“You didn’t seriously flash him, did you?” I asked her. I knew Lake would never do that, but I hated the thought of a perv in the building. For fuck’s sake, he probably had a key to their place. My face warmed. “Where does this guy live?”
“We can handle it,” Lake started. “We’ve been handling—”
“Lake, sweetheart.” I cut her off, cracking my knuckles. “I’ll take care of it.”
Val raised a freshly made cranberry vodka in my direction. “Apartment 6E. Have at it.”
I left the girls and headed upstairs. The super was a gangly old man, short on hair and abundant in beer gut. I was pretty sure Charles would forget his pride if he knew his daughter was relying on this man for anything.
“The building’s not up to code, which you know,” I told him as he answered the door in a wife-beater. “Let’s start with the lock to the building. It needs replacing.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m visiting my girlfriend in 5C, and she needs some repairs.”
“Right.” He scratched his graying chest hair. “I have her requests. I’ll get to ’em when I can.”
He started to close the door on me, but I caught it. “I’ve done a lot of it the past few days, but she needs her radiator replaced among other things. Handle it by next week, or I’ll report you to the Attorney General’s office right before I bring the fire department by for an inspection.”
“Who the hell are you? Do you sign my paychecks?” he asked. “I’ll get to it when I get to it.”
“It’s not an empty threat.” I had no problem calling for back-up however I needed to. I’d once wanted to serve the public. There were other men out there like me and I could find them. “I’ll get the landlord on the phone right now if we need to bring him into it.”
He shook his head. “Fine. Next week. That all?”
I held the door open and added, “That’s my girlfriend down there and her roommate. Lake tells me anything I don’t want to hear, and I’ll come back for a less friendly visit. No firemen. Just you and me.”
He raised a hand. “I have no idea what you’re getting at, but I got no business with those girls. Only doing my job.”
I released the door and went back to Lake’s apartment. I didn’t like the situation, but I had to trust Lake and Val were smart enough to know what they were doing. They’d lived in New York for years after all, and Val didn’t strike me as the type to take shit.
When I walked into the kitchen, the girls were talking about Val’s ex, some guy with what sounded like a chick’s name. It didn’t appear that Lake and I would be getting the alone time I’d planned on. “I’m going to hop in the shower,” I said, giving Lake a look that made her stand and follow me into the bathroom.
“She broke up with her boyfriend,” Lake said.
I stripped off my shirt and flipped on the water. “I heard. What does that mean for me?”
“She needs me.” Lake gave me a reproachful look. “She’s sad.”
“I’m sad.” I pulled her into my arms as the mirror steamed over. “I don’t want to share you. It’s our last night together.”
Lake kissed me quickly on the lips. “I just need to listen to her for a bit. Clean up and go wait for me in the bedroom.”
“Don’t be long,” I said, releasing her.
After I showered, I spent the next thirty minutes on Lake’s bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to her clock radio as I fantasized about all the things we were supposed to be doing. When she walked in the bedroom, closing the door lightly behind her, I was already hard. I sat up, reaching for her, pulling her onto the mattress. “Come here.”
“Shh.”
“Why?” I asked.
Her long hair brushed the tops of my forearms. “Val’s right out there.”
I took off her top, laying her back on the bed. “I don’t care.”
“I do. I don’t want her to hear us.”
“Then she should leave.” I opened Lake’s jeans, running my hands over the smoothness of her stomach. She lifted up to get out of her pants but all I saw was the beg of her hips, welcoming me. When I had her stripped from the waist down, I said, “Turn over.”
“Can you be quiet?”
“If I have to be. Can you?”
She reddened, then flipped onto her stomach. With my knees on each side of her, I opened the clasp of her bra to run my hands over her back. My thumbs touched in the middle, over her spine.
“Are you going to give me a massage?” she asked.
“Later, if you want.”
She turned her face, resting her cheek on the pillow. “I’d like to give you one.”
Alice in Chains came on the radio as the DJ introduced “Nutshell.” I gathered Lake’s hair in my hands and moved it aside. “How come?”
“I used to look at you on the construction site and think you worked so hard,” she said. “I wished I could go to your house and make you feel better after.”
“Yeah?” I slid my hands down her sides to grip her waist. I could feel her ribs, and she had a smooth, slight ass. She wasn’t eating enough. “Tell me more about that.”
“When you get back, if you decide to do construction, I’ll give you massages after. I’ll light candles in here and you can tell me where you’re sore. I’ll work on your back until you’re healed. I used to think it was so unfair that you worked your body so hard.”
I lowered my hands, prying her cheeks apart a little. She shivered. Immediately, I thought about taking her this way, pressing into her from behind. This was why I couldn’t be with her that night in the truck. I couldn’t be trusted. I might’ve ruined her that night, and if I hadn’t, I would’ve soon after. One time with her wouldn’t have been enough. I’d only been in New York a few days, and my mind was already running with all the sordid ways I could have her.
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“Miss what?”
