By the time my sister got put in a real room, I could only stay for a little while longer. I knew I had to get back to work, but mostly I needed to talk to Amy. Miranda was in good hands and much to my surprise, she wasn't acting like her and Ty were going to separate. That helped me out considering that I now had a new life mission to take down Heather and save my sister's marriage.
Before I left the hospital, I ducked in to say my goodbyes. My sister was feeding one of the twins. She and Ty looked exhausted but had been inseparable since her accident. It wasn't my business to interfere and Ty had told me they were staying together and raising their children for sure, so I stayed off of the subject.
The first thing I did when I got back to town was head to the salon. It was still early and I knew she'd be there. I needed to hold her; to kiss those sweet lips and never let go.
When I walked in, her and the other hairdresser turned in my direction. The look on Amy's face was indescribable. She was cutting some woman's hair and froze completely. I sat down in a chair and grabbed a magazine. Amy turned around and told the other girl that I was her next appointment and started back on the woman's hair. I caught her several times looking my way and she looked distraught. She filled the woman's hair with rollers and walked in my direction. I lifted my head and smiled at her. "Why haven't you called me, darlin'?"
"You can't be here!"
She grabbed my arm and pulled me outside.
"What are you talkin' about? Is Rick here?"
"No, it doesn't matter where he is. I can't see you anymore."
I grabbed her arm and she quickly pulled it away. "I ain't leavin' until you start explainin'." I saw tears in her eyes and started to lose my cool. I pulled her around the building so that nobody could see us. When I pulled her into my arms she tried to fight me. "What the hell is goin' on?"
"He's working tomorrow. Meet me at the hotel?"
I cupped her cheeks and looked into her eyes. "Are you goin' to explain, because I can't go another damn day not knowin' why you're giving me the silent treatment, especially not after what I said to you."
"I'll tell you everything." Something was wrong. I could tell from the moment I first looked into those eyes.
"Amy, promise me that you're okay."
She nodded her head. "I'm fine. I promise."
I kissed the top of her head, but it wasn't enough. Before she could pull away, I kissed her on the lips. "You better be there tomorrow or I will come find you."
I walked away from her, more pissed than before we ever talked. Something was very wrong and I was going to find out what it was, because I wasn't about to lose her, not for any damn reason.
Chapter 22
Amy
Conner showing up at the salon scared the living shit out of me. I was sure that Rick had some kind of spy cameras set up or maybe he paid the other girl that worked for me to tell him if I did anything behind his back.
When I went home that night, he said nothing about it though. Since I hadn’t been caught seeing Conner, I knew I had to tell him everything. Even if I had to end things, he deserved to know why. With the thought of breaking his heart steady on my mind, it was hard to be cordial to Rick. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t thought about offing him while he slept.
For the past week, he had been purposely sleeping in bed next to me at night, but it wasn’t so he could force me to have intercourse with him. It was so that he could watch my every move.
At about midnight, I was awoken to him pulling my hair. I opened my eyes to see him leaning over top of me in our bed. “Now that I have your attention, there’s something we need to discuss.”
Fear washed over me, assuming that he did know about Conner visiting me. I backed away from him as much as I could with him still having a bunch of my hair in his hand. “Rick, let go of me, please.”
He shoved me away, but stayed where he was positioned in the bed. “In a couple of hours I need to leave on my weekly run. If you think for one second you can pull a fast one on me, you better think again. I am just reminding you that if I find out you’re seeing that little prick, you will both be sorry. I hope you warned him about me, because I wasn’t fucking joking.”
I heard his threats loud and clear. “I haven’t called him. I don’t even have his number. His sister almost died and I’m sure he is with his family in Kentucky by now. I’m not doing anything wrong, Rick. Conner is gone and he’s not coming back.”
“You better be telling me the truth bitch.” He rolled over to his side of the bed and started adjusting his pillows. “No bitch of mine is going to disgrace me.”
After crying myself to sleep, I woke up the next morning alone in bed. For the first time in a week I was able to finally breathe without looking behind my shoulder. I took a long shower and thought about how the past week had played out. I contemplated asking Conner to run away with me, but knew that his family was too important for me to even ask something so selfish.
Still, telling him the truth was my main priority. It was bad enough that I had to stop seeing him. He needed to know that it wasn’t anything he did wrong and it certainly wasn’t because he told me that he loved me.
After a long day at the salon, I drove straight to the hotel. Conner had parked in front of a certain door, so I just knocked. I should have known that he was going to be all over me once I cleared the threshold. He welcomed me in his arms like I belonged there and within seconds my purse was on the floor, followed by my shirt. I grabbed the bottom of Conner’s shirt and tore it over his head. I needed to feel his skin against my hands and if only for one last time, his love radiating through my pained soul.
