Destroy Me (Crystal Gulf Book 1)

by Shana Vanterpool

  “I need this,” he moans in my ear. “Forever.”

  “It’s yours!” I gasp.

  After a while we both slow down, the roughness and desperateness out of our systems. Bach lifts up and grabs my hips, quickly lifting me into the air and laying me back down so that I’m straddling him. I didn’t think he could get any deeper. But the moment I’m on top of him he slides in one more inch, stretching me deliciously. That additional inch makes me shiver and cry out. I brace myself against his chest as he grips my hips and moves me against him. I let him set the pace before I take over, grinding on him the way I’ve always wanted. I let any doubt I may still feel go and ride him until he’s the one moaning my name. His hands leave my hips and grab my breasts, massaging my nipples between his fingers. He closes his lips around me and sucks. The sensation of him inside of me, nibbling on my sensitive nipples, and our sweat sliding between our skin sends me over the edge.

  I can feel it coming, something so intense it’s going to break me, and I can’t wait for it. I grind harder, wanting more, more, until a tiny shiver shakes me. The shivers grow until they break me. Pleasure slams into me, controlling my body as I succumb to Bach’s storm. I can hear myself screaming. My inner muscles clench and tremble around him as he takes control again. He pulls me down on his chest, wraps his arms around me, and then fills me mercilessly rough as my orgasm takes each thrust and asks for more. They work together until light and stars and magic explode behind my eyes. I squeeze my eyes shut and let the incredible wave of pleasure wash over. In that moment, where Bach’s crying out my name and I’m coming apart in his arms, I fall completely, disastrously, in love.

  Let the lighting strike me.

  Destroy me, Bach.

  I slump against his chest, pulling breath into my deprived lungs. We remain that way, with his arms holding me and his chest rising and falling rapidly as we both try to contain ourselves.

  “I love you, Harley.” His voice is rough with emotion.

  I slowly lift off his hips, easing his thickness out of me. Another shiver tears through me when his penis hits that ache on its way out. I balance precariously on top him as another earthshattering orgasm makes me quiver. When I open my eyes he’s laughing warmly at me. Sweat drips down his face. I want to lean over and lick it off. “I love you too, Bach. Sorry.” I grin indulgently at him. “I love you.”

  “Take your time. I love watching you.”

  “Did you … ?” I look down at my vagina.

  “Come inside of you? Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about it.” He looks worried.

  I won’t tell him that having his semen inside of me is unsettlingly turning me on again. Or that I want it like that every single time. I lean over and kiss his mouth softly. “No one’s ever done that.” The more of him the better.

  “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  I settle back down on his lap and lay against his chest. “Don’t worry about it. Mom has made me get the shot every three months since I started college. Apparently she never believed I was as much of a good girl as she pretended.”

  He relaxes beneath me. “Dylan never did it?”

  “No. He always wanted to use a condom. He didn’t trust it for some reason.”

  “I trust it.” His hand snakes around my back and grabs my ass. “Let’s test it out again.”

  He wraps me in his arms and stands up with me, carrying me to his bedroom.

  “I feel like I’ve never had sex before.” He lays me down gently on his bed and opens my legs. “That shit before was nothing. I didn’t feel anything. Making love to you is fucking amazing.” He falls down between my legs, hard as a rock already. “Amazing, Harley.” He teases my opening with his penis. I slip up and hiss when he slides in. “Are you sore?”

  “A little,” I admit, wanting to cry suddenly for some reason. “I’m sorry.”

  He laughs warmly at me when I do. “Don’t be sorry, babe. If you need a break tell me. I don’t mind waiting.”

  “I don’t want to wait. I don’t know why I’m crying.” I laugh in disbelief at myself. “Keep going, Bach. I want you too.”

  “You’re crying because I just gave you the most mind-blowing orgasm of your life. Give your brain a chance to catch up.” His lips caress mine softly as he eases from between my legs to lie on his side next to me. “Get used to that.”

