Sunday
Page 23
Every time he gave her a little, she sought a little more. Her hunger was infectious, spreading through his body until he was closing the distance and pushing her gently against the shower wall. His eyes drifted closed as he surrendered to the feel of her wanting him, choosing him. Or was she just placating him with the power she held over him? Whatever the case, he found himself relenting, unable to get enough.
Gia sighed her relief into his mouth, her hands wrapping around him to pull him in closer. She melted in to the slick weight of his body, relishing the way his wet skin slid easily against hers. He groaned into her mouth, steadily building the tempo and intensity of his kisses as his cock rose to full attention against her stomach. Back and forth it rubbed, making its insistent presence known. She welcomed it, sliding her hand down his chest, over his lean stomach, and then lower to cup and stroke him.
He groaned louder and longer, pressing his lips against hers more firmly. The sounds of desire echoed off the walls of the shower, muffled only slightly by the steady hiss of cascading water over their heated bodies. She could barely feel it’s warmth. It couldn’t rival the warmth of Flynn’s hand as he stroked it down her neck and squeezed a soft breast. She arched into his touch and gasped as he pinched the chocolate bud just the way she liked, her nipple tight and hard under his thumb and forefinger.
“Cameron,” she whispered into his mouth, bringing her hands up his sides and then around to the muscles of his firm ass.
His hands had grown hungry over her skin, finding the places that always made her gasp. Her breasts were firm and panting under his palms, her skin prickling with goose bumps from the caress of his strong fingers, her slit wet and aching under his firm touch. He still marveled at the way she responded to him, at how his hands could never get used to the familiarity of her beautiful body. He was ready for more.
He lifted her up by gripping her thighs, eliciting a startled, hungry cry from her throat. He waited until she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck before he settled her on the head of his cock. Her body slid easily against his, and he buried himself in the heat and wetness that rivaled the water falling over them. Her voice was a strangled cry, his a sharp breath as he filled her. Her body greeted him warmly, embracing him tightly as he began to pump his hips.
Flynn steadied himself, pulling her hips away from the wall slightly. He watched as his hips rolled slowly against hers, his pale cock disappearing into the silky, wet folds of her sex. She leaned in to kiss him, pulling her body closer into his as it rocked steadily in and out of hers.
She wanted his eyes to melt into hers the way they always did. But something was still holding him back. He was never more brazen, more honest, than when he was connected to her like this. So, why wasn’t he giving her all he had? Why were his eyes so distant as he looked into hers? It felt like the more she clutched him, the more he seemed to disappear behind those captivating green orbs.
Why couldn’t he just shut down? Or just be angry enough to push her away? Flynn wished he didn’t care. He wished he could be unaffected, but every time he wanted to let loose and give himself over to the moment he would see her in Luca’s arms. He would see her months from now when he was gone, giving into the past the way she had given into him when he pushed. He might have been able to get past these thoughts, to ignore them or at the very least hide them away until after he had come. But he’d just been slapped in the face with a realization, one he had been fighting so vehemently since the first time he pressed his lips to hers.
He was in love with her.
And he wanted to ignore it.
Nothing should ever be this complicated. He’d had his fill of people he loved letting him down. There was nothing to do short of chaining her to his radiator to keep her by his side. He knew she cared about him, that she wanted to be his and that she wanted to be loved by him. But he couldn’t be Luca. He couldn’t compete with years of memories, with time itself. He couldn’t love her in the way that kept her holding onto him even now.
Sooner or later she was going to realize that, when even this undeniable bond between their bodies was severed by distance and time. She would desert him for the comfort she deserved to have. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Anger mated with sadness inside of him, a sickening mixture that propelled his body in search of the euphoria he could always find within her depths. She cried out as the first hard thrust surged into her. She clenched her legs tighter around his waist, welcoming him. Always welcoming him. He thrust harder with a grunt through gritted teeth, pressing her body hard into the shower wall. She cried out against his neck, clasping her arms around him. He wanted to push her away and pull her closer. His body understood, even if his mind didn’t. He thrust harder, nudging the end of her warmth with an aggression, a kind of brutality he had never known was within him.
Gia cried out as another hard stroke bottomed out within her. Somewhere beneath the pleasure was the hint of pain. She could hear her own voice whimpering with the strange mixture. Her mind was screaming at her to back away, but her body tightened around him. It wasn’t so much that he was rough; she was used to this and had come to understand her own craving for it. She loved being filled by him and being consumed by his need to fill her.
But this was different. She found herself aching deep within, somewhere he couldn’t reach, even though his cock seemed to be trying to get there. She’d known fear at his hands, but that had been fear of the unknown, fear of her own desire. This was a fear she could identify and it made her clutch him tighter, her body pleading for forgiveness because she knew she’d done more than make him angry.
For the first time she realized she had hurt him. It made her bring her hips down over him to meet his maddened thrusts. She didn’t want that kind of power. She wanted to surrender it and herself to him, to tell him in the only way she knew how that she was only his.
