CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #2
It’s a brisk morning. I thought we were bundled up and trekking through our acreage in the foggy amber light to snuggle by the pond, but something feral seized Wells on the way. His eyes glint with a roguish glee. Boyish and imposing at once.
He scoops me up, sprinting with me thrown over his shoulder as I squeal, and drops me before the obstacle course with a soul-scathing kiss, like he’s branding my insides. When my knees are good and weak, those emeralds twinkle with a dare.
He tucks a wisp of my hair behind my icy earlobe. “I told you I’d chase you to the ends of the earth, Little Storm. Let’s give it a go right here.”
Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and the past week, I’ve been less in the mood for anything, even our mind-blowing sex.
He’s obviously wound tight even though he fucked me into the stone tiles of the shower last night and I returned his wake-up call with a thigh-shaking, deep-throated blow job this morning.
The ravenous set of his lips screams how much he’s missed me.
I shake my head with a rebuking smirk, jutting my hip to the side. “With the right motivation, I can outrun anyone.” My eyebrows hike up my forehead as I scrape my teeth over my lip in a taunt. “Most especially, you, Chief.”
He howls like he did the last time I told him I’d run, the thunderous bellow ricocheting off the surrounding woods with a haughty echo.
His fingers curl around my jaw. “There’s no incentive in this life that out trumps my need for you, Ivy.
” His teeth nip at my ear, then at my neck below it, peppering my skin with kisses as a crest of electricity shivers through me.
“Being a brat only makes me crave you more. Go,” he rasps.
“Two-minute head start, but when I catch you, I fuck you in all the ways I want.”
Breathless and shaky, I lunge for the first ledge I can reach, heaving myself up the spider climbing wall, limbs quivering with equal measures of arousal and determination.
The two-minute head start offers false confidence.
I breeze through the course until the cargo net, when I realize he’s gaining on me.
With limbs twice the length of mine, his stride is massive.
“Fuck me,” I hiss, glancing behind me as my chest tightens, blood drumming in my ears, heat pooling between my legs.
“That’s the spirit, Little Storm, readying yourself to be impaled on my dick.” His wolfish grin, the glint in his eyes, and the sparkle of his teeth could make Lucifer shudder, simply because of his relentless tenacity.
A tremulous moan rumbles in my throat. If it wasn’t for my pesky pride, I’d surrender right here.
The real prize is getting caught. In my tantalized haze, my foot slips through one of the holes, and I lose more precious seconds.
So, when I finally slither my way onto the high tower, it’s unsurprising that he flips me over, clamping my wrists in his hand.
His power over me is a clutching of sweet freedom.
I’m elated to help him celebrate his win.
“Mine,” he growls in a savage claiming.
Biting my lip with an exhilarated hunger, I agree, “Yours.”
“That’s my good girl.” He folds the waistband of my pants, shimmying them down my hips with a victorious grin.
It’s not quite forty-five degrees, our breaths puffing out in a smoky white, but my skin is so feverish with need, the damp, frosty air is delicious on my exposed heat .
I glance around. Awareness that we’re in the middle of the yard on the highest point while the sun illuminates us bathes me in a titillating humiliation. Pearls of sweat dot my hairline and breasts and spine with a rousing panic. “Here? Why here?”
“The guys have been instructed to stay inside,” he informs me, circling my clit with a euphoric rhythm, as if that is the sole reason this is an odd place to be fucking.
“Wells—”
“Here, Ives, because I want you to remember there is no height I won’t climb for you, no distance I won’t travel, no depth I won’t dive.” His voice is thick with emotion as his fingers plunge into me. “So wet for me,” he praises.
And his kiss is lyrical, as though he’s penning me a ballad, telling me I’m his and, together, we’ll be okay. The chase, the height, the lesson—so poetically Wells. My tongue dances with his to the tune of his promises, his passion, and his love, which burrow deeper into my soul.
“I’m going to fuck your pretty pussy up here, Little Storm. And then I’m going to haul you down there, carry you back to the house, and fuck your ass, so you remember there isn’t a part of you that isn’t mine.”
I whimper, bucking against his fingers, set ablaze at the image of how he’ll own me in a new way today.
His hand rises to my throat, tightening the way I love. The breath of his chuckle heats and chills me at once, and his lips tickle mine as they speak. “That’s my filthy slut. So goddamn greedy. You’ll have my cum filling every hole today.”
