But I think I overestimated my strength because I can only get my t-shirt up to my neck, to expose my tits to the night, before my hands give up.
Before I’m coming on his tongue and he’s drinking everything like he always does. He’s slurping and working his mouth on my pussy to get all of it, to not even miss a drop.
When he’s done, I feel him take his mouth off and stand up.
I’m too weak to look back at him but still, I open my eyes and watch him emerge from the ground. I watch his shiny jaw and mouth, making him look even more like the sun. I watch him while he takes his dick out of his pants, his big, beautiful dick, and snaps the condom on.
I watch while he watches me, all silent and breathing hard as he grabs my naked hips and positions his cock at my still-pulsing entrance.
But when I see the muscles of his abdomen flex and his hips jerking forward, I can’t anymore.
I can’t watch because he’s inside of me and I have to shut my eyes tightly.
Because oh my God, it’s so big and good and fuck, it hurts that all I can do is grind my head into the wall and moan.
My pussy pulses over his massive length and he grunts loudly, louder than he’s ever grunted before, and his forehead drops to my shoulder and my own head somehow comes back to rest on his.
When his other hand, the one not gripping my hip, settles on my bare stomach, I gasp out, “It’s so big. Why does it feel so big? Like this…”
His dick jerks inside of me and I gasp again.
“Because you’re still tight as fuck. Like a virgin. Even after I’ve stretched your hole a hundred times,” he groans, rolling his forehead on my shoulder. “And because I’ve never had you like this.”
“Like what?” I pant, my hands slipping on the wall.
He raises his head, his rough cheek brushing against mine, and whispers in my ear, “Like a dog in heat.”
My channel pulses at his crass words – crass and delicious and somehow so erotic – and he has to pump into me. Once, twice, short and jerky motions.
And I have to put my hand over his where he’s grabbing my belly. “I feel you in my…”
“Where?” he asks when I don’t pick up the thread.
I was going to say stomach. That I feel him in my stomach but that’s… wrong.
I don’t feel him in my stomach.
I feel him somewhere deeper.
Much, much deeper.
I turn my head to look at him. “In my womb.”
His chest shudders at my back and his face grows mean with lust. I think even his cock swells inside me, grows to insane, obscene proportions as it presses into my womb, my very femininity.
The very thing that makes me who I am.
The girl with all the feelings, all the emotions.
The girl in doomed love.
With the guy who’s fucking her.
Who presses his hand on her stomach and strokes it, as if feeling for the ridge of his thick cock invading my body in such achy and wonderful ways.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks, his eyes narrowed, his hand massaging.
“In a good way.”
He digs his fingers into my belly as his eyes go dark, darker than before. “Good.” He moves his hips, his pelvis grazing against my bare ass, making me whimper with the pressure. “Because I want to fuck that womb too. I need to fuck that womb. I need everything you have. Every fucking thing, Salem. Everything you have belongs to me. It’s mine. All of it.”
His words, possessive and growly, hit me in the very thing he wants to fuck, my womb, and I push my hips back.
I take him in further while moaning, “Yes, all of it. All of it belongs to you.”
He takes me then.
He stretches me in new ways, making space for himself in the corners that I didn’t even think existed before.
He presses his palm on my stomach, as if squeezing out my juices and greasing up his cock even more, and I moan again.
I squeeze his fingers on my stomach and bring my other hand away from the wall and over to the back of his neck as he moves inside of me. He’s slowly picking up the rhythm and his body is pushing into me with every ram of his cock.
And I let him ride me as I hold onto him.
He pounds, pounds, pounds inside of me and I realize that he goes in so easily now. So wonderfully as if he’s slicing through creamy, soft butter.
Every time he goes in, he jabs me in the womb and I scream. And every time I scream, he pushes harder inside of me, his hand digs deeper into my stomach, massages it in broad strokes as if soothing the hurt he’s causing.
But the hurt is so good, so delicious that I only want more of it.
So I surrender.
I go flush with the wall, my nipples scraping against it as I writhe between the bricks and him.
All the while he keeps fucking me, practically bouncing me in his lap and I realize that the wall I’m stuck to is pulsing too.
Both with our violent, passionate fucking, and the music.
The sad love songs.
I can’t be sure what song it is but I hear violins and melancholy and I let the years and years of love wash over my body.
I let the music – the one he’s creating with his grunts and his slapping hips, and the one seeping through the walls – soak into my skin.
Letting go of my hip, he reaches his hand up and wraps it around my throat. Then he bends my neck to the side and for the first time ever, sinks his teeth over my pounding pulse and sucks on it.
And like a crazy girl I smile.
I smile because he’s giving me a hickey.
He’s taking a bite out of my pulse, my heart, the heart that’s filled with all the love for him, and I come.
My womb contracts.
My pussy clenches over his ramming length and I have to give up the violins pulsing through the wall and arch up against his chest.
But it’s okay.
I’ll give up everything for him, all the sad love songs and all the bike rides. All the desolate bridges and lonely places.
