39. SKYE
SKYE
“Do you need anything else?” I asked Rita as I stood in her doorway.
The day escaped into night. When we got back with the groceries, Storie was locked up in her room. Dream was in the TV room with snacks and coloring books, enough to keep her busy and distracted.
And the three brothers were huddled in the study, discussing what went down. I knew by how hushed they spoke that they were planning something crazy. Rita had confirmed their nature to me through the various talks we had.
“I just need to lie down. Oh and I’m gonna lock my door from the inside. I don’t trust that little girl. And I might have to beat her to death with my cane,” she let out a nervous laugh.
“I hear you. Get some rest,” I said, before leaving her.
I found him in the kitchen a little past midnight, standing at the island in a plain white tee and gray sweats, a glass of that dark amber Banks Reserve sitting untouched in front of him like he’d poured it just to have something to look at.
He didn’t hear me come in. Or he did and just didn’t turn around right away.
“Couldn’t sleep either,” I said, because the silence in that kitchen felt like it needed something dropped into it.
“Not really.” He lifted the glass, took a slow sip, set it back down exact on the same ring of condensation it had left the first time. “Been sitting with a lot tonight.”
I crossed to the island and stood across from him, close enough to smell the liquor. He’d showered since being home from jail, and the scent of his cologne was intoxicating. It beckoned me closer to him.
“His name’s Tron,” Justice said, flat, like he was testing how the word sat in his mouth. “That nigga that she was with. Tron Blakely. I did a little digging and found out he stays in Suitland and works at T-Mobile. They met online. Oh, and he knew, Skye. Wasn’t no confusion about her age.”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t a version of comfort that fit into that sentence.
“I need to say something to you.” He finally looked up, and his eyes had that stillness in them that I’d learned meant he was choosing every word before it left him.
“You didn’t have to call me. Coulda minded your business, coulda let that whole thing play out and never said a word.
But you saw my daughter with a grown man and you called me before you even finished walking away.
That means a lot to me. I appreciate it.
That’s the kind of thing that tells a man exactly who he can trust in his own house.
You care about my family beyond just a paycheck. ”
I did care. I cared about all of them. Something twisted low in my stomach, sharp enough that I had to look down at the counter instead of at him.
He trusted me and he shouldn’t have.
“You don’t have to thank me for that,” I said. “It’s just decency, Justice. Anybody would’ve called.”
“That’s not true. She’s not even your responsibility.”
I came around the island before I could talk myself out of it, needing my hands on him more than I needed to keep arguing the point. He was sitting tense on that stool, shoulders up near his ears, a knot of muscle I could see just from looking at the set of him.
“Turn around,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow at me, something almost playful trying to surface through all that heaviness.
“Justice. Turn around.”
He turned, and I got my hands on his shoulders, and the second my palms met all that tight muscle under his shirt, I felt exactly how much the last two days had cost him.
He was carrying it in his neck, in the base of his skull—all the strain of spending last night in a cell and a lifetime of trying to keep everybody else standing upright, knotted tight beneath my fingers.
“Damn,” he said low, when I pressed into a knot at the base of his neck. “Where’d you learn to do that.”
“I can’t tell you my secrets,” I smiled.
“I’ll pull them out of you,” he responded.
I worked my thumbs slow down either side of his spine, into the meat of his shoulders, and felt him start to give under it, breath going longer, head dropping forward just slightly to give me better access.
His skin was warm through the thin cotton, and somewhere in the middle of it my own hands stopped feeling like hands doing a job and started feeling like hands that wanted to be doing exactly this and nothing else in the world.
He reached up and caught my wrist, stilled it there against his shoulder.
“Skye.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m real glad you’re here.”
Five words, and they went through me like fire. I was glad I was here too. Not just for the money. I was glad to be with him.
I should’ve stepped back then. I knew it even as I didn’t do it.
I knew every single thing that man believed about me was a lie.
And every time I let this go one step further I was making it that much harder to walk away when the day came.
