Stripped- For The Very First Time

by Penn Rivers

  I had a moment of trepidation. She was small. My fingers had filled her up, and my cock was a hell of a lot bigger.

  Gemma wiggled her hips and I pressed in. Slow. So slow. I wanted to feel every inch of her wrapping around me. I wanted her to feel every inch of me spearing her.

  “Tell me if it hurts. I’ll stop.” I prayed to baby Jesus I’d be able to if it came to that.

  “No,” Gemma argued, her eyes going half-mast, her breath hitching in pleasure. “Don’t you dare stop.”

  I pushed farther, this time the pressure of her body gripping me stole my breath and made my knees weak. Mother of fuck. I was holding us both up. I could not let my knees give out.

  “Mmm, so big,” Gemma squeaked, her eyes closing tightly.

  I stopped pushing in, somehow I did, even though all I wanted was to slam home. Pound into her again and again until we both came undone and collapsed in a heap on the shower floor.

  Gemma’s eyes popped open to stare at me. “Why’d you stop? Is something wrong?”

  “Don’t… don’t want…” I breathed through the urge to thrust. “…to hurt you.”

  The emotion in her eyes made resisting even harder. They sparkled with unshed tears and the sweetest smile curved her lips. She kissed me, tugging on my mouth as she pulled back.

  “Halfway in, and you manage to stop because you’re worried about me. I swear, Kane… you’re ruining me for any others.”

  I growled at the idea. That was the whole fucking point.

  Without warning, she slammed her hips down, impaling herself the rest of the way on me with a cry that was half pleasure half pain, and allll mine. Dangerous move since my knees buckled at the feel of her surrounding me fully. I pressed her against the wall, the weight of my hips anchoring us in place until I could stop seeing stars behind my eyes.

  Her mouth was at my ear as we both breathed through the new sensations.

  “Now fuck me,” she whispered, a whimper following close behind.

  I found my footing, gripping the backs of her thighs for leverage, and pulled back out, all the way to the tip, relishing the drag of her body on mine. No other feeling could compare. No other touch I’d ever been given. Gemma’s body on mine was new and it would be my whole fucking world from this day forward.

  “Fuck you, huh?” I gasped out as I slammed into her like I’d wanted to do before.

  “Yesssss.”

  “What about if I wanted to make love to you?”

  Gemma’s eyes flew open, her body going stiff with surprise, but I didn’t stop my retreat and advance. Couldn’t now. This was a foregone conclusion.

  “Love?” she whispered, ending on a long moan as I hit the back of her channel.

  “Yes.” I swiveled my hips in and out, harder and faster. “Unless you just want me for my body.”

  She barked out a surprised laugh, causing her pussy to clench on me.

  “Ah, fuck,” I hissed, dropping my mouth to her shoulder and biting the cord of soft muscle there. “Laughing will ruin this for us, baby. I’ll be a goner if you do that again.”

  “Mmmm…” Her eyes closed in pleasure, moving her hips to meet mine. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

  I captured her mouth, tasting her while I worked her body, inching us closer to release. The steam of the shower, her moans in my ears, the wet slap of our bodies. It was some glorious combination I’d never experienced before, and the weight of that hit me like a train at the same time Gemma tensed, going ramrod stiff. Her orgasm fluttered around my erection, a swarm of butterflies, as she jerked in my arms calling out my name over and over. Her voice reverberated off the tile walls, ringing my ears and I roared my encouragement.

  “Yes. Fuck. Yes.”

  My girl. Coming apart on my cock. This was going to be the end of me. My new addiction. It would demolish me. Turn me to ash. And I’d come back as something new. Something completely and utterly… hers.

  My release roared forward, and I exploded, pumping into her while she shook so hard I thought she’d shatter.

  But it wasn’t her who was breaking. It was me. I was falling apart in her arms. Pieces of my past mixing with so much gratification, nothing made sense. Guilt mixed with the sweetest pleasure I had ever known. Pride and shame. A rainbow of feelings bled into a bittersweet color that represented my life. I was free to have this moment with the woman I loved…

  The woman I loved.

