Chapter 24 #3
“Oh, please, you despise her. It’s all over your face.” However much I resent being read in such a way, she is correct. “It’s fine, she’s an easy person to hate, but she isn’t a bad person. She’ll probably bring Cassie to lunch and then maybe out to the mud hole.”
“The mud…hole?”
Tugging on my hand, Lucy pulls me in the direction of the trailer.
I never let go of her, and we walk quietly in the blazing hot sun down the dirt road.
“That’s a big thing in here. They get on three-wheelers and kick up mud and stuff in a big hole not too far from here.
” Off the look I give her, she laughs and shrugs.
“I’m a city girl, you know I hate every inch of that. ”
The charming smile, the mischief in her eyes, the acerbic wit… though her hair may be shorter and her muscles more defined, she’s still my Lucy. In lieu of responding I wrap my arms around her arm and squeeze it as we walk. She plants a kiss on the crown of my head and a bit of my soul is restored.
We do, in fact, eat lunch, but we also inevitably end up back in her bedroom.
I’ve never had so much unrestricted free time before, and it appears I cannot keep my hands off her.
Nor her me, as she hangs one arm around my upper back and the other planted behind her for leverage.
She rocks back and forth, hips smashing against my hand, mouth on my neck, legs wrapped around my butt, panting out a string of profanity that would make me blush if I wasn’t already red from exertion.
Summers spent at the brothel provided an unsolicited education in sex.
Frequently, my innocent wanderings resulted in observing people doing things in places they shouldn’t.
Faith was more than forthcoming about the proclivities of clients.
Hunter enjoyed embarrassing me by trotting out examples of different types of sex, complete with exaggerated body movements.
There was lovemaking, she said, and there was fucking.
Either you could do with someone you love, but you could only do the former with someone you were in love with.
She didn’t explain how to tell the difference—or how she knew there was one—but I think I’ve figured it out.
Last night, or early this morning, that must’ve been lovemaking.
Slow, thoughtful, intense, filled with affirmations of love—the culmination of an entirely ridiculous amount of yearning.
This, however, is fucking. It must be. It’s debauched and sweaty and hot, and the part of me that’s ashamed of myself is drowned out by the amazement of claiming and ravishing the woman of my dreams.
A broken cry wrenches free from her lips, and her body sags as she comes down from her climax. But I’m not finished with her, so I grab the arm that’s holding her up and pin it against the bed. Her eyes fly open in surprise and arousal. “Jesus Christ.”
Holding her down with my body, I don’t stop the rhythm of my fingers. In fact, I push harder and revel in her wetness running down my wrist. “You are going to come again…when I tell you.”
Her “yes” that devolves into a hiss is more than enough encouragement for me, and I keep up the punishing pace as I greedily wrap my lips around one of her nipples.
She’s nearing another climax, but that will not do.
Our previous engagement might have been my first time, but I learned Lucy likes it when I’m bossy.
“Not yet.”
Lucy whines mid-moan and frustratedly grabs my hair and pulls me up to her lips for a kiss that is as much a beg as it is a punishment for my denial. She whimpers. “Please.”
“Oh, that is very polite of you, but, no.”
“Asshole,” Lucy growls with a wide smirk on her face. The smirk disappears when I bend my fingers at the knuckle and brush them along the textured upper wall inside her and she throws her head back into the pillow. “Taylor, please. Fuck—I’m so close, I can’t…”
“A little longer,” I coo against her lips. She squeezes her eyes shut as she fights her impending orgasm, legs shaking and her breath coming fast. I press a soft kiss on her lips and demand, “Now. But look at me when you come.”
Her pretty eyes snap to mine and her hips go wild as her insides flutter against my fingers. It’s difficult to wrangle, but I soften the landing for her. I let her hands go she envelops me in her arms and rolls us onto our sides.
In the “spooning” position, I settle my back against her front and she snakes a hand over my thigh and between my legs.
The sensation of her coming around my fingers brought me close without being touched, and it doesn’t take much of her rough, circular ministrations for me to unravel.
I come with her name on my lips and shudder as my heart rate slows down.
“I’m kind of mad we could’ve been doing this the whole time.” Lucy shakes her head and nuzzles into the back of my neck. “I should’ve dragged you upstairs with me the night of the ball.”
Once I’m settled again, I pull her arms around my bare stomach and hold her tight against me.
Of course, like any lovestruck idiot, I fantasized about that exact thing many times when constructing my plan to kidnap her.
