A slight smile on her lips, she walked over to the dresser, placing the hair tie into the little box she left them in before heading into the kitchen to put the groceries away. Ever since the other night, he seemed to be trying to avoid her more than usual. That thought made her frown as she placed the canned beans she’d bought into the cabinet. Burner had actually left three times over the past week and a half after they’d had sex. He normally slept here and she missed him. She’d gotten used to him holding her and she found that her insomnia, which had been almost nonexistent over the past month, was back with a vengeance. She was used to him being there until early in the morning but since that night when he’d nearly broken her heart with his revelation, he’d begun to pull away from her.
Kelsey knew that he might think all they were was fuck buddies but she knew they were more. It was there between them every time they touched but getting him to realize it too was not going well. It was as if they took two steps forward only to jump three steps back. It frustrated her because she knew that what they had could be so good for both of them if she could just figure out a way to get him to talk about the things he had done in order to protect his club. If she could get him to open up to her, then they might have a chance to really make something of this relationship.
Kelsey hadn’t realized how much she wanted that until the other night when he’d opened up to her. She was sure that whatever he told her would be tragic and she understood after the little bit he had told her that the scars he bore from the experience were tearing him apart. She opened the fridge to set the milk and eggs inside, absently wondering what she was going to do about Burner.
Frowning a little, she remembered last week when he’d shown up with his face a mess and she’d had to play doctor because the swelling over his eye was pretty bad but the stubborn man had refused to go see Lance. She was beginning to suspect that he was becoming physically self-destructive and that worried her. She absently put the flour into the container she used for it as her mind mulled over the best way to get him to talk to her.
Her phone dinged that there was a message and she lifted it to read it. It was a message from Burner. Her heart sank because he was sending Hammer to watch her at the bar tonight. She sighed, knowing it was another way for him to avoid her. Damn, she was going to have to figure this out fast or she was going to be regulated to part-time sex bunny.
Burner was not happy with the way his night was unfolding. He’d chosen not to go to the bar, trying to put space between him and Kelsey, but all night he’d thought of her with other men. Of them looking at her, of them thinking of touching her with their dirty hands and it had made him insane. He didn’t like her working at the bar with all those sons of bitches and if one of them came near her, he’d murder them because she was his. At least she was his until he’d had his fill of her and the sweetness he craved.
He was waiting in her drive when she pulled her little jeep into it, watching as Hammer waved to him and roared off. He couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing here. He was supposed to be leaving her alone for a week or two. Only here he was, standing here waiting on her to get out of her car so he could fuck her again.
Damn, why was he still addicted to her?
“Hey, thought you weren’t coming by tonight because you where busy?” Kelsey asked, trying not to let her elation that he was here with her show. She didn’t want to gloat but she was sure he was here despite telling himself he wouldn’t come tonight and that meant he wasn’t as immune to this relationship as he pretended to be.
“Got free so I came over.”
Kelsey almost snorted at that as she pushed the key into the lock, wondering why he hadn’t just gone inside; he had a key. Hanna’s key actually, she thought ruefully. She was sure that Burner hadn’t been busy at all but instead had been trying to stay away from her. She pushed the door open, entering to set her purse and keys on the little end table by the door. Kelsey felt a hard hand on her arm turning her to face him.
Burner’s face was dark, lit only by the light that shone in through the front window. His lips were pressed into a hard thin line and his jaw looked clenched. Kelsey wondered if it hurt because she knew that not all his bruises had healed.
“How many men were watching you tonight?” he demanded, his hands holding her hips as he backed her into the wall next to the door.
“What are you talking about, Burner?” Kelsey asked, unsure what he was so intense about.
“How many men?” he demanded, his breath teasing her lips as he pressed her back into the wall. His hand rose to tug at her hair, tilting her head back until she was forced to meet his shadowed blue eyes.
“I can’t get the idea of the men who were lusting after you at the bar tonight out of my head. The idea of another man touching you makes me a little cranky and really fucking horny,” Burner growled, his fists clenching thinking of those men looking at her.
“I–I don’t know why you think anyone was lusting after me. I mean, you can’t be serious?” Kelsey said.
“I’m very serous, babe. I know they were thinking of fucking you and no man should be looking at you and they certainly shouldn’t be thinking of touching you because I won’t share you,” Burner gritted out from between clenched teeth, his jaw aching from how tightly he was clamping them together.
Kelsey couldn’t believe he was acting so aggressively possessive again and a little shiver ran up her spine. Over the past weeks she had seen a softer side of him but for some reason tonight he was acting like the Burner she had met so many weeks ago who didn’t have a single soft thing about him and she wondered what was wrong with him tonight.
“Burner,” Kelsey began only to find her lips captured by his. His tongue aggressively stabbed into her mouth as his hands gripped her hips, pulling her forward so that he could press his hardened dick against her stomach. She couldn’t help the little moan of pleasure that escaped her.
