I hated the idea of talking about this shit with anyone, but he had a point. I walked over and sat down, irritated that they were all staring at me, waiting for me to say something.
“What?”
“It’s okay to share with us,” Sinner coaxed. “We all have things we don’t want to talk about. Here, I’ll start. When I was taken and tortured, they electrocuted me repeatedly and I kept up a pretty brave front. But then they got my cock and it was fucking useless for months. Now, I don’t think I have to tell all of you what a kick to the nuts that was. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to fuck again. Now, you tell me that my situation wasn’t as bad as yours.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Comparing torture stories?”
“Well, no, I was opening up so that you would feel comfortable in the circle of truth.”
“Sinner, where do you come up with this shit?”
“Cara has become very spiritual since we’ve been together. She shows me shit.”
“If I wanted to feel more comfortable, I would go beat the shit out of you in the boxing ring.”
“Harsh, man. I was just trying to help.”
“Why?” I stood angrily. “Why does everyone need to help? Why can’t I just deal with this shit on my own? I’m not some fucking project you can all join in on to make yourselves feel better.”
“This is good,” Sinner stood, coaxing me to get more out. “Purge. Get those feelings out. Tell us how you really feel.”
“I feel like I want to hit something right now,” I growled.
“Right, I see where you’re coming from. Here.” He reached down in a bag and pulled out two long wooden sticks in the shape of swords. “Cara gave these to me. The girls all made a bunch of them. She says that we need to work out our aggressions or some bullshit. It’s supposed to be kind of like fencing.”
“Sinner, these are wooden swords. This is nothing like fencing.”
“Look, I get that this is fake sword fighting, but Cara thinks it’ll help and I can’t go back to her and tell her I didn’t even try.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s pregnant. You’ve seen pregnant women, right? Remember Freckles? Shit, you don’t mess with them. Last time Cara was pregnant, I made the mistake of telling her she needed bigger shoes because her feet were swollen. She stomped on my fucking foot with her huge ass feet and almost broke my bones.”
“Fine,” I sighed, grabbing the sword from Sinner. I took my position across from him and twirled the sword in my hand. This was fucking ridiculous.
“Gabe, you want to help me out here?”
He grinned, “No, I think it’s really important that you work out your frustrations.”
That fucker. “If I have to do this, then so do you. We’re all a team, remember?”
All the guys grumbled as they stood, but Florrie and Lola were grinning like this was the funnest thing they’d gotten to do all year. Even Knight stood up and joined in, though he looked like he was about to spit nails.
“Alright, let’s take this nice and easy,” Sinner said, but taking it easy was the last thing on my mind right now. I lunged forward and thrust my sword at him. He shifted to the side just in time and started dueling with me. I could hear everyone else fighting as well, but my only thought right now was taking down Sinner for making me play this ridiculous game with him. When I got close enough, I caught his sword between my arm and my side and then lifted him, throwing him over the couch. He crashed into a table and then I was tackled from behind. I rolled into the tackle and jumped back to my feet, now fighting with Ice. He still wasn’t quite up to shape yet, so I took it easy on him, but then he faked right and stabbed me in the fucking chest and raised his hands in victory. Screw that.
I charged him, our swords beating against each other in a less than thrilling sound. Right about now, I could really use a real fucking sword. Chris fell to the ground, his sword skidding right in front of me. I quickly grabbed it and started fighting Ice with both swords, feeling every bit like a Musketeer. The fighting moved out into the main part of the house, everyone fighting as if this was a battle to the death. Chairs were broken, tables were missing legs, and most of all, the ladies were watching, which made each of us fight harder.
Ice started backing up the stairs and I knew I had him. “You pussy! Don’t run away from me.” He turned and sprinted up the stairs, throwing a table at me from the top. I ducked just in time, but it still caught me and sent me back down a few stairs. I lost one of my swords and charged forward with just the one. When I tripped on a stair, I took advantage of the fall and took Ice out at the knees, crashing into the banister. We were still leaning against it when I heard it start to crack. I moved just in time, but Ice wasn’t so lucky. The banister gave way and he crashed through, grabbing onto the light that was hanging from the ceiling.
With still more opponents to fight, I slid down the railing and took out Burg at the bottom of the stairs. Derek was fighting Ice as he hung from the light. Cap was dragging Maggie back as she tried to join in the sword fight. Alec and Florrie were fighting, and by the looks of it, she was kicking his ass. When I didn’t move fast enough away from Burg, he swept my legs out from under me and held his sword to my throat, grinning like an idiot.
“What is going on here?” I heard Kate yell, but nobody stopped fighting. Burg raised his sword like he was about to cut off my head when Kate let out an ear-piercing whistle. Everyone stilled and looked in Kate’s direction by the door to one of the common areas. “What is going on?”
“Uh…Cara told us to work out our aggressions,” Sinner said.
“You weren’t supposed to beat each other up! You were supposed to talk things out and have a small sword fight when you had a difference of opinions. Did you even talk or did you just start fighting?” Cara asked.
“We…” Sinner looked around, shrugging at all of us. “We just started fighting. But baby, you were right. I feel a lot better.”
