Текст книги "A Pound of Flesh"

Автор книги: Sophie Jackson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

26

The clouds had rolled in dark and thunderous by the time Carter and Kat arrived back at the house. The pair of them ran and shouted, laughing curses when the heavens opened above them. A flash of lightning made Kat squeal when they finally made it inside, making Carter laugh. Kat flipped him off and started removing her soaked clothes while her hair dripped down her face.

Disappearing up the stairs to change, Carter followed her, once he’d lit the large fire in the living room, with worry in every step. She hadn’t been herself since they’d left the convention. Carter wasn’t the most knowledgeable man in terms of women’s moods, but something was definitely up.

He thought back, trying to remember when she’d become so quiet, distant. Was it what he’d told her about Max and his past? Was she upset about the whole introducing-her-as-a-“friend” thing?

With his eyes fixed on the bathroom door where she was changing, he pulled off his jeans and T-shirt, and, after he’d rubbed his head dry with a towel, settled for his trusty gray sweats and a dark blue NYPD hoodie. Oh, the irony.

Kat reappeared moments later and dropped her wet clothes into a bag. “Ben texted. The meeting went well. That stuff you gave him about Austin’s deals with Casari worked like a charm, he said.”

“Of course it did. Even Austin isn’t immune to a little blackmail.”

Kat shook her head and put her hands on her hips. Her face flushed with blatant annoyance. She looked hot as hell. “I can’t believe Beth tried to set me up with him. He’s far more of a criminal than you are, and then she has the audacity to talk shit about you and—”

“Hey.” Fuck that shit. Carter didn’t want to waste one more minute thinking about Austin Ford. “Kat, it’s done, okay?” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms.

“It makes me so mad.”

“I know. It makes me mad, too. But he’s not worth it.”

Kat huffed but nodded.

“So listen,” he continued. “I’ve lit the fire in the living room, and I have a grotesquely large selection of DVDs. How about we watch TV, get warm, and forget about that asshole, huh?”

Her smile was small. “That sounds good.”

Frowning, he wound his arms around her waist. “Is anything else bothering you?”

She buried her nose in his neck, hiding her face. “No.”

Carter wasn’t convinced. Nevertheless, he halted the desire to push her further. He didn’t like it, but what choice was there? He’d trusted her enough to open up; he had to be patient for her to do the same.

* * *

Back downstairs, Carter poured some red wine, while Kat stood by the glass doors watching the formidable clouds roll over the sea. The sky was pitch-black.

“I love listening to the rain when I’m nice and warm inside,” she said quietly as thunder rumbled above them.

Carter handed her a glass. “Me too,” he admitted, sipping his drink. “Gran and I would do that a lot here.”

“Yeah? Dad and I did, too.”

After grabbing a shitload of snacks from the kitchen, Kat took her seat on the sofa while Carter fought with the DVD player. Kat laughed when he held up the disc case to show her what they’d be watching. Beetlejuice.

“I can’t believe you have that!” she exclaimed. He sat down and lifted her legs onto his lap. “Hey, Carter, 1988 called, they want their movie back.”

“It’s awesome,” he deadpanned, and hit play on the remote. “Shut up.”

Carter was quickly engrossed in the movie, but all Kat could do was watch him. She could see the child inside him with each snort of laughter. He seemed so relaxed, and never once removed his hand from her knee, circling it with the pad of his thumb while he drank, ate, and smoked with the other.

The connection was wonderful and allowed Kat to reflect on the day they’d shared. Discovering that he had gone to prison for his friend had left Kat reeling. He was loyal and selfless and so much more than she had ever imagined. His trust and honesty with her was the most beautiful thing, and her heart ached to tell him so. She let her eyes wander down Carter’s strong profile, feeling heavy with overwhelming emotion.

“What are you thinking so hard about over there?” Carter asked, his gaze still stuck on the TV.

“Nothin’,” she answered, grabbing a handful of Pringles.