We undressed like a city marathon and in seconds we were naked overtop of one of the beds. I slid my body on top of Conner’s and let my fingertips run from his lips down to his abdomen. When I brought them back up to his mouth, he kissed my fingers. I found his mouth to be one of the sexiest parts of his body. With my eyes focused on his lips, I reached up and kissed them, dragging my tongue over them as I pulled away. Conner reached up to me for another kiss before I could back away. His arms reached around my back and pulled me into his chest. It wasn’t like an erotic move, but more like he was hugging me tightly. When he stopped moving and kissed my head, I knew he wanted to talk before we went any further.
Because I felt like this was going to be our last time together, I didn’t want to taint the moment with a relationship ending conversation. I reached my hand down between our body and took his hard shaft into my hand.
He grabbed my arm. “Not so fast, Blaze. We have all night for that. I’ve had the worst week of my life and I can’t wait another damn minute to find out what is really goin’ on.”
I let go of his length, feeling defeated, I rolled over so that I was beside him. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”
He leaned up on his elbow and traced his finger around my nipples, making them extra hard. It was hard to concentrate on a conversation with him touching any part of my body, especially the sexually sensitive ones. “Talk to me.”
“Well, Rick found my phone and accused me of having an affair. He broke it in half and said if he found out I was seeing someone he would hurt me and take away everything I loved.” I left out the death threats. If Conner knew that he would be waiting for the man in my closet with a twelve gauge.
“It doesn’t sound like anything new.” He rolled over and ran his hands through his hair. “No, something else has you freaked out. What aren’t you tellin’ me?”
“Nothing!”
He grabbed my chin and made me look into those damn green eyes. I could feel myself starting to tear up. “Tell me, Blaze.”
I closed my eyes. “He saw you leaving the salon that night. He was outside watching.”
Conner sat up in bed. “Are you fucking serious? I’m in there tellin’ you how I feel and that son of a bitch was outside the whole time?”
“He saw me running out after you, but you were already pulling awa
y. I tried to call you, but he came in and destroyed my phone, but not before scrolling through my calls and messages and calling back your number. Once he heard your voicemail greeting, he knew.”
Conner got up and started pacing around the small room. He kept shaking his head and thinking, but all I could look at was his naked body. I know it was horrible, and I was probably going to go to Hell for having extra-marital sex, but my God he was beautiful.
“Did you hear me?” Conner stood there looking at me.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I was too caught up in his nakedness.
“I said, did he hurt you?”
I think he knew the answer before I even opened my mouth. He pressed his lips together and started cussing through his teeth. The remote control went flying across the room. “Conner, I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not okay. Him touching you is not okay. None of this is okay.” He kneeled down in front of the bed and kissed one of my knees. “You tell me everything. I’m goin’ to fuckin’ kill that mother fucker.”
“Conner, no, you can’t! Please! I told him you went back to Kentucky and that you and I were just friends. He suspects it was more, but he really thinks you’re gone.”
He buried his head between my legs and I played with his brown hair. “Why would you tell him that? I ain’t afraid of his pussy ass. You let him confront me and I’ll show his ass what a real man looks like. I don’t need to lay a hand on a woman to feel good about myself.”
I let go of his head and wiped away the tears that were falling. “I told him you left to protect you. I don’t want you fighting for me. I definitely don’t want you involved in my mess.”
He ran his hands up my legs as he climbed up on the bed beside me. “Your mess is my mess, don’t you get that by now? We’re in whatever this is, together. You’re not alone anymore. You have me. Damn, woman, would you stop tryin’ to push me away when all I want to do is be with you? Are you that messed up from his abuse that you can’t see how much I want you for myself?” He kissed the side of my face and traced the back of his hand down between my breasts, before stopping it on my stomach, while his lips brushed my ear. “I’m not afraid to fight for what I want, darlin’, and you know better than anyone that I always get what I want.”
I closed my eyes and attempted to focus on the situation and not the fact that we were naked and my body was already reacting to his touch.
His hand slid down to my hips, traveling even further until it traced around the lips of my sex. A fire started between my legs that was leading to an apparent volcanic eruption. “Conner…”
“Shh, just let me love you.” In one swift move his fingers breached my opening and spread my lips. I felt them sliding inside of me right before his thumb rubbed firmly over my clit. Conner knew how to bend his fingers just the right way to send me climbing the ceiling in ecstasy. As his movements quickened, so did the tiny moans escaping my mouth. He pressed his mouth against mine and teased me with his tongue, not letting me touch it. The more he teased me with it, the more I fought to feel it mingle with mine. He licked my chin. “I want to taste every inch of you.”
“Conner, please don’t stop.” I cried out for him as my body released against his fingers. He pulled them out and rubbed my wetness all over my pussy lips.
Finally, he let me kiss him and the first time his tongue touched mine, I felt tingling through my whole body again. He grabbed my hair and bit down on my bottom lip, pulling it with him as he moved back. “I want to make love to you, Amy.”
I knew what I had to do; what I had to say. I pushed him down on the bed and climbed on top of him so that he slid right inside of me. I lifted up my ass and let it fall back down, repeating it until we found our groove. He groaned and closed his eyes, but just as he was opening them again, he looked right at me. I leaned my head back and let myself go with the movements. Conner’s length provided for the ultimate pleasure. I lifted my body up, removing him almost completely, before sitting back down abruptly. He growled and grabbed my hips to guide me to do it again. The closer I came to removing it, the more he tugged at my hips. “Do you want to get behind me?”
