by JC Harroway
His stare holds. He clenches his jaw and pushes inside me so slowly I want to weep. But his hand on my hip, his gritted teeth and flexed jaw, stops me slamming backwards and impaling myself. He’s still controlling the pace, where I’m desperate to race to the finish line so we can start all over again.
He’s big, thick. I force myself to relax as he works his way inside me. The look of intense pleasure and agony on his face freezes every part of me, including my heartbeat. When he’s fully seated he drops his chin to his chest, his long, agonised exhale the only sound he makes.
How can he do that? I want to scream my pleasure to the skies. Even now, buried as deeply inside me as he can go, he’s contained. Fighting for control. But his emotions are clearly displayed in his dark eyes. He’s struggling every bit as I am to contain this intense pleasure.
But it’s his show. That doesn’t mean I can’t play dirty, of course. I clench my pelvic floor muscles around him, satisfaction tugging a smile from me as I hear his low groan. His eyes slam to mine in the mirror.
‘Playing with fire, Brooke?’ He presses his chest to my back, reaches around and tugs on one nipple with his thumb and forefinger. This time the clench of my internal muscles is involuntary, but no less delightful.
‘Yes. But you make me burn. Please move...’ I’m begging now, but I’m past caring.
He positions my body exactly the way he wants it—a shift of one thigh here and a tilt of my hips there, so I’m spread wider to his penetration, and presumably for maximum view in the mirrors.
Gripping my hips in his tight grasp, Nick starts to thrust into me, holding me close to him so I feel every scrape of his length inside, and I’m stretched almost beyond pleasure.
‘Can you come again?’ he asks, his stare burning into mine with such ferocity I want to look away. Because after everything we’ve shared today—kinks, confessions, this club—his eye contact is the most intimate. How didn’t I notice before how much emotion he displays in the depths of his eyes? And why, oh why, did he fight this so hard?
I nod, because amazingly I’m close, and I want to perform for him until I collapse from exhaustion.
I take my weight on one hand and slide the other between my legs, caressing his balls before finding my clit, which is greedy for some more attention. His eyes flare with heat and he watches the reflection of my hand moving between my thighs in time to his thrusts.
It’s the wild, frenzied coupling of two people who’ve waited too long. It’s everything I wanted, and I love every second of its perfection.
‘Come for me, Brooke,’ he says huskily. With a few swipes over my engorged clit and with Nick’s continued thrusts I come, screaming out my orgasm as I try to keep my stare locked with Nick’s in the mirror.
He slams into me over and over, his jaw clamped, nostrils flared as he fights his own mounting climax to ride out mine to the last soul-destroying spasm.
I watch in wonder. Thrilled to be finally getting everything I’ve craved for so long. Nick Rivers undone. For me.
But at the last minute, when I’m finally spent, he pulls out, scoops his arm around my waist like a steel band and hauls me into a kneeling position, my back pressed to his chest. I feel his cock pulsing between our bodies in the small of my back. He buries his face against the side of my neck as he comes without a single sound.
I stay still as he bucks against me, crushing my body to mould against his until he’s wrung dry and collapses us both back onto the bed.
The euphoria and triumph I felt at the best sex of my life dies out, leaving me close to inexplicable and ridiculous tears, and with one depressing thought.
Nick is broken. Punishing himself. And I need to know why.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nick
I FEEL HER questions build as I lie still under her, the painful thud of my heart mocking the calm, controlled exterior I’m trying to project. But she cut my restraint to shreds. I close my eyes, flashbacks going off behind my eyelids. Brooke embracing this club when I knew it was her first experience. Dancing for me, her beautiful stare displaying her every feeling. Her sexy striptease and how she instinctively heightened my desperation for her through a hint of denial...
She gave me everything I said I needed and it still wasn’t enough to keep me in control. Because she’s perfect. Too perfect. Still as dangerous as a steel blade to my throat.
