Chapter 17 – Reese #2
I choked on a sob as the most appalling, horrifying, terrible, soul-consuming relief exploded through me, like something had ruptured in my chest. I threw my arms around his neck and shoved my face into his throat, inhaling his scent like a fucking psychopath as I tried to hold back the tears, and he wrapped his arms around me without hesitation.
Fuck, I needed to get my shit together, not fall apart in his arms because he’d said the one thing no one—not one single person—had ever said to me after the accident. The only thing I’d never known I needed to hear.
“It’s okay,” he murmured into my hair. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”
I believed him with every ounce of my being.
I trembled against him, and he let go when I pulled away. The cold slithered in between us again.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling embarrassed now that the intense emotion had passed.
Dakota trailed a finger across my knuckles. “Don’t be sorry.” I twitched when he slid his index finger down my thumb. My heart stopped beating when he put his hand on top of mine and slotted his fingers into the gaps between mine and curled them inward.
He was holding my fucking hand, and I couldn’t move.
“What about your dad?”
“My dad…” I swallowed past the hurt that always came up when I thought of him. “He just kind of detached from reality in his grief. He pretty much forgot about me and started drinking a lot. Died a year later. Got drunk and drove his car off a bridge.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dakota said softly, squeezing my hand.
There was a layer of anger in his voice, and when I glanced sidelong at him, he was frowning.
But when he looked at me, his features softened.
He reached toward my face and swept a finger across my birthmark.
“That must’ve been really fucking hard. How old were you? ”
I cleared my throat, trying to get oxygen past the lump in it, trying to hold myself together when all I wanted to do was fall apart. “Fifteen.”
“And you’re twenty-two now?”
“Twenty-three. I was held back a year.”
“Oh, you’re older than me. I like that.”
He smiled when I glared at him. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two. I was held back a year, too.”
That didn’t seem to bother him at all, though, because he kept grinning.
I looked down at our hands, at the long fingers that were still linked through mine. He had three freckles on his ring finger. I wondered which one of his parents he’d inherited his freckles from.
But he was adopted, so what if he’d never met his birth parents? I realized I didn’t know very much about Dakota at all.
“What happened to your birth parents?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I dunno. I just pretend that they died because it’s easier than thinking they didn’t want me. Can you blame them, though? Look how I turned out.” He winked, and this time, it only made me angry.
I punched him lightly in the arm. “Don’t do that. You turned out fine.”
Dakota clutched his arm. “Oh, there he is. Thought you’d been replaced by a weird, sweet doppelg?nger. Or gotten possessed. I was about to call a priest.”
“I haven’t been sweet for a long time,” I muttered.
“But you were?” He leaned forward and twisted toward me, those dark eyes capturing mine. “That means you still are, that you’ve just hidden away that part. I wonder what I have to do to lure it back out.”
He set his hand on my thigh, and I didn’t move.
“You can’t lure out what isn’t there anymore.”
“Oh, I think it’s still there. I’ve seen bits and pieces. You’ve been leaving evidence all over the place. Little crumbs for me to find.” He drew closer. “Do you know why I like the night so much now, even though I’m afraid of the dark?”
I stared into his eyes and slowly shook my head.
“When you’re sleeping is the only time I get to see you without your guard up.” Dakota leaned closer, and I held as still as I could because—because he was going to kiss me, wasn’t he? He was going to—
He brushed his cheek against mine and whispered in my ear, “I like the night so much because it gives me the version of yourself that you’ve been fighting so hard to hide. It gives me you.”
He slid his tongue under my earlobe, captured it in his mouth and bit down.
The pleasure that sparked through me froze my lungs, and when he moved down to my neck, I tilted my head without hesitation.
He slid his hand into my hair and tugged at the strands, exposing my throat to him as he inhaled, then gently closed his teeth over my pulse point.
My eyes rolled back when I felt his tongue glide against my skin, and the first word that exploded from my chest was, “Harder.”
Dakota groaned and moved over me, straddling me as he bit down harder, and when he sucked, the electric heat that ran through my body made me buck beneath him.
I grabbed onto his waist as he sucked and bit, the pain and pleasure so intertwined I wasn’t sure which was more intoxicating.
My thighs tensed, and I was so hard that the slightest friction from my pants made me feel like I’d come any second.