He grabbed her ass lifting her up and she wrapped her legs around him as he moved them to the couch nearby. He collapsed onto the soft cushions, his lips still on hers. She moaned again when his hands ripped at her shirt, taking it off. His hands slid around to wrench her bra off, tossing it aside as his mouth moved down the side of her neck nipping and sucking at her tender skin. She felt the hard sting of his stubble as it scraped her, adding another sensation to the ones already making her dizzy.
Kelsey grabbed at his cut pulling it off him and throwing it onto the back of the couch while her hands jerked off his t-shirt. Her mouth caressed his chest running over his skin as he groaned above her, his eyes shut as she worshiped his hard plains. She kissed up his chest from his stomach to his neck where she nipped at him making him moan loudly.
Burner’s hands cupped her breasts, his fingers rubbing over her nipples as she continued to explore his skin with kisses. She felt his body jerk slightly when her lips surrounded his nipple, her teeth raking it before she licked around it.
“Kelsey,” he said in a broken, almost desperate, cry. His hand moved to bury in her hair. He tugged her lips to his, kissing her deeply. Her hands gripped the back of his arms as she lost herself in his kiss.
Burner couldn’t get enough of her. Feeling her lips on his chest made his brain almost implode with the need to be inside her. He couldn’t seem to ever not feel with her; it was like she had an arrow that went straight through him every time finding the emotions he hid. His hand cupped the back of her head, his mouth glued to hers as he tried to make sense of what he wanted from her. He moved down her neck to take her nipple into his mouth sucking the tip. He felt her tremble beneath him with satisfaction. Burner cupped her other breast, running his fingers across the tip and tugging it gently.
Kelsey let out a little cry that fueled his need and he found his hand ripping at the fastening on her jeans. It didn’t take him long to jerk them open and shove his hand inside to find her wet pussy, his fingers delving inside her to feel the slick wetness of her passage. He groaned and moved the
m in and out as she moaned and writhed beneath him.
His dick throbbed, jerking hard when she tightened around his fingers as he worked them in and out of her. He had to get inside her, now. Putting that thought into action, he pulled his hand free of her, ignoring her little cry of despair, to tear his own pants open. He pulled her pants down, jerking them off one leg so that he could lift her leg up and out. His own pants were still around his knees but he didn’t give a fuck. He needed her.
Burner pressed his hardened cock into her hot wetness, grunting with the pleasure that assaulted him as she closed around him making him lightheaded it felt so damned good. It suddenly occurred to him as he began to move inside her that this was the feeling that kept him addicted to her.
This blissful rightness to being inside her was the reason he couldn’t seem to let go of her even though he knew he should. Burner held her right leg up as he pumped into her hard, trying to absorb her into his very skin so that he could have this feeling always.
Kelsey felt Burner enter her and cried out his name. She moaned as he began to move inside her, feeling his hand tighten on her hip as he pumped into her over and over, his thrusts heavy and his eyes looking down into hers. She didn’t know what she was seeing in his darkened blue eyes as he watched her but she knew that he was trying hard to not be affected by this and was failing at that.
It was in that moment as he thrust into her with his eyes clinging to hers that she realized the reason she allowed him to come here and make love to her. She was in love with him. As if this realization increased her pending orgasm, she felt her body shake as her world came apart in a kaleidoscope of broken pleasure that left her panting and limp beneath him. Her body clenching around him must have sent him over the edge because he came a moment later with a roar of pleasure ending in her name.
They lay there together with him resting on her with most of his weight on the couch and her hands running over his skin gently. Kelsey knew that she had to get him to open up now more than ever. If she wanted to have a relationship with him, she had to help him get past what had happened to him when he was with the Headhunters.
Burner finally pulled away from her. Sitting up, he put his jeans back on and Kelsey did the same, pulling her jeans and underwear up and back on. Searching the floor for her shirt and finding it in a crumpled mess by the end table, she put it on while her mind tried to find a way to bring up the subject of his stay with the Headhunters without making him run again.
Burner was trying to get his raging emotions under control. He sat beside Kelsey on the couch with his mind reeling. He almost couldn’t breathe and found himself rubbing his hand along his jaw feeling the light stubble that must have left red marks on her skin. Turning, he looked at her for a moment, seeing the love bite on her neck and the red marks along her jaw with a possessive satisfaction.
Damn, he needed to get a handle on this addiction. He should get up and walk the fuck out of her apartment before he fucked up her life even further. He was a bastard and she didn’t deserve to be used as a buffer from the screams in his head. Kelsey shifted; standing up, she looked down at him.
“I’m hungry. I made pasta earlier, do you want some?” she asked, her hand brushing her red hair back from her face. Her brow was raised in question and he wanted to grab her to drag her back on the couch to kiss every inch of her. Burner felt his fingers twitch with the need to reach out for her but he held himself back.
“Sure,” he found himself saying even as his brain told him to get the hell out of here and leave her alone. Instead he stood up and followed her into the kitchen, his eyes glued to her sexy ass in those tight jeans. Burner almost swallowed his tongue when she leaned over to grab the bowl from the fridge.
