With the Colonel’s Help: A Pride and Prejudice Variation

Wrecked.

Completely fuckin’ wrecked.

And I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do about it. How to move on from here. How to stop the spiral that Raven and I had fallen into. Madness took over any time I looked at her precious face.

This fiery temptress with all that soft vulnerability underneath.

And I kept marring it. Tainting it at every turn. Should have known when I brought her here that I was going to take that treacherous path. That everything was going to change, and there’d be no keeping myself from that trajectory.

But they say trauma either brings people together or forces them apart. It’d been true back then, in those days when I’d been skating that line and we’d smacked heart first into a grief so severe that we’d been fractured by it.

It’d been a glaring awakening. A reminder of who I was. A monster who didn’t deserve someone like Raven Tayte. So I’d put up every barrier that could be fabricated all while still being the glutton who’d kept her near.

Close but out of reach because there was no way I could fully cut her off.

And there I was, all these years later, scooping her off the floor and into my arms.

God, she felt good. All that bare flesh tucked up against mine. Her warmth saturating my skin and sinking way down deep into my soul.

I was flooded in a wash of satisfaction.

In a feeling of contentment while tumult loomed around us.

Of course, she went all sass when I started carrying her toward the steps.

“Otto Hudson, what do you think you’re doing?”

I arched a brow at her. “What does it look like? Carrying you.”

She knitted that pretty face into a scowl. “Um, yes, I realize you are carrying me, but the question is why on earth you think it’s a good idea to do it after you’ve just been shot!”

The last part she shrieked.

“You didn’t seem to mind so much when I was carrying you to the worktable to give you an orgasm.”

She gasped a choked sound before she tossed out, “Temporary insanity. I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions.”

God knew, I was going to be held responsible for mine. Letting myself go astray, touching her the way I had, though I was having a damned hard time worrying about the consequences right then.

“Now put me down, you burly bear, before you bust a stitch, and when you do, my brother is going to ask if you were following the doctor’s orders, and I’m going to have to tell him the circumstances. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

If she were standing, she would have been tapping a stilettoed toe.

A chuckle rolled out of me.

“You’re going to tell your brother, huh?” I asked as I started up the stairs, taunting her a little.

Honestly, I barely noticed the wound. My body was still riding that Raven Tayte high. No pain in sight. This woman was the ultimate balm.

“Okay, fine, no, I’m absolutely not going to tell him that because the whole point here is to keep you healthy and safe and not dead.” She bugged her eyes out at me.

“Would deserve it,” I told her, my voice going gruff and some of the lightness wilting on my tongue.

Raven stopped struggling in my hold as I climbed the stairs. Two of us naked and exposed. Delving into a place we weren’t supposed to go. Somehow going there felt inevitable, anyway.

“How can you say that, Otto? How can you say that after everything you’ve done for me? After all the times you’ve been there for me? After you were just shot because of me?”

Her words slanted in emphasis.

“Told you I’d stand in front of every bullet if it meant keeping you safe.”

Problem was, I would likely have a million others coming at me. The things I was doing risky. Hazardous and grave.noveldrama

Both with the beasts I had sworn to destroy and the wedge I was driving between me and my club.

I’d pretty much spat in the face of every oath I’d ever made, and the greatest one of them was currently in my arms.

“And how could that ever make you wrong for me?” she asked.

“You already know the answer to that, Raven. You know why we can’t do this.”

She wiggled in my arms, her bare ass brushing my dick that still stood at half-mast.

“Based on what just happened between us, I’m pretty sure we can.”

A groan got free.

When I got to the top of the landing, I shifted so I could turn the knob and edged open the door, then I carried her across the great room and up into my bedroom. I strode straight for the shower in the en suite bathroom, and I balanced her in one arm as I reached in and turned the faucet to high.

While it heated, I turned and sat her on the counter. I stepped back from her, though I still was standing between her thighs.

Her pussy was right there, still emitting heat.

My cock jolted, hungry to just give in and fully take her over.

I brushed back the matted hair from her face before I set my palm on her cheek, staring down at the beauty that was this girl.

The goodness.

The kindness.

The belief.

My moonflower that had forever shined in the night.

I was terrified that I might be the one to stamp it out.

“I need to know how you’re feeling. If I pushed you too far?”

Understanding dawned on her features, and her hand came up to cover mine as she leaned deeper into my touch. “No, Otto. I wasn’t afraid. I know you would never hurt me. Know that you never could hurt me. I wanted it. I want it. I want to feel you in every way.”

“Afraid I can’t give you what you’re looking for, Raven. Can’t give you what I see playing in your eyes.”

I couldn’t give her forever, and that’s the one thing she deserved. And if I took any more of her? I was never going to want to let her go.

She’d get so far under my skin there would be no way to get her out, not that she hadn’t been there all along. Winding and weaving into me.

Body, spirit, and soul.

Disbelief shot from her mouth, and her eyes pinched at the corners as she lifted her chin. “Because you don’t want to, Otto? Because you really don’t see me the way I see you? Or because you’re the one who’s afraid?”

Fuck.

She just laid it out.

I took her chin between my thumb and index finger and angled in close. “Because I’m no good, Raven. Because you don’t know who I really am. Because you’d be disgusted if you knew.”

Because I’d failed my sister, and I’d be damned if I failed her, too.

“Because yes, Raven, I’m terrified of hurting you.”

Surprised dread rippled through her features, and that sexpot mouth dropped open a fraction as her attention flicked all over my face. I knew she was searching around for something to say, for an answer, for a rebuttal, so I cut her off before we could let this spiral any farther than it already had.

“Now let’s get you in the shower and clean you up, then I’m going to take you to Moonflower and I’m gonna stand outside and watch over you the way I was meant to do, and we’re going to forget what happened between us last night and this morning.”

What fuckin’ bullshit.

There was no forgetting Raven Tayte because no matter how painful it was, this woman was carved on my heart and written in my soul.