Going Under (The Blackhawk Boys Book 3)

by Lexi Ryan

  “What happened?”

  “You. You happened. You showed up in my life five years ago, and I haven’t been the same since. Do you have any idea how awesome Logan is?”

  Logan? Why are we talking about him right now? I expected her to bring up Martina or my dad, but Logan? He is awesome, a great fucking guy. But I sure as fuck don’t need to hear about it. Not from Alex. Not when she’s this close to me. “I’m sure he’s great,” I say in a monotone.

  “He’s perfect. He’s handsome and successful, and he treats me like a princess. He wants to be with me.”

  Then why are you here? My heart feels like it’s trying to break out of my chest. Maybe it wants to claim her before Logan can.

  She takes a breath. “And it sucks because instead of giving him a chance, I keep wondering why he can’t be you.”

  Fuck. My chest aches. “Alex—”

  “Don’t Alex me. I’m broken. You ruined me. I don’t want to be broken. I want to be with Logan, feeling beautiful and letting him kiss me and touch me the way I let you.”

  I could do without the specifics. My gut is in knots of need tangled up with guilt and frustration, and hearing her talk about Logan like this is only making that knotted mess burn. I’m on my way to an ulcer, but I deserve this torment. I deserve worse.

  “But instead I’m here.” She tilts her head to the side.

  I want to ask her why. I want to know why she’s willing to be close to me after my confession, to know how she can look at me without anger or hatred in her eyes. But I’m afraid to ask, afraid to say anything that might bring her to her senses. “Does Logan know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  I’m not sure what to make of that. Should I be glad he’s not part of this in any way, that she didn’t seek his permission before coming? Or does it just mean that her being here means more to me than it does to her?

  My chest feels too full and my mouth is a jumble of words that defy order. Thank you, you’re so goddamn beautiful, I’ve missed you, and why him and not me?

  “Where do you want me?” she asks.

  In my arms. I point to the black backdrop. “Standing to start, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.”

  She takes her position, and I survey her outfit. Tattered jeans, knee-high boots, and a button-up flannel shirt with only the top button undone.

  She wrings her hands in front of her and looks up at me through her lashes. “Should I pose, or…”

  “Try to relax.” I adjust the lights so they highlight the side of her face. “Just turn your head toward that light right over there.”

  She turns her head, bringing her scars into the light, and I take the shot. One, two, three pictures before adjusting the light again. This time pulling it to the other side of her face and allowing those scars to be cast in shadow.

  When I pause, she turns to me. “Should I…” She unbuttons the top two buttons on her shirt then pulls it to the side so it falls off one shoulder and exposes the scars on her chest. “This doesn’t seem right. This isn’t what you need.”

  “What isn’t? You’re beautiful.”

  “No.” She looks down at her chest then back up at me before slowly lifting her shaking hands to the next button, then the next, and the one beneath that. My breath sticks in my lungs, burning, and she squeezes her eyes shut. “Help,” she whispers.

  She’s so fucking vulnerable. I could tell her to button back up, that we don’t have to do this, but I can see in the determined set of her jaw that she needs to. I step forward and help her pull the shirt from her shoulders.

  I’ve never seen the full extent of her scars before, and it’s like having the wind knocked out of me. When I reach out to touch, my hand trembles. I’ve read that skin grafting is incredibly painful, and I can’t imagine how excruciating it must have been for her to have this much of her torso treated. The bulk of the scar is almost triangular, with its narrowest point starting on her neck and widening as it travels down, and the widest part stretches from her navel to under her jeans.

  As I trace the uneven surface with my fingertips, she slowly opens her eyes. I follow the scar along the waistband of her jeans then unbutton them and slide them down her hips. I help her out of her boots, and she swallows hard as she steps from her jeans. And there she is.

  My most beautiful Kintsukuroi standing at my fingertips in nothing but a black bra and matching panties.

  I drop to my knees and press my mouth to her belly as I wrap my arms around her waist. When I lean my forehead against her hip and hold her tight, I feel her ragged inhale.

  “I was dealing when I met Martina. I was the reason she was an addict.” I feel like I have to say it again, like I have to make sure she heard me and her being here now isn’t some terrible misunderstanding.

  “I know,” she whispers. Two words that break my heart.

  The ache in my chest turns sharp. “Then why are you so close to me? Why are you letting me touch you?” My hands frame the scars on her belly. “Don’t you understand I’m no good? Don’t you understand I am the reason she was caught in the fire? Don’t you understand I am the reason you almost died with her?” I reach up and press my palm flat against her chest. “Your pain, your suffering, your loss, it’s on me.”

  “I don’t blame you. I blame Martina. I blame myself. But I don’t blame you,” she says softly. A tear runs down her face. “Oh, Sebastian… You’ve been carrying around all this guilt.”

  I feel as if a dull blade is slicing right through the middle of me. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I made my own choices.”

  “But your father…”

  “I made my own choices,” I say again. “My father asked me to help, and I did. Don’t you see why I had to stay away from you? From the very beginning, you were goodness and light, and I was darkness and ugliness. I couldn’t do anything but bring you down into my hell, and I wouldn’t do that. I was never supposed to fall in love with someone so good, but I did. And then you ran into that fire like a fucking superhero.”