I’ll give up myself because I belong to him.
I belong to my darling Arrow.
As soon as I think that, he comes too.
He comes with a roar, his hands clenching and clenching my flesh and his hips stumbling and jerking against me.
His cock expands so much that I think the latex will burst and all the ropes of his cum will shower over my womb. And my greedy, lovesick womb will absorb it like I absorbed the violins and his violent fucking.
My entire body will absorb him.
Absorb everything he gives me.
The guy I’m in doomed love with.
My Arrow.
Something is wrong.
Very, very wrong.
I mean, of course I knew that. I knew that something was wrong because not only did he come back from LA feeling all mysterious and strangely restless, he also actually told me that he had a shitty week.
So I know things aren’t all that great.
But then as soon as we were done back in the alley behind the bar and he dressed me up like I’m really his doll – without looking into my eyes though and with very tight, angry movements – it started to snow.
The very first snow of the season.
That’s when I realize it’s November now. Mid November.
I’ve been at St. Mary’s for two and a half months. That’s almost the same amount of time that Arrow – new Arrow – has been back.
Ever since he arrived, I’ve lost all sense of time. I’ve been living in a dream, walking on clouds and I don’t like the reminder.
I don’t like this reality check.
I don’t like the snow either.
I know people think snow is pretty and auspicious and whatnot. But I’m the girl who loves summer and sunshine and open roads.
Snow interferes with all of that.
Now I have this foreboding in
my chest that something awful is going to happen.
But I try to push it aside. I try to be rational and strong as I climb off his motorcycle when we reach St. Mary’s.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, the wind brings the flakes of snow into my face and I huddle inside his vintage leather jacket that I’d worn to the bar. And I’m reminded of the first night that I saw him, kissing that girl.
He was so unapproachable back then, so deliberately tight-lipped.
And right now, he appears exactly like that first night. Tight and agitated. He hasn’t even looked at me, actually.
He’s staring straight ahead, into the darkness, his back all rigid. His fingers are clenched so tightly around the handlebars that I want to reach out and loosen them up.
I want to loosen him up.
Clutching the lapels of his jacket around my neck, I ask, “What happened?”
‘In LA’ is implied, I think.
I’m right when he clenches his jaw and says without looking at me, “You should go.”
I take a step closer. “Arrow, tell me what happened?”
This time, the clench lasts longer. He even flexes his fists around the throttle. “I said you should go.”
The longer he doesn’t look at me, the louder my heartbeats become, and I have to grab the sleeve of his wrinkled suit jacket. “Arrow, please. Tell me. Did you see her? Did you see Sarah?”
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m clutching onto the sleeve of his damp jacket or if it’s the mention of her name, but he snaps his eyes over to me.
His dark, furious eyes.
And God, again, I think of the first night at the bar.
When the mention of my sister’s name changed everything.
It changed everything that I believed in. Everything that I thought to be true.
That just makes me even more frantic, more desperate. Desperate enough to pull at his sleeve with not one but both hands.
“Arrow, tell me. Did you see her? What’d she say?”
“Leave,” he says curtly.
But I don’t listen. I can’t listen.
How can I leave when he looks like this? When he looks… so furious and so flushed with anger. So scarlet, like his blood is rushing too close to the surface.
“Not until you tell me.” I shake my head. “Just tell me what happened. Tell me what she said.”
“Salem. Just leave.”
His voice is quiet but it’s dripping with warning. It’s dripping with authority and a heavy threat. I should heed it.
I know that.
But the next question that bursts out of my mouth is so reckless, so fucking thoughtless and yet so urgent and important that I don’t know how else I could have said it, if not in a squeaky, high voice, with my nails digging into his arm, my body trembling with dread.
“D-do you love her? Do you still love my sister?”
I think I screamed it. I think everyone heard it.
Everyone at St. Mary’s heard that I asked the guy I love if he’s still in love with my sister.
Or at least that’s what I feel for a few seconds, because my eardrums are ringing.
My chest is vibrating.
The only thing silent and frigid, frozen over by the snow, is him.
The guy I asked this question to.
If I thought he was tight before, I was wrong. If I thought he was furious and hot before, I was wrong again.
He’s burning up now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he melts all the snow on ground.
Especially, when he glances down – for the first time – at my fists in his jacket and I feel my hands sting.
Keeping his chin dipped, he lifts his eyes. “Get out of my face.”
“What?”
“Just get the fuck out of my face before I lose it, okay?”
“But I –”
He jerks his arm then and my fists are shaken loose, making me stumble back a little.
But it’s enough.
It’s enough to give him the space he probably wanted because his foot goes to kickstart the motorcycle, and I know that as soon as he does that, he’ll leave.
He’ll leave me here, standing in the snow, with so many unanswered questions. With so many emotions and feelings that I will explode.
I won’t make it through the night.
So I do the only thing that I can. The only thing that I can think of.
I hurl my heart at his feet, my beating, pulpy heart at his kicking feet, and hope that it’s enough to make him stay.
