51. Harper
FIFTY-ONE
HARPER
I’d wanted Nash for so long, I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t want him to notice me more, talk to me more, pay attention to me more than those hoes he fucked around with in school. Hell, half the time I ran around after we graduated, I wore things I knew he liked.
Short skirts with pleats. Tops with strings to untie. String bikinis I intentionally asked him to tighten the top of just to feel his fingers on my skin.
Nash liked to unwrap things, and I wanted to be his present.
And now, I finally had him, and he was so different I didn’t know whether to mourn the man he used to be, or celebrate the monster he’d become.
I wasn’t the same girl I used to be. I wasn’t the girl who played coy to win his affection and the little attention he paid me in between women in his bed.
I was a woman who knew what she wanted. And if I was going to be out here, breaking all my own rules, then I might as well go all the way.
"Fuck me, Nashville Blackwood," I demanded, my hand shooting out to grab him by the front of his shirt so I could yank him down to meet my lips. "Make me feel things."
I’d been so afraid to feel for so long. So afraid to love, afraid of connections, afraid that somewhere down the line, I’d lose myself and end up more hurt than the time they betrayed me on that bridge.
Now, I was afraid of not feeling the very thing I’d been running from this whole time. I wanted to relish whatever time I had with them. I almost died. I could die any day. Time wasn’t guaranteed.
"Please," I begged, hating myself for being weak for him. "Please, Nash."
His hands made short work of the zipper on his pants, and the fucker didn’t even bother pulling them off before he notched the head of his dick at my entrance and grabbed my hips, fingers digging into my ass as he slid home like he belonged there.
Inside me.
The two of us, one.
"Shit," he breathed, gritting his teeth as inch after glorious inch of his cock disappeared inside my tight heat, stretching me, filling me, too much and yet just enough in the same breath. "Shit, Harpie girl, you’re strangling me."
"Not quite," I mused, my fingers tangled in the sheets. "But I could, if you’re into that."
"Maybe later," he growled, his hands shaking as he lifted me slightly off the bed for better access. In one move, he slid home inside me, down to the hilt of his shaft, bottoming out in me as I groaned through the sensations.
Fuck, he was so big.
Angel was bigger, though.
I hadn’t had my hands around it, but fuck if I didn’t know he was packing from the way it pressed against me when I woke up first. Or when he’d had me pinned to the car, our tongues down each others’ throats, that collar around my neck like?—
Okay, I should definitely not be thinking about his brother while I was in bed with him.
There was something wrong with me. Something broken. I supposed that was why I fit in so well with these warped versions of the boys I’d grown up with. Because at our cores, we were all a little twisted up inside. Broken.
"Fuck me," I pleaded, "I need you to move inside me, Nash."
"Say less," he breathed, sliding himself out almost all the way to the tip.
I wasn’t prepared for him to slam back into me with such force it shoved the bed against the wall.
Loudly.
I moaned through gritted teeth, feeling the stitches in my side pulling uncomfortably, cutting into my skin. "Fuck," I groaned, reaching for him as he set a steady rhythm, rearranging my guts with skills no mortal man should possess. "Nash, I?—"
"If you have the energy to talk, I’m not doing it right," he quipped, his brows raised as he stared down at me like I had grown a horn. "What do you want, Harpie girl? I want you to say it."
What did I want? I wasn’t even sure what the answer was anymore.
I wanted his dick inside me, turning me to mush. I wanted to feel his pain, shoulder some of this agony and angst he hid behind that made him want to hurt himself every time he looked in a mirror. I wanted to know that he wasn’t lost, wasn’t all the way gone. I wanted him to know that he was worthy of fucking love.
Love.
Fucking Christ, was I in love with these assholes?
No. Just no. No fucking way.
I broke literally every other personal rule I had. I couldn’t fall in love with the men who’d betrayed me over and over, who let me walk away without a single word, who?—
"I want to hurt you like you hurt me," I whispered, not even believing it came from my own mouth. "I want to feel your pain, and I want you to feel mine."
"Fucking hell, Harpie girl," he moaned, his dick twitching inside me. "Hurt me. Make me pay for all the pain I’ve caused you."
His thumb slipped around to the front of my waist, and I cried out as it pressed insistently against my wound there, blood squelching against the gauze as I breathed through my mouth and tried not to scream. The agony was fucking insane, but I asked for this. I wanted to know how he felt, and now, I wanted him to feel it right back. I wanted him to know he could still feel pain, outside of the pain he caused himself to avoid the agony of the world hurting him instead .
So I did what any semi-sane woman shacking up with a hitman would do, and I dragged my nails down the edges of his self-inflicted facial wound. I drew the smile in reverse down to the corner of his mouth as he bled freely, droplets decorating my skin as he growled and ripped my shirt in half, baring my breasts to his gaze.
"Fuck, that’s so hot, yes," he snarled, leaning into my painful caress. "Make me bleed for you, Harpie girl. Sink those claws into me so I can never escape."
His lips were on me in a heartbeat, taking a nipple at a time into his mouth to savor while I moved my hands to the base of his neck, pulling the hairs there as he groaned against me, his cock still sliding in and out with every breath we took.
Man, when Nash fucked, he fucked.