“No, I need to see your face.”
I don’t know if it was those words, but something sent me over the edge. As the muscular walls of my sex tightened, I felt Conner releasing. He held me still and bit down on his lip before finally pulling me down into his chest. “Please say it, Amy. I just need to hear you admit it.”
I kissed the inside of his neck and sat up to look directly at him. “I love you.”
It was the truth…
A truth that would break his heart when he found out we had to stop seeing each other.
Chapter 23
Conner
I think my damn heart skipped a beat when she said those words to me. For days I’d been so caught up with what was happening with my family and the fear of losing her, that hearing her say that made everything better.
I held Amy in my arms for a while, before carrying her to the shower and washing her down. Once we were clean, we climbed back into bed and tangled our bodies back together. It didn’t matter what we were doing as long as I was touching her.
“Conner, I came here tonight to tell you we couldn’t see each other anymore.”
It didn’t shock me. Amy was being threatened and until I could get her out of that house, she needed to keep her guard up. “You know I’m not goin’ to let that happen.”
She nodded her head and smiled, before touching her fingers to my lips. I kissed them before she could pull them away. “I know, but we’re going to have to be more discreet. I know you’re not going to like this idea, but how would you feel about meeting me here once a month?” I started to open my mouth to argue, but she put her hand over it, like I always did to her. “Before you say anything, hear me out.” She sat up and leaned her arms on my chest. “I want to be with you, Conner, I’m not going to lie about it anymore, but right now I don’t have a place to go. We can’t tell your sister about us with her and the babies going through this ordeal. She needs to come home and work things out with her husband. Until we can figure out a way to be together without having to hide, I’m just saying it would be to our benefit if we were extra careful. Besides…it would give you the time you need to finish this shit with Heather.”
I put one of my arms behind my head, so I could look down at her better. “This shit with Heather will be over in the next few days. You’re askin’ me to wait months to be with you. That ain’t fair.”
“Conner, if I can understand you needing to see things through with this Heather scheme, the least you can do is consider my idea. Don’t you want us to be together for real?”
I thought about how bad I wanted to wake up next to the woman every single day. Somehow, I knew she was right, but the fact that she’d have to go back to that house with that fucking bastard was not cool. I had to consider the bigger picture. A few months was what I needed to get my shit together and give her a place to go. “All I want is for us to be together.”
“Then we’ll make a plan.”
“I’m buying you a new phone. I don’t give a shit if you have to hide it, but you’re havin’ one. If I want to send you a damn message at midnight, I should be able to. The past few days have been hell for me.”
“They weren’t exactly great for me either. Do you know how horrible it was to know what you were all going through. I should have been there with you. I should have been there for your sister, but I knew I couldn’t dare ask that.”
The hotel was the shittiest place in the county, but having her in my arms was something beautiful. “When you live with me, you better not ever ask me for permission to do somethin’ you want to do. I want you to do it and be happy. I’ll never make you feel like a prisoner.”
“So you think I want to live with you?” She was teasing me and I appreciated her showing me that spunky side that always liked to bicker with me.
“I know you do, in fact, we’re goi
ng to be so happy living in a shack in the middle of the woods somewhere.”
“A shack?”
“Yeah, we’re goin’ to live off the land. I will go out every day to hunt for our meals, while you stay home and wash things.” I started laughing even before I finished the sentence.
She lightly smacked me on the chest. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m crazy about you, Blaze.”
“I’m thinking about going back to brown or maybe even doing skunk stripes.” She giggled and bit one of my nipples.
“Well, they don’t have hair dye in the wilderness.”
“You are not growing a beard.” She was so serious about it when she said it.
“Neither are you.” Her eyes got really big as she smacked me again.
“Eww, that is just gross.”
I pulled one of her hands to my lips and played with it against my mouth. “I’d still want you if you did have one.”
“Conner, be serious.” The big old grin on her face let me know even she got my sense of humor. “Besides, I would totally carve a shiv out of a rock and shave that shit.”
“Now that there is somethin’ I would love to see.” I loved when she smiled; when we could be together like this and just be ourselves. She never got to smile about anything and it needed to be changed.
“I have to tell you something.” She paused for a minute and got really serious. “I’m afraid to stay here the whole night with you. What if he does have someone watching us. I can’t take the chance of anything happening to you because of me. I would never forgive myself.”
I sat up on the bed and pulled her with me. My hands grabbed her on the shoulders. “Listen to me right now. I chose to be with you even when I knew you were married. At the time, hell, I didn’t even care if you were happy with him. I just wanted you for myself. If he comes after me, then it’s my problem, not yours. My priority is keeping you safe, you don’t have to worry about me. I guarantee I can take care of myself just fine. Rick may act all big and tuff, but he’s a fuckin’ pussy. No man should ever lay a hand on a woman, not ever. The fact that it’s the woman that I love, just makes me want to hurt him more.”
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