Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)

by Brynne Weaver

We fuck. We come. We fuck again. I come in her pussy. I come on her tits. On her belly. The sun is setting when we finally stop, both of us panting, both of us sated, though I can’t say for how long. And as I pull out of her for the last time, I’m already wondering how I’ll ever be able to stick to these rules.

“Wait,” I say, untangling my feet from the sheets. “Let me help you.” “I’m good, Doc.” She casts a smile to me over her shoulder before she hops toward the door. Her ass bounces with every jump and I have to clench my jaw to keep from begging her to come back so we can do it all over again. “Rules, remember?”

Rose turns, fully facing me. Her skin glistens with my spend. It’s smeared on her thighs, painted on her belly and breasts. With her other hand braced on the door handle, she trails a finger through the cum spread across her belly, drawing her touch upward, tracing the swell of her breast. Her eyes never leave mine as she raises that finger to her mouth and rests it on her tongue. Her lips close around it. She hums a satisfied note, and then she gives me a wink. A thousand fantasies flood my mind, all of them of Rose. My cock grows harder. “Night, Doc. Thanks for a fun time.” She closes the door behind her and leaves me sitting in the growing dark.

The thrusts come faster. He strokes my inner walls. His thumb works against me, and I close my eyes, every muscle tightening as release unravels in my core. My free hand grips Fionn’s wrist through his jacket, but he keeps going, not stopping until he’s sure I’ve claimed every moment of pleasure from this moment. He withdraws his fingers slowly as though savoring the heat surrounding his touch and the mess that he’s made of me.

“I think there’s a bad man in this good doctor,” I tease. “And I like him.”

“Just because you finger fucked me on a plane doesn’t mean I want to get married, Dr. Kane,” I say as two women exit the elevator arm in arm. “You tell him, badass bitch,” one of them says as the other gives me a high five when they pass by. Fionn looks like he’s wishing the floor would open up and absorb him, and though the women give him a brutal side-eye, he doesn’t tear his attention from me.

“Beating a guy unconscious during a moment of blind rage is kind of the antithesis of my profession. It was pretty bad.”

“No.” He shakes his head, his eyes haunted. “Never on purpose. Never you.” His gaze falls from mine as though he can’t quite bear to look at me. “Never me,” I agree. “Because you’ve seen it and lived it too, haven’t you? You’ve lived in the shadow of a monster.”

“It’s okay to love your darkness and still love yourself. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a whole one.”

His heart drums a melody into my ear. I’ve touched him before, of course. Run my hands over his muscle and bone. But this time feels different. It feels like home.

When she pulls her palm away, she leaves a gold sticker behind. “And you’re not getting away from us, no matter which way it goes.” “Yeah. You’re definitely not. You’ve been stickered. You’re part of the sticker-bitch crew now. Count yourself lucky she didn’t put them on your tits.”

“You don’t have to try so hard to be somebody else,” I say, and Fionn meets my eyes. “I like the dark too.”

He’s so delicate with my broken parts, even when he’s about to destroy the rest of me. It sets my blood aflame.

Fionn slides his tongue from my entrance to my clit, circling the bundle of nerves. He moans into my flesh, his eyes drifting closed. If he said my pussy was the best meal he ever had, I would believe him.

“Make me come on your beautiful fucking face. I want to see it smeared all over your skin.”

Fionn raises on his knees. He takes me with him, never breaking his mouth away. My legs are braced over his shoulders as he raises my ass off the bed. The sounds he makes are wild, animalistic. He fucking devours me. I don’t just moan. I don’t just come. I scream his name and split apart.

The scent of sex and his citrus and sage cologne are heavy in the air. I’m sure I lose hearing, every sound dampened, even my own unraveling moans. Fionn doesn’t let up, still chasing every last moment of my orgasm until I tap him to stop.

“Part of me doesn’t want to go home,” I confess into the dark. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Me too.” But as a close my eyes, I realize, I’m not sure which home I mean anymore. I’m not sure where I belong.

I blink at Rose, trying to process everything that just spilled out of her mouth. Churros. Speed. Gorilla. Ass fucking …? I shake my head and try to return to the medical part of her confession, though it’s a struggle. I finally land on, “You gave him amphetamines?”

No one ever asked me for help the way she did that first time we met. And I realize now, as she steps into the motor home and turns off the lights, that no one has thanked me for it either. Not until Rose.