And the day was coming. Maybe in weeks, maybe less now. I was running out of time.
I leaned down instead and put my mouth against the side of his neck.
He turned on that stool fast, caught me by the waist, and pulled me down into his lap like my thick juiciness weighed nothing at all.
His mouth found mine before I could say another word, and whatever I’d meant to say dissolved right out of me the second his tongue slid against mine, slow and certain, one hand splayed wide across my lower back holding me exactly where he wanted me.
“Upstairs,” I breathed against his mouth.
“Now,” he said, standing with me still wrapped around him like I belonged there, and carried me through the dark house that way, my legs locked around his waist, his hands under me holding my full weight without a single stumble, like I was nothing to him, like I was everything.
He set me down inside his room and locked the door behind us without breaking stride, and by the time I turned around he already had that white tee up over his head, all that dark skin and muscle catching the low light from the lamp on his nightstand.
My mouth went dry looking at him. I’d seen him plenty of times by now, but tonight, with the danger sitting under both our skins, it felt like the first time all over again.
“Come here,” he said, and it wasn’t a request.
I crossed to him and he had my dress up over my head before I finished closing the distance, unhooked my bra with one hand like he’d been doing it his whole life, and then his mouth was on my collarbone, right along the edge of that scar I still flinched to have touched, except tonight I didn’t flinch.
Tonight his lips moved slow and deliberate along it like he was trying to kiss the hurt right out of my skin, like he could taste the years of shame still clinging to it.
And that should have stopped me cold. That scar was the one map to me nobody was ever supposed to read.
Five years I’d kept it covered, kept it in the dark where questions couldn’t reach it.
It was proof somebody had wanted me dead, and I’d spent all that time making sure not one living person got close enough to ask about it.
He didn’t ask. He just put his mouth to it like it was worth being gentle with, and some locked-down thing in my heart cracked clean open.
For one terrifying second I wanted to tell him everything.
My name. My babies. Every true thing I’d buried to stay alive.
I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. But God, I wanted to more than I’d wanted anything in five years.
His hands slid down my sides, thumbs grazing the soft swell of my hips before he hooked his fingers into the waistband of my panties and pulled them down slow, letting them pool at my feet.
“Step out,” he murmured, voice rough, and I did, kicking them aside as his hands came back to my thighs, spreading me open just enough to feel the heat of his breath against my skin.
His mouth moved lower, teeth grazing the inside of my thigh, and I gasped, my fingers running through his hair as he teased me, his tongue flicking out just enough to make my knees weak.
“Justice—” His name came out on a whimper, but he ignored it, his hands gripping my ass to keep me steady as he finally closed the distance, his tongue dragging slow and deliberate through my slick heat.
My head fell back, a moan tearing from my throat as he worked me, his lips and tongue doing things that made my legs shake.
He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t slow. He was taking what he wanted, and I was more than willing to give it to him.
His fingers dug into my skin, pulling me closer, and I could feel the vibration of his groan against me, the sound sending a jolt straight to my core. He pulled back just enough to look up at me, his lips glistening, his eyes dark with hunger.
“You taste like sin,” he growled, and before I could respond, he stood, lifting me effortlessly and tossing me onto the bed.
I bounced once, my breath hitching as he loomed over me, his hands already working the waistband of his sweats down.
His dick sprang free, thick and heavy, and I bit my lip at the sight of it, already imagining how it would feel inside me.
He didn’t make me wait. He climbed onto the bed, settling between my thighs, his hands gripping my hips as he lined himself up.
The first push was slow, deliberate, stretching me open inch by inch until I was full of him, my body trembling with the effort of taking all of him.
He groaned, his forehead pressing against mine as he bottomed out, his hips flush against mine.
“Fuck, Skye,” he breathed, his voice strained. “You feel like heaven.”
I couldn’t respond. I could only whimper as he started to move, his hips rolling in deep, steady thrusts that had me seeing stars.
