by Casey Diam
Shit, I’m an idiot. She could have had a concussion from the accident, and I had her out when she should be resting.
“I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” I looked at the time on my phone. “If we hurry, we can catch the last train.”
“No. You don’t have to leave your friends. I know my way back.”
“No way. I’m coming with you.”
“Are you sure?” She turned to her bag and picked up my hoodie that was thrown over it. She twisted around the small space between the table and seat until she faced me, placing a knee on the seat and leaving one foot on the floor.
Damn, it would be so easy to pull her leg over my lap and have my way with her. Or she could have her way with me.
A weird fantasy of her tracing the tip of her knife down the center of my chest while riding me seeped into my thoughts, and I blinked twice as my cock stirred.
Where the fuck did that come from?
She looked down at me for a moment before putting the folded sweatshirt to my chest. “After last night, there are a lot of questions you have answers to that I need.”
I rested my hand on her hip. “Will I have to answer those tonight?”
“No, but—”
“Then, I’m coming with you.”
“Then, I guess there’s something you should know.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Paige
Caleb had added a black leather couch and a kickboxing bag hanging from the ceiling in the living room. The bag from the ceiling was odd but wonderful in an I-didn’t-expect-a-kickboxing-bag-to-be-a-part-of-his-new-furniture kind of way, but it also made me feel right at home. He’d pretty much handed me his key after I told him I was homeless less than an hour ago at the bar. I should’ve been scared, and I should’ve objected, but what other choice did I really have besides sleeping with—I stole a glance at him lying on his back on top of the sheets, typing something on his phone—my enemy? He wasn’t officially my enemy yet, but I had a terrible feeling he was about to be. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this week, but soon.
He reached over my body to set his phone next to mine on a small wooden nightstand. The nightstand matched the new platform bed’s headboard. I inhaled as I felt him all over. His tempting masculine scent and his body’s proximity swept over me like a heated blanket, though I liked thinking he was a rock-solid shield. One that would protect me. One that knew how to make me feel good.
As he moved back, his chest brushed the tightened nipples beneath my tank. My lips parted as I craved more—the touch of his mouth on mine, the feel of his hands on my body. Why wasn’t he touching me?
I cleared my throat. “Are you done with the light?” When I turned my head to look at him, he was on his side, gazing at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “What?”
“I’m serious about what I said earlier,” he said. “Whenever you don’t want me here, just let me know. I can sleep in my suite downtown while you stay here. I know you must not be used to having someone around.”
Oh, yeah, his generosity, offering up his apartment to me as my very own residence. But he was right; I wasn’t used to being around anyone like this. In fact, I’d never thought I would ever be able to fall asleep while someone else was in the same room as me, but it hadn’t been a problem with him.
“I will,” I told him, shifting so that I was mirroring his position. “How long have you known Calvin?”
“Fourteen years.”
“You two are close?”
He nodded. “He’s the only person I trust with my life.”
Interesting. “What about your brother?”
He shook his head. “Tell me something about yourself, something that no one else knows.”
I tucked both hands under my cheek on the pillow. “You first.”
“Hmm,” he started, the low hum in his throat reminding me of the sounds he made during sex.
Was it normal for me to want this much sex with him?
Gosh, he’s so attractive, especially when he licks his lips like that.
I felt a low pulse between my thighs, and my muscles clenched. I bit my lip for a second before Caleb touched my chin and then used his thumb to pull my lip from between my teeth, toying with the energy between us as if it were minor. It was taking all my willpower not to climb over him and do everything to his body that he’d been doing to mine.
He moved his hand to the edge of his pillow. “Remember how I told you I was adopted?”
My head jerked in acknowledgment.
“My parents didn’t want me; they gave me away because I... looked different.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I didn’t look like you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Blonde hair, blue eyes. They were both blondes, so I’m guessing she cheated, and... well, you see the problem there.”
My mouth puckered. “Oh.”
“Your turn,” he said.
“I don’t have a family.”
“You’re going to have to give me something more.”
“No more.” I rolled onto my back. “I don’t have a family. I only have me. That’s all you get.”
“Why?”
My defenses rose, and my voice shook. “Because I don’t do this, Caleb. I don’t talk about it. And I can’t do whatever this getting to know each other crap is. I just can’t. It isn’t me.” I turned my back to him, my heart racing. It only took a few seconds for me to feel like an asshole when he didn’t shift or mutter a word.
He’d opened up to me, and I was lashing out at him. And for what? Because I was too much of a coward to dig up the past?
Realization dawned.
All this time, I’d thought I was scared of the men, scared of them finding me when, really, I was scared of going back. Them finding me meant I would have to go back to that night, go back to...
No, think about Caleb.
Although maybe it wasn’t all bad memories. Seeing him onstage had given me a good memory, a memory I’d thought I would hate.
Swallowing, I turned around to face him again. His eyes remained on the wall behind me like he was purposefully trying to avoid my eyes.
His parents sucked. I sucked.
