Chapter 10
TEN
AMELIA
I should’ve changed my email sooner.
I’ve been distracted, with Van Gogh, with this little crush of mine, this fixation. The new routine here, it lulled me into a false sense of security. I lost track of time, whittling away the days painting new businesses, watching Weston work on my engine at night, and programming in between, with occasional texts from Lexi to distract me. It’s been two and a half weeks of that routine already, and it’s flown by.
Normally I change my email addresses every month, at most. It’s probably been six weeks or more that I’ve had this one.
The tinny robotic sound that came through was just like every other, the ones that alert me to emails from my mom, from my co-workers, or the occasional message offering to enlarge my penis size.
Hope filled me at the notification. Maybe Mom’s tulips have bloomed and I’ll get to see this year’s bed.
It gives me a sense of home whenever I see the colorful buds, no matter where in the world I am, the soft petals take me right back to a different time. I can feel the safety I used to know before everything went to shit. Smell the hotdish in the oven, hear the music blasting from my brother’s bedroom down the hall. My mom’s whistling as she makes taking care of her family look like something she’s lucky to be able to do.
After seeing the subject line of this email, though, that sound will now send my body into fight or flight.
The way my blood chilled, icing through my veins in slow motion as the horror spread through my system, cell by cell. My stomach turned to liquid and slid through my middle, pooling somewhere around my coccyx. The mental turmoil that went into overdrive at the realization he found me.
I force myself to take a deep breath and read the words, not just stare at the subject line.
I’d rather freak out obsessively over the actuality than the mystery of this thing.
Re: You think your clever
Angel (or whatever your calling yourself these days),
You can keep running but I’m always rite behind you.
All you have to do is give me the money and I’ll leave you alone.
I won’t stop until your life is ruined, like you ruined dad’s & mine.
I’m done playing games. Give me the rest of the money or I expose you and put you into the public eye. I bet America would love to know where you are now.
You are the reason for all our lives being ruined, but you can make it rite and go live out the rest of your days as a nobody, just like what you want. It doesn’t have to be like this. Just give me the money and I’ll leave your miserable ass alone.
What is it you and Mom always say? Miss you always?
I’m on your tail. Soon, I won’t miss you at all.
Your loving brother
It takes minutes for my fingers to stop shaking. For my breaths to come back from the jagged things they were and fall back under my control, some semblance of a rhythmic pattern to them once more. To be able to run a check on the sender and find the IP address the email was sent from.
Someone smarter who was trying to extort their sister over email might try to hide their IP address, use a proxy through some third-party system, make it look like it’s coming from Sweden, or anywhere you aren’t .
My brother? Let’s just say he didn’t get the brains in the family.
Within minutes of my fingers operating as normal again, I have the results.
Minnesota .
Still back home.
My breath falls out of me in a long whoosh .
He still has nothing on me. No clue where I am.
It means he’s still back home, pressuring Mom, ruining her life, but she won’t crack.
I never tell her where I am not because I don’t trust her, I don’t want her to know, I don’t miss her so much it makes it hard to breathe every fucking day. I keep my location hidden from her so my brother can’t hold it over her head. So he has nothing he can do to her, nothing he can get from her, to make her feel she has to comply with him and his shitty demands any more than she already is.
Mom has no money, we both know that.
She didn’t want the payout, wouldn’t take a cent of it. Even dad would’ve wanted it to go to me, according to her. That’s why she made sure just as soon as I turned eighteen the trust was accessible by me and only me. And that Randall didn’t find out about it for so long.
By the time he did, I was long gone.
He’s always been a real piece of shit, but when he has something to gain? He knows no boundaries. Randall will stop at nothing to step on my neck, crush me as he tries to raise himself up the ladder of the shitty world he calls his life.
At this point, it wouldn’t even matter to him that I don’t have a penny left of all we have left of our father.
He’s spent so long being single-minded, this one focus to pour all of his vile self into, that he wouldn’t stop just because of the silly truth that I don’t have the money he’s after.
No.
Mom has tried to reason with him time and again over the years, and he hasn’t listened.
My brother feels wronged by not getting a cut, and maybe if he hadn’t been a junkie since high school he would’ve gotten half, but he alienated our parents all by his damn self and wants to blame me for it.
Now? He’s after humiliation. Making sure I can’t escape the past I’ve spent so long running from, distancing myself from.
Not only that, he refuses to believe the money is gone. It’s what keeps him motivated to go on, the thought of some windfall that means he’d never have to work again in order to get his next fix. I shudder to think about what he might do if he realized there’s nothing left.
