“You really have a way with them,” Linda said, a small laugh escaping her. I turned to check on Maddy and she was smiling at me. A smile so wide that I think she could charm the sun to come out at night. I reached out my hand towards her and she walked over to me, making my dead heart beat again. “Come say hello.”
“Hi there,” she said, so softly that it came out as a gentle whisper. I couldn’t help but smile at her. The puppy came closer to us, his small head nuzzling up against Maddy’s hand.
“Looks like you have a way with broken beings too,” Linda said. “I knew there had to be something special about you for Kyler to bring you here. You’re the first person I have ever met that Kyler knows. He barely even talks to any of the staff here.”
“I’m glad that his sour demeanor isn’t just targeted at me,” Maddy said with a small laugh as she glided her fingers through the puppy’s fur, who was now curled up in her arms. “He’s really sweet isn’t he?”
I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the puppy or me. I hated that a little piece of me hoped that maybe the little mouse could someday…
“Ready to head back?” I interrupted the love fest, swiping the puppy from her lap and letting it lick my cheeks eagerly before setting him on the floor.
“Until next time, little guy…” Madison stood, smiling at the tottering animal. Next time. I wondered what I’d gotten myself into, inviting her to my special spot. “What are you thinking so hard about over there?” Madison shook me from my thoughts of her.
“Nothing important.” I stepped around her, waving once to Linda before pushing out of the doors and into the cool night.
Chapter 21
“I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me.” ― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Madison
“What made you start volunteering at the shelter?” I asked as we walked through the damp grass.
“The judge,” he replied. “I got caught driving with a few too many beers in me. I was fine, no one got hurt either, before you ask. That cop just had it out for me. I still don’t know why he asked me to take the breathalyzer, but he did, and I failed it. I spent a night in jail until my parents bailed me out the next morning. My dad knows the judge, so he convinced him to go light on my sentence--he gave me time-served as long as I completed three months of community service.”
He paused, the silver moonlight glinting off the lip ring he was so furiously working back and forth with his teeth. Something in me wanted to press my lips to his just to get him to stop that relentless back and forth action.
“But after my three months was up I couldn't bear to leave--those dogs are just like me. Alone, with no one to turn to, I couldn’t walk away.”
I let his words hang heavy in the frigid air, my mind running wild with the implications of his words. What did he mean he was alone like the dogs? He had a family, a home, money, comfort. Those dogs had nothing and no one. His words felt like sharp stabs of self-pity from someone who was given too much.
“Do you want to hang at the pool house for a while?” His words interrupted my thoughts. I’d been so lost in my head I hadn’t realized we were home already. “We could watch a movie or listen to music? I think I have some leftover pizza in the fridge.”
“Boy, you’re really selling this now,” I teased, but he didn’t smile back. Only just twisted that lip ring between his teeth and glanced over my shoulder. I cleared my throat before replying, “Sure, I just have to let my mom know.”
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and shot her a text message that I was with friends and we were going to start a movie. My phone flashed when she replied instantly with a smiley face and positive have fun.
“Moms are great.” I tucked my phone back in my pocket.
“Good to know some of us were blessed with great ones.”
I chose to ignore the snark in his words as he pushed off ahead of me, stopping at the pool house door to unlock it before pushing it open and holding it wide to gesture me inside. I nodded, careful not to get too close to him as I passed--not because I didn’t want to touch him. On the contrary. I did. Too much. And for some reason he felt a little more on edge than he usually was and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I sure as hell knew I didn’t want to add to it. Kyler was a tightrope, things could run smoothly but one false move and I could land flat on my face.
“Ham and pineapple from Little Napoli is on the menu.” He pushed a box in my hands and dug deeper in the fridge for soda. “Ice?”
“The pizza’s cold enough.” My attempt at a bad joke bombed. He turned, eyes cutting across the room and sending a shiver of fear or anticipation, or a mix of both, down my spine. The energy had shifted since we’d entered his space. “I love pineapple pizza, this looks great.”
He didn’t reply, only went around the edge of the sofa before falling onto the wide leather and kicking his feet up on the table. He spoke into the ether and asked the sound system to play an alternative playlist. The beat kicked on a moment later and the house filled with a dark blend of house music tracks interlaced with fender riffs in the chorus.
“Pineapple pizza and Coldplay, sounds like a great night.” I was rambling now, I could feel it, but why was he all of a sudden holding back? Was he regretting revealing so much to me earlier about his past?
“It’s not Coldplay, but nice try. I’ll still cream you all over music, little mouse.”
I gulped at his use of the nickname. I wasn’t sure if I’d missed it or still hated it. We’d been through so much in the months since I’d moved here, I felt like a different person, but how did he feel?
I smiled, then announced loudly for the sound system to play Everyday People by Sly & the Family Stone. “Have you heard it?”
He rolled his eyes. “Who hasn’t heard it? What are you, from 1965, little mouse?”