“Liar.” He adjusted himself in his seat, facing her. “I told you before, you’re shitty at that. What’s up?”

Kat shook her head, which only made Carter smile wider. “I have ways of making you talk, you know,” he threatened with a wicked glint in his eyes.

He placed his wineglass on the side table and moved like a predator up onto his knees, pushing her legs apart and moving her hoodie up her stomach to her chest. With a smirk, he placed a tender kiss above her belly button. Kat ran her right hand across the velvet texture of his head. His hands came up her sides and caressed slowly, his rough fingers handling her as though she was breakable. Her eyes drifted shut.

“I have so much I want to say to you,” Kat confessed with a long breath.

Carter hummed into her belly. “So much so that you’ll tell me what the hell has been bugging you since we came back?”

Kat licked her lips watching him shift up her body, placing kisses where he moved.

“Kat,” he groaned in frustration, moving up so he was lying between her legs with his forearms at either side of her head. His face pinched. “Did you not enjoy today?”

“Of course!” Kat cried. “It was fantastic. I had so much fun. I loved being with you. I—”

Carter played with the tips of her hair splayed out over the sofa cushions. “Is it what I said to Petey about you being my friend?” He grimaced.

Kat chuckled. “No. Why?”

“Because it sounded fucking ridiculous. I was caught off guard,” he replied, and then muttered into her neck, “You have to know you’re so much more than that to me.”

Kat’s heart pounded. She placed her hands on his face and pulled his mouth to hers. “Take off your top,” she said firmly. “I want to feel you.”

Carter whipped the thing off over his head immediately and watched in awe when she, too, removed her hoodie, leaving her bare. She oozed sexiness, and the color of her alabaster skin against the dim lighting made him want to lick her from head to toe.

“Sit up,” she rasped.

He obeyed, slack-jawed, as Kat straddled his waist and assaulted his mouth. He moaned. The sensation of her nakedness against him was incredible. Her nipples shifted, etching his skin with invisible lines of ownership, just as her mouth declared possession with every flick of her tongue and suck of her lips. His hands delved into her hair, gripping her close.

“God, Carter,” she breathed, sending sparks of lust over his skin. “I want to show you. I want—”

She stood suddenly, leaving Carter’s hands holding nothing but air, and pushed her pants to the floor so they pooled around her feet. Carter whimpered, recognizing the look on her face, the dark hunger in her eyes. She bent to his ear and brushed his lobe with her tongue. His fingers moved between her legs.

“No teasing,” she whispered, pushing him away. “I need you too much.”

Thank Christ.

He pulled his cock from his sweats, locked his hands around her hips, making her straddle him, and pulled her down, slipping into her easily. They gasped in unison as the lights flickered with the heavy roll of the storm. Holding his breath, Carter moved slow and deep, dragging a moan from her throat while she clutched his shoulders and rocked over him. He cupped her cheek, grunting when their lips met. She tasted of wine and desire.

A loud clap of thunder shook the house.

Kat pushed down, taking him in with small thrusts and slow rotations of her pelvis, surrounding him while he slid his palms down the curves of her waist, around to the luscious swell of her ass.

She was a fucking vision. She moved over him, in control, greedy, dominating, and hard, leaving him breathless. He’d never seen her this way before. There was something in her eyes, a passion, that made his heart race and his hips jerk, and when their mouths slid together, it grew hotter and more powerful. The fervor with which she fucked him pulled every conceivable emotion to the surface. She was letting go in a way he’d never seen, wild and unashamed.

It was magnificent.

It was different.

The two of them together was different. It was as raw, hot, and mind-blowing as always, but the desperation between them was so thick, Carter could almost taste it. As though reading his thoughts, Kat rode him harder, scoring his flesh with her nails, arching her back, taking him deeper, making his entire body burst into flames.

“So fucking good,” he told her, his voice hoarse. “Don’t stop. Take it all.”