Without a doubt, he’d try to ruin me for it.
I was lucky enough to get a full scholarship to college, but that only lasted a semester. A few glorious months away from home, a new name, a new identity, a new life untainted by the past. Until I made the mistake of trusting my first and only boyfriend. Revealing my history to him, for it to become all he saw in me.
Within days, I was a pariah. The place that had become my escape became my place of torment. Impossible to ignore the judgmental looks. Not to hear the whispers loud enough I couldn’t miss ’em everywhere I went. It became no different than the town I fled as soon as I’d graduated.
Mom was right. She said anywhere we went, it would be the same. Even if we could’ve afforded to up and move somewhere else, the truth would’ve followed us there. The stigma.
So, I did what I had to do to survive. I used the money to build out Van Gogh while I studied code online. It took a few months to start earning my own living from that, and then I donated the rest, and I hit the road. I’ve never looked back since. Not as Angel. Not as Avery. Not as Amelia. Or any of the half a dozen names that came in between.
I haven’t stopped running for eight years. In all that time, he’s only gotten close two times.
Early on, I didn’t mix up which postcards I sent to Mom when. He rifled through her mail, pilfering my correspondence with her, and he retraced my steps. Back then I didn’t zigzag my route either. I’ve gotten unpredictable with my stops now. When I was nineteen, I didn’t think to do anything other than keep driving down the interstate. Now, I’ll surprise even myself with where my stops take me. Random keeps me safe.
The first and only time he almost caught me in person was the night my modus operandi changed. I was heading up the PCH, crashing in parking lots on beaches and living the best part of van dweller life, stopping every hundred miles or so, a few days at a time, sending a postcard from each stop. Until Randall was waiting at the dive bar in a little town north of Monterey.
We locked eyes from across the room and I ran. Screamed fire, pushed open the emergency exit, triggered the alarm, and the restaurant emptied out in a mass exodus of mostly drunken patrons that made for a hell of an obstacle course for my brother.
I took off east, changing course often, and didn’t sleep for 48 hours, until I was in South Dakota. At least I got to see Mount Rushmore.
The second time he got closer than I’d like was three years later, when he started going through Mom’s email. That’s when he started sending me threatening emails, but I knew he had nothing to go off of after I had implemented the safety protocol. There’s no way he can track me down the way my life is set up now.
Unless he’s a lot smarter than he’s ever let on, he won’t find me if I stick to the plan. It’s kept me safe all these years since.
That second time was when I swapped to a more secure email platform. One that hackers choose for a reason. And I started changing my email address regularly, for extra good measure, and I haven’t heard from him since.
Even Mom has no clue what email address I’ll write from next. She usually deletes my emails after responding to me, and I keep a stack of postcards, shuffled like a deck of cards, and send her one every now and again.
It’s worked all this time, up until now.
I got sloppy. Comfortable, for the first time since I’ve been on the road, staying as far away from my brother and our past as possible.
A sigh of relief flows through my nostrils and into the air around me when it sinks in that he truly has nothing. He got my email from Mom, he tried to push me around again, and that’s it. I’ll change my email, and we’re back to the same old that’s kept me safe from him, and the memory of our father, for all this time.
It doesn’t stop the pall of gloom from rolling in and taking root over me.
I’m two days from being back on the road, just two damn days. Can’t I enjoy the rest of my time here in Smoky Heights?
It’s surprisingly high on my list of favorite places I’ve visited, considering how extensive my travel history really is. I’d hate to have the tail end of this stay ruined by the taint of my brother.
After taking a screenshot of his email, all necessary sender information and tracking data I could obtain, I purge the email account and set up a new one, immediately alerting my supervisor to the new form of contact. He probably thinks it’s a little weird, but he’s never asked questions, and for that, I’m thankful.
Fresh starts are what I do best.
This is just the beginning of my next one. I need to look on the bright side and treat it as such. Not let my pessimistic half win.
Hell, if I was in the habit of listening to that voice, I’d have yeeted myself over a cliff years ago.
A knock on my van door breaks me out of my focused state and I secure my laptop.
“Come in,” I say in as normal of a voice as I can. I might have an edge in that area—so many years of practice—but I feel like I do a pretty good job of even fooling myself with that one.
My van rocks as one heavy foot comes in, then another.
“Hey, darlin’. We’re ready for Van Gogh now, if I can steal her from you.”
Weston has clearly just showered, clean shaven, golden hair and tanned skin popping with that fresh white tee stretched across his muscular chest and biceps. It reminds me of the beauty there can be in fresh starts.
