by Kane, Jessa
I trap a moan in my throat, his pumps so ferocious now that my fingers are clinging to his shoulders out of necessity. The week my parents went to Carmel, I’d just gotten my driver’s license. And God, knowing he’s been lusting after me as long or longer than I’ve wanted him only makes me writhe my hips with more purpose, brings my nails scoring down his back. “What would have happened?”
“You would have been walking funny when they picked you up, sweetheart. Don’t act like you don’t know.” He lifts his head and looks down at me, his expression half affectionate, half mean. The combination is a drug to me. I love it, because it defines this man. Pissed off and loving. Rough and tender. “Nah, fuck that, I wouldn’t have been able to let you leave. They would have had to pry you out from underneath me, huh, baby?”
“Yes,” I whine, playing with my nipples now, sending pulses to my core which is rapidly starting to spasm, as if predicting a storm. “Yes…”
His hard-on thrusts into me ruthlessly, the bed quaking and groaning beneath us. “You like hearing how fucked up I am over you? You like knowing this obsession has only gotten worse, every goddamn day since I saw you?”
Unable to speak due to the oncoming rush of the unknown, I can only nod.
Above me, Mase’s features begin to contort and it’s the sexiest sight I’ve ever laid eyes on. The visible loss of control. He’s close to the end and I get to watch as it happens. His lower body pistons furiously, finding that glorious spot inside me faster, harder until my vision begins to blur, my stomach muscles seizing. He’s not the only one about to reach this destination we’ve been pushing towards since I walked into the room. “Ain’t pulling out. Can’t. Warned you last time what would happen and you didn’t listen.” He leans down until our lips are a breath apart. “You want my come, stubborn little niece?”
“Please,” I whimper.
“I get yours first,” he rasps, our lips grazing together and making my heart squeeze. “Drop your knees wide. Spread yourself open for me.”
I don’t break eye contact as I follow his instructions. Focusing is almost impossible when pleasure is bearing down on me, but his intensity is an anchor preventing me from flying away.
“Good girl. Now let me work.” Mouth poised on top of mine, Mase angles his hips differently, pressing the slick girth of his erection down on my clit and bucking fast. Fast. Fast but gentle. Lust paralyzes me, traps me, smothers me in its grip as the bliss moves in and crowds out reality. There is only the swift, perfect pressure of Mase’s light grinds on my sensitive nub and I’m almost over the edge when he kisses me. Kisses me for the first time. His lips are hard and demanding, the rasp of his unshaven jaw abrading my chin and cheeks. When our tongues lick together and we both moan, there’s an awareness of exactly how forbidden this is. What we’re doing. He’s more than twice my age, he’s my step-uncle and he’s paying me for sex. “I tried to stay away, Ripley,” he growls, ripping his mouth away. “Now I never will.”
Hot shivers wrack me and I start tearing at his hair, frantic to reach the end, while also being terrified of the immensity of what my first orgasm will feel like. “I can be your little secret,” I sob, my words jumbled and almost incoherent. “I won’t tell, just don’t push me away.”
My climax grips me and I scream, drowning out whatever Mase said in response. It’s more monstrous and overwhelming than I could have dreamed, taking hold of my intimate muscles and strangling them with pressure, before soothing them with relief. I shake and squirm and whine my way to the end, batting at his shoulders with my palms, feeling the cascade of my own moisture coasting down my inner thighs.
I think I leave earth for a moment and when I return, Mase is slamming his broad inches into me, over and over again, his face screwed up with pain. “Here it comes. Take my come. Take it.” A hoarse sound leaves him and he stiffens, hot spend leaving him and filling me up. “Coat your fucking womb in it.”
This part of the act was something I never imagined. The rawness of taking his fluids into my own body. How fiercely possessed and owned and coveted it would make me feel, to be the keeper of the proof of his lust. Feeling his hot eyes raking me, I open my thighs wide as they’ll go and let him watch me take it greedily, milking his size with my inner walls and mewling my pleasure, my fingers twisting in my own hair. Reveling.
