44. PAIGE
FORTY-FOUR
PAIGE
I don’t move. I don’t say anything.
Neither does he.
Finally, I blink a couple of times, allowing my mind to fully wake up.
I heard him call my name downstairs—it filtered through my dream. We were driving.
It still feels like I’m dreaming. Driving.
But my hand isn’t on his knee. My head isn’t on his shoulder. He’s not touching me, but his smell is within reach, so I take that.
God, I want him to touch me— I want him to touch me so badly that my skin ripples and peaks with goosebumps just looking at him.
The urge to close the distance between us is so fierce, I feel a breath away from shedding my fucking skin.
Shedding his skin.
But I tighten my fists around the pillow case, keeping the protective layer for now —not by much— just the small bit of self-control that’s holding me back from reaching out to him.
He may be here— but I pushed him too hard last night. I can’t do it again.
It’s the reason I left.
But I would never send him away. Stuck in my daze, I finally ask, “What are you doing here?”
His eyes drift down to the comforter like maybe he thinks I’m asking him what he’s doing in the bed. For a moment, I think he’s about to get up, and my fingers twitch to reach out and stop him—but he simply says, “ You’re here.”
The response is low and gravelly, and reels my eyes deeper into his. Like my irises are growing arms and feeling for everything he isn’t — everything he can’t seem to tell me.
What isn’t he telling me?
I scoot toward him a little, moving away from that question. But as our bodies inch closer, the haunted forest in his gaze meets the violent sea of my own, and I feel the collision deep in my chest.
He’s here because I’m here, but he’s not saying anything. Our gazes still hold with our cheeks on the pillows, and after a few more seconds of silence, I rasp, “Please talk to me.”
His eyes float away from mine for a second, and I instinctively lean in. I don’t touch him, but the restraint makes my eyes well up.
I don’t . . . I don’t know how to be right now. With him. And I’ve always known how to be with him.
My throat tightens, but the pain staring back through his eyes is what breaks me. The fear.
The boy I’ve known my entire life is scared. Fucking terrified— and I know it’s because he believes I’m in danger right now.
He thinks he’s dangerous.
A sob escapes me at the thought, and his face blurs behind my tears. “Linc, this is . . . this is —killing me .” I barely make it through the sentence before another cry breaks free.
The anguished lines on his face, the fact that we’re within reach, but we’re not talking, not touching —this isn’t us.
This isn’t us.
This isn’t fucking us.
This is why I left.
My sobs bellow, my heart throbs, and my mind throws a fucking riot. It’s so unfair. It’s so fucking unfair that this happened at all. And if our shared horror wasn’t bad enough, the following aftermath is so hopelessly daunting that it feels like we’ll be caught in the Rubik’s cube of this trauma for-fucking-ever.
Stuck.
But I’m suddenly surrounded by the smell of woods. Ocean. His arms. “ Fuck , Pip,” he grits out, but my fists ball the fabric of his shirt, my fingertips digging into his back as he whispers, “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I want to crush the apology in my fist, grind it into the fabric of his shirt still clutched in my hands. I don’t want to talk right now. His hands suddenly shove through my hair, twisting, knotting, grabbing—and all I can think is . . . more.
Give me more.
“Oh God, please keep touching me.” My voice is nothing but breathy desperation and I don’t even care.
I don’t fucking care.
Because touch me he does. My arms, my neck. The rough pads of his fingers hesitate as he reaches my collar bone, his eyes meeting mine.
I see the silent question and I nod frantically. Keeping my eye contact firm, I tell him, “Anywhere.”
I’ve never meant anything more in my life, and I think he can see it. His gaze catches the permission like a shooting star. With only a second more hesitation, he buries his face into the side of my hair and runs his fingertips over my heaving chest, panting— feeling me.
“ This ,” he damn near growls as he curls the tips of his fingers into my chest, his nose skimming the shell of my ear like he’s marking me, and I match the movement.
Fucking mine.
We claim each other —re claim. His hand leaves my chest, but only to slide to my lower back, and the fist in my hair releases to explore.
God, his hands. His smell. Him.
But suddenly, his muscles tense, and I realize then that his hand is just breaching the curve of my ass. “Shit,” he mutters, moving to pull his hand away, but I snatch it back immediately.