Some things I have to look forward to on my last night, tomorrow.
I give him a smile, a real smile he’s earned, and nod my head at him. “Yeah, you’re good to take her. I gotta warn you though, she’s the least valuable Van Gogh on the planet. You might be wasting your efforts here.”
The burning look he gives me—in lieu of cracking another joke like we normally would—tells me I’m not the only one with their mind on tomorrow night. When he speaks, his voice is low, the timbre raspier than usual. “She’s worth more to me than any painting, Amelia. I’ll take good care of her.”
Taking one last glance around the space I’ve called home my entire adult life, I grab the bag with everything I’ll need for the night and turn her over into the care of the Grady brothers one last time.
They’re going to start the installation on the transmission tonight, but since they’re squeezing this in after hours Wyatt has warned me that he’s going to need tomorrow night for the engine, so she won’t be ready to drive until sometime tomorrow evening.
That leaves me homeless for the night, except for one benevolent gentleman. A Boy Scout, if you will.
The brothers move my van, my whole world, into the shop for the rest of her stay here, and I watch them work together, grumbling and laughing as they take out whatever’s left of the old parts inside Van Gogh and place the new ones in.
And I get it. Over the course of the evening, I see how important this is to Weston. This relationship with his brother, why he wouldn’t want to jeopardize this bond that I’ve seen grow in the past couple of weeks. Even if I was willing to abandon my reasoning in the name of one steamy night together, he wasn’t, and after watching them all this time, I get it.
The rare twitch of the lips that passes for a smile from Wyatt, the looks of respect and pride as he checks over Weston’s work. I’m guessing it’s a tenuous sort of peace that’s new for both of them.
I might not understand why Weston being happy would trigger Wyatt, or why Weston is okay with putting himself on hold for someone else, but I do see the beauty in what he’s going for here.
If making things right with my family was an option, I’d probably suffer through a lot to make it happen too. But there isn’t a happily ever after for my family, not even a family reunion is possible at this point.
The Grady brothers get to a point they’re happy with for tonight and assure me it shouldn’t be as long of a wait when they wrap it tomorrow.
By ten p.m. Weston is giving me the very abbreviated tour of his current home. A small Craftsman he’s renting with one bedroom and one bathroom, it’s barely bigger than my van. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the tour takes about as long. There’s the kitchen, there’s the living room, there’s the bedroom, there’s the bathroom. I get it.
The problem comes when he tries to insist I take the bed while he takes the sorry excuse for a couch.
I drop down onto it to test it out, and a metal spring nearly gives me an enema.
“Not to yuck your yum or anything, but how are you going to sleep on this without getting a prostate exam? You weigh, like, twice as much as me and it’s already breaching fifth base with me.”
Weston gives me a look that reaches every single nerve cell all the way down to my toes before answering. “We’ve got one more night to last, darlin’. I can put up with just about anything tonight knowing I’ll be in your bed tomorrow.”
That wink he follows it up with should be illegal.
“I mean, if this is what you’re into, if you want a romantic night alone with the couch, let’s just pick a safe word now and I’ll say no more. All you’ve gotta say is polar bear and I’ll take the hint.”
“Is that your safe word?” The way his lips pull up and curve into a smile promises to give me a reason to use it.
“No, mine is I’ve got mace ,” I joke.
Weston pulls a tight grimace and shakes his head. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to give me some clear boundaries before we start tomorrow. I’m not risking some Vixen-worthy move below the belt because I pulled on your hair when you only wanted me to stroke it.”
Only one word of that diatribe stands out to me.
“Vixen?” My eyes light up, finding his. “You listened to Vengeful Vixens ?”
He pops a shoulder up casually, almost carelessly. “I had to hear it for myself after all your talk about it.”
“And?” I practically shriek the word.
“Getting vengeance for those victims who aren’t here to tell their own stories,” he says in a scary accurate impression of Jynx’s husky voice as he nails the delivery on the show’s tagline. “No, it’s pretty solid actually.”
“I knew it!” That was definitely more of a shriek, and I jump up off the couch and hug him excitedly. It’s a testament to his character that he doesn’t let that be weird, that he doesn’t pull back or shrink away from me.
For two people who are used to staying detached, that was a wee bit personal. But he runs with it, holding me close with one arm and rubbing my back with the other for just a moment, releasing me as I pull back and pretend I didn’t just memorize the way his body felt against mine.
The firm abs beneath his shirt that absorbed the impact of my body running into his.
Those strong arms that held me for a too-short moment that will keep me embarrassingly toasty for the rest of the night.