  …but still not free of the memories, the hurt, the truth.

  Her soft lips on my jaw brought me back and I slowed my thrusting. I didn’t want to pull out yet. I wanted to stay right there forever. But now I was shaking like some leaf in the wind, and I’d come so hard it had taken all my strength.

  I eased out, letting her legs drop to the floor, but I couldn’t back away. I curled my body around hers because it felt safe. She felt safe.

  Burying my face against her neck, I shuddered out a breath. Her hands slid up my back and I could feel her smiling by the way her cheek curved against mine.

  My girl was happy. It made all the bad things fade away. They weren’t gone, just… lost, for a little bit.

  “Kane?”

  I kissed her neck, struggling to catch my breath. “Hm?”

  Her question was only a breath, barely heard over the spray of water pouring over us. “Was that love?”

  “No, Gem.” Love wasn’t a big enough word. “That was… fuck, that was my fucking heart wide open for you.”

  Her sigh sounded like pure relief. “Mine too. So wide. Practically inside out.”

  I twisted her under the spray, tipping her head up for one more taste of her lips.

  What we’d done couldn’t be undone. I wouldn’t undo it even if I could. Never in a million years. But now we had to move forward. I had to finish what I’d started and tell her everything. Then we would face her demon. Find a way to get Rafe off her back for good. And then… maybe then we could both be truly free.

  Or maybe not. But either way, I was going to try harder than I ever had before. Because this ache in my chest wasn’t going away. It was growing bigger and was here to stay.

  I loved my girl.

  Now I just had to find a way to tell her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  GEMMA

  My head felt light with anticipation as Kane carried me down the hallway like he was freaking He-man or something. What we’d done in the shower felt so heavy. So important, and not only because I was his first. It felt as crucial as what we’d dug out in the kitchen after eating. Like it was righting wrongs and soothing pasts and rewriting futures.

  Some kind of magical love making that changed you in your heart.

  But as the minutes ticked off, Kane seemed to change. Every second we got farther from the shower, he became a little stiffer, a little more distant.

  I couldn’t let that happen. Not after the beautiful thing we’d just shared.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my bed. I have things to tell you, and I want to hold you while I do it.”

  Instinct told me something was wrong.

  “Bad things?” I asked, needing a confirmation.

  He nodded, his gaze flicking to me warily for nothing more than a moment, and then back up.

  I let my fingers graze his jaw and it went hard, a muscle in his cheek flicking in response.

  We passed through the doorway of the room I’d woke up in. Kane’s room. Kane’s bed. Plain, with nothing to decorate it. No pictures of family. No artwork. None of his personality. Like the rest of his home. Like he was afraid to live in it, make it real, make it his.

  The things he’d confessed about his mother came to mind, and I knew whatever he had to tell me was going to hurt. And I had questions about what he’d revealed in the shower, that I was his first ever. A dominant man like Kane, with his looks and vitality, and the way he moved like he knew a woman’s body… how was he still a virgin?

  Scrape it out. Strip it down.

  He slid me
to my feet next to the big bed, and somehow it seemed ominous. The bed I’d slept so well in before. Right now, it felt like something that needed taming.

  “Get in, Gem,” Kane said quietly.

  And I did. Because it was him. His. And he was safe.

  With a heavy sigh, he climbed in behind me, his hot skin meeting my naked body as he slid his arm under my shoulders. I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to his weighty breathing until he was ready. Whatever was coming had to be birthed, slowly.

  “Get the worst of it out and the rest will follow.” I repeated his words to me from the truck.

  I felt him nod, but he was quiet for so many breaths I wondered if we’d just fall asleep without talking.

  “The worst of it has to do with my father, Gem.”

  “Okay.”

  More silence, more breathing.

  “See that fan up there?”

  My eyes drifted to the ceiling fan above his bed and nodded.