Panic rolls through my stomach. I don’t need her to be any more of a temptation. I can’t allow this connection to get away from me. And yet in less than three days she’s managed to bewitch me so thoroughly, I’m already hard again. Desperate to touch her again and again and again...
But good sex is an emotional experience. That doesn’t mean I can allow this woman to undo the barriers I’ve spent years constructing. Barriers that make me the man I am. The man I want to be.
I don’t want to hurt her but, from her pensive silence and the wounded expression I caught on her face as I pulled her down to the mattress, I guess I already have with my messed-up need to stay detached.
Yeah...real detached, dickhead.
I wanted her so damned much that I almost lost my mind. Almost lost complete control. With every ragged breath I try to claw it back. But the sick sense of dread tells me it might be too late.
‘Why didn’t you come inside me?’ she asks, her question jabbing between my ribs.
I bide my time, my fingers toying with her short silky hair, which smells like sunshine and sin. I could lie. Construct some excuse that won’t expose the very heart of me and how I’m too twisted and ruined for any woman, let alone a woman like Brooke. But she’s smart, and after everything she’s given me tonight she deserves more than the scraps I’ve given her up to now.
Her gentle reassurance earlier over lunch all but slayed me. I want you to know that you can talk to me, if you need to. That you can trust me.
But no amount of talk will change what I did, or return what I lost. This post-coital emotion is as pointless as my regret. It changes nothing.
She must feel the defeated exhale that recoils my chest under her head.
‘I don’t have any infections and I’m on birth control, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ She looks up, a pinch of confusion settled between her brows and a glimmer of hurt lingering in her eyes. ‘And you were wearing a condom so...you know...double protection.’
I’ve hurt her. Hurt and insulted her.
Fuck.
I rest my hands on her back, stroking her warm skin so I can find the strength to formulate the right words. ‘It’s not that. It’s not you.’ Shit, that’s the best I can come up with...?
Bile reaches the back of my throat and I swallow the shame down hard, feeling small and stupid. Of course my weird withdrawal is partly a safety thing. Habit I’ve formed over seventeen years because I made that mistake with Julia. But how can I tell this incredible woman all my shameful secrets? How I was once young and reckless enough to act without thought for the consequences? How I got Julia pregnant and naively, arrogantly, believed everything would work out? How I’d then landed myself in prison and she’d lost our baby. How Julia herself almost died.
Pain shoots through me as if my terrible cascade of mistakes happened yesterday.
All that I am, all that I do, prevents me from feeling like I’m freewheeling back towards those bleak days. That dark place of grief and impotence and utter self-inflicted aloneness.
Brooke stares, peeling away layers of me with the questions banked behind her emotive eyes. ‘Didn’t you enjoy yourself?’ She nibbles at her lip, and I tug it free with my thumb and kiss the exact same spot.
‘Of course I did.’ I roll onto my side to face her, keeping my hands on her, keeping her close.
She frowns, calling bullshit. ‘It’s just that you were so...quiet.’ She offers a hesitant smile. ‘I’m seriously impressed—I’d need to
be gagged to stay that silent at the height of pleasure.’
I slide my hands from her hips to grip her backside, pressing her against my semi-hard dick. ‘Well, that could be arranged...’
She laughs a sexy, throaty chuckle and rolls her eyes. I take a deep, shuddering breath. She was amazing—embracing something new, giving me her trust and her passion and a safe space where I might release my own.
But I can’t. I don’t let go completely. I gave her my standard moves. The contained version. No feelings. No risk.
The spasm in my throat chokes me. I’m an arsehole and I don’t want to be responsible for damaging this amazing woman’s self-esteem. She did absolutely everything right and stayed true to herself. It’s me who’s the coward. Emotionally crippled.
I cup her face, tilting her delicate chin up so our eyes connect. ‘Can you imagine how little privacy there is in prison, or in a barrack room full of soldiers, for that matter?’ I ask. ‘You learn to be quiet. I guess it’s just become habit...’ It’s a half-truth that slashes fresh shame through me.
