by Knox, Abby
I shake my head more emphatically, but it only causes my whole body to erupt in a fresh bout of intense trembling. My breathing is shallow, and a feeling of dread seems to be pouring out of the walls the closer we get to the door to leave.
“She doesn’t want me to leave. I can’t leave,” I plead with him.
“I’m putting my foot down. This is enough, D.”
I grab his shirt. “It’s n-not about the bet anymore. S-something really bad happened here. The c-closer we get to leaving the house, the more it feels like…like I might d-die, Blake. P-please.”
He wraps his arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides to still my tremors. “You’re having a panic attack. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen door and try to go out that way. One step at a time.”
He holds my hand and guides me to the kitchen. But as soon as we’re within a few feet of the kitchen door, same thing. The trembling spikes, my guts feel like I’m riding a plummeting elevator, and my air passageways feel half blocked.
“I’m so cold, I can’t stop shaking,” I squeak through my constricted throat. “And I can barely breathe.”
Blake tries to still me by putting his big arms around me, telling me to breathe in slowly with him.
“This is not a p-panic attack. This house is h-h-haunted,” I whimper.
Blake runs one hand through his hair and mutters. “Fuck. Come here, D.”
He scoops me up and carries me up the staircase. “Wh-where…?” I start to say, but he has no more patience for me and my full-body shakes.
“As far away from the basement as possible without leaving,” he says.
Inside the guest room, Blake sets me down on the end of the bed. I watch curiously as he unzips my sleeping bag to make a blanket on the bare mattress.
He begins to undress me and my panic rises in my throat. But, I remind myself, this is Blake. He wouldn’t… “Blake, w-what…?”
“I don’t know if this is what I’m supposed to do for…whatever the hell is going on with you…but this is what we’re doing.”
I acquiesce but only because I trust him completely. He would never purposefully do anything to hurt me.
He tosses my trench coat to the floor and helps me slip out of my boots and my dress. Now only in my underwear, he helps me lie face down on the bed.
I’m still trembling, but not as intensely as I was downstairs. I turn my head on the sleeping bag to look at his reflection in the window. Everything looks wild and eerie in the lantern glow. I watch him take off his jacket and shirt and undress himself down to his boxer briefs. It’s then I realize what he’s doing—he’s taking care of me the way he used to do when we were dating. The idea of it nudges my heart. The memory of it would make me full-out cry but I’m so scared and cold and freaked out, no other emotions can take hold.
Whenever I’d get so stressed and overwhelmed about my grades or work myself up into a ball of nerves over my term papers to the point of not sleeping or eating, Blake would convince me to take a break and lie down on my bed for non-sexual “skin on skin time.”
“B-Blake, this isn’t term paper stress. This is s-something else.”
But in the next second he’s hovering over me, his palms running the lengths of my arms and legs, gradually pressing his weight down on top of my back.
“Let me know when it’s too much and I’ll back off,” he whispers in my ear, brushing my hair away from my neck.
“You must be freezing,” I say as the trembling beginning to subside.
“Kinda,” he says. Blake grudgingly gets off me for a second to grab his flannel-lined sleeping bag. He unzips it and covers the both of us with it. My skin misses him in the few seconds it takes for him to do this, and I realize my heart is at risk of getting attached to him again.
Trapped body heat combined with skin on skin contact is actually working. His big chest blankets me and I can feel his chest muscles ripple against my shoulder blades while he warms my arms. The smell from the flannel lining of his sleeping bag hits me. Oh boy, do I remember what we used to do in the woods inside this exact sleeping bag. He adds a little more of his weight and I sigh.
“Am I too heavy? Just say so.”
I close my eyes. His stubble warms my cheek.
“Too heavy? God no. Don’t hold back.”
“If you’re sure,” he says. Blake’s voice vibrates all through me; it’s the sweetest feeling in the whole world. Oh yeah, I’m definitely in danger of getting hurt all over again. But I’m under this crazy spell of not just attraction but of affection. His need to take care of me was one of the most endearing things about him, back when we were together.
I feel a connection with him on every inch of my exposed skin. Even his toes are linked up with mine. Something about it not only calms me down but squeezes my heart. It’s so heavy and comforting and loving, it’s making even more happy memories of our time together two years ago come flooding back.
Blake’s covered dick is wedged between my ass cheeks in the most innocent way possible, as much as it can be while I’m wearing cheeky undies. There seems to be no sexual end goal to what he’s doing; it’s just comfort. He knows how to block out the world for me. He silences all my racing thoughts.
The trembling has finally stopped. My breathing normalizes. My skin warms. The hideous feeling of dread in my guts evaporates. I find myself on the verge of plummeting into blissful sleep.
My voice cracks as I whisper, “Thank you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Blake
Her emotional “thank you” pushes away all the remaining stubbornness from of my chest.
Why did I ever let her get away? Why did I push her so hard to let me go when she went away to finish college? She loved me and I convinced myself that breaking up was for her own good. When she told me she loved me, it was so pure and sweet and raw, but it caught me off guard. In my head I’m kicking myself.