I snarl —feeling goddamn feral— before I plant his hand back at the base of my spine, the contact making a small smack that tightens my core. But I put his hand right where it was before I saw his intrusive thoughts take hold.
My fingers take his chin, my breath panting. “I told you anywhere, and I meant anywhere.”
Our noses brush, and his eyes don’t darken, so much the color . . . shades— like a cloud just pulled over them, filtering the greens and browns—but then I see the faintest gold flecks pulsing to life.
I’m not sure where my bossy-little-bitch persona is coming from, but it seems to be effective because he slowly resumes his movement. His palm covers my ass, and I lean into his neck, running the tip of my nose along his scruff.
Suddenly, I feel a buzz coming from his back pocket —his phone.
He ignores it, and I’m sure as fuck not willing to share one of his hands if I don’t have to—not while we’re riding out one more delusional, delicious wave.
His hands drag over my body in the most hypnotizing cadence, like my limbs have caught their own personal current.
When his hands move to my lower back again, it’s different. His fingers slip under the cardigan, under my shirt, branding my bare skin, and a breathy moan escapes me.
We’re pressed together so tightly now that I feel his cock—long and hard as a fucking rock between us. Another needy whimper escapes me as I slide my leg over his, practically dry humping him.
What is happening? What am I doing?
But I’m only met with his hungry rumble before he tugs my hair so that I’m looking up at him.
“You like it when I touch you,” he rasps.
It’s not a question, but there’s curiosity to his tone, rough wonderment in his voice.
But my face must look mystified. A true and proper —yeah-huh.
Oh God, this is a bad idea. So bad. But all I can do is dip my chin in the slightest nod.
My brain is melting like butter as the fingers I’ve only felt in phantom touches for the last seven years feel every part of me—a desperate reverence setting my skin ablaze.
The mix of colors in his eyes smolder with matching heat. He keeps one hand in my hair, a slight tension in his fingers that keeps my chin tilted up, but he moves his other hand from my lower back up to my cheek.
His thumb runs along my bottom lip with awe-filled eyes, and my hips instinctively rock against his—but there’s too many layers. Too much between us.
Still, our hips grind, and the friction makes me gasp. In fact, the room fills with a mix of heavy panting, greedy fingers, and desperately stifled moans.
“Fuck, Pip—” he grunts, then pins his bottom lip with his teeth.
Something inside of me snaps. In an instant, I’m sitting up, pulling off the cardigan, yanking off my shirt —whoops, no bra— and I pull my leggings off, all in seemingly one distressed movement.
Bared desperation, I suppose.
But then I’m sitting—in a high kneel position—directly in front of him on the bed. The silvery-blue strands of my hair fall over my shoulder, brushing against my nipple, and I try to catch my breath.
Linc sits up quickly too, his eyes wide and gleaming—taking me in—wearing nothing but a light blue thong.
This should feel weird. This is weird. But . . .
His eyes manage to drag themselves up from my nakedness, his voice gravelly as he says, “Never.”
A shiver runs down my spine at his voice, and I breathe in his confirmation, my heart settling as he slowly moves toward me, but then his eyes drift down to my wrists, covered in lace and bracelets.
Oh, shit.
After a second, his gaze shoots back up to mine, and it’s a knowing look. I think he’s noticed the wrist decor already, and I’m certain he knows what they’re hiding, but . . . it’s on the “do not discuss” list.
And fuck— I don’t want his focus on that right now either.
I shift my hands back—just behind the back of my thighs, begging him with my eyes. Just stay. Stay with me.
He holds the tension in his stare for another second. I can see the disturbed curiosity in his gaze, still edging behind me, but he quickly pulls his eyes back up to me.
My wrists seem forgotten as he moves a bit closer. I can nearly taste the heady desire pouring out of him. His fingers clench and release at his sides, but just as he reaches a high kneel before me, his head hangs. “I don’t deserve this, Paige.”
God, the hit hurts. It does. And he called me Paige.
But my instincts tell me I can’t lean into his despair. I can’t feed into this delusion he’s been spinning for nearly a decade.
And still, every second he stares at me —so slowly— the fine lines in his face start to fade. His eyes move to my ear, they linger there.
