and then he stood back and watched the prick twist himself into knots over it all.”

“There never was a grave. Or information.”

“No. Since clearly, she’s alive and feral, even now.” He exhales a quiet laugh. “Their plans were not flawless, they were young, working under great pressure, and inviting more men into the fold meant more lips that could flap. Richard’s business was devastated financially, and his mental health was completely obliterated. For a short while, anyway. But where there are lips to speak, secrets eventually spill. Word got out that more than just Paul and Bastion were involved in my mom’s death, and worse, those same loose lips let on that there were five separate men, each in possession of a subset of information Richard wanted. Which brings us around to Nova’s involvement in this whole mess.”

“Lincoln said you were hunting each of those five men down and relieving them of the information they possessed. The original assumption was that you were killing them, but later, he said these people were being placed into a protective detail and given new names and stuff.”

“Right. Ish.” He chews on the inside corner of his lips. “I was double, triple, quadruple agenting all these motherfuckers,” he chuckles. “Working for my mom, working for the government, working for Richard. Richard was paying me to track these men down, dispose of them, and bring him the codes. So I tracked them down, took the codes, tossed them to the government for safekeeping, then I fed false information and assurances back to Richard. The government was paying me to hunt them down, too, get them to safety, and bring the codes back.”

“But you fed false information to them, too?”

A slow, sly smile creeps across his face. “Exactly. I was double-dipping and earning a fortune, and all along, I was giving both sides bullshit intel. Meanwhile, thirty years after the original grand escape, I decided my mom and dad should’ve listened to Benjamin Franklin.”

Curious, I pull back and search his eyes. “What?”

“Three may keep a secret, Princess, but only if two of them are dead. Or in our case, five separate men being party to one secret is really fuckin’ stupid. So I relieved each of them of their burdens and brought the secret back to one. Or, well…” he snickers. “Two. Since Nova Nichols is a pain in my ass.”

“Which is why you stayed close to her. It’s why you were supposed to be back here with your family in September, but now it’s December and you’ve only just returned.”

“Gotta make sure she’s trustworthy,” he teases. “I really didn’t wanna have to kill her, and tossing her into protective custody wouldn’t solve my issue, since she’d memorized her fuckin’ code.” His eyes flicker between mine, thoughtful and probing. “When a man has a secret, it’s important he keep it to himself. When he doesn’t, the people he loves might get hurt.”

Hence, holding a thick hoodie over my face on the way in.

“It must’ve been incredibly scary for your mom to be violated by the very man she should’ve been able to trust, and forced to trust the very men she should have considered her enemies. And then to find out she was pregnant…”

“Exactly.” He drags a loose lock of hair off my cheek and tucks it back. “So yeah, maybe she’s mean to basically everyone except her immediate family, and maybe her words hurt your feelings.” He inches closer and nibbles on my lower lip. “I won’t defend that shit from today, because she was wrong for it. But maybe next time you’re tempted to assume the worst about her, consider the path she walked to get here. Consider the bravery she needed and the risks she took. It was to save her life,” he nods. “Sure. She wanted out. But it was to save my life most of all.”

Swallowing, I tilt my head back and search his eyes.

“Richard would not have allowed his daughter to carry a bastard child to term, and he wouldn’t have allowed her to carry his child, either. Doing so would be proof, right there in a little blue onesie, of the atrocities he’d committed against her. To sell his daughter to a wealthy, powerful man would be to sell a lie about her purity. A pregnancy would have exposed those lies.” He rolls onto his back and draws me up until I’m perched on his hips, then he searches the mattress surrounding us and takes a Sharpie between his fingers. “You have no reason to like, or even give a shit about my mother. She’s been unkind to you, and you deserve better than that. But perhaps woman to woman, survivor to survivor, you might look within yourself and understand, if only for a brief second, why she’s the way she is.” He offers the Sharpie and grins as I take it. “I noticed while you were tossing all your shit into your bags that your notebooks are looking a little full.” He sets his large hands on my hips and peeks down at his chest. “I have a canvas for you to draw on, Princess. Every single day, that canvas is reset after a shower.” Devastatingly handsome, he brings his eyes back up to mine. “If you let me be your book, you’ll never run out of pages again.”

My heart swells and throbs like a flower blooming in the spring. A pretty posy opening itself to the warmth, stretching its petals and absorbing the sunlight.

With a goofy grin and trembling hands, I pull the cap off and fold forward, resting my elbow against his ribs. My position probably stings a little, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, the instant my Sharpie touches his skin and works long strokes into the designs already permanently inked there, he exhales a satisfied grumble that shoots electricity straight to my core.

“Think I just found my new favorite way to relax.” He picks me up easily, only to lower me onto his cock and savagely skewer me with his rock-hard length. He arches his neck and captures my cry of delight with his lips. Pain. Pleasure. Desperation.

Defenseless, I simply collapse against this chest and feel.

“Nuh-uh. Keep drawing.” He rolls his hips beneath mine and forces me back onto my elbows. “Drive your ink into my body, Princess. I’ll drive my cock into yours.”

29

SEBASTION

EXPLORING

“Come on, Princess.” I slap Scarlett’s already-reddened ass and lean across the bed to give the same spot a little bite. I would spend the next decade right here in my room, locked away from the world, all so I could taste every inch of her body if I could. Explore every dip and curve. Chew on every lean muscle, and experience how fucking good it feels to have her body and soul in my palms.

She’s so accustomed to arguing with me, to being defiant and defensive. But when we’re naked and buried in each other, she’s exactly who she was created to be.

Mine.

But I made a promise a little while ago, and we’ve been locked up in here for hours already.

“We’re going for a walk, so I need you to get your ass up and put on some clothes.”

“Mmm.” Lazily, she lies on her belly, exposed, grinning, and existing within the bliss of an orgasm and those few moments before the rest of the world encroaches again. Busy schedules don’t matter, enemies on the hunt aren’t a consideration. Not even the anxiety a woman feels when her entire world is on its head plagues her mind. Not when she’s just been fucked into an almost comatose state. “You go,” she mumbles sleepily. “Have fun. Lock up on the way out so no little boys come charging in here to climb the walls.”