Chapter Eighteen
Winter
Deep down, I know this is a bad idea. But I see the edge of the cliff that will take me far from the pain, anger, and grief rising higher and higher within me, and I leap toward it headfirst.
This isn’t me begging for it.
I don’t kiss Thomas, because then he’ll win.
This isn’t about him or the game we’re playing. The endless back-and-forth. The banter. The push and pull that builds every time we see one another. No. This is about me and the distraction that will make me feel anything other than the way I do right now.
Heartbroken.
This is for relief. I would rather be full of regret than sink into the endless pit of despair that has been building for over twelve years.
Thomas asks, “What do you want, Winter?”
That’s a loaded question. What I want is something simple.
Easy. I want to feel free from the chains that have wrapped around me since the day I put white roses on my parents’ coffins.
I want to have an out-of-body experience where only pleasure encompasses me instead of the emptiness that I pretend isn’t eating away at my soul.
I don’t just want it at this point.
I need it.
I need the shadow to stop casting me into darkness.
I need the rain cloud to go away. What I need isn’t just Thomas to bring me to a place of mercy.
It’s to make me feel like a normal girl.
Not the orphaned one that people pity. Not the headstrong one people see because she had to overcome her parents’ deaths.
What I need is to be the type of person who makes mistakes. Who’s giddy and reckless. Who acts out of emotions and not out of logic.
I’m sick of thinking.
I’m tired of trying to be reasonable.
All I do is pretend to be fine when I’m drowning in choices that don’t make me happy. Suffocating on decisions that only get me so far.
But I don’t divulge those deep, dark thoughts or desires.
“I don’t want to feel this way,” I whisper instead, dragging my fingers from where they’re curled atop his collarbone to cup the nape of his neck and knead the tense, knotted muscles there.
I close my eyes and inhale slowly, finally letting my lungs get the oxygen they so desperately need.
“I don’t want to feel—”
Thomas doesn’t let me finish before he’s flipping us over, so I’m on my back beneath him. The couch is short, barely large enough to fit both of us because of his bulky frame, but he makes it work without struggle. He’s good at domineering his space, no matter how little of it he has.
His presence, authoritative and confident, is both attractive and terrifying because I know I can’t compete. We’re not on equal footing. My experience is lacking in ways I refuse to admit.
I don’t do virgins, he’d told me once.
I swat that thought away like a pesky fly.
“You want me to make you come,” he purrs, hovering over me and propping himself up with his arms on either side of my head. “The question is, sweetheart, how do you want me to do it?”
I blow out a shaky breath as he dips his face dangerously close to my mouth. He doesn’t kiss me—doesn’t cross that invisible line bordering on the brink of our insanity. He knows the second he does, he’ll lose his control.
Keeping true to his promise, his lips move to the crook of my neck to press open-mouthed kisses against my pulse. He nips the skin and drags his tongue across the same spot, his bite hard enough to make me suck in a breath. Involuntarily, I arch up until I feel the hardened length under his jeans.
“Do you want me to get you off with my fingers?” he asks into my throat, before moving to pepper a trail of kisses down my neck. He bites into my collarbone, and I hiss at the pain that he licks away with a smile. “Or my mouth?”
My eyelids flutter closed as he lowers his body to press against mine. His weight doesn’t feel overwhelming, and I suspect he’s holding himself up so as not to crush me. “B-both,” I rasp when his teeth sink into me again, this time at the curve of my breast. “More. I w-want more.”
He hums against my chest, where he grazes his lips against the spot above my racing heart. I hear the faintest chuckle vibrate against me, undoubtedly because of how hard the organ in its cage drums in reaction to him.
“More, huh?” he muses, his tongue flattening against the bite I suspect will leave a small bruise tomorrow. “What else do you want from me? I’ll need you to use your big girl words.”
His comment should annoy me the same way it did when he referred to me as a kid weeks ago, but I’m incapable of irritation. His hot kisses and the way his hands roam up and down the sides of my body like he’s petting me are setting me on fire. I do want more. I want it all. Everything.
I make a noise when his mouth disappears, and he rises up to look me in the eye.
He pinches my chin and tilts my head. “Look at me, Winter.” His voice oozes authority, so I know it isn’t a suggestion. I force my eyes open and try calming my beating heart. “Good girl.”
