by Snow, Nicole
Will she ever care about me that way?
Maybe it’s that question that makes me say more.
That makes me force the words up, because I want her to know me right here, right now.
Everything I am, everything I’ve been, everything I love and hate about myself.
So I know if I’ve even got a chance when she might find me too repulsive to ever touch again, after she knows who I really am.
“It fucked me up for a while,” I whisper. “I started drinking right out of the Army, taking on some odd jobs, screwing and boozing my woes away. Then I landed a gig with Deep Horizon. You heard of them?”
She sucks in a soft breath, her eyes a wide, pale blue. “Yeah. God. They’re all over the news. Private contractors. Mercenaries with no morals. Some people say they should be tried as war criminals for what they’ve done overseas, while everybody else says they’re war heroes for doing what soldiers wouldn’t.” Her eyes widen. She stares at me. “Gabe, you...?”
I wince. Every word she's saying about that demon outfit is true.
I can’t quite read anything on her face other than shock, and I have to look away.
“Yeah. I worked for 'em. Not much overseas, but their domestic arm...they hired me out on a lot of private jobs, and I didn’t ask questions. They paid me, and I made people disappear. Usually wasn’t my hand on the trigger. It was just my job to deliver people where they were supposed to go. Long as I didn’t know what happened to them, it wasn’t on my conscience.”
Except it was.
This black, horrible stain, sinking deeper and deeper until I can’t ever be clean again.
But Skylar’s not pulling away from me. I don’t understand why, but she’s still warm against me, her hand falling to rest on my chest and curl in my shirt.
“I don’t think you really believe that,” she whispers. “I've heard how good they pay. You'd have never quit if it didn't cut deep.”
“No...no, I don’t,” I answer bitterly. “That’s why I got out. That, and Landon. He knew me then, saw my whole downfall, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy for him to believe I’d go back to those old ways. Even if I couldn’t, not after what happened. Because I started wondering. I started digging. And I turned up an obituary for a kind little old man I’d convinced myself had to be some kind of crook, or they wouldn’t have sent me after him. Maybe he was into some dark shit, money laundering or something, yeah, but there's no justice in him disappearing off the face of the Earth without a proper trial.” My vision blurs red, horror rattling around my head. “He had six grandkids. They all came to his funeral.”
“You didn’t kill him, Gabe.”
“But I’m probably the fuck who gave him to the people who did!” I flare, then force myself to take a deep, wet-tasting breath and shake my head. “I couldn’t do it anymore, Sky. I can’t do it no more. I can’t be that person.”
“Your face, when you took me to Harmon...I get it now,” she says softly. “That’s why you were like that. You were almost back in that place again.”
It catches me off guard, realizing she’d noticed. That she’d been paying that much attention while being face to face with Harmon twisted her up in her own demons.
“Maybe,” I admit reluctantly. “Something like that.”
“You were willing to do that for me? Go there again?”
“For you and for Joannie,” I say, smiling bitterly. I feel so completely torn open right now, but fuck. She’s not rejecting me. “Better reason than any damn paycheck.”
She just looks at me for long, searching moments. Moments that make me feel naked and vulnerable, before her lashes lower as she rests her head back on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Don’t be. Don’t you ever apologize for what I chose to do.” My fingers clench against the book still clutched in my hand. “I ain't stupid. Already knew from the day I first put your name in my book that I was gonna do whatever I could to help you.”
She blinks, tilting her head back to look up at me again. “I’m in there?”
My face burns a little. Like I'd been outside under the summer sun too long. I duck my head. “Well, yeah. Told you, I write down the things I want to remember. And I wanted to get down a few real important things tonight about the girl I've been writing about for weeks.”
She arches a brow. A touch of amusement breaks through the gloom of my goddamned maudlin bullshit, like the sunbeam I know she is. “Weeks, huh? What the hell have you been saying about me?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Yes.” She says so eagerly it's almost comical, trying to hide how bad she wants it. Then she reaches for the book, but I snatch it out of her way.
“Nope,” I say. “Don’t you know you don’t read little boys' diaries without permission?” Grinning, I flip to the first page where I’d penned down the first day I saw her. “I’ll read it to you.”
She pouts, but flumps against me again, all those sleek curves molding just right against my body. “Fine. Read me a story, then.”
I laugh, grateful for the distraction, and start to recite my own words back. “I started this job today. Protection gig. Thought it was gonna be easy, but there’s nothing easy about Skylar Sunbeam Szabo. She’s what they mean when they say dynamite comes in small packages. She’s a hundred pounds soaking wet, if that, and every goddamn pound of that is beautiful and wild. She’s got eyes like blue diamonds, with edges sharp enough to cut. She's got a fire behind them to make me think the pain might be worth it. But when they catch the sun just right, the ice is gone. They’re warm. Warm as sunbeams. She’s a walking, defiant sunbeam, and I think, deep down inside, this week’s gonna be all kinds of interesting.”
I look up and see a Sky I've never seen. The girl’s gone fire engine red, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t tickle the hell out of me.
She growls, burrowing her face into my bicep.
“Ugh. I’m not any of those things except maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet.”
