Chapter Twenty-Nine
THE OPENING OF the zipper of my hoodie is loud in this dark, abandoned place.
It might even be the loudest, louder than my own heavy breaths, if not for Peyton’s gasp followed by her tirade.
“You asshole! Just when I thought you had redeeming qualities!” I hear her struggle in the background, as if she’s trying to break free of Rad and fly over to me.
“Are you actually asking her to get naked? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Arsen doesn’t pay her any mind. Like he hasn’t all this time. His eyes are mean and they’re only for me. They watch me unzip my hoodie all the way before I roll my shoulders and take it off, letting it fall to the floor.
Peyton’s voice echoes in the room again. This time, addressing me: “Don’t do it, Riri. Don’t you fucking do it.” Then to Rad, “Let me go, you asshole. Just let me go to my friend. She needs—”
“Arsen,” Rad growls over Peyton. “Stop this shit right now.”
“Yes, Arsen,” Peyton snaps in a mocking voice. “Stop this shit right now and let my friend go. She has nothing to do with this.”
I want to correct her and say that I do. I may not be a Turner, but I’m a Grayson.
I’m his.
Even if for the time being; and somehow, I got in my head and forgot about that.
I fucked up so big that taking my clothes off for him in front of the world doesn’t seem like a big deal.
Or rather only two people, but with my body issues, they might as well be the whole universe.
I can’t say anything, though. Whatever energy and willpower I have is going into fisting the hem of my T-shirt so I can pull it off.
“Don’t you fuckin’ do somethin’… you’re gonna… regret later,” Rad says with heavy pauses.
I don’t think they’d be noticeable to anyone else. Except the people who know about his speech issues. And I think it’s happening because he’s angry on my behalf. Again, I want to say something, but I can’t.
The only thing I see is Arsen. He looks so tall, so broad and large, standing in front of that dirt-streaked window. The barely there moonlight filters in and highlights the shape of his body, making him look like a phantom almost. A fever dream with a silvery silhouette.
The only thing I feel is his stare as it follows my fists pulling the T-shirt up and up and over my body. The moment it comes off, leaving me in just my bra and my jeans, my heart explodes in my chest and my skin is riddled with goose bumps. The night suddenly turns cold.
“If you stand here a second longer,” he growls without taking his eyes off me. “Lookin’ at my wife and what’s only meant for me, I’ll carve your eyes out.” Then, glancing at them, “Goes for both of you.”
Peyton screeches. Rad growls.
But I don’t pay attention to any of them.
I don’t even care when Rad drags a screaming, cursing Peyton out of the cabin a moment later.
I’m more focused on the fact that I don’t feel cold anymore.
In fact, the moment they slam the door shut, it feels like I’ve been licked by fire. And maybe I have been.
If his eyes are flames and his stare is more like a touch.
It travels from my face, through the fluttering pulse at my neck, along my heaving chest and shaking breasts, all the way down to my jeans.
I know what he wants me to do, and so I get to it.
I unbutton my jeans and without much thought, push them down.
I take a step toward him, but he shakes his head.
Then, with the tip of his chin, he commands, “Lose ’em too.”
“M-my bra?”
“And panties.”
“I—”
“Anything, yeah?” he asks with flashing eyes.
My breath hitches. “Yes.”
He shifts on his feet with a deep breath. “Let’s get to it then.”
Didn’t I say he wouldn’t make it easy for me?
Even so, the actual act of stripping down to nothing makes me a little nervous.
Especially when there’s no reaction from him, not a single emotion or a sign that this is affecting him in some way.
It’s like walking barefoot on glass. But then I think about how he must’ve felt, what he must’ve gone through tonight because of my recklessness, and my arms reach back.
If he can walk through fire for me, I can walk on broken glass for him.
My fingers are surprisingly steady as they unhook my bra and lower the straps on both arms. Then, with another roll of my shoulders, I get rid of the garment and let it drop to the floor to join my other clothes.
The instant his stare brushes my bare tits, my nipples go hard.
So hard that it hurts. So much so that it takes effort on my part to not reach up and touch them.
To not pull at them and twist them and just…
do something to them. And it only gets worse when I go for the panties and pull them down my legs.
