Chapter 10
Blakelyn
I don’t sleep. I just lay on my back for hours, staring at the cracks in the wood on the ceiling beam and chew the inside of my cheek until I taste copper.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter.
It was just a kiss. A touch. A slip.
But I’m not seventeen and na?ve. I’m not some girl pining over someone who was never hers to begin with.
I’m a woman with bruises that haven’t fully faded on the inside, who walked away from a man who used love like a leash.
I put hundreds of miles between myself and that life.
I chose here for the silence, and the safety, and the chance to breathe again…
and now, I can’t breathe without thinking about him .
Gruene Cavanaugh… with his broad shoulders and broken voice and haunted green eyes.
The man who saved me the day Tyler showed up. And he did. If Tyler had gotten to me, he wouldn’t have stopped until I was no longer breathing. I know that.
The man who kissed me like he was trying to forget every time he hadn’t.
The man who walked back to his cabin last night like it, like I, meant nothing at all.
Except , he spent hours installing cameras and motion detectors on my cabin. He put markers in the river. I know it isn’t actually nothing… and so does he.
I’m on the dock before the sun is.
Wrapped in an old hoodie I never wear, regardless of the Texas summer. My hair is still damp from the shower I couldn’t get hot enough to chase off the chills inside of me.
Tyler is coming back. I know he is. It’s not an if… it’s a when.
The breeze off the water smells like cedar and morning and a summer that’s starting to rot at the edges.
Pulling my knees up, I rest my chin on them and tell myself I’m fine. But then, I hear the sound of boots on gravel, and my pulse skips like it’s still tethered to him.
The tread is different. It’s not Tyler. I know that. But my pulse still races, and my back still tightens as I brace for a hit that’s not coming.
Damnit to hell.
Gruene doesn’t say anything as he walks up. He doesn’t stop until he’s standing at the top of the dock.
I glance up at him.
His eyes are bloodshot. His jaw’s tight. His shirt’s wrinkled like he slept in it—or he didn’t sleep at all.
“Your motion light was on all night,” he says gruffly.
I nod but say nothing.
“Thought maybe you didn’t feel safe.” He says.
“I didn’t.” I mutter.
“I should’ve stayed.” His voice is quiet.
“You didn’t want to.” I flatly reply.
“That’s not true.” He exclaims.
“Then, why’d you leave?” I ask.
He swallows, his throat working and I’m mesmerized by it. “Because I wanted to touch you. And I didn’t trust myself to stop.”
I stare up at him, heart pounding. “Maybe I wanted you to stay … to touch me.”
“Blakelyn—” I can hear the strain in his voice, but I don’t care.
“No.” I push to my feet. “Don’t give me the speech. Don’t do the fucking noble thing. I’ve had enough of fucking men trying to make decisions for me. I decide for me!”
His eyes flicker but he doesn’t respond to me.
I wrap my fingers around the warm skin of his arm, wanting to touch him, unable to stop myself. “I’m not broken , Gruene. I’m not some porcelain doll that’s gonna shatter if you touch me… if you want me.”
His nostrils flare. “It’s not you I don’t trust, Blakelyn. Do you even understand the darkness that lives just under the surface with me? You have no idea how fucking hard this is for me.” His fists are clenched, and his jaw is strained.
His words hit me harder than I expect.
He steps closer… slowly… deliberately.
“I haven’t touched anyone in six years,” he murmurs. “Not like that. Not with anything that mattered.”
I feel like I’m holding my breath.
“I didn’t leave last night because I didn’t want you. I do want you… more than I have any right to. I left because I want you so badly it scares the hell out of me.” He stops a breath away. “And because if I touch you again, if you let me touch you again, I’m not walking away a second time.”
My hands are shaking as I reach up and curl them in the front of his shirt. I tug him forward. “I don’t want you to, Gruene.”
His mouth crashes into mine. His lips aren’t soft.
They aren’t careful. His kiss is fire with teeth and six years of silence cracked wide open in a single, brutal kiss.
His tongue slides over mine coiling and racing it like he’s learning me, claiming me.
His hand fists in my hair as he tilts my head back until I’m gasping into him.
He tastes like coffee and regret and guilt. But he feels like heat… like hunger… like every answer I’ve been too afraid to ask for and when he backs me toward his cabin with one tug of my wrist, I go willingly.
We don’t make it to the bed. As soon as we clear the threshold, I’m shoved against the front door. My hoodie is pulled off. My tank is shoved up over my breasts with one brutal jerk. I’m exposed.
