What the fuck?
Footsteps pounded up the stairs as I just stared at the screen, my brain firing on all cylinders as I tried to unravel this riddle.
“Has she got it with her?” Blake demanded.
“Do you know where she is?” Kyan snarled.
I looked up at them and silently held out my phone for them to see.
“What the hell is going on?” Kyan growled.
“I’ll call him,” Blake said instantly. “Find out what the fuck is-”
“No,” I said suddenly, rising from the bed to stand before them as my brain still struggled to figure this out. “If we call them they’ll realise we’re on to them and whatever the fuck they’re doing. If we give away the fact that we know where they are, they’ll realise I can trace them and they’ll switch their phones off.”
“So what are we going to do?” Kyan demanded.
“Get dressed,” I said, the only option clear to me before I even had to run over all of the possibilities. “Coats, boots, everything. We’ll take my car. We’re going after them.”
Kyan and Blake exchanged a heated look before turning and racing back downstairs to do as I’d said. I hurried to my closet to follow my own advice.
I didn’t know what the hell Tatum and Monroe were up to, but we were going to find out.
Run, run, as fast as you can. When I catch you, you’ll be sorry you ran.
Three hours was a long time to be trapped in a small space with a beautiful girl. Especially one who made me laugh so easily and somehow got me to open up about all kinds of things I hadn’t even thought about in years, much less discussed.
We’d told each other stories of our childhoods when our families had been alive and we’d been happy. When neither of us had been forced to live every day with the burden of grief weighing us down. And it was, nice to think about those days. To smile about them and let myself remember that I’d been happy once. Loved.
After hours on the freeway, we’d pulled off and Tatum had directed me through small towns and out into the wilderness of a thick forest. We’d followed smaller and smaller roads before finally ending up driving down a dirt track all the way to the end where the trees closed in too much to allow us to go on. She’d put her boots back on as we approached, ready to get out the moment we arrived.
“It’s just through those trees,” Tatum said quietly as I cut the engine and looked at her in the darkness. It was just gone five am but the sun wasn’t due to rise for hours yet and even though the night was clear, the moon was low, so there wasn’t much light to see her by.
“What time is your dad getting here?” I asked as I squinted in the direction she’d pointed and just about made out the shape of a cabin hiding there between the towering trunks.
“He just said today. I don’t know if he’ll be there yet or if I’ll have to wait…”
“Why do you keep saying I like this is the bit where I fuck off?” I asked, trying to keep any resentment I felt about that out of my tone.
Tatum bit her lip and looked at me in the darkness. “Dad told me to come alone…”
“You think it’ll spook him if I’m still hanging about?” I asked.
“Maybe.” She looked away from me as she tugged her coat off of the back seat and wriggled into it.
“Can I wait here or do I need to move further away then?” I asked.
“Wait?” she asked, her eyes flashing my way for a moment then away again quickly.
My stomach tightened as my suspicions were confirmed in that one word. Even though she’d said she was coming back to Everlake after this meeting, now that she was here the doubts were creeping in.
“You’re thinking about going with him, aren’t you?” I asked in a low voice.
“No,” she said instantly then frowned like she’d heard the lie in her own voice. “I mean, he never said anything about that. He just wants to speak with me. But…he’s on the run, so I don’t know if there’s a chance that I could possibly stay with him anyway and-”
“But what if there is?” I asked, my heart pounding as I fought against the selfish desire in me to beg her not to go with him even if he asked her to.
“I…”
“I get it,” I said, turning away from the sadness in her big blue eyes to look out into the trees. “He’s your dad. If my mom showed up, asking me to run off into the night with her, I’d do it too. No question.”
“No question?” she breathed, but I didn’t have anything to say to that. My mom was long dead anyway. Her remains disposed of by the state and her ashes long since scattered to the wind along with everything I’d ever loved.
“There was a twenty four hour diner back in that last town,” I said. It was about a thirty minute drive away but better that than the whole three hours. “I can go back there and…get breakfast or whatever. I’ll wait. As long as it takes for you to decide. Just send me a message to let me know if you need me to come back for you, or…”
“Or?” she breathed and I made myself look at her again, a lump forming in my throat as I forced myself not to reach for her, to brush her hair behind her ear, skim my thumb across her full lips, lean in and taste the sweetness of her skin. Fuck.
“Or if it’s goodbye,” I finished. Because we both knew if she ran with him she wouldn’t be coming back. Ever.
“Goodbye?” she whispered and the word carved into me as it hung in the air between us.
She felt like this unfulfilled promise. This offer I took too long to accept. A form of magic I should have claimed for myself before it was too late. But now it was too late.
“I’ll wait in the diner,” I said roughly, my throat thick with unspoken words.
“Nash…” she began, reaching out to lay her hand over mine where it rested on the parking brake, but I drew it away as her touch burned me in all the right ways.
“Imagine what we might have been in another life,” I murmured, the air in the car coiling with tension and heartache and so much damn longing that it actually fucking hurt to breathe it in.