  “I hate it. Hate that it’s the last thing I see before I fall asleep. And I know this isn’t normal, to hate a fucking ceiling fan. But when I see it… I remember the room I hid in as a kid. It was an office in the back of the club where my mom worked. I spent hours in that room. Sometimes from dark to dark. So many fucking hours. No one cared that I was there, in a place no kid belonged. Well, no one but my mother. Except she had no other place for me to go. So, to the office I went. Where there was a fan and a neon sign in the window of a lady with circular tits poking her ass out.”

  I tried to imagine Noah in a place like that and shuddered. Even a place as clean as the Sapphire. I’d never let him anywhere near it.

  “I hate it, but I don’t take it down. You want to know why?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “I leave it up there because I can’t let those memories defeat me. They remind me where I came from, and I don’t want to forget. I… I want to be free. I want to break these chains of guilt and be free of it all. But I can’t forget because forgetting doesn’t make me free. My mother taught me that. She taught me that.”

  He paused to catch his breath, and for the first time, I realized how tight his fingers dug into my arm. They didn’t hurt, but my heart burned for him, and the pain he so clearly held inside.

  “Sometimes I think nothing will. But I can’t stop trying, you understand?”

  Trying to be free? I got that more than anyone could.

  “And you… being with you is the closest I’ve come to feeling that freedom. So I need to give this my best fucking shot. I want everything with you, Gem.”

  Pressing a kiss to his chest, I murmured, “You can tell me anything. I promise to be strong for you, like you are for me. Your safe place.”

  Tucking a finger under my chin, he brought my eyes up to meet his. “You are so. Fucking. Sweet. Finding you makes me think I’ve finally done enough to make up for my past. Like you’re my reward for all the work I’ve put in, and I can finally be happy. I don’t know if it’s true, but hell, I’m going to find out.”

  He pulled my face forward, dropping the tenderest lingering kiss to my forehead.

  He sighed, going completely still as he stared up at the ceiling fan he hated.

  “I’m here… I exist… I… goddamn it.”

  I watched his jaw clench and his eyes slam closed as he struggled for words. I felt the pain radiating off of him and all I wanted to do was make it all better.

  “Tell me, Kane. Scrape it out.”

  With a frustrated growl, his words tumbled forward.

  “I’m alive because my mother was raped by a horrible man and he left his baby in her. And she chose to carry that baby, birth it, care for it the best she could even though she wouldn’t ever love it and wasn’t truly fit for motherhood. She kept me anyway. And she tried, so that someday, maybe this day right here, I’d have a chance.”

  The confession hit me in the chest, hard as a pile of bricks, and brought tears flooding my eyes for what Kane’s life must have been like. My heart was torn, thankful for his mother’s effort. Angry for her inability to love him, but understanding all the same. Wondering if I could have done what she’d done had Noah’s circumstances been like Kane’s.

  Oh, Kane did need a safe place the same way I did. And I was keeping that promise. I’d be his.

  “I was so young when I learned where I came from. Why she didn’t look at me like I looked at her. Why she couldn’t hug me as much as I wanted. Why she told men she loved them, but never me. Why she stayed with them even when they beat her and screamed at her and used her, but pushed me away when I only ever was good to her. So damn young when I learned what the neon sign in the window meant. And the grunts coming from the next room. And that it wasn’t normal for a small boy to know what a naked woman looked like already.”

  Fingers dug into my arm and I stayed perfectly still, letting him clear out the ruin in his heart.

  “It fucked me up, Gemma. In so many ways. I loved my mom, but I was the source of her pain. The thing that destroyed her soul. How was I supposed to live with that kind of guilt? I watched her worsen as I grew older. I look like him. Whoever he is. I don’t even know, neither did she. But I tried to make up for things by being her guardian angel. I watched over her when I was old enough to, but she didn’t know. If a man was mean to her, I took care of him. Beat him away, set him up with the cops, whatever it took. I was a bouncer for that wretched club by the time I was sixteen. Saw the scum that came in and out, taking advantage of the girls. Saw more tits and pussy than men three times my age and didn’t want any of it. Never did until…”

  His gaze drifted down to me, his eyes softening. And I recalled what he’d told me in the Champagne room when he’d gotten hard.

