Burn

by R. J. Lewis

  I gaped at him. And then I kissed the ever loving shit out of him. My lips trembled against his. I coated his face with my tears and he held me tightly against him with an arm around my back.

  I didn’t want it hard and fast anymore. I didn’t want to get fucked. I wanted it slow and soft. I wanted to make love.

  He sensed my need and obliged, thrusting in and out at a tender speed. He cherished me on those steps, stroking me and kissing me. He prolonged my peak by building my pleasure and slowing it down again. My body could no longer take anymore. My skin broke out in shivers as I clutched him hard against me and exploded. I hadn’t felt a release in so long, and it washed over me like the blinding light of morning – a boundless inevitability that I had no control over, seizing me in a temporary bubble of heaven before it washed away into mild contentedness. My lips quivered against his as I came down from my high.

  Then I just… plopped there against his chest, like a bag of bones. The energy was zapped right out of me, leaving me feeling like a cloud in the air, floating away…

  But he was still hard inside of me. I could feel him pulse with the need to continue.

  “These stairs are giving my ass a cramp,” he muttered.

  I smiled into his chest. “I can imagine.”

  He slowly stood up, careful to keep me still against him. I brushed my hands through his hair and kissed his nose and the border of his face as he ascended up the porch and into the cabin. He returned the gesture, kissing both of my eyes and then the slope of my nose.

  I didn’t realize how cool it’d been outside until we were enfolded in the warmth of the cabin. Jaxon carried me as if I weighed light as a feather to the bed and set me down. He pulled out of me and turned me around on my stomach. I was still blissfully content from my orgasm when he began kissing up my legs, brushing his hands over my ass and up my spine.

  “Beautiful. You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

  I felt revered, worshipped. I didn’t deserve to be so well cared for. I felt his love in every caress, and I remember thinking, I’m never getting out of this bedroom. Because the outside world was a terrible place; an unpredictable mess of choices and consequences filled with lies and deceitful people willing to tear you apart for their own selfish reasons. And in this bedroom, away from reality, was our world, and it was filled with love and soft kisses and tender moments that brought to the forefront the purpose of our life: each other.

  Still flat against the mattress, he spread my legs apart. I felt his body heat envelope me as he pressed his chest against my back. Then I felt his tip at my entrance, and I shut my eyes serenely as he slowly eased himself back in.

  “Fuuuck,” he moaned, his face hovering inches above my shoulder. He kissed my shoulder blades and slid a hand down my stomach and to my clit. He massaged me as he moved in and out of me, and the intensity of both acts felt like I was being licked by fire; a painful pleasure that burned and faded and burned again.

  “Don’t stop,” I begged, breathing erratically against the sheets moistened by my open mouth. “Please, please, please.”

  He moved faster within me, and each thrust forced my lower body to press against his hand that circled deliciously around my centre. I held my breath and felt my world implode; the second orgasm rippled rapturously within, feeling as though it were trying to find a way out until I sucked in a breath again, momentarily suspended in an aphrodisiac wonderland. I could do this again and again for I still felt aroused beyond measure soon after…

  “Always you,” he groaned against me. “Perfection.”

  He moved in and out of me for so long, prolonging his own peak over and over again until he couldn’t any longer. I delighted in his sounds, in his warmth, in the feel of him with me again. Finally, he stilled and tensed, biting softly at my shoulder as he grunted through his release. I felt his riotous heartbeats against my back and they lulled me into a half-conscious slumber. My energy levels were at a critical all-time low.

  He moved off of me and I made a sound that resembled a tortured pup. I needed him. He lay at my side and trailed his hand up and down my back. I opened an eye and watched him. I could see his profile as he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling in deep contemplation.

  “Are you okay?” I managed out.

  He turned his head to me and smiled wistfully, dimples and all. “Yeah,” he softly replied. “I’m more than okay, Tiny.” I bloomed at his use of my nickname that only he has ever used.

