by Lila Fox
“Jesus fucking Christ, Rosie.” Dex spat out, his breathing going shallow. “You’re gonna make me crash this fucking car.”
I chuckled before laying a wet kiss to the top of his dick, dipping my tongue into the little slit there and tasting his precum on my tongue. The taste was salty and heady but not at all unpleasant. Craving more, I took him into my mouth, wetly swirling my tongue around the head. Letting my spit ease the way, I worked my hand up and down his hot shaft.
Dex’s large hand moved off the steering wheel to rest on the back of my neck. “That’s right, sweetheart, get it wet.”
My pussy thrummed between my thighs at his encouragement. I paid no attention to my uncomfortable position or the prospect of ruining my new dress as I sloppily worked his cock with my mouth. Switching between working the shaft with my lips and tongue and coaxing more of his hot come out him.
The man beneath me let out a steady stream of groans and pants, completely unafraid to let me know just how much I was pleasing him. “Are you going to let me fuck that pretty mouth, Rosie?”
Again I said nothing, choosing instead to rest my hands on his thighs for leverage and envelope as much as his cock in my wet mouth as I could, prompting him to fuck his hips up into my mouth. His thrusts were shallow, so as not to cause me any discomfort but just enough that he could easily chase his pleasure between my lips.
“I’m about to come, baby.” He fucked into my mouth at a faster pace, encouraging me to continue sucking at him without abandon. What I lacked in practical experience I more than made up for with enthusiasm. The way Dex’s strong thighs were clenching under me and the slight revving of the car every time I worked my tongue along the vein on the underside of his shaft more than indicated that.
Dex gave me fair warning of his orgasm before I tightened my spit-slick, swollen lips around the pulsing head of his cock, letting his long spurts of come squirt into me with no resistance. Feeling especially proud of myself for not spilling any.
Leaning up I looked into Dex’s eyes, his dark pupils slightly blown and his eyes a little wild. “That mouth of yours is going to send me to an early grave, Rosie.”
The morning after the exhibit, Dex and I decided to take another day off. When I expressed my concerns about missing out on another day of work he immediately shot down my concerns. Stating that he felt so good about his most recent sale and progress on other works that he wanted to celebrate. And apparently his idea of celebrating was the two of us lying around his house half naked all day.
Not that I was complaining, of course. It felt like I had more earth-shattering orgasms that morning alone than I had experienced my entire life.
“I’m so goddamn hungry,” Dex’s deep voice sounded into my neck as he lie on top of me in his rumpled bed. The thought of food immediately causing my stomach to rumble as well. He rested his warm hand on my soft stomach. “And so are you.”
“I think I’d rather just stay here actually.” I couldn’t genuinely think of a time I had ever been so comfortable or content. “Let’s just starve.”
Dex laughed, a hearty chuckle from the back of his throat. “Nah, I need to be alive and strong for the next time you feel like attacking me.”
Pushing him off of me slightly I stood up from the bed. “Alright, I’ll go see what you have in that barren wasteland you call a kitchen.”
Halfway to the kitchen I heard the shrill ringing of my cellphone on Dex’s bedside table, without thinking I yelled out to him. “Hey will you get that, it’s probably a work call.”
Three crunchy saltine crackers and a spoonful of peanut butter later Dex joined me. I didn’t look up at him as I focused on the task at hand, spreading a thick helping of smooth nut butter onto slices of celery and slightly stale crackers.
“Who was it?”
He remained silent, causing me to look over at him questioningly. His strong jaw was clenched and his eyes angry in a way I had never seen them. At least not directed at me.
“Who the hell is Daniel and why is he calling himself your fiancé?”
15
Dex
Rosie froze, the content smile on her face immediately disappearing into a frown as I questioned her. I was desperately trying to reign in my emotions but I could feel my facade slipping. As much as I hated it, I couldn’t help but be angry at her.
She lied to me.
I let her into my home, my bed, my fucking art, only for her to conveniently leave out the fact that she had a goddamned fiancé.
I tried to calm myself, rid my mind of the rushing thoughts of betrayal. There had to be some explanation. Some perfectly reasonable reason that she had kept something like this from me. Maybe this was what she was running from.
The short conversation with the man on the other end of the phone had only lasted enough time for him to introduce himself as her fiancé. His tone, while slightly angry and anxious, definitely hadn’t indicated any extreme hostility, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been something slightly more unhinged lurking underneath. Something angry and violent enough to cause my Rosie to run away from him. To outright refuse to speak of him.
My mind was racing, filled with all kinds of awful possibilities. Had she been abused? Had he cheated on her? Had I been wrong all along, had I been ensnared by some pretty young rich girl looking for a good time away from her privileged life?
It was time for her silence to end. I was done waiting for her to open those pretty lips and tell me the truth about herself.
“So?” I tried my hardest not to raise my voice at her but my self-control was hanging on by a thread.
Rosie refused to look at me, staring instead at her white, painted toes on the kitchen tile. “So, what?”
“Who was the man on the phone?”
“It was no one.”
“Goddamn it, Rosaline!” My voice climbed higher, tone angrier and more desperate than I ever wanted it to be when directed towards her. “It’s time for you to stop lying.”
