It wasn’t even my idea to go to Sammy’s Wingshop with Christie. She’s been blowing up my phone lately, first with offers to come over for a quick fuck, but when those went unanswered, she texted me random shit, like bits about her day or asking what I was up to. Half of the reason why I accepted was to get her the fuck off my back. The other is I guess I needed to get out and do something other than the same mopey-ass routine I’ve been in the past couple of months. Just driving past Dahlia’s studio was hard enough, let alone sitting in the exact same spot Dahlia and I had been in. But considering the way tonight unfolded, I’m fucking thrilled I ended up going.
A contented sigh escapes her, and I squeeze my hand cupping her shoulder. She cranes her head to look back at me and gives me a warm smile, but shadows creep up behind her electric gaze and the delicate skin between her eyebrows creases.
My spine stiffens. Oh shit, does she regret what happened? God, please don’t let her take off again. Not now, not after the best fucking night of my life.
She sits up, clutching the sheet to her chest while her shoulders slump forward. Pushing myself up, I fixate on the curve of her spine, ready to jump if she tries to make a run for it.
Her throat clicks on a thick swallow. “I don’t know who my biological father is.”
I sit up straighter, less concerned about her leaving now.
“My mother . . .” She takes a deep breath, her slim shoulders rising and falling. “She probably never knew who he was either.” She spits out a caustic laugh. “My mom cared more about the drugs she was shooting up her veins than who she was fucking. Just as long she got something out of it.”
I crawl over to her, wrap my arm around her waist, and press her back into my chest.
“Since I was of no use to her in that department, I was left to fend for myself most of the time. She hardly ever came home, and when she did, she was always high as a kite.”
Her body trembles against mine. I’m not sure if it’s from rage or sadness or maybe a mix of both, but I stay silent, not releasing her. I’d do anything for this girl, but I refuse to let her go right now.
Another thick swallow. “I would sneak onto buses and steal bikes to ride into town for food. And since all of our money went to her addiction, it was either steal or scavenge through restaurant dumpsters.”
Jesus fucking Christ. No wonder she had such a difficult time trusting me. She couldn’t trust her own mother to bring her something to eat. How long did she live like that? Rather than interrupt her with the question, I keep quiet. She needs to talk about this, and considering how closed off she is by nature, I’m guessing very few, if any, people know about her past. While my heart breaks for her in so many ways, it also grows from the knowledge that she’s sharing herself with me.
I comb my fingers through the soft strands of her hair and press my lips to her temple. Her eyes squeeze shut, and tears well at the corners of her eyes.
“Just before I turned nine, we moved to an abandoned house out in Delford.”
Now it’s my turn to shut my eyes. Fuck, Delford is the shithole of all shitholes. An ugly stain in our area of Michigan, it’s riddled with drug addicts, sexual predators, and the like. The very thought of Dahlia living in a place like that makes my skin crawl.
She sniffs, wiping angrily at the corners of her eyes. “I would come around here sometimes when I got too hungry.”
My heart drops. Fucking plummets out of my body and smashes straight onto the floor.
“I was attacked one night by a stranger behind Christos’s studio.”
She says it so faintly that I almost don’t catch the full statement. But I do, and those words set my blood to a rolling, angry boil. The muscles in my arms and hands twitch with fury. Attacked. She was fucking attacked. When she was a goddamned child searching for food because her junkie mother couldn’t be bothered to care for her daughter. I have to breathe through my nose to ease the rising tension in my chest.
“I was so sure I was going to die, but then—” Her voice grows weak and nasally while her chest convulses. “Christos saved me and began to take me in, giving me food and teaching me self-defense. Not long after the attack, I returned home to find the house empty. I stayed for two full days before returning to Christos.” She turns in my arms, her eyes bloodshot and shining with the anguish of her memories. “I haven’t seen my mother since.”
“Baby.” My voice is hoarse, a perfect reflection of how I feel. As if I’m fucking crumbling. I engulf her in my arms, shielding and protecting her with everything I am.
