Crave

Glamouring had hidden the scars that Leah had left on his body when she’d failed to put an end to the Maddox line (like she wasn’t the rotten fruit hanging from the lowest branch of that family tree), but it was the thick skin he’d had to develop after that hid the rest of him. At times it felt paper thin, pared down so there was only the thinnest of barriers between him and the rest of the world. Destiny’s hands had covered him then, protecting him the way he did her, but they’d also clawed at him, her hurt clawing its way straight through to the part of him that would scar again.

All that the people in this place saw were the meatiest parts of it. Slabs of muscle and money that made him one of them instead of the thing they would’ve scraped off the sole of their Tom Ford loafers. They schmoozed him hoping for a taste of it, leaving the cloying scent of their desperation behind. Before Mystic Falls he’d have bathed in it, and the blood that would’ve run from the necks of those he’d picked out afterwards. What he’d wanted taken from them, used for the sort of good they wouldn’t have seen if it was tickling their noses like the champagne bubbles. There weren’t gonna be any bodies left in shallow graves around the edges of the parking lot tonight though (age old sacrifices to bless the ground he owned). He’d just slip his skin when the last guests were shown out (probably forcibly since people like this never knew what to go home), the thinnest parts of him left to retreat into the home he’d made with Destiny up at the pinnacle of all of this.

Feeling some patches already turning opaque, tissue paper thin – a bad combination if Catia’s scalpel tongued sister appeared – he’d tried to find his exit away from that feeling. She was glowing in the crowd, his Tinkerbell surrounded by the acolytes of her newspaper staff. Thankfully Hart wasn’t there, he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to resist shattering the champagne glass in his face if he had been.

Grey breathed a sigh of relief as Destiny melted into him, shields slithering into place like shadows around him, the noise – including Mikayla’s stiletto sharp laugh – dimming with her so close. His smile remained up, aimed at the group until they were out of sight and then he could let it down, his face settling into tired lines only Destiny could see. Dipping his head, he dragged his lips over the delicate arc of one exposed collarbone as Destiny’s arms wrapped around his shoulders. Her fingers were light on his jaw as his head rose again, tracing those lines with the sort of tenderness that had those shields thin enough to see every feeling through like a window to the core of him.

The corners of his mouth lifted, her reassurance appreciated, even if he would’ve dragged her away anyway. ”I’m sure they expected it at some point.” They all had to be familiar with his appearances at the newspaper office now, each one hopefully needling at Hart until he choked on frustration he couldn’t vent on the printed page.

This close up he missed the way Destiny’s attention had flicked awy from him, finding something over his shoulder to focus on. He stiffened, suddenly seeing more than the painted lips he planned on kissing bare later, when it was just the two of them again (well, four with Flower and Berlioz). Grey straightened up faintly, not wanting to turn and look when he felt brittle enough to snap in a place where he could ill afford it. ”Which one?” he asked dryly. The apology spilt out a second before the explanation. ”Baskerville.” His voice flattened even further. She was a Baskerville of the Baskervilles, the ones who’d first settled Virginia. All those generations later they still weren’t letting people forget it.

”No!” There was a sharp edge to his voice that hadn’t been in Destiny’s, but her question had cut all the same. He let out a long breath, his brows furrowing. Her apology whispered over his lips a moment before her mouth did, a ghost of a touch that did little to bleed off the sudden tension. Lifting a hand, he gripped her jaw lightly to lift her eyes back to his. ”You don’t have to be jealous of her. I never would’ve touched her. I never will now. Why would I when I’ve got you?” Doubts crept in though, insidious voices in your ear that it was hard to block out when so much had already gone wrong.

