Chapter 21 #2
For one endless heartbeat, he stays perfectly still, every muscle locked tight, as if the smallest movement might make this vanish. Then, like a man deciding to step off the edge, he exhales through his nose, and his mouth softens against mine.
He doesn’t push. He doesn’t take. He simply answers.
The kiss deepens by the tiniest degrees, like we’re both learning a language neither of us was ever taught. His mouth moves against mine with aching hesitation—testing, tasting, giving me every chance to pull away. But I don’t. Instead, I open more.
Our tongues touch, and it short-circuits everything—thought, caution, every carefully maintained reason I had for keeping distance, and all that’s left is his taste.
It floods me. Cool water, faint copper from blood, and something darker.
Something sweet. My chest cracks open with it, and I make a sound I didn’t plan, small and helpless and needy, right into his mouth.
His hand tightens on my waist in response, fingers digging in like that sound did something to him he wasn’t prepared for, and I gasp when his other hand finds my hip, abruptly pulling me closer, forcing me up on my knees, pressing against him.
My hands slide up his chest. Over the wet shirt. Over the heat of him underneath it. Up to his jaw, the scar beneath my palm, and he kisses me deeper, bolder, licking into my mouth like he’s tasting something he’s starved for.
From my waist, his hand travels up the line of my spine, fingers spreading wide between my shoulder blades, and the warmth of his palm through fabric makes my back arch involuntarily.
He tilts his head, finding a new angle against my lips. The shift draws a gasp from somewhere deep in my throat, the sound swallowed between us, and I feel him respond to it, feel the low vibration of something that isn’t quite a groan, like the sound of me losing control is driving him insane.
His cock is already hard. I feel it against my thighs as I lean against him—thick, heavy, straining against the wet denim of his jeans. It sends a fresh rush of slick to my sex, my panties already soaked, the fabric clinging obscenely to my swollen folds.
One hand snakes under my shirt, rough palm sliding up my stomach until it cups my breast fully. His thumb drags over my nipple, and heat detonates inside me, like an electric current straight to my clit, and a broken moan rips out of me before I can stop it.
My pussy clenches hard around nothing, a deep, greedy pulse that aches in my core. I can feel how wet I am for him, how my body is already preparing to take him—throbbing, leaking like it knows exactly what it wants.
I pull back just enough to breathe, and he follows me, chases the inch I put between us like he’s not finished, like he’ll never be finished.
“Are you real?” he murmurs against my lips. “Please tell me you’re real.”
“I’m real.”
A moan rolls from his mouth to mine, and his kiss turns desperate, intense in a way that makes my whole body shudder.
His fingers keep rolling my nipple, pinching harder now, twisting just enough to make my back arch and my hips jerk forward.
I barely know who moves first, but suddenly I’m straddling his lap, thighs splayed wide over his, my ass settling right on the heavy, thick length of his cock. He’s so fucking hard it feels like steel under me—hot, pulsing against my core through the denim.
It’s slow and desperate, the way my hips move, dragging my pussy along the entire ridge of him, and the groan that tears out of his throat is raw, broken, almost pained.
I wrap my arms around his neck, fingers sliding into the wet strands at his nape, pulling him closer, desperate to feel every inch of him against me. But in an instant, his hands are around my wrists like iron, fingers circling tight, yanking them down against his chest, stopping me cold.
Our mouths are still touching, breaths mingling in hot, ragged pants, but the kiss breaks with a sharp inhale from him.
“Not… there,” he rasps, voice wrecked and trembling.
His grip on my wrists doesn’t loosen, but his thumbs stroke once, almost apologetically, over my pulse points, like he’s terrified of hurting me even while he holds me back.
Heat rushes to my cheeks, a cold wave of reality slamming into me. “I’m sorry. You’re hurt…I wasn’t thinking.”
I try to move off him, but his fingers clamp tighter around my wrists, keeping me there.
“I can handle pain.” Blue eyes search mine, and I recognize it—the look of scars that run deeper than skin.
“Jesus, Reth,” I breathe out. “What did they do to you?”
“They made sure I’d never forget the shape of hands on me.” The words scrape raw. “The weight. The smell.” His lips curl in disgust, like he remembers the scent. “They made sure every time someone got close after that, my body would remember first and ask questions later.”
His voice cracks on the last word—not dramatically, just a small fracture, like a hairline break in glass.
“That’s why I—” He stops. Swallows again. “That’s why I can’t… let you put your hands where they were.”
Oh my God. It’s there. Why didn’t I see it before. His neck, his back…the avoidance of touch there. It’s the body’s memory of being pinned from behind, held down, overpowered.
Multiple hands. Multiple angles. Multiple times.
The realization lands like a stone through glass.
Men. Not one. Them.
I feel it, the exact moment my rib cage cracks open. My hands, still resting on his chest, start to shake. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, biting back sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
Tears burn behind my eyes so fast I can’t blink them away.
“Don’t cry for me, Cherry-red.” He brushes my cheek, catching a tear. “I’m not worth your tears.”
“Reth—”
“I’m not worth anything soft. I’ve never been. But you…” His thumb strokes once more, slow, deliberate, like he’s memorizing the feel of my skin before it’s taken away. “You’re the first thing in my life that ever made me wish I was.”
He swallows, the sound loud in the quiet.
“So if you’re gonna cry, don’t cry for what they did to me. Cry for what I’m gonna do to myself if I ever let myself believe I could keep you.”
The words land like a fist to the chest, and he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t flinch. He just waits like he’s expecting me to pull away.
Instead, I lean close, pressing my forehead against his.
“I’m not crying for what they did to you,” I murmur. “I’m crying because you think that’s all you are. That you’re only the damage. You’re so much more than that.”
He sucks in a breath like the words physically hurt him—sharp, ragged, almost a sob he tries to choke back. With his busted hand, he cups the side of my face, and a tremor spreads through me as his thumb eases over my tears.
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” he whispers, voice so low it’s almost lost in the drip of water.
From the way he presses his forehead harder against mine, it’s like he’s trying to fuse us together, like if he lets go, the moment will shatter.
His breath is warm against my lips, uneven, and his hand tightens just a fraction on my face, his other arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me closer until there’s no space left between us.
“I never meant to drag you into this. If I could go back to that very first night I saw you, I—”
“Tell me.” I inch back, just a little. “Tell me…about that night.”
There’s a long pause, and he reaches into his shirt pocket, revealing a cracked, pink, heart-shaped lollipop. “The night you changed my life was the night you gave me this.”