Chapter 24 #2
“Have I?” I echo, wondering what the hell this whole time means. An hour? Two? But you can’t get to Oregon in two hours, can you?
“Two days,” she answers my unuttered question, her voice muffled in my chest.
My body tenses. “Two… two days? How is that possible?”
She turns so her cheek is against my chest, and her fingers draw shapes against my skin. “You were out for a long time, Quill. I was so scared.”
It’s all wrong. She shouldn’t be scared because of me. At least, not in that way.
Something stirs in the pit of my stomach, thinking of a different sort of fear that I wouldn’t mind seeing in her eyes again. The kind that tells me she’s mine to do with as I please. The kind that tells me I control her. The kind that tells me she likes it.
She squirms in my lap, maybe feeling something of what I do.
No. We’re not teenagers anymore, and hormones have to come after the asking questions part. We’ll get to this stuff later. Much later. First, I need to make sure she’s safe. Then, that she’s not too badly injured. Then… well, we’ll see.
Clearly, she doesn’t feel the same way, because her bottom is still squirming in my lap, and the blush making her bruised face even splotchier makes it pretty hard not to act on my urge.
I still her with a hand to her thigh, and she clicks her tongue in annoyance.
“We’re not ready,” I whisper.
“Oh.” She bites her lower lip, and a surge of emotions flickers through her eyes. I realize I’ve hurt her again. Not awake one minute and I’ve hurt her again.
“I’m sorry, Quill,” she breathes. “You’re injured.
And I guess you’re… you’re angry. I left you, and everything that happened is my fault.
I have a lot of apologizing to do.” She swallows, more tears bubbling up in her eyes.
“Is it going to be okay, Quill? Are we going to be ready one day? Did I mess everything up?”
I open my mouth several times during her monologue, unable to get a word out. This is how it always is. Emotion makes her speak, and it makes me quiet. She’s unraveling fast, her mind jumping to all the wrong conclusions, and I’m powerless to stop it.
“No.” I push the word out, and she pauses.
Her heart beats fast against mine, as I search for the words to explain.
To tell her. To make her see. “You did nothing wrong. I’m the one who hurt you.
I’m the one who needs to spend the rest of my life apologizing.
” I swallow thickly, trying to get the rest out.
“I need to understand the danger we might still be in. I need to know you’re not in pain. Then we’ll be ready.”
She lets out a low, shuddering breath, her body relaxing once more in mine. “I’m not in pain,” she breathes out at last. “Not really. I’m sorry, Quill.”
I let her have the last sorry, because I have a feeling otherwise we’re going to enter into an endless cycle of apologies, and that won’t achieve a thing.
Instead, I say, “I have a question.”
She pushes her head back at that, regarding me in surprise. “You do?”
“I do.” I flatten my lips in a tight smile. “You weren’t expecting that, were you?”
“Nope,” she giggles.
I repress the urge to squeeze her to me, knowing that no matter what she’s saying, she must still be in some pain.
“You’re going to have to get used to it, cricket,” I say instead. “I’m gonna be asking a whole lot of questions from now on. You won’t have the monopoly on speaking anymore.”
“You just try and beat me,” she grins, and then nestles right back against me happily.
This time, she probably doesn’t mean to press against my cock, but her bottom does happen to be right against it, and I shift uncomfortably.
Fuck it, maybe we are ready after all.
Or maybe we’re not, but, well, fuck it all the same.
“Tell me, cricket,” I murmur, inching my way up her thigh with the hand on my uninjured side. “Are you sure you’re not in too much pain?”
“Not too much,” she confirms, and then lets out a low moan when I don’t stop at the hem of her dress.
My fingers continue up her inner thigh and she bites her lower lip, tensing to keep still, probably remembering I told her we weren’t ready, and wondering what the hell I’m doing.
“Are you in pain… here?”
I cup her pussy through her tights with my palm, and she lets out a second, louder moan. “I don’t think so,” she shivers. “Maybe you should touch me more… just to be sure.”
Smirking, I slip my fingers under her tights and panties, touching her folds. “You’re wet for me, cricket,” I breathe, toying with her clit.
She bucks against me, but then grimaces, and I can tell she’s not as free from pain as she’d like me to think. “You’re gonna have to keep still,” I tell her. “Let me pleasure you, and keep still.”
Letting a long, loud breath escape her, she does her best to relax against me, closing her eyes as I rub her clit very lightly.
It’s the kind of light touch that I know serves only to frustrate her.
No matter how thankful I am to have her in my arms again, no matter how much I tell myself I will spend the rest of my life groveling at her feet, I just can’t help the streak of sadism that pops up whenever it comes to sex.
I toy with her clit a while longer, keeping her in a state of shuddering frustration, until she’s clearly convinced this is going to turn into one of those denial sessions.
I used to keep her like this on my lap for ages, happily denying her all afternoon. And I still derive an intense satisfaction from knowing her pleasure is entirely in my hands. But then it occurs to me that she’s entirely too submissive this time.
In the past, she would loudly protest, playfully pressing my hand against her folds, trying to get me to give her the pleasure I was withholding. She was my bratty, cheerful, outspoken little cricket, but now, she’s lying still, all her features tense with the will to submit.
Maybe she thinks she deserves to suffer, I suddenly realize with a pang.
That thought makes my heart twist in pain, and I push a finger into her, harder than I probably should.
But she gasps in happy surprise. “Quill!” she groans loudly, as I start to finger her, using my thumb to continue to apply pressure to her clit.
I can feel her body go rigid with the effort of keeping still, and once more, remorse eats at me. Maybe being tense like this hurts her even more. My eyes are burning again, a lump in my throat, as I bring her to orgasm with my fingers, then feel her sink against me, panting hard.
I remove my fingers and cup her pussy again, my palm against her wringing the last bits of pleasure from her. My other arm goes to stroke her back, still moving a bit stiffly from the injury.
“You’re my good girl,” I purr into her ear.
“Yes, Quill,” she says, her voice catching, “I want to be. I will try very hard to be.”
I try and fail to swallow the lump in my throat.
Her promise just reminds me we’re not ready.
We really aren’t, because I’ve fucked with her mind hard these past few years, and it’s going to take time for her to heal.
If she even can. Any reasonable person would wait for however long it took.
The thing is, I’m not reasonable. And neither is my Piper.
And so, as I feel her huddle in my arms, as the sun sets slowly over the lake, painting the sky with streaks of pink, I bring down my lips to hers and steal the kiss I once thought I’d lost forever.