“Construction.”
“You just finished telling me how unfair you thought it was.”
“But it was a better fit than sales.”
“I told you, I’ll take the first job I find. If it’s in sales, then I’ll do that. I’ll look at construction, too.”
“Don’t do that,” she said softly. “I want you to do something that makes you happy.”
“I know you do, but that’s a luxury I won’t have, at least not when I first get here. Maybe down the line I can concentrate on finding something more fulfilling.”
She turned her head to lie on the opposite cheek. “I’ll find a new job that pays better.”
“I don’t want you to worry about that,” I said.
“I’m not. Waitressing jobs are a dime a dozen here.”
I couldn’t talk her out of it, so I went at it from another angle. “Then you’ll have no trouble avoiding the graveyard shift.”
“I’ll avoid the twenty-four-hour job listings,” she said, shifting under me, “if you promise not to worry.”
“Sure,” I said, as if it were a remote possibility, and squeezed the tops of her thighs. Her skin was unnaturally soft all the way down. I ran my knuckle over the backside of her knee. “You have the finest blonde hairs here.”
“Sometimes I forget to shave that part.”
“At the tops of your thighs, too,” I continued. “I saw them when you wore those short shorts at camp.”
“I can shave higher.”
I shook my head to myself. It wasn’t what I meant. “When I was in solitary, I used to think about that, how I’d seen a part of your leg you hadn’t meant anyone to, and how it was so close to heaven, and I would get lost …”
“Lost how?” she asked, her back expanding with an inhale.
“Turn over again.”
She didn’t. “Are we going to have sex?”
“Eventually. I want to look at you first.”
“Manning?”
“Yeah, Birdy …”
“Why do you want to look at me so mu
ch? It makes me self-conscious. I don’t want to turn over and lie here while you look at me.”
She had no idea how touching her, seeing her, was a delicacy I never thought I’d ever be allowed to taste, much less gorge on. I was leaving tomorrow. I needed this to sustain me while I was gone. “Don’t be self-conscious. I just like the way you look. Turn over.”
With a sigh, she moved onto her back but kept her hands over her breasts. She was uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to push her. I was eager to get to the point where she could relax around me, though. “My cell in solitary was about half the size of this room,” I said to put her at ease. “Imagine having to stay locked in here for a few months … or, in some cases, years.”
“Did the guards talk to you?”
“No. They just pushed food through a hole most days. Then, they’d take me to the rec area, which was a slightly bigger room without windows where I could shoot hoops alone for an hour. And they’d watch me shower.”
She widened her eyes. “Really?”
I nodded slowly, bringing her ankle to my mouth. “So I wouldn’t try to pull anything.”
“I thought about you so much while you were gone. Did you think about me?”
“Every day.” I inhaled a breath by her calf, watching her face as I ran my stubble along her skin.
She shuddered. “How did you think about me?”
I could tell what she was looking for. It was my own fault. I’d kept her in the dark about these things, because of her age and innocence. She probably felt insecure about that, wondered if I’d thought of her at all. But of course I had, in all manners of ways. With her leg in my hand, shame tightened my chest. It should’ve turned me off to remember fantasizing about her while she was underage—I’d been unable to stop, even after I’d learned my dad was a pedophile. Instead, my erection raged on. Back then, I hadn’t been able to have Lake in any other way but in my mind. Now she was lying in front of me, still young and sweet and wide-eyed at heart, but with the body and mind of a woman.
I found a condom in the nightstand, put it on, and got horizontal on the mattress, lying between her legs so my lower half hung off the bed. I parted the blonde curls over her mound and kissed her once.
Her hands went into my hair, grasping me as I licked her like a peach-flavored ice cream cone that held the sweetest nectar at its core. When she got so worked up that she was trying to push my head out of her legs, I crawled over her and entered her quickly. She covered her mouth to muffle her moans, but I removed her hand and kissed her, swallowing them for her. Having to be quiet irritated me. I cradled the top of her head so she wouldn’t hit the wall and spent my frustration by fucking her fast and hard. When she was close, I put my other hand over her mouth so she could scream into it, but we weren’t fooling anyone. I looked into her eyes and she didn’t turn away, maybe because my hands held her head in place. As she accepted the length of me with each contraction, I came before I was ready.
I scanned her face. Her cheeks were flushed where my fingers pressed into them. I removed my hand, and her labored breaths came hot against my chin. “Damn,” I panted. “I wanted to look at you more before we did that. Couldn’t help myself.”
She spread a hand on my back. “You can try again later.”
As my heart rate slowed from hammering to pounding, I released the tension from my muscles, giving her my weight. She was sweating, sweet-smelling but briny. Me? I was far from sated. I’d had her body, now I wanted more. I wanted her to know, every day of her life, that she could tell me all her thoughts and desires and secrets, and I’d never tire of hearing them. And for that kind of intimacy, I had to reciprocate.
“It turns me on thinking about that time I couldn’t have you,” I admitted.