Glancing over his shoulder again, Grey cursed under his breath. He could see Mikayla working her way in this direction, with the determination of an idiot who couldn’t see what was right under her nose. Dropping his hand to peel one of Destiny’s from around his shoulders, Grey started away down the hallway. Any of the rooms available for guest use had been left with the doors open, he went through one that was closed, shutting it pointedly behind him before he flicked the lock. He huffed out a breath as he backed Destiny towards the long table that stretched down the middle of the meeting room. His hands were already slipping down to cradle her hips. ”You’re the only one,” he said hoarsely. ”Everybody else out there could go up in a puff of smoke and I wouldn’t care. This is my hotel, my home, and you’re the only woman who’s ever mattered. You understand?” His eyes were glittering bright as he kissed her, this time far less ephemeral. A hot press of lips, his tongue already parting them to slip inside, to claim her.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 971

Thick, dark hair, pretty blue eyes and a fat wallet. Mikayla hadn’t seen anything more in Grey Maddox than what she’d wanted to see. Her cloyingly sweet smile would’ve melted away the moment he’d hit her, that botoxed face going as slack as it could. The newspapers would’ve been packed with stories about her disappearance, the party girl finally finding the trouble she’d courted for years. It wouldn’t have given him an ounce of power to do it, but when your patience was rubbed that thin, it stopped mattering.

With Destiny she’d seen into him from the start. Maybe the view was obscured sometimes, what he felt hidden behind the granite walls he’d spent years building up to stop anybody from tearing him apart again, not even the words slipping past them. Hers were the hands on those blocks, the ones that could tear them down and hold him together all at one time. He tried to do the same, fingers, lips, promises trailed over the scars that life had left on her. A balm for the uncertainty and fear that could hollow both of them. It wasn’t jealousy that had drawn her attention to Mikayla, it was doubt in herself, those deep stamped fears – some of which he’d caused – biting at the back of her mind.

The blonde on the night they’d lost Petyr had been the last he’d ever put above her again. He’d burn every bridge he had in this place to make sure she knew it. Let the assholes drink the place dry and grumble about their host’s rudeness. There were always more to fill the space they’d leave if they turned their back on him. There would never be another Destiny.

His lips curved up into one of those rare smiles as she laughed in the tight confines of the hallway. Light spilled from the sound the same way it did from her smile, filling him, heating him from the inside to stoke the need he always had for her. Without the blip of Mikayla he might’ve continued to stoke it all night, letting it pour into Destiny once they shut the party down and slipped back upstairs. That wasn’t the way it was ending through.

Destiny’s smile shone in the dim light, her hands curling around his arms as he guided her across the room. His Tinkerbell, happy again, thank God. ”Don’t ever forget what you are to me,” he whispered hoarsely. The fabric of her dress crinkled against his fingers, smooth and cool, a contrast to the warmth of the skin he found beneath as he palmed her thighs. Her mouth was hot under his, need growing supernova bright in all the spots where they connected.

Breathing deeply, each exhalation ragged, Grey looked down at her as she leaned back. His hands slid further under her thighs, drawing her hips against him so she could feel what she did to him – what only she could do to him. ”I love you too,” he managed hoarsely, his teeth nipping lightly at her lower lip before she started to try and cut him off.

Dark brows rose, amusement pulling at his mouth. Had she missed him saying this was his place? ”We can. They can’t tell me what to do here. Let them wait, they can peel their lips off of my arse for a while and kiss each other’s instead. The only person in here I care about is you.” And he hadn’t said it enough. He needed to. No holding the words back anymore. She was going to hear them echoing in her ears and in her heart when they were done and every day from them on out.

Dragging his lips down to the open neck of her dress, Grey pressed a kiss into the notch of her collarbones, then down to the shadowed line between her breasts. Words were pressed into the soft, milky skin plumped up by the red silk. ”You’re all I can think about when I’m with them,” he panted hoarsely. ”Your taste. Your scent. The little gasps you take right before I drive you over the edge. I sit in those meetings and I don’t hear a word they say because it’s always how much I need you. Do you think about me right here? Between your thighs? On my knees for you?”

The carpet was soft against his knees as he sank down to them. Destiny’s dress was pushed up her thighs high enough for him to trail his mouth from her knee up to the spot where his hands gripped her thighs. One let go, his mouth taking its spot as he dug into the pocket of his pants. ”It’s where I’ll always be for you. Forever, Destiny. I’ll never stop loving you, I’ll never stop needing you so much I can barely breathe. Will you have me? Destiny, will you give me this lifetime and all of the ones that came after?”

