13. Haley
HALEY
W ith barely any sleep and a long day in the office where my mind wandered too much and focus was hard to come by, I come through my front door with my head fuzzy and my body exhausted. I didn’t sleep well last night after the call from my mom. I swear the stairs creaked and floors groaned all night, like the threat of someone sneaking around.
I had to remind myself, they’re just the sounds my house always makes. Sometimes the floor creaks and the wind blows on the roof. There was nobody there.
Even if something inside of me refused to believe that. Even if my pulse was panicked and sleep brought me terrors. When morning came, I was just fine and there was no one else there waiting in a dark corner.
Just me.
Focusing on my patients was tough today and took a ton of my mental energy.
I drop my keys on the table in the entryway, and?—
A sound. From the kitchen.
I freeze in place, my blood icy with fear. I try to breathe past it, but my heartbeat is all off. How fast can I get out? If I move backward toward the door, I could try, but I’d have to unlock it, and that would make a sound, and?—
Aden comes out into the hallway, his hands up.
Fucking hell. My tense body relaxes and all the air rushes out of me. “Aden. God. I—I just thought?—”
I rub my tired eyes rather than finish the sentences.
He comes toward me slowly, like he doesn’t want to scare me any more, and wraps me up in his arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” There’s a smirk on his lips like this is funny. But he doesn’t know…
“I thought you were my mom,” I breathe the excuse against his chest.
“Shh.” He strokes my hair and holds me closer. “You know she can’t hurt you anymore.”
I do. I know that. I know I can choose how to respond to this situation. I burrow into Aden’s chest and breathe. He smells warm and clean, and I need every bit of comfort he can offer. I cling to him and I love how he holds me back. I needed this.
As he rubs soothing circles on my back he seems to realize how shaken I really am. “She can’t do anything to you anymore,” he reassures me.
“I know,” I finally manage to say. “I know she can’t.” Repeating the words out loud always helps. “But she called.”
Aden’s hand stops on the back of my head, his fingers in my hair. “What? What did she say?”
“Oh, God. It was nothing new. She said the same things as always. She wants to be there for me. She thinks she should be able to support me. As if she could ever understand how to do that.”
My chest aches in a tightening way.
He makes a soft sound, and his hand starts moving on my hair again. “You okay?”
“Not really.” I let out a final deep breath, wanting to release all that’s come over me.
“Yeah. I could tell something was going on.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. None of that is your fault. I could tell, is all. I was worried about you, so I came here to check on you. Should’ve told you beforehand. I won’t scare you again.” He smiles down at me before kissing the tip of my nose. “Promise,” he adds and with his handsome smile I have to smile back up at him.
“It’s okay.” I curl my fingers into the back of his T-shirt. “It’s okay. I’m glad you’re here. I need you.”
Heat flares up everywhere inside me. It melts through my fear and my anxiety, and then my body realizes that Aden is here. He’s here with me, and nobody can take him away.
Knowing I can have him—that I do have him—sends a heavier wave of heat between my legs. He’s been my cure to all I went through. The balm to everything broken inside of me.
That simple comfort is my therapy. My drug. My everything.
Aden puts his hand under my chin and tips my face to his.
I kiss him harder than I meant to, but I can’t stop. I’m hungry for him. I’ve wanted him all day. All of last night, too, and I can’t wait anymore.
He walks me backward until I’m against the wall and keeps kissing me, deeper and deeper until I’ve fully melted against the wall and into him.
“Haley,” he says, voice rough. “Yeah, that’s it. You don’t have to worry anymore. I’ve got you. I’m here.”
I part my lips for another kiss, and he gives it to me.
By the time he pulls away to catch his breath, all the stress of the day has melted off me. All I want is Aden. I want him to touch me everywhere, and I never want him to leave.
Our eyes meet for a few long seconds. I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.
Nobody can stop us.
Nobody can make us look away, or punish us for looking.
He puts his hand to my chin again, softer this time, and holds my face still.
And then he just stares, his cheeks flushed from how he kissed me and his lips wet. His eyes roam over my face, drinking me in, and my heart twists with a warm ache. I wish this didn’t mean so much to me. I wish I’d never gone to that school.
But it means everything to me, just like Aden. I can accept that it happened to me because I have to accept it. I’ll never appreciate it. I’ll never be grateful to anyone at that school.
The one thing I’m grateful for is Aden.
I’m grateful to him for surviving. I’m grateful to myself for doing the same.
He comes in for another kiss, slower and gentler but just as hot. I taste him once, then twice, and then we’re all over each other again, pulling at each other’s clothes.
Aden picks me up. I sling my legs over his hips and wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss him like I’ll never get to kiss him again while he walks us to my bedroom.
Then he strips my shirt over my head and pushes the rest of my clothes down and off. I run my fingertips over his bare skin. He has scars underneath his shirt. Some of them are from school. Others happened after. I kiss them one by one, caressing them, and drag my hands lower until I wrap my hand around his hard length.
He groans, his head dropping back, and lets me stroke him a few times, working the droplet of precum from his tip over the head.
He’s so fucking hot.
With a firm possessive grip, he puts his hands on my waist and pushes me onto the bed.
Aden crawls over me, pushes my knees to my chest, and holds them there while he devours me. His tongue laves over every inch of my pussy. He licks me like he’ll die if he can’t keep tasting me, stroking the tip of his tongue into my entrance, then finally working his way up to my clit.
