Chapter 26 #2
“You didn’t come after me. I’m sure you thought you were respecting my choices or some noble bullshit, but the truth is you let me go and I needed you not to.”
Something detonates behind his eyes.
“You think I didn’t try?” His voice comes out rough and wrecked as he takes hold of my wrists where I’m still shoving at his chest. “You think I didn’t spend six months calling every number I had for you?
You think I went off to Harvard and just—what, moved on?
I showed up at your mother’s trailer, Harper. Three times.”
I wince. Oh God. He went to Darlene’s.
“She told me you were gone and she didn’t know where you were, and that I should stop coming around because it was upsetting her.”
I stare at him through my tears.
“Your mother,” he says. “Who I promise, Z instructed exactly what to say to me.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
“He thought of everything,” I whisper. “He used my own insecurities against me to convince me your mom wanted you to have a fresh start without me in it.”
Caleb goes completely still.
The final pieces click into place. “Some part of me had always believed his version of the story anyway. That I had always been the wrong kind of girl for you.”
“Harper.” His voice has gone rough. “My mother loved you. She told me before she died—” He stops. “She told me you were the best thing that had ever happened to me.”
I close my eyes.
Of course she did.
Of course that’s what Helen said, because Helen was Helen, and Z knew exactly which lie would land hardest on a girl who had been told her whole life that she wasn’t enough.
“He stole the last decade from us,” I say.
It’s so painful, after spending the last few days working through what I know is only the beginning of the bodily autonomy he took from me.
I don’t know how one person can take so much.
“Yes,” Caleb says.
“He took nine years from Bruiser knowing you as his dad.”
“Yes.”
I open my eyes. Caleb has edged closer, my arms against his chest now as we stand in the blue light and curling steam of the hot tub.
“I’m so angry,” I say. “I don’t know what to do with how angry I am.”
“Then let it out.” His voice has dropped an octave and there’s an edge in it I haven’t heard before, something that has been waiting behind all that careful control.
“Stop managing it. Stop filing it away into something neat you can handle, or worse, bottling it up. Just—Feel it. Right now. Here. With me.”
I laugh. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. Except feel all this stupid fucking anger!”
“Lemme have it, then,” he says amiably. “We’ve already established I’m a safe person to take out your anger on.”
“What does that even mean?” I scoff.
“I want you to stop performing ‘okay’ when you’re not okay.”
He steps closer and the blue light catches the line of his jaw.
“I want you to stop being so Goddamn careful about what you let me see. I’ve seen you shoot a man, Harper.
I’ve seen you drive through a firefight with our son in the back seat.
I can handle whatever is actually in your chest right now. ”
“You want to know what’s in my chest?” My voice is rising again, but I’m starting to hear what he’s saying… so I let it. He is safe. This is a safe place. For the first time in so, so long, I’m finally safe to say what I truly feel out loud.
“I’m furious at Z for all the lies, and I think I’m even more furious at myself for believing them.
How do I ever trust myself again? He took that from me.
And I’m furious at you for being so fucking patient with me that I don’t know how to fight with you, because fighting is the only language I actually know, and you keep being so Goddamn—”
I go to smack him in the chest again, but he snatches my wrists in a firm grip before my fists land.
His grip is loose. But when his fingers flex around my pulse point, my fury finally finds an outlet.
Because my anger abruptly sparks into an explosion of lust.
Suddenly I remember how gentle, boy scout Caleb used to turn into a little masochist in the dark. When everyone else was asleep and it was just the two of us alone as teenagers exploring one another’s bodies.
I remember what it felt like to trust someone else with my darkest, most intimate impulses.
And every nerve ending in my body lights up with sudden déjà vu, remembering how to be alive.
Caleb must see it in my face because I watch the chain reaction darken his eyes a second later, my combustion lighting his.
I leap up and throw my legs around his waist, all but climbing him.
His muscled arms twine underneath my ass.
And then we’re kissing, as mad and unhinged as when we were just fighting moments before.
His teeth bite at my tongue in his mouth and, oh fuck, this is what I’ve been missing. This wild, obsessive need to be touched by the man I want and—
—trust.
An alarm bell inside my body—deep, deep in my subconscious where I could never acknowledge it—was always screaming that I couldn’t trust Z. The sex always reflected it.
But with Caleb, my body knows it’s home, and that it’s safe, and that it motherfucking wants—
I can’t help wildly grinding against him as he walks us down the hot tub steps into the water, my legs still velcro’d around his waist.
“Fuck me like you still love me,” I whisper in his ear, fingernails digging into his scalp.
He undoes the bikini top I’m wearing and then his hand is below the water, thumb immediately landing on my—
My head tosses back at the burst of pleasure. His hand is so perfectly skilled at remembering how to touch me just right.
Then his mouth is on my nipple.
And for once, oh thank God, Caleb Graham is not gentle.
He uses his teeth exactly how I need him to. I drag my fingers down his scalp as pain mixes with pleasure in an intoxicating way.
It’s the perfect potion that only Caleb can give me.
Caleb moves us around the spa and then angles my body so that one of the jets takes over for his thumb, hitting me right there at my swollen clit. Meanwhile he grabs my ass cheeks underneath my pajama shorts and drags them apart, teasing at my pussy with his thick fingertips.