‘Oh. I didn’t think of that.’ Her finger traces some of the ink on my chest, her eyes darting. ‘So what about...you know...the pulling out? Have you had a bad experience or something? Because the way we did it, there’s zero chance of unwanted pregnancy.’
‘I know.’ I wince. I want to talk about this as much as I want to take up knitting to keep her company. I don’t really owe her any explanations. She had a good time. I could hide my weird behaviour behind the kinkiness she already knows about.
But...
Every second we stare in silence––something I usually embrace because I’m not one for meaningless chatter––my heart thuds faster until I fear I’ll pass out. Now I’ve crossed the line with this woman, when she’s embraced my kind of sex, I should give her something in return, even if it’s just peace of mind that my reservations and rules are about me and in no way a reflection on her.
This is why it’s easier to walk away at this stage.
I hold her close, stroke my hand up and down her back. ‘Everything about tonight was amazing. You’re perfect. Delicious.’ I press a kiss to her unsmiling lips. She won’t be satisfied with platitudes, no matter how true or heartfelt. And they are.
Brooke is like rich, dark chocolate... Addictive and decadent.
This time my sigh is loud. ‘I don’t normally talk about this...’ But I care about Brooke. She’s confessed her own issues about her relationships, her fame and her past betrayals. I don’t want her to regret what happened tonight.
‘I was careless once, as a youth,’ I tell her. ‘My girlfriend, Julia––the one I told you about––got pregnant, but she lost the baby while I was in prison.’ I rip out the words as quickly as possible to limit the damage, but they still shred my throat like the slash of razor blades, their power as potent as the day I heard the devastating news.
Brooke gasps. Shock transforms her stunning face. ‘Oh, Nick.’ She grips my waist more tightly. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She buries her face against my chest. It’s both comforting and claustrophobic, because it exposes the memories.
My mother visited me in prison. I’ll never forget her expression of pain and disappointment, which as it turned out was to be only a fraction of mine. I can never forgive myself for what I did, because Julia, my mother and my innocent child all paid the price for my immature recklessness. For my mistake.
‘It was a long time ago.’ I swallow my resurfaced shame, shoving the memories and the feelings of helplessness back down my throat like a jagged pill. But how easy it is to relive the scalding self-disgust and remorse.
If only I’d been there for Julia, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened. We had everything—we loved each other. We were going to be parents. Discovering I was going to be a father, albeit a young one, had given my life a purpose for which I’d been searching. I got a job and started saving for our own place. And then in one rash second I turned that bright future to ash.
My incarceration added untold stress to Julia’s pregnancy. She visited me, stood by me, but I know she faced questions from her parents, who thought she deserved better. Losing the baby was my punishment. A punishment Julia didn’t deserve because it was my fault.
And that’s the end of this well-travelled path. It’s always the same. The buck stops with me.
‘Let’s shower and get out of here,’ I say, jumping into action as a distraction technique. I disengage from her, stride to the bathroom and flip on the shower, hoping the hot water will block out the brutal home truths in my head.
This is what happens when I don’t keep my guard up. I remember. I relive. But I can never atone. All I can do with my control is keep myself safe from feeling again. Keep those in my sphere safe with distance from me and try to close the lid on the past.
Brooke joins me under the shower, silently watchful as we soap up and regard each other for long, uncomfortable moments. I might as well be washing in acid for the effect of her quiet scrutiny, even though she’s likely only deciding how best to respond to my revelation.
‘You’re still punishing yourself, aren’t you?’ Her expression is one of concern and understanding.
But I don’t want her compassion. I want her desire, her playfulness—even her fucking trust is better than this torture. Because she’s forcing me to look internally. And I know exactly what lies at the centre of my cold, black soul. Shame and guilt and blame.
