Broken Crown

by Susan Ward

  Fucking incredible torture.

  Like the night we first went to bed together. My sexual frustration and long-denied body wanted to fuck her into oblivion. Hell, I’d just gone six months trapped in rehab then Jackson Parker’s house without a woman, but I was held back by her nervousness and sweetness and innocence.

  Good thing that I was. That night was a fucking shocker in more ways than one. Who would have thought Jack’s daughter would have been a virgin at eighteen? I sure as hell didn’t—I laugh—definitely a first for the both of us. All my romantic nonsense about wanting to make love to her was just what I thought I had to say to get her into bed quickly so I could do what I wanted with her. And there was quite a bit I wanted to do to her, even though she’d been pretty much a pain in the ass since I’d met her.

  Why she had been such a frustrating girl, mixed messages and confusing as hell to pursue, I didn’t get until I found myself punching through her untried cunt and then face-to-face with her tears. I never expected that one. What the hell was a virgin doing giving it up to an asshole like me? Not just any virgin, a beautiful rich girl from California who could have any guy she wanted, but for some reason had settled on a bloke like me.

  That’s when the softness of her seeped through my pores. Her beauty. Her fragility. Her sadness—oh yes, even her sadness is an intoxicating thing—and the eagerness in her body that she didn’t know what to do with. Her walls dripping and tight around my cock propelled me to something beyond aroused, only to be quickly followed by the flashing realization that I would be her first experience with sex and if I fucked it up, I would fuck her up forever. And Chrissie was already a pretty fucked-up girl before I entered her life. I didn’t need to screw her up in more ways, not with that perfect body of hers already covered with self-mutilating burns. Her version of pleasure; pain.

  What happened next changed me forever. An act of love done in love—it’s like a drug you can’t kick—only she didn’t love me then, not that first night. I was the one already in love with her. Hers from the first moment I saw her. Hers, but she didn’t know that then, and I’m not completely sure she knows that now.

  Fourteen years have proven to me that I am and always will be Chrissie’s. I still loved her after she left me in New York in ’89. I still loved her after she cheated on me in ’93. I loved her while she was married to Neil. I love her today after years of her not committing to me. Whatever Chrissie does, I love her.

  Moronic.

  Asinine.

  Romantic drivel.

  But it is the fucking truth. There is such a thing as a woman grabbing on to your balls and not letting you go, but for it to last she has to take your heart first so you’ll want it. Chrissie, who understood men not at all when we first met, did this brilliantly. She took possession of my heart during a walk on the beach. My balls she took a week later that first night we went to bed together. And she’s held on to them both ever since.

  I walk down the hallway. Kaley’s door is open. I glance in. Bed empty. Ah, my luck is improving. A kid-less house for a change. Oh no, I hope she’s not sleeping with Chrissie. That would be a great fucking end to this wretched day. Then I remind myself that the girl just lost her father. What a selfish prick I am at times.

  Whatever happens here tonight is not going to be about me, my wants, or even how fucking scared I’ve been since talking to Dr. Blackman. Whatever Chrissie needs has to come first, that’s part of the cost of loving Chrissie, even though I’ve got my own shit going on.

  My bedroom door is ajar. I try to marshal my thoughts into obedience. I’ve been thinking too much lately. Uncharacteristically introspective. Not good. Is this what happens when someone shoves the possibility of dying into your face? You become sentimental, reflective and weak?

  I stare in at her. Chrissie is lying on her side in the center of the bed, her beautiful face lit by moonlight, her long, blond hair streaming across the pillow. She looks like an angel—an angel with a body built for sin. Everything a man could want.

  I step into the room, set my drink on a table and start to undress. I debate whether I should wake her or just climb into bed and make love to her before she can speak. Get one good fuck in before the shit starts—me telling her about my illness and her telling me about Neil.

  It’s been two months since we’ve fucked. My balls feel like they are about to explode. I slip into bed and ease into her until my body is flush against her full length, my cock pressed into the supple flesh of a butt cheek. I inhale, feeling the thrill of her shoot across my already blistering nerves. I run my palm down the smooth flesh of her hip.

