The Reaper (Dark Verse #2)

by RuNyx

“If something happens to you, caveman,” she told him, looping her arms around his neck. “I’ll kill you myself.” She saw a flash of his dimple before her eyes closed and her mouth got busy.

Morana held him through the pain, her own eyes tearing up as he cried in her arms. She didn’t know what had caused him to break, didn’t know what had triggered him into heaving like the little boy who had been left hurt and alone in a world too cruel for him. She didn’t know and she didn’t care about anything right now except he had sought her out. He needed her acceptance. He needed her unconditional love to heal like his own was healing her. She doubted he even realized that he loved her, or that every action of his cemented that fact in her very soul.

Morana softly pressed her lips to his, accepting every word that hovered on them but couldn’t make it out. He wasn’t there yet. She didn’t know if he would ever be there. But she knew. And that was enough for her.

“I’m so in love with you, caveman.” She saw his eyes flare slightly, his hand coming to rest around her neck, gripping her firmly. “You can’t take that back,” he warned her fiercely.

“I mean it, Morana,” he threatened her, his eyes so alive she felt buzzed. “You cannot take it back. Do you understand me?” “I won’t,” she reassured him.

“I’m in love with you, Tristan Caine. I don’t expect you to say it back. I don’t need you to. I just need you to keep on loving me.”

He loved her, and he would probably never be able to tell her so. And she was surprisingly okay with that.

He had given her a home, somewhere she belonged, just as she was. Be it his penthouse or the cottage or this hotel room, he was her anchor. She was never going to be alone again.

“The men in this world don’t love like normal men, little doe. Their love is more intense than any other. He fell in love with you as a boy and as a man. And watching it happen has been the only peace I have found in years, knowing you will be loved and cherished and protected after I’m gone. I needed to give you that.”

His arms tightened around her and he kept her close. “It’s okay. It’s just a panic attack. It’ll pass. Just focus on my voice and breathe with me, Morana.” She did. She focused on his voice, on the whiskey that got her drunk and the sin that made her feel alive. She breathed with him, feeling the slow expansion and deflation of his chest and matched hers to him.

“You are exactly where you were supposed to be,” he told her, his voice leaving no room for doubts. “I know exactly who you are.” “Who am I?” “Mine.”

“You might have been born with another name but you are Morana. My Morana. You’re the girl I killed for and you’re the woman I’d die for. You are mine and you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. Don’t ever question that again, do you understand?”

His hand flexed on her throat. “Do you know why I enjoy holding you like this?” She shook her head. “I can feel your life under my hand,” he stated, his eyes burning on hers, his fingers locking her life to him. “Your body, your life, your heart – they’re all mine now. Trust me to keep all of them safe.”

Dante walked to his father’s, now his, desk and brought out a crystal-cut bottle of vintage scotch, pouring it into three glasses, handing them both one. “To the Alliance,” he raised the toast. “To finding the missing girls,” Tristan matched. “To the future,” Morana clinked glasses, looking both men in the eyes. They were her family now.

She unmanned him, this little woman with the soul of a warrior. He was a smart guy but her brain was unlike any he had ever known, and it occasionally made him feel like an idiot. He didn’t mind that one bit.

He didn’t think she had any idea how much she amused him, the emotion something he’d never been very familiar with until her.

The sound of footsteps made him look up at the woman who had been his reason for existence for so long he didn’t know where he began and she ended anymore.

She was his gift for a fucked up life, this woman of fire that warmed his chilled, lonely bones.

“I can’t marry you,” he told her, “not until I fulfill the promise I made to my sister.” She nodded in understanding. “But I never, ever want you to not walk into a room and know that every part of me, fucked up man and the lost boy, belong to you.”

And then she peeled it off carefully, seeing the small tattoo he’d gotten two nights ago. He looked down at it himself, pleased with the curvature, the one word loud and clear. Morana.

“I’m so fucking in love with you, Tristan Caine,” she blubbered, attacking his chest with her face and pressing kisses against his pounding heart.

He pressed a little kiss to the top of her head, enjoying how small she felt against him. He forgot sometimes, with how fierce she was, that she was tiny.

He wanted to tell her he loved her too. And he didn’t know how to tell her that, how to verbalize that. Maybe one day he would. He hoped someday he could. Until then, he could just show her.

She looked just the same but she smiled more now. He didn’t think she even realized it but he caught her biting her lip more, talking more, moving her hands more as she talked. She was more alive and seeing her that way made him feel so fucking good. He knew he was damaged. He knew he would never completely be able to give her everything she deserved. But he liked to fucking try and every time she smiled, it was his reward.

He wanted to tell her that love was too tame a word for everything that happened inside him where she was concerned. She had shifted him, realigned him from the inside out. Like a planet that suddenly pulls a moon into its orbit, she had bound him to her, given him direction for longer than she knew, gave him purpose to exist. She was his gravity, his fucking planet, and he was lost without her.

She held on to him. She always held onto him. And with one woman he loved beside him, searching for the other he had lost, Tristan felt loved, accepted. Whole. And he would go through it all, over again, just for her.