He must have gone through his whole life feeling awful, unloved, and unwanted by the two people who should have accepted him.
What the hell? What assholes.
Caleb was the most attractive guy I’d come across, so to think they had given him away because of how he looked was complete shit. And all he had to do was look in the mirror to realize that.
Raising my hand, I traced my finger over the five o’clock shadow gracing his jaw. It was sexy. Gosh, everything about him was sexy, and right now, there was just something about a brooding Caleb that tugged on my heart.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t like talking about my past, and I’m sorry about your parents. They were stupid, shallow people who didn’t deserve you if that was why they didn’t want you in their lives.” I didn’t want to intrude more into his life after shutting him out of mine, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Who told you that was the reason they had given you up?”
He looked into my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. They still gave me up.”
My insides ached more for him than for myself. Moving closer to him, I hooked my leg over his hip, kissing his nose and then his cheek, before I whispered, “Let’s not talk.” Using the force of my body, I pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips.
“What do you want to do then?”
Grasping the hem of his shirt, I started to remove it, but he stopped me.
“Are you doing this out of pity?”
I paused and then smoothed my hand over the heated skin beneath his shirt. “No, I just need to feel you. Take my pain, and I’ll take yours.”
Twisting his fist into the front of my tank, he pulled me to his chest. “I can’t take your pain if you don’t let me.”
“I’m letting you now. Y
ou might not realize it, but I’m letting you now.”
A burning desire coursed through me the moment our lips melded. Maybe because this kiss was harder than he’d ever kissed me before. Like he was really giving himself to me this time. It didn’t take long for our clothes to disappear and for Caleb to be on top of me.
And, wow, I wish he would walk around naked.
My hands roamed over the hard ridges of his abs and up over his chest, and my eyes hungrily ate up every dip and rise of his flexing muscles.
“Look at me.” He lowered onto his elbows, and my eyes fluttered up to his. “I love watching you when I do this.” He sank into me, and I gasped.
Retreating, he did it again, extracting the same response from my lips before his mouth was on mine.
“How does it get better every time?”
His kisses moved from my mouth, and I didn’t realize I’d spoken that aloud, but he agreed with a muffled groan, “So true,” in the midst of giving my nipple the sweetest torture between his teeth.
“My head doesn’t want me to, but I can’t help it; I trust you,” I confessed.
“You’ll stop once this is over,” he said, moving his kisses to my neck. “It’s kind of hard not to trust the person who’s in the act of fucking your sweet little pussy.”
“I won’t stop. Oh God...” I paused as he hit an even sweeter spot inside me. “I won’t unless you give me a reason not to. But, right now, I trust you. I have since I met you. I don’t why, but I do.”
He kissed me, plunging deeper, and a myriad of curses brushed across my cheek as his lips left mine. “Oh, fucking hell. You’re mine. No one else gets to fuck you like this. Got it?”
He was big in all the right ways, and the way he stretched me was beyond anything words could convey. I didn’t want to talk anymore, just feel.
But, as Caleb drove deeper and questioned me once more, I cried out a quick, “Yes.”
It wasn’t like I wanted anyone else to do what he was doing to me. I only wanted him. He felt right. He felt good.
I kissed and sucked the skin on his shoulder, needing to do something with my mouth. My body took everything he was giving with so much greed that I couldn’t decide whether to loosen or tighten my legs around his hips. But, as I loosened them, it changed the way he thrust into me, and my body was delighted in the pure ecstasy of his longer, deeper strokes. I bit into his shoulder, delaying the wave threatening to take me under, but then my moans grew closer to each other as he brought me closer to the end. I didn’t want to come yet, but the way he moved caused my muscles to involuntarily clench around his incredible thickness.
“Oh God, Caleb!”
My teeth sank into the bulging muscles of his shoulder again, harder this time, but he didn’t protest, and it made what was happening between us even more intense. His heated skin against mine, his heartbeat matching the wild thumping of my own. He groaned, and I stiffened, arching into what started out as a gentle wave of pleasure, but as I drew him deeper to satiate the hunger, he gave, and I took, clenching and unclenching until I held him captive.
Undone.
Satisfied.
And I could tell he was, too, by his dead weight resting on top of me.
I liked it.
I liked how close, how safe, how complete I felt in this moment. And I wished he could stay inside me because all I wanted was to hold him like this for a while.
“I just want to fall asleep like this,” Caleb mumbled against my neck.
I smiled. “Don’t whisper sweet nothings unless you’re ready to do that again.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, not moving but his cock throbbed inside me. “Don’t tempt me with your sweet nothings unless you don’t plan to leave this bed again. You want to know why?”
I bit the grin on my lip as I asked, “Why is that?”
“Because I want to make sure I fuck you thoroughly.” He sucked on my neck. “Paige, you should be thoroughly fucked. Always. And by me. Only me.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Caleb
It was 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and just hours ago, I’d dropped Paige off at work after having another round of the best sex of my entire life. In fact, the last few days had been what I imagined normal felt like, and it was addicting. It could be why neither one of us wanted to bring up the past or what had happened the night of the accident.