She looked up at me, those big brown eyes wide in shock and full of unshed tears. “I haven’t been lying to you, Dex!”
“The hell you haven’t. Lying by omission is still lying, Rosie.” It took everything I had to keep my distance from her. I had to stay away. The closer I got, the more I would want to touch her and I couldn’t bear to have her in my arms right now. Not when I wasn’t sure she was really the woman I thought she was.
Rosie’s jaw twitched and her little hands clenched at her sides. “I didn’t omit anything, Dex,” she spat my name out harshly, her lips curling even farther downward. “It just wasn’t your business.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “The fuck it isn’t-”
She cut me off, her face twisted into a scowl but still unable to meet me eyes. ”What was I supposed to do? Spill my life story to some guy I had just met?” She threw her arms up. “My fucking boss?”
“So what, Rosie? You thought you could lay up in my house, get fucked a few times by ‘some guy you just met,’ and run back to your fiancé?”
Rosie said nothing, her head shaking slowly back and forth.
“Then what, Rosie? What the hell is it?” I was officially fed the fuck up. “You can fuck someone you barely know but you don’t have the decency to tell him you belong to somebody else?”
“It’s complicated, Dex. But I promise,” she took a long pause. “I swear, Daniel isn’t my fiancé. He isn’t my anything.”
“He seems to think he is.”
“Well he’s a fucking idiot,” she snapped, her voice suddenly acrid with disdain.
She sounded so sure in her declaration that it gave me pause. Barely a couple minutes in and I was already growing tired with this argument. Fighting with her wasn’t going to solve a damned thing. She needed to talk to me. I needed to finally make her talk to me. No deflections, no side stepping, no more fucking bullshit.
“I want the truth, Rosie. All of it.”
16
Rosie
I didn’t know what to say
. I barely knew where to start with my explanation. There was so much garbage, so much fog, clouding my perfect little life that I could hardly sift through it all. Daniel Bennett, my father, school, everything was a mess and I only made things worse by running away.
I moved to Miami in attempt to live for myself. To forget the expectations and pressures forced on me by my family and find out who I really was. Dex had been completely unexpected. The beautiful man with all of his passion and goodness completely trampled all over my carefully laid plans. Though he had yet to say it, he showed me more love and kindness than I ever felt or expected to feel.
In all of my eagerness to explore my newfound feelings of love and security, I outright refused to acknowledge my past. Choosing to forget all of the painful things I left behind. Hoping that, with enough willpower, all of my problems would disappear, leaving me free to ride off into a perfect watercolor sunset with Dex by my side.
It was becoming clearer by the second that wouldn’t be possible. I was naïve to think my dramatic past wouldn’t catch up to me sometime. But it had, much too soon for my liking, and with a vengeance that threatened to ruin my relationship with the only man I had ever felt some semblance of love for.
I couldn’t hide it anymore. Couldn’t hide behind pretty smiles and coy deflections, Dex deserved to know everything. Every ridiculous, messy detail from my past that brought me to him in the first place.
“I…” I took a moment, pausing to get my bearings. “I don’t know where to start.”
“At the risk of sounding like an asshole, the beginning is probably as good a place as any. Why did you come to Miami?”
That one was easy. “I came to Miami because I needed a fresh start. Isn’t that why everyone moves to a new place?”
Dex chuckled humorlessly. “It’s more than that with you though. I can tell.”
“You’re right.” I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, chewing on it furiously to keep myself from crying prematurely. There would, no doubt, be tears by the end of this conversation, but it was still too soon to fall victim to my emotions. “I was… Am. I am running away from something.”
Dex suddenly looked alarmed, I reached out to touch his arm, attempting to soothe him.
“Nothing like that! I wasn’t in any physical danger, I was just profoundly unhappy.” I knew it sounded terribly dramatic and childish but there was no other way I could explain it.
He stared at me patiently, his eyes dark and expectant but somehow still the most comforting things in the world.
“My father has… All of these plans for me. For my life.” I was fumbling with my words. It was the first time I had ever outwardly discussed the topic and I wasn’t entirely sure how to fully express my thoughts. “He’s a senator.” I spat out a laugh. “Completely unremarkable, but you’d never guess it by his ego.”
Dex’s dark eyebrows furrowed, confusion taking over his handsome face. “So you ran away because your father is some asshole politician?”
I shook my head. “No, I ran away because I was tired of him dictating my life, just like he dictates everything else.” The tears were coming now and I could do nothing to stop them. “Back when he was still a big-shot lawyer, my mother was his secretary. She was beautiful and young and so full of dreams and she fell in love with a total bastard.” I choked out a bitter laugh, this was a tale that seemed as old as time. It was almost too cliché to seem real.
“Long story short, she got pregnant and he refused to acknowledge me as his own until she died when I was seven. He took one look at me on the day of her funeral, spit some garbage about how I looked so much like him and carted me off to his mansion in the hills.”
“From there it was all-girl’s boarding schools for most of the year and summers spent being carted around the south of France with Au Pairs, followed by my entrance to a well-known but not too prestigious university, and an internship at a small time law firm.” I was becoming increasingly angrier, almost unable to contain my contempt. “And of course the relationship with a well-to-do young man. All carefully planned and orchestrated by my father.”