“I wish it could have been this life,” she said, her voice cracking a little as a tear slid down her cheek, glimmering wetly in the faint starlight. “Goodbye, Nash.”
“Goodbye, princess,” I rasped, frozen to the spot as she reached for the door handle and let herself out.
I watched as she walked away through the trees towards the cabin with cracks forming all over my skin and breaking open as the first person I’d cared about in a hell of a long time walked away from me and the foundations of my soul were rocked apart by each step she took.
I cranked the ignition, threw the car into reverse and managed to get it turned around with some manoeuvring between the trees, possibly denting my door in the process and not giving one shit.
I just needed to get away from here. From her. From the fucking ache in my chest and that look in her big eyes which told me this whole damn thing was on me. That it was my choice. That I was the one turning my back on her. On us.
I tore down the dirt track way too fast, aiming for the road at the end of it and some kind of relief to this all-encompassing grief as I turned away from her for the final time. Left her behind. Gave up on the only shot I’d really had at something good in so fucking long that I couldn’t even remember the last time.
What the fuck am I doing?
My foot slammed down on the brake and I jerked into the seatbelt as the car skidded to a halt half way down the track. I barely even thought about what I was doing as I threw the car into reverse and twisted in my seat to look out the rear window at the dark track and accelerated up it as fast as I could, squinting to see.
When I made it back to the end of it, I yanked on the parking brake, ripped my belt off and threw the car door wide as I leapt out. I didn’t even bother to close the door behind me as I ran through the trees towards the cabin with my heart thrashing in my chest and my skin crackling with an energy so fierce that I couldn’t ignore it for a second longer.
The wooden cabin was nestled between the trees, covered in moss and ivy and looking like a part of the forest itself. A thin line of smoke rose from a stone chimney to the left of it and a heavy door faced me as I tore towards it.
I grabbed the handle and threw it wide, scanning the open space inside in one sweeping glance that took in the wood panelled walls, simple furniture, king sized bed to the right of the room, bunks to the back and the fireplace with the freshly lit blaze coming to life inside it.
But I didn’t give a shit about a single thing in that room aside from the girl who leapt to her feet before the fire, her eyes widening in alarm as she turned to face me, blonde hair swinging around her shoulders.
“What if I don’t want it to be goodbye?” I demanded, my heart drumming a war beat in my chest so damn loud that I was sure she could hear it. “What if I can’t say goodbye to anybody else I care about?”
“Then don’t,” she said, her voice rough with desire and that was all I needed to hear.
I threw the door closed behind me, locking out the winter and plunging us into darkness which was only slightly lessened by the orange glow of the fire blossoming in the hearth.
I crossed the room in five long strides, catching Tatum’s face in my hands and tipping her chin up so that I could capture her lips with mine. I drove her back against the stone mantelpiece with a groan of longing as I kissed her with all the passion of a dying man offered a final meal. But she was more than a meal, she was a feast fit for gods, she was temptation embodied and every sin I’d ever dreamed of committing. She was my salvation and my demise all in one and I was done resisting her.
She gasped as I kissed her, her arms curling around my neck as she tugged me closer, giving me room to press my tongue between her lips.
We were burning up with passion and months of denying what we hungered for and as I drove the solid length of my erection against her flesh she moaned with pure, carnal need.
Her hands slid down my body as I drove her back against the wall and she caught the hem of my T-shirt in her grasp, yanking on it in a clear demand.
I forced myself to break our kiss, pulling back so that she could tear it over my head then planting her lips on mine again as she threw it aside.
Neither of us asked how far this was going to go. There was no stopping us now. Not this time. The heat between us was burning too fucking hot and neither of us could bear to deny it for another second.
She tried to kick her boots off, cursing when the laces wouldn’t give, her teeth dragging my bottom lip into her mouth as her frustration brimmed over.
I grabbed her hips and lifted her off of the floor so that she wrapped her legs around my waist and I could grind my dick against her with urgency and the denim of our jeans created a friction which felt so fucking good that she moaned into my mouth.
Her hands explored the plains of my chest but she wasn’t gentle, her nails marking my skin in her desperation to take more of me, all of me.
I growled with desire as I yanked her away from the wall, dropping her down on to the rug before the growing fire and falling over her in the same movement.
I kissed her so hard that I could taste blood and I didn’t know if it was hers, mine or a mixture of both.
We ground against each other so forcefully that I was in danger of coming in my fucking pants, my emotionally drunken state over this girl beneath me driving me to the verge of oblivion before we’d managed to do a single thing.
With a grunt of determination, I knelt back, breaking our kiss as I caught her foot in my hand and ripped the laces of her hiking boot open so that I could tear it off of her foot and throw it over my shoulder.
Tatum moaned with need as she writhed beneath me, pleading for me to hurry up as I battled her other boot and she popped the button on her own waistband, shoving her jeans down while I struggled with her fucking footwear.
“Just tug the laces,” she growled.
“I am,” I insisted.
“Well do it faster.”
“What is this? A double knot or something? Who ties their shoes like this?”
