Текст книги "Even Better"
Автор книги: Skye Warren
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 6 страниц)
Chapter Eleven
It’s the next night that I come awake to the muted clink of pots and pans. West spent most of the day at the Grand. All three of us ate an awkward, chaste dinner last night and went to our respective beds. Now it’s four o’clock in the morning, and I smell butter and bacon.
Blue is more of an early riser than I am, religious about his morning runs, but right now he is fast asleep, expression soft, mouth slightly open. There’s only one person who could be cooking now, and I find him in the kitchen.
West is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, standing in front of the stove. I’m not fully awake yet, my mind a fog, but I know this is strange.
“Nightmare?” I ask softly.
He doesn’t turn around. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Six months ago I would have only been going to sleep at this time, exhausted and sore after working the pole all night.
I eye the stack of pancakes. “You were going to eat those by yourself?”
“I was going to wait until you woke up. Couldn’t sit still though.”
His words filter through my sleepy brain, and I understand that cooking has been something to keep his hands busy, that he’d really gotten up and dressed for some other purpose. Then I see the duffel bag by the door. My heart drops. “You’re leaving.”
He flicks off the stove and turns around, expression somehow both hard and soft, determined and pained. “It’s time.”
“It couldn’t have been time in three hours?”
“Might change my mind in three hours.”
I sink into a chair at the kitchen table and fold my hands. I’m suddenly aware of how naked I am in the slinky, short nightgown. He’s seen even more of me, but now he’s fully dressed—and he’s leaving.
“It’s that important that you go?”
He nods. “I stayed too long already.”
I swallow hard, because I recognize regret. And resolve. “Because of what we did?”
The chair creaks as he sits across from me, his long body folding into place, a temporary respite. “Because I want to do it again. And I shouldn’t want that. Not as much as I do.”
My heart squeezes. “Blue was telling you the truth. I wanted what we did.”
Something flickers behind his eyes. Longing. Anger. “How many times, Hannah? How many times will you have to suck my dick before I stop having nightmares?”
I manage not to flinch. “We could find out.”
That makes him laugh softly. “You are too generous.”
It’s not generosity that makes me this way. I want him to feel better, but I also know this is the only way I can help. Other people have kind words and homemade soup. I have tits and ass. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. This is the only way I’m useful.
“Blue would want you to stay.”
“He’ll understand.” Then he’s standing up, moving to leave.
I move too, matching his steps, blocking him. “Wait.”
I’m not sure why it bothers me that he’s going. I like him, but that’s not really why. It feels like he’s taking something with him. Maybe because if he leaves, if my body isn’t enough comfort, then I’m useless. Or maybe because he knows what it feels like to be useless in this world, to have skills you can’t use and nightmares you can’t share.
“Maybe it’s not a blowjob I need,” he says softly.
He stands as if to be judged, proud and forlorn. He’s strong in every way that counts, in every way I envy, but he’s afraid too. Afraid of what waits for him outside this door. Afraid of what’s inside the door too, wary as he watches me.
Does he think I’ll refuse?
I turn my face up to meet him, letting him capture me in a kiss. He’s gentle with me, one hand cupping my jaw, cradling me, the other at my waist. His tongue runs along the seam of my lips, and I open to him.
He’s softer than any man before him. Softer even than Blue.
When he flicks his tongue against mine, a gentle question.
I pull away. The answer is no.
“You don’t want to wait and say goodbye?” I whisper.
“This is goodbye,” he says, eyes searching mine. I know what he’ll see. The wistful salute to some future girl, one who’s made just for him. She’ll love every soft touch, every sweet word. I can enjoy them in the moment, but I’m made for something else. Someone else.
I was forged in fire, melted and re-formed. I need a man who knows I won’t break. A man who will test me just to prove the point. I need Blue, even if I’m not completely sure he needs me back.
Chapter Twelve
I lock the door behind West and make my way through the living room. Except I’m not alone.
Blue’s body is a large and silent shadow. He’s sitting in the armchair, watching. You can’t see the kitchen or the door from here, but I don’t know how much he heard. Does he know I let West kiss me? Just the night before, he pushed my mouth toward his friend’s cock, but that was sex. The kiss was something else.
Panic tightens my throat. Panic that he won’t understand. Or that he will.
“You’re awake,” I say, my voice small.
He doesn’t say anything.
“West left.”
Blue just watches me.
It makes my heart pound. I feel myself slipping, sliding into that familiar skin. I don’t have heels and lipstick, but that’s okay. I knew about sex long before I learned its trappings, and I show that to him now, fingering the hem of my silk nightgown. I let it catch the faint moonlight from the window, let him pant for the pussy he already knows so well.
