Chapter Twenty-Nine
Everett
After leaving the hospital, I head home, take Merlin out one last time, and stretch out on the couch.
I turn the TV on and attempt to watch a baseball game, but it’s not long before I give up and turn it off.
It’s too hard to focus on balls and strikes when all I can think about is pinning Mila against the back of the barn.
My fingers inside her.
The way she moved.
The memory is enough to make me hard, but I resist the urge to get myself off. It doesn’t feel right, knowing where she is and what she’s going through. The guilt she’s suffering.
It infuriates me, the way Eliza manipulates her. The way she has Mila convinced that everything is her fault. And my chest hurts every time I recall what Mila said about the little kid in her still trying to win over her mother. I wish I could convince her to stop.
People like her mother and my father don’t change.
How many years did my mom spend making excuses for my dad? Trying to shield my sister and me from the worst of him? Believing things would get better if she just stayed with him, tried harder, kept her promise until death did them part? Her loyalty was nothing but a trap.
When Gabi and I were little, we’d hear our father yelling at our mom after we’d gone to bed.
Hear our mom attempt to placate and defuse.
Hear his alcohol-fueled rage and her tearful pleas to be quiet so the kids didn’t wake up.
Often, Gabi would sneak into my room and ask to sleep in my bed.
Sometimes, we’d play games to drown out the noise.
One night when I was about twelve, the fight was louder than usual, and I heard something crash and shatter. I bolted out of bed, took off running down the hall, and burst into their bedroom.
My mother, wearing her nightgown, was kneeling next to the broken remains of a lamp. My father, disheveled but fully clothed, was standing across the room. “Go back to bed,” he ordered.
My hands clenched into fists. My heart was hammering inside my scrawny chest. I looked at my mother, who managed a teary-eyed smile. “It’s fine, sweetheart. I just knocked over a lamp.”
Knocked over a lamp? There were two lamps in the room, one on each bedside table. The one on my mother’s side was intact. The one on my father’s side of the bed, next to where he was standing, was missing.
Above my mother’s head was a mark on the wall.
“Go on back to bed, sweetie,” she said, her eyes pleading with me.
“You heard your mother.” My father’s words were slurred.
After that, I slept with a baseball bat underneath my bed.
I must have dozed off, because I wake up when my phone vibrates. Groping around for it on the couch, I check the screen. Mila calling.
I sit up so fast I drop the phone in my lap and fumble to get it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hey. I’m sorry to call so late.”
“Don’t be.” I clear my throat. Run a hand through my hair. “How did everything go?”
“Fine. Turns out the fall dislocated an implant, but they were able to set it right.”
“That’s good. Was she upset with you?”
“Hard to say. I kept trying to apologize, and she told me to quit being so dramatic.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“She has to stay at least one night in the hospital, but she should be able to come home tomorrow night.”
“Are you still there?”
“No, I came home to clean up and feed Beatrix. I offered to go back and stay the night with her, but she said not to bother. That one of us might as well get a good night’s sleep.”
Some real generosity? “That was nice of her.”
“Yeah, I was glad. I didn’t want to spend the night in her room.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I want to spend it in yours.”
That’s when I hear the knock.
My hair stands on end. From his crate in the corner of the living room, Merlin barks once, but it’s more sleepy than ferocious.
I rise to my feet as excitement balloons in my chest, keeping the phone at my ear as I walk to the door.
When I pull it open, she’s standing on my front porch wearing a giant fuzzy cardigan, flip-flops, and an uncertain expression.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” We lower our phones at the same time. Then she shivers, because for fuck’s sake, it’s probably fifty degrees and her legs are bare.
“Christ. Get inside.” I grab her arm and pull her into the cabin, kicking the door shut with my foot.
She drops her bag and clutches her sweater together at the chest. Her expression is that of someone looking at a carnival ride they really want to get on, but now that they’ve reached the head of the line, fear is kicking in. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I was home alone in bed and starting to spiral about everything—like literally just coming apart at the seams, pieces of me scattering in every direction, and all I could think of was that I feel better around you. So I jumped in the car and drove here. In my pajamas.” She sheds the big sweater, and my eyes about pop from my head.
Her barely-there navy shorts are edged with white lace. The matching top with skinny little straps is loose but cut low. Her nipples poke through the satin, begging me to kiss them.
