Leather & Lark (Ruinous Love, #2)

by Brynne Weaver

For those of you who came here after the B&B ice cream and just read the L&L triggers and thought, “She’s not really serious about the pizza … right …?”This one’s for you.

“If I ripped that tape off your mouth, you’d probably tell me you’re oh-so-very-sorry about fucking Savannah in our bed while I was away, wouldn’t you?”

Just like in nature, the prettiest things are often the most poisonous.

Never. Again. It might not make for a pretty vow, but I do my best to make the execution of my promise fucking spectacular.

“Atmosphere is so important in these moments, don’t you think?” I ask as I bring up “Firework” by Katy Perry and turn it up to full volume.

There’s power in finding secrets and blowing them up in a beautiful, bright light.

“I’ve never had a concussion before. Could I fall into a coma?” I ask as I catch up to him, following close on his heels. “No.” “Do you think I have a brain bleed?” “No.” “But how do you know for sure? Are you a doctor?” “No.” “Oh good, because your bedside manner sucks.”

“No, I’m not drunk, you one-word asshole. I haven’t had any alcohol at all.” He huffs. “Well? Did you smell any when you were all up in my face sniffing my breath like a fucking psycho?”

“Exactly. So thank you for your totally unnecessary judgments, Budget Batman,”

“Don’t drown, Budget Batman. What would Rhode Island do without your exemplary customer service skills and your empathetic medical diagnoses?”

“Oh … my God … that’s so horrible … what have I done …” More silence. An owl hoots from the shadows of the forest. “Such a tragedy …” I continue as I dab at my dry eyelashes. “So sad … I will never forgive myself.”

“Time to go,” he grits out as he draws close to where I plant my feet in the center of the road. I cross my arms. “How about, ‘Time to go, please.’ Or, ‘Shall we depart? My Batmobile awaits, fair maiden.’”

Lark Montague is beautiful. And I have to stop staring like a feckin’ creep.

“What a lovely evening. Mind if I join you? I know nothing about chickens, by the way.” “That’s good. The last guy was way too into poultry.” “He sounds like a feckin’ asshat. Feather fetishes aren’t really my thing.” “Such a shame, I do love a bit of feather play—”

The second my palm touches her skin, she whimpers with need. My erection is painful against my zipper as she presses her body against mine. Our teeth clash. The kiss grows brutal. Within seconds, Lark has ripped through any restraint I thought I had. She kisses me with the kind of fevered desperation that makes me feel not just wanted. Or needed. It’s as though she craves me. She grips onto the back of my neck as though she’ll fall apart if she doesn’t hold on. When she sucks in a breath, she dives deeper, towing me into the dark with her. Every time I think I’ve gotten control of the kiss, she tears it from me. With a touch. With a bite or a suck or a moan.

“My concussed head. Where I needed fucking stitches which I never got because I had to walk home, thankyouverymuch. And then you growled at me like some rabid trash panda that was about to gnaw my leg off and tossed me in the trunk of your car, you fucking psycho.”

“That is the biggest pile of hypocritical bullshit I’ve ever heard. How’s the contract killer gig going, by the way? Raking in some good cash with your murder-scuba skills, Batman?”

“You’d better kiss me, pretty boy. You’re not my husband until you do,” Sloane whispers as a single tear breaches her lashes and slides toward her lips.

“Geallaim duit a bheith i mo fhear céile dílis duit, fad a mhairimid le chéile,”

“Because I told them not to invite you,” my aunt declares, silencing the bombardment. “You all have enough going on lately with the businesses. With me. So when Lark told me she’d met someone and wanted to marry him before I pass away, I asked her to do it this way. She wanted something intimate, and I wanted to be there. And now it’s done.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I whisper, my throat suddenly tightening around my words. “I’ve always wanted you to walk me down the aisle. But I fell in love with Lachlan so fast,” I say, gazing over at Lachlan in a way I hope is convincing. “And it just … happened.”

“I have to thank my brother, really,” Lachlan pipes up. “If it wasn’t for his wedding and all the preparation that went into it behind the scenes, I don’t think Lark and I would have spared each other the time.”

