11
TAYLOR
SEEKING FORGIVENESS
After the coffee and pastries are demolished, we walk the Lackeys to their car. Barb giggles like a tipsy teenager as Mitch helps her inside, a little drunk from whiskey, wine, and whatever sweet drink I poured her after dinner.
Jesse hovers, watching them leave while the rest of us walk inside. I’m walking on eggshells, picking up his disquiet. After our discussion earlier, he’s been wary of me. I should regret being so emotional and direct, but I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time, and I’m proud of myself for letting them know how I feel.
The fear that lingered from dealing with my father’s outbursts has ebbed a little with Clint and Maverick. Clint’s aloof and brooding but he seems to be on my side. Both were quick to step in to back me up.
But Jesse’s different.
I keep catching him staring at my midriff, and it aches from me holding it in all night. Is he disgusted with how I look? When we had sex, he kissed me there, so I don’t really understand the change of heart.
He’s holding himself as though he has a rod up his back. Combined with bunched shoulders, it feels as though he’s braced for a fight.
I have to clean the kitchen before I go upstairs. I’m sure they’d expect that from me, but hanging around when the air feels tense enough to cut with a knife is taking all my strength. When Maverick and Clint disappear upstairs to prepare for bed, I’m left in the kitchen, knowing Jesse’s still downstairs. I scrub the pans as hard and as fast as I can, hoping I’ll be able to disappear before Jesse emerges from his study. If I can get into my room and close the door, I’m hoping that will be enough of a barrier to anyone disturbing me. Then again, there are three men in this house expecting sex from me, so I’m sure I’m being unrealistic. Maybe they’ve worked out a schedule that I’m unaware of. Rotating every three days. Will they think about giving me a day of rest?
I’m hot between my legs, and my body’s response puzzles me.
The idea of sex with the cowboys doesn’t generate a comprehensible response from me. My mind tells me to be wary, my heart tells me to keep them at arm’s length and remember that I’m here only because I love Molly, and I have no alternative. My body, though… my body wants to feel more of the pleasure they gave me so easily.
I’m weaker than I thought I’d ever be as my body flushes with heat, and I grow heavy and achy between my thighs.
Memories flutter through my head. Maverick counting as he penetrated me, Clint kissing a path up the inside of my thigh, and Jesse whispering good girl. Am I sick for enjoying all of it?
I’m certainly selfish for not focusing on Molly enough and risking her safety by getting angry with the man who brought me here.
I should apologize. I should make him feel good, so he forgets my anger and fear. He needs to be relaxed and focused on his own needs and how I can fulfill them. He has to want me to stay so much he’ll take on another mouth to feed.
My hands tremble as I place the last pan on the drying rack. I dry my hands slowly on a towel, staring out of the window into the inky darkness. There’s no jaundiced glow of streetlights out here, no sounds from neighbors’ houses or rumbling of passing cars. The silence feels deafening, the isolation like a ceiling pressing down.
This is my life now.
Safe in some ways. I’m not going to starve here. There’s an honor code ingrained deeply in these men that makes me believe they won’t physically hurt me, but the emotional turmoil I’m feeling is barbed wire around my heart.
I don’t wait for Jesse to find me. I seek him out in his dimly lit study. His back is to the door, wide shoulders, spread legs tucked under the monstrous dark wood desk. He senses me before I speak, turning just his head and finding me hesitating. Then he turns his whole body on the swivel chair, facing me, assessing me with his eerie aqua eyes, lips pressed into what feels like a disapproving slash.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For getting upset.”
Jesse nods, leaving silence to hang between us.
“I just… I brought feelings from outside here and overlaid them. It wasn’t fair.”
A flicker of recognition passes over his face, widening his eyes. The hand resting on his powerful thigh flexes.
“Can I make it up to you?” My voice is barely a whisper, and I clasp my hands together in front of me, trying to stop them from noticeably trembling.
He swallows, his throat shifting. His gaze drops from my face, over my body. In my new clothes, I feel different. Older. Less dowdy. More like a wife than somebody’s neglected teenager.
“You can.”
He holds out his big hand, and I slowly cross the room until he secures my wrist in his rough palm. He tugs me in between his legs and uses his other huge hand to make me bend enough to kiss him. He tastes of whiskey and dark desires, and my head spins at the slide of his tongue into my mouth.
When he pulls back and licks his lips, a shudder runs through me. A shudder of desire and trepidation. His hands cup my face as he takes me in. It’s like he’s reading words on a page but finding them in a language he doesn’t understand. There’s a craving in the urgency of his touch and a wariness in his shuttered gaze. He’s a barrel of confusion, a tangle I want to learn how to unravel, and it’s not just because I need him to want me. It’s for my satisfaction, too. He closes his eyes, blocking me out. When he opens them, they’ve darkened with resolve and intention.
“On your knees.”
