He kissed my chest again and I groaned with relief. He made a line up to my neck and his tongue flickered against my skin, making me wiggle and laugh.
I put my hands to his shirt and pulled, wanting him.
“Hey,” Trev whispered. “We need to talk about something quickly.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” He pulled away and was a few inches from my lips.
“Everything okay?” I asked. “I was going to grab a shower. I was hoping you’d join me.”
“Damn, sweetheart,” Trev whispered. “That’s torture.”
“Good. I want to torture you.”
“Dangerous games, Serafina.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered and inched up to steal a kiss.
I saw the look on his face. He was definitely troubled by something.
“Hey, what is it?” I asked.
“Uh, there was a situation,” he said. He sat up and pulled the covers up over my chest. “After Heath died.”
“Okay,” I said. “What kind of situation?”
Trev sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his jaw. “Heath was sort of engaged to someone. Their, uh, relationship was rocky. It was this intense, instant thing and when Heath wanted to ask her to marry him I thought he was crazy. I told him that. He always cheated on her. He had this notion that whatever happened at parties, stayed at the parties. It bothered me for a long time to see it all happening. Heath asked to borrow some money to buy the ring. So I helped him out. I thought that if he was going to take something so seriously, it would help him with everything else in his life. But it didn’t. Heath was selfish. Greedy. A spoiled punk. He didn’t deserve Becca. She deserved better. Yet what I didn’t know, was that she knew all about him. She didn’t care. At least, not in the sense that some would care. She was actually going to leave him the night of the accident. But then it happened and… it broke her.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, what’s the situation?”
Trev looked back at me. “I wanted to help her. After Heath died. I wanted to be there for her. She completely lost herself. Went off the deep end. It was terrifying to watch. Honestly. She, uh, she started to look for comfort in the wrong places. Not that it was my job to judge… but, you know, I didn’t want to see her getting hurt any worse.”
“That was nice of you, Trev.”
I felt my heart starting to slam inside my chest. My mouth going dry.
“Yeah, right,” Trev said. “I ended up being the comfort for her, Sera.”
“Oh.”
Trev hung his head. “I know how messed up that is. I know how wrong that sounds. But it’s the secret. Okay? That’s my secret.”
I touched Trev’s back. “Okay. Do you… did you… love her?”
“Not in the way I love you, Sera,” Trev said. “I loved her for who she was to Heath. In some way, maybe I was jealous of it all. The way she put up with his shit and never turned away. It was… it just happened between us. And we both agreed it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Which we both kept to. I promise you, sweetheart. To me, I wanted to be there to help her. Even if it wasn’t the right thing to do. We were both looking for comfort. I felt guilty. Everyone pointing the finger at me for what happened. I thought I killed him. I punished myself. And I had nobody…”
Trev stood up and shook his head.
“No,” Trev said. “I can’t do that, Sera. I can’t make excuses right now. I did what I did.” He turned and looked right at me. “But the second I realized I loved you, I ended everything. Okay? I talked to her and we’re good. There’s an understanding. I made it clear that I love you. But even that isn’t good enough, Sera. That makes it sound like I’m choosing… and I’m not doing that. I’m in love with you. I really am. You sort of blasted through my doors and messed everything up. You’re like a tornado in the eye a of hurriance… a storm within a storm... and I mean that in a good way. I’m not using people, okay? I didn’t use her. I’m not using you. It’s just… there was something there.”
I felt a lump in my throat as I tried to understand what Trev had just admitted. This was his deep, dark secret. I’d confessed to him about Max and now he’d confessed to me about Heath’s fiancée.
“There was something there,” I said back to him. “So you did like her or something.”
“Yeah,” Trev said. “For all the wrong reasons. And I acted on those reasons during the worst possible time. I justified it in my heart and head that if I didn’t do it, then she would have gone out and gotten herself into trouble. She… she wanted to hurt herself a few times. She would call me to help.”
“You’re not going to just leave her, are you?” I asked. I inched to the edge of the bed and stood up, holding the sheet against my body. “You can’t just leave her.”
“No,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean anything will happen, Sera. You have to know that.”
“Even if she makes a desperate move on you?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re going to feel this, aren’t you? I wanted to make sure that everything was exposed before you jumped any more than you have.”
I stepped toward Trev and touched his shoulder. “The problem with jumping, Trev, is that when you jump off the cliff, there’s no coming back. There’s no stopping. There’s only falling and hitting whatever’s below.”
Trev nodded and shook my hand away. “Go and enjoy a shower, Sera.”
“Are you leaving?”
“It’s my apartment, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m just giving you some space.”
He left the bedroom and shut the door.
I stood there, shivering from the inside out.
When we both said everything was wrong… we were right. Everything with us was wrong. The things I’d done. The things he’d done. Yet when it came for us to be together, we were perfect. In our own messed up world, we worked.
I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. The bathroom was to my left. To my right, I couldn’t see Trev, wherever he was in the apartment.