  I still haven’t caught my breath. I don’t think he has either. We both lay there panting, remembering how one another made us feel. At least that’s what I pretend he’s thinking about. With Bach I can never tell. I roll over and look at his face. “You love me?”

  He opens his eyes slowly, now half-asleep. “I do.”

  I reach up and grab one his pillows. “Here. You sleep on this and I’ll sleep on you.” His chest rises and falls beneath my head. Before I count ten breaths he’s already fallen asleep. It takes me a little while longer to follow him. My body needs it but my mind isn’t nearly as exhausted.

  Nothing will ever be the same. Bach’s in my heart in a way Dylan hadn’t been. Nothing will make me forget the love Dylan brought me, but there is a part of me who wonders if he ever took my breath away the way Bach does. Breathlessness is a prerequisite. Laughing comes second.

  Just before unconsciousness takes over I hear him whimper. My eyes snap open. His hand swats at something that isn’t there. He’s dreaming again. I don’t wake him immediately. I have a feeling that Bach will never tell me what he’s running from if I don’t make him.

  I reach down and grab his hand, and then I listen to Bach burn alive.

  “Cereal,” he mumbles childishly. His face shifts into anger. “I want to watch cartoons,” his quiet, pained voice demands.

  He flinches in his sleep as if someone hit him. His free hand reaches up to touch his face as soft little whimpers escape his lips. I should’ve woken him up right then and there. Bach doesn’t whimper. But Bach is whimpering and I’m too stunned to move. I watch his mouth intently as words pour from his lips.

  One strangled whisper breaks my heart. “Daddy’s sorry, son. Come out.”

  In bed Bach freezes. All I can think is, Don’t do it. Don’t come out.

  “You promise?” Bach whispers, trembling beneath me. Seconds pass that way until Bach screams out loud. “Go away!”

  For the next few minutes Bach’s breathing deepens and his feet kick the sheets away, as if he’s running around in circles. Tears stream down his face. “Momma!” he begs heartbreakingly. I wipe my eyes and kiss his cheek, mixing our tears together. The smell of urine suddenly permeates my nose.

  “I don’t want to get burned,” he cries, his legs kicking violently.

  I shove at him hard. “Bach. Get up. Wake up, honey.”

  He bolts upright in bed and scrambles away from me, from his nightmare. With his back pressed against the wall he finally looks at me. When our eyes lock Bach falls apart. A deep terrifying sob tears out of his chest and he crawls to me. I wrap my arms around his body and hold him as hard as I can.

  “You’re safe,” I promise. “You’re safe with me.”

  “I was only seven,” he argues against my skin. “He told me to do it. I hate the smell of piss.”

  “Shh. It’s just a nightmare. You’re not seven anymore. You’re twenty-two. You’re grown.”

  “I can’t take this shit anymore, Harley. Almost every night for fifteen years. I need a drink.”

  I hold him tighter. This is the perfect condition for him to run. His muscles are tense, his legs hanging off the bed, and his breathing hasn’t slowed. I almost want to let him to relieve the heartache and pain clinging to him, but his wellbeing is more important than his emotions at the moment.

  “What happened?”

  He pushes away from me. As he crawls out of bed he notices the ring of urine. His eyes fill with dread. He can’t even look at me. He drops to his knees and stares at the urine as if it’s going to drag him back into his nightmare. “I hate piss. I pissed myself that day twice. It
was stronger than the smell of fire. Of smoke. Of the skin on my legs burning.” He stretches out his leg and shows me an uneven patch of scarring on his lower calf. “This is the only one that never healed.”

  I get up and lock his bedroom door. Then I slide down in front of it and sit, looking at him crouching on the floor. “What happened to you?”

  His mouth opens but nothing comes out. “No one else knows but me, my dad, and my mom can pretend, but I know she knows.”

  “You love me. I have a right to know what’s hurting you. How can I help you if I don’t know what’s wrong?”

  “You can’t help me, Harley. It already happened. All you can do is be here when I wake up. Seeing your face is the best damn cure.”