He’s a monolith. I can’t see if he’s turned on, if his dick is hard. I can only feel my way around him, moving my body as I pull the silk over my head. Then I’m naked, and I drop to my knees.
It’s safer here.
I crawl to him, shoulders high, ass tilted up. I find his legs bare, coarse hair over hard muscle. I find his cock hard, straining against the fabric of his briefs. The material catches underneath his weight, and for a second I think he’s not going to help me. He’s not going to let me take his cock out. Not going to let me do the only thing I know how to do.
Then he shifts, and I pull his briefs to his thighs. His cock springs up, hard and damp at the top. I grasp him in my hands, sliding both fists up and down before kissing the tip. I’m determined to please him, as determined as West was to leave. I’m not even sure why I’m so desperate for this. What battle am I fighting? It’s like I’m apologizing for his friend leaving.
Like I’m begging Blue not to do the same.
“So much guilt,” he murmurs, voice low and expansive in the dark. “So much shame.”
Heat rises to my cheeks, because he’s right. Guilt and shame and a deep, unrelenting dread. I don’t know how to keep a man. I’m almost afraid to try. The only thing I had going for me was the sex, and now that I’m no longer a stripper, it feels like I’m losing that too.
“I don’t know what to be,” I whisper.
If he could just tell me, if I could just follow his orders, it would be okay. He tells me what to do in the bedroom, but not anywhere else. And I’m floundering. I’m failing, everywhere else.
“I never asked you to change,” he says, stroking my cheek, trailing after a tear.
That’s true. He never did. But how could he want me? I have nothing to offer him. Nothing but a striptease and a hard fuck. Maybe it’s not a blowjob I need.
God, even West knows I’m not enough.
He pushes his hand into my hair and tightens his fist. “You still think I’m going to let you go?” he asks, his voice ominous. “You still think you’ll…what? Do something wrong and I’ll throw you out? Is that what you think?”
It’s what happened at every foster home. They’d use me for the small monthly support payments—or use me for something worse. And when they got tired of me, they’d kick me out again. Why wouldn’t that happen again? “No,” I whisper.
His cock stands hard and proud in front of me. I can almost feel it throbbing. I could make it so good, but he holds me still, my mouth an inch away. I lick my lips, and he groans.
“I’d kill them,” he mutters. “Every single fucker who ever touched you and made you think that’s all you were good for. I did that too, didn’t I?”
I try to shake my head no, but he’s got me tight in his grip. I only succeed in pulling my hair. A small sound of pain escapes me. It makes him hold me harder—he gives me a little shake.
“I’m still doing it,” he murmurs.
Then he’s lifting me, pushing me toward our bedroom with the leash of my hair.
This room is the darkest, the curtains drawn tight, leaving no light at all. The fronts of my thighs hit the bed, and he bends me over, leaving my ass in the air, exposed and vulnerable. The first hit is a surprise, his palm on my sensitive skin. I yelp, and the burn spreads over my ass and between my legs.
“You want someone gentle?” he asks, breath warm against my temple. He’s leaning over me, the ridge of his cock against my back. “Like West? Someone to bring you flowers and worship you?”
“No, no. I need you.”
He laughs shortly. “You need me to mark your beautiful ass? To make you black-and-blue?”
My pussy clenches. “God, yes. Please.”
“Why?” he asks, softer now. Menacing. “Because you deserve to be hurt?”
Yes. But if I tell him that, he’ll stop. It’s not the complete answer though. I deserve what he does to me, but it’s not only pain. It’s pleasure too. It’s the only language of caring I understand, bodies slamming together, flesh on flesh.
The whoosh of air is my only warning. Smack.
“The thing is,” he says, conversational despite the ache in my ass, “I’m not with you because you were a stripper, and I’m sure as hell not with you because you stopped. I’m not with you because you suck my cock like a goddamned dream. I’m not with you because of a damn thing you do.”
Then why? I won’t ask him though. I can’t, especially when he hits me again, stealing my breath. I can only fist the covers and try not to cry.
It doesn’t matter. He hears my unspoken words. He hears everything.
“I’m with you because of what you are.” Smack. “Because you’re beautiful and submissive and kind.” Smack. “And so fucking good.”
I flinch, because that’s the opposite of what I am. I’m the bad girl, the slutty girl. The sexpot with only one purpose in life. And without that purpose, I’m lost.
“You sent me away so I wouldn’t start another fucking fight, to kill someone else when I was too out of control to stop myself.” Smack. “It wouldn’t matter that they deserved it too. I would have been locked up, for good. Life over before I even turned eighteen.” Smack. “Who else would have had the strength to protect me?”
He waits, and I understand he wants an answer. A real answer, spoken aloud. So I give him one, the only answer I know to be true. “I loved you.”