No wonder there were so many girls lining up to sleep with him.
And it dawned on me why men hated when they were reminded another man had slept with his woman before him.
I was possessive. Feral. The thought of another woman taking this, what should have been mine years ago, filled me with a hatred I didn’t like.
Anger I shouldn’t feel.
Resentment I had no business with.
Nash noticed I’d pulled away, and in a rare moment for him, he snapped his fingers in front of my face and turned concerned.
"Harpie girl, you still with me?"
I blinked, realizing he probably thought I was having a panic attack. "I’m—yeah. I’m here." The thoughts raced through my mind still, but I wasn’t going to give voice to them.
I wasn’t.
"You don’t seem as into this as you were a minute ago." He glanced away from me, his hair falling over his face as he hid away from me, already preparing to pull out.
Against my better judgment, I used what little power I had left in me and flipped our positions, putting him on his back on the bed as I straddled him, keeping his cock buried inside me. He stared up in surprise, his mouth agape at my sudden display of dominance.
"How did you get so good at this, Nash?" I snarled, hating the way I felt but powerless to stop it. Something in me reflected something in him, and it was like I’d become part of him, a sickness of the mind seeping in and taking over. "How many women have had this dick inside them before me?"
"Who cares?" he said casually, rocking back up into me with eagerness. "I’m inside of you now. Isn’t that the important part?"
"I don’t think you understand," I raged, my hands sliding from his face, down his throat. "I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone in my life, Nash. But I want to strangle every fucking girl who’s ever been with you." My hand tightened around his neck, and I felt him throb inside me. "I want to hate you for all the things they taught you," I whispered, watching his eyes darken as they stared me down, his whole body at attention. I started to rise and fall on his cock, taking him as I slowly cut off his air supply. "I can’t stop thinking about how good you are in bed and how you had to learn those things somewhere." I took him inside me like a pro, leaning over to plant a kiss on his lips as he started to actually suffocate. "I wanna hate you for fucking every single one of them, Nash. But you feel so good inside me, I can’t."
The color rushed from his face as I released his throat and leaned back, propping myself up on his thighs as I bounced on that dick, the arch in my back forcing his cock to hit that sweet spot inside me with every thrust, so pleasurable I could almost ignore the shooting pain in my side.
I could almost forget that I was bleeding all over myself now. Almost forgot that I was falling apart, that something black inside my mind was slowly turning me into an unrecognizable, possessive, angry bitch.
Almost .
"Fuck yes, Harpie girl, ride me, take what you want from me, take it all?—"
I doubled back over and took his face in my hands, slipping a pinkie beneath the remaining stitches on one side. "Don’t hide from me anymore, Nash, you hear me?" I tugged at his stitches, feeling one give way as he groaned and rose up to meet me on the next thrust, the two of us rising to a shared peak together. "I want to see you. All of you." Another stitch popped as he groaned, his fingers digging into the flesh around my waist.
"You have me," he panted, blood streaming down his face now, just like it did my abdomen. "Christ, Harpie girl, when did you turn into a monster like me?"
"Maybe I always was one. I just needed another one to match my freak, to drag the truth out of me."
Maybe I’d always been a monster. The funny thing was, if either of us was a monster, it wasn’t him.
It was me.
Because I wanted a monster like him. I knew him, inside and out, back to front, and still wanted him inside me.
A part of me. Under my skin.
Forever.
Shit.
I felt the edge of the pain fade away as he thrust into me one more time, and I came with a shout, the feeling like an out-of-control, off-the-rails freight train with no brakes. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t edge away from the precipice. I was there. And suddenly, so was Nash, his face lighting up like a sky full of fireworks as he came.
He tossed his head back on the blankets, his hair scattered around him, and that Adam’s apple worked in his throat as he struggled through his own release, breathing shallow and rapid.
I hooked a finger in his mouth and dragged his eyes up to lock onto mine, so I could see his soul laid out for me as his orgasm rocked him, hot ropes of his cum filling me as he jerked uncontrollably.
"Look at me when you come for me, Nashville Blackwood."
His lips spread in a feral grin, and like that, Nash was sitting upright, clinging to me as he came inside of me, giving me every ounce of seed he had in him. And my greedy cunt took it like a champ, throbbing around him, oversensitized as fuck and desperate for more.
But my body had had enough.
And so had my soul.
I needed to step away before the reality of what we’d just done set in completely.
Nash wasn’t a carer. He had his own ways of doing things, and I think a part of him knew he wasn’t what I needed after that ordeal.
He pulled out of me, laid me down on the bed, and marched over to the door as he tucked himself away and zipped his pants. With a last look in my direction, he yanked the door open, and Angel nearly fell through it, a stunned look on his face that quickly turned into rage and hatred.
He turned on Nash, his fist raised and ready to plant itself square in his brother’s jaw. At the last minute, Nash reached out and stopped the incoming punch, nodding in my direction.
"I’m not good at all that post-sex shit. She doesn’t need me right now. She needs cared for." He looked Angel up and down, a hint of distaste and jealousy in his voice when he spoke again. "She needs you."
With that, he strode off into his bathroom and slammed the door, refusing to look back at me even when I called his name.
Abandoning me once more.