Chapter 17
Ami
It’s amazing how on my knees, bared to him, in the most exposed position, I feel the most powerful.
I feel… sexy. I feel awakened. I feel like a woman for the first time in my life.
I know what I want. I want this. I want Gage.
I want his mouth and his fingers and his cock. I want all of him filling all of me.
For once, I’m not afraid.
I’m not sitting back, ghosting through my own life, letting it pass me by. I’m participating. I’m actually living.
My body vibrates, rattling with each breath, brimming over with lust.
The bed dips as Gage kneels behind me. It takes all my strength not to crane my neck around and stare at him. I feel his heat as he brushes up against my skin and goosebumps explode over my entire body.
“Where do you want to be touched, Ami?” he asks in that low growl that is so completely sexual it makes every single muscle in my stomach tighten like stone.
He runs his hand up my leg, starting at my knee, up, up to where I want him the most. I want to buck back into that hand, to swivel my hips and send him straight to the ache that’s throbbing between my legs.
I bite down hard on my bottom lip instead, and let him trail his fingers over the sensitive skin at the inside of my thigh.
His fingers slick through the wetness coating me there.
He lets out a raspy groan that raises the hairs on the back of my neck and leans in to press a hard kiss just above my knee. So far from where I really need him. Where I crave him and his mouth and his burning kisses.
Gage trails hot kisses up the inside of my thigh, but when he reaches my overheated sex, he blows softly, driving me mad. I mewl and squirm and writhe, but he evades me, pulling back so that only the hot pants of every breath fan me.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I growl, shamelessly trying to push my hips back into him, but he dodges away with a low chuckle that makes me want to turn around and hit him, knock him down and climb on top of his face.
God. I have no idea where that thought came from. The mental image should scare the hell out of me, but I’m not scared. I’m so far from being scared or uncomfortable that it’s astounding.
“Please, Gage,’ I pant, leaning back, searching for him.
“Please, what, darlin’? You’re gonna have to ask me. I never was much good at reading minds.”
“You know what I need. You know what I want. You know it better than I know it.”
“Doubtful. I want you to tell me. What do you need?”
“I need you to make me come. Please. I don’t care how. Just do it.”
“You know, I was gonna see if I could make you come without even touching you. But since you asked me so nicely…”
His mouth is on me in a second, attacking, dining, diving in like the world is going to end and he’s going to be judged on this final act of pleasure.
I arch away from him with a gasp, on instinct, trying to get away from his lashing tongue and his amazing hot mouth.
He grips my thighs and tugs me back into him, showing no mercy.
He plunges his tongue inside of me and fucks me hard with it before he pulls out and dances over my folds to suck my clit.
That little bud is so sensitive that I arch away from him again with a low whimper of pain and pleasure all mixed up together.
My knees shake so hard that they nearly knock together, but still he pulls me back.
He lashes my clit with his tongue while he brings his hand up.
He gives me absolutely no warning before he plunges two fingers inside of me.
I’m soaked and he slips in easy, filling me.
The sensations swimming through me are so strong, so heady, so wild, all I can do is clutch the blankets between my claw-like fingers and hold on. I buck and wail and thrust my hips back into his face and he fucks me with his mouth and his hand, taking no prisoners.
After another half a minute of the onslaught, I give in and lose myself.
I come hard, the climax crashing over me, spiking up from my toes, and landing straight at my core. The pleasure blossoms in my belly and floods my veins until I’m hot and burning. Until I’m nothing but liquid sensation and wild abandon.
I scream and thrash on the bed, fighting him, bucking with him, riding out each wave as his fingers fuck up into me over and over again, as his tongue and hot mouth turn me to ash and resurrect me, reborn as something else, a creature that I never thought I could be.
A woman. A woman capable of pleasure. Capable of confronting her demons, facing them head-on, and coming out the other side.
Because I’m not sorry.
I don’t want to take it back.
I feel no fear and I feel no shame.
When the pleasure turns to pain as my clit becomes oversensitive, Gage’s fingers still and he pulls out gently, smearing a trail of liquid arousal down my thighs before I collapse on the bed. I use the last little bit of strength I have left to turn myself over and face him.
His gaze locks with mine as he lifts his fingers to his mouth, almost embarrassingly shiny with my juices, as is his chin, and sucks them between his lips. He closes his eyes, savoring it like the taste of me is some exotic fruit he can’t get enough of.
“Fucking delicious,” he says darkly, popping his fingers out noisily.
He stays that way, sitting on his ass, as casual as can be, while I pant and blink away the stars and try and collect the buttery pieces of myself that just shattered all over the bed.
All over him. Shattered in a good way. Shattered in the best possible way.
In a way I didn’t even know was possible.
When Gage slides off the bed, I nearly ask him what he’s doing. When he bends to collect his jeans and slips into them with little more than a whisper and the rasp of his zipper being done back up, my eyes bulge and my heart nearly knocks out of my chest.
“What… what are you doing?” I scramble to the edge of the bed and catch myself at the last second. God. I don’t want to look so fucking desperate. I was just asking this man for a divorce an hour ago.
He looks at me funny, his face devoid of expression other than a salting of humor glistening in his eyes. His top lip quirks up. “Getting dressed.”
“I know, but why?” I hate the pleading tone in my voice and snap my mouth shut. I watch him instead, for clues.