As she buries her nose into my neck, I wonder if I pushed her too hard. Never in my wildest nightmares could I have imagined she’d gone through that. I clutch her frame tighter, nauseated from the guilt settling in my stomach.
She pulls away, lifting her hands to wipe her eyes, but I catch her wrists, tug her toward me, and press my lips along the salty streaks marring her flushed cheeks, kissing and licking her tears away. And all the while, I wish I could take her pain on as my own as she grows limp in my arms.
MY FUCKING HEAD HURTS. SCRATCH that, everything hurts. My body shakes and trembles against Zack from the onslaught of the searing pain from relaying my past. I despise discussing it. It’s a source of both bitter resentment and embarrassment. Being the daughter of a junkie, who would ever expect me to amount to anything? Which is why I keep it locked up tight. Even Lexi doesn’t know the entire story. Just bits and pieces.
But the need to tell Zack kept building and building until my mind and body could no longer keep it in.
I’m thankful that most of the conversation was held with my back facing him. I couldn’t bear for him to witness the shame in my eyes. Even now, as he rains sweet, gentle kisses over my cheeks, my eyes, my chin, everywhere scalded by tears, I feel like shrinking away. Not because of him, because of my truth.
When he pulls back, I find no judgment in his gaze as he cups my cheeks in his warm hands, and I allow myself to fall into the deep blue pools of his irises, transforming my agonizing heartache into something new. Something beautiful and hopeful as the grime and sludge of my past that has been weighing me down for so long washes away. I’m left feeling somewhat bare, somewhat vulnerable, but lighter than ever before.
He captures my lips in a soft kiss that quiets the tremors racking my body until my shoulders fall and I breathe into him with a languid sigh. When the kiss breaks, he runs his hands down my arms, but before he speaks, I feel as though I need to clarify something.
“I guess, through the years . . . I’ve found a certain comfort in being alone.” His thumb brushes my lips, and I press a light kiss to the pad of his thumb.
“I think you confuse being alone with being safe. Loneliness doesn’t mean safety, baby. It just means when shit goes down and times are tough, there’s no one there to help you through it.” The corners of my mouth turn up in a resigned smile.
I nod before he tucks me back into the solid warmth of his bare chest, allowing the sheet to fall away so we’re skin to skin, our heartbeats mingling in a new rhythm. He’s right. My version of safety was simply being alone. I figured that if I kept people at arm’s length, they couldn’t touch me, couldn’t hurt me. But in doing so, I was depriving myself of moments like this. A moment where, for once, I can find solace in someone’s comfort rather than my own emptiness.
Kissing him deeply, I lean over the bed and reach for his bedside drawer. His hand runs up the length of my spine as I fish out a condom and tear the package with my teeth while I move to straddle him. His eyes roll back as I take him in my hand and stroke him once, twice, the velvety skin of his cock remaining so soft even has he hardens in my hand.
He watches me through hooded eyes, sighing deeply when I slide the condom down his thick shaft and position the wide crown at my opening. As I bear down on him, my head falls back on a moan, my arms hanging limply over his shoulder while I welcome the feel of him filling me.
His hands press flat against my back while my hips un
dulate against him, grinding in a slow, languorous motion. So different from the first time, where it was more about claiming each other. This time, it’s an act of giving. This time, I hand over my heart to him freely while we rock in unison, the faint sounds of breathy moans and pleasured sighs filling the room with echoed promises.
AS MUCH AS I WANT to spend the entire night with Zack, I still have homework assignments to get to. And fast. In the months Zack and I weren’t speaking, my work ethic at both training and school plummeted. My mind was too preoccupied, and by the end of the day, my energy was so depleted that I crashed almost the second I made it to my bed.
Pulling up to my house, Zack pulls the parking brake and turns to look at me with those soulful eyes, grabbing my hand where it rests on my thigh. “Call me in the morning?”
Smiling at him, I lean over the center console and press my lips to his, my head already becoming dizzy with the need to have him again. It’s uncontrollable at this point.
