CHAPTER SIX | MILO
CHAPTER SIX
MILO
I’VE BEEN TRAPPED IN enough snowstorms in my life to know what to expect — boredom. It’s a lot of board games, DVDs, and watching the snow fall. Even three days later with Cherrie next to me on the sofa, her warm body curved into mine, that hasn’t changed, except now she’s here, a sweet temptation running her slender fingers over the back of the free hand I have resting across her belly.
Her hair no longer smells like peaches, but a combination of my shampoo and Tieran’s body wash. She’s wearing Cal’s shirt and my white socks that she’s pulled to the knees. No pants. No underwear. It’s the most normal thing I’ve ever experienced in my fucked-up life.
I wonder sometimes if keeping Cherrie is the right thing to do. She’s honestly too sweet and pure for men like us, men with a whole past riding their shoulders and the devil at their door. None of us have a good story to tell. Not one between us that doesn’t revolve around her.
Our Cherrie.
I stroke a crooked knuckle over the pale blush warming the gentle slope of her cheekbone.
She’s my safe place.
She’s the singular piece of happiness that I can hold on to with both hands and know she’ll never leave me. She won’t abandon me because I’m not enough.
Across the room, Cal and Tieran are in the two armchairs facing the TV. One of the Fast and Furious movies is playing. Tieran’s pick. I have no idea which one or what is happening. I’m tracing Cherrie beneath my finger. I’m painting the lines of her arms. The mole just beneath her right elbow. The steady pulse beneath the curve of her neck. She lets me. Giggling only when I brush a tickle spot. She has several. I make note of each one.
I love you, I want to tell her, hypnotized by the delicate line of her jaw. The heavy fans of her lashes. I run the pad of my thumb to her pert chin. Trace her soft lip.
It dips up at the corners as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking. Her head turns on my shoulder and we’re inches apart. Noses nearly touching.
“Hi,” she whispers.
I feel my own lip twitch. “Hey.”
Her palm rests on my cheek. Her thumb ghosts over my lips. The TV light shines in her green eyes. Illuminates her sweet face. A face I’ve wanted to look at me the way she is at this very moment for so fucking long my heart hurts.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, voice low just for me.
I kiss the tip of her nose. “How much I wish I could sketch.”
She pinches her lips together as if stifling a smile. “Mm, The Rock does look pretty sexy.”
I blink. “What? No!” I cry when she gives me a teasing grin. “I meant you.”
Cherrie rolls her eyes dramatically. “He’s much prettier.”
I poke her side and she twitches and snorts and swats at my hand. I capture her small fingers and bring the heel to my lips. Happily falling into her smile.
It’s that damn smile that did me in all those years ago. It hadn’t even been for me or anyone and it was the purest thing I’d ever seen. The sight of it had me coming up short, stopping mid stride as I was crossing the road.
She was sitting alone under a tree in the main square. Her jacket bunched under her. Her hair wavy curls around her shoulders. I knew who she was. Jefferson isn’t big enough for strangers, but she was two years younger than us, and we had a rule about girls like her.
Cherrie wasn’t like the other girls in Jefferson. She didn’t fuck us in the dark and pretend we don’t exist in the day. She didn’t avert her eyes when we passed her or act like we were filth. But it was more than that.
Cherrie was one of us. Unwanted. An outcast by the very people who should have cared for her when she had no one. But they abandoned her. They turned a blind eye to her struggles just like everyone turned a blind eye when my uncle got piss drunk and beat the shit out of me. Like the way no one noticed the black eyes and belt marks Tieran went to school with on a regular basis. Like how no one ever noticed that Cal never had a lunch.
They ignored our pain. Blamed us for their shortcomings. But like us, Cherrie survived. She stayed on her feet no matter how hard they tried to bring her to her knees. Our Cherrie is fucking strong and smart, and gorgeous.
