Caution to the Wind (The Fallen Men, #7)

by Giana Darling

“Doing anything for the people you love isn’t just something I hold in theory, Axe-Man. You and Cleo deserve action.”

“So do you,” I told her solemnly as I took her face in my hands. There was still blood caught between the grooves on my fingers. “I’m tryin’ to give you words, but I’ve never been much good at that. Maybe, you’ll understand what I’m tryin’ to tell you better like this.”

Why had I waited so long to fuckin’ kiss her? ’Cause now that I had, I knew I’d never wanna stop.

“I forgive you,” I told her. “In case that wasn’t clear. In case it wasn’t obvious that there’s nothin’ to forgive you for. In case you still needed to hear it.”

“We were never enemies, Rocky. I’ve loved you before, and I was foolin’ myself thinkin’ I ever stopped.”

“I told you once eight years ago that I loved you, and you implied it wasn’t enough.” I moved toward her again, takin’ her limp hand to lead her into the middle of the concrete floor. “I asked what the fuck I had to do to show you how much you were loved.” I swallowed the burn in my throat. “How much I loved you.”

“Is this enough?” I asked, voice rough with disuse ’cause I wasn’t used to voicin’ the things written in ink on the inside of my chest. “’Cause I haven’t been able to get you outta my head since the moment I saw you again at the hospital. I told you, you got your teeth and claws in me, Rocky. And the fuck of it is, even when I wanted so fuckin’ much to hate you, it was me I hated, for lovin’ you still and for wantin’ you now in this new way that rocks me.”

I will always be the Off-White Knight to your Rocky. That’s an oath I’ll swear in blood, and if I ever break it again, I give you leave to kill me by metal, wood, fire, water, or earth.”

“Gonna paint you,” I told her. “Then I’m gonna fuck you like I shoulda the first time.”

“Be still while I worship you.”

She moaned. “You’re trying to kill me. You really do still hate me.”

“Be good for me, Rocky, and I’ll take you as close to death as pleasure can get ya.”

“Every inch of you is fuckin’ gorgeous. Inside. Out. Covered in paint. Covered in cum. Covered every day in my ink like a livin’ breathin’ fantasy. All of it, any which way, is mine. You get that, little dragon?”

She was a dragon, fierce and beautiful, and I wanted every fuckin’ inch of her, even her sharp teeth and hooked claws.

“If I’m yours, though,” she murmured, pausin’ to bite my lower lip. “You’re mine.”

“You take my cock so fuckin’ well,” I praised her, watchin’ as the words made her shiver and drove her higher. “Always knew you were made to fight, but God, were you made to fuck, too.” My fighter liked to be called a good girl, a pretty little thing.

“Now, every inch of you is mine.”

“In case it wasn’t clear, I always was,” she said through a smile that was more at peace and lovelier than any expression I’d ever seen before on that exquisite face. “I’d be yours forever, if you asked. Even if you never do, I already am.”

“It’s a tracker,” he explained, voice rough with emotion that also shone from his turquoise eyes. “Not losin’ you again.” Then ask me to stay, I wanted to say, ask me to be your Old Lady, and I won’t let anything in the world take me from your side again. But he didn’t ask, and I didn’t beg.

“Axe-Man,” I said on a shiver. “Don’t tease me right now.” “Call me Henning,” he demanded. “And I’m gonna fuckin’ devour you, Rocky. Don’t worry.”

To be the best kind of lover, you have to be a fighter. Don’t stop fighting for him if you love him. I fought and literally almost died for Lion, and I’d do it again today, tomorrow, and any day following.”

I’d already told Mei she had her teeth and claws in me, and I wanted to tell her the rest of it. That I was so in love with her, I felt mad with it. That I wanted her to stay here in Entrance with me forever. That I wanted to tie us together with more than just ink and paint and words. I wanted ceremony and legal papers with our names on them. I wanted decades of adventures as the Off-White Knight and his Rocky.

I got her tattooed into my skin forever, right over the heart she owned in my chest.

You were made to keep me alive.”

“Rocky,” I murmured, smoothin’ her wet hair away from her face so I could press a kiss to her forehead. “You’re the one who keeps savin’ me.”

“No,” she swore fiercely. “It’s you. Because in all the darkest moments of my life, even lying in a fucking grave, the possibility of seeing you...

“I happen to like the taste of blood,” I reminded her in a voice thick with remembered lust. “And I don’t give a fuck about anythin’ in your past or mine anymore, you hear me? I would wade through a lake of blood for you. I would dig ’til the bowels of hell opened under my raw, stingin’ hands. I would cut out my own heart and would barter with Satan himself if it meant keepin’ you safe. You’re mine if you’ll say I’m yours, and I’m keepin’ you forever.”