  “What kind of hero am I?” She shakes her head, sadness filling her blue eyes. “I didn’t save anyone.”

  “But you are. You saved me. I thought that world was my life. I thought I was stuck, but your bravery, your strength as you recovered, you saved me.”

  When I finally stand, it’s to cup her jaw in my hand and lower my mouth to hers.

  Maybe it was supposed to be as simple as a kiss. Or maybe I knew it would be more. Maybe I’m a selfish bastard who will use any excuse and any opportunity to touch her. The next thing I know, I’m spinning her around and propping her on the work desk so I can spread her legs and stand between them, so I can slide my hands beneath her ass and pull her against me.

  I kiss her and nip at her bottom lip with my teeth when she moans.

  “I’ll stop,” I whisper. I don’t want this to be something she regrets. I won’t ask for something she isn’t ready to give.

  She shakes her head. “No. Don’t stop.” She threads her fingers into my hair. “Touch me.”

  I kiss down her neck, and she arches into me. I slide my hand over her stomach. She’s warm and soft, and my breath rushes from my lungs as I cup her through her bra. I scrape the pad of my thumb over her nipple, and she gasps and takes a handful of my hair. She holds my mouth against her neck and whimpers as I suck her earlobe between my teeth.

  I’m not doing this to drown out the world or to make her stop talking. I’m doing this to feel her pleasure, to feel what it’s like for her to fall apart in my arms. I’m doing it because I fucking can. Because she fucking wants me to—and that’s a gift in a life that lately feels to be taking more than it’s giving.

  She unzips my jeans, and I draw in a ragged breath. She slides her hand down and cups me through my boxer briefs, ripping a groan from my chest.

  “Not here,” I whisper. Because if she starts touching me now, I won’t stop her. I don’t want to even now. But I need to.
r />   Breathless, she withdraws, leaning away from me and pulling her hand back. “I think it’s my turn to say sorry now.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and wait a beat, praying for patience before opening them again. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

  “I got carried away, Sebastian.” Biting her lip, she shrugs.

  I trail down her arms and cuff her wrists in each hand. “Fuck it, Alex. I want you carried away. I want you wild. I’m dying to know what it feels like to have you touch me.”

  “I want to. I want more.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut again. “I want more too.”

  She runs her fingertips over my beard. When she looks at me like this, I almost can’t remember why I’ve stayed away so long. I almost can’t remember why I’m all bad for her. Being with her is like swimming to the surface for air. It’s coming up from a dark and clinging abyss. She’s fresh air. She’s sunlight. She’s the wind on my face and the reason I fought to free myself from the darkness.

  “I keep waiting for you to apologize.” She scans my face again and again. “That’s what you do after you kiss me.”

  My heart sinks. “I was only sorry for kissing you because it made me want to do it again.”

  She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and shakes her head. “Should we take some more pictures?”

  “Yeah.” But I want to breathe her in. I’m not ready to let go.

  She smiles tentatively and peers up at me through her long, dark lashes. “Or you could just lock the door.” The way she says the words—soft, low—makes me want to do just that. Lock the door, strip her bare, and touch her until her moans fill my ears and block out all the ugly fears that fill my mind. She grins. “It’s almost like you’re considering it.”

  “I am. But you deserve better than an old photo studio.” I reach for a silky black sheet. “Cover anything you don’t want in the picture.”

  Her cheeks are flushed, and she nods as she wraps it around her waist and over one shoulder. The next forty minutes, I take as many pictures as I can. I can’t take my eyes off her. The smooth, soft skin of her stomach, the perfect curves of her breasts in a black lace bra, the wrinkled skin of her scars. She watches me through each shot, moving this way and that, sitting with her knees drawn to her chest for one shot and stretched out on her side for another.

  Every click of the camera feels like a promise of how I want to touch her, and by the time I’m putting my camera in its case, I’m desperate to get her home, where I can make good on each of those promises.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Alexandra

  When Sebastian is done with his pictures, he waits for me to dress, then we walk side by side out of the art building and toward Mr. Patterson’s house.

  Sebastian never reaches to hold my hand, but every time his arm bumps mine or his knuckles brush the back of my hand, he winks at me. The look in his eyes sends a flurry of flutters through my stomach that’s better than any warm and fuzzy feeling handholding has given me before now. This is better. This is a secret, ours alone right now, something special and private that we get to figure out before we make it vulnerable to other people’s eyes.

  And I can’t wait to figure it out.

  Martina’s journals gave me the courage to come. I haven’t read them all, only the first two from before her life spun out of control. She was so young and the subject matter was trivial, but it was like having my sister in the room. I could practically hear her telling me to go to him, to forgive him, to let myself be happy.

  We pass a bakery that has a large wedding cake as well as croissants and baguettes in the display in the window, and my mouth waters. I press my hand to my stomach. “I’m so hungry.”

  Sebastian runs his eyes over me, from my head all the way down to my toes, before slowly moving back up. “Tell me about it.”