His mouth meets the skin of my neck, drifts over my shoulder, and down my chest. He’s biting, licking, and sucking, marking me, until I’m arching into him like I’ll die if he stops.
“Tell me to stop,” he growls, his voice ragged.
“No.” I exclaim, arching further into him and raising his own shirt up and off. He lets me. I throw it.
“Tell me what you want.” He mutters still laving the pulse point in my neck from the spot he just bit me hard enough to bruise.
“You. Now. ” I practically wail it.
His hands go to the button on my shorts. He releases it and pulls them down hooking my panties with his thumb on the way. They fall and I kick them as he drops to his knees and buries his face between my thighs like a man starved.
I cry out, grabbing the frame of the door to keep my balance. His tongue is filthy. He’s focused… maddening. He laps at my clit, before sucking it hard enough to make my knees buckle, then, circles it with obscene pressure. I can’t take it. It’s too much yet not enough. “Gruene… oh, Gruene…”
He holds me steady with hands that grip too hard. I’m going to bruise, but I don’t care. His nose presses against the crease of my thigh as he devours me, groaning into my body like I’m the one ruining him. I fist his hair and pull him into me tighter. Just as I’m about to come, he pulls back.
“Noooo,” I gasp.
He rises to his feet, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and kisses me hard. “You’re not coming from my mouth,” he rasps. “You’re gonna come with my cock buried deep inside of you.”
I moan but before I can even breathe, he spins me toward the door. My palms flatten against the wood and my back arches, I push back against him, completely shameless.
I hear the sound of his zipper, then, his jeans drop to the floor.
I brace for him, and then, he’s there. Thick. Hard. Sliding through my folds and sinking in with one slow, devastating push that stretches me wide-open all over again.
I sob against the door, my hips arching backward to take him deeper.
“Jesus,” he growls. “You’re so fucking wet, Blakelyn.”
“Don’t stop.” I groan.
He wraps a hand around the back of my neck, not squeezing it, just holding me there. “I’m not stopping, baby,” he says low and wrecked. “Not until I’ve ruined you for anyone else.” And he thrusts.
It’s brutal in the best way. Every slam of his hips is punishment and apology and pure, violent need. He fucks me like he’s trying to exorcise something. Like I’m the first person he’s let inside since the storm took everything from him… like I’m not safe… but I’m his.
I take it all. He murmurs filthy words into my ear, “You want it like this, Blakelyn… you want my cock stretching you as I fuck you and your ass grinds back against me… begging me for more? You want your face against the wall as my cock touches you in places so deep, you’ll feel me tomorrow?”
His words are so unlike him, but I do… I do want it. I want it all and I want… more. I scream, “Yes, I want it… I want everything, Gruene.”
His fingers dig so far into my hips that bruises will bloom, but I want them because he’s not hurting me. He’s not humiliating me. He’s giving me what I want.
“Gruene!” His name is ripped out of my throat as I come with him still pounding into me, unrelenting.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until he pulls out, flips me around, and lifts me off the ground.
His arms wrap around me. His cock is still hard between us and my legs wrap around him while I kiss every inch of tanned, scarred skin I can reach. I’m still quivering. My pussy is still spasming from the intensity of my release.
He walks us to the kitchen table, sets me down, and pushes back in like he was never finished.
“Again,” he growls. “I want to see you break for me, baby.”
He fucks me like he can’t get enough of me, and I shatter, again. And still, again, triggering him. He groans my name into the sweat-slicked skin of my throat as he comes inside of me. We’re both wrecked and it feels like a dam breaking.
He slumps over me and we stay like that… naked… dripping with sweat… silent other than our labored breathing.
My chest heaves. His forehead rests against mine.
“I told you not to let me touch you,” he says hoarsely.
I lift my eyes. “And I told you I wanted it.”
He pulls back slightly, he leaves my body and winces as the suction sound fills the room. I feel his cum drip down my thighs as I stare at him.
His expression is raw… torn open… like he’s still deciding whether this was a mistake or a revelation.
“You didn’t just get sex , Blakelyn,” he says quietly. “You got me .”
“I know.” I reply, wanting to cry and to pull him back into me and hug him tightly.
“I don’t… you could have anyone…” His voice is full of something I can’t define, but I want to.
“I don’t want anyone, Gruene . I want you .”
He looks at me for a long, long time. Then, he nods once and lets out a breath like it hurts to do it. His voice is wrecked as he says, “Okay.”
Gruene
Her legs are still wrapped around my waist.
My sweat’s drying cold on my skin, and I’m staring at the edge of her jaw like it’s the last goddamn lifeline I’ve got.