Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)

by A. L. Jackson

  Tugging hard. “Oh God…please.”

  My dick damn near exploded.

  I did the same to the other, making sure she was a squirming mess of need.

  Ready for me.

  Because on all things holy, was I ever ready for her.

  I moved back, knelt down and unlaced my boots, before I stood and shed my jeans. I stood before her in nothing but my tight underwear, my cock so fucking hard.

  Begging.

  Needy.

  Desperate to take this girl.

  Body and soul. Spirit and flesh.

  Everything.

  I had the depraved, fleeting thought that maybe I’d find a little bit of freedom in her, too.

  Under her unyielding stare, I pulled my underwear down and kicked them from my feet.

  Blue eyes roamed my body, up and down. The girl knew exactly how to undo me. Her tongue darted out and swiped across her lips when her heady gaze locked on my dick that was pointing to the sky. But then she let it trail back up, over my body that was covered by my story. The good and the bad. The deranged and the beautiful.

  She looked to my eyes. Like she was both in the dark—willing to give up anything to read the fucked-up pages because she couldn’t quite see, and in the light—where she still got all the important stuff anyway.

  “It’s you who’s beautiful, Lyrik. Fascinating. Talented. Broken while you take the time to rebuild me. To make me remember what it feels like to be cared about. Taken care of. What it’s like to feel unafraid.”

  Care.

  I did.

  I fucking did.

  My jaw clenched. “But my time’s running out.”

  Pain and hope lashed across her face. “It doesn’t have to.”

  But it did and it would and there was no use wishing for things that weren’t ever going to be.

  I cinched my hands tight around her narrow waist and tugged her closer to the edge of the bed. “It’s gonna end, Red. You and I both know it. Tell me right now you’re okay with that. Otherwise, you need to get up and go, because I’m not the type of guy who’s going to stand here and feed you lies. Think you know me better than that by now.”

  Shit. Why did saying it cause a ripping ache to slice through my insides?

  But she knew what this was. Right from the start.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Her head nodded harshly as I ran my palms under her ass, kneading and squeezing,

  “I want everything you have to give. Even if this ends right here, it’s more than I ever thought I’d have.”

  Resting her ankles on my shoulders, I leaned down and worked the red bottoms free from her tight little body. She lifted her ankles just enough so I could pull them from her feet.

  Lust lit up behind my eyes and saturated every cell. What was left of my senses took a sharp turn south.

  Her pussy was pink and bare and damp. I parted her with my fingers and watched her expression as I plunged two fingers inside.

  Her hips shot from the bed. “Shit…Lyrik.”

  “Love my name coming from that smart mouth.” The words scraped up my throat.

  I kept pumping my fingers, and her head rolled back, mouth dropping open the more pleasure I brought her.

  That mouth.

  That mouth.

  She cried out in frustration when I suddenly pulled my fingers free. The sassy red vixen came out to play. Blue eyes flashed, and she made to sit up. “Damn it, Lyrik…don’t you dare—”

  I cut her off by pressing my fingers into the well of her hot, hot mouth.

  A mumbled moan rolled from her as she sank back down onto the mattress. The needy sound vibrated up my arm and through my body as her tongue played across the pads of my fingertips.

  I slid them out, back in.

  “Fuck…you’re so hot, Red. Don’t know how to make sense of you.”

  I kept fucking her mouth with my fingers and she kept bucking up, pussy rubbing against the tip of my dick.

  Energy thick. Heavy. Anticipation and apprehension and desire.

  I pulled all the way back and stared down over her.

  Red writhed on the bed. Her delicate hands were fisted in my sheets.

  Soft and unbelievably fierce.

  Strong and unbearably sweet.

  This girl was my ruin.

  “Get in the middle,” I demanded.

  She scooted back. Her breaths came sharper and harder as I opened the top drawer of my nightstand and grabbed a condom. I tossed it next to her on the bed.

