Chapter 40
Dean
So maybe fucking the night away wasn’t the best idea after spending part of it running from a crazed guy in a truck. Mentally, the sex created a sort of buffer — or a rebalance. Physically, I felt like I woke up in the body of an eighty-year-old man.
It was midday by the time I forced myself out of bed, leaving Lily to continue sleeping.
After a stretch that seemed to crack every vertebrae in my spine, I made my way into the ensuite for a quick shower to soothe my muscles, and then dried myself in front of the bathroom mirror. Only then did I get a good look at what became of my body last night.
Among the healing cuts and bruises from the explosion were fingernail scratches on my chest and back. There was also a faint bite mark on my shoulder.
I half smiled and went back into the room. Not bothered to get dressed yet.
Lily was beginning to stir when her eyes landed on me.
“Hmm-morning.” She smiled sleepily and stretched her arms above her head, arching off the bed with a soft groan.
It caused the bedsheet across her body to slip from her chest, revealing her perky breasts and the marks I left on her; a hickey on her neck and another lighter one on the curve of her right breast.
I approached the edge of the bed, aware of the way her eyes traveled over my body. “You tore me to shreds last night.”
She bit her lip sheepishly, leaving her arms to rest on either side of her head on the pillow. “Oops.”
“Last night wasn’t too much for you?”
Lily shook her head, smiling easily. “It was fantastic.”
I crawled across the covers, making her happiness grow as I came to hover over her. With our bodies separated by the sheet and blanket, I kissed her softly.
“Morning, beautiful,” I said.
She kissed me more in response, and I lowered my body to hers. Beneath the covers, she slowly began moving against me, pressing her chest to mine and parting her legs.
She was trying to instigate something.
I chuckled against her lips and pulled back. “Breakfast first. We need sustenance.”
“Or.” She gently pushed my shoulder.
I rolled off her and rested against the headboard while she leaned closer.
Confidence poured from her every move as she traced her nails along my bare thigh and kissed me slowly. She continued that touch along my limp cock. It wasn’t limp long, and twitched against my leg as she kissed the side of my throat.
I let out a breath, getting lost in the pleasure the second she curled her hand around my cock and moved to her knees. The rest of the sheet fell from her body, and any thoughts trickled out of my brain.
She moved to straddle my knee and slowly peppered kisses down my body as she stroked her hand up and down, lowering her face to stop beside my cock.
My brows rose when she dragged her tongue along the underside of my shaft, following one thick vein while she fixed her blue doe eyes on me.
A grunt formed in my throat, and I dropped my head back. All the while growing harder in her hand. “Fuck me,” I groaned.
She swirled her tongue around the tip and opened her mouth to take the rest, but paused and smiled innocently at me.
Releasing my cock from her hold, she moved to straddle my hips. Barely letting herself touch me as her mouth hovered by mine. “Shower first, then sex, maybe another shower, and then breakfast.”
I reached for her face, wanting to kiss her again, but she pulled back and happily hopped off the bed to skip to the bathroom.
I watched her bare ass as she went, instinctively sliding a hand down to my erection to give it some attention.
“Are you coming?” she called from the bathroom as she turned the shower on.
I inhaled through my teeth and pulled myself from the bed.
The Smash House Rage Room was located in Coney Island, around twenty minutes from the girls’ apartment. Without my car, Lily and I got an Uber and met with Seb and Kira at the front doors of the place.
The warehouse sat a few blocks back from the beach, but the wind pushed the salty sea air right by the door anyway. It ripped at our hair and danced on any exposed skin like cold, sharp knives.
Just as Kira excitedly pulled the front door of the warehouse open, a gust of wind yanked the door from her grip. I went to catch it, Seb caught it, and Lily threw up her hands before the door could hit her.
“Not the smash house trying to smash you,” Seb joked, using his body to hold the door open as we went in.
“That would be my luck,” Lily said, adjusting the beanie on her head as she smiled. “Pancaked by a door.”
Kira wrapped Lily in a side-on hug as they walked ahead of us, approaching the front desk.
The inside of the warehouse was industrial grunge, with graffiti decorating the black walls, metal music playing loud from brightly spray-painted speakers, and a caged ceiling to bring down the actual height of the room but allow for a full view of the old warehouse rafters above.
Seb huffed a laugh, craning his neck to peer up. “I feel like we’ve walked into your brain, bro.”
“Close enough,” I agreed, half smiling. “It’s missin’ the self-loathin’ inner monologue.”
He shook his head in amusement as we reached the desk.
The guy behind the front desk, with a dark buzzcut and a pierced eyebrow, couldn’t take his eyes off Kira and Lily as he talked them through the consent and liability forms he had handed to them on clipboards.
Popping a bubble of gum through his lips, he winked at them and then pulled his attention to Seb and I to hand us our clipboards too.
Except when his eyes fell on me, he sucked in so hard he choked on his gum.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked empathically.
