Chapter 22
Dex
“Of course.”
The answer comes automatically, without a thought. I trust her with everything in me, even though I have no idea what she has planned. She looked nervous when we first walked in here, but now, she is standing there with her shoulders back, set on whatever she’s going to do.
God. She’s gorgeous.
I wish I could hold her like I saw Gage doing downstairs.
She nods and pulls the chair that sits in front of her makeup table into the middle of the floor. “Sit,” she orders, pointing to the chair.
“Les, what’s this about?” I ask, getting comfortable.
“You said you trusted me. I’m going to prove to you that you can. Even with this,” she walks in front of me, holding up a satin blindfold. “You still trust me?”
“Les,” I say roughly. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I go to a dark place and can’t control how I react.”
She lets it drop so it’s hanging from her fingers.
“The goal is to replace that dark place. I want to replace it with pleasure, not pain.” She lets the tail of the blindfold trail across my legs, covered by my jeans, and I can feel my muscles tense.
She walks around me, letting the material trail across my clothes, never touching my skin.
“I want you to accept my touch and be able to touch me,” she says from behind me, close to my ear but not touching.
I shiver and don’t know if it’s from fear or feeling her breath rush across my neck.
She steps back in front of me, holding the blindfold in front of her again.
“I won’t force you to do this, Dex,” she says softly.
I look into those blue eyes I’ve dreamed about for years and decide. I take it from her and tie it around my eyes. I let my hands drop and grip the edges of the chair. I refuse to do anything to hurt her.
“We’re going to start slow. I want you to listen to my voice.” She is behind me again, and I didn’t even hear her move. “Are you ready?” I nod, afraid to open my mouth. “I need your words, Dex.”
Shit. “Yes,” I croak out.
“Good,” she replies, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “The point of vision deprivation is that you have to focus on your other senses. Touch, smell, hearing.” I focus on her voice; she’s on my right side, the side with the scars. “What do you smell?”
“You.”
“Be specific. This is what I want you to remember when you go to that place,” she murmurs, moving while she’s talking.
“Your vanilla scent mixed with a man’s cologne.” Gage’s cologne, I figure out when I focus on it.
“Good,” she says, moving again. “What do you hear?”
“Your sweet voice, fabric moving.”
I feel her touch me before she ever does; it’s just a brush of her hand on my shirt, nothing I can’t handle. “What do you feel?”
“Your hand on my left shoulder.”
“Is it a bad touch?” she asks from my right side, running her hand across that shoulder; my skin bunches under her hand, but it’s bearable.
“No.”
“When you put all those things together, what do you get?”
“You. Your smell, your voice, your touch.”
“So, think of this moment when you sink into your mind.”
Her voice has taken on a hypnotic state. Soft, slow, seductive. I wish she would touch me again, something I haven’t wanted. But I know she won’t when I expect it. The point of this is that spontaneous touch isn’t always bad.
I exhale and nod.
She trails her hand from one shoulder to the other, just a light brush of her fingers. Her smell washes over me like an aphrodisiac, calming my pounding heart.
“Dex,” she whispers in my ear, her lips barely touching the lobe. I shiver again, and I know it’s not because I’m afraid. I can feel my cock start to harden. Amazed, I shift my hips. “Are you okay?” she whispers again.
“Yes,” I say, nodding, letting my fingers loose from their death grip on the chair.
She runs her fingers over my back again, firmer this time. She squeezes my shoulder, and my whole body turns to stone. “Dex,” she whispers in the other ear. “It’s just me.”
Alessa. It’s just Alessa.
I force myself to relax, and she squeezes my shoulder again. This time, I don’t tense up as bad. I think of her smell, her touch.
Every time I tense up, she reminds me of where I am.
She squeezes both shoulders before she slides her hands to my biceps, down my pecs, and my abs, still never touching my skin. She does this until I only react in a good way, leaning into her touch. I find myself trying to follow her hands wherever they go.
“Are you ready for the next step?” she whispers again, and it’s starting to fucking kill me. My dick is painfully hard, straining against my zipper, begging her to touch me.
“Yes.”
I hear her take a breath. “Take your shirt off.”
I freeze. Touching me through my clothes is one thing; this is different. I would be able to feel her skin on mine, the heat from her touch. Can I do it?
“I won’t push, Dex, but I think we’re in a good place right now.” Her voice still has that soft cadence, reminding me she won’t harm me.
I jerk my shirt over my head before I can rethink it, careful not to dislodge the blindfold.
“I need to push a little harder,” she warns. “You need a safe word. You say the word, and I stop. No questions asked.”
“A safe word?” I croak, alarmed.
“This isn’t about pain, Dex. Just pleasure. I would never do that to you.”
I slow my breathing and think of a safe word. “Peaches.”
“Why peaches?” she asks curiously, and I can hear her moving again.
“Because that’s what you were eating the first time I saw you.”
“Peaches, it is.” I can hear her softly laugh under her breath. “You remember what I was eating?”
“I remember everything about that day. You were wearing a yellow sundress, sitting on that huge swing behind the house, eating peaches straight from a can.”
I was still a street thug for her dad, too young to be in the big boy business but strong enough to fight on the streets. Why she ever paid me any attention at all blew my mind. But once I had her full attention, I knew I could never let this woman go.
“Hm,” she hums. I know she doesn’t remember. I was following a group of other guys in the backyard and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw her. She was lost in her little world, staring out over the city. “Are you ready?” she asks.
“Yes,” I rush out. I need her to do something before I run from the room.
“Just breathe, Dex,” she says, pulling me back under her spell.
What the hell is she doing to me?
She starts with light touches again, but the moment her skin touches mine, I tense up so tight my muscles scream in protest, and her hand drops instantly.
“Dex,” she whispers. “Who’s in this room with you?”