She was in love with him.
And she wanted him to feel it.
He could hear it in her voice, the cries laced with pleasure and pain as he fucked her harder than he ever had under the steady cascade of warm water and anger. Did he want to hurt her? Or did he just want to reassert his claim, hit a place inside of her no one could ever reach again? It was as if he were marking her, branding her womb with his signature.
She should have been afraid of him. She should be disgusted with him for being so rough. But she just held on tighter, helping him plunge into her with one tortured gasp after another. He felt his throat closing up and he slammed his eyes shut against the clenching in his chest. He’d never felt more lost, more powerless as he drove himself over and over again into her.
There were no words. No whispered teases. No laughter mixed with ecstatic sighs. There were only grunts and groans, moans and screams. His thighs flexed and his ass clenched under her crossed legs as he drove the last of his hard thrusts into her. She was vibrating around him clenching him in the tightness of her orgasm. Her voice shuddered against his ear. She called out his name in the quietest of whispers.
Even in the echoing cocoon of the shower her voice was so soft he could have imagined it. He hated to admit it, but it was her pleading whisper, the sound of her voice calling for him even in his cruelty that made him come. It filled his mind over and over again as he shot into the depths of her body, making him want her even more.
For the second time he found the little voice inside of him whispering back, saying that he loved her. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it or the anger it evoked in him. Her hold on him was that much tighter now, his attempt to push her away only wedging him closer.
Gia shivered against him, the rush of orgasmic warmth and hot water coursing over her skin. Her lips found his cheek, sought out his mouth as she pulled back. He kissed her back between panting breaths, licking at her upper lip and rubbing his forehead against hers. His whole body was shaking as he tried to find his breath.
He felt her hand on his face, lifting it slightly until his eyes found her
She’d been so close to telling him. Her mouth had parted with the weight of the words. She was going to whisper how much she loved him against his lips, breathe them into his body so that they could fill him up the way he had filled her. But just before she kissed him again his eyes went cold. The barrier had slammed down and fear sucked the words back down her throat.
His lips met hers, but not with the same fire. He pulled away from her, out of her and set her down gently. That hurt her more than his eyes had. She almost wished he had just let her fall if he were going to look at her like that.
He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. He wasn’t intentionally trying to be cruel as he gathered water in his hand and washed her juices off his wilting cock.
He wasn’t trying to be mean when he looked down at her and asked, “You staying or getting out?”
It didn’t take a genius to see that was exactly what he was being when she looked away from him.
“I’ll be out in a bit,” she said turning away from him and dipping her head back under the water.
He didn’t say another word to her as stepped out and closed the shower door behind him. She kept her eyes closed so that she couldn’t see him leave the bathroom, running her hands slowly through her hair. They laced behind her neck and she tilted her head downwards, watching the water trickle down her forehead, feeling a thousand soothing taps of liquid warmth beating against her back and dripping down her body.
She stood there for a long moment, breathing in the stillness, her mind blank. She could feel his release starting to succumb to gravity, heavy and trickling out of the gateway between her legs. She clenched her thighs around the residual pang of lust and closed her eyes.
She didn’t cry, but she wanted to. She had never felt so far away from him.
She’d never felt so lonely.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Flynn couldn’t sleep. Not that there was much sleep to go around these days. There were projects to finish, studying for finals to do. And there was his impending departure to prepare for. He tried to tell himself it was those things that were keeping him up, and not Gia, but he wasn’t that good at lying to himself.
He’d felt like shit after the way he treated her, and though he still couldn’t bring himself to be warm and fuzzy, he did try to make things right. He’d already dressed and was in the living room when she came out in nothing but a towel and a grimace. She hadn’t said anything to him, just walked past him to grab up the clothes she’d stripped off, which he’d placed neatly on the couch.
She probably would have headed to the bedroom, gotten dressed and left without a word, if he hadn’t stopped her by wrapping his arms around her from behind and placing an apologetic kiss on her temple. He’d held her just long enough for the meaning of his embrace to sink in and for her to stop being rigid against him.
“You gonna spend the night?” he’d asked quietly.
She’d gone still for a moment, turning her head so that she could look up at him.
“Do you want me to?” she’d asked, and the tone in her voice was part bitter, part inquisitive and part hopeful.
He’d nodded, said, “Yeah,” and then, offered to make her something for dinner.
That was the best he could do and it seemed to be enough, though it didn’t hide the fact that they were still tiptoeing around what was bothering them. He had already told Gia about his job offer, though the news had been lackluster at best in light of the current tension surrounding them. They hadn’t spoken about it, but she was still quietly unrelenting about going to the funeral and he was still quietly angry.
And hurt. He clenched his jaw against that word: hurt. It made him sound so weak in his own mind, feeling that way about her showing so much affection to her ex.