  “I’m going to fuck you until the only name you know is mine.”

  Made her that promise once, and I intended to keep it.

  She arched as I crawled over her. Her heart was pounding. It was this wild beat that stirred something deep within.

  Beyond the window, lightning flashed.

  I sat back on my knees between her trembling legs, and rolled the condom over my cock. I reached down and held my hand over that tat of temptation, before I ran it up her leg and hooked her knee over my hip.

  I set the opposite hand next to her head to hold myself up. Our faces were a foot apart.

  Breaths mingling.

  Hearts stuttering and hammering and racing.

  Tension wound fast, my muscles going rigid with restraint. My eyes locked on the girl. “Do you hear me?”

  Did she?

  Could she?

  She burrowed her fingers into my shoulders. “I hear you.”

  Her back bowed, her tits mashing into my chest as she clung to me. Like she was giving me everything and I was giving it in return.

  Trust.

  Hope.

  A little bit of life she didn’t have.

  Something good.

  This time she turned her mouth to my ear.

  “I hear you.”

  That confession hit me like an earthquake.

  I wedged my hips between her thighs.

  I grabbed my cock at the base and ran the tip through her center.

  Cautious. Watching every insinuation and implication. For any sign of fear or panic. I remained still while I watched the emotion wash through the girl who was trusting me with something I didn’t have the right to hold.

  But fuck.

  I wanted it to be me.

  Couldn’t stand the thought of this moment belonging to another man.

  A moan shuddered from her when she lifted herself and rubbed against my dick. Needy and breathless.

  I pushed inside. Barely an inch.

  “Shit.” The harsh word left me as my stomach coiled. A flash fire of pleasure roared across my skin. Singeing. Swallowing me whole.

  Her nails sank deeper into my shoulders and her blue eyes locked on mine. Anxious, but lacking horror or fear.

  “No girl should feel this good.”

  She stuttered out a disbelieving laugh, half-choked with desire. Then she shot me one of those flirty grins. All sex and seduction. She lifted her chin. “And you haven’t even felt me yet.”

  My lips curled into a smirk.

  “I’m about to change that.”

  I slid all the way home.

  Taking her knocked the smirk right off my smug face. My body heaved with the impact. Like I’d just dived into an endless abyss of bliss, and even if it cost me my life, I didn’t ever want to come up for air.

  I stole the throaty moan escaping from between her parted lips with a kiss. My entire body pulsed like a live wire while she trembled and shook, adjusting to my size.

  Edging my head back, I looked down at her. “You okay?”

  A smile trembled around her luscious mouth, dancing between awe and hope and faith. The same way she’d been looking at me back on the beach when I’d snapped that first picture.

  “Saying I’m okay would be nothing less than an insult.”

  My chest tightened, and I struggled for a breath. I pressed up onto both hands and let the rest of my weight fall to my knees.

  Our eyes tracked each other’s gaze, flicking down at the same time to
where we were joined as I drew out.

  Slowly.

  A strangled, needy sound slid from her tongue.

  “Yeah?” I asked, giving her a nudging taunt.

  “Yes,” she whispered frantically.

  I rocked back in, hard. Her walls clenched around my dick as I took her as deep as I could go. I shifted and clutched the caps of her shoulders, tight and tender and trying with all of me not to completely let go.

  But she felt so good.

  So damned good I couldn’t see.

  Couldn’t grasp on to reality or sanity or that dwindling sense of loyalty.

  Couldn’t feel a single thing but Tamar.

  Tamar.

  Blues and reds and blacks and blinding light.

  For a year, I’d been dying to get inside this girl.

  The first time I saw her, I knew sex with Red would blow my mind.

  She was like a bundle of fireworks just waiting for a match.

  Now I was standing in the flames.

  I fucked her, relentlessly, while she panted and moaned.

  “Lyrik. Lyrik. Lyrik.”

  A tingling feeling weaved through my chest and compressed my ribs.

