by Laura Day
She lost track of the orgasms; they came so fast and hard, one on top of the other, that they blurred into one mind-bending surge of ecstasy. She came and came, and she screamed for him, screamed like she was dying, and she heard him beneath her, crying out as well, urging her on, urging her to come again, come once more, let him taste her one more time.
All those smaller fireworks came together in a grand finale; her body clenched around him, surging like an exploding star, and instead of screams, she found utter silence. A moment where the world went still and white and utterly calm. Her eyes, squeezed tight for so long, opened, and she saw his eyes, looking for her gaze, and she caught it, held it, her hand reaching down and touching his face.
And then the surge came, the world rushing back in, and she threw back her head and howled. For the pain of the past few months, for the agony and irritation of being without her home and her dog and a sense of stability. For feeling alone in the most loving and caring relationship she’d ever had. She surged through all of that, feeling it entirely, and then let it wash away as Mason bore her down to the wood floor. She was limp, exhausted, but not so much that she couldn’t cling to him when he tried to stand. “Baby, please,” he murmured. “I want to fuck you.”
He’d stripped down at some point; she had no idea when. She’d lost her shirt and bra, too. She had a vague memory of flinging them off because she wanted to play with her own nipples. “It’s okay,” she said, knowing suddenly that it was. “I went on the pill. A couple weeks ago. And we’re both clean, so— it’s okay.”
He was as still and silent as the world had been a few moments ago. She could feel the heat of his erection against her thigh, and the weight of his gaze on her eyes. “Are you absolutely sure? I am okay with still using them, if you want to. I mean— no method is perfect, but two can be better than one, and I get that it’s a trust thing—”
She pulled him down to her, capturing his mouth with hers. Her hand slipped down between them and stroked the satin-skin of his cock, feeling the moisture swell out of him with her strokes. “Consent,” she said, her mouth moving against his. “Enthusiastic consent, even. If you want one for you, then that is fine, but you don’t need one for me.”
“I don’t deserve you,” he breathed.
She laughed and shook her head. “No one deserves anyone else. But we can try and be worthy of each other. I’m game if you are.”
He trembled at her entrance; she could feel the sweet heat of the tip, with no barriers between them. He pressed her open, slowly, moving like she was a virgin; and in a way, she supposed, she was to this.
Of all the crazy things she’d done in college, she’d never let anything this close in her life. People had made noise about how different it was, how much more intense, and in a way she supposed they were right, but it wasn’t so much the physical difference as the one in her mind and her heart.
She arched up to meet him, flesh to flesh, and groaned at the sweet completion she felt as he slid utterly home. His hands curled up around her shoulder blades, cupping her shoulders and holding her firmly. His mouth was close to her ear, and she could hear him panting heavily, even though he wasn’t moving. The muscles of his back trembled with tension. “Holy shit,” he whispered, again and again. “Holy shit, baby, oh my god.”
“I love you,” she whispered back, there on the floor of his apartment, just feet from the door.
She bucked her hips, sliding him out of her, and then just a little deeper in. He made a noise, a keening, and then he was driving into her, fast, deep, and it didn’t hurt, it didn’t make her wince; it felt like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the promise kept, the moment when a minor chord resolves.
“Need to…” he groaned, and rose up just enough that he could look into her eyes. His control was held by a ragged thread, she could see that. His pace slowed, and she could see the entire ring of his irises in his eyes as he fought to hold on a little longer, extend the sensation just a little more. “Need to see you…”
She wrapped her legs around his hips, hooking her ankles together and pulling him in tight to her. It undid him. She watched as his upper body froze, completely still, while his hips drove into her in short, rapid thrusts. She could feel him convulsing against her, feel him emptying inside of her, the rush of heat as he spent himself within her.
She held his silence inside of her and smiled, stroking her hands down his back as he embraced the sensation, and then came back down to her, holding her against him, rocking softly back and forth as he whispered nonsense words in a gentle tone. She held him just as tight, feeling completely loved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One thing they never showed in porn, she thought later, as she went to the bathroom to pee, was how much easier clean-up was with a condom. Her thighs were cold and sticky, and she took a moment to wipe herself off, chuckling. It was worth it, she was sure of that. But one more thing that no one told women about sex. She ought to write a book.
When she went back out to the living room, Mason had found his jeans and shorts again. It felt awkward to be naked while he was dressed, so she started collecting her own clothing from the various places it had landed.
“I— that was amazing,” he said.
She glanced at him, then leaned over to adjust her breasts into the cups of her bra. “Sounds like a ‘but’ is incoming.”
“I meant to talk to you first,” he said. “I didn’t mean to— push myself on you.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “Well, you did at first, but you stopped before I even had to ask you to, and then you were only doing what I asked you to. So no harm, no foul.”