He continued to ramble incoherently, begging her as he wrapped his arms around her back and drove up, hard. She was sensational with her head thrown back, crying out, her neck elongated. His orgasm built, heavy between his legs, stretching to his stomach, which tensed and relaxed in microspasms as they fucked.

“Can you feel it?” she gasped. She moved harder, making Carter’s eyes roll. He pressed his lips to her damp shoulder, nodding, growling. “It’s us. It’s you and me.”

He’d tried to hold his orgasm off, but her words and the way in which her body held him were making every attempt futile. Each one uttered tore him apart in brilliant ways. Carter licked her jaw, clutching her hair in his fists, pleasure vibrating through every vein, every organ.

She slammed down again, rough, eager.

Fuck. Carter lost himself to the sensations her body stirred up, reveling in her, in what she gave him.

The wetness, the heat, the pounding heart almost bursting from his chest.

The gasps, the moans, the filthy words, the orgasm teetering on the brink of oblivion.

And then she was calling out for him, gripping him, clenching around him.

His hips drove upward. “Come with me.”

Her mouth chased his, hungry and wet, as her arms embraced his neck. She whimpered and gasped for air. “Now. Now. Oh.”

When all his energy started to push down into his groin, Carter fell back, watching in breathless wonder as Kat continued to pull it from him. She lifted and fell, she demanded and begged, she swiveled and tightened, she thrust and grasped until, with a furious bellow, Carter shattered into her. Carter’s neck corded as his orgasm blasted through him like a rocket and smothered his entire body in white heat, her name leaving his lips with an agonized moan.

Bright lights blinded him, while his body twitched and shuddered beneath her. He held tightly, praying she would secure him to the earth and keep his heart from stopping altogether. She squeezed around him, milking him. He threw back his head with a cry of almost painful pleasure. “Sweet Jesus!”

“Wes,” she screamed out, coming apart, bucking, and writhing in his lap. “Wes. Oh God. Oh God. I love you!”

With a giant flash of lightning and a deafening clap of thunder, the room was plunged into darkness.

27

As they came to a gradual stop, still wrapped around each other, their heavy, labored breaths filled the living room, illuminated only by the still roaring log fire. Carter’s eyes opened slowly as Kat’s words rang around them.

Like a statue, Kat remained on his lap. Her knotted arms stayed around his neck with her face pressed against his. Carter’s brain moved at a thousand miles a minute, and he was damn sure he could feel her heart pounding in time with his.

He moved his thumb minutely, touching the delightful dimples at the bottom of her back, and took a deep breath. “Peach—”

“Shhh,” she interrupted in a quiet, anxious voice. He could feel her shaking her head next to his. “Just. Shhh. Don’t say anything.” He made to move his head so he could look at her, but she held him fast. “Don’t move. Please.”

Confused, he continued to hold her in the same position, cocooned in her warmth. He exhaled raggedly in aggravation when she kept silent and still. Why the hell was she so quiet? Did she regret saying those words to him? Maybe it was a simple impulsive thing inspired by the amazing sex they’d just had.

Maybe she didn’t mean it.

Astonishingly, Carter’s heart paused at that particular thought.

“Kat,” he whispered. “Please.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice shook.

Carter swallowed hard. He heard her sniff and tried to move his head to look at her, but she was too damned strong.

“Kat,” he admonished. “Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I—I can’t. I shouldn’t have …”

At the sound of the words, he gripped her wrists from around his neck and pulled them away, keeping her body close to him with his hand on her cheek. His gaze wandered over her face in question. He saw she was crying, her face pained, and immediately a huge rock of discomfort lodged in his gut.

He smoothed her damp hair from her face. “What shouldn’t you have done?”

If it was a slip of the tongue—so to speak—then he wanted to hear her say it. As masochistic as it sounded, if Kat had said those words and not meant them, he had to know. He wanted to believe her, truly, but so many things in his mind made him doubt her words. He hated that there was any doubt at all, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been programmed that way: to be suspicious and untrusting. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying his damnedest to rid himself of the uncertainty coursing through him.

