22. Trust me
22
Trust me
Electra
He just took off my shirt…
I must be too stunned. Yes, that’s it, that’s why I’m not biting Exton’s head off yet or slapping his hands away as he slips them inside the waist of my leggings, pulling them off me. That’s why I don’t so much as squeak when he briefly winds one arm around my waist, invading my personal space with his intoxicating scent as he picks me up slightly as if I weigh no more than a feather, so he can push the stretchy fabric off my butt and sit me back down.
I can’t feel his touch, but that doesn’t prevent a burst of goosebumps to cover the skin on my legs when I sense it.
The air around us becomes warm and moist with the heat of the water that is quickly filling up the deep sinker tub. A delicious aroma of water lilies lacing though it from the bubbles Exton poured in.
Here I was, getting ready for another movie night and just wanted to take a quick shower beforehand when I froze beside the bathtub. It wasn’t the first time I looked at it longingly, but it was the first time I had such a visceral reaction to it. I mostly ignore or feel indifferent toward the things I’ve lost after the accident.
But really, I should say felt . Past tense. Because for these past couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling a lot. I’ve been feeling the loss and craving what I can’t have. I’ve been dreaming of “what ifs” and each one have to do with the man standing in front of me now, reaching for the hem of his own white T-shirt and pulling it off in one fluid, sexy move.
My breath gets caught in my throat.
No, damn it, I’m not stunned or at least not stunned from anger. I’m hot. And not from the air inside the bathroom. I’m warm and achy ever since those words slipped out of his mouth.
Giving you what you want, little star. I’ll always give you want you want, need or don’t know that you’re missing , followed by his hands on my skin. Yeah, I ignited pretty fast after that, all depressive thoughts I’ve been sitting with here, long forgotten.
Here I am, sitting in this wheelchair wearing a simple cotton bra and a pair of lacy thongs and confused as hell. My whole body is screaming for him, but my brain is pulling the break leaver as fast as it can.
“What are you doing, Exton?” I repeat once again, but this time the question bares a whole other meaning.
What is he doing? What are we doing? What has been happening between us all this time?
But in answer he only pushes his sweats down, stepping out of them and pulling off his socks as he kneels in front of me. My breath catches.
This man is on his knees in front of me and his hands are back on my skin. My gaze falls down to where his huge palms reverently slide up my thighs and I notice how comically small they look under his hands. He’s silent. A man on a mission as he keeps trailing up my body, setting my skin on fire. He gently slides his palms to my waist, over my ribcage and up more until he reaches my bra and then to the clasp that holds it closed in the back.
My hands fly up to his, halting him as my chest heaves, giving away my true feelings on the matter, but I keep a firm grip on his wrists until Exton fixes his whiskey eyes on me and says, “Trust me?”
Like a match to a can of gasoline those two words start a roaring, ice-cold fire. However, this time, before it has a chance of consuming me, Exton punches through the frost, pulling me out.
His hands are on my face, gently caressing it but his words are firm and uncompromising. “No! Trust me, Electra! Trust me, please. And even if you don’t, I won’t let you go under anymore.” His lips seal against mine, completely extinguishing the flicker of panic created by my memories and starting a whole new one. A much warmer one, and I feel my head nodding, giving him an answer before I can process it all.
I’m not sure whether I’m nodding that I do trust him or that I don’t, but I’ll go along anyway. And something tells me that it’s the former, even if I deny it but nevertheless, that’s all Exton needs before he slips his hands behind me again and snaps open my bra, throwing it to the floor.
His eyes fall to my chest briefly as his throat bobs and he sucks in a shuddering breath. He looks at me like I’m desirable and I’m shaking under his gaze, my nipples tightening into hard peaks just for him.
I don’t know what I expected to happen next, but it still takes me by surprise when Exton slips his arms under my body, lifting me in a bridal hold and steps into the bathtub with me, while both of us are still wearing the bottom pieces of our underwear.
