“Let’s go upstairs,” he whispers against my mouth after a moment, right when my fingers finally find the tie on his sweatpants and begin to undo the knot. I give him a look and then glance over my shoulder. The skunk-y smell of weed drifts in through the cracked sliding glass door, and male laughter follows along behind it.

“Trying to avoid the boys?” I ask, lifting my brow and letting my mouth curve into a sardonic smile. “Good idea. I’m supposedly due a whole fuck-load of spankings.” I snort and shake my head, leaning forward and putting my fingers against Aaron’s chest, my mouth against his ear. “But you know that you’re the only one I like to spank me.”

Aaron’s one good arm tightens around my waist and he stands up, lifting me along with him. I shouldn’t be surprised at how strong he is, but I am. Pleasantly so. He looks down at me with a possessive male expression on his face.

“No. I’m not avoiding anything anymore. Not even this. I’m in love with you, Bernie, and I always have been. My mistake in the past was trying to make decisions for you without bothering to explain myself. Not anymore.”

“You mean … you won’t try to make decisions for me?”

He smirks at me.

“No, it means I’ll try to explain them.”

I’d roll my eyes at that bullshit, but I’d much rather take Aaron to bed. His fingers stop just shy of my stitches, but he must be worried about me because he sets me down and then takes my hand. Our fingers curl together as he pulls me toward the stairs. I stop him short, redirecting him toward the master bedroom.

Aaron hesitates, but only for a split-second. He must know what’ll happen if we go into this room together, but he lets me guide us there. At some point, Victor might join us … The thought thrills me as we spin into the room and Aaron slams the door behind us.

I push up against him, my breasts catching on the oversized t-shirt I’m wearing, straining as I arch my back and press them into Aaron’s chest. The move makes my side ache, but if there’s pain then that means I’m still alive.

We’re both still alive.

Nothing short of a miracle.

My fingers dig into Aaron’s hair as his one good hand drops between my legs, cupping my heat and rubbing my clit with the heel of his hand. I find myself working my pelvis against him, thrusting into his firm touch. One of his fingers sneaks forward and slides along the length of my cunt, teasing the wet fabric.

“You ruined my motherfucking boxers,” he whispers, closing his eyes as I kiss the edge of his stubbled jaw. “You owe me for that.”

“Do I?” I ask, pausing and stepping back. Getting to my knees isn’t quite as sexy as it could be; my stitches fucking hurt. But I don’t care. I shed the t-shirt, smiling as Aaron curses and runs his hand across his jaw. His gaze finds my breasts, but he’s only got one good hand and it’s on my head as I drop down. My fingers tease the waistband of Aaron’s sweatpants, curling beneath them and then dragging them down until his cock springs free.

There’s a pearl of pre-ejac on the end of his dick that I lick off while one of my fingers traces the pulsing blue of a vein beneath the smooth skin of his shaft.

“Bernie,” he whispers, and the sound is somewhere between a curse and a death wish. I grin and slide my tongue along the underside of his dick, on a place called the frenulum. Thanks to the shitty worksheet in my biology class, I know the proper name. Lucky me. I can be scientific and perverted at the same time. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he murmurs as I give him a nice, long, slow lick from balls to tip.

“You want to know what I’m … thinking?” I ask incredulously, and then laugh. My mouth takes over the head of his cock and I slide forward until the end of him hits the end of me. With a strong sucking motion, I slide back and then sit on my heels. “While I’m doing this? That’s really your question?” There’s a long pause, and then I turn my fist in a corkscrew motion, making Aaron groan, his body slumping against the door. The hard plastic of his medical boot is loud against the wood. “I’m thinking about how you put an entire clip into Kali.”

Aaron’s fingers tighten in my hair, almost to the point of pain. When I look up at him, he’s staring down at me with an expression made of ice. He did what he did for me.

I want to make up for that.

“Do what you do best: get on your knees and suck,” the ghost inside my head taunts, wearing the face of fucking Kali. I ignore her, focusing instead on the hot heat of my lover’s body. I cannot describe to him in words how it feels to have him back, like the universe, in all her strange wisdom, finally decided to grant me a second chance. So I say it with my body, with the stroke of my fist, with the wetness of my tongue, with my lips as they press kisses down the length of Aaron’s thick shaft.

There are bruises down here, around his cock, on his cock. I’m desperate to know what happened to him while he was gone, but I’m not going to push it. I know better than anyone that you can’t force someone else to relive their own trauma. My grip loosens slightly as soon as I see those marks though; the last thing I want to do is hurt him.

“Harder,” Aaron grinds out between clenched teeth, pushing his cock to the back of my throat with a deep thrust. “Harder, Bernie. As hard and fast as you can.”

I tighten my grip on the base of his dick, and then bear down on him with my mouth until he’s coming, hot and salty against my tongue. I swallow while he pants above me, still watching, gaze darker than I’ve ever seen it.

Does it make me a bad person that I’m turned on by that look?

I sit back and swipe my arm across my lips.

“It’s bothering you, isn’t it?” I ask, but Aaron shakes his head, sweat beading on his upper thigh and sliding in tantalizing rivulets down his uninjured leg until it soaks into his rumpled sweatpants. My breath catches as a matching bead of sweat slithers between my bare breasts.

“It’s only bothering me because it’s bothering you. I wish I could say Kali is the first girl I’ve ever …” Aaron pauses and sighs, reaching out a hand and helping me to my feet. We both groan a little, but being with him hurts too good. I’m not stopping, though I’ll probably hate myself in the morning. “You not killing her doesn’t prove anything.”

“I’m gutless and weak,” I say, but when Aaron tries to protest, I kiss him again, stealing the words from his lips by wielding my own as weapons. We move back until my thighs hit the edge of the mattress. We break apart briefly and I scoot back onto the bed until I’m enveloped in pillows. That’s the odd thing about Victor. He likes his bed covered in pillows, but he only sleeps with one. Aaron, on the other hand, puts one between his legs, cuddles one, and rests his head on another.

I’d love to know how all the Havoc Boys use their pillows.

“Anything but gutless or weak,” Aaron argues finally, shedding his own shirt, slowly and carefully and with much wincing. I smile as it falls to the floor in a heap. He puts his left hand on the bed for support and drops his lips to my belly, kissing my heated flesh with reverence as I let my head fall back into Vic’s mountain of pillows. “A warrior.”

I snort.

“If I am, then I’m a failed one,” I whisper, looking up at the ceiling and finding Kali there, clinging to it like a demon in a horror movie. She stares down at me and smiles an awful, ugly sort of smile. Her face is covered in dirt, and her skin is already turning purple. You’re imagining this, Bernie, I tell myself, wondering if I’ve finally done it, snapped and gone completely mad.