  Was it wrong how much I liked that?

  Hearing her cry out my name. Struggling to get closer while I was filling her so full each utterance left her mouth on a panted breath.

  Pleasure wound fast. It spread across my lower back and tugged at my balls.

  “Blue. Need you to come, baby. You feel too good.”

  It’d been five weeks since I’d been in a girl. Worse yet, it’d been my whole life since I’d been in this one.

  Sick part?

  If I could, I’d keep this moment forever.

  Keep this girl.

  Like I could ever deserve her.

  “Touch me,” she whispered.

  Inching back a fraction, I slid my hand between us and rolled my finger across her clit.

  That was it.

  All she needed.

  My blue-eyed angel lit.

  Tamar screamed my name.

  I pumped harder and faster as she came, her body nearly floating up beneath mine. My hips snapped against hers. Frantic and uneven as intense feeling swept over me. Head to toe and everywhere between. Something bigger than I’d ever felt.

  Something both blinding and bright.

  Energy and life.

  Boom.

  RAIN PATTED GENTLY ON the roof, and Lyrik pulled me deeper into his hold. My back was to his chest and his breath was all around me. The pound of our hearts had finally begun to settle like the waning storm.

  He pressed a kiss to the back of my head. “How do you feel?”

  On a heavy exhale, I let myself be drawn closer. My mind and body drifted on the comfort. Light and free.

  I braided my fingers through his where he had his hand pressed over the tattoo centered on my chest.

  “Amazing.” It was a reverent whisper as I lifted our entwined hands and pressed my mouth to the back of his.

  “You are what is amazing,” he murmured back, his nose nuzzled in my hair and his words slithering across my skin. Slipping in and over and working all the way through.

  I rolled over so I could look at his face. Inky eyes stared back at me in the darkness. His hair was a sexy mess and those red lips were swollen.

  A shiver rolled through me.

  I chewed at my bottom lip.

  I’d just had sex with Lyrik West.

  Holy shit.

  And it’d been exactly that.

  Amazing.

  Undeniably, extraordinarily amazing.

  I hadn’t felt lost to fear or panic. I didn’t feel a prisoner to the memories.

  I felt…liberated.

  Beautiful.

  Wanted and desired.

  He smirked as if he’d just latched onto my thoughts. “You’re looking a little…satisfied.”

  I giggled. Yeah. I giggled.

  Then it just got worse and I was giving into this rippling sense of euphoria as I grinned and brushed my fingertips across his chin and thought back to the day when he’d openly challenged me out in the market, provoking me by saying the only thing I needed was to be satisfied.

  And God, had this man challenged me. Challenged every belief and fear and hope I’d harbored. Chased me down until I faced them.

  “Don’t go and get too proud of yourself, rock star.” I went for a tease, but there was no keeping the thick emotion from my words.

  God. I’d gone and gotten myself in deep.

  That smirk. “Oh, I’m feeling pretty proud right about now.”

  A smile tugged at my mouth. “Oh, you are, huh?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  That was the thing. I could see it.

  Pride.

  But he wasn’t proud of himself.

  He was proud of me.

  “Thank you.” My words were hoarse and came from that place within me I’d never thought I’d see again. The place he’d exposed.

  He gentled his fingers through my hair, this hard, cryptic man who was so utterly soft. “No…thank you. Thank you for trusting me. For letting me get to see a side of you that nobody else knows. For allowing me to help her shine.”

  He hooked his finger under my chin and lifted my face to him. “She’s incredibly beautiful and I feel honored I was the one who got to meet her.”

  A million nerves fluttered.

  That was the crazy thing. He knew me better than anyone. Maybe it was even crazier I felt as if I knew him best, too. As if only I held the power to understand the veiled truth within him. As if I was so close yet still watching from afar.

  My fingertips trailed over his shoulder and ran down to the musical bars winding up his arm. An unsung song crying out to be played.

