These Vile Secrets (Enclave, #1)

by C.E. Ricci

“No, baby. Now you’ve got me.”

The things I've worked for, my own thoughts and desires, no longer matter. Because now? He's my every thought and desire.

"No room over there, baby. Your fault for getting a goddamn Lambo in the first place. Now are you gonna make me fuck my fist while you watch or are you going to take every inch I have to offer while you ride me?"

"Didn't stop you from wanting to fuck inside it though, did it?"

"I better be the only one you've fucked in this vehicle," I hiss while he lubes up my length. "Aww, baby."

"Are you jealous of the idea of someone else getting some Lambo lovin'?"

"I won't be if you promise to never call ...

"Deal." He laughs, leaning down to press a kiss to my mouth. ...

"It will always be me."

"You were made for me. Only me. No one else, Rome. Not another fucking person on this planet can fuck you like I do. Can drive you to near insanity the way I do."

"And more importantly? No one on this goddamn planet can make you feel what I make you feel."

"Nothing and no one compares. Not a ch...

Every kiss and touch and sound and thought he has, I want. All of it, until everything about him is irrevocably mine.

"Fuck, I love you," he groans, rolling his hips as his forehead meets mine for balance.

No, I want his heart. It's the only thing of his I want for myself. The only thing that's fucking priceless. Fuck the rest.

We're one. Nothing is changing that. Not his past or his legacy, not these vile secrets being kept from us and between us.

Fuck. That. He's mine, only ever mine.

"Because while I know my cock is a thing of beauty, I also know you do, in fact, love me as well."

I whisper, "It's okay if you do, you know?"

“It’s okay,” I say again in a breath against his lips. “Because I love you too. Only you.”

And as I look into those hazel eyes, the ones that bore into me with nothing but passion and emotion, I realize I really do love him. Him. Roman Mitchell.

and all I can do is stare at this man who I’ve fallen helplessly in love with, knowing I’m about to destroy everything with my secrets. But because I love him, I’ll tell him.

The only thing running deeper than the gash in my chest where my entire soul is currently bleeding from? My love for him.

Everything we built was all based on a lie. Fabricated from the beginning. Then I fell in love with him and the entire world shifted. It tilted on its axis and we've been off-kilter ever since, not knowing what to do next.

I feel tears prick at the corners of my eyes, dying to spill over. Because I broke the only person who ever meant anything to me. The one who made me feel human again.

It's at that moment I know I've ruined him. Destroyed a soul not meant for this life, no matter how much training and teaching and grooming went into his upbringing.

It breaks me to know I'm the catalyst in his downfall. The final factor in turning him into the monster he's not.

Because if I've meant anything I've said in this lifetime, it's that I love him. With my eternally damaged black heart and broken soul.

I wish he wouldn’t, because his eyes still read like he loves me. And I can’t let myself believe that.

I think that’s the worst part of this whole thing, knowing how much I still care about him—still love him—even though he might as well have stabbed me in the back.

I fell in love with him. Trusted him implicitly. Shared things with him I couldn’t tell anyone on this Earth. My biggest regrets, my darkest secrets.

Rain is nothing in comparison to Hale. Stand them side by side and there’s no contest. I’d choose Hale over and over again until my dying day.

But at his core, the center of who he is, that’s where I felt the safest. The lightest and happiest. The most loved I’ve ever felt in my goddamn life.

He didn’t need me to make it through the day, to fill the missing part of the sum of a whole. I fucking get it, because Hale is the piece of me I didn’t know was missing the entire time.

"But you want thoughts, baby? Fucking take them. You’ve had all of them for weeks—months—now. You’re all I think about anymore, Hale! Which is why this"—I shout, waving my arms around the space between us—"hurts so fucking much. I sat here and told you every fucked-up thing I’ve ever done and you haven't even given me an ounce of the truth."

Anger and despair wage a war for dominance inside me as I begin pressing the knife to the spot above his heart. The one piece of him I covet most. The piece I thought I had.

The one wielding the weapon that’ll take him from this Earth. From me.

Mostly, though, I hate him for making me love him just to rip out my heart with the only betrayal that could ever cut deepest.

"I love you," he utters, barely audible. "Only you, always you. I fucking love you, Rome."

I instantly know, I feel it in my bones, I made the right choice. He will always be the right choice.

"Slit my throat. Carve my heart out. Put it on your mantle or use it as a paperweight or crush it in your fist. I don’t care what happens to it because the only person I want to have it is you. Only you,"

My enemy, my mentor. My love, my life. My liar, my traitor. I don’t care about any other label I could put on him at this moment as long as mine is one of them. That’s the most important one.

"I’d stay for you. I’d fight for you." "But Hale—" His lips on

"You want the truth? I’d kill for you," he whispers, my mouth a breath away from his. "I’d die for you."

"I’d die for you," he whispers again, the tips of his fingers scraping against my scalp. "I’d die for you."

"I don’t want you to die for me, baby," I tell him, rubbing the tip of my nose against his. "Not when it would kill me too."

He looks at Kaede, of course, before speaking, "I mean, can you really blame us if we don’t, man? You pulled a crazy ass stunt back with Rivain—

"You actually gave them a ship name?"

Cal shrugs and gives me a sorry, not sorry look. "I was rooting for them, dude, sorry."

"It’s fine." I roll my eyes before glancing over to Hale. "But if you let us out of this alive, make sure ours is Rale. Since that’s what we like to do to each other."