Not for the first time, he wondered if she still wanted Luca and feared that she may not be completely over him. The last time they had a conversation about Luca it had ended in her being his girlfriend. That should’ve been the end of it. That should’ve been the ties that bind being cut.
Flynn didn’t care if she was a good person. He didn’t care if she didn’t want to hurt Luca’s feelings during such a fragile time. Just this once he wished that she would’ve told him to go fuck himself, make it clear that they were finished. It wasn’t that hard. Flynn had done that with most of his family and he somehow managed to turn out okay.
He was sitting on the couch in the dim light of the living room while Gia was sleeping soundly in his bed. Or so he thought until he saw her coming around the corner of the hallway. He looked up, his eyes meeting hers as she stood tentatively at the edge of the couch.
Gia had woken up as soon as Flynn got up to quietly leave the bed. She’d watched the moonlight filtering in from the window, casting a luminous glow over his pale skin as he pulled on some sweatpants and tiptoed out of the room. She tried to tell herself that he was just feeling restless and that it had nothing to do with her. But she knew that he was having trouble sleeping beside her because he was still angry.
He’d asked her to stay the night but it didn’t feel like he really wanted her there. She would have been put at ease by the fact that they made love in the shower, but the subtle coldness he had shown afterwards left her shaken. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. She just felt like she was losing a battle she hadn’t wanted to fight in the first place.
“What are you doing up?” she asked, her voice slightly hushed in the already quiet living room.
“Had some work to finish up,” he said absently. His knuckles were rubbing against his lips as if he were deep in thought.
“Do you need help,” she asked. “I know you have class early tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “Nah, I’ve got it under control. Go back to bed.”
She sighed and instead of turning away, she came closer and sat in his lap. She didn’t put her arms around him; she just sat there, eyes glued to him until he was forced to look up at her.
“How long are you going to be mad at me?”
He turned his eyes away from her and continued to look at the computer screen.
“Maybe if you gave me a timeline, Flynn, like you’ll be mad until Saturday for example, I could stop trying so hard to make you talk to me.”
“I’m not in the mood for this right now, Gia.”
She tilted her head to capture his eyes. “And you think I am? You think I like being caught in the middle of something like this and having you not want to be near me? Well, I don’t like it, and I’m not in the mood for it, but you didn’t give me much of a choice did you?”
His jaw clenched and he leaned back in his chair, biting at the inside of his cheek.
“If you didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a beef between me and your ex, then you should have told him to leave no matter what his personal issues were,” he said simply and firmly. “You did have a choice, and you made the wrong one. That’s why I’m angry with you, and I’m going to keep being angry until you fix it.”
She stared, dumfounded as his words tried to penetrate and wound.
“I don’t believe this,” she whispered shaking her head. “He just lost someone he loves and I know how painful that can be. What kind of person would I be if I just turned him away?”
Silence—an increasingly common presence—stretched between them. But she wasn’t going to let it get out of hand. And she wasn’t going to let the bitterness of his words scare her away.
“Look, I’m sorry that I upset you. I really am sorry.”
“But?” he said. “I know there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“I’m going to go to the funeral.”
He let out a little huff of laughter, shaking his head. She’d made her decision and he had made his. He was done talking.
“You know what?” he said with a bitter smile, “Do whatever you want. You always do anyway.”
He started to stand and she had no choice but to hop off his lap. She watched him turn off his computer and then start walking towards his room.
“I said that I was sorry. I promised that it wouldn’t happen again. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you to drop it so I can get some fucking sleep,” he said heading down the hallway. “Is that okay with you?”
He stopped walking when he heard a frustrated growl and felt a pillow from his couch smack him in the back of the head.
“No, it’s not okay with me! None of this bullshit is okay with me! If you would pull your head out of you ass for two seconds you would see that. I’ve done everything short of kiss your feet and you still—”
“None of that matters,” he said, spinning on her, his voice rising as he approached quickly. “It’s all empty words and empty promises. He’s like a stray cat and you just keep feeding him, keep letting him back in. He’s playing you and you don’t even see it, but I do. And you just refuse to listen to me.
So yeah, you can do what you want, but don’t expect me to kiss your ass and tell you you’re wonderful. It’s not going to happen.”
“Oh, now I’m looking for you to kiss my ass? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. How selfish of me to expect the guy I’m with to actually trust me. What was I thinking?”
Flynn was all queued up to make another snide remark when she spoke, the anger in her voice laced heavily with sadness.
“You said we’d make it work, but you’re not even willing to do that right now, with me standing right next to you. What’s going to happen when you’re in California, huh?”
It was like a slap in the face. Never mind the fact that in a way it was the truth, that all of this was happening because he was scared that he couldn’t trust her or himself not to fuck things up.
“I should ask you the same question. You’re the girl that could fuck a guy in the bathroom while her boyfriend was downstairs. How much easier will it be when the boyfriend is thousands of miles away?”
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