Kat stared down at where they were still connected. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Carter slumped and watched her wipe at her tears. He let his hands drop to his sides in defeat. The warm postcoital sensation inside him turned cold.

“It’s all right,” he said in a rough voice. “It happens.”

He had no idea if that was true, but he wanted to make her feel better.

“What happens?” Kat pressed her palm tenderly in the center of his chest, tracing the cursive black ink with her fingertips.

Keeping his eyes on the flickering flames in the hearth, he answered: “I’m sure people say stuff like that a lot. You know, when they get carried away in the moment.” There was a second of complete silence where Kat tensed in his arms. Lightning lit the room sporadically.

Carter’s eyes fluttered closed when her hand touched his chin, bringing his face around to hers.

“You think I got lost in the moment?”

He shrugged.

Kat shook her head slowly from side to side and cleared her throat. “I didn’t get carried away, Wes.”

His name never sounded as good as it did when she said it. He held her stare, searching for any hint of a lie, but all her beautiful eyes told him was the truth.

“You didn’t?”

Her head continued to shake, as she mouthed silently, No.

His chest heaved, as he tried to regain thought and the ability to speak. “Wh—” His throat closed around the word. He swallowed, and tried again. “If you weren’t caught up in the moment,” he muttered, “why are you sorry?”

Kat drew invisible circles around Carter’s belly button. She stayed quiet for an age, driving Carter beyond distraction.

“I’m sorry because I didn’t want to say it that way. I didn’t know if you’d want to hear it. I was afraid you’d not want to hear it.” Gradually she brought her head up. “I didn’t want to say it while we were together this way.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s cliché. Tacky.”

“Kat.” He grabbed her wrists and shifted her back, sliding out of her body. He pulled her hands, clasping them over his heart. He breathed, collecting himself. “Did you mean it?”

His voice sounded so foreign. He felt so fucking small. Weak. Breakable.

Kat’s forehead dropped to his. She trembled against him.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I meant it. With everything that I am, I meant it.”

* * *

Saying those three words to him—as scary and unexpected as it was—had made Kat’s whole body light. She loved him with every part of herself, inside and out, good and bad, past and present.

His fingers were suddenly at her face, tracing her lips. “I want to hear it.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “I didn’t know how much until just now. Don’t ever be sorry about saying that.”

“But—”

He cut her off again with a burning kiss that made her toes curl. It was filled with lust, gratitude, and a long moan that came from his throat. He wanted to hear her say that she loved him. He wanted her to love him. Kat’s body folded into him in relief.

“Can I tell you something?” Carter asked quietly when their lips separated. “You’re the first person, the first person in my whole fuckin’ life, to ever say those words to me.”

Kat blinked.

“But your family,” she began, garnering an amused and sardonic expression from him. Okay. Of course not. “Your grandmother?” she hedged. “Friends?”

Carter’s eyes dropped to her mouth. “I was always ‘precious’ to Gran, and she did love me, but she never said the words. And my friends?” He chuckled. “We’re not exactly the huggy, affectionate types. Max is like my brother, but … no, we don’t say that to each other.”

Kat was astonished. How could the man before her never have heard anyone tell him that he was loved? What kind of parents would allow that? How could he have lived for so long with no one telling him how special he was?

Without words, she kissed him again.

“Don’t be sorry, for God’s sake,” he urged. “Christ, hearing those words from you … It doesn’t matter where or how you said it. What matters is that you said it at all.”

She held him close. With her lips by his ear, she whispered once more, “I love you.”

He squeezed her and placed a gentle kiss on her throat. “Thank you for being my first.”

She buried her nose into his buzzed hair. “Thank you for being mine.” Carter sat back, looking at her in question. “I’ve told people I love them before,” she clarified. “You know, family. But I’ve never felt this way about anyone, Carter.”

Carter’s grin lit the room.

“Wow.” He licked his lips and dropped his head against the back of the couch. He kept his eyes firmly on her. “Look at you.”

