Thursday, June 22nd #2
“You’re always so hard on yourself, Ran.
” Shane’s voice is gentle now, without sarcasm.
“First of all, shit happens. Cat was on birth control. It failed. That’s not some moral failing on your part.
And second, I know you’re not your mother.
Or your grandfather. You’d never hurt Cat.
Or your kid. You just don’t have that in you. ”
I shake my head. “You’re wrong. I do have it in me. I’ve been in situations where I’ve seen nothing but red, Shay, and—”
He cuts me off. “You mean Adam? Dude, that wasn’t you losing control.
That was you defending Cat. You weren’t the god damn aggressor here.
You didn’t just beat the shit out of him because you thought it was fun.
You wouldn’t have so much as touched a hair on his head if he hadn’t come for the person you love most in this world.
Twice! You’re not your past,” he says, softer now.
“Stop looking at every new day like it’s yesterday.
It’s not. This is your tomorrow, Ran. You’re already building it. ”
***
Shane and I take our separate cars home.
This new car is still so unfamiliar. I don’t know what to do with my right hand now that the transmission’s automatic, so I just let it rest on the shifter like it’s lost all purpose.
Might as well amputate it. I don’t even use my right hand to jack off.
The engine doesn’t roar to life the way my Mustang used to.
It just… hums awake when I press the button.
No key to turn. Not to unlock the door, not to start the engine.
Just that dumb little fob sitting in the cupholder, as useless as my hand on the gearstick.
It smells clean. New. Like it hasn’t lived yet. No sweat or spilled drinks or spicy backseat memories clinging to the upholstery. No character. I can’t even tell if this car’s a he, a she, or an it.
And it’s white. Not sexy satin-black. Not even a sharp electric-blue or deep steel-gray. Just… white. At least the interior isn’t beige. God, I’d have fucking died.
It takes me a solid minute to find the button for the parking brake—of course it’s a button—and by the time I climb the stairs to our third-floor apartment, Shane’s already inside, the door unlocked behind him.
We don’t bother with the lights. I could navigate this place blind by now, it’s so familiar. Honestly, it feels more like home after nine months than my dad’s house ever did.
I rinse the day off in the shower, quick and mindless, then brush my teeth in the dark.
I have no problem with it, with shadows, with silence.
They keep you safe. Noise, light? Those only drew unwanted attention, made my mother realize I was around to serve as her punching bag. So I learned to become invisible.
My bedroom’s just as dark, just as quiet. I close the door behind me with a soft click, sealing off the rest of the world.
I tug at the towel around my waist, letting it fall where it does. I’ll deal with it later. Right now, all I care about is the shape curled up in my bed, the one that makes everything else fall away.
Cat.
She hasn’t spent the night with me in a couple of weeks now.
Her dad’s been giving her a hard time. She hasn’t gone into detail, but she doesn’t need to.
I know he doesn’t like me, blames me for…
well, everything. Rightfully so, I guess.
I told Cat not to pay it any mind, but she’s forever a peacekeeper, and as much as she’s realized people-pleasing isn’t always healthy, I understand why it’s much harder to go against your parents than someone on the outside, especially now that we may need to rely on them for help very soon.
But she’s here tonight, asleep on her side, facing away from the window she must’ve cracked open for me. Cool air slips through, giving the room my favorite kind of chill. And, god, she looks so peaceful, so at home in my bed it makes something tighten in my chest.
She’s the opposite of everything about that new car parked on the curb. The car is sterile. Smooth. Buttoned-up. White, with no personality. Cat is all curves and warmth and chaos and color. She’s scent and softness and breath. She’s mine, even when my demons say she shouldn’t be.
Her right hand rests over her stomach, a pillow tucked under it like she’s cradling the tiniest secret. She’s barely showing. There’s just the faintest swell, something no one would notice unless they were looking for it. But I notice. I notice everything.
She says she’s not having many symptoms, that it’s all easy so far. Except I notice her fatigue, the frequency of her trips to the bathroom at night, the wrinkling of her nose when something doesn’t smell quite right to her. Little tells she probably doesn’t even realize I’m clocking.
And then there are the other changes. The ones that get under my skin in all the best ways.
She’s always been unreal, twelve-out-of-ten, knock-the-wind-out-of-me gorgeous.
But lately? Lately, there’s this softness, this fullness to her curves that drives me completely fucking insane.
And it’s not just physical. It’s the way she wants me.
The way she reaches for me, takes the lead, chases her pleasure like it’s something urgent.
It’s the hottest thing ever.
Quietly, I pad to my side of the bed. My fingers graze the edge of the blanket as I slide beneath it, the mattress dipping with my weight. I inch toward her, slowly, carefully, letting her presence wrap around me before I even touch her. I find her warmth and, fuck, she’s naked.
My breath catches in my throat as I settle behind her, letting my hand glide to her waist. She shifts slightly in her sleep and makes a soft sound but doesn’t wake.
I press my nose to her head and inhale. She smells like lavender and rosewater, and something else I don’t have a name for. All I know is it’s her. It’s safety. It’s want.
Carefully, I trace my fingers along the gentle dip of her waist, up her side to the arc of her ribs, then under her arm to the warm swell of her breast. She fits perfectly into my palm, like she was made for me.
Her nipple tightens under my thumb, and I stifle a groan as I press against her. I’m already so damn hard for her.
I lean in, brushing a kiss over the curve of her shoulder, then up to her delicate jaw. Her skin tastes like sleep and warmth.
She doesn’t speak, but I know she’s awake by the soft moan that slips from her lips just before her hand moves from her stomach to my hair. Her fingers curl there, and she turns just enough to find my mouth.
She kisses me like she’s starving. Like I’m the answer to every question she didn’t know she was asking.