I don’t know how many times I come with my hands in his hair. I just keep pulling him in and in and in, and he keeps working at my clit until I’m oversensitive and gasping.
“Aden,” I say, pushing his head away from my thighs. “Aden. Just—just a minute. I can’t—I can’t?—”
“Mmm. Can’t you?” He keeps one hand on my thigh and slides two fingers into me, sliding them in and out at a slow pace. I clench down around them, so he buries them deeper and finds my G-spot.
“Oh, God, Aden, Aden. That’s so—oh, God.”
It’s so much pleasure, and Aden shows no signs that he’s willing to stop. It builds deep inside me, expanding around my hips and curling up in my belly. I don’t exist anymore. I couldn’t put a thought together if I tried. I’m made of nerve endings and Aden’s hand on my thigh. His touch is all that matters in the world.
He adds a third finger and I arch up into it, making sounds I can’t stop.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful like this.” He sounds awed, almost as if this is the first time we’ve been together this way. It isn’t, but it warms me up all over again that he still feels for me like that. “I could never get tired of this. If I could make you come on my fingers for the rest of my life, I’d do it. I don’t think I’d ever stop.”
“You’d keep me in bed with you forever?”
“Longer than forever.” His fingers stroke my G-spot as his thumb finds my clit. He’s so gentle that I moan out loud and relax into the touch.
With my eyes closed, I can’t see him smiling, but I can hear it in his voice. “Yeah, you like that. You’re so fucking wet. Are you ready to take my cock yet, or should I make you wait a little longer?”
“Don’t,” I whine, my breath hitching. “Don’t make me wait. I’ve wanted you all day. I’ve been so patient, and I don’t—” He curls his fingers. “Aden, I can’t wait. Please don’t make me wait. I need you.” How often do I tell him that? Far too much I think. It’s then I think of Dean, but the thought comes quickly and then leaves.
“Alright baby.” He moves over me and leans in for a kiss. I can taste myself on him, and he lets me until he uses both of his hands to turn me over, slow and gentle. Aden pulls my hips up in the air just as gently.
I wriggle my ass side to side. I feel empty without him, needy and wanting.
“Fuck me hard,” I beg, pushing my face into the pillows. “Please,” I beg.
“I will,” he promises, his hands sliding over my hips. He notches himself at my opening, his fingers flexing, and then thrusts in.
He fills me to the hilt. I gasp at the feeling of stretching around him, of making room in my body for him. It always feels new and forbidden. I think I’ll always feel like I’m getting away with something I shouldn’t have.
“You can have me.” Aden leans over me and kisses my nape, rolling his hips. It hits the perfect spot inside me. I curl my toes into the blanket and meet his thrusts, grinding back on him.
Aden sits up and fucks me harder. He’s so deep inside me that I can’t open my eyes. I grab the pillows for dear life with one hand and reach between my legs with the other.
“Yeah, fuck yeah, take it baby,” he pants. “Fuck. Make yourself come on my cock. You’re so—fuck, fuck, you’re tight. You feel so fucking good.”
My clit is so sensitive that it can only handle the gentlest touch. I circle it softly while Aden fucks me. The contrast between the force of his thrusts and the whisper-soft pressure of my fingers builds an impossible tension between my legs. That tension becomes a pleasure so thick that I almost feel drunk on it. I keep rubbing until another orgasm hits me like a wave.
Aden curses behind me, burying himself deep while I ride it out. It feels endless, my body clenching around him again and again, and I haven’t begun to come down yet when his hips hitch and he starts stroking into me fast and hard.
“Gonna come,” he says. “Fuck. Fuck. Gonna come.”
He does, his release is hot inside me and I feel every pulse of his cock.
I don’t think it’s fully ended yet when he pulls out.
“Aden,” I cry. “Aden, please?—”
He turns me over onto my back and makes sure my head is nestled in the pillows, then crawls over me and pushes himself inside. Still hard and wanting more.
“Too much?” he murmurs into my ear.
“No. No. Could never be too much.”
It couldn’t. Not with his strong body over mine. Not with his arms around me. Not with my arms around him.
I’m almost delirious with pleasure, but I shut my eyes and move with him.
He’s slow the second time around, taking his time with every thrust. I think he wants to fuck all night, and I wouldn’t mind it. I could fall asleep like this and wake up with him still inside me.
Aden starts dropping kisses to my face and my forehead and my jaw after a while. He kisses me as slowly and deliberately as he fucks me.
This is what it’s like to be able to touch someone.
This is why I survived.
Because I needed to be consumed by a man this way.
Not just any man. By Aden. I need to have him over me, exploring me, so deep inside me that I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. It’s all feeling between us, all heat and emotion and moment, and it makes me feel like I can breathe.
Every part of my body that had been stressed or tense from the day melts into the bed. I lift my face up for more of his kisses. Each one feels like a promise. He’ll be here for me. He’ll do whatever I need from him.
We made it.
We made it, and we’ll never have to go back to those days.
This is our life now. This is the life we’ve made, and I’m going to live every minute of it with as much pleasure as I can.
It’s been a long time when he shudders out another orgasm, his mouth open on my neck.
“Good?” I ask, half-asleep. I don’t think I can stay awake anymore. It will feel so good to sleep and dream next to him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, but there’s something in his voice that makes me think it’s not entirely true.
But I don’t ask… and instead my mind wanders back to Dean.