His voice sounds thicker. “You never stopped loving me, you beautiful little fuck. You let me hurt you and hurt you because you’ll take anything I give you, won’t you?”
I whimper. “Please.”
I just want him to fuck me. I want to forget this night ever happened, but I know I never will.
“And then with Mrs. Owens,” he continues. “Taking your clothes off for strangers to keep a roof over her head. You’re the most generous woman I’ve ever met.”
“Stop,” I cry, voice cracking. Generous. It’s what West called me too, but it’s a lie. “I didn’t help her just for her. I needed to be…”
“Needed,” he says, dark and sure. “You need to be needed. Welcome to the goddamn club. That doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you human. And an amazing woman.” He pauses, stroking my cheek. “And one day you’ll make an amazing mother.”
I twist, fighting him now.
He grasps my hands and pins them to the bed. His body covers mine, a hard weight that steals my breath. “You want to be needed, beautiful? You got it, because I need you. I need all your goodness under me, at my mercy. I need to make you cry and then comfort you and then do it all over again.”
I’m crying now. The sheets are damp beneath my cheeks. “You won’t. You’ll get tired of me.”
“I waited for you. I didn’t fuck anyone else. I could watch them with West, I could jack myself off, but I couldn’t touch them. Do you think that was easy?”
“No,” I whimper, because he’s hurting me. With his hands and his cock and his words.
He’s hurting me.
“Well, it was,” he says, almost a growl. “It was easy as hell not to touch another girl. I tried, goddamn you. I wanted to be over you, but I couldn’t. Even when I hated you, when I fucking fooled myself, I didn’t want anyone but you.”
“Me too,” I whisper into the bed. I don’t know if he can hear me. I didn’t know if he could hear me across the miles, across the years. Now our bodies are connected in the most intimate way, our lives intertwined.
“I know.” His voice is soft now. “And I’ll never get tired of you. I never could get tired of you.”
“Blue,” I say. Just that. Blue.
He turns me over so I’m face-up on the bed. At the touch of his hand my legs fall open. He stops and stares between my legs, fingers playing in my folds. “No, I could never get tired of this. I could never stop wanting you. Never stop needing you.”
“Come inside me,” I beg. I need that closeness after what he told me. He’s baring his soul, but he’s holding back too. He’s keeping himself apart, almost aloof as his thumb flicks my clit.
“You’re worried you might do something wrong, but God, beautiful. I’m the one doing wrong every time I fuck you. I’m the one hurting you, making you cry. I’m the one who needs to do that. What if you get tired of that? Jesus, you should be tired of that.”
I don’t have the words to explain how it feels, how the lash of his palm is more soothing than a hug, how the tears he makes me cry are all the ones I never could as the tossed around nobody, a throwaway girl. I don’t have the words to explain that when he holds me down, it feels like he’ll hold me forever. “West could never be what I need,” I say. “He could never hurt me. He doesn’t think I can take it.”
“He thinks I’m too rough with you.”
My eyes widen in the dark. “He told you that?”
“He didn’t have to. We know each other well, even if we don’t always agree. He probably asked you to go with him. Didn’t he?”
Not with words. But that kiss… “I never would have.”
Blue leans down and lines his cock against my cunt. “I wouldn’t have let you go.”
A push of hips and then he’s invading me, inside me, so deep I gasp and squirm away. Large hands hold me down, keeping me in place as he forces the rest of him in.
“Too much,” I gasp. Too fast.
“You can take it,” Blue says darkly, his voice rough with pleasure. “He doesn’t have any fucking clue how much you can take. Sometimes I think you don’t either.”
He pulls out and thrusts back inside, making me whimper. My sounds just spur him on. He fucks me harder and faster until the world is a shadowy blur. I let it overtake me, the passion and the pain. He is the water, and I’m the ocean floor, held down by his weight, made soft with his motion, finding peace in the riotous waves above me.
Chapter Thirteen
I fall into a dreamless sleep after Blue collapses on top of me. I know I have things to worry about, things that might break us, things that break me, but I let them drift away under his comforting weight. Comforting, because I know I can’t get away. Because I know he won’t let me go.
When I wake up, Blue is already awake—and watching me.
“Morning,” I say sleepily.
His lips quirk up. “It’s afternoon.”
I blink. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Seemed like I might be needed at home.”
I sit up in dismay. “I don’t want you to feel like you need to stay here because of…whatever. Because of my insecurity. You should be able to do what you want to and—”
“This is what I want, beautiful. You are what I want.”
I’m not wholly satisfied, but I sigh in defeat anyway. The truth is I’m beyond grateful to find him here, solid and loving beside me. And naked. I swing my leg over and straddle him.
