by Selena Scott
Tre wrote the words into her skin a hundred times, calling himself a fool every minute of it. Because of course he wanted to keep her. There wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t want to keep Caroline. But the point wasn’t what Tre wanted. The point was what he was capable of. And he knew, without a doubt, that he was not capable of loving Caroline the way she deserved. He couldn’t give her that.
He didn’t want to think about that right now. What he wanted was to think about all the things he could give her. All the ways he could make her happy. Give her pleasure.
It was with that in mind that Caroline felt Tre’s hand work its way south over her back. This time, he didn’t return to her shoulder blades. He smoothed a hand over her ass, his thumb pressing lightly into her crease.
When Tre’s hand made its way all the way down, slipping lightly through her wetness, she went completely tight and he went completely lax. He groaned, just like he had when she’d been going down on him. She was beginning to love that noise of his. His forehead planted itself between her shoulder blades and his free hand gripped her at the place where her shoulder met her neck.
“I want inside you,” he said against her skin.
In answer, Caroline tipped her ass up toward him, making one of his fingers slip slightly into her. She gasped and Tre took the invitation for what it was. His middle finger worked into her wetness while his index finger sought out her clit. He was so gentle, so teasing with her pussy but he gave her even more of his weight at her back and his hand at her shoulder clamped down hard.
Caroline was in heaven. She felt as if he was belting her in, readying her for a roller coaster of some sort. As if he was strapping her to a rocket ship. She wanted more weight, more restraint. She didn’t want to think about anything but that finger of his that was painting circles around her clit.
So she didn’t. She utterly lost herself. Her hips worked, her breath huffed, her skin slicked over with sweat. Caroline’s feet tangled in the sheets until Tre tossed a heavy leg over the backs of her knees and pinned her there as well. His chest expanded and contracted against her fast and faster as he worked her. She was so wet, so perfect, so hot against his hand.
He changed his grip at her shoulder so that his forearm was across her shoulder blades, his hand grabbing her ribs on the opposite side. Her hands reached up and gripped the bars of the headboard until her knuckles were white as her pussy started to contract around his fingers. Her head was tossed back as she tightened and Tre tasted the skin along the divot of her spine. He jammed his cock against her hip as she writhed and took his weight and rose for him.
She tried to push up to her knees but he held her down and twisted his hand inside her, finding her G spot and petting it like crazy.
“Tre!” she whispered desperately, the white sheet clenched between her even-whiter teeth. He lifted his head to see her gorgeous brown eyes fling open and dilate violently. She was unseeing, unmoving, frozen, tight and clasping so hard around his fingers that he thought she might pass out.
When she collapsed back against the bed, Tre pulled his hand out of hers and shifted over her. He planted an elbow on either side of her ribs and slid his hard cock against her ass.
Her breath was choppy and emotional and joyous as it tore its way out of her. She lifted her hips up against him, inviting him in.
“Love,” he groaned against her neck, licking at the salty layer of sweat there. “I don’t have any condoms.”
“Mine are in my room,” she murmured back. “Are you clean? I know you would never put me in danger.”
“Never,” he said immediately. “I’m clean.” He paused. “I’ve never done that before, though. Had sex without a condom.”
She turned her head to the side so he could see her expression. “Me neither,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I ever really trusted Peter. Even at the beginning. Definitely not at the end.”
Tre shifted and redistributed his weight, so that his cock smashed down between them, the broadside pressing insistently against her wetness. “Are you sure?” he asked her, while teasing the hell out of both of them by pressing forward, slicking himself up.
She pushed back against him. “Completely. Please. Now.”
He tipped his hips forward and pushed forward into her wetness. Tre clamped his teeth and groaned when he sank into her an experimental inch. She pushed back and he thrust forward and sank to the hilt inside her.