  I move my hips into her and her sweet little butt pushes back into me automatically, but she doesn’t wake. God, she has a beautiful ass, even if she doesn’t ever let me fuck her there. It’s small and round and firm and torture.

  Massaging her with my lower body, I kiss her hair. Her scent fills my nostrils, reminding me of why I was in such a hurry to get here.

  My hands skim over her torso and her belly toward my favorite part of her body. I begin to lightly tease her with my fingers between her legs. Gentle, slow, over and over again, as my kisses cover her body, enough to get her wet and hot, but not fully awake…on no, not fully, not until I’m in her. My hips thrust forward, pushing my pulsing flesh deep into her before I can stop myself. I freeze, my body shuddering from being held tightly inside Chrissie.

  I fight not to move. A couple of pumps in her and it’s going to be over. Oh shit, I’m that fucking hard and we haven’t even started this. The surface of my body is twitching and burning.

  “I’ve missed you, baby.” I run my teeth along her earlobe. “Show me you’ve missed me, too.”

  My hand moves upward to her perfect breasts as I hold myself still, in agony. Fucking dick-ripping agony. I run the calluses of my fingertips over her nipples.

  “Oh God.” She whimpers and is trembling in want and dripping wet. I knead and tease the fullness of her breasts, gliding my lips on her neck. She groans, pushing back against my pelvis and my body responds, meeting the urgings of her repeated, anxious moves.

  She starts to pant and her hips move in time with my rhythm, and what I planned to do just died a fast death.

  “I love you, Chrissie,” I tell her as I sink myself into her over and over again.

  I increase the pace. The surfaces of our bodies are covered with sweat, we are both quivering and straining into each other.

  “I want it harder, Alan.”

  She’s desperate. She is on fire. She needs me, misses me as much as I miss her when we’re apart. Knowing that is a good thing, feeling it is a fucking hot, out of my mind, flesh-searing thing.

  I pull out, leaving just the head of my cock in her. Her limbs start trembling and I know she’s on the edge. I slam into her, balls deep, and she shudders around me and screams my name.

  It’s my undoing. I plunge into her over and over again, my cum shooting from me in a torrent, my body unrelenting in its need to pound in her, until I’m drained and collapsed against her back.

  I don’t pull out of her. I want to stay buried inside her as long as I can and she’s curled in a ball, ass into me, hugging her pillow. She’s exhausted, too. Her eyes are closed. I bury my face in the curve of her neck and shoulder. I’m still hard enough to keep this going, to do it the way I should have, slow and tender and consuming.

  I kiss her shoulder, nipping lightly before I ease back and lift up on an arm. I slowly turn her onto her back, and my mouth drops to her pelvis. My hands lightly move up the tops of her thighs. I kiss her mound, then breathe deeply the scent of her. I run my tongue around her clit, close but not touching that spot that ignites her. I let out a breath. Her body shimmies.

  Her fingers snake in my hair, clenching my waves, and she abruptly lifts my face from her. Those enormous blue orbs flash at me.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” she whispers raggedly. “You don’t know what it’s like for me when you’re on the road. It’s
awful when you’re gone. It’s like I can’t breathe or think, like someone has hit a pause button on me until you’re back again. But it is worse when I can’t reach you. I go crazy when I can’t reach you.”

  Oh fuck. Her eyes are wide open, alertly studying me and filled with hurt. Hurt, so much worse than angry Chrissie. Hurt Chrissie always makes me feel like a shit, even though I don’t have anything to feel like a shit over.

  My temper flashes, but the way she’s staring at me makes the list tick off in my head: Except that I am gone too much…and she does deserve more…and I do play that trust card to the limit at times, like I did not calling her back for days…but I’ve got shit in my life, too…and I hate leaving her…and she won’t travel with me…fuck, she won’t even marry me…

  I bank my thoughts and anger quickly. I can run that list through my head forever—she will always be the winner and I will always be the one not good enough for her.

  I inch back up her body and turn onto my back, taking her with me and settling her on my chest. I hold her tightly against me—it feels so fucking good to hold her—and I don’t want to release her. And I don’t want to talk. I just want to fucking hold her.