  That doesn’t happen to me. Not for anyone else. You understand? Just you. It’s why I never watch you dance.

  “Don’t cry, baby,” he murmured, noticing my tears. “You have no idea what you’ve done for me. You can’t ever know. But I have to finish this.”

  I nodded, my tears collecting on his chest under my cheek, and he continued, his voice somehow stronger.

  “When my mother died, I felt relief. Like she’d fought this epic battle trying to love me and failing, and it was finally over. Just… over. She wasn’t suffering anymore, but I was. I was still choked with guilt for just existing. Still angry over my shitty father and all he’d taken from her. And the only way out I could see was to bring him to justice. The law wouldn’t, it’d been too long. And the victim—the only victim that counted—was dead. So I did a horrible thing.”

  Kane drew in a deep breath, and my stomach twisted waiting for what he would say.

  “I hired Sal to track him down and kill him.”

  “Sal?” Oh, no.

  “I got his name from someone at the shitty club I worked at. But he wasn’t the person for the job. He wasn’t a killer-for-hire, though… he’s done bad shit, Gem. Not my story to tell.”

  I had a feeling. But somehow, he’d always felt safe. Like Kane and Marco.

  “He’s good though,” Kane confirmed. “Inside, Sal is. He recognized the pain in me, and put me in contact with his friend. Dr. Trammel. He owed Sal. I never found out why, but he took me on.”

  “Therapy?”

  Kane nodded. “They were sneaky about it. Sal pretended to hire me for shit security jobs. One was personal security for the doc. It didn’t take long to figure out I’d been set up, but since my talks with the doc were helping, I let it go. I’ll save you the details, but… I switched gears away from revenge and back to making amends. It’s how I ended up at the Sapphire. I needed a job that could protect women like my mom. Make sure they were safe, since she wasn’t, and hadn’t ever been. I’d stand in that gap as long as it took for me to feel I’d made up for everything.”

  “I knew you took the job seriously.” My words were choked, tears coming no matter how hard I tried to stop them. “I just didn’t know why.”

  “But then one day,
you showed up, Gem. And damn it all, I never believed in fate and shit. I just couldn’t. Not coming from where I came from. But you… something about you was different.”

  “And now here we are.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence settled between us. The only indication of the emotional turmoil Kane still experienced was his tight hold on me. It hadn’t let up at all.

  “It wasn’t your fault you were born. You know that right? The guilt you feel isn’t yours.”

  “Dr. Trammel says the same thing.”

  I put myself in his mother’s shoes. She chose to keep Kane. It wasn’t the kind of love I had for Noah, but it was love still. All the love she had to give, if I had my guess.

  “She loved you. No mother keeps a child she doesn’t love.”

  Frowning, he stared down at me.

  “It’s true, Kane. She wouldn’t have given you a chance at all if she didn’t. She just… she couldn’t love you the way you needed. The way you deserved. And you did deserve it, you did. Because you did nothing wrong. But sometimes it’s the wrong others do that affect us the most.”

  I thought of Rafe and how his wrongs affect Noah. Mama. Myself. Lives ripped apart because of a brutal man who couldn’t live and let live. Who wanted to rule instead of abide.

  “And I didn’t know your mother, Kane. I didn’t. But… I don’t think she’d want you carrying your scumbag father’s guilt as your own. I just can’t see her wanting that for you. If she was willing to give you a chance, the best she knew how, I believe she’d want you to take it. Use it. Make something out of the awful. Something beautiful out the darkness. That’s what I think.”

  I saw tears rim his eyelids, and it was a shot through the heart. A big strong man like Kane, crying because things inside him hurt that badly. In that moment, I felt like I knew my purpose. One of them at least. It was my job to soothe the things that hurt him, because that’s what you do when you love someone.

  And I loved Kane.

  I did, and it was a euphoric and terrifying realization all at once, to feel so much for someone after all the pain I’d been through.