But, since I had woken up this morning, I’d had this nagging feeling that things were about to change; after all, I knew what my life was, and I knew whatever fairy tale we thought we had would be over soon. I just didn’t know when it would happen or how it would happen. And, as I napped in my suite and then woke up to my ringing phone and brother freaking out at the other end of the line, the possibility of it happening this soon was far from my mind.
Brad opened the door to his suite, his eyes wide as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, ushering me inside in a hurried motion. I wasn’t going to show up because the dude was a total dick, but he was still my “brother,” and I had already been in my room at the hotel, waiting for Paige to get off work. But, as I watched him fidgeting with the lock on the door in his sweatpants and T-shirt, I knew he was high. I’d suspected it from the call, but this was confirmation. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten paranoid from the drug.
I sighed. “What is it, Brad?”
He turned to face me, his eyes still wide. “She’s dead.”
“What?” Instantly, my mind shifted to Paige, knowing he’d started going to the gym where she worked, but I shook my head because they still hadn’t figured out her second job at the bar—or at least, I hoped. With a swift stride into the foyer, I headed toward the living room, my gut sinking. “Who, Brad? Who’s—”
I stopped short when I saw a girl, who wasn’t Paige—thank Christ—lying on the couch on her side, eyes closed. She had long black hair and was in a black miniskirt and a sparkling white top. Wait, I’d seen her before. Last week, she’d come knocking on my door in the same outfit, looking for Brad. It had to have been a trap. For me.
Why else would she be dressed the same, and who would have given her my room number last week? The hotel staff would never have told her or given her access to my floor for that matter.
My eyes drifted to the glass coffee table where at least a whole fucking pound of cocaine sat in clear plastic.
I swung around, jaw tightening, “What happened?”
He paced from one side of the vast living room space to the other and then back to me. Intertwining his fingers, he clasped the back of his head and stared at the girl. “OD.”
I assessed him because Brad didn’t have a heart, and he walked around half the time fucked up on drugs. I wouldn’t put it past him not to have killed her.
“Dude, Dad’s going to kill me.”
He wasn’t sorry.
“Are you sure she’s dead?” I walked over to the girl, noticing the two tightly rolled hundred-dollar bills sitting next to the specks of white powder left on the glass. I bent and pressed two fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. Nothing. I tried for a pulse again on her small wrist because I wasn’t an expert, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I still hoped I was only missing the small tick by a few millimeters. “Maybe they could still resuscitate her at the hospital. We just have to get her there.”
“No, she’s dead,” Brad said, a little too fast. Too confident.
I looked up at him, studying him. “What makes you so sure?”
“I just know. I would know, or have you forgotten?”
I stood. “Fine. How about you call Dad, or I’ll call a fucking ambulance? Your choice.”
“No. Please. Just help me.”
I cocked my head. “Help you what?”
“Get rid of it. What else?”
“It? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s a fucking person, Brad. I’m done.” Starting for the door, I shook my head. “I’m fucking done with this shit.”
“You can’t go.” He stepped
in my path, but I shoved him out of the way. “I’m calling him, but he’ll know you were here, and you know what he’ll do if you leave. If you stay, it won’t be so bad.”
Nausea settled in my gut, and tears sprang to the backs of my eyes. I inhaled and turned around. “Fuck you.” My head shook, and I pointed to the girl. “You deserve that, not her.”
He put his phone to his ear. “Fuck you, too, brother. You know, I was hoping we could bond tonight. You know, settle our differences after you snitched on me about the accident.” He said that like he’d done this on purpose.
I looked at the girl on the couch, who couldn’t be more than twenty years old.
Would he really kill someone just to fuck with me?
Brad spoke again to someone on his phone. “Situation in my room, and we might need the whole crew.”
Brad put the phone in his pocket and went to the glass coffee table where he picked up the hundred-dollar bills and shoved them into his pocket.
“You sure you don’t want to leave, big brother? You know you want to.”
I wanted to use him as a punching bag, but I knew he wouldn’t feel a damn thing while he was under coke, and fuck if it didn’t piss me off more.
My brain started to connect some of the obvious dots. Brad wanted me to be here for this, which didn’t make any sense. Ever since my father had realized I wasn’t like the rest of them, I had been kept in the dark when it came to things of this nature. This couldn’t just be about me parking the dented car in front of our dad’s house. He was taunting me with this. He wanted me to react. If I did, Dad would keep me at the house. And if Brad wanted me gone, it meant he knew something. He had to. I decided to stay because, although I had a choice, staying meant I would get to see Paige soon. Staying meant I wouldn’t get punished or have any of his men following me around like a puppy to make sure I didn’t go to the cops.
I went back over to the girl and tried again for a pulse. Hoping whatever was happening was temporary and she’d come back. It’d been four years since the last time I was involved like this. Ten years since...
No fucking way. I couldn’t go back there.