“FUCK.” His hips piston all the harder, splashing his desire everywhere, the wet sound filling the room along with his frantic grunts. “You beautiful little brat.”
He stills one final time, roaring up at the ceiling, and collapses on top of me.
My mind is reeling. My body? Forget about it? I can barely feel my legs.
I can only locate my lungs as they struggle to fill themselves.
There is a bone-deep satisfaction inside of me. A completion I never want to live without. And I won’t have to now, right? We made confessions to each other. He told me how much he’s wanted me and now that we’ve ripped off the Band-Aid of the forbidden, how can we ever stop? My body knows who it belongs to and so does my heart.
My optimism takes a nose dive a minute later when Mase lifts his head, his lips peeled back in a snarl. “Christ, Ripley,” he seethes. Facing away from me, he sits up on the edge of the bed and buries his head in his hands for several beats, sweat and nail marks decorating his tattooed back. Before I can ask him what he’s thinking, his hand shoots out like lightning, wrapping my hair in his fist and drawing me whimpering to my knees. I’m thrown face down across his lap before I can catch my breath, his hand raining down stinging slaps to my backside. He’s spanking me. Hard. “Are you happy now, you little liar? You’ve conned me into a ruining your life.” Smack. Smack. “Is that what you wanted?”
“You aren’t ruining anything,” I choke out, struggling to get away. The rebuke is turning me on, making my flesh clench and search for another invasion, but his anger, his words are causing my chest to cave in. “Uncle Mase! Stop!”
“See this?” He palms my right butt cheek, soothing the sting, before smacking another one into its place. “This is what I’ll do if you don’t answer your phone. If you smile at another man. If you’re late coming home. Did you think I’d be prince charming, sweetheart? No, I’m your fucking master. This is what you wanted. Right?”
Tears flood my eyes and drip down onto the carpet, the fight going out of me.
What he’s trying to tell me penetrates. He’s saying these things to scare me away, to make me sorry, maybe even to shatter my feelings for him. Doesn’t he realize nothing will accomplish that? I love him. I always will. And the fact that he’s trying to push me away after what we just shared, after I gave myself to him…it slices my heart straight down the middle.
He doesn’t feel the same way. I’m a nuisance to him.
Something he was trying to avoid.
My pitiful sob rends the air.
Mase’s body stiffens beneath me, his hand dropping lifeless to my lower back. “Ripley,” he says gruffly. “Sweetheart, I…” But I’m already scrambling off his lap and scouring the room for my robe, stupid hiccups tripping over my lips. I have to get out of here.
I find the blue silk and belt it around my sated body, lunging for the door—
He blocks my exit, his hands landing on the meat of my arms and holding me captive. Whatever he sees in my face leaves him stricken. “You’re not leaving like this.”
“Oh yes I am.”
“Ripley, you tricked me. I was pissed off.” His voice shakes with passion. “There are reasons I’ve kept my hands off you and now—”
“Now I’ll make that a lot easier for you. Let me go!”
Even in the muted light, I watch the color leach from his face. “I shouldn’t have spanked you like that. Out of anger. Christ, it was your first time. I should have held you—”
I interrupt him with a hiccup, more moisture leaking down my face and he just watches, visibly devastated. So much so that his hands drop like they weigh a thousand pounds and he stumbles to the
side, clearing a path to the door. And I take it, running down the hallway barefoot to the thankfully empty changing room. Blindly, I grab whatever possessions I can find that belong to me or Alana, bundling them to my chest and leaving once again.
For a moment in the hallway, I’m disoriented and turned around, but with Mase only a few yards away in our room, I make a break for the second closest room, knocking on it and hoping like hell Alana is on the other side.
When she opens the door, I’m so grateful to see her familiar face, my knees dip. Her eyes are kind of stunned, teeth marks embedded in her lips. I want to know every single thing that happened to her—and I will find out, so I can make sure she’s okay—but right now, my flight instinct is screaming at me to get away from the source of my pain. “I have to go,” I whisper, imploring her with my eyes. “I have to get out of here. Now.”
