20. Arlo
I see her walls fly up. It moves with her hands. They lift hard and fast over her chest as if her dragon isn’t enough to keep out what’s coming.
It’s not.
But she is.
I see myself in her panicked gaze and quaking frame. I see myself in the fear, shrinking her back to become one with the wall.
My feet root to the carpet before I reach her. Literally. Metaphorically.
Four feet and a chasm of trauma separate us.
I’ve pushed too hard. Said too much. Too soon.
“I’m sorry.” I take a step back and straighten. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Thank you for today. I’ll show myself out.”
Something is going on behind her bright eyes, but I can’t discern a thought. Her hands fall to her sides.
A few days ago, hell, a few hours ago, the thought of someone hugging me, even her, would have sent me running. Now, I’d give anything for her to open her arms wide and let me in. Let me back in. I’d lost my shit this afternoon, and I’d found something earth-shattering in her arms. Comfort.
“Goodbye, Hailey.” I fill myself with one last look.
Her bloodshot eyes. Her red cheeks and swollen lips. Her hair spills wildly behind her shoulders. Her tattoo peeking out from behind the forgotten last button. Then I turn and head for the door.
“Lock it behind me,” I call over my shoulder.
She doesn’t respond, but I’m sure she’ll comply.
My footfalls echo in the wood-encased hallway. It’s a shock to hear them. They’re not measured because I feel safe around her. I feel safe because of her. I grip the doorknob and squeeze. Everything inside me that usually screams at me to run, to get away, is bellowing the opposite.
Stay.
I turn the knob and prepare to heave myself out. It’s what she needs right now.
“Wait.” Her voice is small and tentative. Nothing like her.
My forehead presses against the cool wood of the door. I pull in a deep breath like she taught me and slowly let it out.
“I’ll be your surrogate.”
I jerk upright and look at her. “My what?”
She takes a step into the corridor, and I hold the knob to keep from rushing her again.
“Your sexual surrogate.” She takes another step. Her shoulders slowly roll back, and her chin rises. “I’ll help you work through your issues with touch so you can be with the woman you love.”
Love.
Is that what I feel for her?
For the past year, I’ve thought of her as my obsession.
Obsession is too tame a word.
She is the person I think of every hour of every day. She is the person I fantasize about. She is the person I stalk, mildly. She is the person I long to know everything about. She is the person I would do anything for.
She is the person I love.
I love Hailey.
My heart leaps and then dives. She wants to fuck me, face-to-face, to help me. If she knew what I really wanted, she’d be running for the hills.
Fuck me.
“Why would you do that, Hailey?”
She wipes at her eyes.
I release the doorknob and turn fully toward her. “Do you pity me? Is that why?”
“No.” Her precious nose crinkles in disgust.
“Do you miss our time at Crave?”
“No. I mean, yes, but not…not exactly.” She sucks in a frazzled breath. “That’s not why I’m offering.” Her slight fingers grip the fabric of her skirt, and her knuckles go white.
My head tilts, and I hike a brow.
She releases the skirt as if tossing it away. “I care about you.”
“Like you cared about Matt?”
“No. Yes. Not exactly.” She takes another step toward me.
Blood pumps through my body with a ferocity akin to entering the ring.
“You don’t have to worry about me hurting myself. If I were going to do that, I’d have done it when I was younger. I’m committed to this life, whatever it brings. So why don’t you tell me something exact?”
Her chest shakes with a breath, like relief. I hate Matt, just a little, for hurting her. I know he did what he felt he had to, but fuck him.
“I care about you. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
A gust of air hisses out of my lungs. With my fucked voice, one of many things my uncle broke inside me, it sounds like the breath of a beast. She shivers. It’s a shiver I’m all too familiar with. It’s nothing like the quake of so many others. It’s not disgust. It’s not fear. It’s arousal.
The need to strip her bare and breathe her in makes my cock heavy in my pants. Not for the first time today.
“What does a sexual surrogate do exactly? What would you do for me?”
“Um.” She swallows.
I take a step closer to her, tickled at her stammering.
“Anything you want.”