  “Did you mean what you said?” I bit my bottom lip and watched him in anticipation. People say shit when they have sex. Sometimes they don’t mean it after.

  “What did I say?”

  My cheeks heated. No way would I repeat it! If he didn’t even know what I was referring to then it was probably said in the heat of the moment. Damn.

  His blue eyes, even radiant in the dark, eyed me mischievously. Then he smiled even wider. Bastard knew exactly what I was talking about…

  He edged closer to me, turning onto his side. “You mean, do I want to marry you?” He rubbed his nose against my cheek. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

  I sputtered out an unladylike grunt.

  “Yeah,” he said, tracing circles along my spine. “I’m marrying you. No more of this crap between us. We need some stability after this. You won’t be able to run off when you have my name attached to you, and maybe everybody else will fuck off when you do. Til death do us part, right?”

  I managed a nod. My throat felt tight. I would marry him right then and there. I even went all caveman-like thinking how amazing it would feel to be possessed by him. The feminist in me wanted to drown me in acid for such a thought.

  “Almost six years apart from you and the second I’m with you it’s like I’ve never been away.” He finger combed my hair, splaying it out down my back. He watched me with this look of tenderness and something else entirely. He wasn’t like the others. I couldn’t read every part of him. Jaxon was a perpetually fascinating man; no matter how hard I might try to unfold every layer that is him, he would forever be unconquerable.

  “Why do you love me?” I asked him, bewildered by my train of thought. “After everything I’ve done... After all I’ve put you through…”

  “Because you’re my ultimate.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  He chuckled. “What, do you want me to write you a love sonnet to express why I love you?”

  “Go for it. I dare you.”

  He cleared his throat and, with a deeper more baritone voice, spoke, “Her cunt-eth gleamed in the moonlight, her juices flowed therein, and I said unto her, ‘I would love… to eat you out.’”

  I smacked him hard. “That’s not a love sonnet! Gross. You’re sick.”

  His body shook in laughter. I bet he thought he was the funniest thing ever, and on that note, who the hell laughed at their own joke?

  “Talking about my vagina is not a thing of love.”

  “But I love you because it looks so good.”

  I smacked him again. “You’re evil.”

  “I’m a man with needs, you’re a woman with a tight little honey cave–”

  “Mature, Jaxon, real mature.”

  I waited a couple minutes until his laughter died down. It took everything in me not to smile. I had to pretend to be the mature one of us, so I continued to glower at him and then I raised my eyebrows up expectantly.

  “Why do pigs roll around in shit?” His question confused me. I put more oomph in my glower now, but he looked solemnly at me. “Why do flowers need sunlight? Why do caterpillars turn into butterflies? These are all basic, living instincts; predispositions that aren’t in our control, but in our makeup. We don’t understand what propels us to certain things. Why does someone like this or that? I believe it’s wired in us. Just like I’m wired to you and you’re wired to me. It doesn’t make sense and we don’t understand it, but we’re propelled to each other. Be it a chemical reaction binding us, or a higher power that deems
it so, we’re soul-mates. That’s why I love you. I can’t turn it off because I have no control over it, and I’d never want to anyway.”

  His thumb stroked away the tear that fell from my eye. Then he gathered me and set me against him. I wrapped my arm around his waist, rested my head against his chest and listened to his heart beats. I listened and listened until the blackness took me away.

  Twenty Two

  “I don’t want to do this,” I whined coming to a halt. “I’ve got a cramp in my side and I’m tired.”

  Jaxon turned around, one hand holding tight the backpack strap on his shoulder. He glared at me like I was a petulant child that was screaming for candy at the check-out aisle. The look alone had me moving my ass as if a herd of buffalo was after me.

  We’d been trekking the woods for, like, an hour…

  Maybe forty minutes, actually.

