Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7)

by Julia Kent

  And I knew that. I knew that in the back of my mind as Tyler showed me a different way. I knew he knew it too, knew it all. He’d been violated and defiled and objectified. While he wouldn’t tell me the details, just the fact that he knew how it felt to be turned into a lesser version of yourself by someone else’s body and will made what he was doing right now to me, what he was accessing in me, what he was creating between us, all the more holy.

  “What about you?” I said, a desperate clawing filling me suddenly. A sense of guilt. As if I had just opened myself up and he’d poured everything he had into me, and I had just gulped greedily from the cup of Tyler.

  “What about me?” He was between my legs and looked up, his eyes quizzical and hands stroking my thighs.

  “You—you—I—” I stumbled over my words. “You said—you said earlier that you had—”

  He cut me off. “I know,” he said softly, moving up my body, making it so we were eye-to-eye. “And we can talk about that some other time.” His eyes went soft and hooded, searching my face again. “But you—this is new for you. I’ve—I’m on a different path. I’m—” He struggled with his words too, starting and stopping, his hands never leaving me. His thumb stroked the soft inner skin of my elbow and then slowly moved up to my shoulder as his eyes roamed over my face, settling finally on my mouth. “I’ve been through more of what it takes to heal than you have,” he finally said.

  I frowned, shaking my head slightly. “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “This isn’t my first time since,” he said quietly. “And I know how hard this is. And I’m honored, Maggie. I’m so...honored I think my heart’s gonna burst inside my chest, and come crawling out, and kiss yours.”

  The smile that he gave me turned me into an unbroken person. All at once. Like someone waved a magic wand. And I was whole again.

  “This is about you.” His words came out like a sigh. “And the next time we make love, Maggie, it can be about us.”

  “I want to make it very clear that I’m going to cry,” I said, smiling as my mouth twisted and my eyes filled.

  “I know. I figured.”

  “It won’t freak you out?”

  “You feel what you feel. I’ll feel what I feel. Now, let me make you feel.”

  “I’m ruining this, aren’t I?” I gasped, half laughing, half choking, naked in his arms.

  “Never.” He kissed my neck and made his way swiftly back to my soft, sensitive clit. “You can’t ruin this moment with me, Maggie. No matter how hard you try.”

  That made me laugh, the feeling neutralizing my self-consciousness. For all his flaws with words, Tyler was a master in this moment. It was eerie, as if he knew exactly how to be, naked and vulnerable, wanting and real.

  And then my thoughts shattered as his mouth brought me a kind of pleasure that words can’t. It rose and fell, the sweet sense of inner pulsing making me clench until I felt like all my blood vessels were exploding.

  But they didn’t.

  Over and over, his touch was perfect. Really, deeply perfect. Except I knew what he was doing and...I couldn’t. I couldn’t orgasm.

  This is what the last seven years had been like.

  I hadn’t orgasmed since the rape. Not alone, and certainly not with a guy. Not with anyone. I couldn’t even let myself tip over into that place where you’re falling with a kind of ecstatic freedom that makes you release everything.

  That was no longer part of who I am.

  I knew this was true, just like I knew so many facts. And nothing Tyler did right now would change that, but oh—this felt so good. So, so amazing.

  It just wasn’t going to happen the normal way. Sex was supposed to be this intimate, hot, racy series of touches and kisses, of sighs and moans, of thrusts and orgasms and yet...none of that was happening right now. I was too raw. Too exposed. I lived in my head and my body as if they were two separate states of existence.

  And meanwhile, Tyler did his damnedest to be what I needed.

  I felt the sob rise up in me just as his tongue stroked the most delicious spot. Just as his fingers dug into the soft flesh of my hip. Just as his other hand splayed across my belly with heat and passion. My stomach tightened and all that was supposed to be sweaty and sexy in this moment became a convulsion of pain and outrage.

  He sensed it and came up to me, stroking my hair instead of my ass. Kissing my cheek instead of my clit. Murmuring words of comfort instead of dirty talk. For seven years I’d avoided sex because I knew it would be awkward and bizarre, broken and painful.

  It turned out I’d been right.

  “It’s okay,” he said, his body long and hard, hot and taut against mine as my chest heaved with painful, hitched cries. I hated myself in that moment. Hated what I’d just done. I’d turned what was supposed to be a romp in bed into a therapy session, and the last man on the planet I’d expected to be naked with me and holding me was a guy named Frown.

  But it turned out fate knew better than me what I needed.

  “Maggie, shhhhh,” he soothed, his voice so soft and warm, his caring only making me cry harder. I was a basket case, a naked, sobbing wreck, and his arms and murmurs wrapped me with a sense of compassion I didn’t know any man could display, much less this man.

  He made me want him even more. Even when I shouldn’t want intimacy, I wanted this man. He held me until whatever needed to come out was finished. With a shaking hand I reached up and stroked his stubbled cheek, then kissed him.

  He kissed me back, his lips tender and tentative, the kind of kiss you give when you’re being respectful. Suddenly, though, I didn’t want respectful and tender. I wanted to feel empty and full at the same time. To keep on going until I came out on the other side of whatever this journey took me through. I couldn’t stop now. If I did, I’d be half finished. Half healed.