The declaration whirls in the air between us. It mixes our apprehension and desire into a devastating storm. It’s desperate for carnage. I need to tell her here and now, who she is to me, what she means to me, but this fucking vortex tugs me in. The possibility of having anything from her overrides my fucking brain.
“If I told you to show me your pussy?—”
Her green eyes flash, stopping me cold. She gathers the material flowing down her legs into her hands. Slowly, an aching inch at a time, her boots are revealed. Brown leather that rides to her knees. Then her stocking-covered thighs. My dick thickens, and my hands fist at my sides to keep me from reaching out. Which has never been a problem. But the pink flesh at the apex of her legs peeks out from the frame of her garter. It calls to me. She beckons me.
“If I told you to get on your knees?—”
She unfastens her skirt, lets it drop to the floor, then follows it down. Her knees go wide, displaying her sex, while her gaze zeros in on the front of my pants.
“Fuck, Hailey.” I palm myself through the expensive wool. I’m as full and as hard as I’ve ever been. “If I?—”
Her jaw drops open in invitation before I can even ask. The silk of her tongue lolls out of her mouth.
My heartbeat hammers as though I’ve gone twelve rounds. But my stupid fucking head shakes. “Because you want to. Not because you’re some goddamned surrogate.”
The flat of her tongue slips over her lips. She gulps and crawls to me. I’ve never been religious. With the slope of her shoulders, the hang of her covered breasts, the dip of her hips, and the swell of her ass swaying toward me, I begin to reconsider. She stops at the brace of my legs and straightens on her knees. Her brilliant eyes meet mine.
“Unfasten your pants.”
I’m the one who gives the orders. She follows them.
Usually.
My hands move to my belt. The leather sings in the quiet. Metal shrieks on metal. Her eyes stay on me. There’s no challenge in them, only a lusty reassurance. I need it because as ready as my cock is, my hands fucking shake. I want this more than I’ve wanted anything except all of her, and still, I’m terrified that her mouth around my cock will transport me back to hell. I’m afraid of my reaction, of hurting her out of self-preservation, out of instinct.
“Where are you, Arlo?” Her voice is lust soaked.
“I’m in your home.”
“Who are you with?”
“I’m with you, Hailey.”
“Yes, you are.” She scoots my hands away and slides my pants and boxers down. My dick falls free, bobbing in front of her face. “Yes, you are.” Her fingers heat the skin of my abdomen.
A heady sigh filters out of my throat, and my eyes threaten to roll back into my head. “Yes, I am.” This is nothing like anything I’ve experienced.
Her head comes closer. The smoothness of her cheek brushes the length of my shaft. A tremor skitters down my fucking legs. It’s pleasure. One hundred proof. Her mouth connects with my hip. It glides over my skin. She sprinkles my low belly with kisses, and I groan.
Gently, she trails them closer and closer to the base of my cock.
“Is this okay?” Her breath dances over my bare flesh.
Anticipation forces my lungs to work overtime. “Fucking God, it’s perfect.”
“Hailey,” she corrects. A smile pulls at her devilish lips.
“You are perfect, Hailey.”
Her gaze skitters to mine. I can’t look away. I don’t want to.
There’s so much in her eyes, in the gape of her lips. She licks them and opens just wide enough. I’m enveloped in the wet heat of her mouth. Inch by torturous inch. It’s the best goddamn torment of my life.
Hers is the first mouth on me. It’s wet and slick, and the suction. It’s all so right.
A fucking moan pours out of my lips as I hit the back of her throat, and then she sucks and pulls at my flesh. My hips flex. She answers my moan with one of her own. Her hands clamp around my base, and she pumps me and sucks me into her mouth.
Without permission, my head lolls back. My eyes close. I’m left with only feeling, and fucking hell, it’s amazing. I’ve dreamed of such pleasure and watched it unfold before me, but I have never felt something unique.
She removes her hand and thrusts my cock deep. I hit her throat, and she forces me deeper still. The soft sound of her gagging fills the corridor.
My abdomen tingles, and my hips lunge.
The things that leave my own mouth aren’t intelligible. They’re guttural sounds and gasps. Pleas and wails.
Not a minute in, and I’m fighting for control. My knees threaten to buckle.