Because I realize—as always, belatedly, because he makes me feel so many things and all of them at once—that my panties are wet.
They’re leaving streaks of cream down my thighs, making them glisten in the moonlight.
Now that I’m naked, he traces the shape of my body with his eyes, and for the first time I notice a little shudder in his chest. That small reaction from him puts me a bit at ease, and I take a step toward him again.
But he shakes his head once more. This time, it’s physically painful to stop, but I do it because it’s his show, not mine.
“Get down on your knees,” he commands.
I dig my nails into my thighs. “What?”
“And crawl to me.”
“Crawl to y-you?”
“Anything, remember?” he growls, his face hard, his voice harder.
“This is anything, darlin’, so you either drop your knees to the ground and crawl to me like the sweet little wife you’re tryin’ so hard to be or stop wastin’ my time.
” My thighs clench at his raspy voice and he keeps going, “Because you are, aren’t you.
Tryin’ to be a sweet little wife for me. ”
I jerk out a nod, feeling a drop of my cum pulsing out of my core and running down my thigh. I am trying to show him I can be a good wife who listens to him.
“So again, let’s get to it or get the fuck out.”
As soon as he finishes, he moves. He heads to the right, his mud-streaked boots thudding on the floor as he drags a chair and proceeds to sit on it. With his shoulders straight and thighs sprawled, his hands resting so casually on them, waiting for me to choose an option: commit or leave.
But there’s really no choice, is there? I’m not going to leave. I don’t want to. And neither will I let him go, so I drop down to the floor and do as he said.
I crawl.
And every move I make toward him makes my pussy even wetter.
It makes my thighs more slippery and slick.
My tits are heavy and dangling, and my nipples still want to be pulled and played with.
It doesn’t even matter that the wood is hard and the floor is all dirty.
Or that the dirt grinds into my kneecaps and my palms as I move.
It also doesn’t matter that halfway to him, I realize there’s a possibly dead body on the floor, lying in a pool of his own blood that I may have to pass through to get to him, but it’s okay. It’s the proof that Arsen came for me.
He saved me.
He keeps saving me over and over and over again, and he needs to know that. So when I get to him, I don’t just stop at his feet. I go all the way. I get between his sprawled, jean-covered thighs, and as soon as I do, they snap into action and hug my sides, making a café of his body.
And God, he’s hard. His muscles feel rock hard, harder and tenser than they’ve ever been. So I rub my hands up and down, trying to massage them as I look up. “You came.”
His features flinch at my whisper and he leans over. He reaches for me, for my braid, and captures it in his fist as he rasps, “You called for me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
He tightens his fist. “Does that make you feel good?”
“What?”
“That I’m so fuckin’ wrapped around your little finger,” he says in a low, dark tone, his eyes flashing, “that I come runnin’ every time you call me. Every time you scream my name, I bust down doors. I tear through woods. I beat a man half to death just so I can get to you.”
I bite my lip. “I don’t… I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
A puff of breath escapes him, and his fingers tighten even further in my hair. “Then you should’ve stayed in your bed tonight.”
“My bed?”
“Yeah. You should’ve been sleepin’ in it when I came to the room.”
At this, my movements stop. “You came… you came to the room tonight?”
“Thought you’d run away.” He licks his lips as his eyes rove over my features. “Thought I scared you after last night. Fucked you too hard maybe. Made you bleed too much, left too many marks on your ripe little body. Trashed that pussy so bad and now you don’t want my filthy cowboy hands on it.”
I dig my nails into his hard thighs and shake my head. “No, you didn’t. You… I’d never run from you, Arsen. I—”
“Then I thought,” he keeps going, his thighs tensing around me, “they took you.”
My heart drops at what that means. “The Turners?”
“Thought they came for you,” he says. “They did once, didn’t they? They took everything from me. So they could do it again. They could and I thought this time around I’d fuckin’ burn them to the ground. I’d kill every single Turner on that ranch until I found you.”
My hands fly over to his face and clutch it like it’s the most precious thing in my life. And it is. He’s my husband, even if only for a little while. He’s the love of my life. I don’t want him to suffer. I never want him to suffer.
“Look, Arsen,” I say, trying to get his attention because he looks lost in his own world. “I’m here, okay? I’m with you. You saved me. You—”