Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)

by Brynne Weaver

Rowan’s navy eyes glimmer, a fleeting spark igniting in their depths. “In Boston, Blackbird. What are you doing in Boston?” “I … I’m here for work. Meeting. A work meeting. Not like, here in the restaurant, obviously. In town. City. Boston city.”

Good save!

It wasn’t weird. I wish I’d known you were there. I wish you’d stayed.

“I would have made time for you. You’re …” I swallow before I can say more than I should. “You’re my friend. Maybe someday my best friend.”

“No one competes with Sloane.” Rowan’s eyes anchor on mine, dragging me into the depths of a navy sea. “She just hasn’t realized it yet.”

I’ll never forget the way her skin flushed such a pretty shade of pink when I said she was beautiful. I would have crawled across the table to kiss those plump lips when they pursed as I spilled my secrets between us.

“I love the sound when my victims beg too.”

I don’t want to let go, but time is always working against me when it comes to her. It works against me almost as hard as she does.

I lose myself in desire. It crashes into me, as though it was always hiding behind a crumbling wall. And once it’s unleashed, it consumes me.

When I look at her, I can’t seem to pry one emotion away from the others. They all intertwine when I think of Sloane Sutherland. Fear is fused with hope. Care with control, with envy, with sadness. It’s fucking everything, all at once. Even the desire to turn this feeling off locks with the need to nurture it. The totality of it devours me.

“I’d teach you a lesson about wanting. About wanting to come so badly you have to beg for it.” My cock hardens as Sloane’s blood surges against my fingertips. “And once I was sure you’d learned that lesson, I’d teach you about wanting to stop coming so badly you beg for that too.”

Well damn

“Something caught your eye, pretty boy?” I whisper. “Yes,” he says, his voice pained. “God, yes, Sloane. All of you.”

“You are the thing I most look forward to, Rowan.”

“How fitting, love. Now be a good girl and find something to grab on to”—he says, then passes one long, slow lick over my center—“because I’m about to destroy you.”

“I would kill for you, and I have. I would do it again, every damn day. I’d turn myself inside out for you. I would die for you. I don’t just like you, Sloane, and you fucking know it.”

In a whip of movement, she aims the gun at David, the muzzle pointed at his forehead. He stiffens and drops his arms. “Pow, pow, pow,” she says in a staccato rhythm. Her grin spreads before she lowers the weapon to her side. “Just kidding.”

And I thank every god I never pray to when she wraps her arms around my body.

“You did color,” he whispers, but he still doesn’t let go. I smile in Rowan’s arms. “What can I say, Butcher. I guess you brought it out of me.”

I take one breath. And then I walk from the shadows and into the sun.