  The idea that all I have to do is exist for him to be better should comfort me. It doesn’t. In fact it makes me even more upset. “What about when I’m not here, Bach?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?” he demands with panic in his voice. “Why wouldn’t you be here with me, Harley?”

  “I’m just saying,” I backpedal, seeing the worry in his eyes. “What if I’m at school or in my apartment? I’m not going anywhere. Calm down.”

  “Don’t leave me,” he begs, shoulders slouching.

  “Please tell me what happened.”

  He starts crawling to me and then realizes a number of things. One: he’s still naked. Two: he’s covered in his own urine. And three: he’s doing it all in front of me. “Fuck,” he hisses, pushing to his feet. He grabs a towel off the floor and wipes himself down then marches over to his drawer and gets a pair of shorts out. “Get dressed, Harley.”

  “No. You’re running. Stop it.” I cross my arms over my breasts. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Are you going to be here when I wake up?” He has his back to me as he attempts to wipe up his urine. He curses harshly then rips the sheets off his bed angrily. “Well, will you!” he snaps.

  “Every morning,” I vow.

  “Move, Harley. I want to wash these.” He stands in front of me with is dirty sheets.

  I look into his frightened eyes. “If I let you out do you promise not to run?”

  “I promise. If I tell you will you promise not to either? Promise me, because this isn’t a cute bedtime story. This shit killed me,” he admits, his voice breaking.

  “I promise.” I rise to my feet and open the door for him. I follow him toward the back of his house to the laundry room.

  He dumps the sheets into the washing machine and then pours almost an entire bottle of soap over them. “I’m going to have to buy a new mattress.” This of all things seems to bother him the most. “I don’t have money for a mattress.” He hops up onto the dryer and stares down into the washer as his sheets begin to slosh around. “I pissed all over myself.”

  I’m extremely unsettled. I don’t want to let him know how, for the first time, my hands are shaking too. That there’s a sense of dread in my stomach that I’ve never felt before. “Bach,” I whisper.

  He won’t look at me. “My dad tried to kill me.”

  I lean against the washer for support. “How?”

  “He killed me.”

  “How?” I can barely hear myself.

  When he finally looks up the torture in his eyes is so real I know he was never running from me, or from himself. Bach was running from his dad the entire time.

  “He was a drug addict. Everyone knew it. Even as a kid I knew what he was. He abused me. He’d get high and come home and kick my ass. He’d get drunk and kick my ass. He kicked my ass with Dylan around. He kicked my ass every chance he could. Momma let him. She let him do whatever he wanted to me, to us, whenever he wanted, because she wanted him. He kicked her ass too. She drank a lot, cried a lot, and spent a lot of time at the bar. She never told me she loved me, never hugged me, and never acted like moms are supposed to. I guess she was raised the same way, you know? She didn’t love me because no one ever loved her. How can you love me, Harley, when my own mother didn’t?”

  I reach over with trembling fingers and wipe the tears that run down his cheek. “Easy. I’m doing it right now. I promise to love you so hard, so much, that you won’t ever miss it.” I grab his face and force his eyes on mine. “You never have to worry about that.”

  He looks down with his face still in my grip. “You’re still naked.”

  “No. Sex isn’t love for you right now. I am not having sex with you again to prove a point that was proven the moment I promised it was.” I reach over into a hamper nearby and grab a white button down shirt and throw it on over my naked body, ignoring the smell of flowers and sugar clinging to it. “Keep going,” I urge him.

  He hops down from the dryer and heads into the living room. Without a word I follow. He sits in the video game chair and powers on the television. He doesn’t put on the headpiece. Instead, he plays without the volume and tells me the most heartbreaking story I’ve ever heard.

  “The morning it all happened, all I wanted to do when I woke up was pour a huge bowl of cereal and sit in front of the couch and watch cartoons.” He shoots something on the screen and smiles sadly. “We were always too poor for cereal. But Mom bought cereal the night before and it was all I could think about. Lucky Charms. You like those, Harley?”

  “Yeah, Bach. I like those.”