“I love you.”
I screamed that too, I think.
Everyone heard it.
Everyone heard my secret.
Holy. Shit.
Holy fucking shit.
I press a hand on my stomach because I can’t breathe. Because all my organs are in disarray or at least it feels like it because I just told him.
I told him.
My secret of eight years.
My secret because of which I stole and lied and cried and lived in misery for eight long years. My secret because of which I was sent here, to St. Mary’s.
I just told it to him and turns out, it was enough for him to stop.
It was enough for that foot to stop, the one resting on that lever. It was enough for him to stare back at me. Not only with his eyes but also with his body. He twists his torso in my direction as if he’s completely attuned to me now.
Completely attuned to what I just said.
And maybe, maybe I would’ve taken that. I would’ve taken the way his body looks tight and coiled, turned toward me.
But then, he goes ahead and climbs off his Ducati.
He actually swings his thigh over and comes to a stand and I have to step back.
Because he’s standing in front of me, his feet wide apart, his hands on his sides curled into fists and his chest moving up and down, all hot and snowy.
“What’d you just say?” he asks in a low voice.
In the most dangerous voice I’ve ever heard. A voice that causes my hickey – the very first love bite that he gave me – to burn and throb.
I swallow, pressing my hand further into my stomach, feeling chilled. “I-I…”
“You love me.”
I swallow again. “I didn’t mean it.”
“So you don’t love me.”
“No, I do. I…”
His eyes narrow. “Well, which is it?”
Oh God.
Why does he have to look so intimidating right now? So tall and big and dark, his sun-struck hair all wet and brown.
I don’t know how to handle this.
But I have to handle it, right?
I just said it. I can’t take it back.
I won’t take it back.
Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.
Just because it was only a half-formed idea in my head to tell him, doesn’t mean it’s not true.
So I take a deep breath and say, “Okay, let me just start at the beginning. I write you letters. Not the ones we’ve been exchanging these past few weeks but others. Like, really long ones where I tell you about my day and I tell you what I did and who I talked to and who I saw and you know, where I just make general conversation with you. And I’ve been doing that for the past eight years.”
I take a pause here to look him in the eyes; they’ve turned inscrutable now, his gaze along with his smooth, unruffled features as the snow falls around us.
“Since I was ten,” I continue. “Since the day I saw you in the kitchen and you told me not to tell your mom about the juice thing and you asked me if I was cold. I… I wanted to answer you. I wanted to tell you that I wasn’t. I mean, I was. But then you came in through the door, all sweaty and panting and the room was all yellow, you know? Because the sun was streaming through the windows and you appeared so… sun-struck. And as soon as I saw you, I felt this strange warmth flowing inside my bod
y. And it made me feel so good and I wanted to tell you that. But then…”
I part my lips and my breath comes out all foggy and white and I bite my lip to compose myself. I bite my lip because he’s all frozen now.
Frozen and smooth and listening.
He’s listening to me, to my story. As if he’s riveted.
Or maybe I’m imagining things because I wanna make it easier for myself.
“But then, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you that I wasn’t cold. That you made my cold go away. And I couldn’t talk to you like I wanted to. So I started writing you letters. Every night I’d write you a letter and I’d fold it and put it in an orange envelope, and then I’d put that in a shoebox that I hid under my bed. When I moved to St. Mary’s, I brought that box with me. It’s a couple, more than a couple of shoeboxes actually because I’ve written you a lot of letters. And I had them with me the night I was running away too.”
I sniffle and rub my chilled nose with the back of my hand before straightening up my spine and beginning the awful, awful part of the story. “You asked me why I was running away that night and if there was a boy involved. There was and that boy is you.”
My confession wrings out a tiny reaction on his part.
A very tiny, one-syllable word that he says in a flat tone.
“Me.”
I jerk out a nod. “Yeah. I was running away because of you. Because you were gonna marry her. Because the day I saw you and you asked me if I was cold and I could never answer you? It was because Sarah came in that very moment and you looked at her and… you never looked away,” I whisper, thinking about all the times I wanted him to look at me but he’d stare at Sarah.
“I think you forgot I was there. A tiny, messy, blanket-wrapped ten-year-old. And then you never remembered me after that. Never really paid any attention to me, even when I was there.” I shake my head, wishing things could be different.
“Anyway, you used to be so fascinated with her, you know? I’d watch you watch her and I knew you were falling in love with her. And she was falling in love with you and I watched it all happen. And all the while… all the while I was falling in love with you too. With my sister’s boyfriend. I’ve spent years feeling terrible and awful about it. That’s why I kept myself away from you. That’s why I’d never look at you or talk to you or just leave the room when you were there, because I loved you. Because you were Sarah’s and what kind of a sister would I be if I did something to hurt your relationship. That’s why I was running away. I didn’t want to sully your wedding with my presence. I didn’t want to be there, the girl with a witchy heart, in love with her sister’s groom. But back then, I didn’t know something about myself. Something really important.”
My Darling Arrow Page 29