“Fuck.” He dropped his head to her neck and she turned her head to kiss him. Tre pulled back and thrust and found that he couldn’t get nearly close enough to her this way. He slid a hand underneath her and gripped her waist, pulling both of them up so that she sat on his lap, facing away from him. Caroline still gripped the bars of the headboard as Tre settled his temple against hers and stared down her front, fully appreciating the view. One hand found her breasts and the other found her clit as he started to power upwards, into her. He could use both the power in his hips and the bend in his legs to thrust into her and he was taking them up off the bed.
Caroline couldn’t concentrate on any one thing. Not the rough way he tugged at her nipples, making them pay attention, or the sweet way he played with her clit, or the breath-ending way he pistoned up into her body. A man had never been so deep inside her and Caroline was lit up with it. She felt as if she were deep inside a thundercloud, getting up close and personal with lightning bolts, but never knowing when or where they were about to strike.
Her head leaned back against his shoulder and he sucked at her neck. His heat was overwhelming. His hand stopped playing with her breasts, and like he did before, he just banded her to his chest. Like he needed her tight and close. She couldn’t get enough, she’d never felt so safe in her entire life. Her hands gripped the headboard even tighter as he worked her clit so sweetly. Suddenly he stopped thrusting. He just pushed deep inside and held and let her work herself on him. He was so powerful inside her, so hot and all-consuming. His fingers never stopped on her clit and Caroline dropped one hand and joined him there. Together, both of them, worked her right into an orgasm. She went tight and hot. She wondered if her cells would ever stop vibrating. Tre stuck with her right through it until she fell forward, her hands gripping the headboard and her forehead in the crook of her elbow.
Tre’s arm went from gripping her chest to gripping her waist as he smashed her to him. He tipped them forward, so that he was on his knees behind her and one of his hands joined hers on the headboard. He supported his weight there as he pumped into her from behind. He was furious, manic, gone. He rode her wildly, feeling her perfect body continue to clench him from the inside.
Tre pulled out at the last second, and in a preternatural sort of understanding, Caroline quickly flipped over. He pumped himself twice and exploded onto her belly and breasts. She gasped and breathed and reached for him and Tre collapsed over top of her. The moment before could have been pornographic, but to Tre, it was simply beautiful. He could feel himself between them, cooling quickly and making them sticky. But his forehead was against hers, her eyes were open, point-blank into his, her fingers gripped his back. And there was nothing pornographic about it. He’d simply never been closer to another human being in his entire life.
Their lips found one another and they melted into the kiss. Their noses occasionally switching sides as he clasped her head to his.
Finally, he worried his weight might be too much for her and he rolled to the side, wincing at the sticky feeling.
She kissed him one more time and then rolled to her feet beside the bed. “Let’s shower. And then let’s do all of that again.”
CHAPTER TEN
Arturo’s eyes came open and he saw only the black of his darkened room. He was discombobulated about everything for a minute. Where he was. Why he was on the floor. Why he felt as if he’d been leveled by a tornado. And then he remembered.
“Caroline,” he groaned, shoving up to his knees, planting his fists on the carpet. He remembered his reaction, how out of
control he’d been. He was certain that he’d hurt her. How badly remained to be seen.
Every single muscle screamed and Arturo realized it was because he wasn’t breathing. He gasped for air and staggered to his doorway, sagging against the doorframe.
He jolted as a roll of laughter came from down the hall. There were people still awake. He figured he couldn’t have been knocked out for too long.
Pain rolled through him so acutely, he felt nausea grip the back of his neck like he was an errant schoolboy. He planted palms on the walls of the warping hallway and staggered to the living room where a blurry group of people sat at the table drinking and playing poker.
“Jesus!” That was Thea’s voice. The party screeched to a stop.
“Caroline,” Arturo gasped her name almost desperately. “Where is she?”
“What?” someone asked. There was a gasp and a scramble as Arturo fell to his knees in the middle of the room.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“She’s with Tre!” Jean Luc said, standing over Arturo.
