42. River
FORTY-TWO
RIVER
Nothing could feel more blissful than being tangled with Charleigh. Our skin slicked with sweat and our bodies sated. Breaths short and shallow, breathing each other where we lie on our sides facing each other on her bed.
Legs twisted and hearts tied.
That’s what this was.
I fuckin’ knew it.
It was plain and clear that I’d crossed a line that I was never supposed to cross. Wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with that shit. The truth that I’d broken the rule that I’d written. Guilt flared at the very recesses of my mind.
My failure.
The oath I’d made.
But somehow it no longer possessed me. No longer contained me.
Charleigh had swept in and rearranged every-fucking-thing I thought I’d known.
I brushed back the lock of chestnut hair that was stuck to her cheek, tucking it behind her ear.
“How do you feel?” Could barely get the words out, my throat was so raw.
An affected smile danced across her pink, swollen lips. “Like I was just ravaged by a beast.”
A grin tugged at my face, heart going light. “That was not close to a ravaging, Little Runner. I needed to give you time to adjust before you find out what being with me is really going to be like.”
Redness swept across her flesh, and she bit down on her bottom lip like she was envisioning it. How I was going to take her in every way.
Her fingertips came out and played across my lips. “Is that what I am? With you?”
“Think we made that much clear, yeah?” I pulled her closer, her bare, naked flesh plastered against mine. “It’s you and me now.”
“Yeah?” My fierce girl looked timid. Vulnerable. And I fuckin’ loved that she felt confident enough to be that way with me.
“Yeah,” I told her.
Her skin blistered against mine, and I could feel the steady thud of her heart as it beat at my chest.
Fingertips played along the designs on my arm before she took my left hand that was on her hip and ran her thumb over the Ss.
“What does this mean? You and all your friends have the same one.”
She peeked up at me as she asked it before she turned her attention back to the design, barely tracing her fingers over the ink.
Unease gripped me in a fist, and I blew out the strain through my nose. “We all met in LA as teens. Each of us fucked up in our own way.”
A frown carved into her brow, and I reached out with my thumb and smoothed it away as I continued, “We learned to rely on each other. To have each other’s backs. It was how we survived. We became a family, and this is a sign of the pact we made that we would always stand by each other.”
I left a whole fuckton out. Seemed she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t give some pieces of her life. I would one day. I just had to figure out how the fuck I was going to handle this.
Sorrow billowed through her spirit. “Raven told me a little about your pasts. Showed me the scars she has. She said you saved her, but it was a story you needed to tell. ”
I took her hand and pressed her knuckles to my lips. “Doubt that’s a story you really want the details of.”
Her caramel eyes were soft, the cinnamon flecks swirling as she gazed at me. “Yet I feel like it defined you.”
My stomach fisted. Couldn’t believe the way this girl could read me. Way she had direct access to who I was.
“Guess it did. The bastard taught me what hate really meant, and he also taught me the lengths I would go for the ones that I love.”
Her nod was slow, like she was piecing it all together without needing the gory details. “And do you think that’s a bad thing?”
A low chuckle rumbled out. “Whole lot of people in the world would label it that.”
Taking justice into my own hands. But I wouldn’t change it. Not after everything we’d been through. Not after the people we’d helped.
“I see who you are,” she murmured. “The way you are with Nolan and Raven. The way you are with me.”
Her fingertips fluttered over my heart like she could inscribe her belief on it.
A heavy sigh pilfered through my nose. “Love them with everything I’ve got.”
A tiny smile tugged at the edge of Charleigh’s sweet mouth. “How could you not? Your sister is amazing and wild and the most thoughtful person I’ve ever met, and Nolan…”
She trailed off, wistfulness climbing into her tone.
I brushed my fingers through her hair. “Kid is the best thing in my life.”
Adoration swam in her eyes. “He stole my heart. I think that first day at the clinic, he stole my heart.”
I pulled her closer, arms wrapping her tight. “Pretty sure he feels the same about you.”
Hell, I was pretty sure she’d stolen mine, too. Ripped it right out of my chest.
I wavered, but there was no missing the melancholy in her gaze. The sadness that was there in the middle of her love. So I broached the topic that had been plaguing me in the back of my mind. “How old was your son when you lost him?”
A pained sound hitched in her throat, but she didn’t seem that surprised by my asking it. “He was just a tiny baby.”
My stomach clutched. “Were you in the car accident with him?”
Sorrow blanketed her expression, before she whispered out the words, “No. He was with my parents.” She blinked through what seemed a thousand memories, awash in the torment I could feel lashing her insides. “They were coming to meet me. They were all killed.”