He regards me from beneath dark lashes, his expression implacable. “What are you doing?”
A shrug. “You always call me beautiful.”
“Because you are.”
I trace a finger down the center of his chest, the valley that leads to his abs—and lower. “You’re beautiful too, you know that?”
He looks amused. “That so?”
My hands are trembling as they slide over his hips, the same hips that are spreading my knees wide. That’s what he does to me—he opens me up, when I didn’t think I could open up to anyone. When I didn’t think I deserved it or that I was even capable of it. He forced his way in, his love like a goddamn battering ram.
“Beautiful,” I say, aiming for confident. He doesn’t comment on the fact that my voice is barely a breath. Maybe because I lean down and kiss him, right on a dark, flat nipple. He sucks in a breath, and I work my way over the ridges of his abs. “Beautiful,” I whisper without a sound.
His cock is straining for attention, already hard and thick and standing straight up. It’s demanding my attention, but I ignore the command, turning instead to his muscled thighs, working my way inward. He shifts slightly, spreading his legs so I can reach his balls. I lick and tease him until he’s groaning with frustration. “Suck me,” he says, his voice hard. His fist is hard too, where he clasps my shoulder.
I pull away. “Blue.”
His eyes are dark. They promise retribution.
It makes me smile, because I want him to pay me back. I want him to turn the tables. Not yet, not yet. “You’re beautiful, Blue,” I tell him, somber now. “And I love you.”
His eyes narrow. “And?”
“And…I don’t want to have your baby.”
Complete stillness. Not a sound. Oh shit.
“Not yet,” I add quickly. “I do want to start a family with you. Later. I mean, we are a family, you and me, and—”
He stops me with two fingers to my lips. I fall silent.
“You think I’m going to get mad at you,” he says slowly, and it’s not a question. He’s processing, and I’m tense. Because yes, I do think he’s going to get mad. How could he not, when he’s asking me to start a family with him and I’m saying no?
I’m halfway mad at myself for turning that down, but not enough to stop. It’s not enough that Blue thinks I’m generous, that he thinks I’ll make a great mother. I need to find myself, who I am, before I can lose myself to motherhood. I owe that to Blue and to our future child—and to myself.
“And you think,” he continues softly, “that if you say no to something, I’m going to leave?”
“You wouldn’t be the one leaving.”
“No,” he says, comprehending. “You would. And you’ve been kicked out about enough times to get damn tired of it.”
“I’m terrified of it,” I whisper. “It’s not just another house to me. You’re not just another guy.”
“I’m glad to hear that much, because you’re damn sure not just another girl. You’re it. You’ve been it since the goddamn beginning, and I’ll never stop kicking my own ass for walking away.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” I protest.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree. Maybe it got out of hand at the end, but I should have known someone was hurting you. I should have protected you, and there’s not a damn thing you can tell me that will make it untrue.”
I sigh, leaning into him, hands on his chest. Even with my fingers spread wide, they don’t reach all the way to the outside. He’s broad, an island of man. I’m stranded on him, and I never want to leave. “Then you aren’t mad?”
“No, beautiful. I’m mad at myself. Mad at every asshole who ever used and hurt you. Mad that I didn’t make it clear that you could stay on those birth control pills just as long as you want. Forever if you want. Thinking about your belly growing round with my seed makes me hot.”
“I noticed,” I say drily.
“And it will keep on making me hot as long as we talk about it. Or if it’s stressing you out too much, we won’t talk about it. Okay?” He taps my clit, making me jolt. “No more fucking this sweet pussy bareback, talking about my come inside you.”
My face heats. I was a stripper, for God’s sake, but he still has the power to make me blush. “We could maybe do that a little.”
“Absolutely not,” he says, mock sternly. “No more bending you over, forcing my fat cock inside you until you milk me dry, your little cunt clamping down on me, sucking my come deep.”
His words are so coarse. They make me run hot and then cold, and then hot all over again. “Blue,” I moan.
He flips me over, spreading me wide. “And I will definitely not ever,” he says, sliding inside me to the hilt, “never ever, stay home from work just to fuck you all day.”
I groan. “You don’t play fair.”
“That’s right.” He pulls out, and I let loose a sound of frustration. It just makes him laugh, and he moves down my body, placing a kiss on my nipple, on my stomach. He drops kisses down my thighs in a clear parallel to what I did to him, moving inward. The next place for him to go is between my legs.
A shiver racks my body. I’m too sensitive. Too open. “No,” I say, my voice breaking.
His eyes meet mine across my body. “Beautiful,” he murmurs before pressing his lips to my sex. He tells me everything would be okay with every swipe of his tongue. He promises me forever with every graze of his teeth. And for once, I believe him.
For once, I believe I’m enough.