  I want a few days with Chrissie with everything normal, without my problems in the room every minute. I want to hold her, fuck her, and feel normal until reality won’t let me.

  She pushes back against my arms and lifts her chin. “You promised never to lie to me, Alan. I called Len. Why didn’t he know where you were? Why didn’t you call me back? Were you with someone else? Just tell me quickly now and get it over with. But don’t lie to me.”

  I lift my lids. She’s staring down at me.

  “How the fuck could you ask me that?”

  Her gaze clouds over. She pulls away from me completely and sits on her heals beside me.

  “Were you with a woman?” she repeats, each word clipped and scalpel sharp.

  “Fuck you, Chrissie.”

  Her body jerks and I regret that outburst. But, fuck, I’m angry. I shouldn’t be. It’s what I’d think if she disappeared and was unreachable by phone, but she should know me better.

  I move my hand toward her but she avoids it.

  I relent. “It’s not what you’re thinking, and I wouldn’t lie to you, not ever. You know that, Chrissie.”

  Her lower lip quivers. She’s battling tears. “Then tell me where you were.”

  I study her face as she struggles to maintain her composure. Her gaze is burning into me unwaveringly. Those giant blue eyes are like truth serum.

  Fuck. I run my hand through my hair in aggravation. “I was in the fucking hospital.”

  Her body goes rigid. “What do you mean in the hospital?”

  Shit, now she’s worried and afraid and I can tell that my explanation has collided with the recent events of Neil and is stirring her into full panic.

  “It was nothing,” I say quickly, the lie falling from my lips with appalling ease. “It’s been a long tour. Road exhaustion and a touch of lurgy. Just the standard shit, Chrissie. Exhaustion. Too much booze. Dehydration. I just got worn down until I was ill. They released me from the hospital. I wouldn’t be home if it had been something serious. Can you please stop worrying, love?”

  Her eyes rapidly search my face. “Are you telling me the truth? I can’t take one more shock, Alan. You have no idea what’s been running through my head since I heard you walked out before the London concert—”

  I cut her off by pulling her back into my arms. “I didn’t know about Neil until the pressroom that night. All I wanted was to get home to you. I didn’t think. I was wrong not to call. I just wanted to get home to you, Chrissie.”

  Her breasts move against my chest from her rapid breathing. I’m not sure which way this is going to go. More questions or…

  She wraps her arms and legs around me. Her mouth takes mine in a wide open, deep tongue kiss. My insides jump and my cock hardens to its full length. Her hips lift. She gloves me with a hard downward descent on my erection, and she is riding me hard, touching and kissing me into full boil.

  I thrust upward into her. I take a nipple in my mouth, sucking it until she shivers. I finger that sensitive spot above her hole. She moves faster, more urgent, her shudders more violent with each stroke of her cunt around me.

  I moan and surrender to her and I know—this is going to be a hard fuck homecoming.

  * * *

  2013

  Shit, how long have I been sitting here silently lost in my thoughts? I can feel Miles Abernathy studying my face.

  I close my eyes, stopping the memory, but not before I remind myself that it wasn’t a hard fuck homecoming after all. It was the homecoming of mistakes. Going to the hospital in Stanford instead of Neil’s funeral. Not telling Chrissie the complete truth about my illness. Letting her be disappointed in me yet again. The fight we had three days after Neil was buried. What she said to me before she walked out that last time: “I’m tired of living my life alone, Alan. Five years we’ve lived together, I see you only a handful of days a year, and I don’t even have a ring. I asked for one fucking thing from you. To be with me at Neil’s funeral. But no, you made me go without out. It’s never going to change. You’re never going to change. And you are never going to really love me.”

  That’s the part that fucked me up, and filled me with anger and misplaced pride. The you are never going to really love me part of her tirade. Stupid now. I regret it. But it kept me silent as I watched her walk out the door.

  I down my scotch. But, fuck, I didn’t think she’d leave for good and I never expected three months later she’d marry Jesse.

