“Really decent. Mark, the dad, taught me how to play catch, and Vanessa, the mom, she was probably the most loving person I’d ever known at the time, which might not have been saying much. But she was very kind. I think…had things gone all right, I would have been adopted, but the dad, Mark, he got really sick and after about two years, I was removed from the home.”
“He died?” Peter asked.
“He did. I got put in a few other homes and I started getting in trouble for fighting. Stealing. I kept trying to run away to go back to them. I didn’t understand that Vanessa was grieving and that there wasn’t room for me—”
Peter stood up, and I shut my mouth so fast my teeth clicked.
“You... you eat,” he said, looking anywhere but at me. “I’ve got some work to do. Leave the dishes when you’re done.” And then he was walking away from the table.
The silence after he left was stifling, and I didn’t know how to change it or fix it. This was why I was shitty with people; I didn’t know how to be easy. I could only be a stone, weighing everything down.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.” She spoke in a rush. “Don’t be sorry about anything. Not a single thing.”
“I’d told myself I would make small talk with Peter so that you wouldn’t be stressed out, and now look what I’ve done.”
“You haven’t done anything,” she said. “I’m…I’m glad you told me those things. They help me see all of you, you know?”
I looked over to find her watching me with tears in her eyes.
“No,” I breathed. “No, baby, no tears. There’s nothing to cry over. It’s ancient history.”
“But it’s not,” she whispered. “You’re still that boy, waiting for your mom to come home, just like I’m the girl waiting for my mom to hear me.”
This morning I’d been ready to drop Beth off at her apartment and walk away from her. Right now, on this deck, my body blissed out from her touch, my fingers burning from the tears I wiped off her cheeks, I wasn’t ready at all.
I couldn’t even imagine a time when I would be ready. The date kept slipping further and further into the distance.
I wish…
“Come with me.” Beth stood, her hand outstretched toward me.
I was new at this, not totally used to the signals and signs, but I would have to be dumb and blind to miss what Beth wanted. It was written on her face. Her skin. I saw it in the way her nipples pressed against her shirt. She was everything subtle and not subtle about sex right now. About connection and about us.
I put my hand in hers and stood with her.
With her free hand she put my food on her plate and picked it up.
“We’re going to need provisions,” she said like we were soldiers off to have a sex battle. I grinned at her, feeling lighter than I had in years, and put the last of the eggs on the plate.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
I followed her up the stairs, my eyes glued to her hips in the black jeans she wore. The sway of her body, the curve of her spine. I was hard in a heartbeat.
I’d fucked up that conversation talking about my mom and the foster family. There was a chance I’d never be able to talk about them without making an emotional hash of it.
But this…losing myself in Beth, I could do. So far I hadn’t fucked this up at all. I had beginner’s luck. Maybe making love to Beth was my one true skill.
Inside the apartment Pest was sprawled out on the bath mat, asleep, and I shut the door to the bathroom while Beth put our food on the dresser.
“It’s been a long time since I talked about my mom and my first foster family,” I said.
“It’s not easy.”
“But fuck, I feel… better. You know?”
“I felt better when I told you about my mom. I mean, better and worse.”
“Better and worse, that’s it.”
Maybe there were a million women who would know me like Beth did, if I let them. If I let them into my life, even a little. But it was like I knew I only had room for one person like this in my life. And Beth got there first.
No matter who I dated. Or loved. Or had sex with. Beth got there first.
It was the singular truth of my life. I was Beth’s. Completely.
I loved her. I loved her now as much as I had then. More maybe. I loved the woman she was. The girl she’d been. Every piece of her, and I wanted to believe there might be hope for us.
And the hope was a slippery fish. With teeth. And I didn’t know how to hold it.
“I’m not hungry,” I said out loud instead of letting I love you fall from my lips.
Because I wasn’t ready to say it.
“Me neither,” she said.
I reached for her, my hand on her hip, the other at the nape of her neck.
“Make it good,” she whispered. Staring at my neck and shoulders, her hands still at her sides. “Make it something I can’t forget. Ever. Even if I try.”
Even if I try. Fuck.
She lifted her hands to her hair, to take it down. After that lunch, after telling her my story, I didn’t want the game. I wanted to do this with Beth. Not Jada.
“Don’t,” I breathed, pulling her hands from her hair. “Leave your hair up. Just let me love you the way you are.”
Immediately she shook her head, taking down her hair anyway.
“You won’t?” I asked.
“I can’t.”
It was a small pain she’d inflicted. A livable pain. I knew that. But still it hurt. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, across her face. Hiding her. Hiding me.
“I like it like this,” she said and I blinked. “I like the way you fuck Jada.”
Her hair was a wild mess around her small face. Like she’d been in a storm. Like she was a storm. And I was caught up in it. In the look in her eyes. The way she licked her lips.
She didn’t want love.
She wanted sex.
She wanted fucking.
It was me who wanted love.
But I put that boy away and let this be about what she wanted.
“What do you like about it?” I asked, stepping toward her as I pulled her into me at the same time. We met with a sigh and curse. If this was how she’d have me, this was how I’d take her.