His throat works as he swallows, and I think of a way to move past that awkward moment, spitting out the first thing I think of.
“Can I use your shower?”
His eyes flutter shut, jaw clenching with a tic for the briefest second before he collects himself. “Of course, darlin’. Right this way.”
He gets me set up with everything I might need, my bag with my clothes and toiletries, and I take my time getting ready for bed. Relishing in the unlimited hot water his house has, that I can stand under the spray that could melt flesh for a quarter of an hour, maybe even longer if I dared. Trying not to inhale the steam and wonder if I can smell him in it. His body wash on the small, built-in bench, tempts me to pick it up and take a whiff. But I’m not a total creeper psycho, whatever my DNA, and I pass on the chance.
Instead, I force myself to shut the water off before he asks if I’m drowning myself, like a good little house guest, dry myself off, do my nighttime routine and ready myself for bed.
Does that include an extra thorough cleaning of all my most personal areas? Some shaving? Possibly, what are you, a journalist?
When I emerge back into the hallway I don’t see Weston, so I let myself into the bedroom and sort out my belongings, putting away toiletries I don’t need anymore.
I would simply refuse to sleep in here, but we had a pretty thorough back-and-forth about it on the way here, and I can tell I’m not going to change his mind on the matter. The man is a Southern gentleman to his own detriment. He outright refuses to sleep in the bed while I’m relegated to the sofa. But I’m not about to let him sleep on the couch and let that thing round the bases with him while I have his bed all to myself.
That would certainly throw the universe out of balance yet again, and I’m not about it.
I didn’t plan on wearing a small pair of panties—or a thin, stretchy bralette that traces every secret my chest holds—to bed out of any scheme to seduce him or ruin our plan when we’re not even twenty-four hours away from victory. I didn’t even know I’d be staying in his bed when I packed my bag.
And maybe I’m not from the South, but you know, in the Midwest, we tend to be decent people, too, and I just can’t let this literal golden retriever of a man throw his back out on that janky couch and ruin my chances of a real, live rodeo experience tomorrow night.
So really, I’m being selfish, if you wanna look at it that way.
He can do this as a favor to me . I’m looking out for my own interests with this move. He doesn’t have to trade in his gentleman card by taking me up on this offer, because there’s nothing uncouth about it on his part. What would be rude is turning me down.
“Boy Scout, I hope you know I’m not going to bed without you,” I call loud enough to travel down the hall to wherever he’s hiding out.
“Then I guess you’re in for a long night,” he drawls from the doorway, and I try not to startle at his sudden appearance. His minty fresh breath and that smell that’s uniquely him—the one that’s come to make my knees buckle at the hint of the woody fragrance with a strong masculine undertone—reach me from several feet away and I steel myself.
Weston looks like he’s trying to keep his balance when he spots me. Spies what I’m wearing. His grip tightens on the doorjamb, knuckles turning white as his eyes slowly move their way down my body, skimming over the clear outline of my breasts, my flat stomach, my thighs and the small triangle of nude material in between them. It might as well be his tongue for the way my body reacts to it.
“I won’t complain about a long night,” I tell him with a heavy-lidded look that betrays my impatience. “Just don’t make it a lonely night.”
“Darlin’, you’ll be the death of me. That face. Those tits. That body. I won’t survive a night in a bed with you where I can’t touch you.”
“Then touch me,” I offer.
“So eager, angel, when the wait is only going to make it that much sweeter.”
I let out a loud sigh and turn my back on him, walking to the bed and pulling back the covers. If he watches my ass as I walk away, that’s his prerogative. His scent overwhelms me as the sheets fold back, that blend of maybe cedar, and something else I can’t place, it invades my senses. It melts my insides, and I’m lucky my knees don’t give out. To be wrapped in his scent, the fabric that’s touched every inch of him, I hope it’s enough to hold me over for one last sleep.
When I climb in the bed, perch myself up on some pillows and pull the covers up to my stomach, I find Weston watching with a fixated stare that gives away just how he feels about waiting one more damn night.
He looks like the last tether on his restraint is about to snap.
Good. Mine snapped a week ago. It’s time for his to catch up.
I pat the empty side of the bed on my left and wait expectantly.
He sucks in a breath through his teeth and turns his head to one side.
“You’re really testing my resolve here, darlin’.”
“I can keep my hands to myself if you can.” I think.
“That’s the problem. I’m not sure I can.”
“What if I promise not to let you touch anything you’re not supposed to?”