He continued to stare at her, holding her captive. Occasionally his mouth would open to speak, before he would close it again.

“It’s okay,” she soothed, running her palms down his sides. “Stop overthinking it.”

His body shook with laughter. He kissed her forehead. “You know me so well.”

“I do.” She sat up. She could see the battle: the fear in believing her and the hope that it was true. Her heart squeezed. “I didn’t say it to hear it back. It’s okay.”

“But—”

“No, Carter, really, I don’t need you to say it. And I don’t want you to think that you have to.” She stroked his face.

He stared up at her. “Why do you love me, Peaches?”

The absolute incomprehension in his expression crippled her. Kat trailed her thumb across his jaw as thunder crashed above the house.

“I love you because you’re very special.” She kissed his right cheek. “You’re generous.” His nose. “Caring.” His top lip. “Passionate.” His bottom lip. “And you are, without doubt, the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

He leaned his forehead to her chin. “Christ, I …” He lifted his head sharply, eyes wild. “I have to show you how—why I– There’s more.”

She held his face in an effort to calm him. “Show me whatever you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

He lifted her from his lap. With her cell lighting the way in the darkness, she hurried with her clothes to the downstairs bathroom, cleaned herself up, and made it back to him in time for him to wrap a large blanket around her shoulders. He had a flashlight in his hand.

He held out his hand for her. “Come with me.”

Kat placed her hand in his palm and let him lead her up the stairs and along the corridor. He came to a stop outside the third door down from their room and put his hand on the knob. He turned it and pushed the door open. It creaked loudly, as though it hadn’t been used for a long time. Kat was hit with a rush of cold air and a musty, aged smell.

With only the flashlight and the intermittent glimpse of the moon through the storm clouds, it was hard to see much. The small room was decorated with dark wallpaper, interrupted only by posters of cars and baseball players. A corkboard hung by the closet, covered in drawings and ticket stubs. White dust sheets hid the furniture, and the small bed was unmade with the mattress bare and unused. Kat turned to face Carter, who was looking at her patiently.

“This was your room,” she stated.

He moved the flashlight over the walls, pausing on a picture of a Triumph. They both remained quiet until Carter placed his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the bed, where she sat down. He ran his hand through her hair once before he moved over to the closet. He mumbled and cursed when he opened it and started to pull out boxes of different sizes. He rifled through them slowly until he pulled out a small book held together with a rubber band.

He stood and moved back toward the bed, sitting down next to her with a long breath. He placed the book on Kat’s now crossed legs, staring at it as though it would jump up and attack him. Kat moved her hand to Carter’s right knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Carter scratched his chin with the side of his thumb. “This is kind of a– It’s a diary,” he stuttered. “It sounds stupid, I know, but after …” He paused. “I just think it’ll explain things better.”

“You want me to read it?”

He laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, I– Fuck, Kat, I don’t know.”

His nervousness was troubling. “Okay.”

With tense fingers, she pulled the rubber band off the book while Carter opened the small bedroom window and sparked a cigarette. Kat placed the rubber band on the bed and opened the front cover.

What she saw made her blink in astonishment and suck in a quick breath of shock.

Her head snapped up to Carter who shrugged apologetically. Stuck untidily on the first yellowing page was an article reporting the death of one Senator Daniel Lane. There was a black-and-white picture of him and Kat’s mother taken on the day of his election. He was so happy and so handsome. Eva looked beautiful, too. She smiled a smile that Kat hadn’t seen in a long time. Kat’s heart clenched with yearning for the mother who’d told her daughter she could be anything she wanted.

Kat’s eyes skimmed the article, knowing what she would find, the details she would read. Words jumped out at her in the flashlight beam: “horrifying,” “distraught,” “brain hemorrhage,” “police shot two suspects.” She swallowed hard and let her fingertips slide over her daddy’s face.