“You asked, darlin', and that’s how I see you,” I say, draping an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to kiss her hair.
She doesn’t pull away, and some of the tension in me unravels.
Whatever this is with us, I haven’t ruined it.
Maybe she does understand me, after all. The same way I wanna understand her.
We sit like that for some time, comfortably nestled together. The windows are cracked open, and the whole room smells like the sea and Skylar.
I recognize that scent now. That scent from home.
She smells like honeysuckles.
Like summer when the honeysuckles are just these full open fronts, delicate and spraying everywhere, dripping their heavy sweet nectar into the air, permeating every breath.
After a while, though, she shifts against me, her eyes slipping open pensively. “Hey, Gabe?”
I pull from my quiet trance and look down at her. “Yeah?”
She bites her ripe, luscious lower lip, then says, “It’s okay.”
It comes out halting, straggling, like somebody’s choking the words out of her, but I’m patient and I wait her out while she continues slowly, “I know what it’s like. It’s...it’s not just you with the bad stuff behind you.”
She's quiet for a long moment. I tighten my grip, tilt her little chin with my hand, and stare into her eyes. “Something you wanna tell me, darlin'?”
“My parents...they died when I was young because my Dad got caught up in too many bad things with some cronies who did the Grizzlies MC wrong. The club was into a lot of bad stuff then, before it got cleaned up years ago. It left me feeling cheated. Pissed off. Full of so much hate for so long. But I guess I grew up, finally. Learned to channel it into learning to be strong enough to protect my grandmother and Monika. But that hate never went away, and when I went into the military...” Her body tightens against me, almost vibrating with tension. “I met a lot of good people there. Learned discipl
ine. But I also learned how to use that hate. How to channel it to kill. That’s...that’s not something that ever leaves you. It changes you. It can fuck you up in a lot of ways.”
Sky finally looks at me then, and I see a crack past the icy layer of those eyes, a crack that seems to lead all the way down to her heart, opening up to let me see.
“It’s okay if it fucked you up,” she whispers. “It fucked me up, too. What matters is finding a way to break free.”
It’s weird to hear myself reflected in the pain in her voice, the bitterness, the brokenness, that lost question of what am I, now? What am I, after the things I’ve done? After the things that made me something I never wanted to be?
Weird, but comforting in a way I never knew I needed till it was mine.
Even if that’s only temporary, when we haven’t said a thing about what we’ve done or where we stand or what this even means after tonight.
I take her hand and lift it to my lips. “You think we’re free of it now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe in this moment, yes. Forever? I really don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I don’t like to think about it.”
I turn her hand, exposing the underside of her wrist, and press my lips to her pulse. “Then let’s not think about it, darlin'. Let's keep our minds on the here and now.”
“Yeah?” she says, a note of hope in her voice, and I smile.
“Hell yeah.”
And then there’s no need for words at all as she stands, and drawing me by the little pixie hand I've captured, leads me into the bedroom with our clothes falling by the wayside with every single step.
* * *
It’s strange how in just a few short nights, I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t fall asleep without my hand finding its familiar place in the naked curve of Skylar’s hip.
What started as an impulse has turned into a habit.
A pretty damned terrible one. A fucking glorious habit, too.
I feel like I almost live here now, when I’ve only left to get a few changes of clothes from my AirBnB spot and she’s only left to go to work. Every evening, we spend hours poring over Chinese takeout and all her notes, digging for anything we can to get a lead on Joannie, putting our brains together. We’re smarter together than we are apart, working up a killer game plan with a few promising leads.
Then the late nights come, where it’s just me and her and sweet skin, where she tastes like honey-sweat and moans my name like a dream.
I never met a woman who can take me the way she does. I gotta be careful, most of the time. Don’t want to hurt nobody. I grew up big. Every woman who ever spread her legs for me never knew whether to fall down and thank her lucky stars I'm so well endowed, or to run for the hills.
But little Sky begs for it.
She wants me rough and wild. She takes all of me, every seething inch, and asks for more till I’m so goddamn addicted to her it’s scary. It’s like that fuzzy moment when the alcohol hits my veins and I know I could turn into my Dad too easy, unable to survive without the bottle.
Would it be so bad, though, if I couldn’t survive without her?
I feel like I’m gonna die right now, if I can’t have more of her.
She’s hot underneath me, arching, her breasts flush against my chest, and I’m fucking her as hard and raw as I can.
Because there’s this sound she makes when my cock hits home, when I slam into her just right, and I need to hear it again and again. I need to find the spot inside her that makes her let go. The uncertainty, the pain, every dark thing in this world. It's the place where she gives up and becomes mine, and only mine. Mine in every sheet-clenching, soft cursing, heart-pounding detail.
She’s wet and tight around me, so fucking slick, dripping for me everywhere and making more of those fine scratch lines down my back again. I feel like a beast when I hold her down and take pleasure in making her scream when I angle her hips up so that every time I hit deeper, deeper, harder, drowning myself in her heat.
“Wider, darlin',” I whisper, reaching between her legs as she complies. “Open the hell up so I can frig that clit when I come.”
“Gabe!”
She's already on the edge. If I weren't about to go over it, too, I'd be grinning like a fool.