“Of course,” I murmur against his lips.
Somehow, I need to snag another student’s seat before they get to class Monday morning. Either that or beg them to do a seat swap. Sitting so far away from Zack has been really shitty. Which is sort of funny considering at the beginning of the semester, I would have given anything to be as far away from him as possible. Life is funny like that.
When we pull apart, he grabs my hand and presses a kiss to my palm, sending a shiver up my arm before I exit the car. My eyes stay trained on the front door and I feel Zack’s on my back the entire walk up the steps. Once inside, I press my back against the cold door and bite my lip on a smile as I hear the Jeep peel down the driveway, the sound becoming more distant as he drives away. I already miss him. Jesus, I sound like some love-struck fourteen-year-old who just experienced her first kiss.
Although unlike those kisses, which are usually nothing more than an awkward peck on the lips or a sloppy five-second makeout session, Zack’s were skilled and practiced, the perfect balance between soft and sweet and fervent and rough, but more than enough to drive me insane. I suppose that also can describe our relationship up to this point: sweet with a little touch of insanity. Sweet insanity.
I toss my keys into the bowl atop the white antique table by the door, stride into the living room, and am nearly given a heart attack by the sound of Christos’s voice greeting me from the sofa.
“I may be getting old, but, I could have sworn I saw you leave earlier with Lexi. You can imagine my surprise when she came a few hours ago to drop your bag off.”
“You worried me, paidí mou,” he says in a sleep-laden voice. “That’s not like you.”
No, it isn’t, and while Christos stopped giving me curfews when I was eighteen, I’ve always sort of given them to myself. Combine that with the fact that I’ve been distant and downright mopey lately, and Christos’s concern is completely justifiable.
The corners of my lips turn up in a contrite smile while I round the side of the teal couch and sit beside him, feeling terribly guilty for my cold behavior the last few weeks. Those warm onyx eyes stare back at me, the wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes more prominent as he looks at me with concern. I hate that I’m the cause behind that look.
“I’m really sorry for the way I’ve been lately. But I promise I’m okay now.” Because I am okay. Vulnerable and a little shaken, but okay. For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say that I’m happy and hopeful for the future.
He smiles warmly, touching his hand to my cheek and giving my forehead a kiss “There is no love in fear, paidí mou.”
“I know that now,” I whisper, covering his rough hand with mine.
And with that, he gives my cheek a pat, rises from the couch, and heads upstairs to bed with a, “Good night.”
I fall back on the plush cushions and sigh with relief. God, I feel as though a thousand-pound weight has been lifted off my chest.
There is no love in fear.
Those words float around in my head for a while before they fully sink in. No, there is no love in fear, but by the same token, there is also no life in fear. When you choose to stay hidden in the shadows, the light will never touch you, never fill you with its warmth. And when you’ve resigned yourself to the darkness for as long as I have, the shock of the light may burn and even blind you for a time. But after some adjustment, your eyes will be more open than they’ve ever been before.
I’m smiling the entire way up the stairs. Hell, I’m practically floating. My muscles are deliciously sore from the night’s events.
I toss my purse on my nightstand and fish through it for my phone to plug it into the charger. When it lights up, several text messages display on the screen. Four from Lexi and one from Zack.
The most recent text from Lexi reads: Get it, girl. And btw, I want allllllll the deetz.
But I don’t open the chat to read the rest. The one I tap on is Zack’s.
Zack: Sleep well, beautiful.
And sleep well I do. Like a goddamned rock. For once, not dreading the next day but welcoming it.
THE LAST THREE WEEKS HAVE been fucking heaven. Between Dahlia coming over on the nights she isn’t training and our practices and games finally getting back on track thanks to me pulling my head out of my ass, shit is finally sorting itself back out. Not to mention that every time Dahlia is over, I get to look forward to some mind-blowing sex. Yeah, it’s that good. Whenever our very personal training sessions get a little loud, Keith actually makes a point of letting us know by banging his fist on the wall that divides our two rooms. She was mortified at first, but after a while, I think she enjoyed pissing Keith off as much as, if not more than, I do.
