125. Things You Never Ask
THINGS YOU NEVER ASK
LIVY
I take a leap, wrapping my legs around his waist, threading my hands into his too long hair, and seize his mouth.
It’s not ladylike. And I don’t care one bit.
I don’t do dirty talk but I need him, and he’s always telling me what he wants.
“I want you inside me. I want your cock to fill me so deep, I can feel you hit the end of me. I want to be stretched by you, pulled apart. You promised to ruin me, Layton. Ruin me.”
I reach between us only to have a vise wrap around my wrist. It’s too quick, too firm. Too much.
Cold rejection slithers through my veins. He softens the blow with a gentle voice. “Today was about you, baby.”
“I’m trying to make it about us.” My voice is quiet.
He looks away and pushes himself back a bit, using the momentum and the force of his arms to make for the stairs. He steps out, slowly and deliberately, and without a look back, walks to and through the doors to the bedroom, the limp obvious in his gait.
I don’t know what happened. One minute he’s hot; the next he’s cold. He wants to get me off, but not get off himself. He wants to touch me and kiss me and finger me, but not allow me to do the same.
My face flames. I’m embarrassed and so freaking sick of being not enough. Once and for all, I’m getting to the bottom of this.
I storm to the house and through the doors. The cold air is like ice on my skin, and the pools of water on the floor say it did the same to Layton mere minutes before.
The sound of water running draws me to the bathroom. I push open the double doors and look at an en suite bathroom the size of my living room. Layton peers around the open enclosure to the shower and closes his eyes, dropping his head.
“No, you don’t.” I march into the area that might as well be a small car wash. Jets hit me from every angle as rain falls from above me. I get right in his face, as much as I can from a foot shorter than this infuriating man and demand, “What is it? What is it about me? What about me isn’t enough?”
His head snaps back, and the look that passes over his face should tell me something.
But I’m not reading messages right now. I want words. I want to hear them trip from his lips as he lays it all out there. “Tell me.” I poke his chest.
I should notice that he’s in his shorts and tee shirt, but the fact doesn’t register.
He scrubs his hair, and a pained look crosses his features.
“Nothing?” I strip out of my bra and my athletic shorts and stand before him completely naked.
“I’m here. I’m literally naked. And let’s be honest, figuratively too.
I’m asking you to tell me what it is you find so lacking.
I’m telling you that you’re hurting me. And I’m begging you to put me out of my misery. ”
He looks to the ceiling, his chest heaving.
“Layton Ranger, this is me calling you on your shit… The way you told me to… when you told me not to let you fuck this up.”
“And this is me, Pix, telling you my dick doesn’t work, not even when I’m fucking desperate for it to, so I can make you feel good, so I can feel good, so I can forget my fucked-up life.”
He turns, giving me his back, and leans deeply into the marble wall.
I drop to my ass and can’t stop the tears. It’s not about me. It’s not about being desperate for his touch. It’s about a man who seems to have lost so much, losing more than anyone knows. Losing his mom, his body, his career, his independence, his income, and now his manhood in one fell swoop.
“I’m sorry, okay? I…”
My head whips up. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
He shakes his head like he can’t comprehend my meaning. “Huh?”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me for that. That’s biology, and I hate it for you, but I won’t accept you apologizing for something you can’t control. I owe you an apology. I…” I suck in a deep breath. “I’m sorry for what I accused you of. That was unfair. Will you accept my apology? Please?”
Layton stands over me, blocking the spray that pummels me, and extends a hand. He leans heavily onto the wall, seemingly bracing as he helps me to my feet.
“I haven’t told anyone. As in no one. Just you, Livy. I trust you. I do. I just never wanted you to know. What kind of man can’t satisfy the woman he wants so desperately? What kind of man…” His words trail off.
He looks at me standing before him. He runs a large hand over my petite shoulders, my tiny tits. I suck in a breath when the pad of his thumb rubs over my pebbled nipples.
He watches his fingers as they trail down my belly and around one hip bone.
His voice might as well be crawling over gravel. “I want you.”
I spread my legs, being greedy and encouraging him, but he doesn’t move to touch me there. He watches his hands.
The ragged exhale he releases is almost drowned out by the multiple showerheads and jets. He breaks eye contact, flips off the huge rain head, and stares at the ceiling.
“I want everything about you.” He lifts his shirt over his head and holds my eyes, offering me the entirety of his pride on a silver platter.