  Half Maggie.

  I kissed him with an urgent hunger that clanged inside me like a bell, the sound getting louder and more eager, the cacophony a strange mix with the pleasure of his heated body. His cock rose in response and yet I felt him holding back, his restraint admirable but exactly what I did not need.

  “Make love to me,” I whispered, the sound carrying across the tiny space between us like dried leaves on an early winter day, the wind careless.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice slow and heavy.

  “Yes.” I shifted, my breasts and one thigh sliding against his torso, the feeling both erotic and frightening at the same time. How I could feel two completely different responses at the same time wasn’t a surprise. What shocked me was how the erotic quickly became more powerful than my fear. I nearly cried with relief, but my body was cried out.

  Maybe that was the secret. Find a guy nice enough to let me cry during sex and—

  “We don’t have to do anything, Maggie. Seriously,” he said, his mouth against my ear. He rubbed my back, carefully avoiding my breasts and ass. I wanted that touch—needed it. The absence of it made me feel hollow. I knew that my reactions didn’t make sense. Fighting that reality was holding me back. Maybe what Tyler was trying to tell me was what I’d hoped was true:

  You can feel anything you need to feel and that’s fine, because your truth is your truth.

  My answer to his words was a touch that made him inhale sharply.

  “This is what I want to do,” I whispered. “I want you to be inside me. I want,” I said, my mouth going numb as my body because exquisitely sensitive, “you to make love to me.”

  I felt his smile against my neck. “Gladly,” he answered. And then I quite literally felt him frown.

  “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath. “We don’t have a condom.”

  “Uh, actually,” I said, squirming under him, reaching for my backpack, “we do.”

  “We do?”

  “Lena packed them.”

  He chuckled. “Your sister packed you condoms for a road trip with me.”

  I shrugged and pulled out the foil packet. “She wanted
us to be prepared.”

  He took the condom from me and tore the package open, shaking his head with a smile. “She bakes cookies and she packs you condoms? She’s quite a catch.”

  “Hey there,” I said, “she’s not your type.”

  “She’s not?” he laughed.

  “No, she likes pussy.”

  “Then we have something in common.” He began to tear the packet and I took it gently from him, our fingers fumbling against each other, his face tight with a frown.

  “May I?” I asked. I hadn’t done this in years. It meant something to me in that moment, but I didn’t know what.

  He pulled back and I looked down, seeing his erection, the veins prominent, the flesh so...simple. The same body part on another man (men) used as a weapon against me all those years ago now looked so harmless. Fresh and alluring, something to bring pleasure. He hissed as I stroked up, twice, then carefully rolled the condom on.

  He smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “No one’s ever put one on me before.”

  “You don’t normally wear them?”

  “No, no!” he said quickly. “I do. Always. It’s just...I’m normally the one putting it on.”

  “Then I’m pleased to be something new for you, Tyler,” I said. His kiss in answer was full of yearning and buildup, of being in the moment. Of holding our breath as we paused before crossing over.

  I stretched beneath him and he moved over me, my legs opening in invitation. I didn’t want to have to say it. Consent was important, but he already had that. I’d given it to him and to myself, and now it was time.

  Tyler’s beautiful mouth opened and I knew, before he began to speak, what he was about to say. I pressed my finger against his lips and he startled.

  Our eyes locked.

  “Please.” That was the only word in my head, the only word I cared about. “Please.”

  And then I said:

  “Now.”

  He nodded, eyes serious and watchful, arms powerful and protective as he balanced over me. I guided him in and oh—the fullness. The aching, slow relief of having someone enter me on my own terms.

  My own timeline.

  My choice.

  If I’d looked him in the eye in that moment as he hovered over me, my thighs pressing into his hips, my hands on the small of his back as he rocked his way into me, I might have cried. I might have laughed. I might have done neither. I might have frozen and gone cold inside.

  Without his eyes aimed at me, I closed mine and just felt. Felt the brush of his abs against my belly. Took in the rasp of his chin against my shoulder. Considered the push of him going in me and the sweet, soft slide as he pulled out, then thrust in again. Inhaled the scent of soap and musk and man his skin exuded. Reveled in the chanting loop in my head that whispered:

  You did it. You did it. You did it.

  You’re free.

  I kissed his shoulder and Tyler tensed, his ass clenching and his throat clicking with a swallow.

  “You okay?” he asked softly.

  All I could do was nod.

  “This okay?” he asked.

  “Better than okay.”

  I moved my hips up to meet him and take him in deeper and he groaned, a wild sound that ignited something in me. In that split second this went from a healing moment to something more visceral, more carnal. I wanted him more—wanted his raw power, to commune with him, and as I pushed up to meet his gentle thrusts he came back faster, harder, with less restraint and more abandon.

  And then he slowed down.

  I sped back up, my body unleashing a torrent of pinprick sensations that spread high and low, but halted as if they struck a massive wall. I knew this feeling. I’d known this feeling earlier.

  I wouldn’t come.

  My body wouldn’t let me.

  But oh, how this felt so good. So right. So...Tyler.

