Round 39 #2
He snorts, suckling on the tip and drawing me closer.
Closer. So friggin’ close, my spine arches, and my entire body curls into his.
“Give me a good reason to let you go, and I’ll make it happen.
Cliff owns like ten houses in Plainview and in the next town over, so I’m sure we could get you one of those even without a lease and come to an agreement he’d be happy with.
” He peels the front of my bra down and drags his tongue across my bare skin.
“But you need to convince me why that would be a good idea. You having a tantrum is not it.”
“I’m not having a tantrum!” I shove him back, forcing space between us. Between my throbbing pussy and his leg. “I’m trying to do the right thing by you, Oliver. The fact you can’t see that concerns me.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s right for me.” He snags my hand and nibbles on my wrist. My forearm. The soft, warm spot at the crook of my elbow. “You’re not very good at arguing with another human being, by the way. I’m right here picking at you, and you’ve got nothing.”
“That’s fine, because you’re ridiculously good at pissing me off. Which is helpful in more ways than one, just so you know.”
“You want me to piss you off?”
“Yes. You being perfect all the time is how I ended up in this situation in the first place. Show your ass more often and I’ll be more able to control how I feel.”
“You…” Confused, he stops nibbling and brings his focus back to me. “What?”
“I just want to be an independent, functional person!” I bound off the couch and drag my bra and shirt back into place. “I don’t want you to be with this useless, broke, unemployed, freeloader who contributes nothing to society. I want to be worthy.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Frustrated, he flops back onto the couch, his feet on the floor and his back sandwiched in the cushions. “Worthy of what?”
“Worthy of you! Worthy of your love! Because I—” I gasp and slap my hand across my mouth, my eyes shooting wide, and the clap of my palm sending ricochets of pain reverberating into every nerve ending I own.
Oh God. I screwed up! I screwed up so bad.
Ollie’s silent stare knocks the wind out of my lungs. The way he leans forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees, makes my stomach roll.
“Wait, no—”
“Because you what, Rosaline?”
“Nothing!” I stumble out of the gap between the couch and the table, careful not to trample the kitten. “Forget I said anything.”
“You said love.” Like an apex predator in the wild, he slowly pushes to his feet and prowls two steps closer. “I heard you, Rose. L. O. V. E.”
“No, I didn’t.” I back up and navigate the recliner. The rug. The fireplace. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You broke something, alright.” He hunts me down, one slow step at a time.
“You broke the image of what you thought we were. In like. In lust. You trusted me to take care of you, to not hurt you, to feed you and to be a good, decent guy. But that was before, when this was just affection. Now you love me, and you’re scared I can’t love you back the way you think I should. ”
“I didn’t say—I’m not—” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I stumble back another three steps. “Ollie, stop—”
“Say it, Rose.” His eyes are alight with a kind of madness. Elation. Taunting. “Say you love me.”
“No!” I crash against the small side table, my hip colliding with the corner and my breath racing out on a hiss. “I won’t. You’re delirious.”
“You love me,” he teases. “But you think if I think it back—if I feel it too—it’s not real. It’s just the product of trauma and proximity and me being too kind to burst your bubble with the cold, hard truth.”
My heart throbs in my chest. My stomach whirls.
My vision is damn near blurry because I’m too hard to love.
I desperately latch on to the door frame leading into the hall.
If I turn and run and lock my bedroom door, I could maybe climb out the window and go find Barbara before he catches me. “Ollie—”
“Say it, Rose!”
“No!”
He whips his arm across and hooks his finger in my shirt.
Then he slowly pulls me in, like a fisherman reeling in his catch.
“You want to move out and have a job and be your own, independent woman, so when I say I love you, too, you’ll feel like you deserve it.
You’ll feel like it’s true, and not something I say because I’m trapped in a situation I never wanted. ”
“Please let me go.” Humiliation tickles the backs of my eyes. Scratching my throat. Tossing the contents of my stomach. “I didn’t mean to say anything about—”
“I’ve been counting down the minutes until I could keep you.
