21. AVERY #2
“You are not a whore,” he grits into my hair. “And I don’t ever want to hear you say that word in reference to yourself ever again. You understand?”
I nod, holding on to him as tight as I can, given I am debilitated from how cold I am and all the emotions running rampant inside me.
“Good.”
Rubbing my back with one hand, he guides me into the en suite, flipping on the walk-in shower so that it’s pelting down as hard as the rain outside. Except the steam is so hot that it starts to thaw me.
“He said he was going to kill me,” I murmur while I watch him hang a fresh towel over the heater. “And now he has a gun.”
Raw panic assaults me. It’s as though I’m a breath away from the surface of the water, but I just can’t break it.
“Sweetheart.” He tips my chin up with his hands cradling my face. “He’s not going to hurt you ever again. I told you that already, and I meant it. Nobody hurts you ever again. I promise.”
The promise is sweet, and I wish that it was as easy as it sounds from his lips, but the reality is that it’s not something he can keep.
“I’m not going anywhere, Avery, and I’m always going to jump in front of anyone or anything that comes for you and Iris.”
I nod, choosing to ignore the voices that tell me it’s impossible for it to be true. That he can’t protect me without bringing harm to himself.
“I know you want to save me, Doc, but I can’t be the reason you are hurt…or worse.”
The words are enough to suffocate me, and at the thought, tears flood my eyes.
“I’ve made worse choices,” he tells me. “In fact, it’ll be the best one I’ve ever made.”
Unable to reply, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull myself up onto my tiptoes to press my lips to his. I’m not sure how you can love someone when you’re broken, but I love Rhett Reynolds with every last shattered piece of me.
There is no part of him I don’t want, even the ones that have the ability to decimate me. I want every cell of his being as badly as I want him to possess mine.
“Rhett.” I murmur his name over his lips as his hands meander down to my hips. With his stare holding mine, I breathe him in. “I want you to make me yours.”
“You are mine,” he rasps as my back finds the shower wall and the warm spray rains down on us, hotter and hotter with the attack of his mouth on mine. Low and deep groans vibrate through me, making me shudder with the stroke of his hands down to the hem of my dress and back up my thighs.
Fingertips trace over my soaked underwear. Over and over, lightly at first, until a wayward whimper pushes past my lips.
“You’re so fucking wet,” he grits out with a hand cupping my ass to tilt me to him as he sucks and nips down my neck. “I want to taste you, every precious inch of you. I want to eat your pussy until you beg me to stop,” he continues, fingertip pressing at my entrance.
I wish he would delve beneath my panties. Touch my skin. That he would fill me with his fingers. Peering down the length of our bodies, I grasp the skirt of my dress and drag it up with one hand so that I can watch him. The sight makes me shiver as I twist my other hand in his shirt.
Rhett strokes over the flat between my hips with his thumb while his fingers continue tracing over my underwear. A light tease again.
“Do you like watching me touch you?” he asks, studying me as he continues stroking over my underwear.
“Yes.”
“Does it turn you on?”
“Mhmm…” My moan quivers when his thumbnail scratches over my clit at the same time as his finger slips beneath my panties.
“Does it make you crave me like I crave you?”
“God, yes, Doc.” I screw my eyes shut as my muscles tense and my toes curl. “I want you so much. So bad. I want you to fuck me.”
“Avery…” The pained groan escapes him as I turn my attention to his shirt, fumbling with every button until his shirt hangs half-open and half-slick to his incredible body. “Don’t start something I won’t be able to stop.”
There’s always a warning with him. He never takes more than I’m truly willing to give him, and yet, giving me that sliver of control in turn gives him power over my every want, wish, and need.
Knotting his hand in the length of my hair, he takes a step back once I’ve unbuckled his belt, and before I know it, I’m pressed to the glass wall. My hands are splayed either side of my face as he unzips my dress and strips me of it without a single snag.
Peppering kisses down my back, he slips my underwear down my thighs, lowering to his knees behind me while nipping over the curve of my ass.
Oh my God. Oh. My. God.
“Open your legs,” he commands. His voice is so gravelly that my insides twist at the sound. They twist tighter as he cups my pussy, encouraging me to follow his order swiftly while he wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me to his face.
With his tongue lashing at my pussy in time with his fingers, he grinds his palm over my clit relentlessly.
I’m choking on my moans as he draws his fingers through my folds and licks into my entrance, tongue fucking me until I’m incapable of holding myself up by my own volition.
My knees cave as he brackets me with the V of his hand, thumb pushing inside me and curling to my broken cry.
“You taste so damn good.” He bites down on my ass before he spins me to face him. “Too fucking good, sweetheart.”
Groaning, he licks up the seam of my pussy, eyes intent on mine as he stands in front of me buck naked. Gloriously so with his lightly tanned skin, smattered with sun freckles and lightest trail of golden hair trailing down from his navel…
Rhett’s so beautiful that for a moment I’m flustered at being naked in front of him with my stretch marks and caesarian scar.
But then he kisses me, and it’s not any kiss.
It tastes of me and him—of us—and it’s coated in his desperate need and my unquenchable desire.
The longer our tongues duel, the better it tastes and the more I want him to take all there is of me.
“I want you to fill me.” The words tumble from my lips into his gaping mouth.
“I want you—I want you so much. So much—” Rhett silences me with a bite of my pout, dragging it between his teeth to an inaudible pop.
“It hurts to want you like this,” I sputter as he prisons my body to the glass with his, hands tracing up my sides with the lightest brush of his thumbs to my breasts.
“I don’t want to hurt you, beautiful, but if I do, it will always be like this. Never because I don’t want you or don’t—don’t treasure you.”
A tear escapes me, followed by another and another.
It’s cathartic and freeing. The hunger inside me scratches and yells and rattles as I watch him watching me, so much more than hunger in his eyes.
Something that reaches deep into me winds around my heart, tugging and tugging until it feels as though he might physically take it.
“Doc…”
“Beautiful, precious sunshine…” he utters with reverence as he presses a kiss to my lips, chaste and soft and filled with yearning.
His lips work over mine, sucking and rolling between the bottom and top one.
And when he cups my face with both hands, I can smell myself on his skin—sweet, salty, and musky with that undertone of citrus.
Something like bergamot and bitter orange.
With his cock pressed to my stomach, he thrusts over my slick skin in time with our kiss. Our breathless pants get louder and louder as he devours a scorching path over my jaw to my neck, his hands falling to my thighs before he hoists me up his body and takes my nipple into his mouth.
Holy fuck!
My entire body slackens as he rolls my turgid nub between his teeth. My head falls back, and I can barely hold on to his shoulders as frissons of heat course through me, pulling and pushing at my insides as my pulse pounds hard and fast through my veins.