Concern transforms her dumbstruck expression. “Oh my God, Rip. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later, just…please drive me home.” I shoot a nervous glance down the hallway. “Now?”
“Of course.” Alana turns in a circle and crouches down to drag her robe up off the floor, wrapping it around her naked body. Then she closes the door behind her and follows me toward the emergency exit. “Wait,” she calls behind me. “I need my car keys.”
I dangle them over my shoulder without slowing down and a second later, we’re roaring out of the parking lot in her car, leaving my shattered heart behind.
6
Mase
I watch through the front window of the drugstore as Ripley glides down the aisles, her nose wrinkled in thought. She’s as beautiful as ever, her red hair in waves down the middle of her back, an ice-blue sundress hugging her delicious body…but something is wrong. There’s a hitch in her stride that isn’t normally present. She keeps shaking out her hands and second-guessing everything she picks up.
I wonder how she would react if she knew I was watching.
She’d probably give me the finger—and I’d deserve it.
Fuck. Every time I blink, I see her mouth open, moaning. I feel her nails raking down my back, her inexcusably tight pussy rippling around my johnson. I thought I was fucked up over my niece before, but ignorance was bliss compared to this. I’m ruined for anything and everything else this world has to offer. There’s only her.
And I sure as hell ruined her back, didn’t I? Not in a good way, either.
I hurt her. Made my sweetheart cry.
She gave me the best night of my thirty-eight years and I left angry handprints on her ass in return. If another man had laid hands on her in frustration, they would be at the bottom of a lake right now with their feet encased in cement. My self-loathing is so goddamn heavy where it sits on my shoulders and chest, it’s a wonder I could get out of bed this morning. But I needed to see her. When I woke this morning, there was an intuition churning in my gut. A sense that I need to see her right the hell now.
I busted inside her without a condom.
I came deep and my intentions were so primal in that moment, I’ll be shocked if she isn’t in a delivery room in nine months.
My dick is hard thinking about it, my tongue thick in my mouth.
Didn’t I know this would happen if I took her? That my obsession would inflate into something almost predatory and insatiable?
Yeah I knew. And here I am, salivating over the sight of her while keeping my eye on every other man in the drugstore, daring them to come within ten yards of what’s mine so I can put my size thirteen boot up their ass.
I’m the last person Ripley wants to see and that causes a cavern to open in my stomach, but when she walks out of the store a few minutes later clutching a brown paper bag to her chest, I have no choice but to step out from the shadows. Into her path.
She skids to a halt and I watch a few different emotions pass over her face. Surprise. Happiness. And finally the killer: indifference. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“That right?” I take her elbow and drag my hissing niece around the side of the building. “I have a lot of things to say to you, sweetheart, but right now I’m concerned with one thing.” I urge her chin up with my fingers, aching to kiss her. “What’s in the bag, Ripley?”
“Nothing,” she says too quickly, her eyes darting to the side.
“Now that’s bull and we both know it.” I’m painfully aware that anyone walking by can glance down the side street and see us. A six-foot-three felon with neck tattoos trapping a sweet, young girl against a building. They’ll probably think I’m robbing or assaulting her. Our many differences are why I tried so hard to stay away, but hell if logic matters anymore now that I’ve had her legs wrapped around me. “You pregnant, baby?”
She must feel my erection swell against her stomach because she sucks in a sexy, little breath. “How would I know? It’s only been five days.”
“Ripley…” I warn.
“Fine.” Her free hand shoves at my shoulder, but I don’t budge. “My period was supposed to start the day after we…after you…”
“After I fucked you good and hard?”
My niece tries to trap a moan but doesn’t quite succeed and it drives me crazy. Makes me want to fall to my knees, lift the hem of her dress and lick between her legs, right here on the street. “Anyway,” she whispers tremulously. “I-I’m late.”