He peels my panties and his joggers down, just enough, and in a blurry sweep, he thrusts inside me. I gasp and whimper, drunk on his possessiveness and the fullness of him stretching me.
It’s as though we’re making love in the clouds, floating and free. Yes, it’s the wild and territorial seizing I crave from Wells, but his passion, with the sky engulfing us and the brisk air lapping at my sopping core, is a fairy tale. A rescuing.
A butterfly’s kiss .
Our orgasms detonate in unison, guttural cries singing from the high tower.
And a while after we find our footing on solid ground, he makes good on another promise in the warmth of his office, bending me over his desk as pens and papers skitter across the wood.
He inserts a remote-controlled vibrator into my pussy, commanding it to tease my clit and center while lubing me up, and pushes his way into an area I never imagined giving away.
But Wells colors the experience as both an erotic takeover and a tender act of love.
His brand of dominance molds to even the most hidden parts of me.
“Relax and let me in,” he whispers, the demand as smooth as velvet. “Fuck, you’re so tight, so perfect, baby. Such a good girl taking my cock.”
He grunts in tandem with my pants and moans as the glorious fullness morphs from discomfort to a spark to a jolt of surging frisson. I’m full. So fucking full.
“Jesus, I love you, Ives.”
With those words and my parroted declaration, we grip each other for a shattering that renders me more whole than I’ve ever been.
Thememory swirls on the crisp breeze, making me heady. I drop my bag on the straw-like dead grass from the tower, selecting the black spray paint first. After testing it, I mark the outline of the piece I have in my mind, taking my time to keep the lines precise and tight. Clean but flowy.
The area is so vast without the massive workout structure, and I utilize it all. Several spray cans later, I’m delighted with my masterpiece and grateful the season is late in delivering snow this year.
Dragging a trowel, I dig a shallow trench on either side of the lines and trace it all with the fluid. Content with that, I jog back to the house—a jaunt I’ve made a hundred times.
My AirPods are in, imparting more recent classics than what Wells prefers.
“Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles blares in my ears like a therapeutic soundtrack as I sprinkle gasoline and gunpowder over each of the rooms, dousing my memories and theirs in a lustral two-step.
My guys wanted to sell our home and pretend our time together didn’t happen.
This is far more cathartic.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then I’m nailing this sanity angle.
As I make my way back to the glass French doors to the patio, I take one last wistful glance at the ghosts drifting through the space that once swelled with boisterous laughter and men who willingly cradled my pain.
Visions of the period party. Liam’s quick wit, mischievous grin, and dark web tutorials.
Ty’s sweet hugs, our movie-character game, and easy banter.
Gage’s nachos, his pledge to stay with me, his enthusiasm for my baked goods.
And Wells holding it together for all of us so those moments were viable.
The flick of a match.
The crackling spark.
A wheezing blaze devouring it all.
And vomiting ashes.
A satisfying whoosh resounds as the flames lick up—a balm cauterizing all the wounds they inflicted.
And that’s the crux of it. No matter the motives—even if, in some twisted way, they believed this mindfuck was some form of safety, protection, or saving—they robbed me, allowing me to be tortured under the guise of nonsensical reasoning.
Standing on the patio, I heed the warmth. My nostrils flare, a tickle evoked from the sulfuric aroma of singeing, not unsimilar to our campfire nights, as the chill of the January air wars with the burn of my goodbye.
A final letting go. A disengaging.
My eyes look on with pride, the growing blaze stinging them into a squint, captivated by the scorching, melting, smoldering.
The flames writhe to curl with greed around the cabinets and drywall—painting a blackened and charred version of the hollowness they left me. A more accurate depiction .
The stone won’t burn. I like that.
To leave smoke stains and walls enclosing ashes. A shell of what was.
Of what isn’t.
A fortress of all that was stolen. Erased, if you will.
Ivy can be terribly difficult to eradicate after all. You might say I’m simply doing my part to accomplish what they began.
But the thing about burning ivy—the poisonous kind—is that those plumes of smoke release toxic spores, harmful to anyone who comes into contact with it.
They might not have factored that in.
It’s not as though they didn’t know who they were dealing with. They’d watched and studied me for five years, learning both my loyalty and my rage.