“Just get it off of me and get inside me,” she snarled and I would have laughed if I wasn’t so desperate to follow her damn commands.
“I’m beginning to fucking hate winter.”
“Now, Nash!”
I finally got that one off too, tossing it across the room and hearing something break before grabbing the ankles of her jeans and tugging them hard. The material tried to resist but she lifted her ass and I pulled as hard as I could, dragging them off of her, panties and all and baring her before me.
I groaned desperately as I fumbled with the buckle of my belt and she reared up to yank my fly down, panting with need as her fingers dipped inside and she grasped my cock through the material of my boxers.
“Fuck, Nash, hurry up,” she pleaded and I ripped my belt open finally, knocking her hand aside as I tugged my jeans and boxers down just far enough to free the thick length of my shaft.
She moaned as she looked at it, bucking her hips in a silent demand as I dropped down between her golden thighs, my dick instantly pressing against her soaking wet opening.
I was so desperate for her that I couldn’t wait another moment, pushing forward with a sharp thrust of my hips, a deep groan escaping me as I sheathed the full length of my dick deep inside her. Tatum gasped as she clutched my shoulders, her fingernails digging in so hard I was sure she’d drawn blood and her ankles locking together around me.
For a moment we could only stare at each other, acknowledging the wall that had just shattered between us as my dick filled her completely and she clenched her muscles tight around my thick length. Then she reared up to capture my lips again and we were moving, my hips slamming into hers hard and fast as she met me for every move I made.
My name spilled from her lips between moans and I devoured every noise that escaped her, kissing her almost as hard as I was fucking her.
It was fast and frenzied, this desperate, messy joining of our bodies which we’d both been fighting against for way too fucking long.
She felt a thousand times better than she had even in my filthiest fantasies about her. And I’d had a hell of a lot of those. But nothing could compare to the realty of how tight she was around me, how rough and needy her voice got as she gasped between kisses.
Her breath hitched every time I slammed into her and her nails tore into my back as she demanded more and more and more and I gave it to her with everything I had.
Our pelvises ground together hard as I pressed her down into the floor and she moaned as the friction rubbed her clit in perfect synchronisation with my thrusts deep inside her.
My heart was pounding and my skin humming with this deep, unrelenting pleasure as I finally got what I’d been dreaming of, aching for, hungering after and her body fused to mine.
We were hot and sweaty, half dressed and so frantic that our breaths came together in this ragged cacophony of grunts and gasps and moans of pure pleasure. My whole world centred in on the feeling of our bodies joining, of every inch of me consuming her, her heels driving into my ass encouraging me to go harder even as she fought for breath with every savage thrust I delivered. We were like two wild creatures rutting in the dirt, each demanding everything and giving it all at the same time.
Her name fell from my lips as the most devout of blessings as I worshiped her body with my own, consuming her, devouring her, destroying her.
All too soon, my muscles were tightening with expectation, pleasure dancing through me and my dick swelled as I spilled myself deep inside her with a low groan. I kissed her hard as she cried out in ecstasy too, her back arching off of the floor so she was pressed against me and I could feel her nipples rubbing against my chest through her shirt.
I fell over her panting, our bodies remaining joined as I pressed my forehead to the wooden floor beside her and we tried to catch our breath.
I panted, sighing her name and pressing my lips into the
curve of her neck as I bathed in that feeling. Of owning her flesh like I’d been dying to. Of taking the girl I’d craved for so long and finally forgetting all of the things that had kept us apart. Because there was no keeping us apart. And I’d been a fucking idiot to think there ever could have been.
“Fuck,” I mumbled as a bit of sense returned to my brain and I pushed up onto my forearms as I looked down at her. “I didn’t use a condom.”
“I noticed,” she said with half a laugh that made her body clench around my dick. I could feel myself getting hard for her again already and I was dying to do that all over again.
“Shit, I should have pulled out, I should have-”
“I’m on the pill,” she said dismissively. “And I’m clean…are you?”
I snorted a laugh as I looked down at her. “Yeah. I got tested about eighteen months ago.”
“That’s not that recent,” she pointed out.
“Well, it’s recent enough. Considering I haven’t gotten laid since then.” I eased off of her as she arched an eyebrow at me like she found that hard to believe and I took her expression as a compliment.
I tucked my dick back into my jeans and knelt back, reaching over to snag my shirt from the floor and using it to mop up the mess I’d just made between her thighs with a teasing smirk. She bit her lip but didn’t make a move to stop me and when I got to my feet and offered her a hand to pull her up, she took it without question.
“Well, that was…”
“Unexpected?” I offered.
“Overdue,” she tossed back and I grinned at her.
“If it wasn’t official already, I’m definitely going to hell now,” I teased.
“Not possible,” she breathed, reaching out to trace the outline of the tiger which was inked onto my chest.
My gaze dropped down her body as she stood before me in her socks and shirt. There was something kinda hot about the fact that we hadn’t even been able to wait long enough to get our clothes off properly. But I wasn’t satisfied by what I’d taken from her. Not by a long shot.
Kings of Lockdown: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 2) Page 59