Have mercy, he silently begged. His cock was already hard for her again, and he wasn’t thinking of leaving anymore. Nope, he was thinking of how long it would be before she let him ravish her a second time. Shaking his head, he sat down at the little table while she heated up the pasta on the stove. When she was finished, she placed the food on two plates and brought them to the table, setting one in front of him.
“What do you want to drink?” she asked, drawing his attention from his observation of her breasts.
“Beer if you have it,” he grunted.
“I do.”
She went back to the fridge and he bit his lip to contain the growl that rose in his chest when she had to bend over to get the drinks. His hand clenched on his fork as his eyes drank in the view. She came back with a soda for herself and a beer for him, sitting down across from him. Burner began wolfing down the pasta, trying to keep his mouth full so that he didn’t have to talk with her. Eating with her suddenly seemed too intimate.
If he was going to end this farce between them then he needed to stop allowing himself to stay after he fucked her. He refused to call it anything else despite the fury that thought sent spiraling through him. Burner saw her little smile as she ate her own meal as if she had a secret that she was trying not to blurt out. He eyed her across the table, her smile making him nervous. She pushed her empty plate away when she was done, sitting back in her chair staring at him as he ate the last few bites of his pasta.
“What?” he asked when he couldn’t stand the staring any longer.
“Can we talk about what you told me the other day?”
“No,” he barked flatly. Unable to stay still, he grabbed his plate and hers, taking them to the sink. He ran the water over them hoping that she would drop it.
“Why not? I have questions,” Kelsey said from right behind him.
He whirled, resentment burning his guts as he stared at her. “Questions,” he spat out, his eyes narrowing on her. “What do you want to ask me, Kelsey? Do you want to know how many times I hit a woman, or maybe you want to know about how many times I sat and watched a woman get raped? Is that it? Or do you want to ask how many times each one begged them to stop? How about how often their screams echo inside me every day? Are those the questions you have for me, Kelsey?”
Kelsey blanched and she took a step back from him, making him furious. Now she was scared of him when she should have just left this alone instead of deciding to poke at the sore spot inside him. Burner turned back to the sink to give her time to recover because if she flinched away from him again he wasn’t sure what he would do. It lit a fire inside him that burned his insides, scorching him.
“No–I don’t want to ask you th-that. I want you to talk about it, Burner. It’s eating you up inside but if you need to tell me those things then I’ll listen. You have to let it go.” Kelsey’s voice was firm and he’d bet she was steeling her spine in order to deal with the poison inside him.
His fury became a mountain that almost crushed him. He didn’t want Kelsey anywhere near the horrid things she wanted him to tell her about. Didn’t she know that that was what he was trying to protect her from? How could she not understand that her knowing the things he had done would break him and he was already shattered. Turning to face her, his hands still wet from rinsing the dishes, he stepped towards her.
“You think I want to talk about that bullshit? That you’re the one I would ever talk about that with?” he demanded, grabbing her upper arms to shake her slightly.
“Why not me, Burner? We’re more than just fuck buddies and we both know it. You stay here all the time, we’ve become friends, and we have amazing sex. I just want to help you because I care,” Kelsey told him, her hazel eyes full of sympathy he knew he didn’t deserve. Hardening his jaw, he felt his hands tighten and knew he was likely hurting her but he couldn’t seem to let go.
“What did I tell you when this started, Kelsey? We aren’t in a relationship and I warned you not to think that’s what this was. I just like to fuck you.” Burner felt her jerk and he could see tears in her eyes and felt like a total dick. He wanted to say he was sorry but he couldn’t seem to find any words because his throat was clogged.
“I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to mak
e me think that because you’re scared of what’s happening with us,” Kelsey muttered, her lips trembling as the first tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
Burner had to let her go then or he would have taken back every word he’d said to her in the last few minutes because her tears fractured something inside him in a way no other woman’s tears ever had. He suddenly couldn’t breathe as he stepped away from her, forcing himself to continue hurting her when all he wanted to do was stop.
“Scared?” Burner forced out a laugh. “Sweetheart, I’m not scared at all. You’re the one trying to force this,” he pointed back and forth between them, “to be something it’s just not,” he finished.
“Then what is this, Burner? What am I to you, tell me,” Kelsey commanded.
“You’re just another fuck and I can get that from any number of women. You just happen to be the one I wanted to fuck tonight,” Burner snorted out.
“Fine, then go fuck another woman, Burner. It’s not like this matters, like we matter. We’re just fuck buddies, right?” she screamed, her tears now pouring unchecked down her cheeks as she spat the words at him. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t true but he couldn’t; it would only drag out the inevitable outcome of this fucked up relationship he never should have started. Burner watched the tears, his body vibrating with the need to hold her and tell her it would be all right, but he stiffened his spine.
“That’s right,” he forced himself to say, his chest feeling heavy, and it was all he could do not to rub the ache that had formed over his heart.
“Then just go. Get out! If you can’t man up and admit that this is more, then I’m done, Burner. Don’t come back here, ever.” The last word rang with a finality he almost wanted to beg her to take back but he knew this was the right thing for her. He wouldn’t allow the poison inside him to take any more from her than it already had.
Burning Desires (Blue Bandits MC Book 4) Page 17