It’s as if he can hear the thought inside my head because he says, “I needed those to stay on.” Exton’s voice is low and gruff. “On both of us because I’m barely hanging on as it is,” he adds, and my nipples decide it’s a good idea to tease him because the sharp points, graze against his hard chest by their own volition.
Exton growls, cutting me a sharp look that says he is clearly aware of that little fact, and I bite my lip, pulling my eyes away from his mesmerizing ones. They already have done more damage to me than I wanted.
Everything he’s been saying leads me to believe that he is attracted to me as a woman, but damn it, why is it so hard for me to believe?
We are just standing like that, his legs in the water, me tugged close to his chest as he watches me with unnerving curiosity. Like he can see my every thought, insecurity and desire molded into one.
“The water is quite hot, so brace yourself, it will feel good in a second,” he warns me, switching the subject, before lowering himself and me along with him into the steaming water, skittering around the sexual tension in the air.
Exton’s right, it’s pretty hot, but it also feels heavenly on my weary skin, seeping into my exhausted bones.
A small sigh escapes me when my body fully submerges in the water and Exton maneuvers me around, so I’m seated in between his legs, leaning my back against his rock-hard, art-of-work chest. The sweet-smelling bubbles, just barely covering the tips of my nipples, teasing the already sensitive buds. A little lower, around the small of my back, I feel the other rock-hard part of his body digging into me.
Before I have a chance to think about that, his big hands come up to my arms and shoulders, massaging my sore flesh, and I let out a moan and feel his cock twitch against my back. Immediately, his hands tighten on my body, but he clears his throat and asks in a rough voice. “That feel good?”
I nod, rasping, “Yeah.”
“Good. I’ll always give you what you want.”
There it is again, spoken softly but like a promise and an overwhelming feeling rolls over me and tears gather at the corners of my eyes. He did. He did this. He gave me what I wanted. Why? Why is he thawing my ice when we both know this won’t go anywhere, there won’t be a river flowing from this. Just a bloody mud bank.
“Exton, why are you doing this?” I echo the question from my mind.
He sighs in answer. That’s all. And I turn around sharply to look at his face, but instead of the usual cockiness it’s pained. His jaw clenched and nostrils flared.
“Because you ruined me.”
“I…wha—” I start, confused by his response and then slightly angry about it. I ruined him? “How, pray tell, did I ruin you?”
“You brought calm into my life. One I’ve never known.” I blink.
“That…Th-that’s not what I was expecting.”
“Yeah, me either.” And with that comment, he flips my body back to lean against him but now his hands are not on my shoulders, they are trailing over my stomach, my ribcage, the soft skin underneath my breasts while he presses his face into my hair, inhaling me.
“You ruined me with your calm, got me hooked on it…” He pauses. “And on you. You got me downright addicted to you and I don’t do addictions, Electra. I cut them out of my life as soon as something threatens me. But I can’t cut you out. Goddamnit, I can’t cut you out.”
His huge hands cup my heavy breasts, pressing tightly and just holding me like that, as my chest moves up and down fast, panting.
“I want you, Electra. Goddamnit, I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone before. I need you.”
He can’t. He can’t. Want me? How could he? Is it pity? Is that it? He feels bad for me so he’s willing to do all this? To say all this?
“Don’t lie to me, Exton! I don’t need your pity,” I spit out, unable to hide the hurt behind the words. “I’ve come to terms with what I am. I’m at peace with my disability; so please, don’t lie to me.”
There. I want him. I want him to want me. I want it with as much desperation as he’s describing but I know that won’t be enough. I won’t be enough for him, not when I’m half the person I used to be, and I can’t fall for his temporary lies.
“Don’t you see it? How can you not see, feel it?” Exton sounds like he’s in agony. Like what he is saying is the truest thing of all, like he keeps beating against my door and I refuse to open it and it cracks my ice some more. “When I called your name and you didn’t answer, my own heart stopped beating. When I didn’t find you in your room and I knew that you must be in the bathroom, doing God-knows what to yourself, I wanted to rip my own soul out and push into your body. You think it’s fucking pity?”