He patted the couch next to him, and she sat down, but when she reached out to take his hand, he squeezed hers and then pulled back. Okay, that was unexpected. She felt the walls she’d been working so hard to disassemble try to rebuild themselves in her heart; she fought the sensation, but it was difficult, given the day, not to just pull her knees up to her chest and call the whole damn thing off. “I need to know,” he said finally, “Why you called Munch and not me. Why you called Jack and not me. I need to know why you don’t trust me.”
She took a deep breath. This was both the conversation that needed to happen, and the one she’d been hoping to avoid. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. But… Shit, Mason, the last time a guy threatened me, look what happened!”
The look on his face chilled down to the temperature of cold oceans. “Yes, I’m sure I should ask forgiveness for protecting you from a guy who would have killed you if he’d thought for one second that you knew enough to be a danger to him.”
“It’s not that—I appreciate you keeping me safe. But I— we should have gone to the cops in the beginning, Mason. We wouldn’t be in this hole now.”
“You’re right. You wouldn’t be in this hole. You’d be in your pretty little house with your pretty little dog, and I’d be in jail on charges of embezzlement, guns trafficking, and distribution. But your ass would be perfectly safe, so what’s the difference?”
“You don’t know that,” Caroline said, working to keep her tone calm and even. “Jack’s friend is going to try and get you a deal.”
“What deal? I don’t need a deal, because I haven’t done anything!”
She stared at him, and he stared right back. He didn’t flinch or hesitate. “Where’s Declan, then?”
The grin that spread over his face was fueled by nothing but cruelty and pain. “I could tell you,” He said, enunciating each word like a stage actor after an elocution lesson, “But then, I would have to kill you.”
If she’d been standing, she would have stumbled away from him. Sitting, all she could do was press herself back away from him, into the arm of the couch. She saw uncertainty flicker through his eyes, but it was too late. What he’d said— there was no way to take it back.
She stood up and shook her head. “I’m not sure what you think is going on here,” she said. “I was trying to protect you. I was t
rying to handle my problems like an adult. I went to Teddy because I’ve known him my entire life. I went to Jack because I was scared Randall would move on him next. You were here. You have your own personal army ready to defend you. I love you, Mason, but I can’t—I’m not a rebel. I’m not a renegade. I don’t know how to live like you live.”
“No one’s asking you to live this way,” he said, and she knew he didn’t mean it, knew that he was as frightened by the coldness of the words as she was, but he said it all the same.
She didn’t know what button of his she was pressing right now to make him act this way, to make him say these things that seemed calculated to do nothing other than hurt her. But he was still doing it, and for all the screwed up things she’d been taught as a kid, she’d also been taught that if someone is hurting you on purpose, that they’re the asshole, not you, and that it was okay—even encouraged—to walk away from them.
“That’s a shame,” she said, forcing her tone to stay level, forcing herself not to cry. “Because what I was working up to saying to you was that I was trying to learn. But this is not the world I grew up in, and I need your help to figure out how to walk in it. “
He stood up too, and reached out to her, but she brushed his hands away.
“Mason, no,” she said. “I can’t— I don’t know what’s going on, why we’re fighting right now, but I can’t do this. I need some time away from all of this. Jack thinks that his friend will be able to offer you a deal, testify against the cop, about what you know about the club’s involvement in all of the dirty dealings Declan had, and you won’t be prosecuted for any of it. I’m going to— I think I’m going to get out of town for a couple of days. Go see Gloria. See what I feel about all of this when I’m not getting— getting threatened and assaulted and followed all damn day long.” She touched his face, and brushed away the wetness that had swelled out of his eyes. “Just give me a few days.”
“I don’t know who I am without you anymore,” he said. “I’m scared to death that they’re going to take you away, and I’m going to be lost all over again, just like when Anna died.”
“I get that,” she said. “But that’s—not actually a healthy way to love someone. You know? And I’m not saying I’m some bastion of emotional health, but the stuff we’re trying to survive right now—maybe it’s too much for both of us.”
“Please don’t go,” he said, reaching out for her, but she slipped away from his hand, something it seemed like she was always doing.
“I need to.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She was barely three blocks away before her phone started to ring. At a red light, she glanced at the caller ID: Teddy. She sighed. Mason had probably called him, or something; she couldn’t bring herself to answer.
The night she’d driven out of town, she’d been so distracted that she had no idea how long it would take her to get back to Emily’s clinic. And once she got there, it was something of a crapshoot as to what she’d do. Take a long weekend to get her head on straight? Take a leave of absence and spend some time hanging with Gloria, maybe take a trip to the ocean? They’d done it once before, and there was nothing quite as bizarre and hysterical as watching a dog try to herd waves. It would be a balm for her soul, as people said.
