Because then she’d see. See what I’d done.
See just how fucking vile I was.
Blood.
Smears.
Freezing cold.
Anna.
I squeezed my eyes against the foul images, and I sucked in a breath and focused on this girl as I dragged her jeans down her legs.
It left her in nothing but the scrap of black lace covering her heat as she leaned back on her hands. That mess of hair flowed around her shoulders and brushed at my bed, and she had a single leg bent and slowly rocked it back and forth as her chest heaved with desire.
Fuck.
“Idiot. Any asshole who’d let someone like you go.”
No doubt, I’d be just another bearer of that unfortunate title.
“Talk you down. Make you feel like you’re any less than you are. Not when you’re the best thing that’s ever walked into my world.”
Shaken it up and shattered it.
“Did you know, Willow? Do you get it yet? You are the sexiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
My words were grit, both hard and soft because this girl made me confused like that. “Did you know you walk in a room and every goddamned head turns your way?”
She frowned, teeth yanking at that lip. “That’s because they’re looking at you.”
I shook my head. “Not even close. That’s what you’re missing, baby. Just how gorgeous you are. Inside and out. In the places we can and can’t see. And there’s this part of me that wants to tear every single one of those guys dying to get an eyeful of you to shreds. Lash out. Tell them you’re mine when I know I can’t keep you.”
She shivered.
“Do you trust me?”
A hard swallow.
A resolute nod.
I snagged her blouse from the floor. Setting a knee on the bed, I leaned around her and slid her arms back into the sleeves.
Questions fluttered across her face.
“Trust me,” I murmured deep, right at her ear.
I left the shirt open the barest fraction. Just a lust-inducing inch of her skin was exposed right down the middle.
Fuck.
This girl.
And after everything?
This is what that goddamned pretending was all about.
I wanted to show her.
This was what I wanted her to see.
“This is just for me. Just for you. You understand?” I asked when I edged back from the bed and dug my phone from my pocket. “No one else is going to see this. Not ever.”
A pant parted her lips.
Surprise, want, and curiosity.
That dauntless spirit up against a sliver of timidity.
Muted light filtered in through the windows. The room spilled over with dancing shadows and bouncing light.
Right in the middle of it, the girl sat on display. Art in motion. A masterpiece.
I thumbed into my camera app.
“Ash…I…” She dropped her head.
“Shh…” I ran my knuckles down the side of her face and hooked my finger under her chin. “Look at me.”
She turned her gaze my direction. Watched me with molten, trusting eyes.
I snagged a close-up of her face. “You stagger me.”
It was burned on my screen. Her confused, eager expression. I glanced the pad of my thumb across her plush lip.
She moaned while I snapped another.
Click.
Click.
Click.
“Lie back a little.”
She didn’t hesitate. She just settled back on her elbows with a needy sigh.
I set to tracing my fingertips down her throat, and I tapped out a trail across her chest where her heart hammered and thrashed.
No question, mine was doing the same as I took picture after picture of this stunning girl.
Capturing her raw.
Vulnerable and brave.
I nudged the shirt aside. Just a fraction. And maybe that was sexier than anything, just the mind-altering tease of the swell of her breast.
A shiver rippled beneath the surface of her skin, and I splayed my hand across the full expanse of her flat belly.
It tremored beneath my touch. Swore I could feel it slide right through me.
Click.
I edged back to get a better view. The girl writhed, coming alive in the center of my bed.
“Do you feel it, Willow? How beautiful you are? All that life overflowing in you? From you? That’s real beauty. The kind that can’t be contained, no matter how hard someone tries to keep it tamed.”
Click.
“Touch yourself. Feel what I feel when I’m touching you.” The demand slid out low.
A whimper, and her head rocked back. She barely ran her fingertips across the swell of her exposed breast. She caressed her neck. Her legs. Barely grazed between her thighs.
Sweet fucking torture.
I couldn’t help it. I angled my camera in to catch the expression on her face.
Her body twitched, and my name caught in her throat. “Ash.”
She dipped a finger under her underwear, and my world tipped.
There was only so much a man could take.
Any willpower I had left buckled.
Restraint stripped.
I tossed my phone to the bed and shucked out of my jeans and underwear.
I placed a knee on the bed and set to tearing that shirt right back off her tight, tight body.
It yanked her arms back behind her when I did, wrists held hostage.
Her bare chest jutted into mine, and she gulped at the position, her tits pressed and bunched between us and her hands tied behind her back.
Mother. Fuck.
Control’s a bitch to lose when you don’t have a whole lot of it to begin with.
The last of mine snapped.
Severed.
Gone.
Gone to this girl.
I kissed her hard. Demanded her tongue and her breaths and her heart that thundered against her ribs.
I climbed all the way up and straddled her body. I rose up high on my knees, towering over her as my mouth devoured and my cock rubbed at her belly, her arms still tied behind her back.