But each time, I ran into the same issue: I knew something she didn’t.
Would she want to be with me if she knew who I was, what I was capable of, and what I had done?
I doubted it. Besides, the power imbalance alone made it unethical.
We’re different people now. She has melted the hardened parts of me, and I have hardened the softer parts of her. Neither of us entirely the composition of the person we met almost a year ago.
“You never would have slept with me,” she murmurs against my shoulder. “Because it would’ve felt like deception.”
“It would not have been consensual if you did not know the full truth of who I was.” I’m not sure when Lucy learned how to read me like a book, but I will gladly let her know every inch of ink that makes up the words of who I am. “That’s why I stopped us in the cabin, you know.”
“I know. Though, I can’t say I’m mad about how it turned out. I mean, the Taylor I met at the ball blushed at the vaguest notion of a flirtation, and this Taylor railed me into next week.”
I turn over and prop my head up on my hand, and Lucy mirrors me.
Her body is only half-covered by a thin sheet, and my undeserving eyes roam the rest of her skin.
She really is quite perfect, as if someone sculpted her lovingly and romantically out of pristine marble.
Smooth lines and perfect curves, pale skin, and thick, luscious red hair.
But what has always struck me the most about Lucy are her eyes.
They’re not an uncommon color, but they are beautifully open and expressive.
“I hate that you have to go back into battle again.” She caresses my cheek with the back of her hand. “Do you still have the nightmares? The flashbacks?”
“Occasionally. However, not a single one of those nightmares or flashbacks compares to the agony of what I went through living without you these past few months. Thinking you were dead.”
“I get it.” Her eyes convey a world of hurt I was not privy to.
A world she lived in, for a brief time, where I was dead.
I wish I could take that pain from her. Those thoughts are perhaps too heavy, now that the adrenaline and hormonal rush of sex has passed.
Lucy changes subjects as deftly as always.
“So, you have a mom. That’s kinda crazy. ”
“It is rather unexpected.” The shock has yet to wear off, and I can’t even begin to undo years of defining myself as an unwanted orphan.
“My life has been repaying a debt I never owed to a woman who never loved me, who I realize never could. And my own mother looked at a helpless newborn and put her self-preservation over the welfare of her daughter.”
“You never abandon someone you love,” Lucy murmurs beneath her breath.
The motto I lived by, shaped out of my own abandonment.
She brushes her lips against mine in a soft, pitying kiss of concern.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you, Taylor.
I hope you know that you deserve better.
From the moment you were born, you deserved to be loved and protected and wanted. ”
“Thank you. I don’t know how to think or feel about it.
That woman is my mother, and yet, she is also a stranger.
I am technically not an orphan, but I still feel like one.
Delilah, who I’ve always trusted to be honest with me, has been lying to me my entire life.
The Order as I knew it is gone for many reasons, and I have no idea who I am without it. ”
“I do.” Lucy changes positions so she can straddle my legs and pulls me up so we are seated across from each other.
“You’re Taylor. You are strong, courageous, and more empathetic than you let on.
You love foxes and you don’t take sugar in your coffee.
You don’t eat animals because you think it’s cruel.
I know that when you walk in a room, everyone feels more at ease because they know you are there to help them.
You are kind and caring, even if you don’t know how to express it.
You are a hero who saved my life and the lives of countless others through sheer bravery and ingenuity.
You bear indescribable burdens, and you never place those burdens on others.
I know that out of the billions of people in the world, you are my favorite person and I love you. ”
With an open palm, I reach up and hold the side of her face in my hand. I envy the life I must’ve lived prior, to have been the kind of person whose reward is that Lucy exists in this one. “I think I am still kind of flabbergasted that you even like me, let alone love me.”
“Passionately, deeply, annoyingly in love with you, to be specific.” Her teasing, affectionate smile turns into a serious line.
“I mean it, though. You are all of those things, and none of them came about because of how you grew up, or who your parents were. It is you and your heart that defines you, and you are astonishing.”
Years of ridiculous fitness gave me the strength to rise without needing my arms and I reel her in for a kiss.
I don’t quite share her confidence in this definition of who I am.
My rank, my past, my debt to Theia were an albatross.
Without it, I should feel free. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
A life free from duty, a life of peace, a life of simplicity?
I am lighter, but not unburdened. I feel carved out.
A girl with no last name, no army, and no country.
But I do have Lucy. That will be enough.
“I love you,” I murmur into our kiss.
Lucy guides me back down and brushes the tip of her nose against mine. “I love you too.”