“It’s rough,” she said. “Like you’re not sure if you like me.”
Right.
It was because I loved her.
6
Beth
I was lying to him. It was one thing not to tell him who Peter was, but now I was outright lying to him.
Hops? What the actual fuck?
They were lemon trees.
I couldn’t believe it, all those words downstairs, the lies too many to count now. I was clinging to seconds, to minutes; I was clinging to the idea of good-bye the way I wanted it.
Guilt ate at me, and when he’d wanted to fuck me with my hair up, it nearly broke my heart.
If I had any heart left after that lunch downstairs. I felt like a bloody stump. Heartless and ruined.
His face was hard and his eyes hot, and I knew I’d distracted him with telling him I wanted it rough. But I could see how hard he was pretending like he didn’t love me. I could see it, because I felt the same way.
But rough was what I deserved from him.
I needed him to punish me for the lies he didn’t know about yet.
All at once he grabbed me and spun me so I was facing the small dresser, the mirror above it.
And he was behind me, tall and wide and so fucking fierce.
Yes. Yes.
He pushed against my ass and his eyes met mine in the mirror, but it was too much. Even that small connection—eye contact—made regret threaten to swamp me, so I bent my head, making my hair fall in front of my face. Hiding me.
“Look at me,” he said, the words full of heat and grit.
“Tommy.”
“Look at me!”
I was powerless and met his eyes in t
he mirror.
“Watch.”
I was silent, but I did as he asked.
His hands cupped my breasts over my shirt and bra, and the friction against my skin made me bite my lip against a groan.
“Don’t.” His thumb came up to pull my lip out from under my teeth. “I want to hear it. Every sound.”
My breath was loud in the quiet room. And his hands went back to my breasts, his thumbs squeezing my nipples, pinching them until I cried out. And I saw him waver, just a moment. He could play rough, but he couldn’t stand the thought of hurting me. Even unintentionally.
That wouldn’t work for me tonight.
“More,” I said. “It’s okay. I want more.”
He pulled my shirt over my head, stood me up so my skin was against his chest. I felt him through his T-shirt, and I watched in the mirror as he pulled the cups of my bra down under my breasts and my tits were pushed out toward him. My nipples, brown and hard, begging for more of his touch.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Look at you.” His hands, rough and scarred, were all over my chest. Cupping my tits in his hand, rolling my nipples between his fingers, and I sagged against him, held up by his chest. By his hands on my body.
I moaned low in my throat. Between my legs I was so wet. So hot. I rubbed my ass against his cock like a cat in heat.
The tension and the goddamn drama and the sense that this would all be over sooner than I wanted it to tightened every crank in my body. Ratcheting up the heat to unbelievable levels.
His hand slipped down past my breast, over my tummy, and I couldn’t look away in the mirror. His hand was so big and I was so small and the tease of his fingers just under my pants had me writhing.
He stopped, and my eyes flew from his hand to his eyes in the mirror. “You want this,” he said.
“So bad.”
“What am I going to find between your legs?” he asked. “Are you hot?”
I nodded.
“Wet?”
Again, I nodded, and he smiled at me in the mirror. “How wet?”
“Feel me.”
“Show me.”
I licked my lips and put one foot on the dresser, my knee bent, my legs spread. There was a wet spot on my jeans.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Through your pants.”
“I want you so bad, Tommy.” His fingers reached around to unzip my pants and pull them off, yanking them when they were tight around my hips. My underwear—the lewd red bikini—was pulled half off my ass.
“Step out of your pants,” he said, and I shimmied them down my legs, the underwear half pulled off with it. I stepped out of my pants and shoes and I went to push the underwear down, but he stopped me.
“I like this,” he said, pulling the underwear back up. Setting the thin fabric back at my hips.
In the mirror I looked so shameless and wanton—I barely recognized myself. And it wasn’t just this Jada shit. It was the power of this desire.
I was fucking transformed by it. No other guy pulled this out of me. I didn’t even pull this out of myself. This…this woman in the mirror, she was all Tommy’s.
While he watched me, I stepped away from his body and bent over the dresser, my elbows against the wood, my ass and the thin red bikini cutting across it, grazing his cock through his jeans.
“Fuck,” he breathed, and I did it again. Little circles up against him, featherlight.
He wasn’t watching the mirror anymore; his eyes were on my ass against his cock. He grabbed me, his fingers biting in hard against my skin, and I liked that.
His calluses caught on the cheap silk of my underwear, ruining them, I imagined. They pulled taut between my legs, the lace around the leg rubbing against my clit.
I said something unintelligible, and he leaned forward against my bare back, kissed my shoulder with his open mouth and then bit me.
“Tommy!” I cried out, jerking against him, pulling the underwear even tighter. His hand slid down the back of them, palming my ass.
“Yes,” I breathed. His other hand joined the first and my ass was getting grabbed like he was gonna rob it and I shook between his body and the dresser, held taut by the rough desire we had going between us.
“Fuck me,” I said.
He hummed in his throat, considering his options, and I nearly laughed. His hand sliced down between my legs, his thumb touching my asshole on the way to my pussy and I jumped, electrified.