Instead, it takes all my energy to sink my thumb against her swollen nub. I frig like mad, while her hot little pussy pinches me for all its worth, growling the whole time. Her knees buckle together, the sheer force of the orgasm fury I'm fucking into her bending them together, but I pull them apart again.
Then I use that space to drive us both home.
“Sky, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Fuck yes.
I break down into a jabber of rude words and ruder sensations, ripping through me like a firestorm.
I slam her body into the mattress, still frigging between her legs, coming my goddamn brains out and taking hers with me.
I come like I've found the one sweet thing I've been missing all my lonesome life.
I come like a man, a beast, a demon possessed.
I come like the addict I am, lost in everything big and bold and beautiful about Sky, packed into her tight, sweet body, mind, and soul.
I'm so gone I don't even care.
Because I can’t get enough of her face in the afterglow, after I've left her exhausted, still leaking my seed on the sheets. I love how she glistens with sweat in the early morning light, her hair a damp spilling tangle of wisps clinging to her cheeks, her eyes almost fully closed except for the faintest slip of those gleaming blue slits locked on me.
Because I take her again in record time, pushing into her, getting her little gasp of surrender I love more than life itself.
She’s clutching at me, her head tossed back, her kiss-reddened lips parted and still gasping for mercy, her back arched and thrusting her breasts into my kneading palms till her nipples are hard against my fingertips.
“Gabe, Gabe, Gabe!” My name is a mantra on her lips. A whimper, a prayer, a plea, urging me to drive into her like mad.
I do. Fuck, do I ever.
I'm shaking every bone in her body when her pussy tenses around me, and she goes off again, pure dynamite.
And I feel it coming when she goes tight in her belly and locks around me.
Then, suddenly, I’m being crushed and I can’t move, this heat squeezing me tight like she’s demanding my all.
And I can’t resist. Every boiling drop in my balls belongs to this woman.
I'm roaring when my second orgasm of the day pours out of me.
I lose sight of her in the clouds over my vision as I collapse into an explosion, crumbling down everything inside me. Pleasure pulls from me in sharp jerks that seem like they reach down in that hard hot place just below my cock and behind my balls, drawing everything out from inside me in harsh bursts that leave me panting, spent, wrecked in all the best ways.
“Sky,” I whisper, collapsing on top of her, boneless as a jellyfish. I don’t want to move.
I don't want to breathe. Don't want to do anything that'd take me away from this, away from her, away from the serenity we find fucking like wild animals, and so much more.
So, why the hell's the phone ringing now?
Skylar groans and pushes at me. “That’s mine. Let me up.”
“I don’t wanna.” I grumble and mock-bite at her shoulder. “It’s Saturday. Can’t we just damn well stay in bed?”
She sucks in a breath, one that makes her body clutch in a way that aches around my sore, spent cock. “Oh, crap. Saturday.” She tips her head back, glancing toward the nightstand, then strains one arm out to catch her phone just as the screen goes dark. Not before I catch a glimpse of Ms. Monika’s name and a little thumbnail photo. “Jesus.”
Aw, shit. She actually sounds upset, and I’m quick to move, gently separating us and letting her up before sprawling out next to her. “Sky? What’s wrong?”
“I completely forgot.”
She’s up quick as a
n arrow, though she’s tottering, wobbling – walking a little bowlegged, as we like to say down South. Like she’s gonna have to ride sidesaddle for a while, and even though I’m worried, I’m a little smug, too. She’s a wobbly girl, but she’s my wobbly, gorgeous girl.
Mine forever, I hope.
My wobbly, beautiful woman darts for her closet, shamelessly naked but dragging down clean clothes. “I promised Grandma and Monika I’d check in today. I do every weekend, and I’m late. With all the crazy stuff these past few months, they’re probably scared as hell that I didn’t show.”
I push myself up, leaning on one arm. “Then call her back and let her know we’re on the way before she sends the cavalry.”
She pauses, giving me a strange look. “We?”
I grin. “If I don’t come, they’re gonna ask you where I am, and then they’re gonna try to interrogate you with all that relationship talk stuff you don't like. If I’m there, they at least won’t do it in front of me.”
“You hope,” she says, and then groans. “Have I mentioned I hate that you have them so figured out?”
“That’s what family’s like. Pain in the ass, but you love 'em.” Laughing, I push to my feet. “So, c'mon, Sunbeam. I’ll come along for a buffer. You just tell me one thing...” I rake my gaze over her, especially that tight, pert little ass. “We showering alone or together?”
She flushes, but there’s a hot light in her eyes. “If we shower together, we’re not getting out of here for hours.”
“Nah. I'll be a good boy. It’s more efficient.” With a smirk, I step back toward the bathroom door. “Tell you what. I’ll be in the shower, and if you happen to join me...”
“Oh, you ass,” she says, laughing and tossing her clothes aside.
Then she practically tackles me into the bathroom.
She tastes even better wet, rainwater that I lick off her skin with her legs spread in front of me and my mouth on her clit and my tongue delving inside her. We fuck slow and smooth up against the shower wall, water glazing us together in a hot, steaming layer.
We’re a few minutes late getting out the door.