He winked at us and we all joined in.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Definitely.”
“Couldn’t feel better.”
Cara huffed and walked away. Kate glared at all of us, most of all Knight who was currently using what looked like a very expensive painting to bash over Hunter’s head. “I want this mess cleaned up or no dinner for anyone.”
She turned and left the room and we all just stared at each other in silence. Well, until the light hanging from the ceiling crashed down with Ice still hanging on.
✯✯✯✯✯
“This fucking sucks,” I complained two hours later when we were all seated in one of the common rooms. The women thought that perhaps we were too violent and sword fighting wasn’t the way to go. So, they sat us down with something to calm us.
“At least we still have sticks,” Jackson muttered.
“They’re not sticks,” Florrie laughed. “They’re crochet hooks.”
“This is a woman’s activity. I don’t see why we have to do this,” Cazzo grumbled. “We should be fighting battles, drinking beer, and eating steak.”
“See?” I pointed at Sinner. “Even Cazzo thinks that men should eat steak. You don’t fucking eat ice cream. We’re men.”
“Yeah, well, men don’t learn to crochet, but here we are,” he muttered.
“I like it,” Jules said. “The girls are right. This is calming.”
“This is a fucking disaster,” I clarified. “I can’t get the fucking hooky thing to bring the rope through the loop.”
“That’s because you didn’t yarn over.” Jules stood behind me and wrapped his hands around mine. “See, you yarn over, pull up a loop and then yarn over and pull through two loops. Then yarn over and pull through the last two loops on the hook. See? You just did a double crochet.”
I slowly turned my head until I was glaring at him. “Get your fucking hands off me,” I said slowly.
He moved away and I went back to trying to do whatever the hell he just said.
“Hey, look,” Derek grinned. “I made a noose.”
“You’re supposed to be making something productive, like a blanket or scarf,” Lola chastised.
“This is productive. The yarn is strong and it’s the perfect size for someone’s head. I should keep this in my pocket instead of zip ties. It fits much better.”
“Maybe one of us should make a sling for carrying someone,” Chris suggested. “You know, so if we have to carry someone out on our backs, we can just dump their ass in a sling and then we still have our hands free to use our guns.”
“See, now you’re thinking.” Cap got out a piece of paper and pen and started writing down notes. “And then we could make bags that we could carry guns in. Who’s gonna stop someone carrying a crocheted bag?”
“Or a safety net. If someone has to jump out a window, one of us pulls a large net out and boom, we have something to jump into,” Gabe said.
“Did you ever see Robin Hood?” Sinner asked. “With Kevin Costner? Remember that scene when they used the walking stick to store the arrows at the hanging? We could do the same fucking thing with the crochet hooks.”
“Uh, pretty sure an arrow wouldn’t fit in a crochet hook,” I said.
“You dumbass, we don’t even use bow and arrows. We could come up with something clever to put inside. Like a laser beam that kills people on contact or we could make one of those blow darts.”
“Or we could just pull out our guns and fucking shoot them,” Florrie said calmly.
“Sure, if you want to be unimaginative,” Sinner grumbled.
“I think we should make grenade cozies,” Gabe said.
“For what purpose?” I couldn’t understand why everyone was getting into this so much. This was women’s shit.
Gabe shrugged and held up something that looked like a hat. “What do you think?”
“I think you made that hat way too fucking big.”
“It’s not a hat. It’s a mask for waterboarding. See? I made it longer in the front.”
Derek came running over, excited as hell. “I came up with the perfect idea. A poncho that has built in holsters.” He was grinning as if he just hit the fucking lotto. I still didn’t understand what the purpose of all this shit was. It made more sense to me to get out our aggressions with a sword fight. This was just turning the guys into a bunch of fucking pansies. I turned and walked away, hearing Derek shout after me.
“What do you think about crocheted team logos?”
✯✯✯✯✯
Over the past few days, Morgan had been looking at me a lot. The kind of look that I knew meant she wanted to fuck me. And I wanted her too, but I was nervous. She’d been through a lot of shit and I didn’t know exactly how to deal with that sexually. She said she hadn’t been raped, but that didn’t mean that she liked what happened.
When she came into the room with Payton, I made sure she saw me raking her body with my eyes. She hurried Payton into the other room and came out twenty minutes later. Neither of us really knew what to do. I wanted her, but I was going to take it easy on her until I knew that she could handle it. I was full of rage and I desperately wanted to pound into her pussy, but that wasn’t the way this was going to go.
I walked over to her and swept my hand through her hair, trailing my fingers down her arm. Her smooth skin was a stark contrast to my scarred up, puckered skin. I slipped my other arm around her waist and pulled her against me gently. When my lips skimmed hers, fire shot through me, but I forced myself to take it slow. I wanted this to be good for her. I kissed her for what felt like fifteen minutes as I tried to keep my dick away from her. I didn’t want to scare her off. When she sank into my touch, I pushed her back on the bed and let my hands roam over her body. I couldn’t get enough of her mouth and I desperately wanted her lips wrapped around my cock.