“Hailey, you need to stop. I’m so close.” Already.
She doesn’t stop. No. She grips my ass and pulls me closer. My cock pummels her throat, and she swallows. I feel her muscles work around me, and my restraint shatters.
I force my eyes open and my gaze back to the siren at my feet. I grip her hair and pump into her, just one fucking go, and I’m shooting down her throat. The noises that filter from her are vulgar and so damn hot.
My body winds tight. Pleasure is siphoned to the surface and sucked out of me until I’m a gasping mess. My shoulders find the wall, which is good because I’d have hit the ground otherwise.
Hailey cleans me up with her mouth and tongue, then situates my clothes. As she tucks my shirt into my pants, my cock stirs to life.
When she stands, her lips are redder than ever, swollen and puffy. I want her without a blindfold, without a bench, without the walls between us. Two out of three will have to do. “Your bedroom, now.”
She leads me with wide eyes and a bare ass. If she walked out onto 5th Avenue, I’d follow and fuck her there too.
The room she walks into is lit by warm sconces on either side of the bed. Green velvet lines the walls, and her bedding is green too. It’s different, just like the blue velvet living room. It suits her. She stops at the foot of the bed and turns to face me. I don’t stop until our shoes touch.
My fingers go to the buttons she unfastened earlier. I grab either side of her shirt and pull, stripping buttons from the fabric. Her gasp fills my ears. I seal my mouth over hers and drink it in. My palm settles on the center of her back, and I pull her closer until her lacy breasts are pressed to my front.
Looking down at Hailey, I feel powerful. It’s like her lust fuels my own. It blocks out any thought of the past and forces me to be here, now, with her.
I grip her jaw with my other hand and move her where I want her. Closer. Open. Mine. She mews into my mouth, and her hips roll against my thigh. Her fingers claw at my jacket. Then I realize she’s trying to get it off. I let her go enough that she can remove it and then snatch her back close. With the heavy fabric gone, I can feel her even better.
It’s like holding happiness in my arms.
Her fingers rove my face, and I press into her touch. I’m transfixed and transformed in her grip.
“Arlo.” She breathes my name into my mouth. I gobble it up. I pull her hair and nibble her neck, her collarbone, and make my way to her lacy breasts. The fabric grates my tongue. I relish the bits of skin that warm it. Her nipple puckers, and I suck it into my mouth. I feast.
My hands at her waist mold her hips to my touch as my lips milk her skin. My tongue learning her taste.
I work my way up to her lips once more and her fingers toy with my shirt. The buttons specifically. I trap her hands under one of mine and pull back. “Not yet.”
Her puffy lips part. “Of course, I…” She nods. “Whatever you want. Whenever you want it.”
If only that were true. I want her fucking heart. I want to eat it one bite at a time, so anyone who ever tries to hurt her again has to go through me.
She’s still under this sexual surrogate notion. I need to tell her here and now that she’s everything to me.
Her hand slips down my body, cupping me through my pants. She massages every ounce of good sense out of my head and into my cock.
“On the bed,” I manage.
The tattered shirt falls to the floor as she scrambles onto the bed and turns to face me. Her hair cascades in waves around her shoulders and down her back. Marks litter her skin from my hands and mouth.
“Lie back. Hug your boots to your chest.”
She does as I command.
“Now, pull them wide. Show me every filthy hole you have.”
Her moan is a drug. The fact that she opens herself to me, that she shows me everything I want is a lethal dose.
I climb onto the bed and study her blatantly. Every nook. Every crevice.
“Mmm.” I lift her ass, exposing her more. “I want to eat you whole.”
“Yes.” She nods emphatically.
“Do you know what that means, Hailey?”
Her green eyes go wide on me.
“It means that every part of you would be mine.”
A troubled moan slips from her lips. It’s filled with want and dismay and need and panic.
“Not today,” I reassure her. “Today, I won’t eat you whole. I’ll eat your holes.”
I bury my face in her cunt and wonder how it took me so long to get here. Her desire coats my tongue. I dip lower and tease her forbidden bud. Her sounds light me up. My hips grind into the bed. After a while, I shift. I press my knuckle against her ass, lap at her clit, and push a finger into her pussy and curl.