“Then,” she promised, “I’m yours.”

“My whole life I was searchin’ for somethin’,” he murmured as he walked us into the middle of the room and sank down onto one of the huge knit blankets Cleo had made. I frowned at it before Axe-Man’s voice drew my gaze back to his. “I joined the army to save people and then, when that failed, I became a doctor to do the same. Married Kate to save her and Cleo. I did it all ’cause I wanted to be a good man, but more, ’cause I was tryin’ to fill this ache for belongin’ inside me that was gnawin’ through flesh and bone. That hunger didn’t ease ’til you showed up in my life again, the same but different in all the ways that mattered ’cause those eight years meant I could finally see you. See you and know what you were always meant to be to me. My saviour. The dragon at the base of the tower willin’ to protect the few precious loved ones she’s got inside. I’d never had someone fight for me before and it knocked the wind outta me. The sense too or I would’ve done this a long time ago.”

“We don’t have the easiest love story,” he said with a wry twist of the mouth as he shifted, moving me from my straddle over his hips with our torsos pressed together to my ass in the cradle of his lap facing the wall I hadn’t been able to see behind his head. I gasped at the sight of the huge canvas propped against the wall, tears springing to my eyes, my hand flying up to cover my dropped open mouth. “But all those mistakes were pieces in the puzzle that brought us here, to this moment, and there is nothin’ more beautiful to me than this. You and me. This love I got for you that fills my lungs like air, pumps my blood through my body like you own every beat of my heart.”

“Each piece of that torn paintin’ is a chapter in our lives that one or both of us fucked up ’cause of recklessness or pride or just bad fuckin’ timin’, but look how goddamn beautiful they are bound together by gold. By love.”

I swallowed convulsively, trying not to sob, trying to say something half as beautiful as Axe-Man’s words as I stared at the painting of me he’d once torn apart in a fit of rage and now mended together with thick gold paint. I knew the Japanese art of kintsugi well. It was the practice of taking what was broken and repairing it with gold to show that scars have their own beauty.

“We paid the price of this love, Rocky,”

“And I wanna spend the rest of our lives reapin’ the rewards of our labour. I’m not gonna ask, ’cause I got the feelin’ you’d scoff and I’m tryin’ to make this romantic. So, I’ll just say, I wanna marry you. Not next year, not in six months. Soon. Fuckin’ tomorrow. ’Cause I’m nearly forty-one years old and I finally got the love of my damn life and I don’t wanna waste another second. Marriage, babies, if you’ll have them with me. A dog, a cat, whatever the fuck. Any and everythin’ with you ’cause there’s nothin’ I wouldn’t give you if you asked.”

“Henning.”

“All I’ve wanted since I was seventeen was you. If you think for one second, I won’t marry you and have your beautiful babies and watch you get older and hotter every day for the rest of forever, you’re an idiot.”

dreamed about. I looked at Mei, her face illuminated by the light of the moon and candle flames, and I found I had no fuckin’ words to express that kinda joy. So, I kissed her. The kinda kiss that could swallow you whole. The kinda kiss you felt in your toes, the warmth of it meltin’ your spine and burnin’ through your throat ’til you felt like you were on fuckin’ fire.

“You just seem fuckin’…alive. Like Mei was the electric current you needed to start breathin’ again.”

“Eight years is a long time not to breathe, brother. Take it from me. You find happiness, grab it with both hands, and never fuckin’ let go.”

“A knight is just a person who always tries to be better and do their best, even if they don’t always succeed. The goodness of a soul should be determined by the attempts it makes to do right just as much as for its successes.”

“I’m still just your Rocky. I’ve got a knife strapped to my thigh beneath the garter Cleo insisted I wear, and I’m wearin’ black lingerie, not white.”

“Might not’ve known it, but everythin’ that’s happened in my life led me to you. Never wanted to believe in fate ’cause I thought it meant I’d end up like my dad, poor and mean and full of hate. If I’d known the red thread of fate had a face and heart like yours, I’d’ve embraced it a long time ago.”

“You’re saying you would’ve fallen in love with me when I was seventeen and begging you to love me back? Even though I was jailbait, even though I was your daughter’s best friend.”

“I’m sayin’ my soul recognized yours a long fuckin’ time ago, and no matter the time between us and the mistakes we’ve made, I wouldn’t change a fuckin’ thing ’cause it meant we could be here today about to be husband and wife.”

I tied a red thread around Mei’s finger, she did the same to me, a physical representation of our soul mate bond, before we exchanged rings. Then my daughter pronounced us legally bound and I kissed Mei Zhen Axelsen for the millionth time, but for the first time as my wife, and all I knew was peace.