Dex’s expression had gone from angry, to shocked, to confused in the span of a few seconds. “And you couldn’t tell him that you were unhappy?”
“He didn’t care.” My voice sounded desperate. “Christopher Reed doesn’t care about me or anyone else who dares to defy him.”
“So what about, Daniel? How did that happen?”
“I did what my father asked and met a man. Daniel is from a well-off family, one with connections and a bank account the size of a large country. We dated for a while and it didn’t work out. I broke up with him and the next thing I know, he’s kneeling down in front of me with a ring, talking about short engagements, and children, and moving to California to support my father’s reelection.”
I remembered the feeling I had when Daniel approached me that evening on my way home, the abject disgust I felt as he slipped the gaudy ring on my finger before I could get a word out. It had been the tipping point. The thought of spending my life standing at the side of Daniel Bennett, bearing his pompous little children, and forever being under my father’s thumb had me creating a half-cocked plan to move across the country and start a new life.
“I just couldn’t do it, Dex. Not anymore. So I left. I emptied my bank accounts, chose the sunniest place I could find, got my shitty little apartment and hauled ass.”
Dex stepped closer to me, softly touching me for the first time since he had confronted me about Daniel. His rough hands gripped my elbows, forcing me to uncross my arms and wrap myself around him. I breathed him in as he held me, his clean, musky scent comforting me endlessly. I was too tired to cry but somehow more at ease than I had been in a long time.
“So what now?” Dex’s voice rumbled and vibrated through me.
“What do you mean?”
“What are we going to do about this?”
I was confused. “There’s nothing to do, Dex. Now that you know everything we can just move on.”
“Rosie, sweetheart…” His voice was soft, like he was trying not to upset me. “We can’t just pick up where we left off like there’s nothing wrong here.”
“I don’t see why not. My father, Daniel, none of that matters.” I got my new start and now that Dex knew everything, I didn’t have to hide or be ashamed anymore, we were so close to everything finally being perfect.
“You can’t just expect your family to forget about you, baby.” He chuckled, his hand moving up to my smooth cheek, prompting me to look up into his gorgeous eyes. “I don’t care how much of an asshole your father is, there’s no way he’s just going to let his daughter disappear without a fight.”
He didn’t understand. Not fully anyway. Sure, my father never raised a hand against me but he never had to. His neglect, his lack of affection, his overall disdain for my presence in his perfect family was more than enough to screw me up.
Dex had an amazing family. A mother and father who loved and supported him, a beautiful unit of nuclear happiness, there was no way he could understand the messed up relationship I had with my father.
He was right about one thing, though. My father would come for me. Not due to any kind of fatherly concern or because he genuinely cared about my safety, but because he owned me. In his eyes I owed him for acknowledging me when he hadn’t had to and for giving me a life that most people coveted. The money, the education, the blessing of his family name. All of it came with a price. One that I had to pay with my obedience.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore right now.” I wasn’t sure how to make Dex understand, but things were becoming overwhelming again.
Dex sighed as I gently moved out of his arms. “Fine, but you can’t ignore this forever, Rosie. Not anymore.”
I nodded, turning back to the now room temperature celery on the counter. “Fine.”
He moved up behind me, his large hands clasping my bare hips, pressing his lips against the back of my n
eck. “You don’t have to do it alone, baby. I’m here now. There’s no way I’m going to let anyone take you away from me.”
17
Rosie
Two weeks after our fight and my subsequent gut spilling, Dex and I had barely broached the subject again. He tried countless times to prompt me into carrying on the discussion, but I always refused. Instead choosing to change the subject and push it from my mind.
Dex took my countless deflections gracefully, giving me constant reassurance that he was there to support me, telling me definitively that everything would be alright. I appreciated the sentiments but they did very little to comfort me.
I knew there would come a time when I would have to confront my past head on. When I would have to stop running and stand up to my father once and for all. There was no way I could continue on with my life, with or without Dex, in a constant state of worry. Something needed to be done, and soon. I wasn’t entirely sure what the outcome would be, whether I would fold to my father’s demands as I always had or come out stronger. Either way, it would have to wait. I wanted to hold on to my life here for as long as possible.
I wasn’t sure how long I had until the chaos bubbling under our blissful facade finally came to a head. I wasn’t sure how long I had until reality came back around to knock me on my ass. All I knew was that whatever amount of time I had left would be spent with Dex Quinn.
“I still can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” My boyfriend’s deep voice prompted me out of my thoughts as we moved around his large dining room table, setting up an arrangement of plates and utensils.
I walked around the table towards him, lightly slapping his hands away from his sloppily done setting, and moving the forks to the left side of the plate. “It’s a good idea and you know it!”
“No the hell I don’t.” Dex took a step back from the table, crossing his strong, tattooed arms across his chest as he watched me finish setting the table. “This is going to be a fucking disaster. I can feel it.”
“Well, I think they’re going to love each other.” I smiled up at him cheekily. “First sight, head over heels. All that shit. I’m counting on it.”