I felt the contempt in his words, felt them like barbs through my skin, slicing directly to my heart. “My dad loved this song. Whenever my mom or I would have a bad day, he would play it and dance around the house with us. He would belt out the lyrics. He used to tell me that the song reminded him that we are all connected. I am no better than you and you’re no better than me. No matter what, we are all connected.” I smiled, memories of my dad flooding my heart and my mind. “He told me once to remember that people are the same deep down--they all want to be loved and love someone, because at the end of the day we will be remembered for how we treated our brothers and sisters.”
“Your childhood sounds like a Hallmark commercial.”
“It was,” I admitted. “Until it wasn’t.” I snagged a slice of pizza and began eating, watching him out of the corner of my eye. “What would be the soundtrack to your childhood?”
He glanced at me once before speaking aloud, “Play Black Orchid by Blue October.”
Haunting opening lines rang through the pool house. I stopped chewing as the lead male vocalist began singing about loneliness and dying. I suddenly felt like I might throw up. I stood, needing a break from all the darkness that rolled off of this man in waves.
I found a napkin in the kitchen, spitting the rest of the now inedible pizza into it and tossing it in the garbage can before helping myself to a glass of tap water. I collected myself as the beautiful but ravaged words of the song pushed through the stereo system and pounded their way into my ears, unwilling to be ignored.
“Want some water?” I whispered as I returned to the couch, leaving a full glass on the table for him. I just needed something to do, something to focus on other than all of this pain.
They say evil isn’t born, but made. Whatever happened to Kyler Sinclair had left a thunderstorm swirling that was inescapable. Now I understood why he didn’t collect friends like his easygoing sister. I didn’t have
friends because I marched to my own drummer and that usually put people off, especially teenagers. But that wasn’t Kyler’s truth. I had the deep sense that something or somebody had made Kyler this way.
As the song came to a close, Kyler didn’t speak a word, only set his half-eaten pizza slice back in the box and took a drink of the water. I didn’t know what to say, but it felt like he was waiting on some sort of words or feelings from me. He’d just revealed himself to me in a song--a song of bleak loneliness--what was the right thing to say?
“Beautiful Girl by INXS.” And then he turned to me, smirk in full effect, and held out his hand. “Dance with me.”
I broke into a grin, the dark cloud suddenly evaporating into one of lighthearted fun. I slipped my hand in his and he pulled me up to him, mouthing the words beautiful girl, stay with me as he moved me back and forth against him, our hips connecting, then twirling me out at arm’s length and causing me to interrupt into another fit of giggles.
Kyler, like this, was contagious.
The easy way he moved his body like this, with music on and no conversation to be had. He was at home. My heart trembled behind my chest when his fingers snaked up the underside of my arm and lingered at my elbow.
I felt him everywhere.
“Stay with me,” he breathed, his lips suddenly hovering at the corner of my mouth. Dark eyes etched with ragged emotion clung to my own. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what this thing was, living and breathing between us, that made me want to do whatever he said as long as I could be his for even one night.
I barely nodded, unsure what he meant by that exactly.
Then he pressed his lips to mine. Slow and tentative at first, he pushed his tongue past my lips. I sighed into his mouth and our tongues brushed together, my nipples puckering as all of my nerves came to life with his touch. His palms ran up my torso and slipped under my shirt, and a tiny moan fell from my lips before I could help it.
He groaned painfully once, before his fingers dug into my skin and he pushed us both back against the wall. The speakers bled out the next INXS song on the playlist as Kyler’s hands worked over my skin, setting me on fire, making me dizzy with desire.
We shouldn’t be doing this. Nothing about us together was smart; we’d been an epic crash and burn before now. I still didn’t know if I even liked him, depending on the day, but still, here I was, broken down and consumed by Kyler Sinclair.
My bully. My savior. My favorite complication.
What could he possibly see in you, Madison? You’ve never been with a man in your life, what are you thinking?
“Kyler, I...” Words fought for sense in my mind when he was pressed against me like this.
“I'm trying to do right for you, Madison, but when you look up at me like that with my name on your lips, you make it hard on me.”
My stomach swam and my knees swayed as he bent me over the arm of the leather sofa, his palms fisting at the cheeks of my bottom, before he hooked his fingers in the waist of my jeans and tugged them down my thighs. The cool air of his apartment, in contrast to the hot breath at the tops of my thighs, flooded my insides with arousal, making me desperate to feel him. I struggled to breathe as I inwardly begged him to make me his. I would always be his on some level anyway, even if all of this ended right here, right now, I could never forget the way he made me feel.
I bit my lip, dubious of uttering a sound. I felt such overwhelming pleasure charging through my body. I hummed when he ripped down my panties, leaving them twisted at my knees before his hands were kneading at the globes of my ass, his thumbs teasing dangerously close to…
Oh god, his tongue.
His tongue—his tongue was there.
He traced the tip around my exposed entrance, engorged with need for his body, his fingers working in a quick rhythm, before slowing down and swirling my juices with deft fingers. His tongue plunged in and out of my entrance as his hands continued to rub at my flesh and ease away the anxiety in massage-like strokes.
