Page 140 of Bittersweet & Strange

“Last time—oh God—when I didn’t…” His words break apart between breaths. “Mm, Rhys, my God—it didn’t end well.”

I slam into him, and he screams, his body jolting upward before I do it again, and again, and again. My hand doesn’t stop moving, each steady stroke driving him closer.

His entire body suddenly freezes before he comes hard, his back arching off the ground as cum shoots across his front. I keep going, jerking him until he’s begging me to stop and every last drop coats my fingers.

Then I bring my hand to his mouth. “Lick it off.”

His lips close around my fingers, his tongue swirling over them. I watch him until his breathing finally begins to settle.

There was a time when Boone fought with everything he had to get away from this castle. He ran from me, begged me to let him go, and hated me when I refused. Eventually, despite every instinct demanding otherwise, I opened the doors and gave him the freedom he had fought so hard for.

He used that freedom to come back to me.

Not because this place had stopped being a prison or because he had forgotten what I was capable of. He came back knowing exactly who I was. Somewhere between fighting to escape these walls and finding his way back to them, something changed.

Now, when Boone calls this place home, I know exactly what that word cost us both.

My home.

His home.

Ours.

I bend over him and kiss his forehead. Boone’s arms curl around me and hold me close, neither of us in any hurry to move. Beyond the greenhouse glass, the mountain stretches endlessly around us, separating us from a world I spent most of my life avoiding. Inside, everything Boone planted continues to grow.

The basil. The tomatoes. The fucking cherry tree.

He brought life into a place that had been quiet for so long I’d forgotten it was ever supposed to sound any different. He fills empty rooms with his footsteps, leaves things where they don’t belong, and gives me someone to search for whenever the castle becomes too still.

The village can keep its stories about the Beast in the mountain.

Let them whisper about the castle hidden beyond the trees and the man who lives behind its gates. Let them turn me into whatever creature makes their stories more interesting.

I have no intention of correcting that one.

Because Boone knows exactly what I am. He knows what waits for him behind these walls and how fiercely I will keep him now that he has chosen to stay. Somehow, none of it frightens him away anymore.

He chose the castle.

Knowing a beast lived inside.

And he came home anyway.