“Oh. God. Ash.” Her body bowed, trying to meet mine.
I ripped her wrists free of the bind of the shirt. I backed off just enough to get those panties down her long, inspiring legs.
Because if this girl wanted me to get clever, I would gladly oblige.
I didn’t miss a beat, and my hands were on her knees, pushing them wide. “Beautiful,” I growled. Because it was damned true. Her perfect slit that I parted with my tongue.
A needy breath shot from her lungs, and those delicate hands fisted not so delicately in my hair.
A growl that originated somewhere in my stomach scraped up my throat.
“God…I love the way you taste.”
Hot. Wet. Throbbing with want.
No wonder I’d been dying to get a taste.
“Could spend my life right here…buried between your legs.”
I sucked and nipped at her folds. Teasing and torturing. Winding her up. While she squirmed and tried to get her sweet cunt closer to my face.
A litany of urgent pleas whimpered from her mouth.
I chuckled and backed off, loving that I had the power to affect her that way. I nearly lost my footing when I looked up and met with the sincerity in her liquid gaze.
If I share my body with a man, it’s because I love him and he loves me.
That feeling washed over me. One devastating wave. The kind that took out cities. It took me under where I knew I would drown.
I ran the tip of a finger between her lips. “What was that, darlin’?”
“Please.”
“What is it you want, love? You want a little of this?”
I pushed that finger deeper, dipping just into the tight well of her body.
“Yes…more…please. Don’t tease me…please….I need you…want you. You’re
all I want. Everything I want.” It fell as an incoherent jumble from her mouth, each word finding its mark like a punch of clarity.
I dove back in, this time delving deep. I spread her with my thumbs, fucked her with my tongue, moved up to circle her clit, and trailed back down again.
Touching her everywhere just like she was touching me.
It was only fair.
She bucked.
I laved and lapped. I moved all the way back to her ass.
She moaned in the back of her throat, loving it but not sure she should. Her fingers were trembling and needy in my hair, as if she didn’t know if she wanted to pull me closer or push me away.
“Please.”
I flipped her onto her hands and knees.
“Good?” I said it almost like a warning.
Hands fisted in my sheets. “Yes.”
I jerked open the nightstand that’d been crafted by this girl’s brilliant hand and grabbed a condom.
In all this fuckery, at least I’d progressed to getting at least one thing right.
I covered my dick, grabbed her by the hips, and took her in one solid thrust, filling her so full my body bowed with the impact.
She nearly screamed, but it bled into a moan as her body adjusted to me.
God.
She was so tight. Her walls held me in a needy, throbbing clutch.
No girl should feel this good.
“Do you feel that? Do I come close to feeling how good you feel to me? Is it even possible?”
“Nothing…no one…never, Ash. It’s you.”
I set a rigid, punishing pace, yanking her back by the hips to meet my thrusts. Her hair was all over the place, her gorgeous skin blanketed in a light sheen of sweat, my name a constant petition falling from her lips.
My fingers kneaded deep. Her lush, round bottom fit perfectly in the clench of my hands.
Confessions tumbled from her mouth. “Ash…God…what are you doing to me? I can’t…I need you more than anything I’ve ever needed.”
That, right there, should throw up a stop sign. I should cover this girl back up, send her home with a chaste kiss, and pray I hadn’t already done too much damage.
Instead, all my attention turned to my cock disappearing into the tight clutch of her body as I slid in and out of her.
Tingles raced my skin. And I knew I was nothing but a sinner and a liar. I’d chased this. This body and this unnerving feeling I couldn’t shake. The needy feeling that tracked my spine and tightened my balls.
“You want me?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
I gently circled her ass with my thumb, not so gently pushed it in.
A whine escaped her panting mouth. Her body clenched all around me.
I fucked her faster and harder. She met me thrust for thrust.
Demanding all I could give her.
Right then, it felt like everything and nothing at all.
I wound my other arm around her waist and barely flicked her clit.
She went off like a bomb.
Her hands fisted in the sheets, and she cried out my name. She was making all these sounds that slipped beneath my skin and sank into my spirit, her creamy skin lighting up in flashes of red as pleasure streaked through her body.
Incinerated.
Burned.
I knew it was me who’d be reduced to ashes.
I rocked into her hard. Two erratic thrusts. Before bliss stole every cell in my body.
So goddamned good, so unbearably wrong.
I went back to squeezing her hips, holding her against me while I buried myself as deep as I could get while the world flickered and tremored around me.
Taunted me with what if.
Willow collapsed below me, gasping into the sheets as she slowly came back down. I bent closer, peppering her spine, shoulders, and neck with kisses as I struggled to regain my own composure.
“I’ll be right back.”
All I got was a spent, sated nod.
Climbing from bed, I headed into the bathroom, shucked the condom, and washed my hands. I stopped at the doorway, just looking at the girl laid out on my bed, lit up in moonlight against the silvery gray sheets.