He shakes his head, running his free hand through that messy blond hair, the strands falling dangerously over his forehead, begging for feminine fingers to explore them.
His other hand, still on the doorframe, grips it harder, and I worry the wood will split if he keeps it up.
“You’ve got a lot of faith in my self-restraint.”
“I have a lot of faith in you, period.”
He blows out a big breath and those green irises find me from the corners of his eyes and he studies me for a second.
For just a sliver in time, I let the weight, the burden I carry with me every day, show through. I take down my walls, barriers, and masks, and I let him see the heaviness I can never escape. The one that was triggered this afternoon by the email from my brother.
I stop trying to hide my load, and instead I let him see my desperation to not feel it all for once.
“Honestly?” I ask him.
He nods.
“I’ve had a really shitty day, and I don’t want to be alone tonight. We don’t have to do anything. Just lay with me?”
His eyes shutter, and his resolve to stay away melts in front of my eyes.
“If you said that to start, I would’ve brought tea and snacks and we could be watching some true crime documentary right now. Give me a sec.” He turns to leave the room, but I call out to him.
“I don’t need any of that, Weston. Just be with me?”
His hand drops from the doorframe and he’s by the bed in an instant, pulling back the covers from the other side of the mattress, soft eyes on mine.
“I’m just warning you that I’m not responsible for anything my little explorer does tonight.”
“Your little explorer?” I question.
Weston uses both hands to gesture between his legs and my mouth twitches, a smile trying to take over and erase the traces of the frown.
“I’ll keep him under control. But he has a mind of his own sometimes. I can’t lie, he thinks of you a lot, and he might not understand that having you in my bed doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.”
I giggle, the solemnity of the moment broken that fast, and I know this was the right choice tonight. Carrying a load like mine can be so isolating, so heavy on my own. But sharing it with him, even just by keeping me company? Suddenly it doesn’t feel like so much.
“Close those gorgeous eyes, darlin’.”
“Got a surprise for me?” I ask, with a taunt in my voice.
“You’ve already gotten an eyeful of my surprise, but might as well not rub it in your face tonight.”
“I wouldn’t complain if you did,” I tease.
“Mmhmm,” he says in a low voice. “Eyes to yourself for just a bit longer. Then all of you can have your fill. If I see your eyes wandering tonight, I might not be able to stop myself from giving them something worth watching.”
My stomach flutters, desire dipping down south. I place my hands over my eyes and listen to the sounds of him stripping down. The shedding of a shirt. A zipper, the rush of pants falling to the ground, and the noise of him stepping out of them.
Finally, as if he’s dragging this out just to tease me, to ratchet my need up from a nine point five out of ten to an eleven, I hear the flick of a switch and seconds later feel the bed shift under his weight.
I cheat, just a little, and let my hands fall away before he releases me from the command, just in time to see him yank on the sheets, pulling them up and over his body. That glimpse of my new obsession, even still in his dark green boxer briefs, before it’s hidden beneath the navy comforter…it does things to me. Things that turn my blood hot—the air on my skin freezing in contrast—and make my nipples pebble. My panties damp.
The moonlight streaking in through the crack in the curtains on his window is enough light for him to notice the change in me, and for me to watch his eyes darken in response.
“Fuck me. I’m gonna have to sleep facing the wall, aren’t I?” There’s nothing bitter in his voice, just tortured resignation.
“I thought all this anticipation was your idea?” I taunt.
“Yeah, well, much more of it and we might have a problem on our hands.”
“My hands can handle it,” I promise.
Weston yanks a pillow out from beneath his head and slams it down over his face, muffling an exaggerated groan. He pulls it off his face and looks over at me.
“Why? Why did we agree to this last night bullshit again?”
I slide down the mattress until my body is flush against it, on my left side so I’m facing him, one hand supporting my head as I concentrate on taking in his features. His strong cheekbones and square jaw. That sharp nose and forehead that the ancient poets would’ve written sonnets about.
Me? Best I can do is trace the shape with the tips of my fingers, vowing to memorialize him in my mind like he is right now. Selfless, gorgeous, and without judgment.
Though, if he knew who I really was, that might be different.
But for my own sake, I’m going to enjoy the rest of my time in the Heights as Amelia Marsh. And Amelia Marsh has no reason to be judged, to fear this closeness that we’re pretending isn’t blooming with every interaction between us.
So I allow myself this moment of weakness. Where my feather light touches across his face—those hewn features I’m tracing, imprinting on my soul with every touch—they dust goosebumps across his flesh.