She nodded lightly. “It’s the same for me.”
“No it’s not. You were underage. Innocent. It was wrong.”
She sighed, fluttering her fingers over the back of my head. “But you didn’t do anything, Manning, so it’s okay.”
“I wanted to. Very badly.” I lifted my head to see her reaction. “When I was in solitary, I’d jerk myself off thinking about fucking you—and you were seventeen, Lake.”
She bit her bottom lip. When she moved, I became more aware of my cock softening between her legs. “I’d be upset if you hadn’t thought of me that way. You have to forgive yourself.”
Should I be forgiven for all the things I planned to do to Lake in order to ensure she was always mine? I wanted to make her feel so good, she could never leave me. “It’s more than that,” I said. “There’s something you should know.”
Uncertainty crossed her face. “About?”
“My dad.”
The tension in her arms eased, but the wrinkles in her forehead didn’t. “What is it?”
I ran a thumb between her eyebrows, smoothing her skin. “He was … he is …” I worried once it was out there, Lake would see everything differently. I wouldn’t blame her. I was inside her right now. She might shove me off, disgusted with me. I was at my most vulnerable, and that was the reason I both wanted and didn’t want to tell her. “He molested Maddy before she died.”
Lake’s eyes instantly filled with tears. “But she was nine.”
I gripped both sides of Lake’s face as it screwed up, lowering mine right above hers. “Can you understand why I feel this way? Why being with you made me feel like I was no better than him? I can compartmentalize it better now, but back then, I couldn’t. I would think of you and feel like a monster.”
She covered her face and began to cry. “No.”
“Lake.”
She shook her head. “Stop.”
My heart pounded. This was exactly what I’d been afraid of. I thought of all the despair and rage I’d felt since learning this about my dad, and now I was passing that onto the one person I wanted to protect. “Do you want me to leave?” I asked.
“Leave?” she asked. “You’re so … why? Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“I’m so angry with you.”
I pulled her hands away, confused. “Angry?”
“How can you think you’re anything like that, Manning? How could you spend all those years living with this? I know you’re not a monster. You know you aren’t. Please, Manning, stop doing this to us.”
“Doing what?”
“Don’t put yourself, or us, in that box. It’s not you. You loved me, didn’t you? You understood me. You wanted to care for me.”
“Yes.”
“And you never, not once, touched me.” Redness rimmed her eyes. “There’s no way you can equate what we had with his actions. How could you? It makes me want to physically hurt you to get you to open your eyes, and your dad, he … he—” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“I know. I know. Don’t cry.” I kissed the tip of her nose, still holding her wrists even though she struggled to cover her face again. “Stop.”
“How long have you known this?”
“I got the letter while I was in prison.”
“When?”
I looked her full in the face, trying to think of how to explain. She came to the conclusion on her own, though.
“I knew there had to be a reason you went to solitary,” she said. “Something that sent you over the edge. I knew it.”
I kissed her again. I was crushing her, so I let her arms go to lift myself off her, but she immediately hugged me closer. So much for her threats of physical harm. “I went to SHU a few nights after I read the letter,” I said. “One of the guards had seen you trying to get in to visit me—”
“He saw me?” she asked.
“Yes. He was a piece of shit, always trying to get under my skin. He’d talked shit about Tiffany before, but when he started in on you, and how young you were, and the things he wanted to do to you—”
“Oh, no. Oh, Manning.” She dug her fingernails into my back. “Is that why …?”
I nodded slowly, my eyes moving between her lips,
ears, forehead, eyes. All of her. “I couldn’t take it. Not after the letter I’d read from my dad. Suddenly, that guard was a molester who could get to you while I was stuck in there. That guard became my dad. He became me.”
Lake’s hands shook as she touched my face. Her tears made straight lines down her temples. “I’m sorry. I should’ve listened. I never should’ve gone there.”
“I’m grateful that you did. At the time, I would’ve spent more time in SHU if it meant keeping you away from there, but now that so much time has passed … I can admit I would’ve done the same if I were you. And it gives me some peace knowing you never forgot about me.”
“I tried. Did you ever read any of my letters?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“At the house.”
“Do you think Tiffany knows about them?”
“They’re hidden in the attic, but with her, anything’s possible.” I thumbed away some of the wetness on Lake’s face. She was the first person I’d ever told, and with that information out of my brain, I realized Lake was right. What she and I had wasn’t bad or immoral or wrong. She was a part of it, and her goodness always prevailed, and I was not that monster. “You know what?”
She barely even whispered. “What?”
“Instead of continuing to blame myself for something I never had control over, I’m going to make it right, Lake. I’m going to be everything my father wasn’t. You and I will have a family one day, and—”
She cried more, and I had to nuzzle her to make sure she heard every word. “And I’ll spend a lifetime making up for his mistakes. I will be the best father to our children.”
“You can’t say that,” she said, sobbing into my neck. “It’s too early. We’re not even official.”
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