“You’ve always been a feather in the wind, my Meadowlark. You deserve to be happy on your own terms. But I never wanted you to be alone. And now, you’re not.”

“I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, Mr. Covaci,” Lachlan says. He lets the handshake go so he can interlace his fingers with mine. “And I know there’s more going on than what we discussed today. But my word is worth my life. I made a vow to Lark. I will protect my wife.”

“Lark never took the Covaci name,” Ethel says, her voice low and quiet. “She always said she would never leave that piece of her dad, Sam, behind. But she did it. For you.” I can feel Lachlan watching me in the rearview. But I can’t bear to meet his gaze. “Your wife just broke her family’s heart,” Ethel says. “And she did it to save your life.”

I can’t give you anything but love, baby That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of, baby Scheme awhile, dream awhile We’re sure to find Happiness and I guess All those things you’ve always pined for Gee, I’d like to see you looking swell, baby.

And even if it wasn’t the pizza and it was an ache, it’s still just simple biology. I’m on a very long dry spell, that’s all. And Lachlan’s being extra broody and weirdly protective, and he’s hot, and I have eyes. I can appreciate hot. It doesn’t mean I want to fuck my husband.

“The … uh … the passenger seat is comfortable.” “Better than the trunk?” He winces. “I thought it might be too soon for that joke.”

“That night we met,” he says, his voice soft with regret. “The way I acted, the way I took my shitty attitude out on you, putting you in the trunk … it wasn’t right. I’m sorry, Lark. I know what I did was … it was cruel. I wish I could take it back. I wish I could take a lot of things back. But I can’t. I can only tell you I’m sorry, and I’m not going to ask you to forgive me.”

“Helping you into the vehicle. You know, like a gentleman. Believe it or not, I’m normally quite a well-mannered bloke and not a total heathen. You just caught me on an off day,”

“Why is what so hard?” The first tear breaches my lash line and slides down my cheek toward my trembling lips. Lachlan’s face creases with worry as I lose the battle to hold my emotions back. “You,” I say with a flick of my hand between us as more tears escape my control. “This. It’s so fucking hard. I don’t want to care what you’re doing or where you’re going. It shouldn’t matter to me at all. But it does fucking matter and I don’t know why—”

“I know this isn’t the type of marriage either of us envisioned for ourselves. I know it’s not … ideal,” he says as he lays his other hand over mine where it rest on my lap, my attention snagging on the simple touch. “But if you’re worried about me stepping out on you and breaking our vows, that’s not me. Doesn’t matter that it’s not a normal marriage. If I make a promise, I keep that promise.”

“I see how much you’re doing. I know what it’s like to be so busy looking after everyone else that you forget how to look after yourself. You’re going to burn yourself out that way. And I won’t just sit back and watch it happen, Lark. Not if this place is right here, ready to help.”

At first, I thought feelings like joy or hope or excitement had been dulled in me, worn down by the tides of an unforgiving world. But I was wrong. Since Lark came into my life, I’ve felt excited every day. It started when I followed Lark onto the balcony the night of Rowan’s restaurant opening, and though it had a vicious edge at first, it gradually transformed. I realize now that I’m excited every single time I see her. The need to push her away has become a desire to pull her closer. I don’t just want to hear her laugh, I need to earn it. Every time I gain a little ground, I want more. I want to break out of the shade and back into her light. Without even realizing it, I’ve become addicted to it. To her.

My beautiful wife. An angelic devil, so wickedly innocent, her sweet and welcoming features contrasted by the lethal coldness in her crystalline eyes.

“Did you know that’s how I finally told Sloane what Mr. Verdon was doing to me?” Lark pushes the needle through his top lip and pulls the thread taut, closing the first suture. “He’d torn my uniform. I wanted to fix it. But I was shaking too much to thread the needle, so she did it for me.”

Trying not to die of the worst case of blue balls I’ve ever had in my feckin’ life.