  Chapter 4

  “Do you want to talk about the cancer?” Miles asks.

  I tense. How does that prick know what I am thinking about? I stomp out my cigarette. “No. I didn’t talk about it then. I don’t want to talk about it now. It’s gone. Cured. Irrelevant.”

  I feel the bite of my words. Irrelevant? It was the catalyst for me losing Chrissie. A worse legacy than the legacy it left in my body. But I’m not going to try to explain that to Miles for some trivial biography. Cancer cost me Chrissie, that’s what my illness means to me, and I didn’t even tell her I had it. She learned about it a year after the diagnosis by reading it in the press. But by then, it was too late. She was married to Jesse and they had their daughter, Krystal.

  Fuck, is this why she left me? She wanted more kids? Why didn’t I compromise on that? She was thirty-two and hearing that clock tick. It was the only thing she ever wanted. She told me that. Why didn’t I listen?

  I should have had a baby with her. Maybe Chrissie would have stayed. Why did I say no when she suggested it? And shit, not just ‘no’. Consummate ass that I am at times, I said “fuck, that’s all I need.” I’m not even clear on why I said that.

  “There is a notation here,” Miles Abernathy remarks, lifting up one of those small spiral notepads Jesse used to like to use, a habit he kept from his days as a reporter. “2006, but it doesn’t correspond to any of the research in the file. Do you know why this date is significant?”

  Oh fuck. The blood stills in my veins and my stomach turns. 2006. Jesse couldn’t have known about that. Chrissie would never confess that to him. How would Jesse know?

  My thoughts drift again, this time to that lone fuck during Chrissie’s marriage to Jesse that gave me hope that someday there would be us again…

  * * *

  2006

  Oh fuck, when is this party going to be over with? I’m tired of people smiling and getting overly emotional when they talk to me. Such a farce. Not a single person here would give a fuck if the cancer had killed me; hell, there is only a handful in the world who would give a fuck if I died, and probably only because the money stopped.

  I toss down my drink, and feel Shyla staring at me in her critical way. Yes, I’m getting drunk today, love. You wanted this trite party and I’m here. Don’t expect me to do it sober.

  I settle back into th
e cushions of the sofa and stare. The apartment is packed with people. Most of them I don’t know. Shyla’s friends. I can only spot a few from my circle of intimates: band, manager, and industry people. I wish Chrissie had come. To see her would make this almost tolerable to endure.

  Shyla’s arm wraps around mine tightly. I smile at her. Why did I ask Shyla to marry me? Crap, I know why. Chrissie is never coming back, she’s married to Jesse in a repulsively happy way, and I’m tired of being alone.

  I grab another drink off a passing tray. It’s time to get out of here. Chrissie is not going to show. It was moronic to think she would after Shyla told me she had invited her. But no, this is not Chrissie’s kind of crowd: the beautiful, the corrupt, the famous, the amoral; and those who indulge heavy synthetic and sexual recreation. Chrissie hates this kind of thing.

  “Are you all right?”

  I shift my gaze back to Shyla. “I’m fine, love. Why do you ask?”

  She leans in to me and places a full-mouth, overly sexual kiss on my lips. The girl can kiss, I’ll give her that, but when she pulls back she has that insincere worried crinkle in her brow.

  “I just want to make sure that this isn’t too much for you. You’re not tired, are you?”

  I clench my jaw so I won’t tell her to fuck off since we’re surrounded by people, but this worried-for-me shit is getting old. No, love, I’m in full remission. I could fuck you all night if I wanted to—which I don’t—and another two women afterward and still not be tired. No need to fret. I’m going to be here long enough for you to get some fucking money in the divorce after you leave me.

  “Why don’t you go mingle, love? Have fun. You don’t have to sit here with me every minute.”

  Her brows lift. “But I want to.”

  I feel Len’s heavy stare, the kind he fixes on me when he wants to take me aside and have the don’t marry Shyla conversation. I gesture for one of the serving staff and hand her my empty glass. “Get me a tall scotch, neat, please.” When I turn back around, I look at Len. “Do you want to get out of here and find some real amusement?”