I relish in the power of it, the rush it sends through my bloodstream to see the way he’s affected by the simplest of connections between us. Let myself imagine it could be more.
Just while we’re here, in the dark, I can dream that it’s not just the physical attraction that’s moving him, reducing him to this shivering vessel of need.
That I could be what he needs. This beautiful, selfless man who makes the world around him so much brighter just by existing.
That my darkness doesn’t dampen his light, my taint can’t corrode his bronze shine.
The hunger in me ramps up, desire coursing through my cells, liquifying me and pooling in my center.
He sucks in a sharp breath through parted lips, whether it’s the way my fingers caress his forehead, the lazy fall of his golden strands across it, or the look in my eyes.
Fuck, maybe he can scent the change in my pheromones, my chemical makeup that’s radiating my lust to him on a base level that defies words but has existed for millennia. It’s what’s propagated society and civilization all this time. This ancient, primal signal between the hunter and the hunted. Right now, I’m not sure which of us is which.
Weston grabs my hand and stops it from continuing its exploration, down his jaw and beyond, where it would’ve loved to have gone.
“Amelia.”
No one has ever said my name like that. None of my names.
Like he needs me.
Like I’m what’s tethering him to this plane.
Like I’m killing him with every touch.
“Weston.”
It’s a breath, it’s a request, it’s permission.
“You’re making it really fucking hard not to touch you right now,” he whispers, face inches from my own.
“Don’t touch me,” I say soft as velvet.
He stares at me, trying to follow.
“You don’t want me to touch you?”
“I want you to touch yourself,” I whisper back.
His eyelids slam shut, his throat bobs, and his entire face strains. The comforter shifts beneath us, but neither of us have moved. Realization sinks in, and my face flushes.
“Fuck,” he says, and follows it with a groan.
“Isn’t that what you do when you get home every night? Touch yourself, knowing that I’m in my bed doing the same?”
“Aw, darlin’. You’re going to kill me with that mouth of yours. It looks so innocent, but it’s pure fucking filth, isn’t it? Just like the rest of you.”
“It’s just speaking the truth.” At least right now.
“You think of me fucking my fist?” he asks, eyes alight with a kind of intensity I’ve never seen in another pair in all my life. There’s nothing malicious, or sick about this kind of need. It’s pure, it’s reciprocated. It’s something I can fall into.
“No,” I tell him truthfully.
His brow comes down just a touch, closer to his eyes, not wavering from mine.
“I think of you fucking me.”
“Goddamn,” he breathes out, rolling over to face me completely.
“Show me,” I whisper.
“What do you want to see?”
“What I do to you.”
“I’ll show you exactly what you do to me, angel.”
My stomach flips at the use of my real name. What no one else has called me in almost a decade. From him, it doesn’t hold those connotations though. From him it feels like something holy.
I wait, holding my breath, lower lip between my teeth as I watch. Weston pulls the covers back, revealing his cut abs, all six of them, and the waistband of his underwear, taut against his lean frame.
My nipples tighten, my core flutters, and desire floods me at the sight of his masculine form. No part of me isn’t ready for this man.
Weston launches the bedspread the rest of the way off his body, and it lands at the foot of the bed in a whoosh of air. His cock juts up, fighting against the constraints of his boxer briefs, which have the challenging task of holding all of him in. I don’t know if my pussy could do the job, but I’m volunteering here and now to try, if he’s accepting applications.
“I’ll give you the live demonstration tomorrow,” he says huskily. “Make sure you know exactly what you to do to me. Feel it from the inside, all the way from your throat to your toes.”
I let out a hum that might be embarrassing if I didn’t stand behind it a hundred percent.
“But for now, I’ll show you just how hard you get me, Amelia.”
I sit up, such an attentive pupil, here to remember every detail of tonight.
Weston reaches down and peels his underwear off, removing them entirely before laying back once more so I can take him in, entirely naked for the first time.
My breath leaves me, as does any shred of inhibition, as I take in the sight of the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, laid before me like a feast for my eyes. I wish it were an interactive exhibit, but I can make do just fine with this view for now.
His cock is massive, entirely erect, and the veins look damn near angry, the head almost purple from the rush of blood.
I want to taste it. To feel the smoothness of him, the hardness as he notches that fat head into my center and pushes in. I’m not sure if I can stretch wide enough to take him, being as slight as I am. It might break me, but it’d be a worthy end to a life I hardly deserve in the first place.
“Is that what you wanted to see, darlin’?” His voice is gravel and carefully coiled restraint, like a bobcat ready to strike given the signal, at the first twitch of his prey.