“Alessa.” My breathing is harsh, and I feel like a fucking pussy.
“Would I ever hurt you?” she asks, and I can tell she’s close to me, almost touching because that vanilla scent got stronger.
“No,” I answer honestly. I know that. I just need my mind to accept it.
She touches me again, lightly, with just the tips of her fingers. She sweeps them slowly across my back. I can feel her fingers bump over my scars, and I want to hang my head in shame. They should have never gotten the jump on me, but there were five of them and one of me.
“These scars don’t make you weak,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. “I have scars too. Some are visible, and some of them aren’t.” She flattens her palm between my shoulder blades. I focus on the softness of her skin. “Most of them are in my mind.”
“How did you get past that?” I ask hoarsely. She went through something way worse, something I could never imagine, and she functions on mostly normal levels, killing perverts aside.
“I had to push past the walls in my mind.” She runs her hand to my left shoulder.
“I had you, Ryder, and Gage to help me through it. I had you guys to remind me that not all guys were bad.” She runs her hand to my right shoulder.
“I never truly let my guard down until Leo.” She runs her hand up my neck, fingers combing through my hair.
“I only ever trusted you guys, then I found Holden. Then Leo.” She runs her fingers softly through my hair from my forehead back when she moved in front of me.
I can reach out right now and crush her body to mine, but it’s like I’m frozen in place.
“It was almost like it was meant to be.”
I know she slept with other guys before Leo.
She would go for it if they caught her eye, and I always hated it.
Hated that it could have been me giving her what she needed.
But she never went back for seconds, always one-night stands.
Then there was Leo. I knew she was gone the second she said she was letting him take her on a date.
I would never get a chance to push past my bullshit and touch her.
Kiss her. Hold her. Fuck her. Then Gage told me what she wanted, and everything opened up in front of me again.
And now she’s taking her time, so I can be a part of this because she wants me to be.
She places both hands on my shoulders from behind, waiting for me to relax. When I do, she runs them down my pecs and abs—moving her hands apart when she hits the tops of my jeans, lightly scraping her nails up my sides over my ribs.
“Fuck,” I grit out.
“How does that feel?” she whispers in my ear, and I want to crush my lips against hers.
“It feels good,” I rasp. I forgot what a feminine hand felt like.
She rubs all over me above my waist, and all I can feel is her. No bad thoughts creeping up to take this from me.
I feel her soft lips press against mine, and it’s like a dam burst. I crush her mouth to mine like I’ve wanted since the last night I kissed her, the night she came out of the fucking water naked like a siren, drawing me to my death.
I can’t bring myself to reach out and touch her, but her mouth moving against mine is all I need right now.
I need it like I need air. I gently massage her tongue with mine, making her moan into my mouth.
She places her hands on my shoulders, and I don’t feel the panic, the overwhelming urge to bolt.
The kiss goes on, and neither of us gets tired of it.
I feel her straddle my legs, sitting her ass on my knees, not pressing too much touch onto me.
She runs her hands around my neck, running her fingers through the short strands of hair at the base of my skull.
I finally reach out and place my hand flush against the skin on her thigh, thankful she changed into shorts, reveling in the feel of her soft skin.
“You’re a dead motherfucker,” he says as he slashes my back again.
NO! I’m not there. Vanilla. Alessa. She’s kissing me. I’m okay.
I move my hand higher up her thigh. Her lips still fused with mine.
“You aren’t such a fucking badass without your buddies,” he laughs cruelly as he cuts my back.
Shit!
“I want you to give a message to daddy Poletti.”
Vanilla.
“That fine piece of ass he calls a daughter,” he groans in a vulgar way. “What I would have given to be there when they nabbed that girl.”
Alessa.
“You bleed pretty, bitch boy,” he laughs cruelly again, another one landing a solid punch to my gut.
Fuck!
“Tell Poletti this isn’t over.”
I can feel my mind start to take me back there. I keep repeating over and over in my head what she told me, but it’s getting harder. I can feel the panic clawing up my throat, cutting off my air supply.
Shit! Fuck!
“Peaches!” I say as I jerk my mouth away.
Her touch instantly disappears, and she rips the blindfold from my eyes. It takes me a minute to get my breathing under control, my heart pounding out of my chest. When my eyes finally focus on the present, she’s standing in front of me with a soft smile.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, pissed at myself. I had her right there in my arms and fucked it up.
She smiles again. “You have nothing to be sorry for. This isn’t over.”
I stand up, knocking the chair to the floor. “Why do you want me?! I’m a fucking wreck, Baby girl.”
She shakes her head. “No. You went through some horrible shit. We all have.”
“But you guys fucking deal with it, not hide from it.”
Her face never changes, she never loses that softness in her eyes, and I want to kick my ass.
“I kill people to deal with mine. Ryder fights anything that gets in his way. Holden hides in an office all day. Gage covers his up with humor.” She bends down and hands me my shirt. “We just hide it in different ways.”
I take it from her and pull it back on. “I know.” I run my fingers through my hair. “I just don’t know if I can do this,” I whisper hoarsely.
“Dex,” she waits until I look into her eyes, “You just did.” She walks closer but doesn’t touch me. “You just trusted me enough to let me take your sight. That means the world to me.”
“How slow are you willing to go, Les? Because eventually, you’ll get bored.”
She shakes her head again. “No, I won’t. I want you, Dex, and that kiss was just a reminder of how you make me feel. We have already established the boundaries and can move further next time.”
I touch my lips, amazed they were touching hers. “That kiss was everything good I needed.”
Her smile is radiant. “It was for me, too. You’ll get there, Dex.”
She pecks my cheek, leaving the room and giving me a chance to get my shit together. And just like that, the moment is over. I had her hands on me, her lips on mine, and I turned into a fucking coward.