I shift even closer to her, desperate to erase every molecule of air between us as my hand glides down her front, slow, memorizing, feeling that soft, barely-there bump of her lower stomach.
I spread my fingers over it, letting my palm settle there for a moment, allowing the weight of it all to remind me what and whom I’m killing myself for right now. Not my yesterday. My tomorrow.
Then I continue lower, slipping between her thighs.
She parts them willingly, instinctively, and my fingers find the heat of her.
Fuck. She’s already so wet. My middle finger slides through her slickness, parting her softly, circling over her clit with slow, careful pressure.
I take my time, learning what her body wants tonight.
She’s so responsive, every breath a reaction, every thrust of her hips a silent plea.
I dip my finger lower, teasing her entrance, then ease it inside her. She moans into the dark, her fingers still buried in my hair, her body matching the rhythm I set.
I withdraw the finger slowly, savoring the way her heat clings to me, and bring it up to her mouth.
“Open for me,” I whisper.
Her lips part without hesitation, her tongue darting out to taste herself from my hand. The sight of it, the feel of her mouth on my finger, the soft suck… shit, I almost come right then and there.
“Jesus, Cat,” I breathe, the sound wrecked and reverent all at once.
I slide my hand back down between her thighs, this time with purpose. I stroke her again, finding that rhythm she loves—slow at first, precise, then building. I can read her body like a book, every moan, every rock of her hips, every pleading whimper like a poem written only for me.
Her hips move with my hand, her thighs trembling around my hand, and I keep my mouth close to her ear, whispering things I reserve for exactly these moments.
She presses her ass into me, her thrusts more desperate, unrefined, as her breaths morph into shallow inhales of air. “So needy for me,” I groan into her ear. “Come for me, baby. That’s it.”
She tightens around my fingers, her breath hitching high in her chest, and then she’s coming, pulsing, her body arching, head tipping back against my shoulder, moaning my name like it’s the only word she remembers. And, fuck, it’s the only word I need to hear.
Her breathing’s ragged, little gasps slipping from her parted lips as her thighs twitch. I keep my strokes steady, easing her down from the high I just took her to. My lips graze her shoulder, her neck, her jaw again. “You’re so soft, so perfect,” I murmur into her ear. “You did so good.”
She shifts, her hand sliding off my head, and rolls forward, moving the pillow that had been tucked under her stomach.
Then, wordlessly, she presses her chest to the mattress, her spine a graceful curve, her back arching, her ass tilted up and toward me in open invitation.
Her head turns, just enough for her eyes to find mine in the dark, and the look she gives me—glossy, wrecked, wanting—is almost too much.
“Holy fuck,” I whisper, not even trying to hide the desperation in my voice.
I kneel behind her, dragging my hand from her shoulder along her spine, slow and deliberate, like I’m tracing a path of worship. I settle at her hips, hands resting there as I take a breath, trying—and very much failing—not to lose my mind.
“You want it like this?” I ask, even though we both know the answer.
She gives the barest nod, followed by a breathy, desperate, “Yeah.”
I line myself up, guiding myself with one hand while the other rests gently on her waist. And then I pause. Just for a second.
Her doctor said it was safe. That I wouldn’t hurt her. That I wouldn’t hurt the baby. But there’s still a part of me—a loud, terrified part—that worries I could do damage just by wanting her too much. By needing her the way I do.
So I go slow, shaking with restraint as I push forward, easing into her inch by inch, every part of me tuned to her, the smallest shift in breath, the slightest sound. My body screams at me to possess her, to bury myself deep, to let go completely. But I don’t. I can’t. I won’t hurt her.
Cat’s impatience, however, tells me she doesn’t care for careful.
She exhales sharply, hips pressing back, greedy for more.
I give it to her—still steady, still mindful—until I’m fully, deeply inside her, surrounded by heat and softness and that impossible closeness that makes the rest of the world fade away.
I hit the edge of her, the very limit of what she can take, and stay there.
“God, Cat,” I breathe, the words rasping from my chest. “You feel… fuck.”
She makes a sound—half-gasp, half-moan—and I pause, just to let myself feel. The way my hands tremble on her hips, not from hesitation, but from how vulnerable I am, how completely undone. How utterly, deeply, unconditionally in love I am.
I start to move, each thrust a long, deep stroke meant to savor her.
To honor her. To hold her gently from the inside out.
She moans, her fingers gripping the sheets, her back arching.
I glide my hands over her waist, down to her hips, grounding myself in the feel of her skin, in the way her body yields and takes me in again and again.
But it’s not enough for her.
She pushes back into me harder, meeting my thrusts, trying to take more. Her breath stutters, her voice ragged. “Harder, Ran. Please, please—just…” she moans.
Her desperation undoes something in me.
She doesn’t want careful. She wants everything. And she wants it now. Feral. Wild. Needy.
I grip her hips tighter, let go of the tension coiled in my spine, and give her what she’s begging for.
My pace breaks. No more holding back. My body answers hers thrust for thrust, deeper, harder, meeting every roll of her hips with mine.
She moans like she’s lost in it, hair falling in waves around her shoulders, her breath breaking on every exhale.
She’s taking what she needs, and fuck, I want her to.
She moans loudly, no care that the walls are paper-thin, no care who might overhear, like she wants to make her pleasure known. Like she’s claiming it.
There’s no hesitation left. No fear. Just this rhythm we fall into.
Sweat and skin and breath and need. Her body, wrapped around mine.
Her moans, her heat, her strength. The way she commands it, commands me.
Not with words, but with her body, with the way she opens for me, the way she trusts me to meet her right here, in the thick of it.
Every thrust is a vow. Every gasp, a prayer. This isn’t just sex. It’s devotion. It’s trust. It’s everything I’ve never known how to ask for. And somehow, still, everything she gives me freely.