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"What do you mean ‘what do I mean?’" I mocked. "You've got to have something planned. Something grand and elaborate. Something that'll cement who you are and what you are into the minds of the Five Points."
He was quiet. "Your mind is terrifying."
"Thank you," I told him, and I meant it.
Just as he'd meant his compliment.
He let go of my throat and flopped down onto the bed. "I hadn't gotten that far yet. I dealt with what I had to tonight and then I came home. My head is killing me, or I'd still be out. My goddamn alarm is set for two hours’ time. I shouldn’t have bothered disturbing you upstairs."
I heard what he wasn't going to say, and I was fine with that—he'd needed to reconnect with me. Aidan always rambled when he was feeling defensive.
I rewarded him by turning onto my side and hooking one of my thighs over his. My hand went to his cock and I angled us so that the tip was rubbing up against my clit.
"Savannah," he warned tiredly. "Not now, little one."
"I know, I know," I muttered. "I'm going somewhere with this, I promise."
He heard my teasing tone because he snorted his amusement.
I wasn’t lying though. Every part of me was aching. Every. Single. Part. Orgasms might help with pain relief, but I wasn’t doing this for that.
When I was wet enough to accept him into me, not drenched like usual, but enough for my purpose, I slipped him inside with a sigh.
He hauled an arm around my shoulder and tucked me into him, exhaling deeply with the relief of our re-connection.
"You could have died tonight," I whispered.
"You could have too, baby girl." His mouth pressed against my temple, and he rubbed his lips back and forth, back and forth. "You could have been raped; you could have been hurt." He let loose another heavy exhalation. "This fucking world."
He was right, but… "It isn't the world, Aidan. It's humans. It's people. People make up the world. Don't forget that," I warned.
When he didn’t answer, I squeezed his cock to keep him hard inside me, gently pulsing my pussy just to maintain the link.
For the first time in a long while, I truly didn't want sex. I just wanted to connect. I just wanted to feel him inside me.
I wanted to know he was home.
"There were..." I swallowed. "I thought you were dead in the truck. You weren’t moving, and I didn't dare check if you were alive or not. I knew that if they thought I was conscious, they might try to torture me for information. So I stayed still, and I tried to figure out what was happening and..."
He pressed his mouth to mine to still the words.
"If I could have spared you from that, I would have."
"You can't ‘spare’ me from life," I quoted him. "This is reality, Aidan. Our reality. I came into it with my eyes open, and sure, I got a dose of it tonight that came out of the blue, but we're here. We survived. We will live to see another day, and we will thrive. Won't we?"
He didn’t answer my question, but his fingers entwined in my hair, gently stroking it in a way that soothed as he muttered, "When the Aryans took Ma, Da blamed Brennan. He said he was the one who should have been guarding her. He was a kid, Savvie. A fucking kid. But he blamed Bren, and when he captured the Aryans, Brennan was the one who hit the kill switch."
I’d heard the tale. I wasn’t sure anyone in the underworld, or anyone who was curious about it, hadn’t heard what Aidan Sr. had done to the men who’d dared take his wife, who’d raped her and abused her…
"The car crusher?" I whispered.
"Yeah. Bren told me once that Da had the Aryans lined up in concrete boots, strung up above the jaws of the crusher. Bren hit the switch that released 'em into its maw.
"For months afterward, I'd hear him screaming in his sleep. We ignored it. That was what you were supposed to do. If Da could have stopped him having nightmares, he would have.
"Instead, we just pretended it wasn’t happening, and Da was so fucking focused on Ma anyway because she was a wreck that Bren’s trauma got forgotten about. We pulled together; that’s what we do. Bren was never the same after, though.
"That’s the kind of man my father was, Savvie. Those were the shows he put on for the world, and the aftermath wasn’t only felt by the city, but by us too."