” He presses his palm to my chest and pushes me back until I hit the wall, my breath exploding from my lungs and a whimper crawling along my throat.
“I’ve felt guilty, every fucking day that you’ve been here, because I want you exactly how you are.
If you don’t remember your past, then you won’t feel the need to go back to it.
If you don’t remember the people you used to know, then I won’t have to share you with them.
” He follows me in, crushing me against the wall and sliding his hand under my shirt.
Cupping my back. His palm, warming the exact spot that once had stitches he put in my skin.
“I’ve throttled every single fucking thing I’ve ever said to you, Rose.
Put a lid on every conversation we’ve ever had.
Slowed every single thing down. Because I don’t want you to think I’m rushing you into something when you are the vulnerable one. ”
“Ollie—”
“You want to be independent and badass, because you think you’re taking advantage of me? Meanwhile, I feel like an asshole every time I look at you, wanting you, dragging you to my bed, because I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”
“A relationship built on trauma,” I groan. “Unstable and destined to fail.”
He laughs, inching closer and latching on to my bottom lip.
“I wasn’t gonna say shit, because I was terrified that if I told you I’ve been in love with you since the moment you woke in the hospital, trusting me over literally anyone else, that it would be a gross manipulation and a power imbalance between a doctor and his patient.
” He slides his tongue across mine. “I was in love with you when you turned around that day at the hospital and agreed to stay here instead of The Wallflower. Which, let’s be honest, was probably the better choice for you.
It’s clinical. It’s professional. Social.
They focus on building your skills and helping you regain your independence.
Meanwhile, I leave you home alone twelve hours a day, adopt you a cat, and pray you’ll still be here when I get back. ”
He presses his hips to mine, sliding his hand down and dipping his fingers into the waistband of my sweats.
“I was in love with you when you lectured me about my olive tree. And finished my deck. And came to the gym with me, even when it scared the shit out of you. I was in love when you told me about that brother-fucking Hatshepsut, and when you got drunk with my sisters and argued with a literal fucking child, because he knows did you knows and you know did you knows, and neither of you wanted to admit defeat.”
“That’s because I wasn’t defeated,” I grumble. “Just because he knows did you knows doesn’t mean he beat me.”
Ollie chuckles, bending his neck and burying his lips in the curtain of my hair. “I’ve loved you from day one, but I would have gone the rest of my life not saying so. Not until you were ready. But now you are.” He nips at the shell of my ear. “Say it.”
“Oh God.” I drop my head back—thunk—against the wall. “I’ve made it weird now.”
“You have until the count of three to say it.” With a pained groan, he pulls away, dragging his hands from my body and backing away to place five feet of space between us. “If you run and hide, I’m coming for you.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t speak. Can’t fucking think.
“If I have to fuck it out of you, I will.” His lips quirk up on the side. “If I have to chew on your ass to secure those words, then that’s what’s gonna happen. One.”
I gasp. “Ollie—”
“If I have to eat, and eat…” His eyes stray hungrily to my crotch. “And eat until you’re so fucking exhausted you can’t argue anymore, then that’s what I’ll do.”
“Ollie!”
“Two.” He licks his lips, feral and fierce. “You could make this so much easier on yourself if you just say it, Rosaline. We both know you love me, too. You already screwed up and said it.”
“Fine!” My breath comes out in an explosive exhale. My heart thunders wildly against my diaphragm. Swallowing to lubricate my throat, I wait for his greedy eyes to swing back to mine. “But it doesn’t have to make things different. And it doesn’t mean you’re obligated to keep me here. Or to—”
“Rose!”
“I love you!” I choke it out, loud and rasping and panicked enough to make my palms sweat. “I love you, Ollie. And dammit, I just want to deserve your love in return.”
His lips curl devilishly high on one side. “Three.”
Stunned, I crash back against the wall. “What?”