In the bathroom, I turned on the shower and let it warm up. The steam began to rise within seconds. I turned and opened a small door where there were several shelves, the top two holding towels. I reached for a towel and threw it to the floor just outside the shower.
When I turned, I saw my reflection in the mirror. It was fogging up though. I only had a few seconds to stare at myself.
It was hard to think about what led me to Trev, and what led us to the moment we both faced now. Accepting each other’s flaws and secrets. Trusting each other that life would just simply move forward.
But what I said was true. I jumped for him. I fell for him. There was no stopping that. There was no turning that off for a few seconds to reconsider. I was off the ledge, gasping for air, my arms flailing, staring down at the water below. Wondering how badly it was going to hurt when I hit it.
I didn’t want to do that alone.
I reached for the door and ripped it open, ready to track Trev down in the apartment and tell him that he was going to fall with me.
When I opened the door, Trev was already standing there.
I let out a yell and put my hands out toward him. Which meant the sheet from his bed fell off my body, leaving me standing there naked.
“Trev,” I whispered.
He curled his lip, stepped forward, hands at my hips, pushed me into the steamy bathroom, and kicked the door shut.
* * *
His right hand was behind my neck, his left hand at the back of my leg, almost grabbing my ass. My back was against the shower tiles as he thrust himself deep inside me. His lips, tongue, and teeth flirted with my neck, kissing me like I’ve never been kissed before. My hands tried to hold onto his back, but he was slippery from the shower water.
The hot water made steam as thick as fog around us, making it almost impossible to breathe.
I made a quick move and jumped up, wrapping my legs around his hard body, hooking m
y ankles together, pulling at him, wanting it harder, faster, deeper.
Trev growled and kissed up to my mouth. Our tongues quickly started to battle. His hands squeezed my ass tightly, pulling as he fucked forward, penetrating to depths that nobody had ever explored before.
When the kiss broke, he stood tall, towering over me. I kissed his chest, at that sexy as hell tattoo that went from shoulder to shoulder across his chest, groaning as the pleasure mounted over and over again. I put my lips to his chest and just stayed there. Feeling my body sliding against his. The wetness making it hotter, wilder and the greatest sex of my life.
It was so raw and so honest between us. Whether we were brokenhearted, confused, or just trying to let it all go, it was working.
Oh, god, it was working…
Trev slid his hands around to my legs and pried them apart and made me stand up in the shower. The intense pressure made my toes curl against the slippery floor. His fingers touched my hips and ran up my body, water bouncing off his strong hands. He moved over my breasts, but only for a moment as he kept going until he touched my face. There he stopped, holding my face, gently pumping himself in and out of me, leaving every inch of my body quivering.
But the stare from his eyes was more intense than anything else.
“Serafina,” he growled as he kept going, having my body for his own pleasure. “I fucking love you.”
I groaned and clawed at his chest, scratching at the black phoenix that was inked across it.
“I love you, Trev,” I said between gasps of breathless air. “I love you.”
He pulled me toward him and kissed me.
He stopped fucking me though. We just stood there, kissing, he was still inside me. I felt him pulsing. I felt my body pulsing.
Trev eased himself away from me and moved fast as he pulled me into the water and turned me around. His hands were suddenly everywhere at the front of my body. I felt his thick cock pressing against my back. I put my head back against his wide chest and let the water splash against my breasts.
Trev pulled his lower half away and reached down to grab himself. He bent his knees and positioned himself between my legs. With his other hand, he forced me to lean forward just enough to access me. The shower water splashed against my face. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and it only got worse when Trev thrust back inside me.
He made me stand again, his hands holding me tightly as he gently loved me.
Right there in the shower… loving me.
Making love to me.
I put my head back against his chest again. He looked down at me.
We kissed.
I never wanted the moment between us to end.
Because in here, nothing could hurt us…
Chapter 32
Trev
I stood and watched the way the water rolled off her perfect skin and the curves of her body. I was done for with this woman. We had just gotten done with each other a few minutes ago and she was already making me ready to go again. Her head back, washing the conditioner out of her hair. The way her full breasts bounced with every move she made. The hourglass shape of her body, a reminder that she was the one with all the power to fucking destroy me. She was my everything now. She was my time… the one I would give all my time and care to.
Now there was nothing left between us.
When she finished washing her hair, she stepped forward and wiped her face with one hand. I instinctively grabbed her waist and pulled her close to me. Her wet breasts against my wet chest.
“It’s good?” I whispered.
“Oh, it’s good, Trev,” she said.
“I’m serious,” I said. “You have it all now, sweetheart. Do what you want with it. Don’t rush into any decisions.”
“Fool.”
“What?”
“You’re a fool,” she said.
“Why am I a fool?”
“Look at us. Everything with us is always messed up. Backwards. Wrong. It’s our thing.”
“I thought our thing was great sex.”