  Okay, it was more like twenty minutes. Still. The physical exertion was new to me and it made my legs ache. It didn’t help my jeans were now whirling in the washer after last night’s adventurous bar rendezvous with the drunks. I’d found little jean shorts in one of the drawers and shot Jaxon a stink-eye. He simply shrugged, expressing he had no part in what clothes had been placed in them. The shorts comfortably fit, thank the heavens, but I had only baggy shirts to wear on top. I was currently swimming in a massive grey t-shirt that obviously belonged to an XXXX large person and getting the ever loving shit beat out of my legs wading through dense nature that harboured nasty branches and thorny bushes.

  “We’re not far away, Tiny.”

  Liar. He’d been saying that from the start.

  “Do you know where you’re going? Or are we going to get lost out here?”

  “I know where I’m going.”

  I shot his back a dubious look. “What if we get lost?”

  “We won’t.”

  “But hypothetically, what if we do?”

  He huffed in exasperation. “Then we’ll be Tarzan and Jane, mating like wildebeests and frolicking from tree limb to tree limb.”

  “The Disney movie never showed them mating.”

  “Jane was a hottie. Tarzan would have tapped that ass the second the credits came up. Now that’s a fact.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “Don’t need it.”

  I grimaced. “You have forever ruined Tarzan for me.”

  He laughed and turned back to me. His hair looked blonder under the sunlight and his eyes fiercer. I noticed the joy in them, too, and it made me smile hard at him. “Okay, we’re here, and if you shut your mouth for five seconds, you’ll hear the waterfall.”

  “A whole five seconds?”

  He shook his head in mock-irritation and extended his hand out to me. I took it and we walked in silence. The sound of rushing water drew nearer and nearer. Soon, it was a loud whooshing sound that was inescapable. We followed the noise until the fall came into view between the trees.

  It was only a small waterfall, perhaps twenty feet high, flowing down a smooth cavernous rock and into a narrow river. We were close enough to feel the misty water against our skin and its coolness already had me shivering. I stepped back, away from the bubble of merciless cold, and found a dry spot in the grass a few feet from the lake.

  Jaxon threw his bag off and unzipped it, removing a large blanket he’d found in the storage closet. He set it down where I stood and I sat down on it, crossing my legs like a kindergartener. I gazed up at the sky and the tops of the trees. It was a beautiful little spot, secluded and freshly green. Jaxon sat down behind me, legs spread against each side of me as he snuggled up against my back. His arms wrapped around me and I sank into him, resting the back of my head against his broad chest.

  We sat in silence for several minutes, basking in each other’s arms and enjoying the waterfall’s soothing sounds as it deposited itself into the river.

  “How’d you know about this place?” I asked curiously.

  “Christy told me about it and gave me the directions.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s wrong?” he said soothingly, pushing my hair from one side to the other. He trailed kisses down my bare neck.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  “Stop lying. You tensed the second I said her name.”

  No response.

  “She means nothing to me, Tiny.”

  “She must mean something. You helped out her grandmother and all.” Pushing the matter that she must have meant something was Sara-code for: continue to tell me how much of nothing she means to you!

  “Because she was the only nice girl before you came back. She wasn’t after the Scorpion man second in charge of bad-ass-ville. I felt bad for using her. A part of me kept her around that time in case you showed up. I’m a dickhead, I know.”

  “She was fawning all over you yesterday.”

  He laughed suddenly. I felt his head shake. “No, she most definitely was not.”

  I scoffed. “She rubbed up against you, whispered in your ear, gave me dirty looks –”

  “She did not give you dirty looks.”

  “Okay, she didn’t, but the rest is true.”

  He sighed, taking the palm of my hand with his own. He drew circles on my skin before saying, “Tiny, she wasn’t. She told me she was heading to Winthrop to be with her tattoo artist boyfriend, and I smiled at her and wished her good luck.”

  “Why would she whisper that?”

  “It was loud as hell in that restaurant, plus Gretel was talking up a fucking storm about convict art or some shit.”