Power, muscle, golden perfection, all ready and waiting.
I nod at him, tongue tracing my lower lip more out of the wish it were tracing something else than some conscious attempt to lure him in.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about it,” I admit, breath caught in my throat.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about your tits either,” he says. “That fucking ring through your nipple. I want to bite it. Tug on it with my teeth and see what happens.”
My body responds like he did just that. Nipples firm, pussy soaked, and clit pulsing. He’s not the only one about to burst here. I moan at the thought, the picture he’s painted, and I want him to paint something else for me. My face, my chest, my stomach. The thought turns me on in ways I can’t explain, and I need it.
“Show me what you do when you think of me,” I urge him, shifting so I’m kneeling, resting back with my ass on my heels, legs spread just enough for him to see, maybe even to smell what he’s doing to me.
“You want me to jerk off?”
I nod again, subtle movements of my head, eyes homed in on the view in front of me.
“Can… Can I watch you?” I manage to get the question out with only a small blush.
“Oh, fuck. Hell yeah you can,” he says with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for people with clean hearts and good souls. It’s a kind I haven’t felt myself in far too long.
His nostrils flare as he rotates, positions himself up until he’s on his knees in front of me, towering over me as he moves one hand to grip himself.
It’s the perfect view.
Those cut lines on his hips jut down, dragging my eyes straight to the main attraction, like they’d have any trouble finding it on their own. There’s no missing this man, that cock that could be the mold that pleases the masses. But for twenty-four hours, it’s for me alone. I’m not going to waste a moment that I have him— it— to myself.
“What do you normally do?” The question is so soft I worry he won’t hear it, but he answers immediately.
“First,” he says, flexing his fingers around his shaft, “I slick my hand down my shaft, imagining you’re in front of me.”
“Like this?” I ask him, bouncing in place just once, just enough that my tits jiggle and his eyes drag down to my spread thighs.
“Fuck, you’re better than perfect. Yeah, angel, like that.”
“Then what?”
“Then I pull on it, squeeze it as I stroke it upward.”
My mouth can’t decide what to do. It dries out, then fills back up with saliva, desperate to get involved in the action somehow. My pussy has no such confusions. It knows exactly how to prepare for its eventual master. Those inner walls flex and flutter at the sight, his narration of this religious experience for me. My underwear feel hot, uncomfortably wet, and I want them gone. They’re in the way. But I practice restraint.
Right now, I’m here to watch, not to play.
I’ll have my turn.
Weston’s hand pumps at a slow pace, his strong, sure grip moving up and down the length of his thick shaft.
My breaths mold to his movements, every inhale mirroring his downstroke, my exhales matching his upstrokes.
It feels like even our blood is flowing in the same rhythm. Like we’re so connected right now that watching him come might push me over the edge.
I break eye contact with the one-eyed monster and look up at that godlike face to see him staring at me, not watching the show he’s putting on for me like I expected. It takes my breath away, stutters my heart for a second with the intensity I see there.
“My imagination hasn’t done this justice,” he says through staggered breaths. “I’m not talented enough to picture you looking this perfect. Like you’d do anything for a taste.”
I sway my head from one side to the other. “No touching, remember?” I remind him. “I’m being a good girl. That’s what you like, right?”
He screws his eyes shut and I watch in fascination as a bead of sweat starts to roll down one temple. Those biceps of his bulge as his strokes get firmer, stronger as he works himself harder to show me what I want to see.
“God dammit, Amelia, you’re so fucking sexy it’s unreal.”
“What do you think about when you do this normally?” I ask him.
“Your tits,” he says, without hesitation.
“These tits?” I ask him, bringing my hands over my thighs, up my stomach, and resting them on my favorite investment I’ve ever made. My skin lights up beneath the featherlight touch of my own fingers, so used to coming alive in the pleasure I have to offer myself.
“God, fuck, yes, those,” he says through clenched teeth. His neck is strained, tendons flaring and jaw pulled tight. It allows me to picture exactly what he’ll look like if I ever let him get on top of me, forced to brace his weight to not crush me, hold himself back to not wreck me. Our foot-plus size difference could be an obstacle for someone less motivated, but I have a feeling he’ll be determined to make it work.
I slip my fingers beneath the hem of the thin bralette and pull it up, up, up, just as slowly as he teased me with his shirt the first night he saw my chest, and I focus on his breathing, how labored it is, the curses he’s biting out as he continues fucking his fist with a kind of passion no man has treated me to before.
The full bottoms of my heavy C cups are revealed to him. The cool air hitting them is one tell, but his hot gaze is far more palpable to my sensitive skin.