The boldness and surety of the order compel me to move so fast I almost hurt myself. There’s a rug on the floor that’s soft, though, and I watch as Jesse unbuckles his belt and unzips his fly. I’ve never taken a man in my mouth before. So much blood floods my cheeks, I can almost taste it. Jesse palms his thick cock, making me watch as he thickens and darkens. I flick my eyes up and his expression is fierce, possessive.
“Open your mouth, princess.”
I shift forward and he slicks the head of his cock over my bottom lip. He’s so hot against my tongue. Hot and so damned hard. My jaw strains, working to take him deeper. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I close my eyes and think about what I liked when Clint licked me. A moving tongue, changes in pressure, sucking, and changing speed. I try to do those things, urged by Jesse’s hand on the back of my neck. “That’s it,” he croons. “Good girl. Give me what I need. Mmmm... yeah. Just like that.”
A pulsation of arousal tickles my clit when he says good girl. It happened last time we were together. Just that little hint of praise is enough to make my whole body flush. I’ve been so hard up for any kind of approval since Mom died that it’s turned me desperate.
“Yeah, sweet girl.” His fingers flex against my neck. I can tell he wants to control this, but he’s worried I won’t be able to take it. He’s probably right. I’m barely managing to take half his length, and when it hits the back of my throat, it’s all I can do not to gag.
I taste him getting closer. The salty sweetness of his arousal sparks fireworks in my head. I’m doing this to him. I’m making him so worked up he can’t sit still. I’m making his breath come in labored pants, and his hands tremble. Big, bad, bossy Jesse is putty in my hands.
I speed, trying to take him deeper, but just as I think he’s going to lose it in my mouth, he eases himself out.
“Stand up.”
He helps me rise on shaky legs, turning me until I’m looking out into the darkened hallway. His hands unfasten my pants and ease them down my hips, along with my underwear.
With my ass in his face, I couldn’t be more self-conscious, but when he presses sweet kisses over my hips and gives my curves reverent squeezes, my embarrassment subsides.
“Come here.”
He pulls me back and into his lap, onto his waiting cock. My pussy is slick, but the burn of fast penetration makes me gasp. His finger finds my clit and taps rhythmically. “That’s it. Sit on Daddy’s knee. Take my cock.”
I gasp, the forbiddenness of his words so wrong in theory but so arousing in practice. They’re an insight into this closed man and the need he can’t conceal when he’s trying to remain in control.
I shift my hips, needing to move. His hands work me up and down, handing me as though I weigh nothing, thumbs digging into my flesh. For a second, I wish there was a mirror so I could see what I look like being manhandled by this big, dominant man. Little ol’ Taylor. The one all the boys looked past at school, put off by the whiff of poverty and deprivation I couldn’t erase with cheap vanilla body spray.
“You’re so beautiful,” Jesse says. “So perfect… oh yeah… don’t stop.” His thrusts increase in tempo and depth. “Touch yourself, princess. I want to feel you come. That’s it. Come on my cock, sweet girl.”
When I press my finger between my legs, I’m shocked at how swollen I am. The pads of my fingers meet the place where our bodies are joined, and I squeak at the stretch and power of his body inside mine.
“That’s it. Oh yeah,” he growls against my ear. “Use that finger, baby. Make that pussy sing.” With only a little pressure, I’m there, clamping down and then fluttering around Jesse’s cock. He grunts with surprise and then swells inside me, pulsing his release.
Both times we’ve done this, he hasn’t worn a condom, unlike Clint and Maverick. We haven’t had any conversations about birth control, so maybe he’s not bothered about the risk of me getting pregnant. The way he stiffened when I asked about his son flashes into my mind. Does he want to impregnate me? Is that what this is about? Do the others know?
The little implant under the skin on the inside of my arm will put a stop to anything like that, but the realization that Jesse’s either cavalier about making children, or purposefully trying to make one with me without a discussion, makes my throat tighten.
He eases me from his softening cock, pulling me onto his lap but sideways, kissing me with a laziness that seems to only feature after sex. There’s no urgency now, only softness. His fingers graze my cheeks and pet my hair.
“Thank you,” he says, surprising me.
“What for?” I ask stupidly.
“For being the kind of person who doesn’t dig in after a fight.”
“I hate confrontation,” I admit.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “For being a controlling ass. For reacting badly when I was called out for it. I want this to work out.”
“Me, too,” I say. And inside, the words for Molly’s sake whisper like a secret.
I stand suddenly when his cum leaks from inside me. “I’m going to mess up your jeans.”
Jesse nudges the inside of my thigh, urging my legs apart, sliding a finger through my wetness. His expression softens as he pushes his fingers inside me like he wants to push back everything he left behind.
He does want me to get pregnant.
I’m only nineteen years old and so fresh in this house that I still haven’t been in every room. It’s too fast. But I can’t tell him that. He can’t suspect that I’m protected from getting pregnant.
He can’t know that he’s not going to get what he really wants. Not before Molly’s with me.