My breath catches.
“The single thought of not having you in my life kills me from within and I don’t have a fucking clue how that happened. Maybe it was the day you laughed on that ice out there. No…” he corrects himself quickly, as if the realization is hitting him all of a sudden. “No, it was before then.” He stops. “The day you played my goalie, and my puck hit your legs.” Exton’s hands leave my breast sand travel to the said legs, squeezing the useless flesh.
My eyes fix on the action.
But…did I just…how…?
“Yes, it was that day. That moment you cried out as if your soul had left your body and shot straight into mine. And I felt myself catching it, holding it, weaving around it, and tethering it back to life with my own. That was the day you ruined me, Electra Monroe.
“I tried to stay away from you. I tried to keep myself on a fucking leash around you when all I want is to claim you, to invade your mind like you have done to mine. I want to own you, Electra Monroe. I want to be in you. In all the ways possible, but you won’t let me,” he growls.
“Exton,” I breathe out, overwhelmed by his words and the brutal, raw honesty ringing through each syllable. “But I’m a cripple. You said so yourself.”
Exton huffs out a humorless laugh. “That’s all you got from my speech just now?”
“N-no,” I add shakily. “But that doesn’t change my situation.”
“Your situation?”
“How can you be attracted to someone like me? Physically, how can you want me?”
“Just like this,” he rasps out into my neck, his hot breath sending me into a frenzy when I feel one of his hands trail up my body, to my aching breast. His fingers slide over my pebbled nipple, brushing it roughly before he squeezes it hard at the same time as his other hand moves up from my thigh and over the lace covering my pussy until he brushes the top of the fabric and slips his hand inside.
“Fuck, you’re bare…”
I grip his legs with my hands, my fingernails digging into his muscled flesh as I let out a needy whimper, thrusting myself into his touch and losing my mind.
“Exton,” I breathe out. “What are you doing?”
“Do you trust me?” he asks in a husky voice, and I’m too far gone to freak out. But it’s more than that…
“You already asked me that.”
“I know. But now I need to hear it.”
“Why?”
“Because trust is more important than love. Love fades, rusts, and dies without stable ground and trust is that ground. It’s forever. And I wanted your trust, Electra Monroe. I wanted it without giving you all the options. Without warning you.”
“Warning me?”
“That I won’t let you go after you give it to me.” His whisper is sinister, full of dark promise, possession, and obsession as it runs down my spine. “Without giving you an option, I stole your life. Stole it and bound it to mine.”
“I…I…” My words get lost. I feel them. I want to say them, but I can’t.
But he knows.
“Shhh,” he whispers into my neck, running his tongue over my column, tasting my skin and I shudder. “Just feel, Electra. Feel how much I want you. Feel it all.” He seals it with a hard kiss on the spot his tongue was teasing, kneading my breast and I sense his finger on my clit.
But…there it is again. It’s more than a simple sensation of something happening down there. It’s a flicker, almost as if someone has poked me with a tiny needle, but it’s a feeling I haven’t felt since I woke up in that hospital room. And every time Exton draws his finger in a slow circle around my clit, I feel the pinpricks following it.
Almost as if…as if he’s unfreezing the flesh there.
You know that feeling when you get frost bitten from the cold and once you are back in the warmth, your body gets the tingles.
That’s how it feels.
My head falls back against his chest and Exton immediately brings his mouth to mine. He is much larger than me so it’s no hardship for him to bend over me and take my mouth in a savage kiss. Because that’s what it is.
But it’s not the force that makes it savage or how hard he’s kissing me, because there’s none of that.
It’s savage in the emotions that come rolling off his lips.
This kiss is nothing like the small, quick pecks he gave me before. When those seemed almost accidental or forced, this one is nothing short of desperate, passionate, teasingly hot and full of promises. Of trust.
His soft tongue parts my lips easily, without any fight and he slides it against mine, fighting me for control that I give up all too soon and all too willingly. He’s kissing the life out of me.