  “Anyway, I had my cereal and I knew which cartoon I was going to watch. I come out into the living and my dad’s sleeping on the couch. His needles and drugs are all over the living room. I told him I wanted to watch cartoons and he backhanded me. I spilled my cereal all over the floor. We never had anything. Nothing. And I wanted that fucking cereal more than anything. Dad started teasing me about crying, started calling me a girl. He told me that if I could hit him like a man then I was one. But I snapped, Harley. I couldn’t take it anymore.” Bomb after bomb explodes on the screen. “When he closed his eyes I grabbed one of his dirty needles and stabbed him in the cheek with it. I took off and ran for the shed behind the house. It was like his hiding place. He stayed in it for hours. He even brought his flings back there to bend them over the workbench. Dylan and I used to watch him do them through the window.” He pauses to laugh as tears run down his face. “I wouldn’t come out. He tried to trick me by being nice, but I didn’t fall for it this time. Sometimes I did. I just wanted him to mean it, you know? To actually say he was sorry and want the hug he lied about giving me, or the second bowl of cereal, or even the promise of taking me with him when he hung out at the beach. He never meant it. I’d crawl out of my hiding space and his fists would show me the truth.” His sobs are silent, yet I can hear every one of his tears fall. “He set the shed on fire. He locked the door, poured gasoline all over it, and set the fucking thing on fire. He didn’t come back to save me. Mom never saved me. The whole thing went up in flames. The ceiling caved in on me. The walls were covered in fire. I knew I was going to burn alive. The fire started to burn my legs and the smoke was choking me. I pissed myself twice. I’ve never been more afraid in my entire life. Dylan was going to probably miss me when I was gone. I tried to open the door, breaking my toes and cutting my fingertips. I think the smoke is what made me pass out. I fell down and watched the fire come for me. Then the next thing I know I’m waking up outside under the pecan tree. I don’t know who pulled me out of the shed. I don’t know how they got in. When I woke up they were gone. My nightmares never end with me getting out though, Harley. I don’t know how I got out and it’s been torturing me for fifteen years because my brain still thinks I’m trapped in the burning shed.”

  I crawl to him, move the video game controller out of his hands, settle on his lap and then wrap my arms around him so tightly I’m sure he can’t breathe. He holds me even tighter. Each breath makes my ribs hurt. I love every slice of pain each breath gives me because it exists because of Bach.

  “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Bach.” I wipe my eyes off on his shirt and then I wipe his off with the shirt too. “I’m so damn sorry I don’t know how else t
o say it. No one deserves that. I’m so sorry, baby.” Anger I’ve never experienced before burns in my chest thinking of his father. How could you do that to your son, to anyone? “What happened to him?”

  “He got arrested the next day for a huge drug bust. The cops raided a house he was at and he was implicated in the charges. With his past and probation he got thirty-five years in prison. I’ll be forty-two when he gets out.”

  “And your mom?”

  “I got up and went to Dylan’s house and never went back. She never tried to contact me. I never tried to contact her. It’s better that way,” he assures. “Trust me. She didn’t want me and I’m much better off being her bastard of a son she never wanted.”

  I sit back on his lap, unable to imagine leaving my mom and dad behind. Or knowing they wanted it that way. Or knowing my dad tried to kill me and Mom didn’t try to stop him. Or knowing for the rest of my life I would be without them both, and that neither one of them would come search for me. One of those would mess a person up. All of them were Bach’s life. Everything he is makes sense now. The women, the drugs, and the alcohol—these things weren’t meant to hurt anyone. They were meant to numb his pain. Pain I know has to be backbreaking. The holes inside of him are nothing compared to mine. Mine sting and have an uncomfortable draft. Bach’s holes are hurricanes, tornadoes, and the pain in them oozes pus.

  Suddenly he isn’t a man who slept around and did bad things, but a man struggling to survive with his pain. He is strong. He’s managed to walk through the flames for fifteen years without letting them win. I look into his eyes, seeing him in a brand new light. I want to be a part of that. I want to help chase the flames away.