Chapter Twenty One
Charley
The rumble of the motorcycle engine sends a shiver racing through me and I get up from my seat on the sofa and walk into the hallway where the garage door opens out.
It takes longer than I expect but when the door opens, Callum comes in holding my bag.
He’s been gone for hours, but I’m starting to learn that is what it’s like with him.
He pauses when he sees me, his eyes moving up and down my body.
“What else was I supposed to do?” I ask arching a brow.
“Should have left this at your friend’s.” He drops the bag and walks over to me, backing me up against the wall. “This is really dangerous, Charley.”
“Would you have preferred I sat here naked?”
He lifts the hem of his T-shirt and glides his fingers up my thigh, sliding them around to my center, finding me bare. He groans, closing his eyes.
“Truthfully,” he laughs as he teases my opening. “This is way sexier, its almost like I have to work to find the treasure. What were you thinking about while you sat here waiting for me?”
He swirls the wetness around my clit and I press my back against the wall.
“To be this wet for me already? Were you imagining me coming in here and doing this,” he pushes three fingers inside of me and I gasp at the intrusion, welcome though it is.
With his other hand he unbuckles his belt and draws down his zipper, lowering his jeans enough that his bare cock presses against my thigh.
“Or this,” he suddenly turns me around so I’m flat against the wall and tilts my hips back, then lets out a low groan as he slowly pushes into me.
“Either is fine,” I manage to breathe out as he fills me, my whole body welcoming him.
Callum laughs and pushes his hand between the wall and my body and strums my clit as he thrusts into me. “So long as you’re getting pleasure?” he questions and I nod, rolling my head back so he can kiss my throat. “Cock or fingers, it’s all the same?” he teases.
“Cock is better,” I push back.
“My fingers and tongue are offended, Charley.” He bites the point between my neck and shoulder as he pushes into me harder. “But my cock is really fucking happy to be the winner right now.”
Then he stops talking and fucks me until I’m crying out and grasping at the wall, finding nothing to get hold of. He pulls out, turns me around and lifts me, impaling me again and proceeds to fuck into me until he groans and spills inside of me.
I’m not sure when I decided foregoing condoms was a good idea but nothing feels as good as having the hot, hard length of him inside me.
Luckily Helen made me get the implant when I was eighteen. She was convinced I was sleeping around by her daughters who would do anything to make me look bad. What no one, except for Stephen realized, I’d only ever had sex with one person.
I push thoughts of them out of my head as Callum carefully lowers me to the ground, holding my arms so they’re around his neck. His t-shirt falls back around my thighs as he watches me, staring into my eyes like he is trying to see beyond the image everyone else sees.
“Are you okay?” he asks. I nod in response. He touches the wetness between my thighs and frowns. “I should have asked.”
“I’m not going to get pregnant.”
His brow furrows by how easily I say it but there is something unreadable in his eyes too, an intensity I’ve not seen on his face before.
He doesn’t ask any more questions just nods, then scoops me up before I can ask what that was about. Not firefighter style this time, his arm is under my thighs, the other holding me around the middle of my back so I’m cradled into his chest.
I don’t ask where we’re going because I’ve already come to learn how Callum takes care of me after sex.
We shower together and he washes my hair for me, massaging my scalp to the point of me almost having another orgasm, which he finds endlessly amusing.
“Fingers win this one,” he laughs.
I need to get ready for work soon but he strips off my towel and encourages me into the bed.
“What are we doing?” I ask as he shuffles down the bed and lifts my arm so it’s over his shoulders, then he kisses the side of my breast. My heart skips a beat, but he doesn’t take it any further than that, resting his cheek on my stomach.
“Things have been shit lately,” he sighs.
Both Lily and Taylor have told me how secretive the men in the club can be. Callum has told me himself he can’t talk about what he’s involved in, even when I saw firsthand how they reacted to the asshole at Elegance.
Asking him a question I know he won’t answer is pointless, so I run my fingers through his hair and wait to see if he will elaborate.
“Sometimes you need to switch off, or do something you wouldn’t normally do.”
“What wouldn’t you normally do?”
“Stay in bed in the middle of the afternoon with a beautiful woman I never expected to come into my life.”
That was a moment of completely raw honesty. My pulse rate picks up and my anxiety spikes, does he want me to reciprocate?
