Chapter 4 #2
“I don’t want to wonder if you felt pressured to say it back.
And something makes me think you’re not ready if you think some fucking text message is going to send me away.
” Darkness flashes across his face before it dissolves beneath the kind of longing that looks like physical pain.
I can feel it, an echo in my chest, like it follows an invisible thread between us.
“So promise me, Harper. Whether you love me or not, promise you won’t tell me. Not tonight.”
I lean into his touch, laying my hand over his, trying to reassure him that I understand in ways that no one else ever could.
But Nolan’s hard stare never wavers, never lifts.
Not until I finally nod, humming my vow into his skin.
A sliver of relief fills his eyes when they meet mine.
He slowly lifts his palm away from my lips, though I’m not ready for his touch to be stripped away.
“I . . . ” I clear my throat. Steady my posture. Pass my hand over my cheeks to wipe the tears away before I start again. “I’m not sorry I hit you with that shovel,” I say, but my voice is too broken to be convincing. “You’re a fucking pain in my ass, Nolan Rhodes.”
And then I crush my lips to his.
It’s a kiss of blood and anguish. I frame Nolan’s face in my hands and pull him to me.
I devour his words like they still linger on his tongue.
I moan against his lips. He might not let me say what I feel.
I’m not even sure I truly know. I just know I want him, like I’ve never wanted anyone.
I need him, like he’s a part of me I can’t live without.
So I show him, with every caress, with every bite and every whimper and shiver of desire.
I hold him to me and I prove all these things I do know.
Nolan pushes us back from the water’s edge, one uncertain step at a time, until we’re on firmer ground.
He breaks away to layer urgent kisses on my neck, and his hands slide beneath my shirt to grip my waist. My fingertips press into the hard planes of his back, my other hand raking into his hair.
“I thought you said we needed to communicate better as bitter enemies,” I whisper against his lips.
“Fine,” he says before laying a bite to my neck that makes me gasp. “Take off your fucking clothes. How’s that?”
“Good enough for me.”
I break away for only as long as it takes to lift my shirt over my head and toss it to the ground, but Nolan’s touch never leaves me.
There’s always a point of contact, whether it’s the unyielding grip of his fingers beneath my ribs or the gentle caress that flows up my sides.
He carefully helps me lift my sports bra over the swell of my breasts, tossing it onto a patch of grass, his eyes fused to the metal bars through my nipples.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get over how hot those fucking piercings are,” he says, his thumb coasting over the underside of my breast. “Are they sore?”
“A bit.” I shrug, trying to mask a shiver as his thumb makes a return pass across my skin. “I thought you were going to come by this morning before everything went to shit and look after them for me.”
Though I give him a teasing smile, there’s no amusement in his eyes when they meet mine.
“I’m sorry,” he says. When I shrug again, he shakes his head.
“No, I should have stayed. I felt like I needed a minute to think everything through. But it didn’t help like I thought it would. I just needed you.”
I don’t get a chance to ask a question or tell him I understand what it’s like to need time.
Because he presses his lips to mine, urgent and demanding, his fingers finding the zipper on my jean shorts.
He tugs them and my panties down my hips, letting them fall to my hiking boots.
I only manage to fumble one foot free of the fabric before Nolan is dropping to his knees, taking me with him.
In only a heartbeat, he’s lying on his back on the damp earth, my thighs spread wide around his head as he buries his face in my pussy with a feral groan.
There’s no room for inhibitions with Nolan.
He doesn’t care that I’ve spent half the day working in the garden, or that I’m covered in a film of sweat. I don’t think he’d give a shit if I were on my period, if there were blood smeared all over us both. He consumes and devours like he needs me to live.
He grips my thighs with bruising force as he sucks and bites and soothes and starts again, ruining my pussy.
He is primal need personified, his desire so wild that even he can barely tame it.
Like his skin is a cage, and the monster beneath it is always near the surface, one step from breaking through.
When I throw my head back on a moan and let out a strained cry, he growls his approval and forces my legs wider apart.
And the moment I grind my hips and ride his face, chasing an orgasm nearly within reach, his monster breaks free.
In a wild flash of motion, I land so hard on my back that the air rushes from my lungs with a whoosh.