My thighs twisted and I clutched at the leather of the couch, wishing desperately that I could have him in bed the first time. See him, face to face, connect somehow more than—
“Fuck, little mouse, you’re sweeter than I thought you’d be.” The rough stubble at his jaw abraded my over-sensitive nerves, his roughened fingertips that’d flicked a thousand pages on a thousand different books, landed countless right-hooks and bloodied too many noses, were rubbing at my most private place.
“Oh god,” I ground as an orgasm tore through my aroused body.
He gripped my waist and hauled me to him, crashing his lips on mine and thrusting his arousal-sweetened tongue into my mouth, forcing me to taste myself in a way I never imagined could be such a total turn-on. Kyler’s grip tightened on my legs as he pulled me around his waist and turned, hauling me back to the bedroom. Without flicking on the light, I landed in a whoosh of cotton on his king bed, his heavy form caging me in, never once stopping his assault on my lips.
“Kyler?”
“Hmm?” he uttered as his hands worked the hem of my shirt, lifting it over my head and then following it with my bra.
“I-” I choked on the words rambling in my head as the sight of his decadent lips sucking on my plump nipple nearly sent another orgasm rocketing through me. “Kyler, I-”
“Spit it out, gorgeous,” he purred, a crooked smile gracing his lips, his tongue flicking, his lips sucking and kissing. I couldn’t think straight; god, this was so good. Too good. My nerves tingled as his other palm pushed the pants and panties off my feet, exposing me to the chilled air.
“Kyler—” I moaned as one swift digit ran up my soaked slit and fried my brain. Kyler's fingers were slipping against my body.
“Yes, Madison?” He strung the words out ever so slowly, driving me mad with his teasing as he added another finger, stroking at my entrance, so close to plunging inside and making me his forever.
“I-I’m a virgin.”
Chapter 22
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.” ― Jane Austen, Persuasion
Kyler
A swift pounding slammed into my frontal lobe.
I jumped from the bed, feeling like her skin had lit mine on fire. My eyes held hers as I landed against the opposite wall, her mouth frozen in an innocent O, her eyes glazed with the sexiest shade of lust I’d ever seen. She was so beautiful and ready for me it hurt. I’d fuck everything up. I’d fuck her up. That’s what I did.
She twisted my sheet around her naked body as embarrassment flamed her cheeks.
“Christ,” I uttered, flicking the hoop in my bottom lip.
This would never work. We were polar opposites for one, but…a virgin? I couldn’t be trusted with that. That was too much pressure, too much pain, too much everything.
My hands began to tremble, and before she could see me fall into a pathetic breakdown, I turned the corner and ducked into my master bath, slamming the door with a resounding crack.
A virgin.
A virgin.
A virgin.
Oh, Jesus Christ, I’d just slammed the door on a naked virgin in my bed. So much for playing nice with her feelings.
Fuck up.
Fuck up.
Fuck up.
I gnawed so fiercely at the hoop I could feel a bruise forming around the swollen flesh. How could anyone see past how fucked up I was? I’d shared too much, and just when she’d opened herself up to me, I’d bailed with violent fear icing my veins.
But Madison was different.
I grunted and opened the door, my thick-skulled mind shocked to find my bed empty.
“Madison!” I called as I bolted down the hallway, eager to make it right as soon as I could.
I saw the pool house door standing open, her shoes and clothing gone. I took the steps two at a time and found her just as she hit the damp grass. “You’re not leaving,” I heaved as I finally caught her. She turned, and her gaze caught
fire with mine. “I mean, please don’t leave,” I corrected lamely.
She stood, looking back at me fiercely, so young and innocent and unworthy of my assholery.
“No way. Not a chance.” She bit her lip and I saw tears swelling in her big gray eyes.
God, no. I’d really hurt her feelings.
“I’m sorry.” My hands were at her cheeks, forcing her to look me in the eye. I breathed, “I was so fucking worried about myself I didn’t even think about you. I promise it won’t happen again. You’re the only thing that makes the pain stop. When I’m with you, I actually feel human.” I uttered the last part with sincerity resonating in my voice and my gaze. Her eyes flooded a little more then, and she had to close them to keep the tears at bay. I wiped at the salt water hovering at her lashes.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” she finally said in stubborn defiance.
“Not a chance in hell, little mouse. I’m glad you told me. It’s good you told me. Now I can do this right.” I threaded my fingers through her hair and clasped her neck, pulling her to me and taking her in a soft kiss, one that hopefully conveyed my apology more than my simple words ever could. “Come back.” I locked her fingers with my own and, with our lips still attached, walked her with me up the steps of my building. “Stay the night with me, please?” I asked, ready to make it up to her in so many more ways. In all the ways she deserved for her first time.
Her tired chuckle warmed my insides and I knew that this was the right decision. She sniffed, but her smile was bright as her hand stayed clasped with mine. She forgave easily. I was thankful; I knew I didn’t deserve it.
She was so pure, I was her villain, but at least I had a chance to give her the first time she deserved.
I pulled her back into my bedroom, this time with a different intent. Something sweeter. Laying her back on my bed, my hands pushed through her hair and I kissed along the crevice of her shoulders, the hollow of her throat. She was beautiful, ravishing, and all mine.
Ruthless: Black Mountain Academy Page 9