“Changed my mind. Gonna chase you down and fuck you raw anyway.” He bounds forward with grabbing hands, laughing as I scream and sprint along the hall.
I bump into the wall, bouncing away and cackling.
My hair flies in my wake, my speed lifting the locks clear off my shoulders, then I skid to my doorway and attempt to duck in.
But Ollie’s muscular arm wraps around my stomach and sweeps me clean off my feet.
I squeal, equal parts delight and fear clawing along my throat, and when he carries me into his room and tosses me onto his bed, my heart pounding, breath racing, chest lifting and falling faster than I can keep up, I crawl backwards on the mattress and watch him through the gap of my bent legs.
“Say it again, Rosaline.” He unsnaps his belt with a slow, deliberate flick of his wrist, his eyes scorching me into submission.
Peeling the leather away, he tosses it to the floor and goes to work unbuttoning his shirt, opening the fabric to reveal his broad, muscular chest. “Say you love me. Say it on a scream, because that shit turns me the fuck on.”
He sets his knee on the mattress, the bed dipping under his weight. He’s so beautiful. So hungry. So powerful and perfect and, even when he’s a hunter and I’m the prey he’s already cornered, never does my racing pulse translate to fear.
Just anticipation. Desperation. Need.
“Look into my eyes,” he snaps.
Obedient, I swing my gaze up and gulp.
“Tell me you love me.” He wraps his hand around my ankle and tears me down the bed, then he crawls over me, resting with his balled fist right beside my head.
“Say it like you know you deserve it.” He peels my shirt up, scrunching the fabric beneath my chin and dragging my bra down until my breasts pop free.
He doesn’t touch. He doesn’t taste. He merely looks.
And licks his lips. “And when you say it, that’s it for us.
Three months. Three years. Three fucking decades.
I’m not letting you go when I fucking know,” he slips his hand into the waistband of my sweats, dipping his fingers into my pussy, “I know you belong with me. You could have ended up anywhere, in any state, any town, any fucking ER. But you came to mine.”
He pumps his fingers ruthlessly. Tormentingly. Furiously drawing my release to a precipice long before my body is ready to let go.
“You were hand fucking delivered to me by a universe that knows what she’s doing.”
“Ollie—”
His abdominal muscles fire and flex, his core tightening as he straightens out and unsnaps his jeans, pushing the denim down and dropping his pants to the floor with little regard for where they go.
He tears my sweats along my legs, peeling them off and throwing them away, then he crawls over me again, his fist by my face and his fingers drawing me closer, closer, closer to the edge of insanity.
Smug superiority burns in his eyes. In the upturn of his lips, nibbling on mine.
“How does it feel knowing you’re so fucking special?
So insanely significant that the universe knew she had to step in and put you here?
” He steals his fingers from within me, swallowing my cry of despair, only to slam forward and fill me with his cock.
“Ahh!” I cry out.
“You were living the wrong life,” he grunts, sliding forward and filling me to bursting. “Wrong town.” And again. “Wrong everything. But she knew where you belonged. Who you belonged with. So she brought you to me.”
I claw at his powerful shoulders, pulling my legs higher and latching my teeth onto his straining neck. “Don’t stop,” I pant, suckling on his sweat-tanged skin. “Please don’t stop.”
His fingers bruise. They mark my skin and burn themselves into my flesh for all time. “Say it, Rose.” He digs in under my chin, his hair tickling my jaw. “Say it like you know it’s true.”
“I love you.” I gasp, trapped in an unforgiving orgasm that shatters me whole. “Oh, God. Ollie. I love you.”
He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow. He fucks me mercilessly, sliding his tongue across my chest. My breasts.
My nipples. His shoulders burn red from exertion, his breath racing, sprinting to keep up with his pace.
Then he nods, growling. “You taste like you fuckin’ belong to me.
” He turns frantic, pounding his hips against the underside of my thighs.
“I love you, Rose.” He throws his head back and snarls, his cock shuddering, his seed bursting forward to brand me from within. “You’re mine.”