“All of you.” He pushes his athletic shorts down to his ankles and stands before me.
Wounded.
Broken.
Mutilated.
Red scars run across his legs, his torso, around and over his hips and back. Angry puckers trail up his chest and neck and dip into his beard.
He’s considerably thinner than he used to be, and his large, limp cock hangs on full display.
“Here I am, Olivia. Naked. Literally and figuratively… as well as emotionally. I’m telling you everything in me wants everything about you. I’m a broken man. But I’m yours. If you’ll have me.”
I rush him, wrapping him in a hug, sobbing into his chest. I kiss him there as I cry for his pain, for his loss, and for who we’ll have to be to overcome this.
He folds onto the floor, and we both hold each other. When my tears have run dry and the water has run cold, I pull back to look into his face.
“That’s the last of my tears over this. The last of my sadness. The Layton I know has a will of steel and a mind to overcome. His body is strong, and his desire is stronger. Today we wallowed. Tomorrow we work.”
He lifts a pinky. “Promise?”
I hook mine around his. “Promise.”
Within three weeks, the whole world changes, or at least, my world changes.
The bruise on my cheek has healed, at least to the outside world. It swells a bit with exertion or if I work on yoga movements that have me inverted for too long. I never asked how long I could expect it to be on display. I’ve treated it like a bruise. I have to remember there was a fracture there.
Exertion is a stretch. I can’t do much with my healing leg.
Daily since that first day at Layton’s house by the lake, we rise, have breakfast with Pop, and make the drive to the house. Some mornings, this is with a Ranger as a chauffeur. On other days, it’s a ride-share.
Each morning, I stretch Layton. We walk through a full round of PT exercises. Where it makes sense and where it will not hurt any therapeutic progress, Layton has incorporated weights.
After lunch, we do yoga. He grumbles and complains. I remind him his body is only one-third when the practice is mind, body, and soul. He grouses loudly anytime I tell him that the physical part is just that… a part.
He hasn’t yet recognized that he doesn’t grimace when using the porch stairs at the ranch or to get in and out of the pool. He doesn’t seem to notice his limp is less pronounced.
The physical pain is persistent. But it seems the severity is less than when we began.
After yoga, we spend time in the pool. We work.
And we play.
He seems to know when we’re doing therapy. Those times, his focus is engaged, his responses are specific, and he does each rep, each movement, precisely and completely.
And when we’re done, the Layton I knew, and the one I’m still getting to know— and the one I’m certainly falling for—comes out to play. He flirts and touches me.
A strong finger runs under the strap of my bikini. This bathing suit arrived with a dozen others. They’re all tiny and show more cheek than I’d like. All but two are the jewel-toned, rich, bold colors that make me happy against the beiges, whites, and browns I live among.
One is black. Even I can admit it’s sexy. It’s not for public display. In fact, I haven’t worn it yet. That one might require heels and jewelry or something. It rides high at the bikini line and has enough fabric in the back that if I had more butt, it would be a thong. It hardly covers my crack.
The last is white. Come to find out, it’s barely that. When it gets wet, my nipples aren’t just hinted at, they’re on full display. The bottoms aren’t any better. It’s the one I’m wearing today.
“I like this one,” he murmurs as he kisses the points of my shoulders and caresses my butt. “I’m trying to decide if you look better exposed or driving me fucking crazy by hinting to me of what I can’t have.”
He slides a sheer triangle to the side, leaving one of my breasts covered, the other visible just above the water.
“I never said you can’t have it.”
He sits on the stairs as I straddle him. He arches me to his mouth and places one chaste kiss to one nipple before doing the same to the other. “This may take me a lifetime to figure out. I hope you’re patient with me. I’ll be diligent day in and day out to keep my research fresh.”
“Well, if it’s for science…” I let my tone drift off as I watch him drink me in. I take in his trimmed beard. “I like the beard, you know. It does it for me.” I hold his eyes. “You do it for me.”
“That works, seeing as how I plan to keep you.” His eyes are serious. “Now, I’d like to discuss introducing my beard to your pussy and seeing how much it does it for you.”
His thumbs hook over my bottoms and tug as my eyebrows shoot to my hairline. “Up, baby. I need to taste you and I’d hate to rip your new suit to do it.”
I lift off him. “Here?”
He does some David Copperfield-type magic, and I’m out of my bottoms, one breast still exposed, in his nearly private backyard.