He hadn’t planned on saying the words tonight, but they’d been there in his mind for months. Before he’d come home to find she’d gone against him, before they’d made up, before Leah had stolen away the light that had filled the centre of their life. From the moment he’d realised that he couldn’t imagine his life without her. When she was safe finally, when Leah was dead and the druid was gone, but there was no guarantee of that. Now was the time to flip open the box he drawn out, to let the light reflect off of the ring he’d bought – the centre stone for Petyr, the smaller ones either side for the two of them, orbiting around the gift that they hadn’t entirely lost, not even now. As long as he had Destiny, he had everything, including their son.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 970

The Grey Haven couldn’t have been further from the shitty little cottage he’d grown up in. Like he’d dragged himself up from the hovel, the same way he had from that fucking lane and the crumpled body. Each step up another fuck you to the pack and the druids lurking out there, waiting to steal everything away from him. Greyson Maddox would not go the same way his father had. Madness wouldn’t rot his mind or steal all he had left from him before it finally killed him.

In the end its top floor had become their sanctuary. Business humming along beneath them, all the rich, empty headed assholes completely unaware of what had come on here, not feeling an ounce of the grief that had wrapped them up like a shroud. If it came to it he’d have given it all up, thrown every single one of them out and locked the doors, turning it a monument for their son, one that he and Destiny would grow old in. Together.

God, she didn’t know yet had how that always would hit, what it meant. Grey felt it like a chain, pulling tight between his heart and the box in his pocket. There’d been so many moments when it felt like their pasts and their grief would tear them so far apart they would never find their way back to here. He could stretch out a hand, trying to stop Destiny from drifting away from, but it wasn’t enough. They had to work for it, he had to say the words that would erase her fears and make it clear that there was nobody more important than her and never would be.

Later the words would be pressed where he had been heading, the promise to stamp their love into every inch of his hotel not just hot air, but for now he had to say them aloud. The taste of her skin was still on his lips as they formed the words, her fingers in his hair, as though he’d need to be anchored there. ”I can’t live without you,” he added hoarsely as her other hand came up to cover her mouth, tear filled eyes meeting his – admittedly a little misty. ”I should have done this before, made it clear how my entire future is you.” How it would’ve been them if it wasn’t for Leah trying to carve away his heart bit by bit since she’d missed tearing it out that first time. Fear had locked the words in his throat then, but not now.

Grey swallowed hard, Destiny’s silence making it harder and harder to swallow. It felt as though a bubble was expanding there, threatening to send more words, pleas out, anything to hear the words he desperately wanted her to say. Whatever the future held, he could only face it with her. Destiny’s light now the centre of his life, holding all of that darkness at bay.

Relief spilled out on a watery breath. Grey turned his head as Destiny’s hand slipped down to settle on his face, pressing his lips against her wrist. ”I love you too,” he breathed. Nothing could ever change that. ”Whatever comes we handle it together. Mr and Mrs Maddox.” His grin was back, skimming over Destiny’s knuckles before the ring was slipped onto her finger.

”Hey,” he breathed softly as she threw herself into him. His arms caught her around the waist, drawing her into him as she kissed him. Grey sensed all the emotion that poured from it, feeling drunk on it by the time he dragged his mouth from hers, up to her temple. He chuckled into that tender skin before he pressed a kiss there too. ”Tonight wasn’t all about this, but when I brought you in here it felt like the right time. We’ll celebrate, on our own, with the people who mean something to us. Not all of them.” They still didn’t matter, even if they’d pretend to when they went out there that they did.

His mouth found her throat again, capturing her pulse against his lips. Eventually one of them would come looking for them, but they could wait on the other side of that door for an eternity. He had his own celebrations going on, the consummation that was meant to come after the next ring was added to Destiny’s left hand. The physical version of what they’d already said to one another. A joining of hearts, of bodies, a promise made to the future they’d have together. Starting it, Grey pressed a kiss over Destiny’s heart.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 767