Or…kissing the life into me. The hand that was on my breast comes up to my face, holding it reverently. But the other hand that is on my pussy stays there, cupping me harder as his thumb brushes against that swollen bud and I yelp into his mouth.
Oh my god! Did I just really feel that? Exton pulls away abruptly. “What? Did I hurt you?” His voice is breathless, panting as he searches my eyes, and I feel his hand slipping away from my pussy, but I don’t let him.
With my left hand I reach under water, grasping his arm and pushing it back down to my needy core as my other hand reaches for his face, cupping it. “No, you didn’t hurt me,” I croak and before he has a chance to reply, I seal my lips back to his, kissing him back and with just as much desire as he did a second ago.
I want to scream that he made me feel alive. So, so alive. But I can’t. I won’t let those words slip.
A growl rumbles through his chest that shakes my whole body, and he tightens his hold on me just as his hand down below reaches my pussy again but not to tease me.
No, I feel, feel, his finger slip inside me. Deep and hard.
“Oh, God,” I moan into his mouth as mine slightly pulls away from his and a thin string of saliva still connects us to each other.
Exton is back on me too fast, fusing us together once again as his thick finger spears me, thrusting into me a few times before he adds another one. I want to scream that it’s too much but it’s not. It’s perfect and I want more.
“Fuck,” he groans. His free arm draping over my aching tits, rubbing both nipples simultaneously with his forearm. “Why? Why do you have to feel so good? Haven’t you already messed with my head enough?” His whole body shakes, as if he’s fighting himself all while knowing it’s a lost cause. “You are so fucking tight, little star. So, so tight and eager for my fingers, I’m gonna come just from fingering your little pussy.”
I whimper like the needy mess he made me, unable to make my hips move, to grind into his touch. To get more. To feel more and the tears of desperation and sadness spill of their own accord, sliding down my cheeks and mingling into our kiss. God, how I want to feel more…
I know he knows I’m crying. He can taste the salt on my skin, but he doesn’t let up. Doesn’t stop to ask the questions he already knows the answers to. No, Exton only amps up his pace, curling his fingers inside me as they bump into that hidden spot I had no idea about.
“Oh my God,” I mumble into our kiss and that tells him all he needed to know. He found what he was looking for and I didn’t know I could feel that. Didn’t imagine it be possible—even before my injury—but I do. It takes just two more thrusts before I feel tingles take root in the bottom of my stomach, my skin hot from more than just this water, my mind in delirium as my heart hammers inside my chest because…holy…it’s an orgasm and it blasts through my body.
An overwhelmingly long and powerful wave. One I haven’t felt before. I’ve never come so hard in my life before, where my vision goes black and my head is swimming.
“I feel that,” he groans, his fingers not letting up. “Oh, I feel that. Do you? Do you feel how hard your pussy is squeezing my fingers, Electra?” His hand on my pussy holds me so tight, he uses it to grind my ass into his hard cock, jerking himself off with me and I lose it at that thought.
My eyes rolling back, my mouth making incoherent noises, my hand on his face tightens as if I’m holding onto him for dear life.
God, why is that so hot? It shouldn’t be so hot to be used, right? But I want to give him whatever he wants for all he’s done for me. His other hand pinches my nipple and that coupled with the knowledge that I bring him pleasure, makes my climax climb to a new height.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I chant over and over, touching, grasping his hand on my pussy, digging my nails and holding tight to his face, demanding his lips to be back on mine as I ride out this wave of euphoria I’ve never felt and Exton gives me exactly what I want, still pumping his fingers into me as I come down from the high and his tongue caressing mine. Now slower but no less sensual. “I don’t understand. This can’t be happening…how…impossible…I’ve never…” I slump against his chest, still talking nonsense, but I’ll blame it all on the orgasm that just blasted through me.
But he understands, he always understands, and I feel his smile against my back but it’s one of his genuine ones. The ones so rare it’s an honor to see them.