“Are you sure?” Arturo gasped.
“Well,” Jack drawled, standing shoulder to shoulder with Jean Luc. “Either she’s with Tre or he’s throwing himself one hell of a one-man party.”
“Why are you asking?” Celia asked. “What’s going on?”
Arturo’s vision started to clear as some of his panic was subsiding. She definitely wouldn’t be able to be having a grand old time with Tre if she really were hurt from what had happened. He took a shaky breath. “I hurt her. By accident. I didn’t mean to.” He looked up and sought out Martine’s eyes amongst the group. They were just as he’d thought they’d be, painfully sad for him. “I got the past twisted with the present and I couldn’t control my energy. I hurt her. Pushed her away from me so that it wouldn’t go on. She fell back and I passed out. When I came to, she was gone. And I thought…”
The group was silent and Arturo blinked in surprise when someone shoved a glass of water in his hand. That same someone knelt beside him. Celia. She eyed him carefully from a point-blank distance, her eyes bouncing back and forth between the two of his. Thea slipped away from the room and came back a moment later.
“She’s tangled up with Tre and looking like she just discovered the elixir of life. She said she’d explain later.”
Celia nodded again, her eyes still fastened to Arturo. It was surprising her, what she was seeing displayed on his face, conveyed in his tone. After so much unbridled disdain for the group, she hadn’t expected to see this spot of blatant tenderness for one of its members. “We’ll talk to her and make sure her story lines up with yours.”
Arturo nodded. Naturally they wouldn’t trust his account of something like that. He expected that.
Celia spoke again, very slowly this time. “You were really scared for her, weren’t you? You were scared that you’d hurt her.”
Arturo neither confirmed nor denied. Verbally at least. He figured his dramatic entrance and the shaking of his hands was probably all the confirmation that the group really needed.
He took a drink of water, paused, and then slugged back the entire glass.
“You ever seen him do anything so… human?” Jean Luc murmured to Jack.
“You mean take that water straight to the head? Nawl. I’ve barely even seen him breathe.”
“No,” Jean Luc shook his head. “I meant his concern for Caroline. It was almost… nice.”
Jack turned to Arturo and narrowed his eyes for a second. Arturo, still on his knees on the floor, straightened up his spine and turned to glare at Jack. “Are you trying to fight?” he asked Jack.
Jack held his hands palms out. “Not trying to dig around in your head, just seeing if you’re bringing down that wall, is all.”
“You mean you can read his emotions right now?” Thea asked. As far as anyone had known before about five seconds ago, Arturo was apparently willing to endure incredible amounts of pain to keep them out of his feelings.
“Not really,” Jack answered her, as if Arturo weren’t right there. “He’s blocking me again. But I could for a minute. When he came in the room. When he was scared for Caroline.”
“You were scared for her,” Thea said suspiciously. “Sure, you try and flambé the rest of us but Caroline you’re concerned about.”
Arturo scowled. “Whatever. I have a soft spot for her.”
“Join the club,” Celia said, still kneeling beside him. She cocked her head to one side and eyed him. “You need food.”
“What?”
“Food. Ever heard of it? As far as I know, you’ve had broth and coffee for five days straight. You need a sandwich. Come on.”
Celia stood up and was just reaching down to help Arturo stand up when Jean Luc tugged her back. The group stared at Arturo’s semi-extended hand. The one he’d just been about to touch to Celia’s. He’d been about to take her hand to stand up. Like a human.
Ignoring the tense confusion rolling around the group, Arturo stood up on his own and had to admit that his legs were shaky. She was probably right about the food.
“Sit,” Martine told him, shoving him toward the table where the rest of them had been sitting.
A few minutes later, Celia shoved a plated sandwich under his nose and Jean Luc set down another glass of water and, to Arturo’s great surprise, a glass of red wine.
The group sat down at the table, some of them messing around with their cards and poker chips, all of them eyeing him in varying degrees of speculation.
