Chapter 20 #3
He swallowed. “I need to. Unless you don’t want to hear it.” He held her gaze then. “It’s not pretty.”
She bit her lip. “Go on.”
“He claimed she’d trapped him into marriage and that he wasn’t my biological father.
It was always when he’d had too much to drink, which was most days.
Sometimes, I’d wake up and come downstairs and provoke him just to divert his attention away from my mother.
Sometimes, he beat her quietly enough that I slept through it.
I’d wake up the next morning to find her with a black eye and him wearing a smug look on his ugly face. ”
Nora took a step closer.
“He didn’t like it when someone hit back, and I hit back a lot, even when I was small—I guess I was more like him than I want to acknowledge.
Then, when I was eleven, my mom got sick.
Breast cancer.” Cold air filled his lungs.
“My father stopped hitting her then—probably because she had regular trips to the doctor’s office and he didn’t want to get found out and labelled as an abusive asshole.
He hit me instead, even though she tried to get between us.
I didn’t care if he hit me. His punches were a lot less painful than watching her get sick.
“Then I hit puberty and grew big enough to give him a run for his money. Blackened his eye a few times. Man.” He shook his head and exhaled loudly. “I fucking loved that, especially being as he was a cop.” He could still feel the sting in his knuckles, and the pure satisfaction of landing a blow.
Nora didn’t look surprised by the fact his dad had worn blue. Domestic abuse was a big issue for law enforcement.
“What happened to your mom?”
He pushed back the old grief. This wasn’t about him. “She died.”
“You stayed with him, afterward?”
He shrugged. “I had nowhere else to go. I also knew I needed to make something of myself. To make her proud. I joined the police force out of high school, used the connections I had there through him. Used him to get in and then distanced myself from him completely. Thankfully, he’d retired—disability. I worked my way up the ladder.”
“I’ll say.”
He forced a smile he didn’t feel. “I like to think it pisses him off that I got into the FBI.” He watched her as she watched her dog. Finally, she turned to face him, but she didn’t speak. Just looked at him. Weighed him with her haunted eyes.
“My parents’ marriage was a shitshow, Nora. I swore I’d never get involved with a woman that way.” He straightened. Took a step toward her. “This thing with you—for the first time in my life I was able to imagine myself with someone.”
She backed away a step. “Neither of us do relationships, remember?”
“I guess now we both know why.”
Her breath hitched on something that was almost a laugh. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I may not be good at relationships, but something about you makes me want to try. And maybe I’m hoping the story about my pathetic childhood will make you view me with pity, which might, in time, lead to forgiveness.”
She huffed out a frustrated breath and wiped her eyes. “Unfortunately, pity is the very last thing I feel for you, Sebastian Black.”
The silence grew heavy. Their gazes locked. The air around them sizzled despite the frigid temperature.
He wasn’t sure who moved first, but suddenly she was in his arms, making him stagger back against a tree trunk, her mouth on his, fierce and hungry, almost angry with demand.
He didn’t care. He deserved the anger. Craved the lust. He cupped the back of her head in one hand and her ass in another, ground against her so she could feel what she did to him.
Her lips were cold, but her tongue seared his mouth like a brand. He dove deeper, wanting her so badly he couldn’t think.
She groaned, and her hands dove for the button on his pants. He unzipped her jacket as she unzipped his, each frantically seeking skin beneath the layers.
He swung them around so her back was against the trunk.
He scraped his teeth down her neck, then his fingers found her stiff nipple, which he plucked and rolled.
His mouth followed, unable to resist the lure of her skin.
Her back arched as he sucked on her breast. One arm banded around her waist to keep her upright.
His other hand slipped into the waistband of her pants and down in one smooth glide, through those tempting folds into scorching flesh.
She was wet for him.
His mouth parched.
He looked up and held her gaze as he rubbed the palm of his hand against her clit and rocked his finger into her, over and over.
Her lips parted, and then she sucked in a sharp breath as he worked another finger inside her tight heat.
He drove her higher until she was writhing against him.
She cried out, and he captured the sound with his mouth.
She began to work desperately at his waistband.
He swallowed hard. “This is for you, Nora. You don’t need to—”
“I want you, Sebastian.” She wrapped her fingers around his length and made him burn. “Now.”
Sweat formed on his temple. Fuck. He hadn’t planned this, but was desperate to be inside her again. He fumbled in his pocket for a condom.
“I haven’t been with anyone in more than a year, Nora, and swear to God, I didn’t miss it, but you drive me crazy…
” He’d begun to think there was something wrong with him when it came to sex, but it was just that he hadn’t met Nora yet.
He wanted her naked in bed for hours, days, weeks.
He wanted to spend time learning how to please her, learning what sent her over the edge into oblivion.
What teased her, what tempted her, what drove her mad with lust.
“Fuck me. Please.” She kicked off one of her boots and pulled down her pants despite the fact it was fucking freezing. “Hurry.”
In some small corner of his brain, he was concerned this might not be the most sensible thing to do considering where they were and the fact they had unresolved issues between them.
That concern was drowned out by the raw basic need of his body clamoring to be inside her the way she was begging him to be.
“Don’t hold back, Sebastian.” Her fingers gripped the back of his neck and twisted almost painfully in his short hair.
Was that what she was scared of? That he’d treat her like she was fragile? That he’d be afraid to touch her the way she needed him to touch her? He knew better than most how resilient strong women were. How fucking unbreakable.
He lifted her up, and she wrapped her long legs around his waist, taking him in hand and guiding him to her center before sliding smoothly down over his shaft until she hit base.
She cried out as she looked up at the stars. He pressed her against the tree, holding her up as he withdrew just a little and sank back inside.
It might have been the second-best experience of his life—the first being the fact he’d saved her life yesterday. Nothing would ever top that.
His lips grazed her neck, licked her racing pulse before he took the lobe of her ear into his mouth and bit gently, his hips thrusting deep.
She gasped as she met him, trembling with a need that matched his own.
Her jacket cushioned her spine against the rough bark, but he tried to be gentle even though he had never felt more feral in his life.
Her nails dug painfully into his back and arms. He’d have marks tomorrow, and he was fine with that.
His blood rushed until he couldn’t hear anything except her, couldn’t see anything except her face, her eyes, her lips.
Pleasure hovered just out of reach in her eyes like a match waiting to be struck.
He shifted her higher. Her grip around him tightened, and she started to cry out.
He kissed her deeply, swallowed her cries, and dragged one knee higher over his hip, enabling him to sink deeper, move faster, harder. All rational thought obliterated. The only thing that mattered was this. Her. Him. Locked together in primal pleasure.
Nora’s body rippled around him and, no matter how he locked his jaw and tried to make it last, her orgasm pushed him over the edge so that he came in a rush of light that blinded him and stole all the oxygen out of his lungs.
They both stood there panting in the stinging cold air, and he watched the passion in her eyes die.