Chapter 57 #3
But that wasn't life. And we both knew that. Just being here was a mistake on my part. One I wouldn't regret, but one that could have serious consequences if we both didn't learn to accept reality.
A quiet sob escaped Quill's throat and she buried her head in the pillow, pressing herself against me.
That goddamn sound ruined me entirely.
“I'm sorry, Feather.”
I pressed kisses to her hair, caressed her upper arm, but didn't dare to let my hand wander under the covers.
Quill's body was burning hot.
My other hand brushed against something soft. Was she holding the stuffed bunny in her arms?
Once again, she sobbed into the pillow.
I had taken her from one nightmare to the next.
“I'm so terribly sorry,” I managed to get out hoarsely, pressing myself tighter against her, trying to ignore the fact that I was getting hard, her scent not helping matters.
A tear rolled down my cheek and into her hair.
“I'm sorry…”
That was the moment I felt Quill's warm, damp hand on the hand that was pressing against her covers.
“Touch me like you mean it.”
Her voice was barely a whisper, steeped in melancholy and pain.
I squeezed my eyes shut as despair overwhelmed me, sliding down to her neck, struggling with myself not to kiss her there.
“I can't...”
My hand pressed into her arm and I tried not to move, to cling to her as if that would prevent me from doing things I wasn't allowed to do.
Quill took my hand, pulled it past the stuffed bunny, under the blanket, and placed it on her hot skin... between her breasts.
A wave of arousal overwhelmed me, burning me and whipping all the blood from my brain down into my cock.
“You're torturing me, Quill,” I gasped into her neck, touching her skin with the tip of my nose, just millimeters away from kissing her.
She had control over me. And she knew it.
“Quill...” I begged her quietly. “I mean every word...”
I would hold her whenever she needed it, carry her wherever she wanted. I would do whatever she wanted.
“Be merciful to me... Please...”
She said nothing, forcing me to my knees.
I didn't want to hurt her, so I took my hand off her shoulder and let it wander under the blanket until I reached her wrist.
She allowed me to slide my hand into hers, even though I didn't deserve this gesture after rejecting her hand.
How could I have been so easily manipulated? Letting her father into my head...
Quill closed her hand around mine, greeting it more gently than I deserved, far too gently, so that it undid what little of my fragile heart was left.
“I don't deserve you, Feather.”
Her chest rose and fell heavily.
“You deserve someone better.”
With those words, she let go of my hand, so that mine landed on her bare skin. Her hip.
She was naked.
Overwhelmed, I inhaled, my breath shaky.
I dug my hand into the spot. Soft, rounded, as if made for my hand.
“There's no one better than you,” I barely got the words out amid all the hormones exploding in my body, along with the sparks in my stomach, followed by a tear.
Quill shifted subtly, but enough for my hand to slide to one of her breasts.
This woman would be the death of me.
I didn't dare move even one of my hands.
“How can you say that?”
Her voice sounded as fragile as mine.
“Because nothing and no one in this world can save me again in August 1995.”
Quill drew in a sharp breath as if she couldn't get any air otherwise, clinging to the hand I had placed on her breast, and only then did I realize that I had clawed into it.
I let go carefully, but it sent a craving tingle through my cock that made me grit my teeth.
I wanted to finally touch her the way she deserved, wanted to drown all those voices in my head in her, take the weight out of our words before it could crush us.
Quill pressed her butt against my hardness. And I let it happen, even though it sent me through a thousand deaths not to be able to press myself against her.
more than just a friend
f. fin
Instead, I pulled her closer to my chest, slid higher so that I could rest my head above hers, and endured the pain in my pants.
Never before had I had to fight such a battle against my desires. Never before had I had such tormenting fantasies while lying next to a woman. Fantasies that I couldn't act on and that cried out to me more temptingly with every passing second.
I deserved every one of those painful seconds. A pain that surpassed anything I had ever felt. Every inner emptiness, every physical pain.
I stayed until she fell asleep, stayed longer until the morning cast warmer light into her room than the moon ever could, pulled her closer to me every time she snuggled up to me, mumbling softly, and listened to my excited heartbeat.
I had thought that the night on the bridge seventeen years ago had been my worst. Never could I have imagined what it would do to me to hold something precious in my arms, knowing that I would soon have to let it go, that I could never keep it forever.
And I found no comfort in the thought that this fact made this moment even more precious.
People feared death. Yet it was life that tormented us mercilessly.
Just a bird.
Just a feather.
And a time bomb
Together
– Blue