He pulled back, and I made a sound of frustration as he stared into my eyes. His chest was heaving, his face flushed, his lips glistening and red.
He looked wrecked when we’d barely done anything, and I wanted to see what he looked like after coming.
After I’d made him come.
“You know, you left a mark on me that time in the laundry room and I’ve been dying for you to give me more,” he panted, staring down at me with eyes full of need.
He trailed his fingers up my neck, brushing over the rawness of my tender skin and sending little tingles of pleasure and pain through my body.
He kept going higher until he reached my birthmark, gently tracing it.
Without warning he leaned forward, licked it, then bit down and groaned into my skin.
Precum spilled from the tip of my cock and I moaned, my hips lifting from the ground, and then the Dakota from my dream flashed through my mind, naked and hovering over me, and I wanted that. I needed that.
I wanted to wreck him like he was wrecking me.
I reached down between us and palmed his dick. He was so hot and hard through his pants, and he immediately rubbed himself into my hand and groaned. He dropped his head into the crook of my neck and gasped, “Oh, fuck. Fuck, yes, touch me. Please fucking touch me, Reese.”
His begging was unraveling me.
I pressed the heel of my palm against his length and slid up and down. “Take it out,” I said. His hands were shaking against my waist, and to have this big man falling apart at my touch was heady and arousing.
Dakota panted into my neck, his hot breath puffing on the sensitive marks he’d made. God it felt so fucking good. He slid one hand between us and covered mine in his, pushing our hands harder against his erection and grinding into them as he moaned into my skin.
“Take it out,” I said again. There was heat brewing in the pit of my stomach, burning across my face and chest. I was angry at him for making me feel all these things, angry at him for being so goddamn sexy like this, angry at him for being so damn honest all the time.
In his words, his reactions—he was driving me utterly insane.
“I’m not gonna last,” he croaked, fumbling with the button and zipper.
“I don’t care.” As soon as his pants were undone, I slid my hand inside his jock and pulled his length out, stroking up to the tip and sliding my thumb over the precum there.
“Oh my god,” he groaned, looking down between our bodies to watch me touch him. “Fuck, look at that. Your hand is so soft.” He moved his hips, trying to slide himself through my hand, so I started stroking him.
He reached down and pulled up my shirt, exposing my stomach.
“What—what are you doing?”
“I just—unngh, fuck—I need to see more of you,” he rasped, staring down between our bodies. “That feels so good. Oh, fuck—yes, right there.” He slid his hand under my shirt, moving up to my chest until he brushed his thumb over my nipple.
I rolled my palm over his crown, spreading precum and stroking down his shaft again.
I had no idea what made me so bold when it came to Dakota—if it was the desperate, needy sounds he made, how he begged for me to touch him, how much I wanted to see him come undone because of me.
His cock was velvety soft and so fucking hard, and I wanted so badly to lick it.
Taste it. Swallow it down my throat and see just how much more I could wreck him.
I slid my fingers into his hair, gently pulled his head to the side, and bared his neck to me.
“You like it when I touch you like this?” I murmured before sinking my teeth into his skin.
He pressed his hand against my chest and shuddered.
As soon as I sucked hard, he spasmed against me and groaned into my shoulder, squeezing my pec and spilling his cum all over my bare stomach while I slowly stroked him through it.
“Fuck,” he moaned, mouthing at my shoulder. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Reese.” His tongue was soft on my neck, and then he bit down and started sucking at the spot just below my birthmark, sucking and sucking and moaning and sucking and—
White-hot heat shot through me, and I spasmed as my own orgasm rocketed through me. I curled forward, a strangled sound coming from my throat, and then Dakota’s hands were framing my face, his lips inches from mine, and fear had me moving fast.
“Wait,” I panted, grabbing his face. His dark eyes bored into mine, searching for something. There was a happiness in them that started to dissolve the longer he looked. “What—what—”
I trembled as I tried to catch my breath, tried to figure out what was so terrifying about Dakota kissing me.
“What’s wrong?” he said in that rough, low voice.
I slowly shook my head as the ecstasy faded. “I don’t…I’m not…not ready for…”
I could barely think, could hardly speak, and I didn’t know how to tell him that kissing him meant I would be giving him something I couldn’t ever take back.