That afternoon, I’d been on my way to the diner to pick up supper when I saw her just sitting there. Something in whatever she was reading had a grin turning up the corner of her lips. I would have missed it if I wasn’t watching her so intently. Her cheeks darkened and tiny crinkles formed over her nose like whatever she was reading was embarrassing her and I found myself edging closer as if drawn against my will.
“Dirty?” I heard myself asking.
Bright, vibrant eyes the shade of polished jade shot up. One squeezed shut as she squinted against the sun behind me. I stepped between her and the harsh globe, shielding her. Her smile didn’t vanish but widened.
“No, but...” she slapped the book closed, nose still adorably crinkled, “have you ever had such second-hand embarrassment for a character you have to stop and take a second?”
I hadn’t but the way she was grinning up at me with her entire soul, her lip caught between her teeth, I wanted to.
“Tell me.”
That’s how I found myself sitting with her, food forgotten, listening to her tell me everything in every book she’s ever read with such passion and detail that I found myself mesmerized. Enthralled. It didn’t even phase her that people were walking around us, staring at her. Judging her. She just sat there and talked to me like we were the only two people in the world.
“You look so lost,” she whispers, leaning up and taking my lips with hers.
“How can I be lost with you here?”
She kisses me again and it holds the damn world. It holds her every wish and secret. She kisses me as if I hold her whole heart in my hands. It’s deep and sweet, and laced with something so addictive, I’m in a haze when she climbs on top. My cock is cradled under her and she’s rolling her hips over me.
“Can I have him?” she asks, hesitant.
I want to laugh because every piece of me belongs to her. She can do whatever she wants with me, but she’s nibbling on her bottom lip and watching my reaction with uncertainty.
“I’m yours,” I tell her, extending the open invitation to all of me.
It must have been what she wants to hear because she slides off me and holds out a hand for me to take. I ask no questions when letting her guide me from the room and up the stairs.
At the top she turns to me. Her eyes too focused.
“I want you to show me how to suck your cock.”
I almost choke on my own spit. “What?”
She’s all determination as she burns a hole into my soul. Her hand plants into my chest and I’m forced back into the wall at the top of the landing.
“You let Lindsay McAdams do that to you behind the Hunter’s Cavern.” There’s an accusation in the statement that makes my stomach tight. “She was on her knees in her stupid schoolgirl uniform sucking you off.” The band holding my sweats in place are torn open and my pants are shoved to my ankles. “I was pissed for a week.” Her confession goes straight through me as she drops to her knees inches from my swollen cock. “Every time I saw her after, I wanted to punch her in the mouth.”
I can feel a hint of a grin on my face but it’s short lived when she’s holding me in her soft hand. Her perfect lips ghosting the head in a coaxing, open mouth kiss. A dribble of precum leaks from the head and her tongue is there to lap it up.
“Cherrie...” Her eyes lift up to my face. “It was a long time ago,” I fumble, trying not to move as she sucks lightly on the mushroom cap, sipping at every drip of clear liquid coming out.
“I know, but I’ve wanted to do that for you ever since. I want to get on my knees for you. I want you to fist my hair and fuck my mouth.”
“Oh God...” I groan and I can’t even find the sense to feel mortification for the whimper in my voice.
Cherrie smiles deviously like she knows exactly what she’s doing. I have to bite the inside of my lip to hold back the plea bubbling deep in my throat. Her eyes are hot and wanting. Her tongue torturous as she runs it up the underside of my cock from base to head. She never looks away. Never frees me from the sweet torment of her hands and mouth working over me in steady, albeit inexperienced pumps. She goes too far a couple of times and gags but it doesn’t deter her enthusiasm to erase Lindsay from my memory and I can’t find the brain power to tell her I can’t even remember what color Lindsay’s eye are while Cherrie’s eyes haunt my dreams. I can only stand in paralyzed silence as she bobs and sucks. Her fists closes the distance and she works my cock like it’s her job.
“God, baby, fuck ... don’t stop,” I barely manage.
“Is it good?” she pants, lips wet, red and swollen.