But it’s not just the sex. That’s only a bonus, if I’m being truly honest with myself. Every spare minute I want to spend with Rose. She’s funny. She’s whip-smart. She’s unpredictable. She lives her life with a wide-open heart, like she loves every piece of herself and isn’t afraid to show it. She embraces everything from her fucked-up chaos to her brilliant, bright light. I admire her in a way I’ve never admired anyone, because it used to seem impossible to imagine what it would feel like to live that way. But she makes me think I could embrace myself and life the way she does. These things about myself that I’ve hidden away, the secrets and dark urges, she seems to sense them. And she’s not afraid.

“I’m so conflicted. I want to fuck you so badly but I also fear for my life. It’s like wet dream nightmare fuel.” “Honestly, that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. Though I’m probably not supposed to say that. Rules and shit, right?”

I’m not sure how long I stand there. How long it takes for it to sink into my marrow. But I finally realize I don’t care about the illusion of light anymore. My Rose blooms in the dark. And all I want is to grow there with her.

This isn’t just a kiss. This is what it feels like to break wide open. I frame Rose’s face with my bloody hands. I devour her with need. She grips the back of my neck and consumes me with equal desire. This kiss is all bite. It’s teeth clashing. Moans and whimpers and sweeping tongues. It’s urgency and demand. It’s an unleashing of desire that we’ve pushed beneath unraveling rules and conditions for far too long.

I pause, leaning closer, savoring the sweetness of her scent and the longing in her eyes. No one has ever looked at me the way she does. And I’ve never wanted anyone like I want Rose. Never admired anyone, never been as enchanted or enthralled by anyone. I’ve never been as awestruck by anyone, this woman who doesn’t just live her life but blazes through it like a comet burning through space, setting fire to the sky. I’ve never wanted to open up the darkest corners of my soul and show them to anyone like I have to Rose.

“I’m not going to last,” she breathes as I piston into her, the rhythm more urgent with every thrust. “I want to come with you.”

“Then you’d better touch yourself. Because I’m about to fucking fill this perfect pussy.”

Familiar Boston streets pass by the window. And I feel like a ghost in this

Because my life is in the hands of the devil. And my heart has burned to ash.

“I love you, Fionn Kane.”

“I put so many expectations on you, and when that life you thought we wanted didn’t fit the neat little boxes you’d made, you started pushing everyone away. You’ve been running. From me. Rowan. Now Rose. You’ve been running from any love for so long you didn’t know when to stop. And that’s my fault.” “What if I’m too late?”

“What if she doesn’t want this anymore?” “I don’t know, Fionn. Some broken hearts can’t be sewn back together.” Sloane’s gaze drops from mine, landing on Rose and lingering there. “But maybe that’s why you have to leave yours here for her.”

The hardest secret I ever kept was the one I kept from you. It was not telling you how much I love you. How much that love has consumed me, even when I tried not to let it. You unraveled the life I’d convinced myself I wanted. I didn’t think the man left behind was one I could trust. I thought I was keeping you safe from me by hiding those feelings away. But I was wrong. I’d give anything to go back and break every rule before the day we made them. Because I know now that I loved you even then.

“I had a dream while I was in the hospital. That some broken hearts can’t be sewn back together. And I wondered if mine would be like that too. I thought so for a long time. And then your first letter came. I was angry. I felt empty. But getting that letter was like receiving the first stitch. It hurt. But it helped too. Every one since then has closed a little bit of the wound, even on the days when I didn’t want it to. “The card you sent me today is the Three of Swords. You talked in your letter about how it represented heartbreak. There was pain and loss those last days we were together and in the ones since, you said. You worried about how I was feeling. But when I opened the letter and the card fell out, it was reversed. It means that the knives fall from the heart. Healing begins. That’s what your letter meant to me. Another stitch in a wound. “So I hope you keep writing to me. And I’ll keep writing to you. I hope we heal ourselves and each other. I hope we’ll stitch back together. Because I love you, Fionn. I’m not letting you go. I never will. Love, Rose.”

Every day we write each other letters. Every evening we read them out loud. We talk through the way we feel. Sometimes we make love. Sometimes we fuck. Sometimes we fight. Or we laugh. Or we cry. But every day we heal.

“You told me once that no boys were allowed in the woods unless they had scales and a breeding kink,” I say with a wicked grin.

“It’s a cabin. In the woods. In the middle of fucking nowhere. I’m sure we’ll be just fine, love. Get in. We’re going to be late and I want to chase you and fuck you on the forest floor before the others get there.”

look down at my body. My skin is imprinted with a beautiful pattern of stitches that we’ve both had a hand in making. It’s a web of memory. A map of our history in my flesh.

He kisses me. He doesn’t stop. The minutes and hours fall away. But each moment etches a map deep beneath my skin.