Time to lay it all out on the line and see where it lands.
“I should have asked you to stay,” I whisper into her neck.
“Blake, I know why you did it.”
“Let me finish. I should have told you when Gramps died. I knew you would forgive me for everything and come home immediately to be with me, to help me. But I foolishly didn’t want you to forgive me for that reason. I felt I didn’t deserve for you to help me through my grief. I thought I deserved to be alone. You told me you loved me and I ended it. I thought I would hold you back if we tried making our relationship work long distance, so I broke things off with you.
“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have done that. Sorry isn’t even the right word. I’m disgusted with what I did. I beat myself up over it every day. And when you came home six months ago and walked into my bar, I thought the universe was punishing me. I felt I didn’t deserve you, but I deserved the torture of seeing you every day. I should have handled a lot of things very differently and I regret…everything.”
I brush my hand along the soft strands of auburn hair splayed out against the sleeping bag, and it’s there that I feel dampness.
“D? Are you OK?”
I feel her nod and I hear her sniffle. “I’m sorry too,” she says.
I try to shush her but she needs to talk just as much as I do.
Chapter Fourteen
Dahlia
Blake’s words, his strong body blanketed over me, and his warm breath on my neck make me feel so safe that I let everything I’ve been holding on to ever since I moved back home spill out.
“I shouldn’t have been so angry. I should have believed you when you said you thought it was for the best that we broke up,” I say. “I thought you were scared of commitment and I called you a coward. That wasn’t true.”
He breathes a small laugh against my skin. “You called me a lot more than that. Things I’d never heard come out of those perfect lips of yours.”
On the street at noon on a Sunday, just as people were leaving church, as I recall. I squeeze my eyes shut at the uncomfor
table memory. “And I’m sorry that I scared you away when I said I loved you. I should have waited for you to say it first.”
The sudden roughness in his voice almost scares me. “Stop it. Don’t ever apologize for loving someone. Be proud you had the guts to say it. I wish I had.”
There he goes, squeezing my heart and making it impossible for me not to fall for him again. His fingers roaming through my hair send pleasing tingles through my body.
“Let’s never do that again,” he says.
I laugh softly. “You mean never again have a fight on a public street and call each other names and hurt each other and then stop speaking? Yeah, I promise to hold up my end of that deal.”
Blake exhales a sexy sigh and gently hoists himself off me, while keeping his arms and knees on the mattress, caging me in. My body immediately misses the pressure of him. “No. I mean let’s never break up again.”
He waits patiently for the words to land in my brain. When they do, I flip myself over on the bed to face him. I open my mouth to speak but the words won’t come out. I fit my hands along his stubbled jawline. His wide, questioning grin seems to light up the space around us.
“I love you, D. I never stopped loving you.”
With those words, he’s just wrung out the last drop of my resolve to protect myself. For maybe the first time in my life I’m at a complete loss for words. So it’s a good thing no more words are necessary for kissing.
Blake’s lips ease against mine in a familiar slide that’s so tender and full of promise I couldn’t resist even if I had a good reason to. I slip my fingers around to the back of his neck and pull him closer. My lips know his lips and his know mine. They’ve missed each other. I know he’s thinking the same thing as his suction intensifies and his tongue tastes my lips, first the bottom then the top. Our tongues tease each other until our mutual need to claim the other takes over.
Hands gripping each other’s hair, tongues tangling, teeth scraping, legs entwining. This moment feels like we’ve just unlocked the door to a once-sad, empty room full of memories and thrown open the curtains to let the light flood in.
I can’t control the moans that tumble from my mouth into his.
Blake pauses to breathe against my neck. “Never again,” he mutters. “Never letting you slip away again.” His pause to breathe is familiar, too. He’s restraining himself; I can feel him fighting back against his instinct to take me hard and fast.
He growls when I rake my nails over his chest. His mouth paints kisses down my neck to the valley between my breasts. I weave my fingers into his golden locks and pull him closer to urge him on. He gently scrapes his teeth over one of my hard nipples, then the other, before sucking each of them through the material of my bra, ramping up my excitement.
“Tell me what you want, Dahlia.” I let go of his hair and slide my hand down his chest and lower, following the deep V-lines of his lower abdomen until his hard length presses into my palm.
An unintelligible noise of pleasure erupts from the back of his throat. The tip has already breached his waistband, so I help it along by tugging his underwear down his thighs.
He grunts in relief when his cock springs free. I feel it twitch in my hand as I pet it. “D, it’s been so long I might not last if you keep rubbing me like that. I want a taste of what I’ve been missing first.”
I gasp when I gather his meaning. His mouth covers mine hungrily once more before flicking open the clasp of my bra. His warm mouth worships my breasts, suckling each of my tight peaks until I’m nearly mad with need. My thighs clamp around him, and my hips grind against his hard cock.
He chuckles softly. “Now I told you to stop rubbing. Guess I’m going to have to get my face between your thighs right this instant.”
A giggle bursts out of me when I realize something. “Technically it is November 1, so you have my permission to commence with pie season.”