My phone clatters to the floor. My dick springs to life.
I step forward, take her head in my hands, and crush my mouth to hers. Her lips are an open invitation, and my tongue sweeps between them. A want more powerful than any I’ve ever known courses through me.
She’s here.
As if I need proof she’s real, I run my hands all over her body, anywhere I can reach.
Down her sides. Over her hips. Around her back.
She flings her arms around my neck and presses her chest to mine.
Sliding my palms down the curve of her spine, I grab that luscious ass and bite her lower lip.
She moans softly, and my cock surges with need.
With a quick glance at my windows to make sure the shades are down, I slip my hands beneath her top.
She sucks in her breath as I cover her breasts with my palms and tease her tight little nipples with my thumbs.
When she raises her arms, I lift her top over her head.
Blood thunders through my veins—in one direction—as my hungry eyes glide over her creamy vanilla curves, her rosebud nipples like cherries on top.
Bending down, I fasten my mouth to one pebbled tip. Her fingers slide into my hair as she arches and sighs. I switch to the other breast, flicking its stiff peak with my tongue, licking a circle around its crest, relishing the satin texture of her skin.
Reaching between her thighs, I discover two things. First, she isn’t wearing panties underneath those fuck-hot little shorts. Second, she’s already wet.
I have to get my mouth on her.
Capturing her at the waist, I throw her over my shoulder. She squeals and kicks her feet, losing one flip-flop by the couch and the other at the entrance to my bedroom.
At the foot of my bed, I lean forward, and she tumbles onto her back. It’s dark in the room, but light slants in through the doorway, shining on her like a spotlight. My eyes drink in her sunset hair, her luminous skin, those midnight-blue eyes.
“My God, you’re beautiful.”
Her lips curve into a smile. “Thank you.”
I inhale the scent of orange blossom. “And you smell fucking delicious.”
She makes a come-hither motion with her hand. “Come closer, I’ll give you a taste.”
“A taste?” I laugh as I whip off my shirt. “Sweetheart, I’m going to fucking eat you alive.”
“Like the big bad wolf?”
I hook my hands around the backs of her knees and yank her ass toward the edge of the bed. “He’s got better manners.”
Slipping my fingers inside the waistband of her shorts, I pull them down her legs and drop to my knees.
Run my rough, calloused hands up the insides of her soft, smooth thighs, pushing them apart.
Brush my thumb up the soft pink seam of her pussy.
Breathe in the honeyed scent of her, letting her feel it when I exhale.
And then, having reached the extent of my dining etiquette, I go at her like a starving lion.
I bury my face between her thighs, devouring her with a ravenous mouth, fucking her with my tongue. She writhes and moans above me, clutching the sheets, gasping for air. My cock throbs every time she says my name.
Which is often.
Especially once I slide my fingers inside her, plunging them deep enough to make my dick bulge with envy.
“Oh God, Everett,” she whimpers. “You’re so good at this.”
Eventually, I stop gorging myself like she’s my last meal and start paying attention. Because I don’t just want to consume her; I want to learn her. What she needs, what she wants, what she’s too shy to ask for. I’m determined to know her body like I know my own.
“Tell me what you like.” I take my mouth off her only long enough to get the request out.
“Are you kidding? You want me to talk while you’re— Fuck—” She squirms beneath me as I nibble and suck and play a little more gently than before. “While you’re doing that?”
“Yes. For instance, do you like it slow?” I take my time now, swirling and circling and stroking her clit. “Or do you like it fast?” I flutter the tip of my tongue against the swollen pearl, quick as a hummingbird’s wings.
“Yes,” she manages, the word wrenching out between her teeth.
I laugh and give her more of both, going slow and soft until she moves her hips in a way that tells me she wants more, then sucking her into my mouth like a butterscotch candy, flicking her quick and hard.
Her sounds become desperate. She grabs a fistful of my hair.
Finally, I sense the tension in her body reaching the breaking point, and I ease my fingers back inside her, curving them in search of the sweet spot.
Within seconds, her cries grow more frantic and closer together.
Then I feel it—the rhythmic pulse of her orgasm against my tongue, the squeeze of it around my fingers.
Only when her body relaxes and her hand unclenches in my hair do I take my mouth off her.
But I haven’t gotten enough. Not even close.