“Yeah. Fine.” His smirk evaporated as he coughed and stammered through a quick run down of our forms, this time avoiding looking at me. “W-When you’re done, I’ll get you some PPE.”
Just as fast as he sucked back the gum, he excused himself to use the restroom.
Kira, excited about getting the day started, glossed over the interaction, called out a “Great, thanks,” to the guy as he disappeared around a corner, and then skipped over to the bean bags and hand-shaped armchairs that made up the waiting room to our left. She fell into a giant beanbag.
Lily was less enthusiastic with her movements and gently lowered herself onto a bean bag of her own.
Seb nudged my arm as we wandered over. “You know him?”
I shook my head and took a seat in an armchair. “No idea.”
“He definitely knows you…” Seb opted to lean against the wall as he filled out his forms. “His name tag said Scott.”
Scott emerged from the bathroom again, glancing at us and then averting his gaze as he sat down at the computer along the back wall behind the desk. With his back to us, I got a clear view of the back of his buzzed head. And the small scar there.
“Scotty motherfuckin’ Richards,” I muttered. There was no happy nostalgia dedicated to the prick.
“Who?” Seb asked, chuckling.
I leaned back in my seat. “High school bully. He enjoyed picking on the weak until I punched him in the face and slept with his girlfriend a few months after.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Lily whispered, looking up at me from her clipboard. She raised an eyebrow.
My smugness faded, and I cringed. “Sorry.”
“You mean to tell me, you punched him once and he’s still scared of you?” Seb tucked his clipboard under his arm.
“He hit his head and needed some stitches,” I shrugged, turning my attention to the forms and signing the bottom. “When he came back to school, I told him it’d be worse if he bullied anyone again.”
“We needed someone like you at our school,” Kira said.
Seb straightened with a frown. “Who bullied you?”
“No one that matters anymore,” she grinned, clambering from the bean bag. “Now fill out your forms so we can get started.”
Kira left for the desk to hand her form in, with Seb following close behind, rushing through his forms.
I stood and gave Lily a hand getting out of the beanbag.
“If you ever spot anyone in public who gave you a hard time in school, let me know. I’ll thump them on the head. Or hit them with my car,” I joked… Sort of.
She laughed quietly. “Who said chivalry was dead?”
After getting our protective gear from Scott, who still refused to look at me, we were directed to the change rooms in the back. Seb and Kira took one, me and Lily took another.
Right up until that moment, Lily and I had done a good job of masking the subtle aches in our bodies. We wore layers that kept us comfortably warm against the cold. But it wasn’t until we started getting changed, paired with the unheated air of the change rooms, that those aches felt worse.
Mine was a dull throb in my quads that made pulling on denim coveralls that much more of a challenge. My legs felt like lead.
Lily’s soreness was the yellow bruise on her tailbone. She realized after our shower this morning that bending and twisting was a no-go for today.
Unable to bend to lace her borrowed boots, I did them up for her. Sitting on the one bench in our change room, I had her foot planted on the bench space between my legs as I wove the laces around the silver hooks.
“Okay, so maybe doing it against the door wasn’t the best idea,” she muttered, tucking her hair behind her ears as she watched. She was already wearing the coveralls and helmet, with its built-in face shield and earmuffs. It made her look like a cute construction worker.
“We could rain check.” I tapped her calf, indicating for her to switch legs.
“Kira is really looking forward to today, though.”
“Yeah, but you’ll be in pain the entire time.” I tightened the laces firmly and tied them off.
“I’ll be fine.” She took her foot back with a small smile. “After last night, at my parents’ house—”
“Which we’ve still gotta talk about, by the way—”
“—I think I need to smash something. As do you.” She poked the tip of my nose.
She wasn’t wrong about that. Gabriele’s threat clung to my mind like mold. I would give anything to smash in his teeth for what he said.
And reuniting with an ex-school bully was the cherry on top.
As Lily moved away, I started on my laces, wearing the boots I arrived in. My eyes went to Lily as I secured knots in the laces. She bent to pick up her belongings, but stopped short and pressed a hand to her lower back.
“Ow,” she groaned.
I grimaced and stood. “You sure you wanna go through with this?”
“Yep.” She smiled stiffly. “I just won’t make any sudden movements.”
I scooped her things off the floor, along with my stuff. “It’s a rage room, Lily.”
“And I’ll rage carefully.” She gave me an uneasy grin and turned for the change room door.
I followed, half smiling. “I think that’s the most you thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
As we walked through the door, she jokingly muttered, “At least I can mark getting my back blown out against my bedroom door off this year’s bingo card.”
I raised a brow. “What else is on this bingo card of yours?”
“What’s that about bingo cards?” Kira asked as she stepped out of the change room she shared with Seb. She was tying off the braid in her hair, completely unaware of what we were discussing.
“Nothing,” Lily smiled quickly.
I slung an arm around her shoulders.
Seb walked out of the change room next, grinning already and rubbing his hands together excitedly. “Who’s ready to smash some shit?”