She pulled over for a moment, long enough to set the GPS in her car, and then pointed her hood ornament to the south. Her phone rang again, and she tapped it to ignore the call, forcing herself to focus on the road.
She needed country music. Wasn’t that what people listened to when everything had gone to hell, and they needed a good breakup song? She’d never really gone in for all that twang and misery herself, but she didn’t think she could stand the grungy, industrial hard rock that she’d loved in college right now, either. She turned on her radio to try and find a station that didn’t make her cry harder.
That was when Caroline saw the flashing lights in her rearview mirror.
She thought she might throw up; she thought she might slam her foot on the gas and head for the hills. A year ago, she would have sworn, and pulled her car over to the side of the road, not be convinced that someone had put out an APB on her car and was about to have her taken to jail.
But slamming her foot on the gas wouldn’t work, long-term, and vomiting would just make her car smell awful. She probably had a taillight out or something; she’d been so distracted that she wouldn’t have noticed. She pulled the car to the curb and shut off the engine, her hands in her lap as she waited for the officer to approach with the familiar refrain of “License and registration, please.”
Only that wasn’t what happened. The flashlight shone in her eyes so bright and distracting that she put her hand up, ducking away and trying to focus. “Hey,” she said, her tone sharp and mean, and her heart was beating too fast, too afraid.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Detective Randall said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “On the entrance to the interstate. You wouldn’t be heading out of town, would you?”
“Am I under arrest?” Caroline knew her tone was snippy, the response of a white, middle-class accountant, not the girlfriend of a drug dealing biker, but at the same time, she was well aware of her rights.
“You’re a person of interest in a potential homicide,” he said, and everything froze, every cell and every fragment of time. “We’re going to go to the station and talk. You’re going to drive nice and slow, both hands on the wheel, and I’m going to follow you. And we’re going to play awfully nice. How’s that sound to you?”
“Do I need a lawyer to meet me there?” She was incredibly proud of the way her voice only shook a little, and she was still able to meet the spot—well, where she figured his eyes were, above the shocking beam of the flashlight.
He chuckled, all Gomer Pyle aw-shucks-ma’am, and the flashlight moved down, leaving an ugly afterimage on her eyes. “I can’t think why that would be necessary. After all, lawyers are for people who have something to hide. And you keep telling me that you have nothing to hide.”
The way the light shimmered over his face, blocking out his eyes, his mouth, whatever she tried to focus on, made him look even more like a demon, even more like a monster. He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and walked away, and she blinked, trying to clear her vision well enough to feel like she could drive. She grabbed her phone and tapped to the favorites screen. Both hands on the wheel, he’d said. She had to be quick.
She tapped on Mason’s picture, and sent the shortest message she could think of that would make any kind of sense at all. cop. get lawyer. ask jack. She hit send, and then she turned the key, starting the car, and drove across town to the police station. Her hands were shaking, and her stomach was twisted into knots, but in a weird way, she felt confident. Strong. This was all coming to a head now. She could feel that in her bones.
As she pulled into a parking spot, she saw her phone’s screen light up with a text, but she didn’t get a chance to even read it, much less reply. As soon as her car was parked, Randall was there, opening her door and escorting her into the station. He didn’t touch her; that was for the best. She was pretty sure she might have screamed and maybe hit him if he had. And assaulting a police officer on the grounds of the police station would possibly be the stupidest thing she’d ever done.
She held her head high as he paraded her through the station. She’d never actually been inside of a police station before; it surprised her how much it looked like any other state bureaucracy. A counter with a cutout in the glass, and an officer sitting at the desk behind it. They were buzzed through a door, and then he sat her down in a room that could have come straight out of any Prime Time TV cop drama. A metal table, a couple of battered chairs, a long mirror on one wall. She was seated at the table, and Randall gave her a smile. “I’ll be with you shortly,” he said.
She settled down to wait. She had a feeling it would take a while.
It wasn’t, in fact. He let her sweat for just a couple of minutes, and then appeared w
earing that aw-shucks smile, and carrying two cups of coffee. He set one down in front of her; she glanced down at the light brown liquid and tried not to wrinkle her nose.
“Cream and sugar?” he asked.
“No, in fact.” She gave him her prettiest smile. “I take my coffee black.”
He reached out and switched the two mugs, taking the offensive sweetened coffee himself, and putting what had been his own unadulterated brew in front of her. She nodded a thank you and took a sip to be polite. It was swill, tasted like it had come out of one of those single-cup brewers that were so popular now. And as a gesture, she felt sure it was supposed to soften her up, make her feel safer, more compliant. And maybe it would have, if everything else about Randall didn’t set her teeth on edge.
“Am I suspected of something, Detective Randall?”
He shrugged. “Should I suspect you?”