“What?” he asked, repeating my words back to him from the first time we were naked together. “No ass play?”
“You can…you can do whatever you want,” I said, my voice a shaking mess. Just like me. I’d never been fucked in the ass, but this could be my last time with Tommy. And I meant what I’d said; I wanted to able to remember this even when I wished I could forget it.
In the mirror his ears were glowing, and I couldn’t look away.
“Spread your legs,” he said, kicking at my foot a little when I wasn’t fast enough, and I didn’t know if he knew how much I liked that, but I did. I really liked it. When my legs were split, his fingers eased deeper into my underwear. I saw his knuckles against the fabric, and my knees buckled a little.
He worked me, slipping his fingers inside my body, making me cry out and stand up on my tiptoes, only so I could grind down on him harder. And then he pulled his fingers out, rubbing my clit. Palming my ass again, and then he was back between them. Over and over, until I was losing my mind. When he went to pull his fingers out again, I clapped my hand down on his, keeping him there.
“Please, Tommy,” I said.
“What?”
Everything. Please give me everything.
“Say it,” he said, his fingers still inside my body, the long hard spear of him.
“Make me come.”
“I don’t want you to,” he said, and I moaned, dropping my head down. “I want to be inside you when you come.” He shifted the underwear again, rubbing it against my clit, pulling it tight against my asshole, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. “So deep you can’t feel anything but me. So deep I can’t feel anything but you and this.” His fingers inside me, spread wider, dug deeper, and I lifted up on my toes, the pleasure-pain of everything making me insane. “Your fucking pussy, Beth,” he said, “is so perfect.”
“Then do it already,” I moaned. “Please. Just do it already.”
“No.”
I groaned.
He didn’t take off his pants. He just unbuttoned them, pulled his underwear out of the way. But then he was against me, pressing me to the dresser, his chest against my spine. His dick settling into the crack of my ass.
“Letting you come would be kind, right? Nice. It would be giving you what you want… I don’t care.”
Slowly, so damn slowly, he pulled my underwear off, and I knew he was watching. And I knew he was loving it, and so I did, too. I felt the achy excitement of an orgasm, like it was waiting in my clit. I could reach down and with three sure strokes, I’d come.
But I wanted him to do it.
I wanted him to take care of me even as he was pretending I was Jada. I wanted to demand his attention in the places I needed it.
“Tommy,” I said, putting my forehead against my arm.
“You have to wait,” he said, kissing his way down my back to my ass, and I knew what he was going to do, how he was going to torture me. “I want to taste you.” He went to his knees behind me, his hands propping out my hips, lifting me slightly until his face was between my legs. And not just his mouth. His nose and chin.
It was messy and sloppy and greedy. He licked me everywhere. My clit and my pussy. The insides of my thighs. I pushed myself into him, rocking and rocking while he sucked my clit.
“I want to come,” I moaned, reaching behind me to push his face deeper and harder into me.
“No,” he said, muffled against my pussy.
“Please, Tommy.”
He sat back, and I saw him in the bottom of the mirror, his face all wet. Oh Go
d, so fucking wet. All the muscles of my pussy were clenching down on something that wasn’t there. I was impossibly empty. Painfully empty.
“You wanted rough. Like I didn’t care,” he reminded me. His hand came up to my ass again, stroking it with his fingers. “You want me not to care if you come? That’s what you want?”
“Tommy—”
“You want me to use you against this dresser like I don’t give a shit?”
Oh…oh God, he was angry. My nerves went on high alert, the fog clearing from my brain.
“Maybe you want to pretend that I’m not me and you’re not you so it’s easier when I leave you here. Or when I drop you in Los Angeles and we both act like none of this ever happened.”
He was right. He was exactly right.
The ache in my pussy turned to an ache in my whole body. My heart. Everything was splintering apart.
“I’ve never had sex with a stranger,” he said, still stroking me with gentle touches, so at odds with his words. “That’s what you want? To be strangers?”
Our eyes met in the mirror, and I couldn’t stop the shake of my head. The no I gave him.
Not strangers. Not ever strangers. It was us. Beth and Tommy. Always.
“Please, Tommy.”
“You want to come?”
I nodded.
“You want me to make you come? Beth and Tommy. Not strangers.”
I nodded, a sob like a moan in my throat.
And his fingers, so gentle, slid between my legs, deep into my pussy. One and then a second one and his thumb found my clit and I was right. So right. It would take nothing to make me come.
“Beth,” he whispered, and I closed my eyes because I knew he would want me to look at him while he said my name and stroked me to pieces. “Please come for me,” he whispered.
His thumb pushed down hard against my clit, and I was done. Gone. Crying out into my folded arms, my legs collapsing, and he took me into his lap, sitting back on the floor while I shook and came so hard I could barely make sense of myself.
I opened my eyes and I was on his lap, his jeans and cock brushing against my ass and thighs, his fingers brushing back my hair. I was sweaty and slick all the way down to my knees.
He’d made a mess of me, and when I turned to look at him, I realized he was just getting started.
Where I Belong (The Debt Book 2) Page 7