Did he not like what we just did? Did I do something wrong?
Or does he think I’m too damaged? Maybe he told me to turn around and face the other direction so he wouldn’t have to see that word inked in the crudest way across my stomach.
Maybe he couldn’t stand to look at me. Maybe all of this was just…
just some kind of pity fuck that he felt he needed to do.
I don’t know. I don’t know, but the longer I sit there, the worse the thoughts are.
They’re like an avalanche, snowballing over me, consuming me, and burying me alive.
“Stop it. I can see what you’re thinking. Don’t even go there.”
Gage sweeps my dress off the floor and passes it over.
I take it with a trembling hand and throw it over my head in the most ungraceful way.
I get stuck in it halfway through and I spring up from the bed, only to run straight into a solid wall.
Strong, sure hands ease the dress over my head and tug it into place.
After, those hands fall to my shoulders and Gage gently eases me back down to the bed. I could fight him. I want to fight him, but I don’t. My heart is hovering somewhere between my knees and my feet and I can’t force any words I might spit at him past my clogged up throat.
“Don’t. Don’t think it. That’s not what that was about. At all. You’re beautiful. The most beautiful fucking woman I’ve ever seen. Even with that fucking word inked into you. If you hear anything and choose to remember it, remember that. That you’re beautiful. That you always will be.”
I squeeze my eyes shut tight, so sure that he’s just patronizing me now. “Then why… why did you stop?”
I nearly let out a yelp of surprise when his hand smooths over the crown of my hair and I feel his hot breath puff against the tender juncture where my neck and earlobe meet.
“Because, Ami, taking things slow, a little at a time, savoring it… there isn’t any harm in that.
I want to do right by you. Treat you right.
Not take anything from you that you’re not ready to give.
I don’t want you to look back on this and regret it because you thought it was what you wanted, but when it was over and done and the hormones cooled the fuck down, it wasn’t.
I want you to be sure. I’ve never done a single romantic thing in my life.
I’ll never bring you flowers or chocolates or bullshit like that.
I probably won’t remember your birthday, so let me do this for you. Even just this once.”
I can’t help myself. I want to lean into him.
He lets me rest my forehead against abs that defy humanity.
Those rock hard ridges beneath that smooth sheeting of skin don’t feel human at all.
He feels like a mountain, like the earth.
He smells like it too. Raw and spicy, like danger and darkness and hard work.
Like oil and grease and gas. Like leather and…
and like him. It’s beautiful. Every bit of that heady scent that comes together to define him. To make him who he is.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I bite out as reality comes leaking back into the foggy spaces in my brain and all those cells that were overheated and distracted reassemble and turn back on to think rationally again.
“There’s still a set of papers out there…
we might be married, but we shouldn’t be. We both deserve our freedom.”
“Want to explain what this is then?” His hand strokes down my hair again and I have to bite back the urge to purr.
“This is just hormones,” I pant. “Maybe it was what we both needed at the exact right time, but it doesn’t change that we’re wrong for each other. Always will be. The math is never going to add up.”
I could scream at the gentle strokes of his fingers through my hair, tugging at the snarls in the strands, combing so very gently and sweetly.
Far too gentle. Far too sweet. I hate that I want to keep my eyes closed.
That I want this moment to last for hours.
That I want to wrap my arms around him and tumble him back to the bed with me and just hold him and be held.
Being held.
It’s not something I ever thought I’d be able to do without freaking out.
Yet here I am. Imagining it. Yearning for it. Wanting it with every fiber of my being.
Abruptly, Gage’s hand stills on my hair. “We’ll see about that,” he rasps, the words like a promise shimmering in the air between us.
They’re like a vacuum, sucking all the air out of the room. Out of my lungs. Out of existence. I can’t open my eyes. I don’t dare open them, because I can’t bear to see the expression on his face. The burning in his eyes.
I’m frozen to the edge of the bed, even when I hear his heavy footsteps retreat to the kitchen. Even as the soft rasp of his clothing sliding back into place drifts into the bedroom. Even as he retreats further and my front door closes tightly behind him and I’m left alone.
I don’t feel alone.
I still feel him everywhere.
His presence fills me up, a balm over all my ragged edges. I try to conjure up the bad feelings. The bad memories. The terror. All I get is peace. Serenity. Nothingness.
Not a void.
Just an absence of all the bullshit that’s plagued me for years and years.
My eyes fly open and I call out, even though I know it’s too late. “Don’t do anything stupid. Gage. Please.”
I know this isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning.
I’ve seen his scars. I know that Gage is a survivor, like me.
His body is a battleground. He’s been through hell and back, far worse than I have.
I might have been ill used once, but he looks like he was abused physically for years.
He’s a hard man and I know that vengeance simmers in his soul.
He’s already walked through the fire, let the flames sear and lick his skin, come out scarred but hardened, like clay in a kiln.
He’s no phoenix. He’s like a brick. Unbreakable, rough, steady, and true.
He has his brothers at his back. Men rougher than he is. Men who he calls family.
And I know they won’t rest until they have justice.
He might think he’s avenging me, but I can’t let him do it. I can’t let him throw his life away to give me the absolution I never thought I’d have. Justice I was too weak and scared to find for myself.
I have to stop him before something terrible happens.
Even if it means finally telling everyone my secret.