His forehead drops heavily to my stomach as he groans and I laugh harder. “Oh my god, D, you did not.”
“I couldn’t help myself,” I say. One moment I’m trying to control the impulse to crack myself up, the next moment my arousal skyrockets as my big, golden god takes back what belongs to him.
Before I can object—not that I want to—he disappears my undies in under three seconds, and spreads me wide for him. He’s done restraining himself. Good.
The sensation of Blake’s strong lips at my core, tasting me deeply, forcefully, does not simply make me forget all the stress of the previous day, but might also make me forget my own name. The strange dread that surprised me earlier tonight is ancient history.
He alternates between slow, savoring kisses and teasing licks. Every inch of my pussy is drenched with my arousal and his kisses. By the time he sucks my clit into his mouth, I’m so on fire that a volcanic orgasm destroys me almost instantly.
“Oh god! Blake!” I cry as the waves crash over me. The vibrations of his moans against my sensitive skin draw out the most intense aftershocks I’ve ever felt in my life. I shiver again, but this time not out of fear.
“I need to kiss you,” I whimper.
Blake shares my taste with me, and I confess to him I haven’t been with anyone else since we were together last. “I guess I’m out of practice, or I would have lasted longer for you.”
He rumbles against my mouth. “I couldn’t even look at another woman after you left, because I know no other woman would look at me the way you do.”
Chapter Fifteen
Blake
“Roll over for me and watch me in the mirror. I want you to see what I see.”
My instructions are met with a ragged gasp, followed by Dahlia’s eager compliance. She flips over so she’s face-down on the bed and turns her face toward the mirror to look at us together.
I cage her legs with mine on the mattress and tease the backs of her thighs and her round ass with my hard length. I keep eye contact with her in the mirror.
“There you are. There’s my girl. No, don’t turn your head; I want you to look at me. Look at me in the mirror while I fuck all the stress out of you.”
Both of us look like a sexy, crazy mess. She releases a deep, satisfied sigh as I slip into her sex from behind.
Chapter Sixteen
Dahlia
The sweet, meditative friction of Blake’s massive cock makes my entire being feel full.
I never thought my body could feel a need more powerful than the last time he was inside me two years ago, but here I am, writhing under him, my fingers locked onto the sheets and my knuckles turning white as I ascend toward another mind-blowing climax.
I grit my teeth and press my forehead into the mattress while Blake continues his slow rhythm of deep, healing thrusts.
“Look back at me,” he rumbles, stippling my shoulder with a line of wet, sloppy kisses.
I do as he says and turn my head to look, but then something catches my eye in the mirror.
I hear the scrape of a branch against the window before my eyes register what I’m seeing. I gasp in fright. I lift my head off the blanket and my eyes dart around frantically.
“Baby, baby, what is it?” He stops his movements, his face trained on me but my gaze is locked on something in the mirror.
Another face in the darkness. It’s at the window.
I can’t speak. I can’t scream. I’m frozen in place and the horrible dread in my stomach is back.
Blake follows the look of terror on my face and he finally sees it too.
“What the fuck!” he roars.
By the time he’s stood and located his jeans, the face in the mirror is gone. I hear more sounds of scraping branches against the window, followed by sounds of rustling, twigs snapping and a small thud on the ground.
“Someone or something was in the tree outside the window,” I say, my voice shaking as I run to the window and try to make out any shapes below us on the ground. “Please don’t go out there, Blake.”
But he’s out the door before I finis
h saying the words.
Chapter Seventeen
Blake
I should have known it was a trap.
Almost as soon as I throw open the front door of the house to investigate, they have me.
Who “they” are, I don’t know. But there are two of them, one on each arm. Someone shoves something over my face and the smell of burlap fills my nostrils. I fight with everything in me, kicking, thrashing, roaring to make as much noise as I can. For a brief moment, the two thugs lose control of me, and for a millisecond the sack slips off. It’s enough time for me to catch a glimpse in the glow of someone’s flashlight: a logo on the side of a truck. Mason Construction.
I commit what I see to memory just as something heavy and metal strikes the back of my head. My hands are tied behind me, and I’m vaguely aware that I’m being shoved into a trunk as everything fades to black.
Chapter Eighteen
Dahlia
I scramble around to gather my clothes, all the while hearing terrifying noises outside. I try to keep it together as I throw on my dress, all the while hearing struggling, shouting and the sound of car or truck doors shut before multiple vehicles drive away in a hurry.
I make for the door, lantern in hand, trying to dial 911 with trembling fingers. Someone or something grabs me from behind. I scream but my voice is muffled by a gloved hand covering my mouth. I bite down hard. A woman screams, and for a second I think it’s me. But it’s coming from whoever it is who grabbed me. The person knocks my legs out from under me, and my phone goes flying as I fall. My assailant pins me to the floor, my hands behind my back. Whoever it is breathing as heavily as I am. Maybe more so. Keeping control of my fear, I infer that my attacker is female, and I think I can take her out if I need to. She’s out of breath from her efforts to subdue me.