Oh God. I clench my thighs at the sound of his praise, and he notices immediately.
“Do you like that?” he asks, with interest sparking in his eyes. The gray-blue color sides more with the latter, making his hues look like a stormy sky. “Do you like it when I call you a good girl?”
There’s no room for embarrassment when his hands trail up, up, up until the side of his palm brushes against my breast. After I’d come home from the cemetery, I changed into a worn pair of leggings and a T-shirt, forgoing a bra because I wanted to be comfortable.
The shirt is so thin, Thomas may as well be touching my bare skin.
Eventually, I find myself nodding. I’d never been called a good girl before, but the high praise in his tone and etched into his features is a turn-on I never expected to have.
He hums, his hands stilling as he studies my face. “You never answered my question,” he notes, his lips curling into a half-grin. “What else do you want from me? Do you want me to touch you?”
The way he asks, in a quiet, sure voice, makes heat rise to my face. “Yes.”
“Where?” he asks, his hands moving over my breast and cupping it. “Here? Is that where you want me?”
His thumb caresses my hardened nipple, and I make an involuntary noise over the sensation that dampens my panties. Boys have touched me in the past. Above the clothes, mostly. But they never made me feel like this.
Another thoughtful noise comes from him as I wrap my fingers around his wrist and move his hand down my body. “H-here,” I tell him, leaving his hand at the elastic of my leggings and not an inch further despite where I really want him.
Thomas knows that. “Interesting,” he says, hooking a finger into the elastic and brushing his knuckle back and forth along my abdomen. “This is where you want it?”
He’s teasing me, knowing that it isn’t.
“If you want me to help you forget the pain,” he says slowly, his eyes locking with mine, “you need to tell me exactly what you want. More importantly, what you don’t want.”
Kourtney always used to say it was important to have a partner who was open in communication and checked in, especially during sex. I’ve never experienced that before and didn’t think it would be hard to voice what I wanted.
Mostly because…I don’t know.
I don’t know what makes me feel good or what doesn’t. I don’t know what will get me off. What won’t. What I’m craving.
I shut myself away from the world for years, focusing only on how to be independent. How to be okay with being alone. As lonely as it gets, I know that time by myself has been vital. It means knowing I can survive without somebody stepping in to help.
I’ve never let boys go farther than this. I always believed sex would complicate things—throw me off track. I couldn’t focus on whether somebody liked me or not, or worry if someone found out too much about me. I don’t want their sympathy, pity, or judgment.
Shutting down was easier. It’s been the only way I operate. Until Thomas.
“I want,” I begin in a quiet voice, wrapping my hands around his wrist again, “for you to touch me here.”
I move his hand down to cup me between my thighs, where undeniable heat and wetness greet him.
His eyes flash with lust, and that crooked grin grows as he applies more pressure. “Is that all you want?”
He’s going to keep making me say it.
My nostrils flare. “I told you. I want more.”
“More what?” he goads innocently, watching me. “More of this?”
I gasp when he runs a finger over my clothed center, pressing the pad of his thumb against my achy clit.
“Do you want me to get you off like I did before?” he questions, circling his thumb over me with the perfect amount of pressure. “Or do you want me to sink my fingers into your pussy this time? Would you let me put my mouth on your cunt to taste what I do to you?”
Yes, yes, yes. All of it. The answer is screamed inside my head, but not voiced aloud, because my brain short-circuits as pleasure sends shockwaves down my legs.
As if he knows that, he immediately stops, and a whiny protest comes out of me before I can squash it.
“I want it all,” I all but growl at him, the frustration of being so close to something so blissful and having it yanked away grating on me.
“I want your fingers and your mouth and your—” The word is lodged in my throat, the truth so close to being revealed but still holding on to my vocal cords like once it’s spoken, there’s no going back.
Thomas’s eyes scan my face, the lust like a fire being fueled by gasoline. “You want my what, Winter? Be a good girl and say it.”
No going back.
No going back.
No going back.
“I want your cock inside me,” I admit hoarsely, feeling the fire from my core rise up and heat my body like the fire within him is spreading to me. “I want to feel it inside of me. Happy?”
His smile doesn’t waver as he works me over my leggings with his skilled fingers. “Very much so. In fact, I think I’ll reward you.”
Reward—