Moments later, his cock is there, too. Hard and thick.
God this will sound shallow, but I have missed Caleb’s cock.
It’s so thick. Guys are always obsessed with length, and don’t get me wrong, Caleb’s got a good seven inches.
But it’s the thickness that made me so obsessed with his body back in the day. The fact that it happened to be attached to the most caring, gentle, loving person I’d ever met?
It only reinforced the narrative in my head that he was too good for me and I didn’t deserve him.
But at this point in my life?
I don’t fucking know what I deserve anymore. I think I’m going to do what I motherfucking want instead of being such a Goddamn martyr.
He wants me.
I want him.
Enough time has been stolen from us.
We both reach down at the same time, my hand gripping his shaft and his hand covering mine, possessive, as he feeds his cock underneath the loose leg of my pajama shorts into my already quivering pussy.
He’s not gentle about thrusting home.
All I can think, again, is, oh thank God.
He stretches me and I clench around him in welcome as all my nerve-endings light up. His thickness grinds against my swollen clit and I buck against him.
His arm cinches around my waist, as his huge hand palms my ass.
Our gazes lock, and his words come back to me, striking me with a wave of sensation.
Feel it. Right here. With me.
“What are you feeling?” he asks.
“Too much,” I answer back shakily. “And not enough.”
He squeezes my ass, fingers really clenching. “I’m here with you.”
God knows I know that. But I don’t mind him pulling out and thrusting back in as if to make his point.
I shudder around him.
“You don’t have to use words,” he says, leaning in and suckling at the base of my throat in a way that has me writhing on him. He breaks long enough to say, “Just give your body over to every sensation I bring you.”
His hand trails down the crack in my ass to my back hole, which he starts playing with while he continues fucking me.
My mouth drops open at how vulnerable he makes me feel.
But then his next words devastate me, “Let me fuck you like I love you. Because I do, Harper. I love you. I never stopped.”
My entire body spasms with release at his words, an initial orgasm rocking through my body.
He continues fucking me, mastering my body at an angle where his every thrust grinds so perfectly against my clit.
His probing fingers use the distraction of my climax to breach the clenching ring of my asshole. With two fingers. He pulls back against the thin wall where his cock fills me, making everything feel even so unbearably full.
I can’t help crying out, my high-pitched voice echoing off the pool room walls, only somewhat muted by the loud bubbling water of the jets.
There’s no control here.
In a world where I manage everything and everyone, constantly trying to just keep my head above water—
For once, with this one person who loves me—oh God, he still loves me!—I give over to his rhythm. It’s so easy. Not because I’m trying to perform an act I think I should, or to be sexy like I’ve seen in porn.
But just because my body is syncing with his.
We’re both chasing pleasure and furiously trying to get closer to one another’s body even though we’re already as close as two people can be.
Oh God, Caleb’s inside me.
Finally, we’re back together and Caleb is inside me again. Not just two naughty teenagers hiding a taboo sex life from their parents, but grownups now still choosing each other, no less obsessed—
He pulls me up out of the water, just enough so he can fuck me even more furiously against the smooth edge of the spa. The water resistance was slowing him down.
He hefts one of my legs up and over his shoulder, spreading me completely open to him. His hips still do that twist at the end so that just by fucking me he’s lighting up my clit.
I drag him down by his neck to kiss him furiously, needing to devour him in every way while I clench his thick shaft now sawing in and out of me with animal hunger.
“Harder,” I urge, another climax building, but just out of reach. “Fuck me harder, Caleb.”
He was just waiting for permission, apparently. He slaps my clit and then pinches my nipple before devouring my mouth again and absolutely devastating me with his cock.
I’m glad he’s kissing me to drown out the high-pitched whine of need escaping the back of my throat. The wild pleasure, the joy, and the tease of the next release—I forgot sex could feel this amazing.
I watch his face—transformed from the usual careful mask he wears, distorted with raw, devastated need.
His jaw clenches, veins popping with effort, eyes watering as our gazes lock again.
“Tell me you love me,” he demands, pinning me against the side of the spa and shaking with the restraint of keeping his climax at bay.
I squirm on his shaft, tears running down my face. “I love you, Caleb.”
I know I admitted it once, back in Dallas, but I haven’t repeated it since.
His face contorts even more as he leans down, presses his forehead to mine, and starts fucking me slow. Deep. Mesmerizing me.
“Fucking right, you love me,” he growls.
“Fucking right,” I gasp, more tears springing to my eyes.
He tugs me close in every way—with his arm around my waist, by the fingers still up my clenching ass, and with his shaft plunged so deep and throbbing inside me—
I can’t look away from the absolute pained bliss that takes over his features as he thrusts deep one more time and his hips jerk with release.
The next second he releases the pinching grip on my nipple and the tidal wave of pleasure that had been just out of reach moments before suddenly floods me.
Light flashes outward from my belly to the tips of my fingers and toes and scalp, and then every part of me is shaking with release as we climax together.
We sink back down into the hot, bubbling water, both spent, muscles still quaking.
“Feel free to get angry at me any time,” he gasps.
My giggle is drowned out by the water as I dip my head underneath the surface, feeling as effervescent as the bubbles.