Gingerly, making sure she didn’t damage the paper, Kat turned the page. There were more articles detailing the funeral, the foundation set up in her father’s honor, and the events Eva had attended in Daniel’s memory. In each grainy picture of her mother, Kat noticed how she aged. The beauty and radiance so noticeable in the first picture had all but disappeared.

Her eyes pricked with tears. As they moved over the article, she realized that every time her own name appeared, it was either underlined or circled. It was the same on all the articles, including the first.

Silently she continued through the book, glancing at the articles he’d collected. She stopped when she came to a page covered in spidery handwriting. The first date was a month after Kat’s father had died.

I dreamed of her again. Every time I close my eyes, she’s there. She haunts me and I don’t know why. Ever since that night, she’s been inside my brain. I wish I could scoop her out like Gran used to do with the chocolate ice cream out of the freezer, but then … I think maybe I would miss her.

Two weeks later:

I smelled her today. I was with Max and we walked past a fruit stall. Peaches. Sweet peaches. Her hair smelled of peaches. I bought some. Max called me a freak. I think he’s right.

Two days later:

I am crazy. I know I am. I saw her. I know I did. But it’s impossible.

Christmas:

Dad and I argued. He called me ungrateful. I called him a prick. He found my smokes. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes and I saw her and smelled her hair again. Fucking crazy, right? It calmed me down. I think that if I helped her that night then maybe she wouldn’t mind that I use her this way. Maybe she wouldn’t care. Maybe she doesn’t even remember me.

Kat continued to read. The passages were small, no more than five lines each, but gargantuan in their significance. The hand that covered her open, disbelieving mouth became wet with tears. At the same time, the bed moved with Carter’s weight. He wrapped his arms around his knees. He was uncharacteristically still at her side.

New Year:

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,

A stage where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

February:

In Belmont is a lady richly left,

And she is fair, fairer than that word,

Of wondrous virtues.

“Carter,” Kat choked, reading the words from The Merchant of Venice.

“I’m sorry. Shit. I knew I shouldn’t have– I just wanted you to understand.”

“What did you want me to understand?”

She needed him to explain. Reading his deepest thoughts was almost too much.

He took the book from her hand, thumbing through it, smiling wryly at some of his words and closing his eyes at others.

“That night,” he started quietly. “The night we met. That night was the longest, most terrifying night of my life.” He smiled. “But I wouldn’t change it, not for a fucking thing.” He touched the diary almost reverently. “I started this when I was eleven years old. Sixteen years ago.” His voice seemed far away to Kat’s ears.

His eyes flickered to her hair. “Kat, your smell was– It was like it took over my brain. I couldn’t think about anything else. It calmed me when I was ready to murder my father, and even when I was at Arthur Kill, I would go back to that night and think about you. Those were the nights I slept the soundest.”

He put the book to his side and clasped her hands. “I don’t want to freak you out with this shit, I really don’t, but hearing you say those words and not being able to say them back …” He shook his head. “I hoped this would help you see.” He gazed at her. “Do you understand, Kat? Do you understand what you are to me?”

Emotion stopped the answer from leaving her mouth.

“Today, when I introduced you to Petey,” he continued with a crooked smile, “I didn’t have a fucking clue what to say to him. I went through a dozen labels, including ‘my girlfriend,’ but that just … doesn’t seem big enough.” His face creased to show his distaste for the word. “And I couldn’t say ‘my Peaches’ because that shit is mine alone.”

Yes. She was his completely.

“Kat,” he whispered, pulling her closer. Their foreheads touched and Carter closed his eyes.

“I don’t know what will happen when we get back to the city. I have no clue. But I do know that I want no one else but you. I want to be with you for as long as you’ll have me. I want more nights like this one, and I want to be able to walk down the street holding your hand knowing that, for once in my life, every other fucker envies me and what I have.”

Kat clutched his hoodie in her hands.

Carter pulled her into his arms and whispered into her neck, “You’re everything to me, Peaches. You always have been. Always. You’re the best thing I’ve ever had in my life.” He kissed her. “You’re my everything.”