  Feather light, I tapped my fingertips along it. As if playing the chords.

  Lyrik winced.

  My gaze flitted between the pain written so clearly on his face and the notes engraved on his arm. For a few seconds, I studied his expression, trying to make sense of it. To make sense of him. This menacing, intimidating man who at times seemed shackled and oppressed. I wanted to free him. Maybe return to him a little of what he’d given me.

  When I turned to look at my fingers trailing the bars, my voice was quiet and subdued as I spoke my confession. “Sometimes in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep and I’m all alone, I hear you play.”

  I risked peeking at him.

  His eyes were squeezed closed and his body was rigid. Bracing himself.

  I turned my attention back to his song. “I’m almost embarrassed to admit this to you…because I would never want you to think I could look at you as anything but the boy next door…the boy who changed me.”

  I swallowed hard. “It was three years ago when I heard my first Sunder song. It was late…I’d come home from work and had been alone in my apartment, lost in the same excruciating loneliness I’ve lived in for the last four years. This song came on…”

  Soft laughter rolled from my tongue. “You’d think it would be forgettable, nothing that would ever be ingrained in my memory, but I remember the tingly feeling I got when the first few chords came through the speakers. I remember sitting propped up in my bed, entranced. I had to find out who it was. I had to know who was singing. To put a face to the voice that was so haunting and comforting at the same time.”

  Energy rolled across my skin at the memory. “They say music touches us in a way nothing else can, and I swore in that moment it felt as if the person singing it was singing directly to me. That they’d found the words for my loneliness. That they’d tapped into it and for a few minutes I didn’t feel so alone.”

  “Blue,” he whispered in effort to shut me down, but I kept speaking. “I found out that song…that song wasn’t sung by the lead who normally sings the majority of their songs. It was sung by a gorgeous, black-haired boy. He was singing Sunday Gone, a song I learned he wrote. I’d sit for hours in front of my comput
er and watch him with his black guitar braced on his lap and his mouth pressed to the mic. I’d just hit replay over and over because that was the only time I felt truly understood.”

  I pulled air into my lungs. “And it turned out it was you, Lyrik.”

  It was the song I had tortured myself with when I refused to give in to Lyrik’s advances. When he’d terrified me simply from the way he’d made me feel. Back when I’d been certain he would use me up and throw me away.

  And I knew he would.

  Throw me away.

  He’d made that much clear. My heart clenched with the promise that this was going to end. That this was all he had to give.

  But I also knew he wasn’t using me up.

  He was filling me up.

  Would he give me the opportunity to fill him up a little bit, too?

  I pressed a hand over his pounding heart. “I hear you, Lyrik.”

  He trembled.

  “I hear your words and I hear your pain. Let me share some of it. The way you’re sharing mine. Sing me your song.”

  In a flash, he had his face buried in my neck. “Goddamn it, Blue. Why do you have to keep doin’ this to me? You keep trying and trying to get to the place where I can’t let you go.”

  “What if I’m already there?”

  I had to be.

  Not all of this could be one-sided and I refused to believe this beautiful boy could be immune.

  Not when I’d been touched so wholly.

  Not after what we’d just shared.

  Not after we’d come so far.

  He clutched me tightly. His breaths came harsh and hard and his hands burned into my back as he pulled me tighter.

  God, I hurt for him. For me. For us.

  “You aren’t supposed to make me feel this way,” he whispered as if in confession—shamed and ridden with guilt yet still refusing to let go. “This was a terrible idea.”

  Those five words. If anything, they just reinforced the reasons for my reserve, my need to keep my distance from this devastated man.

  He held me, safe and secure, but I could feel part of his spirit detaching and floating away. Just as strongly as he struggled to stay attached.

  His voice shook when he finally released it at the sensitive skin of my neck in a torrent of heartbroken passion.

  Lyrik sang like he did in the night.

  I’d have given it all.

  But instead I got lost along the way.