  That flutter in my belly transforms into a low and slow shimmy, and I swallow hard. Patience. That’s all I need now. Patience will get me back to the house. Patience will give me Sebastian.

  I grin at him. “I’m nervous,” I whisper.

  His chest rises as his gaze skims over my face and lands on my lips. Then he holds up a hand for me to see, and it’s shaking.

  My heart trips and then does a few happy back-tucks to cover its awkwardness. Please don’t pull away from me again. “But the scariest part is over, right? You saw my scars. Even the worst of them.”

  His tongue wets his bottom lip as he drags his gaze down my body. “For the record, I fucking pray that was the first time of many.”

  * * *

  Sebastian

  We make it back to the house through a stretch of long sighs and meaningful glances, and as soon as she disables the alarm and closes the door behind me, she’s wrapping her arms around my neck and giggling against my mouth.

  “Is this real?” she asks, yanking my shirt off over my head and tossing it onto the floor.

  “You’d better believe it.” I slide my hand into her hair and tilt her head back so I can kiss her long and full and with everything I’ve been feeling since she walked into the photography studio.

  “Bedroom,” she says, breaking the kiss. She leads me to a room at the back of the house that’s bigger than my grandma’s entire two-bedroom trailer.

  She unbuttons her shirt and drops it to the floor then toes out of her shoes and peels off her jeans. My heart pounds faster with every inch that’s exposed, as if we didn’t just do this in the studio.

  “Sorry about the taxidermy.” She frowns at the stuffed jackrabbit mounted above the bed. “Hope it doesn’t kill the mood.”

  I arch a brow and stalk toward her, shedding my own shoes and jeans. “There could be an entire forest of live animals watching us, and I’d still want you more than anything. Then again…” Grinning, I scoop her shirt off the floor and toss it over the rabbit’s head. “I’m gonna do things to you that Little Bunny Foo-Foo doesn’t need to see.”

  She bursts into laughter and I kiss her, grinning against her mouth.

  I lay her back on the bed, and she draws up her knees and parts her legs as I settle on top of her. I kiss her mouth, kiss my way down her neck. I use tongue and teeth and lips to taste her, to feel her, and the sounds that slip from her lips make me crazy.

  I trail my hands down her arms and lift them over her head, holding them there as I draw up onto my knees to take her in. “You are so beautiful.”

  I release her hands so I can unclasp her bra and slide it off her arms. She lifts her hips, and her fingers tangle with mine as we work on her panties—both of us impatient, desperate. I pull them down her legs and off her feet and toss them to the floor.

  She reaches for me and I have to stop, catch my breath, and force myself to slow down. I need to commit every second of this night to memory. This isn’t the fantasy. It’s Alex, real, soft and willing, and as hungry as me.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  I shake my head and trail my gaze over her—the flush of her cheeks, the swell of her breasts, the ridge of her hipbones…lower. “Looking.”

  She draws in a deep breath, and her chest rises and falls. “I like the way you look at me. But I want you to touch me.”

  I feel greedy and terrified all at once. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about this?”

  “You’re not the only one,” she says, and the words send a rush of heat through me.

  I trail my knuckles down the center of her body, between her breasts, circling her navel, then dipping between her legs.

  She arches and rocks her hips into my touch as I put the slightest bit of pressure there before finding her clit between two fingers. She gasps. “Yes. Please.”

  “I love the way you sound when you’re turned on. And the way you taste.” I work my way down the bed and lower my face between her legs, relishing her gasp as I taste her first with a light flick of my tongue and then with the hungry press of my open mouth against her. I explore, lick, taste, delve unt
il she lifts her hips and arches into my face, her hands finding my hair, her gasps making me greedy for more.

  I want her to dissolve in this bed. I don’t want her to define herself by the night she ran into the fire. I don’t want her to limit herself or her life to survivor when she’s so much more. I want her to lose herself here and see herself as I see her: beautiful, brave, everything.

  I slide a finger inside her and then another, and she tugs on my hair as she cries out and comes apart against me.

  I pull away gently and kiss the inside of each thigh before kissing my way back up her body. I climb off the bed to strip out of my briefs and grab the condom from my wallet.

  When I look up, she’s rolled onto her side, watching me with hungry eyes as I slide it on. Maybe I should be embarrassed by my trembling hands, but I want her to see who I really am and I want her to see what she does to me.

  She rolls to her back as I settle over her. “Are you ready?”

  “Please.” Her hands slide down my back as her teeth find my neck and I settle between her legs. She holds my gaze as I sink deeply, and my breath catches. There are too many emotions battling in my chest. Lust tangles with years of longing and friendship. Affection and adoration push something even stronger to the surface.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I whisper in her ear. “You feel so good.”

  She moans, and I position an arm under one leg, hitching it higher, driving into her deeper, and when I feel her tighten around me, feel her body tense and then release again, I follow her, and instead of drowning in her, it’s like I’m finally coming up for air.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Alexandra

  We’re still in bed. When the light coming in the windows dimmed with the setting sun, Sebastian went to the kitchen and brought back a tray of food and a bottle of wine, and now he’s feeding me olives, crackers, slices of cheese, and chunks of hard salami.