“By all means,” he told them, gesturing to their game. He slowly ate his sandwich and drank his wine.
It was bizarre to the hundredth degree to be sitting in this warm, bright room, with the night closing in at every window, eating a sandwich of all things. They resumed their game of poker and basically ignored Arturo’s existence. Except for Martine, who just once, turned and looked at him. Deeply. She stared right into him. And he knew she was thinking of the same thing he’d been thinking of. The last time that she and he had been sitting at a table like this one. How different and similar the circumstances had been. Amelia had sat at that table and Arturo had been plummeting into love with her. Martine had sat at that table and she’d been just as alone then as she was now.
The group was laughing about something, tossing cards and chips and arguing loudly. It was then that Arturo noticed Thea, who was sitting closest to him, eyeing him carefully.
“I didn’t try to flambé you, you know,” he told her.
“Is that right?” She sucked her teeth and rocked back onto the back two legs of her chair.
He nodded, just once, tersely. “That’s right. If I’d wanted to, I would have done it. The very fact that you’re sitting here, unharmed, means I didn’t really try.”
She narrowed her icy blue eyes at him, her beautiful face drawn in suspicion. “What’re you saying?”
He shrugged, just as tight-lipped as she was. Just as unwilling to dole out benefit of the doubt.
He couldn’t possibly be saying that he’d taken it easy on them. “You almost killed Jean Luc twice. You tried to capture me to take me back to the demon. You slashed the hell out of Jack’s chest. Made Tre lose a couple pints of blood. And you’re telling me that you weren’t trying to hurt us?”
“People heal,” he answered tersely.
She stared at him, trying to read between the lines of his words.
He turned to her. “Everybody’s still got their souls, don’t they?” he asked her quietly. He leaned back and finished his wine.
He was the last person at the table that night, staring into the dark.
***
It was the deep dead of the night, when the black sky was flat and impenetrable. Tre and Caroline were still touching and kissing and whispering to one another. The light through the cracked bathroom door was just enough to toss a slice of illumination across their bodies tangled in the bed.
Tre couldn’t stop picking up her hair, letting it sift throug
h his fingers.
“I love seeing your tattoos against me,” she said from where she lay across his chest. One of her arms was bisected by one of his and she couldn’t stop looking at his skin. “The designs are so gorgeous. And so colorful! Like beautiful fabric.” She stacked one fist under her chin and grinned, point-blank. “It’s almost like you’re part-man/part-tapestry.”
He couldn’t help but laugh and scrub his eyes underneath the glasses he’d put back on after their shower. He knew glasses weren’t always great for sexy time. But for post sexy time, well, he really wanted to see her in all her brilliant detail. “Great. Glad you look at my tattoos and instead of seeing me as a badass, you see me as a blanket.”
She laughed and he kept going.
“That was exactly what I was going for when I endured excruciating pain for countless sessions.”
“Did they really hurt that much?” she asked, tracing the silhouette of a tiger etched across his chest.
“Well… yeah.” For some reason he didn’t want to talk about that with Caroline. It embarrassed him a little, how much pride he used to take in how much pain he’d been able to endure. He knew that that wasn’t something she’d think was necessarily cool.
“Then why did you do it? I mean, they’re beautiful. But why go through all that pain?”
“Ah.” He cast around for a way to describe it to her. “I mean, the pain is kind of part of what makes it beautiful. The experience is really intense and it’s definitely a high. But the process was important for me. I wanted, like, a visual reminder of how beautiful it can be if you make it to the other side of something really painful.”
She was quiet for a while, tracing his tattoos and letting her legs tangle with his even further. “Tre?”
“Yeah?” He could almost feel the question before she asked it. At first glance, Caroline didn’t seem like she’d be the sharpest tool in the shed because of how bubbly and optimistic she was. But Tre knew just how ruthlessly observant she could be. How quickly she connected the dots between the things people said and the way they acted.