CHAPTER TWELVE
ZINZI
D ex woke me with a mind blowing morning orgasm. I loved it. And that was the problem. Because I wasn’t sure what I loved more—his orgasms, or him. Not that it mattered right now. Because my legs already trembled from the eight mile walk from the place where he’d been fighting all the way back to campus after a rough round with him.
He’d showered both of us, and I’d been asleep in his arms before our bodies hit his mattress mere minutes after we entered his bedroom, but at least we were clean.
And he’d left his bedroom window open before we entered, as though he knew—or maybe he hoped—that he would return with me tonight. Or one night.
The hope was the part that got me. And maybe the fact that I woke up with his tongue doing magic things between my legs. His fingers banded around my wrists where he held them firmly over my stomach—enough that I could pull free, maybe—if I chose, but…
I didn’t. Pull away, that was. I stayed right where he wanted me.
I bit my lip to hold my moans in, my thighs trembling over his shoulders as I gushed on his tongue mere moments after I woke.
“Fuck,” I breathed, letting my legs fall open as he slithered his way up my body to lodge himself deep inside me. One hand found my hip, the other tangled in my hair.
“Taste yourself on my tongue, sweetness,” he murmured, staring down at me before he leaned in and offered me his mouth.
I let my eyes fall shut, opening my lips to lick his tongue with mine as he glided his thick cock in and out of me. The choked cry that tore from me at the overstimulated feeling, my body still pulsing from my last orgasm, drew a dark laugh from him.
“More, please,” I whimpered, tilting my hips up to meet him. Or at least I tried to, but his hand was in the road. I stared up at him, confused. “Dex?”
“You want more, sweetness?” he murmured, grazing my mouth with his, then deepened the kiss until I moaned. “We’re taking it slow today.”
“Slow?” My brain refused to kick in. I wrapped my legs around his hips and he let me, digging my heels into his ass. “Deeper,” I begged, pleading with him.
“Already?” He brushed hair back from my temple with his thumb. “Sweetness, we have a long way to go if you think you’re begging already.” He kissed me again—mostly to shut me up, I suspected—as the horror that he wasn’t, in fact, going to fuck me into oblivion as always advertised with Dex.
Nope, this morning he seemed determined to make love to me.
My trembling legs would bever forgive him, and after I sweated my way through who knew how many orgasms, my voice already raw, my body aching all over and filled with pleasure as he watched my face without reprieve, I decided that neither would I.
And every time I begged him to fuck me harder, he kissed me with a tender touch and drove his cock deeper, triggering another orgasm until I was an overstimulated hot, shivering mess beneath him on his bed.
I had no idea how long his body glided over mine for, but at the end, when he dug his fingers into my hip and kissed me impossibly deeper than before, staring into my eyes as he filled me with his seed, I knew I had been underestimating Dex Breaker’s stamina for years.
He held me afterward, letting us roll onto our sides as he stroked his fingers along my body, tucking me into his chest. I rested my head against the smattering of dark curls over his pecs, playing with the fine hairs.
“Dex,” I murmured, licking a drop of salt from his skin as he groaned, cupping his rough hand behind my head to hold me against him. “You got new ink.”
He laughed. “Not recently, sweetness.”
I caught his hand, the one he had broken, and pulled it from over my shoulder to study the still fresh black ink on his wrist. “This. It was under your cast when the doctor took it off. I remember seeing it. And I remember it not being there before.”
“You know me that well, huh?” He laughed down at me.
I didn’t. “Yeah. I do.”
His smile faded as I played, tracing the lines I now identified as a thick black band that was heavier halfway up his arm that faded toward his hand. Several flowerlike patterns were etched into it, but I couldn't figure out how it was done.
“It’s white ink over black,’ he said quietly. “I got sick of feeling the pain from the break, so I had something else done to distract me. It’s an addiction, of sorts. Like you.”
“I’m your addiction? That doesn't sound healthy.”
I let him tuck me back into his chest and entertained myself by trailing my hands up and down his hard, washboard abs. Dex’s body went well beyond the usual six or eight-pack. He barely had an inch of excess anything on him, unless it was pure muscle. Maybe a few tendons.
And a whole lot of ink.
“It’s not healthy. But I'm still not letting you go. And I want to make you breakfast.”