I continue peeling the fabric up and over my breasts, until my nipples are free, and he curses the loudest one yet.
Looking down, I see my nipple ring winking at him in the rays of moonlight from my right breast, and I watch his gaze narrow on that spot as his hand doesn’t stop, never stops moving, while his other buries itself in his hair, needing purchase somewhere and not being able to touch me. His fingertips dig into the roots, press into his scalp, and I wish it were my own.
My top comes all the way off, and the sound he makes will live in my memory for the rest of my days. Vulnerable, needy, and so fucking earnest.
“You don’t have to imagine tonight,” I tell him, letting the bralette fly off of my fingers, giving him full viewing rights. My hands run back down my taut stomach, my thin frame not having much in the way of curves, but he seems to be enjoying it just fine based off of the groans, the unforgettable show I’m getting.
“Best fucking tits I’ve ever seen,” he tells me again, just like the first time.
“They could be better,” I say, looking down at them and then back up.
“Bullshit,” he spits, cock starting to leak from the tip. But he bites anyway. “How?”
Voice soft, breathy, my natural rasp taking center stage, I say, “They could be painted in your cum.”
He swears, and I watch as his balls tighten, that precum getting thick and stringy as his hand continues jerking that length that I wish I had the honor of handling for myself right now.
“That what you want?” He’s running out of breath. Out of words. Out of sanity.
I nod at him, leaning forward to get closer to him.
“Holy shit,” he mutters, cursing over and over again as he loses control, the pleasure taking over.
I smile at him, a demure look that only hints at the rest of my plans for him, and I let that smile do my talking for me. Wordlessly, I broadcast all those daydreams of our one night together to him, my imagination running wild, and something tells me it all hits him loud and fucking clear.
“Hope those tits are ready,” he grunts out.
Holding steady, I press my chest out just enough to show him how much I want this. How I’ve come to the thought of being covered in his time and again. My stomach, my chest, my face. I want it all, and I want it everywhere.
With a final series of strong strokes, abs clenched, sweat dripping down the carved muscles from his pecs all the way down to his cock, I watch in fascination, fixation, as this man comes with his entire body, maybe even part of his soul breaks free as he releases. He holds nothing back.
A groan gives way as his cock jumps, balls jerking, and the head erupts, spewing his thick, hot, sticky release all over my chest. Like a Pollock, there’s no pattern or predictability to it. It just scatters, spraying my sternum and both breasts, dripping down in rivulets across my nipples.
I shouldn’t be so willing to admit the feelings that evokes in me. Being worthy of being covered in this part of him. This wholesome man, so much better than I deserve, who gives himself so freely, came to the thought of me. The sight of me, on my knees for him. Not even my touch, just the concept of it was enough to make him explode.
It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and the first time I’ve tried something like this. But the thought hasn’t left me alone for weeks and I had to know what it would be like.
This is a level of turned on I’ve never been before, and it’s all because of him .
His strokes slow, arm pumping less and less, and finally pauses entirely, squeezing the last drops of his release from the tip of his dick. I watch on, eager to lap up every memory tonight has to offer.
When Weston removes his hand from his cock, leaving it to its own devices, still bobbing at attention, red and exhausted, he reaches out with his thumb and forefinger and takes hold of my nipple ring, careful not to touch my skin.
“I’m not touching you,” he points out. He’s just touching the metal, and this might be the best loophole of all time. The way my core clenches you’d think he was inside me.
Weston’s fingers grip the stainless steel hoop and twist it, turning it so that the metal runs through my body. The cum all over the piercing goes into my body, and I moan at the visual.
“But at least my cum is inside you.”
If my piercing were fresh, that could present a host of problems. But I’ve had it for years and years now, and I have absolutely no issue with that filthy little maneuver he just pulled.
Quite the opposite.
Considering, on a cellular level, his cum had already probably dripped inside the piercing, it doesn’t really make a difference logically. But watching him push the metal, covered in his release, through the hole in my nipple, watching it spread and the metal slip through it with ease, like it were lube… It’s the dirtiest thing I’ve ever done.
My face, or maybe that little moan I make in response, must give away how much I liked that, and he grins at me, a wicked tilt of his lips that hints at a filthy secret we now share.
Still on my knees, I let myself fall straight back, ass landing on my feet and back flat on the bed.
My knees are shoulder-width apart, my barely concealed pussy on full display for him. Cum-covered chest there for him to appreciate his handiwork on as well.
“Now, it’s your turn to watch,” I tell him.