“You know, I’ve been told I’m like a tougher, buffer, generally better-looking version of Constantine-era Keanu—” “Stop right there, Lachlan Kane. You will not Keanumatize me into forgiveness. That is fucking blasphemous.” “Worth a shot.”

‘Nearer, my God, to thee.’” I’m writing it down as Lark’s singing voice cuts me short: Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, darkness be over me, my rest a stone My pen stops partway through writing God. I turn and look at Lark, her expression peaceful as the melody tumbles from her lips: yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to thee; nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee …

I could so easily reach up and wrap my hand around his nape and draw his mouth to mine. I could discover where this current takes us, see if it ignites or destroys. Maybe I could confess that I think about our moment on Rowan’s balcony every day. That when I do, I can’t help but touch my lips and wish that it had been the first time we met. I could tell him how I wonder more and more about the hurt I’m still holding on to and question why I don’t just let it go. I could tell him that I’m starting to see things in him that I tried to ignore—his fierce loyalty, his protectiveness for the few people he cares about, the way he remains true to the hardest of promises. I could admit that I forgave him when he stood next to his car and promised to work for my forgiveness. Maybe even before that. I know that saying these things would erase the heartache and regret in his eyes.

An ache coils low in my belly. A need that stalks me. More and more, it lingers, ready to consume. It’s there when Lachlan stumbles out of his room in the morning in a T-shirt and low-slung sweats as he heads to the coffee machine to make us Americanos. It haunts me when his gaze lingers on my lips as I smile. It possesses me when I’m alone in my room at night, staring into the dark as my hand slips beneath my sleep shorts. It’s Lachlan’s touch I imagine when I circle my clit, when I plunge my fingers into my pussy. I want his touch everywhere. I want it for longer than just a moment that feels stolen in the dark.

I just figured, maybe you needed to hear it. Maybe I’m wrong. But if you’re like me, I don’t love you any less. Not one bit. And maybe you can tell me about it sometime.

“We could see the alarm clock in the next room through the crack between the doors. I remember every time we checked. Two twenty-four. Three eighteen. Five thirty-nine. Six twelve. Six fifty-two. Seven o’clock finally came and my sister made me stay upstairs as she got help for my mom. She was unconscious downstairs. Dad was already dead. And I never prayed again.” I take a deep breath and clasp my hands together as though I can press the next words out of my body. “Not even at Ashborne, when …”

When I first realized I needed to earn her forgiveness, I never thought about how it would change me in the process. I knew I’d have to prove to Lark that I was sorry for judging her. That I’d made mistakes. That I felt horrible for being callous, for making her feel unsafe in my presence or afraid or disrespected. But how do you show someone in a way that’s more than just a handful of empty words? Because I know now that it’s not only about creating a safe place for her, or crushing anyone who threatens her happiness, or looking after her health when I know she can’t. It’s not just a gift I can buy or an action I can take. It’s not relentlessly wearing her down until she just gets in the damn car. I’m starting to realize I need to give something of me. I need to be a little vulnerable. Put myself in a different kind of danger than what I’m used to.

“I want to make this marriage into one you can be proud of, no matter what it looks like or how long it’s meant to last. I don’t want it to be something you regret.”

Chrissakes. Lark is all those things and more. She’s everything. She’s fierce and unique and surprising and so goddamn gorgeous it sometimes feels like my heart is trapped in a vise when I just look at her. There isn’t a single word I can think of that captures what Lark has become to me. And when I try to open my mouth to say any of them, they dissolve on my tongue. So the only thing I can do is tell her the truth. At least, maybe a little bit of it.

“It’s up to you. But I don’t want you to ever think I’m pushing you into it because of the way I feel.” Lark swallows, her pulse a steady hum in her neck. “And how do you feel?” “You don’t know?” I let my hand fall away from hers. She shakes her head. “Probably not the same as you. Let’s just leave it at that.” “You sure about that?”

“Lachlan Kane is an ass man. Good to know.”

“Let’s go, Batman. The back door awaits,”

“What? Nothing to be ashamed about, liking a bit of butt stuff,”