Growling in my throat, I yank her up and lift her up into my arms. I take us to my room and kick the door closed with my heel.
It takes all of my willpower not to shove her on the bed and just fuck her. I don’t want our first time fast and sloppy. I want to take my time with her as I set her down and peel her top over her head.
Her body is a map of every hill and valley I’m dying to explore, to conquer and own. I want to learn every spot that makes her hum with pleasure.
Cherrie reaches to remove her socks.
“Leave them,” I murmur, not sure how to tell her the sight of her in knee-high socks has been my secret fetish for years, or that her in her knee-high socks with the rainbow skulls and plaid skirt were the things that caught my eye that afternoon under the tree.
But maybe she gets it, because her lips curve and she leaves them. Her hands reach for me instead and she drags my top off. Her head dips and she litters my chest with tiny, moist kisses. Trails them across my collarbone and stops at my Adam’s apple.
“Milo?”
My hand closes in her hair, holding her to my burning skin. “Yeah, baby?”
“Touch me.”
There’s no sane way to explain just how terrified that idea makes me. What if my hands go straight through her like they do in my dreams? What if I do it wrong? What if I hurt her? It’s stupid obviously. I had my fingers inside her twice yesterday. I’ve tasted her skin, her moans. I know how wet she gets when she cums on my fingers.
She’s not the first girl I’ve been with, but she’s the only one who has ever mattered and if I fuck this up...
Her head tips back, eyes searching. “Don’t you want to?”
I draw in a slow breath. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you like this. Naked. In my room. My bed.” I swallow and carefully reach for her waist. Her skin is warm satin. “But if you vanish...”
Cherrie smiles slow and loving. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”
Something in those words breaks something inside me. Maybe it’s the sad, beaten child I was never allowed to be, or the pain of losing everyone because no one ever wanted me, but my hands close on either side of her head and I pull her against me. Her mouth so close to mine I can taste her every breath and I’m trembling and I don’t know if she can feel it but I can’t stop.
“Promise.”
I’m not asking. I’m begging. I’m begging her not to ever leave me because if she fucking leaves I’ll die.
Her arms slide around my shoulders. “I promise.” She kisses me. Sweet. Soft. Sealing the vow into my lips. “I won’t ever leave you, Milo. I promise.”
I’m breathing hard. My chest aches with the exertion. My hands are steel pins digging into her hips, lifting her up and we’re on my bed. She’s on top. In my lap. Her legs are around my waist and she’s taking my cock deep into her tight body.
Fuck, she’s heaven. An Eden of promises.
We’re barely moving aside from our lips. Our hands. The slowest roll of her hips. She’s so wet, I can feel her heat running down my balls to soak the sheets. Her moans burn my tongue, growing louder and deeper, matching the tightening of her walls. The quiver in her thighs.
“Cherrie.”
Her nails cut into my shoulders as her rocks grow harder.
“You’re mine, Milo,” she groans. “I won’t let you go.”
My jaw tightens as she soothes my worries and floods my cock at the same time. Her head falls back, and I lunge for her exposed jugular. I suck and nip the frantic pulse. My hands guide her up and over as many times as she needs until the tremors still and she’s gasping into my neck.
“Did you...?”
I shake my head.
Cherrie rises and I glide free of her warmth. I’m covered in her release. The sight only gets me harder. A thing I didn’t think possible, but the pain has me on edge.
Cherrie kneels between my legs. She scoops up her hair and looks up at me.
“Hold?”
I twist the silky strands in my hand and watch as her pink tongue cuts up the side like she’s cleaning dripping ice cream off a cone. She sucks and cleans and I’m holding her hair, guiding her on me again and again.
“Fuck, baby,” I grit out as I feel my peak.
I’m ready to warn her I’m cumming but she’s pushed me as far into her throat as she can and I’m emptying into her mouth and she’s swallowing hungrily. Her quiet whimpers of pleasure destroy me.
She grins up at me. “Can I stay with you tonight? I want to taste you again in the morning,”