“That’s our thing too, for sure.” She kissed my chest. “Trev, nobody has ever made me… the way you do…”
I smiled. I ran my hands up her beautiful body one more time and cupped her face again. My right thumb stroked under her bottom lip.
“You have no idea, Serafina,” I said. “This isn’t my thing. But you’ve made it my thing.”
“Good. Enjoy the rest of your shower, Trev.”
Sera backed away and raised an eyebrow as my eyes took one last look up and down her body. She turned, showing off her cute as hell ass as she opened the shower curtain and stepped out.
The first thing I did was make two fists and step into the water. I put my fists against the wall and put my head down, letting the water wash all over me.
Things weren’t perfect and never would be. But with Serafina, it made it feel perfect. Knowing that at the end of a long day, I could come home to her… that was something. She had me thinking crazy ass things. Like giving a shit about my job more. Like about wanting to do more training so I could make more money for her. She took me from being a guy into a man.
I finally turned off the water and got out of the shower.
I walked to the closet, got a towel, and dried myself. I looked at my clothes on the floor and smiled. My plan had been to talk to her for a second through the door. But when she opened it and the sheet fell… and the look in her eyes…
I lost myself and went after her.
That’s how we ended up in the shower.
I left the bathroom and walked into the bedroom, hoping to find Serafina either still in a towel, or naked in bed. What I didn’t expect to find was her already fully dressed. And the way she moved around the bedroom, racing as though she was late for something.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked.
Serafina stopped and looked at me. She looked at my phone on the nightstand, then back at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I didn’t mean to see it,” she said. “But I have to go.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought you’d told me everything, Trev.”
“I did.”
She shook her head. “Well, Becca texted you.”
“Okay? So what?”
“It’s not okay, Trev. You said we had it all out in the open…”
“Serafina, wait a second.”
“No,” she said. “I have to go. I have to think. I have to…”
She bolted right toward me. I thought about stopping her, but had no idea what the hell was happening. She was in the hallway when I reached for her.
“Wait a second,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on here.”
She put her hands up, not wanting me to touch her. “Just, don’t. Not right now. I have to go. Please, Trev.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t want you to run, Sera.”
“I’m not running. I’m leaving. You need to go and check your phone right now.”
I didn’t want to walk away from her, but I feared that Becca had sent me a message that she was going to hurt herself. Which meant I would have to go over there to help her. That’s probably why Serafina got spooked.
I went back into the bedroom and got my phone.
I looked at the text message and quickly threw my phone to the floor.
It was a text from Becca. And it wasn’t a text about her hurting herself.
I found out the reason why she had tried calling me earlier that day.
Becca was pregnant.
* * *
I read the text message a hundred times before I moved. Strangely enough, the first thing I did was grab the piece of paper with my name on it off the nightstand. I gritted my teeth as I knew it was a letter from Serafina to me. What I didn’t expect to see though was that it was a letter from Serafina to her best friend Karie. The letter was about me too. I read the first few lines and stopped.
This isn’t happening…
I
looked at my phone.
I swallowed hard.
I looked at the bedroom door.
Serafina thought I knew about this? That’s why she was so mad?
Or maybe it was just the shock of this news.
I ran from the bedroom and through my apartment.
She was already gone.
I went to the window and looked down just in time to see her driving away. I made a fist and put it to my mouth. Ten minutes ago we were in the shower together. Twenty minutes ago I was inside her. Thirty minutes ago I stood at the bathroom door, wanting her to open it and let me in.
How the hell did this happen?
The question was a stupid one to ask.
Of course I knew how this happened. I’d had a fling with my stepbrother’s fiancée. That’s what happened. I let my guard down and sought comfort in the wrong place.
It took me another few minutes before I managed to send a message back to Becca.
Are you home? Can I come over?
I tried to turn off my mind for a minute to think about Becca. What she must have been going through. All the emotions. Shocked as anything. Scared as hell. And worse yet, she was alone.
“Shit,” I growled.
I hurried to get my keys and leave the apartment.
I stopped just outside the door and thought about the letter.
In a last ditch effort of whatever, I went back inside to get the letter from Serafina.
Now I had to go and face the woman I accidentally got pregnant.
Chapter 33
Serafina
I wanted to cry. I held the steering wheel super tight and pulled myself forward as I drove. I tried to think of everything possible that could make me cry. About not having a father growing up. About the way my mother always enjoyed to gently self-destruct. When she said she’d met someone online, was in love, and was moving across the country on her own. Of course, the easiest way to cry was to think about Karie.
I wanted to cry about the message I saw.
Pregnant? Trev got someone pregnant?
I didn’t cry until I got home.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, I saw Hailey standing in the kitchen with some shirtless jock who had his arms around her as she stirred a spoon in a cup of coffee. The spoon clanked against the mug. She wore a button down shirt that was obviously the jock’s. He was in jeans and nothing else, his perfect body, face, hair, everything looking so… perfect.
EVERYTHING WRONG WITH US_a novel by: Page 19