Page 105 of The Doctor

“Clara, stop!” I hauled her against me, hoisted her toward the safety of the second floor. “You don’t need to go.”

“I do!”

“You don’t.” There was a sharp bite to my voice, and I hated that it only served to make her struggle more. “You don’t,” I tried again, tried to soothe instead of frighten. “They’re okay. They’re going to be okay.”

“Don’t lie to me, Zeno.”

Don’t lie to me.

My God, those words were a kick in the chest.

I hadn’t believed her. Hadn’t trusted her to tell me the truth. And here I was, trying to get her to trust me when I’d given her no reason to do so.

“They’re okay,” I promised, yanking her up another couple steps, until I was on my back, until she was pinning me to the floor, still flailing in her efforts to get away. “They’re okay.”

“No!” After an elbow to my gut, she scrambled loose, and I barely caught her, barely kept her from tumbling straight down to the ground. I pulled her back to the floor, slammed my body on top of hers, then pulled out my phone.

“Look!” I demanded, showing her my screen. “They’re going to be okay. Lorenzo told me they’re going to be okay.”

Clara pounded her fists against my bruised chest. In an effort to stop her, to grab her wrists, I dropped my phone.

She was lying on her back underneath me, her too-short shorts and too-thin tank showing off every bruise and cut on her otherwise perfect skin. My dick, still hard from the race up to my bedroom, throbbed as it pressed into the softness of her belly, the heaven between her legs.

“Clara.” It came out a groan, and throbbing head or not, I couldn’t stop what came next. With her wrists locked in one hand, I shredded her shorts and then tore down my pants. “Fuck, Clara.”

I was buried deep inside her in one hard thrust, and the cries from her lips only urged me on. I crushed my mouth to hers, forcing my way inside the way she’d forced herself into my heart. I wanted to soothe her, and if being inside of her was the only way to do that, then that’s what I’d do. I’d taste her. I’d fuck her. I’d wear her out until the beast that lived inside her head finally gave in and accepted that she was mine.

She was mine.

I’d never felt anything more than I felt those three words. I loved Clara with everything in me, and behind every punishing thrust, every brutal kiss, were the words I didn’t know how to say.

I loved her. I wanted her. I needed her beside me. Over me, in me, devouring me the way I wanted to devour her. I wanted to wake up with her in my bed. I wanted to fill her every chance I could get. I wanted to take care of this girl who’d saved my life.

I wanted to make a life with her.

Through her cries, I could just make out her muttered words. “I love you, too. I love you, too.”

It was then that I realized, I’d been telling her that.

That I loved her. That I needed her. That I never wanted to live without her.

I shifted onto my knees, yanked her hips against me until I was plowing into her, until she was wrapping herself around me in a way she never had before.

Because this woman—this woman—was unlike anything I’d ever known.

“Fuck, Clara.” I covered her mouth with mine, feeding on her screams as her slick pussy clenched at the hard length of my dick. I never wanted to stop fucking her, never wanted to end this connection to the only woman in the world who could have won my heart.

But I couldn’t last. Not with the way she felt, not with the love that was overflowing inside my heart. I poured myself into her, shooting hot jets of my cum so far inside her, I had the crazy notion that something would stick.

That I’d filled her in a way I never thought I would.

That’d I’d left a piece of myself in there, and that she would give me one of the greatest gifts in the world.

“Marry me, Clara,” I whispered against her sweaty flesh. “Be mine forever. I want you to be my wife.”

Clara let out a cry, and she gathered my shirt in her fists.

Then she pushed me away.