  I thought on that for a few moments. “She has a man in Winthrop?”

  He laughed again. “You’re such a dumbass, Tiny. Did you not spot the sparkling rock on her finger? Christy got engaged a few weeks ago.”

  I stilled. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.”

  Damn. “Why do I overreact?”

  “Because you’re jealous and you love me.”

  Still was no excuse for it.

  “She’s been through a lot,” Jaxon continued quietly. “Gretel… she’s hard on her. She pushed her to go to med school when she didn’t want to. She’s taken up some receptionist job at her boyfriend’s shop and hasn’t even told her yet.”

  “What about her placement?”

  “She said it was too stressful on her. That she needed a break. So I wished her the best of luck.”

  “Oh.” I hoped she would find the happiness she was looking for.

  We relaxed for ages, soaking the heat of the sun while feeling the coolness of the mist emitting from the waterfall. It was so surreal being here with him again.

  “Where are we going to go?” I asked after sometime. “Are we never returning to Gosnells?”

  “We are. In time.”

  “Are you still going to be a Scorpion?”

  “There’s no out of the Scorpions, Tiny. That’s a done deal. I gave them my word. The only way out is death.”

  “Maybe we can fake your death.”

  He chuckled, his chest vibrating against my back. “That’s easier said than done.”

  “How did you become one?” I’d been dying to ask this. Sure, Remy had vaguely offered an answer, but it wasn’t good enough. I needed to hear it come from Jaxon.

  Apprehension clear in his demeanour, he tensed. Softly, he said, “The men inside that prison were the vilest fucking people you’d ever seen. The kind that’ll eat you up and spit you out. Pretty boy Jaxon was a hit, and I knew quickly I’d be face down and ass up for some Jabba the Hutt. By then, Finley was serving the last year of his six year sentence – tax evasion, he’d said. He watched me fight and liked what he saw. He took me under his wing and offered me protection. In exchange, I’d do what he wanted me to do.

  “What he wanted… it was bad shit, Tiny. They aren’t things I’m proud of. I’d rather gloss over a lot of it for now. But I got the job done each time, and he took me in more and more. We bonded a bit. I had nothing else to do but bond with this convincing rich bus
inessman who not only protected me, but taught me how to run a business and how to make money.”

  “And the whole woman thing with the club…”

  “Finley wanted us to treat women like they were sport. Whatever he grew up in, that was the culture of it, I guess. He’s a damn good speaker, that guy. He could sell snow to the fucking Eskimos. What he does is clever; he brings in men that are down on their luck and builds them up again. When they feel powerful and invincible, they look down on everyone else around them. For a long time that’s what I felt. That’s the lifestyle I lived. Until you came back.”

  He kissed my head and trailed his fingers down my arms.

  “The night I was taken… You said I’d moved on when I asked you about Jade.”

  I felt him nod. “Yeah.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “After I got out of prison, we tracked down the officer that planted the evidence on me. We beat the truth out of him. He said the Jackals were behind it, but we could never get to the bottom of why. I found out later about your mother, but it was only until Remy took you that I realized his obsession. Fritz broke it to me when I demanded the truth.

  “During the time I got the news out of the officer, I went searching for you. I was in Winthrop after all. Finley later approached me a few days later and told me they’d found you, but that you were living with a man you worked for. That you were happy with him.” He paused and sighed deeply, gathering his thoughts before he continued.

  “He proceeded to show me some photos of you and him through your apartment window. Nothing revealing, but there were photos of him in states of undress. It was Daniel. There was no reason for me to question it; it was apparent you’d moved onto another man. At that point, I was angry. I hated you. I wanted to hurt you even if you didn’t know it. Felt like you’d abandoned me, so I wanted to do the same thing. I tried to fill the void with the club, and it became my life. I’m sorry, Sara.”

  I shook my head, my anger directed at Finley. “I never lived with Daniel.”

  “Yeah, well, he made a very convincing case.”