A bed she’d fashioned from hand. A bold piece she’d reclaimed.
She looked perfect lying in it. Like she’d been carved in with the rest. I couldn’t even begin to picture what it might be like without her there.
I roughed a hand through my hair.
What was I doing?
But whatever it was, it was unstoppable, and it had me crossing the room, crawling onto that bed, and rolling her a bit so I could get in behind her.
She sighed and scooted closer.
Seeking sanctuary.
A home.
I brushed back her mussed, tangled hair, and kissed the crown of her head before fumbling for my phone. I thumbed across the faceplate. The bright screen came to life.
Through the images, I watched her expression flicker through uncertainty to wonder.
“This is you.” I whispered my praise, my belief.
Silence swam around us for the longest time as she looked at the pictures, my body half inclined to take note and go for another round. For once, I kept the insane need I felt for this girl reined.
“This is what you really see when you look at me?” Her question was quiet. Almost timid.
“The first time I saw you…” A wistful smile cracked my face, and I hugged her closer.
“You nearly knocked me from my feet. Yeah. You’re gorgeous. Don’t think there’s any question about that. But it was more than that. I liked that you were different than all the girls that run in my circle. A little shy but confident. Convictions and principles clear. Right from the start, it made me want to look closer and see what was really hiding inside.”
She turned enough that she could look down at me. “What did you find?”
“Found someone who makes me wish I was someone else.”
“What if you’re him?” she urged, and I could feel it starting to bleed through. The desperation neither of us knew how to handle. That feeling like the two of us belonged when I knew that was nothing but a cruel delusion.
“I’m not.” Could feel that emotion gathering on my face, winding out as the softest smile as I stared at the girl. “Any guy would be the luckiest bastard to get to be him. But I’m not, Peaches.”
It seemed the more I told her, the less either of us believed it.
Shadows danced across her face, questions and contradiction. “Because of the life you lead? The band and the traveling?”
I sighed. “Think my boys have proven that theory wrong. Maybe I used to think it, but all of them are better off now than they’ve ever been.”
I set my phone aside and cradled her face in my hands. “The problem is me, Peaches. The problem is who I am. Yeah, I could lie here and make you a thousand promises and tell you I’m going to be here for you forever. And right this second? I might be just the fool who’d think he might be able to make good on them. But I have a really bad habit of letting the people I love down. Don’t want to, but it’s what I do. It’s who I am. And I hate that person, and I won’t ever let that person ruin you.”
She sucked in a breath at my careless words.
Love.
My heart capsized.
Because there it was, shining back in those bottomless eyes.
I pulled her face closer. Our noses brushed, my words emphatic where I pled them near her face. “You deserve better than what I have. Better than what I have to give. Better than what I am. And I know that guy’s out there.”
Jealousy surged. A suffocating ache that pounded through my veins, strangling every sense and denying every word.
Couldn’t stand the thought of another man touching what was mine.
“You just have to find him,” I promised her, the words thick and sour on my tongue.
Sadness swelled around her. I fucking hated that I was already hurting her.
&
nbsp; I knew I would.
She pushed away. I wanted to panic until she turned and lay back on her side so she could wind herself back in my arms.
She grabbed my phone again, and I blinked in uncertainty when she suddenly held it out in front of her, the camera lens angled to capture the scene.
Click.
And fuck. My expression was carved in stone. Hard.
But my eyes—they splayed me wide open.
Cut me down until all the promises waiting inside were exposed.
This picture?
It illustrated a girl looking at a man like he might be her world. Like she held the faith he would stand by her side. Hold her up. The man in that picture was looking down at her, ready to give up his life to protect the goodness in her.
Move mountains to find her.
Walk through hell to save her.
Her voice was a whisper. “This…this is what I see when I look at you.”
thirty-one
Willow
There are moments in your life you wish you could set to pause. Press a button to delay the passage of time. Maybe have the ability to play them again and again so you could hold onto them forever.
Because you know without a doubt they’re some of the best you’ll ever experience in all your life. Even when you know they’re fleeting. That time is spinning around you, sucking away the blissful days and the rapturous nights.
This was one of them.
Chandeliers sprinkled a hue of shimmery silver light over the long table nestled in an alcove of the posh restaurant.
Smiling faces sat all around me, their chatter and easy laughter echoing in the air. The ambiance one of hope and belief and the kind of love as a little girl I’d always believed I’d find.
Under the table, a big hand squeezed my knee. Ash grinned at me. So free. So easy. It was as if he were promising me this was exactly where I belonged.
He returned his attention to his patchwork family that stitched together so perfectly.
Everyone was there to celebrate finally heading back into the studio tomorrow.
I had the inkling they were old pros at finding any excuse to get together and let loose. The three bottles of wine the table had gone through seemed evidence enough.
“You wish, man. That story is all kinds of backward. If memory serves, it was you who incited that fight. Just begging for it…walking in that bar like you owned the place.”
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