The confirmation, or at least what I deem as proof that Ripley is carrying my child, packs my chest so tight with emotion, I can barely breathe. Mine. I’m going to care for her and this baby. I’m going to be a dedicated father and husband. Explaining our predicament to her parents is going to be difficult, but everything that comes afterward will be worth one tough conversation. I’ll never be good enough for her, but God forgive me, I’m relieved the choice has been taken out of my hands. Now she’s one hundred percent mine. The claim is set in stone.
I trail my knuckles down her cheeks. “Do you feel okay?”
My affection catches her off-guard. “I’m fine. Just scared.”
“No.” I lean down and kiss her forehead. “Don’t be scared. I’m going to take care of everything. We’ll get a place together and babyproof the hell out of it—”
“No.”
It takes me a second to register that whispered denial. “What do you mean no?”
She takes advantage of my momentary shock to slide out from between me and the building. “I mean…I already decided that if I’m pregnant, I’m going to do it on my own. Raise the baby.” Her chin notches up. “I have a place. My parents have money to help me with childcare. I don’t need you to help me out of some…sense of obligation. I would hate it.”
“Ripley.” Her name bursts out of me on an incredulous laugh. This can’t really be happening. “That is my child you’re carrying. If you think you’re raising them without me, you’re wrong. I’m going to be a part of their life and yours, so get used to the idea real fast.”
My niece has never been one to back down from an argument and this time is no exception. “All this time, you’ve stayed away from me so I wouldn’t get pregnant. You told me so that day in my bedroom. That’s how I know you don’t really want this—and that’s fine. I’m strong and resourceful. I can do it on my own.”
If I’d even remotely seen this argument coming, I could have been prepared for it. But not in a million years could I have expected Ripley to try and deny me the privilege of being involved with her pregnancy, her life, our child’s life. Jesus, I must have hurt her so badly. Yes, I can see that I have. Her chin is wobbling, though she’s trying to hide it. She holds the bag that surely contains a pregnancy test to her chest like a shield. I’m so angry at myself for causing her an ounce of pain and putting her out of my reach that I lash out. I become an aggressor, because fighting is all that I know. It’s how I survived most of my life.
“You’re not keeping me from you,” I rasp, catching her jaw in my hand. “Or this baby.”
“Why do you want to be involved?” she cries, her
tears splashing down onto my inked knuckles. “I conned you, didn’t I? I tricked you.” Her eyelids fall, hiding the eyes I love most in the world. “Making you step up now wouldn’t be fair to you, Mase.”
My heart flips over.
Ah, now I see what’s really going on here. It’s her guilt pushing me away.
I made her feel like shit over what happened in the brothel and now it has come back around to bite me in the ass. She opens her eyes again and stares right through me, making me feel like I’m sucking wind. I know Ripley better than anyone and I’m not going to reach her right now. This girl is stubborn as they come and she’s made a decision to shut me out.
I’m going to have to work a lot harder to win her back.
To erase her memory of how I acted, the words I said…I’ll have to do more than just make verbal demands. To convince her I not only want to spend my life kissing the ground she walks on, but that building a family with her would be a dream come true. A dream I don’t deserve, but one I can’t help but reach out and take like a desperate beggar.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” she whispers. “Just let me go.”
Ready to implode with denial, I nonetheless rein in my mania, taking a moment to breathe. To plan. Then I drop my mouth to hers, hoping she feels the promise in my kiss. “Never. I’ll never let you go,” I growl against her mouth, before tearing myself away from her and walking away. It nearly kills me to leave her standing there, but we’re at an impasse. If I push too hard, I know she’ll only close herself off and I’ll get nowhere.
Perks of being in love with a redhead.
No, I need to show her I’m willing and eager to put in work.
I need to get her trust back and make her realize that while she did trick me, us coming together was inevitable. We are inevitable. I was an idiot to try and fight that for so long.
As soon as I’m out of earshot, I rip my cell phone from the pocket of my leather jacket and call my brother. “Hey,” he answers, sounding bored. Where the hell have you been the last few days? I’ve called a couple of times.”