I kissed her with everything in me, needing her to know how much I needed her. Not just sexually, but as the woman who gave me something I never knew I needed. As I kissed her, I realized I didn’t want to fuck her. I wanted to worship her so she knew exactly what she meant to me. I slid my hand down to her breast and ran my thumb over her nipple. Her gasp shot through me and then she was pulling my mouth to her breast. I nipped at her through her shirt, but it wasn’t enough. I sat her up and pulled her shirt over her head.
She was magnificent. I crawled up her body until she had no choice but to lean back on the bed. My hands were all over her body and every taste of her skin made me want to see if all of her tasted the same. She shuddered as I sucked gently at the delicate skin of her neck. My lips had a mind of their own, licking across her shoulder and down her body. I sucked gently on each breast and down the center of her chest, spending extra time kissing her belly button. Using my teeth, I pulled down her stretchy pants and let my teeth skim her skin around her pussy. Her arousal was strong, dampening her panties and hitting me right in the balls.
I was painfully hard, and when I pulled her panties down and got my first taste in a year, I had to grab my dick to stop from shooting off in my pants. I had never seen anything more beautiful than Morgan spread out for me to feast on. I didn’t let up until she was wiggling under me and struggling to press her legs together to stop the orgasms shooting through her as I continued to suck on her clit after she was already falling to pieces.
“Chance, I need you.”
Stripping off my pants, I settled between her legs and slowly pushed inside her, only remembering that I hadn’t put on a condom after I was already fucking her slowly. Her legs wrapped around me and fingers threaded through my hair and I lost all thoughts of condoms or that asshole that had her for the last year. I pushed deep inside her with every thrust, our sweat gliding between us as I pressed my body as tight as possible to hers.
My heart hammered out of control, my willpower barely holding strong as my cock was buried inside her. I brushed her damp hair back from her face and stared into those gorgeous eyes. I slowly pumped inside her and kissed her lips lightly over and over. She was all I needed, all I could ever want for the rest of my life. After all we’d been through, I didn’t want to go another day without telling her how I felt, how I was beginning to feel when I thought she had died.
“I love you,” I whispered against her lips. She looked almost uncertain, but when her eyes fluttered shut and her body released around me, she pulled me tighter.
“I love you, too.”
I held us together when I’d finished and for the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.
“I thought you died in that fire,” I said after a while. “I hadn’t realized how much I wanted you until I thought you were gone. When I realized you hadn’t died, I felt like I had been given a second chance.”
“What did you mean the other day? You said you were here because of me and Payton.”
I couldn’t tell her everything. It wasn’t something she needed to hear or I wanted to say. So, I told her what I could. “I reached a low point over the last year and I didn’t know if I could…I remembered my promise to you, that I wouldn’t give up until I got Payton back. I told myself that I was going to hold myself to that promise. That’s what saved me.”
“I thought of you when I slept with Wes.” My muscles tensed. I wasn’t sure I could hear this. “It’s how I was able to pretend that I wanted him.”
She pushed up on her elbow and looked at me nervously. “I have something to tell you and I’m afraid that you might look at me differently.”
“Is this about your time with Wes?” She nodded. “Baby, whatever it is, I could never look at you differently. I know you were trying to survive, to get your child back. There’s nothing you could do to make me not want you.”
She laid back down and intertwined our fingers, almost like she was trying to hold me to her as she told me. “At first, I was just trying to make him think that I was really falling for him. The nicer I was to him, the more I appeared to really want him, the better he was to me. At some point, I started to believe
that he really was a good person deep down. I started to think that my time with him wasn’t that bad, and that as long as he treated me well, it could be good between us. I think I was falling for him.”
She took a deep breath and looked over at me. “But then I was out with him and had gone shopping. Someone slipped a tracker in my bag and we were attacked. He thought I had betrayed him and he punched me in the face a couple times and had his guy strangle me. He would have killed me if he hadn’t gotten confirmation that he was betrayed by someone else.”
I was angry as fuck, but I didn’t want her to think that any of it had to do with how she had started to fall for Wes. It was an impossible situation and she was trying to survive. I couldn’t blame her for anything she did.
“It was like a slap to the face. Suddenly, I remembered why he was such a monster and focused on my objective after that. I hated myself for falling into the trap that I had set for him. I was so stupid and it felt like I had ruined what had started between you and I. I felt so horrible because it was so clear that you were the one I should have trusted all along. Wes offered me everything, but it came at a price. You offered me the same, but the only thing you wanted was to get my daughter back for me. You were there for me, swearing to help me and protect me when you hardly knew me.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and kissed her. “It doesn’t matter. It was hell for both of us. I can’t judge you for doing what you thought you needed to do and I never will. I just want to move on. I don’t want to think about that shit anymore, and I think as long as I have you, I can get there.”
I made love to her twice more that night, barely restraining myself from taking her how I wanted her. Until I knew she was ready for all of me, I wasn’t going to push her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chance and Morgan
Chance
“It’s been weeks,” Jackson griped. “How long is it going to take you to seal the deal?”
Chance Page 20