“Nothing is impossible when it comes to you.” He kisses my back as he gently pulls out his fingers from my sore pussy and just lightly brushes them against my still sensitive folds. Exton is holding and touching me like I’m a fragile glass flower, as if he’s terrified he was too rough and that flower might break all of a sudden.
“I won’t,” I murmur, closing my eyes as my breathing calms down.
“You won’t what?”
“I won’t break, Exton. Not when you’re the one holding me.”
I hear his ragged breathing hitch and a second later, his warm, sweat-covered forehead leans against my equally drenched hair.
It’s hot in here from the water temperature but that’s not what caused our state. Eventually, Exton pulls away wordlessly, takes out the water stopper, and I want to scream for him to stop, to let me feel for a bit longer but before I get the chance, he puts it back in. Only emptying a bit of the water and turns on the faucet to let in new, hotter one in and I nearly sigh with relief.
Exton leans back and takes me with him to rest against his chest again, but I don’t miss the hardness still digging into my lower back. He didn’t get off.
“Don’t worry about it,” he answers as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, but that’s no longer a surprise to me.
He understands me on some other level, one I didn’t dare to wade into before tonight. Didn’t dare to even hope to peek inside, but after what we just shared, after his admissions, the door is wide open and if I thought I was scared to look into here before, now that I’ve seen it, I’m even more terrified.
Because I don’t see a parallel road to mine, I see one so intertwined you can barely tell us apart. His darkness is dancing with mine, so it’s not lonely. His soul is holding mine, so it doesn’t slip away. His warmth keeps my chill away. It’s my will that strangles his anger. My desperation is his personal beacon, his grounding. And there’s more.
So much that the deeper I peer into it, the scarier it gets. The farther I look, the more I realize what I shared with Erik—a person whom I thought I loved beyond reason—was a farce. A glimmering, shiny zirconia instead of the diamond I’m now holding.
It’s not a perfectly cut one. Not pure and light. It’s raw, somewhat black, and sharp but it’s the perfect shape for my shattered soul.
The most outrageous thought crosses my mind. If I do walk…he’ll leave. His mission here will be over, and he’ll leave.
And then I’m disgusted with myself for even entertaining a thought like that. How selfish am I? But…just what am I supposed to do without him? How am I to survive when he is the only one who makes me alive.
When he’s the only one stubborn enough to force that life into me.
“Tell me.” The soft demand comes out of nowhere, breaking through my racing thoughts.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me why the words ‘trust me’ trigger you. Let me in.” My whole body instantly tenses but Exton is just as quick, brushing my hair off my back and pressing his lips to the back of my neck. I arch into him like a lost lamb, seeking comfort knowing exactly where it now exists, and words just spill out of me.
“Because trust was ruined for me, and now it doesn’t come easy.”
“Who? Who did this to you?”
I swallow. “You already know, don’t you? Or you have your guesses.”
This time it’s Exton who tenses up as he grits out, “I need to hear you say it. I need to hear what exactly happened. I need to know for what exactly I will spill his blood on that ice.”
His words send a chill over my warm body, but I quickly realize it’s not one of fear. No, it’s one of fire, of all of that balled up anger I’ve been stuffing deep inside, hiding it from the light. Hiding my own dark, murderous thoughts because Elle Monroe doesn’t think like that.
She’s light and sweet.
Only I failed to admit that she really did die . Not until Exton’s words slipped past his lips did it hit me, and I unleashed them. I revel in them. I feel them.
“Give it to me, lay it on me. I’ll take your hurt, Electra. I’ll take it all.” He leans in, placing his lips on the thundering pulse in my neck.
I don’t talk about that day. I don’t allow Stella to talk about it, but I know if I were to give that same ultimatum to Exton, he would not only keep going but push on the bleeding wound even more, bleeding it until every ounce of infection spilled out. And I know I would hurt him. I would hurt him by denying him an entry to my soul when all he wants is to sew up the carved-out flesh.
“That day was supposed to be one of the happiest of my life.” I swallow the lump in my throat, lean into his warmth and give it all to him.
I hurt with him.