I close my eyes for a second and duck my head under the spray. This was the risk of allowing her too close. The very thing I feared. She’s intuitive, perceptive, emotionally intelligent. She sees what I’d rather hide, just as she’s honest and open about her own need to protect something of herself from the public.
She slides her hand around my waist, her fingers flexing against my skin. It’s torture that I crave. ‘You don’t blame yourself for...losing your child, do you?’ she whispers.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ I flick the water out of my eyes and stare.
I do blame myself. It was my fault. I behaved like a hot-headed thug and landed myself in jail. I left my girlfriend alone to deal with the fallout of a difficult pregnancy and the demands of her disapproving parents, who by then understandably hated my no-good guts. I don’t blame them for trying to break us apart. They were protecting her, as I’d failed to do. I can never move past the feeling that if I’d been by her side, instead of abandoning her and putting her in an impossible position, we might not have lost our baby.
‘I don’t know how I’d feel, Nick. I wouldn’t presume to understand that kind of heart-breaking grief. But I know blaming yourself changes nothing. For you, I wish it would, because I understand now that you’ve spent half of your life trying to make amends. That’s sentence enough, surely?’
I stare, too raw from her words to do or say anything. Warm water sluices us. I can’t move, because all I want to do is...
What? Fall to my knees and hold her until this pain and regret dissolves? It won’t work. The threads of it are woven through me at a cellular level. There’s no washing away that degree of blackness.
‘Did you and your girlfriend stay together...after?’ Brooke asks, her voice low, as if coaxing a scared animal. And she’s right. I’m caged by my past mistake. And now I’m trapped by my weakness for Brooke.
I shake my head. ‘No. But I don’t blame her for anything. A criminal who knocked her up and then wasn’t there at the worst moment of her life is hardly worthy of regret.’
The frown is back between her brows. I’m not hiding a god damned thing from this woman. ‘But you said you fought protecting her. It must have been a terrible time for you, too.’
I reach for the shampoo to stop myself from touching her again, the need like nettle stings on the palms of my hands. I lather up my hair and pass the bottle to Brooke, who’s looking at me with caution and puzzlement, as if there’s a way to fix
this. Fix me.
‘I could have walked away from the fight,’ I say, hating the weakness I’m forced to admit. ‘Protected her that way. I made the wrong decision that day and I have to live with the consequences.’
I wanted to be there for Julia, for my child. But I’d rendered myself powerless by landing in jail. When she lost the baby and I was eventually released, I knew from the look on her face that I’d killed her love, and she could never forgive me, and that made two of us.
And now that powerless feeling threatens again, because this woman sees through me. She sees my pain and regrets, probing close to a place I fight hard to protect with everything I have. Because, if I don’t protect that place, there’s a risk I could become that man again.
Brooke’s stare fills with compassion I don’t deserve. ‘You made a mistake, Nick. One. There’s not one person on this planet who hasn’t done that.’
I swallow hard, fighting to get the words past my tight throat. ‘One is all it takes.’ Then I wish I hadn’t spoken at all. Because I feel myself opening up with this woman like a damned flower in the sun. She is the sun. I need to resist, because I’ll burn to ash if I allow her to lead me to look too closely at myself.
Brooke looks down with a nod and then peers up at me from under her lashes, as if testing my reaction to her candour and how far she can push. ‘I understand that, and I don’t want to cause you more pain, but I hurt for you.’ She rests her small fist over her breastbone, as if she too is heart-sore. ‘I think you are punishing yourself. And I wish you wouldn’t. You both lost so much. It must have been a devastating time for you, too.’
I shrug. ‘I’m a big tough guy, can’t you tell?’ I never gave myself time to think about my own feelings, too consumed by the pain I’d put everyone through. As soon as I left prison––as soon as I’d reconnected with Julia and discovered that it was less painful for her just to move on, that my consolation was too late and unwanted––I knew I was alone. No baby. No girlfriend. No prospects.