And now, while she lies on her belly propped up on her elbows, pouring over her notes from our victimology course, my gaze zeroes in on her tits pressing into the bed, her v-neck collar giving me an eyeful of plump cleavage while I fight the urge to dip my head underneath her chin and lick my way up that curved line. The best part about that thought? I can act on it now.
With a swipe of my arm, I can clear the bed, roll her onto her back, and suck those soft pink buds into hard peaks through the material of her shirt while she yanks at my hair and squirms beneath me. Then I’d grab the collar and tear it right down the middle, bra and all, before—
“I can see you drooling up there, you know,” she says, flicking playful eyes up to mine.
I chuckle and crawl over to her from where I’m sitting at the headboard as she drops her pen and rises to her knees. Moving behind her, I cup her breasts, kneading them while her head falls back against my shoulder. I love it when I have her like this, soft and melting into me. Surrendering to the pleasure I give her rather than fighting it. And I love knowing I’m the only one who has this kind of effect on her.
Her voice is breathy when she says, “We really—” She gulps. “Should be studying for that quiz tomorrow.”
Okay, so she’s fighting me a little bit. That’s just Dahlia. Rather than comply to my every whim, she challenges me, and I love proving that I can rise to the occasion. But this battle will be easily won.
I hum my assent in her ear. “But I’d rather study anatomy, today.” Yeah, I know that was cheesy, but hearing her giggle at my lame-ass joke was well worth it.
Turning, she loops her arms around my neck and—
Thud, thud, thud.
Just before our lips touch, we freeze and stare at Keith’s and my conjoined wall. The rhythmic pounding continues for a few seconds before a muffled moan sounds from the other side.
Dahlia’s head snaps back toward me, her face twisted up in a disgusted expression. “Is that—?”
“It definitely is.” I glower at the wall before a little light bulb goes off in my head, and I look at Dahlia again, this time with a wicked smirk.
Her eyes narrow, clearly sensing something off. “What exactly is percolating in that brain of yours?”
My grin deepens and I reach for the bottom of her shirt, tucking my h
ands underneath to run my fingers along the soft skin of her lower belly. “I’m thinking we should show them how it’s done.”
She scoffs but doesn’t push my hands away. In fact, I see a tiny glimmer of mischief in her piercing gaze. That sexy-as-fuck look she gets whenever she’s sees a challenge sends a lightning bolt of pleasure straight to my dick, now threatening to poke a hole through my jeans.
The thumping continues while she and I strip and crawl up toward the head of the bed. We start slowly, with soft kisses and roaming caresses before I reach between us and press the pad of my thumb directly on her clit.
She whimpers, rocking her hips against my hand as if she can’t get enough of what I’m doing to her, and I love that I’m the one making her feel like this. That her soft sighs and helpless moans are entirely for me.
When her breathing quickens and she trembles beneath my touch, I slide my finger into her pussy and begin a beckoning motion. It only takes a few seconds before she’s throwing her head back and arching her chest on a sharp cry. I seize the opportunity to capture her pink nipple between my teeth, tugging lightly as her orgasm subsides.
Sliding my finger out of her, I raise it and wrap my mouth around the base, sucking every last bit of her taste off while she watches me from beneath her lashes. Not something I would have done the first few times we had sex, but over the last few weeks, I’ve made some fun discoveries about her where the bedroom is concerned.
While she enjoys it slow and passionate, she fucking loves it when I do something just a little rough and dirty. Like I said, she’s fucking perfect for me.
Acting on that thought, I clasp her by the shoulders and motion for her to turn her back toward me. With a tug of that thick mane of fiery hair, I bring my lips into her ear.
“Down on all fours, babe,” I growl.
She shudders against me, obeying while my eyes focus on the rounded globes of her tight ass. I’ve never done anal before, but I have every intention of claiming her ass if she’ll let me, which I hope to fucking hell she will.
Sweet Insanity (Sweet Series Book 1) Page 14