  “I want to make this good for you,” he confessed, his words soft and tight, his breath hard and choked.

  “It is,” I replied, my arm sweaty against his back, my inner thighs aching.

  “I just...oh, Maggie,” he gasped. Puzzled, I stroked his back and reached down to touch his hips, then realized what he was saying. Aha.

  “Please don’t hold back,” I said, trying to keep the pleading tone away. I wanted him to come. I wanted to know I could give a man pleasure, and that he could find it in me. With me.

  From me.

  He thrust in, hips curling as my legs wrapped around him and he groaned into my neck, his mouth dipping down to take one nipple in, the feeling both fleeting and electric as he pushed and I lifted to match his movements.

  One, two, three....adrift in the sensation, I lost count until his entire body pushed hard once, then froze, his chest impossibly big for a moment. A long sigh poured out of him, ragged and full.

  He sagged against me, sated and finished. My legs bowed out and down, my arms sliding off his back and resting on the rumpled sleeping bag beneath us. I tried to breathe but he pressed down on me, his body boneless.

  I’d done that. Done that to him. With him.

  I gently pulled him to the side and he roused, shifting so I could breathe. Our legs were tangled in a delicious way, my core raw and aching. My thighs began to tremble and I felt so exposed. Not uncomfortable, though.

  He turned away from me and sat at the edge of the bed, then stood. I watched his naked ass as he went into the bathroom. I heard a flush. The condom, I supposed. This ritual was so unfamiliar to me that I just mused and openly tracked him with my eyes, a thousand Maggies spinning inside my head and chest as I tried to make sense of the last hour.

  I’d had sex.

  With someone who cared.

  He came back to the bed and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Thank you,” I said. The words seemed so anemic, impossibly bereft of the power I wanted them to have.

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  We rested, the only sound our breathing. After too many minutes, I cracked.

  “This is going to sound so...wrong,” I said, my words coming out with a gasp. I had to talk about anything except what we’d just done.

  The problem was my choice of topic. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Go ahead.”

  He seemed to know what I was going to ask, so I sat up a bit and looked him in the eye, my naked breasts resting against his ribs.

  “How old were you?”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep sigh. “Thirteen.”

  “Oh, Tyler.”

  “And because I know you’re going to pester me until I tell you the rest, here’s all I’m saying.” He swallowed, hard, and took a deep breath. “My dad was doing business with this guy.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Yeah.” He looked away. “And Dad didn’t come home for a long time. The guy was high as a kite and huge. By the time Dad walked in, he was...well. I hadn’t hit puberty yet, and he was big.”

  “Oh, God. Your dad walked in?”

  “Yep. Beat the fucking shit out of the dude. Nearly tossed him out the window, and we lived on the third floor back then. Kicked his ass down a staircase.”

  “Your trial must have been awful. Testifying when you’re only thirteen. It was hard enough at twenty-two for me.”

  He jolted, then froze.

  Oh.

  “There wasn’t a trial, was there?” I asked, my voice high, my body going cold and numb.

  “No.”

  “Did your dad—”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot for bringing this up, here, now, while we’re in bed together and we—”

  He pressed a finger to my mouth. I went quiet.

  “There’s never a wrong time to talk about the truth.”

  I gave him a squeeze. He softened slightly.

  “Did your dad get you any help?”

  He made a short, distinct snorting sound. “He told me to forget it happened. Threw the guy down the st
airs, came back in the apartment, told me it was my fault, to forget it happened, and went into his bedroom. We never talked about it.”

  “Your fault? No medical attention? What?” Horror filled me. Some deep, reptilian part of me knew that I was deflecting my own emotional struggles about my sexual abuse by talking so openly about his.

  Throwing myself into his story was easier than grappling with my own.

  There was also a part of me that was about to cry for the thirteen-year-old child that Tyler had been.

  “No.”

  “And you got over it...how?”

  His neck tightened. His jaw clenched. His breath became even. Too forced. He was controlling his emotions with great effort.

  “By not talking about it.”

  I pressed my ear against his heart and listened to it quicken, then steady. My eyes filled with tears and I let them drop into his chest, like a baptism. Like an offering. And we rested like that until I drifted off to sleep, my mind filled with too much to handle awake.

  Tyler

  As she fell asleep in my arms, her curves a warm comfort I didn’t know I needed, all I could think was:

  I’m not good enough.

  I couldn’t make her come.

  I couldn’t give enough.

  I tried. Fuck, I tried. And as she had wept in my arms my own eyes had teared up, my throat tight with anger and anguish. Anger for what those monsters did to her and anguish that I couldn’t fix it. Maggie explained it and I got it on some level. Of course she couldn’t come. The mind makes hellish spirals that go deeper than we realize when we go through bad shit.

  Unscrewing the corkscrew is a hell of a lot harder than putting it in there.

  This had been it, though. This was all I could give her. She’d done nothing but sacrifice for me and in the moments we had made love what I offered felt like something more than just giving. I was getting something back, too. Not just sex. Not just my own orgasm. Not just a fuck. She opened herself up to me. She trusted me. She made me “that guy,” the guy she wanted. Two months ago she tried and I’d shot her down.