I rubbed my cheek against his chest. “You need to know something about me.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, here.” I grabbed his hand and pulled it lower, to my stomach where my skin looked fine except for a pale slice, but the scar tissue beneath told a different story.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. I haven’t told you.” I frowned up at him.
“I searched for you.” His head tipped to one side as he looked down at me, propping one hand behind his head. “ We searched for you. A long time ago. To make sure you were safe. When you have a mafia and billionaire lord housemate, these things are…normal. Or, not normal. We did the same with Bella and Rose more recently. When Nelson finds his significant other, then we will do the same for them.”
I stared up at him, my stomach cramping, though I wasn’t due for a few more weeks. “All this time?” He’d known my history, everything I’d suffered…and he hadn’t mentioned it? Not once?
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s okay, Zin. And he won’t touch you once he’s out. I promise you.”
I scrambled backward until my butt hit the wall. “No. No, you shouldn’t have?—”
“Told you before now?” Dex rolled with me, pining me beneath him. “Told you that I looked you up two and a half years ago, found out the man who stabbed the fuck out of you is in jail, that you got yourself fixed up—alone, because there’s no family for you to rely on—and that scared the shit out of you? Rightfully so.” He never looked away, never once flinched despite my heart hammering at his chest. “Did you think I wouldn’t get it that someone hurt you and that you didn’t want to talk about it, Zin? I knew there was something. I never wanted to push you. I just wanted to make sure you were safe.” He leaned down, and kissed me.
We both tasted my tears. My broken trust.
“You should have told me,” I whispered.
“To what end?” He shrugged. “If he got out before we got to this point, Falcon and I would have dealt with it. He’s not your problem anymore, Zin.”
I stared at him, the suffocating feeling descending on me in this same black painted room once again. If I hadn’t been lying down, I would have fallen. There was no denying what he meant.
“I can’t accept—” I choked.
His thumb grazed my temple. “You don’t have to,” he murmured. “I’ll look after you, Zin. I always have.”
I blinked at him, then shoved at his chest. “No.”
“No?” He crouched back on his haunches, an almost comical look on his face. “I give you unlimited orgasms, and you tell me no?”
“Orgasms are not bargaining chips,” I told him as I threw my clothes on, finding what I could from the night before. My thong was absent so I forewent that, and headed for his door.
“I mean, they could be.” He grabbed a pair of sweats and donned them in record time, then pulled me into his arms. “Slow down. Breakfast, remember? You're staying. We don’t run, not anymore.”
I bit my lip. “You said you look after me, right?”
“Yeah.” His gaze darkened, hooded and heavy as he cupped my cheek and leaned in to kiss me.
A good thing, because I didn’t have the energy or the volume to yell this next bit at him. “The fights with Beau?” He stopped. “The group session with Falcon and Nelson who just appeared in my class?”
Dex stilled, his lips a breath from mine, and said nothing.
Tears sheened my vision with a curtain of salt as I gently detached myself from his hold. “I might love you, and you might think you love me, Dex Breaker,” I whispered, “but we are toxic as all hell for each other. And nothing we do seems to be able to stop that.”
“Zin,” he growled, linking an arm around my waist to pull me in.
This time I was ready for him. I grabbed for the door handle to his room, pirouetting on trembling legs that thankfully worked on demand, and twisted in the other direction out of his hold.
“Bye, Dex,” I whispered, and shut the door between us.
“Zin?” Nelson sat at the kitchen table looking the worse for wear with an askew bow tie and a towel wrapped loosely around his waist. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I’m leaving.” I walked across to him and pressed a kiss to the top of his head just as the door to Dex’s room opened.
Nelson stiffened. “She instigated the contact. I did not.”
“It’s fine.” Dex waved a hand. “Zin. Please?”
I shook my head, willing the tears to stay inside for just a little longer. “Not this time, Dex. It’s not for us.”
He nodded. “You want me to come find you later? Make sure you’re okay?”
My heart ached at the emotion thickening his voice. “No.”
Nelson grabbed my hand. “Whatever he did, he didn’t mean it.”
“You’re a sweetie. But you shouldn't have checked up on me.”
His face fell. “Oh.”
I nodded. “Oh.” My vision blurred again. “Bye, Nelson.”
Neither of them stopped me as I walked out of their dorm room and headed down the stairs.
And right into the arms of a pair of identical twins with unsmiling faces.