Fuck.
“That’s horrible. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.” I wanted to erase it. Erase it all. But I didn’t hold that kind of power.
Her mouth was pressed to my throat when she mumbled, “It was when I finally got away from my husband. Because he had nothing left to hold over me. The only thing left was my body.”
I couldn’t imagine it, living with that sort of loss with the abuse on top of it. It was so much more than any one person should have to bear.
And here she was—the brightest light I’d ever felt. Spearing through me the second I’d seen her. The first person who’d ever held the power to strike me.
Nothing but a fucking lightning bolt.
Wasn’t much of a believer in fate, but I had to wonder if this woman was mine.
I rolled us so I was hovering over her, and I lifted her left arm. I kissed over the skin that I’d marked .
In grief we must live.
I mumbled against it, “There is so much life left in you. You might have been stricken, cut down so low, but that fucker couldn’t snuff out your light.”
She exhaled, and I kissed up her arm to the cap of her shoulder and then along her collarbone.
A whimper got free of her, and her nails scratched against my scalp. “River.” My name was a murmur.
A dream.
A plea.
It knocked through the middle of me like greed.
I eased back enough that I could roll her onto her stomach, and I crawled up over her. I planted my hands on the bed to keep my weight off her as I kissed along the backside of her shoulders and ran my lips down her spine.
Goosebumps lifted across her rosy flesh.
Fuck. She was gorgeous. Every inch of her.
All her scars. All her perfection.
I kept kissing lower until I was softly murmuring my lips over her scars. “Don’t think I want to make you forget anymore, Charleigh. Think I want to help you remember exactly who you are.”
She whimpered, then she moaned when I edged even lower, kissing at each side of her waist, up and over her hips.
My palms spread over her perfect, round ass.
In an instant, the mood shifted. Air still heavy, though it’d deepened with a thrumming density. With this thing that burned between us that I didn’t think could ever be put out.
As sure as the sun that rose every day.
“Please,” she whispered as her hands fisted in the sheets.
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” I pushed back until I was kneeling between her legs, then I grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up onto her knees.
Her sweet little ass swayed in the air, her pussy swollen from me marking myself deep.
I dragged my fingertips through her lips. She jolted forward and rasped my name. “River.”
“That’s right, Charleigh. Told you the only thing I had in store for you was pleasure. Going to give it to you. Again and again.”
Fuck me. She was so damned sexy. Perfect for me.
I kissed and licked along the base of her spine as I palmed her ass in my hands. Kneading my fingers in. “Don’t know what you’ve done to me, Little Runner. Way I look at you and I feel like I’m standing on the precipice of something huge. Something bigger than me. Wanted to get lost in you the first time I saw you, and now that I’ve had you, I don’t ever want to stop. ”
I kept kissing over her scars, down lower along the cleft of her ass.
She writhed and whimpered. “I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to ever stop.”
Her words impaled me. Taking hold. This woman a snare in my soul. Everything I couldn’t keep but I was set on taking, anyway.
Wasn’t like I ever played by the rules.
Greed pulsed through my veins. Hot and heavy. Her scent all around.
Cinnamon and clove. Pure fuckin’ spice.
I wanted to gulp her down. Glut and devour.
“Don’t plan on it,” I rumbled as I leaned down and spread her cheeks so I could swirl my tongue around her sweet, puckered hole.
Charleigh bucked on a gasp, rocking forward then back again.
“River.”
“Going to pleasure every inch of you.”
I eased off the side of the bed so I could grab another condom from the pocket of my jeans.
Yeah, I’d come prepared because I’d known when she’d fled from my house last night that once I caught up to her, I wasn’t ever going to let her go again. I was going to make this girl mine.
I covered myself while she rocked on her hands and knees, long locks of chestnut hair draped around her shoulders and brushing the bed.
Nearly got knocked to my knees when she looked back at me from over her shoulder. Cinnamon flecks shining with desire, caramel molten as that gaze devoured me like she felt the exact same thing when she was looking at me.
Like I was hers.
I climbed back onto the bed behind her, and I took her by the hips. She glowed at the connection, and that energy pulsed around us.
She kept watching me.
A vision wrecking my insides.
Complete ruination.
I dragged my fingers down her cleft then shoved two fingers deep inside her cunt. “Is that what you want, Charleigh? You want me to pleasure you? Again and again?”
Her head swished back and forth with the wisping plea. “God, yes, please.”
“Tell me I’m the only one who ever gets to do it.” My voice curled with gluttony.
“You’re the only one I’d ever want to. The only one who ever could.”
