Chapter 45 – Waylon
chapter
forty-five
Waylon
She didn’t say a word on the way down the stairs.
I walked her out through the front room and nobody in that house said one thing to either of us. Trace was still at the curb with the engine running. He looked at me through the windshield and I shook my head once, and he pulled out.
She didn’t let go of my hand the whole way. She held her other one against her stomach, curled in and careful, her knuckles scraped and bruised.
I’d left in such a hurry that I’d left the porch light and living room lights on.
I didn’t ask if she was okay. She wasn’t, and I wasn’t going to make her lie about it.
Inside, I sat her down on the couch, went to the freezer, wrapped a bag of peas in a dish towel, and came back and crouched in front of her.
“Give it here.”
She gave it.
I turned her hand over in mine. The second and third knuckles were split, and the swelling had already climbed into the back of her hand.
“You hit him right,” I said.
“Did I?”
“Thumb outside the fist. Weight through your legs.” I laid the towel across her knuckles and held it there. “Somebody taught you that.”
“My mom. I was nine.” Her voice came out thin. “She said one day I’d need it and she wasn’t going to have me break my own thumb.”
I kept my face where it was and held the ice.
She started shaking, and it worked its way up from her legs until I could feel it in her hand through the towel.
“It’s not because I’m scared,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“I know, baby.”
“Then why won’t it stop.” It wasn’t a question. Her jaw was locked hard enough that I could see it working.
I set the peas on the floor and put both my hands around both of hers, the good one and the wrecked one.
“Because you had it turned all the way up in there,” I said. “Now you’re home and you don’t need it anymore and your body hasn’t caught up. Let it do what it’s doing.”
She looked at me. Her eyes were dry, which was worse.
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been in that room. Different house.”
She didn’t ask which one.
She leaned forward and put her forehead against mine, and we stayed like that until her breathing returned to normal.
Then she said, “Waylon.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be careful with me tonight.”
I pulled back far enough to see her whole face.
“You don’t have to prove anything. Not tonight.”
“It’s not proving.” Her good hand came up and fisted in the front of my shirt.
“Every time you’ve ever touched me we were stealing it.
In the dark. In a closet.” Her voice cracked and she went right through it.
“I’m not his. I’m not anybody’s thing to sneak around with.
I want you in your bed with the lights on and nobody to be quiet for. ”
“Josie—”
“Say no if it’s no.”
It wasn’t no.
I stood up and took her with me.
I got as far as the bedroom door and stopped, because if I didn’t say it right then I was never going to.
“There’s something you need to know about me first.”
“Okay.”
“I wanted to take you.” It came out low and ugly. “All this time. Every time he put a hand on you in front of me. I didn’t want to earn it and I didn’t want to wait for you to work it out on your own. I wanted to walk across the room and take you out of it and dare him to say a word.”
She didn’t move.
“That’s my father,” I said. “That’s his whole personality. That’s the thing in me I’ve been fighting since I was twelve. And you’re about to let me put my hands on you, so you should know what you’re letting in the door.”
She was quiet for a while.
“You want to know the difference between you and him?”
“Tell me.”
“He never asked. Not once. Not about anything.” She lifted her ruined hand up between us.
“You’ve asked me every single time. Even in that closet.
Especially in that closet.” She stepped in until there was nothing left between us.
“Your father took. You keep. Those aren’t the same thing.
And if you can’t tell them apart yet, I’ll tell you every day until you can. ”
I got her against the doorframe.
I kissed her hard enough to put her head back into the wood. She opened for me right away and made a sound low in her throat, her ruined hand sliding into my hair and pulling.
“Hand,” I said against her mouth.
“It’s fine.”
“Put it on my shoulder.”
She put it on my shoulder.
I got the hem of her sweater and worked it up and off, slow over the bad hand, and then she was standing in my doorway in a plain white bra with the lamp on behind her. She didn’t cross her arms this time. She let me look.
“Say it,” I said.
“Say what?”
“You know what.”
Her chin came up. “I’m yours.”
I had my mouth on her throat before she finished it.
I walked her backward into the room and dropped her onto the bed and turned the lamp on the nightstand with one hand.
“Lights on,” I said.
“Lights on.”
Dr. Bob was grinning at us from the nightstand with his little painted stethoscope. I reached over and turned him around to face the wall.
She laughed. It came out wet and surprised, and she put her good hand over her mouth like she’d done something wrong.