His hands were everywhere. They were gripping my thighs, my ass and my waist, like he couldn’t decide where he wanted to touch me most. His mouth found mine again, his tongue tangling with mine as he fucked me, his pace relentless, his body demanding everything I had to give.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, my nails digging into his back as he hit that spot inside me that made my vision blur. His breath was hot against my ear, his voice a rough whisper.
“You’re mine, Skye. Say it.”
I couldn’t think. I could only feel the stretch of him inside me, his weight on me, the sound of skin against skin filling the room. My body was strung tight as a wire, every nerve lit up under his hands.
“Say it,” he said again, hips slowing just enough to make it torture, grinding deep instead of pulling back, watching my face like he needed to see it land.
“I’m yours.” My voice cracked on the last word. “Justice, I’m yours.”
That seemed to be exactly what he wanted to hear, because he pulled out just enough so that the tip was at my entrance and drove back into me hard enough to punch the air out of my lungs, one hand sliding up to close around my throat, not squeezing, just resting there, a warning and a promise both.
“Louder.”
“I’m yours.” I said it against his palm, felt the vibration of it under his fingers.
He flipped me then, easy, like I weighed nothing, hands on my hips guiding me up onto my knees, and the new angle had me gasping into the pillow the second he pushed back inside me.
He set a pace that didn’t ask permission, deep and punishing, one hand flat between my shoulder blades pressing me down into the mattress while the other gripped my hip hard enough to bruise.
I could hear myself making sounds I didn’t recognize, high and broken, muffled against the pillow, and every single one of them seemed to feed him, because his rhythm only got harder, more determined, like he was trying to reach something in me that words couldn’t touch.
“Look at me,” he said, and dragged me back up by a fistful of hair, gentle even in the roughness of it, until my back was flush against his chest, his mouth at my ear. “I want you to feel exactly whose this is.”
I reached back and grabbed at whatever part of him I could hold onto, his thigh, his hip, anything to keep from coming apart too soon, but he wasn’t having any of that either.
One hand slid around and found me, fingers working slow deliberate circles while he kept driving into me from behind, and the two sensations together built until I couldn’t hold a single thought in my head that wasn’t his name.
“Justice—” It broke off in a sob and a gasp all tangled together, my body shaking apart against him, his name the only word I had left in me.
“That’s it,” he said, low, ragged, his fingers not stopping, his hips not slowing. “Give it to me.”
I came so hard my vision whited out at the edges, my body clenching down around him in waves I couldn’t control, my thighs trembling where they pressed against his.
He groaned deep in his chest, a sound that vibrated straight through my back, and his rhythm broke apart into something rougher, less patient, chasing his own release with my name dropping out of his mouth like a prayer he hadn’t meant to say out loud.
“Skye—” His grip on my hip tightened. He then was spilling into me with a groan that sounded torn out of him, his body going rigid before it folded forward over mine, his forehead dropping between my shoulder blades, both of us breathing like we’d run a mile.
Neither one of us moved for a long minute. His weight pressed me down into the mattress, warm and heavy, his heartbeat slamming against my back like it was trying to match mine.
“Damn,” he finally said, voice wrecked, and I felt the huff of a laugh against my skin.
He eased us both down onto our sides, still inside me a moment longer before he slipped free and pulled me into him, my back against his chest, his arm wrapped heavy across my waist like he had no intention of letting me roll away from him.
His mouth found the back of my shoulder, pressed there soft, nothing like the hunger from a few minutes before.
I lay there listening to his breathing even out from behind, his hand splayed flat over my stomach like he was holding something in place.
I thought about every single lie sitting between us in that dark room, thought about weeks shrinking down smaller every single day, thought about a boy somewhere I hadn’t held in longer than I could stand to count.
I’d get up in a minute. Just until his breathing got slower. Just long enough to revel in his warmth and the weight of his strong hands. One minute, and then I’d slip out and go back to my room. That’s if I had any sense left.
But his heartbeat was steady against my back, I was warm. Five years since I’d been warm like that. Somewhere between one breath and the next, I broke the last rule I had.
I fell asleep in that man’s bed.