My chest tightened as a bolt of possession sheared through the middle of me.
“You ready to find out what it’s going to be like with me?”
“Yes.” She begged it.
Wrapping my hand around the base of my dick, I edged forward, and I lined my aching head up with her throbbing pussy.
Then I pushed in deep and hard.
She nearly knocked me the fuck out with the pleasure that slammed me at the feel of her.
Her walls gripping me tight. Squeezing me in a vise.
She sucked for air as she struggled to accommodate me. Her clutch almost too snug for me to fit.
She throbbed, and my balls tightened in a fit of bliss.
“Fuck me. You feel so good. So fucking good the way you hug my dick.”
I let my hands slide up her sides once, trying to chase away some of the tension that had stiffened her muscles, and the second she loosened, I slipped them back down until I had them cinched around her waist.
Then I drew out and slammed back in.
Gasping, she clawed at the bed. “River.”
“You good?”
“So good,” she whimpered incoherently. Her skin was flushed in that pretty pink, and a slick of sweat had begun to rise to the surface.
I tightened my hold on her hips, and I started to rock, thrusting in and out of her needy cunt time and again .
She looked so good like that, bent over, her lips swollen around where I drove into her.
“You should see what you look like, Charleigh, stuffed full of my dick. Sweet little ass in my hands.” I shifted so I could grab her by both cheeks, spreading her wider so I could take her deeper.
She writhed and thrashed. Coming back to meet me with every drive of my hips.
Wanting it.
Needing it.
Taking it.
I swirled my thumb around her asshole, just barely pressing the tip inside.
She bucked and begged. “River, please…I…”
“Do you like that?”
She frantically nodded her head.
“Such a good girl.”
I drove my thumb a little deeper with each thrust of my cock.
I fucked her hard and deep, winding her high.
She started making all these little mewling sounds that promised me she was getting ready to go off.
I needed to see that unforgettable face when she came, so I pulled out and flipped her over onto her back. Frustration ripped from her before I had her by the legs, spearing them wide before I surged back inside her.
Nearly blacked out with the smack of pleasure. “So fucking good, baby. What have you done to me?”
I drove in deep, watching down over her as I did. Her slim waist and her tiny tits and that face that had ruined me the first time I saw her.
Girl laid out like a fuckin’ prize. Like I could ever do anything to deserve the treasure she was.
That feeling fluttered inside me again. That thing that I’d tried to ignore from the start. Something that was more powerful than anything I’d felt before.
I felt desperate to wrap her up .
Hold her.
Love her and fuck her and keep her.
Bliss gathered fast, stalking up and down my spine. “Charleigh.”
She lifted her hips from the mattress with each thrust, and I slammed into her, quickening my pace. I let go of one of her legs so I could bring my thumb to her swollen clit.
I swirled it around her nub, and the air gushed from her lungs, every ragged pant filled with a plea.
“Please…I need…I can’t…”
“Told you I’ve got you. Told you I have everything you need.”
And my name became a chant, this woman who’d given herself to me. Trusted me. Let me touch her when the only touch of a man she’d known was pain.
I gathered her closer, lifting her up so I could meet her, though it was those eyes that had me tangled and caught up.
A beacon when I’d been so fucking lost.
Every cell in my body got twisted in it, struck with what she’d come to mean.
Pleasure glowed between us like the air had come alive.
Like the crash of waves on a cliffy beach. The toil of the sea in the middle of a storm.
“You feel it, Charleigh? Do you feel what you do to me?” I grunted it as I kept driving deep.
“Yes, I feel it. I feel you.”
Could tell she was getting ready to blow. Way her body bowed and tightened.
I swirled my thumb faster, in time with the rock of my hips.
Her hair was spread out around her, girl this fuckin’ angel in the middle of her bed.
Every element inside me wanted to crawl out and meet with her. In it, she stared up at me and she murmured, “Nothing has ever felt better than you.”
I couldn’t do anything but shift forward, gather her up with one arm, and drag her chest against mine .
I kissed her like it would be my saving breath while I continued to drive.
She split apart then. An orgasm speeding through her like an out-of-control train. Shuddering and jerking as rapture swept through her body. She took me with her, bliss breaking as I took her whole.
Ecstasy blistered out, reaching and seeking. Two of us sharing it, this thing that bound.
Her walls clamped around me as I poured and poured.
And when I finally slowed and edged back so I could look down at her face, I thought this bliss might go on forever.
This connection that couldn’t be severed.
Because there was something about her that tied us. Something woven deep in our makeup that made her feel intrinsic.
Essential.
This woman the blood in my veins.