Dakota placed his hands over mine. “That’s okay. Can you tell me why not?” he whispered. “Why can’t I kiss these mean little lips? Tell me a truth for once, darling. Even if it’s just this once.”
“I don’t know,” I said shakily. “I’m scared.”
He turned his head and kissed my palm. “Thank you for being honest,” he said, drawing back until he was kneeling over me. He moved his hands from my face, then looked down at my stomach. He dug into his pocket and pulled out some tissues, and I wanted to laugh.
He gently and slowly wiped his cum from my stomach, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on my abdomen. He’d wiped his expression clean of emotion, too, and I couldn’t stop staring at him.
He never tried to hide what he was feeling, and a wretched, shameful guilt tore through me.
“Why?” I choked out. “Why do you want to kiss me so bad?”
His eyes cut to mine. “Isn’t that what two people do when they like each other?”
My heart pounded and my lips parted as I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What…?”
He wiped up the last bit of cum, then folded the tissues and slipped them back into his pocket.
“I like you, Reese. I’m not fucking with you.
I’m not making fun of you and I’m not lying.
I don’t think I’ve tried to hide it, either, and I think you already know, you’re just scared.
I like you, and I’m not sure what that means or how to do—” He gestured between us.
“—any of this, but I want to. I really, really want to. I think about you all the fucking time, and I get really excited when I know I’m gonna see you.
There’s this—” He placed a hand over his sternum.
“—weird tightness in my chest when you look at me.” There was resignation in his eyes when he brought them to mine.
“You don’t have to say anything, but I just can’t keep it in anymore.
So…I mean, I’m sorry if this makes you really uncomfortable now.
” He wiped his hands down his face. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have said anything.
” He blew out a breath and tried to smile.
“Ah, well, too late. Cat’s already outta the bag. ”
He gently cupped my face with one hand and placed the softest kiss on my cheek, then stood and walked away.
I sat frozen against the tree, the drying cum in my pants completely forgotten.
How was he able to be so brutally honest and not even blink an eye?
He’d just been so vulnerable and laid all his cards on the table, and I wished that I was able to do the same.
But if the cards I had were a losing hand, how could I?
My throat was ruined.
I stared at myself in the mirror, brushing reverent fingers across my tender skin.
He had wrecked my neck, and I fucking loved it. There was even a dark spot on the port-wine stain, and that made my stomach twist into knots.
I wanted to tell Dakota everything—the whole truth—because the guilt of what I was doing was starting to become too heavy to bear.
I was suffocating under the weight of this deception, and the words—the truth—kept crawling to the tip of my tongue, desperate to get out, to warn Dakota, to tell him what he deserved to know.
And every time I saw him, it was like my mouth was sewn shut.
Beyond that, I didn’t know how to believe that he could actually like me, and I was sure it was because he didn’t truly know me that he was able to convince himself that he liked me.
He was seeing someone that didn’t exist, projecting an entirely fictional person onto me because if he only knew how lacking I was, then he wouldn’t have any kind of interest in me.
I was a mess of emotions, a fucked-up past and a fucked-up present colliding in awful ways.
It was because my past had such a firm hold on me that I felt like lying to Dakota was the only way.
Before coming to Ashbrook, I wanted closure more than anything.
And now I didn’t know what I fucking wanted.
I wanted to pretend none of this was happening, but avoiding or ignoring it wasn’t an option.
If I wanted to…to keep this, I needed to dig out all the beliefs that had embedded themselves under my skin. They were doing more harm than good.
They’d had their time, and now it was up.
I woke with a gasp, heart pounding. It was dark, the room was quiet—except for the soft breathing that surrounded me.
I was wrapped up in Dakota’s arms, and I thought I was dreaming for the longest time.
I wasn’t sure if minutes or hours passed, but I wasn’t about to move, to cut the dream short and have this feeling stolen from me.
My cheek was pressed against his bare chest, moving with every steady inhale and exhale, his arms banded around me, one leg thrown over mine and tucked under the other.
Holding me in place. Keeping me tethered.
I pressed my lips into his skin—softly, inhaling his scent as my eyes slid shut.
I didn’t remember falling back asleep, and when I woke up the next morning, I was alone.