She screams her orgasm so boldly there’s no doubt her neighbors hear the praise she offers me. “Arlo, oh yes. Arlo.”
I don’t give her a second to rest. I push for more. More fingers in her cunt. Two knuckles deep in her ass. My tongue lashes at her engorged clit.
Hailey rocks against my face, seeking the pleasure I offer. Her eyes are wide on me, and I give her my gaze as hard and insistent as my hands and mouth.
Her mouth falls open. Her chest and belly quake. She nods and bucks, and I fuck her with my fingers, wringing her climax from deep inside.
This one is a silent cry. Her chin pitches toward the ceiling, and I press forward, giving her everything she needs.
I kiss my way up her stomach, praising every one of her monsters on my way. I pay special attention to her dragon, tracing his wings, his talons, his teeth, until I place a single kiss on his forehead, over her heart.
“Fuck me,” she begs.
“I want to.”
“Do it.”
“Give me one more.” I brace my arm around her back and grip her head in my left hand. I plug three fingers deep into her slick pussy. My thumb rubs a circle around her red hood. “Take it and let me hear you, Hailey. Let me hear how much you want to fuck me.”
Her breaths rush over my face. Every shard in her green eyes glints.
“Arlo, please. I want you.”
“Do you need me, Hailey?” I lean over her and taunt her with the promise of my mouth. Her chin lifts, and she reaches for my lips. “Do you need me deep inside you?”
“Yes, Arlo.” She pants, getting closer. Her slick walls tighten around my fingers.
I stretch her wide and coil my fingers. “You need me?”
“Yes, oh God. Arlo, yes.” Her body bows into mine. “Please, fuck me.” Her climax slams into her so hard, it clips her words and turns them into screams.
“That’s it, Siren. Give it to me.”
She does with shudders and whimpers and ragged breaths.
I hug her to my chest, another first in a day of firsts, only pulling my hand free of her body when she sags against me. Slowly, I lower her back to the bed and look her in the eyes.
Tears slick her cheeks. “Please,” she begs.
“I want to give you everything you want, Hailey, because you are everything to me.”
“What?” Her tears come faster.
“A year ago, I ran into the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen. Literally. Actually, she ran into me, coming out of the bathroom at a gala for the domestic violence shelters of New York. I didn’t grab her because it’s not in my nature to reach out to people. She fell back onto her pretty ass and stared up at me in disbelief.”
“You.” She gasps. “You were the asshole who wouldn’t help me up.”
“I was, but for the first time in decades, I thought about doing it. I thought about reaching my hand out and you taking it. Of course, while I was contemplating the unthinkable, you peeled yourself off the ground with so much grace and disdain that I was taken aback.” I draw a deep breath. “I took a step closer and really looked into your eyes, and that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“The wall. The hurt. The camouflage you hide so carefully behind. At first, I was envious that you were able to hide it so well, and then I was hell-bent on knowing what hurt you so deeply. Then I was obsessed with simply knowing you. Only, it wasn’t so simple. While I don’t touch people, you don’t see people. Sure, you see your patients, but you don’t see men who could ever possibly get close to you.”
Her head jerks as though I’ve slapped her, but there’s nowhere for her to go.
“I tried talking to you that night, but you wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Not even my attempt at an apology. So I decided to become your patient and make you see me. Of course, it took me a long time to work up the courage to do it.”
“But Crave?”
“Crave had been my outlet for years. My only outlet besides boxing. I didn’t plan that part, though I can’t say I wouldn’t have.” I shrug. “It seems we’re drawn to each other, whether we want to be or not.”
Her mouth hangs open. No words come out.
My lips press a kiss to her forehead, and I ease back.
“The next time I’m inside you, it won’t be because we’re looking for a quick fix at Crave. It won’t be because you’re my surrogate or my therapist. It’s not going to be because you're trying to help me. It will be because you’re mine, and I am yours.”
I dig as fucking deep as I ever have and push myself off her stunning body. I pause at the foot of her bed. “I’m already yours, Hailey. Every mangled part of me.” Then I turn and walk out of her apartment while I still can.