“Don’t.” I pulled it away. “Not in here. I want to hear all of it.”
I dragged my shirt over my head. Her eyes went down my body and stopped, and she licked her bottom lip without knowing she was doing it, and my cock went hard enough to hurt.
“Come here,” she said.
“In a minute.”
I got her jeans open and worked them down her legs and off over her ankles, and then I put my hands flat on the insides of her thighs.
“Waylon.”
“Let me.” I got the bra off her, one hook, and she arched up to help me and then she was bare from the waist up in my bed. “Look at you.”
I put my mouth on her. Her collarbone, the soft underside of her breast, her nipple, and I sucked it until her spine came up off the mattress and her heel dug into the back of my thigh.
“Whose are these?” I said into her skin.
“Yours.”
“Say it again.”
“Yours.” Her hand fisted in my hair. “God. Yours.”
I moved down. Kissed the dip under her ribs and the flat of her stomach and the crease at the top of her thigh, and hooked my fingers in her panties and took them off her.
“Look at that.” I got a hand under her knee and opened her up. She was already slick and swollen. The sight of her open for me made my mouth water. “This is mine.”
“Waylon—”
“Say it.”
“Yours. It’s yours.”
When I slid my tongue over her, she jolted.
“Hold your leg for me.”
She got her good hand behind her knee and pulled it back and held it, and the sight of her doing what I told her nearly finished me before I’d gotten started.
I took my time. Long flat drags, over her clit, the way I knew she liked, and then tighter circles right where she needed them until her thighs started to shake around my head.
I pushed two fingers into her and she took them both, tight and hot and fluttering, and I curled them up and found the spot that made her lose control of her hands.
“Look at me while I do this.” I lifted my head just enough. She’d tucked her chin and her eyes were glassy, with her breath coming in shuddering pants. “I want you watching.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.”
She watched. I held her open with my thumbs and worked her slow and deliberate until her stomach hollowed out and her heel slid on the sheet and she couldn’t hold her own leg anymore, and I took the weight of it on my shoulder and kept going.
“That’s it.” I didn’t lift my head. “Come on my mouth. Let me hear it.”
She came loud with my name on it, nothing held back and nobody to be quiet for, and I stayed with her the whole way down, easing her through it, my fingers still buried in her until she stopped clenching around them.
I started to move up her body and she got her good hand flat on my chest and pushed.
“Wait.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.” She was flushed all the way down to her collarbones and she wasn’t looking at me. “I want to try something.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say okay yet.” She sat up and pulled her knees in. Still not looking at me. “I want to— I’ve never—” She stopped and started over, annoyed with herself. “I want to put my mouth on you.”
I didn’t answer right away, because I didn’t trust what was going to come out of it.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to.” Her chin came up finally. “That’s the whole point. I’ve done it before. I’ve never once wanted to.”
Christ.
“Josie.”
“Don’t.” Her voice went unsteady. “Don’t be nice about it right now. Let me find out what it’s like when it’s something I want.”
I got off the bed and out of my jeans and sat back against the headboard, and I put my hands down flat on the mattress on either side of me where she could see them.
“Then come here.”
She crawled up the bed. She kept her eyes down, and her good hand came up and hovered, and she laughed at herself before she wrapped it around me.
Her fingers didn’t meet. Her eyes came up to mine from under her lashes, and I almost finished right there.
“Don’t look at me like that unless you want this over fast.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“Baby, there’s no wrong way to—”
“Waylon.” Her voice was sharp. “Tell me.”
“Okay.” I got my hand into her hair and gathered it back off her face, slow enough that she could stop me. She didn’t. “Get it wet first. Use your hand for the rest. And don’t try to take all of it. You’ll hurt yourself and I’ll have to stop you.”
She licked her own palm, which about killed me, and stroked me once, then again, watching my face the whole time to see what landed.
“That.” My hips came up off the mattress. “That.”
Then she bent down and put her mouth on the head of me, just her lips, testing, and I made a sound I’d deny later.
She pulled off. “Was that—”
“Do it again.”
She did it again. Took a little more this time, her hand working what she couldn’t, her tongue flat against the underside, and she was clumsy and careful and she kept looking up to check, and it was better than anything anybody had ever done to me in my life.
“Look at you.” I fisted my hand in her hair without meaning to, and she moaned around me, so I did it again. “That’s it. Just like that. Good girl.”