“I’ve seen some bad things, been through a lot of bad situations, things I would never want you to know about,” he tilts his head to meet my gaze. “It’s part of who I am and I’ve always figured it meant having this kind of thing was impossible.”
“What kind of thing?” My voice is a mere whisper.
His lip tilts in a tender smile but he makes the moment lighter by rubbing his palm over my breast, giving it a squeeze.
“Wanting to stay here and find out everything there is to know about you. I’m not blind, Charley, there is something you’re hiding from me. I’d be the biggest hypocrite to ask you to tell me, but it’s hard not being able to help.”
“I don’t need you to help me, Callum. Not in the way you’re thinking. The last couple of weeks have been the first time I’ve felt safe.”
He shifts and props himself up on his elbow. “That’s the kind of thing that worries me, Charley.”
“I’m not in any danger, Callum. Maybe safe is the wrong word.” God, I’m messing this up. “I’ve been on my own for a year, moving around, trying to find my place. Baltimore wasn’t my final destination, given the shit hole I was living in.”
His expression darkens at the memory of that place. He is desperate to ask questions about my past and maybe that is why I finally feel like I want to tell him.
His gaze never wavers from mine, even as he places his palm between my breasts where my heart is beating wildly.
“If ever you want to tell me, I’ll listen. You know I won’t judge, given the surface details you know about my life.”
“I’m not afraid of you Callum,” I shift so his hand falls away but roll onto my side and face him. He drops his elbow so his head is resting in front of mine on the same pillow.
“Good. Because I will never hurt you. And I’ll never let anyone else hurt you.”
“You proved that,” I smirk.
“Fucker,” he grumbles, like he wishes he’d been able to do more than knock him unconscious and run out of town.
That thought should scare me, but coming from him, oddly it doesn’t. We stare at each other for a few moments until I work up the courage to tell him.
“I killed someone.”
Inside I cringe, waiting for him to recoil or the way he looks at me to change. None of that happens, what he says shocks me for a moment.
“Did they deserve it?”
“Probably not…” He waits me out, sensing this is only going to come out on my terms and in my own way.
People in my hometown know all about it but outside of that, I’ve never spoken to a soul about what happened that night.
“My mom died when I was young,” I say, looking down at his collar bone.
He doesn’t try to make me look at him.
“Dad remarried after six months to a woman that my mom hated. I only found out about that later. I was just a kid and didn’t realize the relationship history.
She had three kids of her own, two daughters who were a couple of years older and a son the same age.
I couldn’t understand why she was so cold to me, especially the older I got.
“It was because I looked like my mom. And every passing year all she could see was the rival she hated so much. I still believe she only married my dad as a fuck you to mom.”
Callum’s brow furrows at the absurdity of that. He still keeps quiet.
“It bled into her daughters, or she told them to do it, who knows. They started treating me like shit, embarrassing me in school, bullying me, getting other kids to bully me.”
“Fuck,” he shakes his head angrily.
“I dealt with it,” I told him. “The wicked stepsisters,” I laugh a little. “That is what me and my friends called them. Like I was some kind of Cinderella. They didn’t make me clean the house or anything, we had maids for that.”
“What did your dad do?”
“Nothing.”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah, I don’t like to think about him anymore.
He shut down, he let Helen take the lead, and she got to do whatever she wanted.
The only person who helped me in that house was Stephen.
He kept his sisters at bay, when he could.
They hated that we got close, and it really pissed Helen off, but he made life bearable. ”
“I don’t know whether I like him yet.”
“Probably hate him. Turned out he was a part of it, he wanted to break me in other ways.”
“What the fuck did he do to you,” Callum’s hand moves up to the back of my neck.
“Nothing I didn’t want at the time,” I reassure him. “Even if it was all a lie.”
“Jesus, Charley. They sound like fucking assholes.”
“I hate them all, especially my dad because he never looked out for me.”
I don’t want to go into any deeper detail than that. Callum doesn’t need to know every shitty thing they did to me. I don’t want him to feel sorry for me.
“The night it happened, Helen was being an extra special bitch. There was this gala, and they wanted a united front but I refused to go. So to force me, she contacted the college I’d been accepted into, a million miles away from them, and pulled my application.”
“What? Can she do that?”