I suck in a breath, the silt and sparse grass a shock of cold on my skin, my clit aching with a need denied.
There’s a clink of Nolan’s belt and he barely has his pants and briefs pulled over his hips before he’s gripping his erection in a tight fist. He spreads my legs, lines up to my pussy, and thrusts to the hilt in a single stroke.
“You fucking torture me,” he hisses before consuming me with a kiss laced with the flavor of my arousal.
He thrusts again, long and hard, stealing a moan from my lips.
“I was thinking of your sweet pussy on my face all fucking day and then you sent me that goddamn text. And before I could even finish reading it—surprise, surprise—you put your fucking phone on Do Not Disturb.”
“Yeah,” I manage, barely able to make coherent thoughts as he fucks me mercilessly.
A shameless moan tumbles from my lips when his palm warms my breast, his touch just close enough to my nipple to make me aware of the piercing, but far enough away not to cause pain.
“Thought it was good to not . . . talk.”
“Right. Because problems are so easily fixed by not talking.” His rhythm intensifies, the gritty silt abrading my back with every rocking stroke.
The discomfort churns with the pleasure coiling in my core, an elixir of pain and rapture that only Nolan can balance.
“You know what? Maybe you’re right. Words aren’t enough.
” Nolan’s hand slips down my body, making its way closer to my center with agonizing slowness.
I rasp his name in a plea. “I think you owe me a scream.”
His thumb finds my clit and I gasp, losing myself to another dimension.
Even if words could be enough, there’s no hope that I’d find them.
Not when he lifts my hips from the earth and drives into me, or when he swirls his touch over my clit, or when he leans down to seal his lips to mine and steal my breath in a searing kiss.
He fucks me like he hates me. But with every touch, every caress, every strained whisper of my name, I know he loves me.
Any thoughts of how much that should scare me drift away as Nolan thrusts, and thrusts, and thrusts, a cadence that builds and builds until the tension within me finally detonates.
Euphoria swallows every cell in my body.
My back bows from the ground. My nails dig into Nolan’s flesh.
My eyes clamp shut as sparks fly across their shuttered black canvas. And just like he wanted, I scream.
Nolan is right there with me, his body shuddering over mine.
It’s not until he releases my shoulder that I realize how hard he bit down on it as he filled me.
He soothes my hiss of pain with a lingering kiss.
The thought of seeing the marks in the mirror tomorrow sends an aftershock of pleasure shuddering through me as his strokes slow to a stop.
There’s no other sound in the night but the river and our ragged exhalations. All I see is Nolan, his skin shimmering with a sheen of sweat in the dim lantern light. All I smell and feel and want is him.
“We just fucked on a serial killer’s dumping ground,” I whisper.
He follows a breath of a laugh with a gentle kiss before he pulls away and slides out of me. A chill skates over my skin at the loss of his warmth when he kneels. “Honestly, I have no problem with it. Like, at all.”
“Yeah. Me neither,” I say, taking his offered hand as he stands and pulls me up with him.
He quickly tugs his soaked briefs and pants up before he’s immediately tending to me, kneeling to place one of my feet on his thigh.
I’m a fucking mess, my shorts and panties still clinging to one of my ankles and my back covered in grit.
But he doesn’t care. He just unlaces my boot and takes it off, setting my clothes on top of it before moving to the other leg.
Something about his careful reverence ignites an ache in my chest. I swallow, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing until he meets my eyes. “Nolan . . . ”
Nolan searches my face. He seems to find something in it, maybe the words that aren’t clear enough in my mind to land on my tongue, and then he gently pulls my hand away. “Keep your word, Harper,” he says, and presses a kiss to my knuckles.
And I’m not sure I want to, but I do.
Nolan undresses me fully. Then he leads me over the imprint of my body in the soil, past the graves we’ve exhumed. He takes me to the river. He only brings me as far as my shins, and then he lowers me to a kneel.
I should still beg him to leave. I don’t want him to become caught up in the chaos I’ve created. But I just can’t seem to force him to go. Even though it might not be right, he’s still what I want.
Silently, with one palmful of water after the next, he cleans the grit from my skin. But not every sin can be washed away.