After a moment, my mouth lifts. The freckles. Typically, I suppose it would be a major blow—to be buck naked in front of a guy and have him fixated on some freckles behind your ear.
But it’s not. Not with him. And I can see something stirring to life in his gaze. Like a light pulsing in the depths of a cave.
I take what he said —about him not deserving this— and I swallow it. I’ll take his unworthiness. I’ll take it if I can keep a piece of him.
I just want now , with him. This comfort. This safety. Just feel each other again. And I can see he wants that too. He’s just . . . fighting it.
“I’m begging you, Linc.” My pride flayed the moment I cried, demanding he touch me —long before that, probably— and I don’t fucking care.
If I need to strip myself down to nothing to show him I’m not scared, if I need to crawl and beg on my fucking knees for him to accept my consent —well, I’m fucking doing it!
And while he still doesn’t touch me, his eyes are another story. They’re . . . intense. But not in a bad way. Almost like he’s darkening the outline of my figure. Shading the various dips and lines of my muscles—the curve of my hips. He draws all of me with the timid drift of his piercing eyes before they drop to my thong.
Which reminds me . . .
A newer memory fuels my objective. I keep my eyes with Linc’s, but then take his hand, and slowly move it to my lower back. His safety spot.
A breathy whimper pushes past my lips, but it’s his hoarse groan that tightens the coil twisting deep in my stomach.
“I can’t, Pip. I’ll—” he chokes out before his teeth grind. My hand finds the back of his jaw again.
“You’ll what?” I ask, it’s not meant to be a challenge, I’m genuinely asking.
But he doesn’t respond with anything but a sharp inhale. And despite his words, he pulls me a bit closer, brushing my peaked nipples against the fabric of his shirt.
Our mouths are only an inch apart, and the rumble in his throat as he rubs and kneads his fingertips into my back is fucking divine.
Drunk and desperate, I whisper over his ear, “I know you took my underwear.”
A buzz surrounds us and his fingers halt their movement, but he doesn’t pull away. When his eyes slam shut, I instinctively clasp my hands around the back of his neck—nearly hearing the sizzle as my hands touch his skin.
He doesn’t flinch at my touch, but the victory is short lived as I notice heat spread up his cheeks.
Shit. I wasn’t telling him that to make him feel bad.
Tilting my chin, a barely-there, “Hey,” squeaks from my throat, trying to get him to open his eyes. I gently run my thumb over on the coarse hair of his jaw.
It’s longer than a few days ago when I did this.
When he carried me to bed.
My thumb massages the tension, and eventually, he opens his eyes. I can see the shame weighing down his eyelids and it lights that same furious match inside me.
But I use it. I use the flame for us, telling him, “I like that you took them.”
The gold in the center of his eyes breaks off like embers, spreading through the mix of dark greens and browns like fireflies. His expression starts to turn as the gravity between us pulls. “Y-You do?” he asks.
The hiccup in his voice makes my heart skip, but I use it, I add it to the flame, and I nod.
Keep him talking. Touching. Here.
He leans into me, inching me to move back, but then I recognize he’s lowering me down to the mattress. His clothed body presses against my naked one, but he doesn’t lie on top of me.
Propping himself on his elbow beside me, he just . . . watches.
The heavy weight of his stare starts to feel overwhelming, and I take his free hand, keeping my eyes with his. When he doesn’t stop me, I move it to my stomach, and gently place his hand just above my belly button.
My body intuitively squirms under his touch, but our gazes remain on our invisible tightrope.
Keep him talking.
The first thing I think to ask is if he recognized the underwear. But that seems like the worst fucking idea ever—so I move along.
His fingers twitch against my belly for a second, and I inhale sharply, then ask—”What’d you do with them?”
Linc’s brows furrow, but this time it’s from confusion.
Fucking hell.
My eyes float down to my thong—reminding him that before I was unabashedly lying here naked, we were having a kind-of conversation. Still naked.
Totally normal.
“I saw them the night I carried you to bed,” he says, suddenly. And holy fuck— the timbre to his voice has a resonance I haven’t noticed yet. Rich, deep, manly.
A shiver runs down my spine as I hear his phone buzz again from his pocket, but I’m too captivated by his eyes, his voice. I want him to talk again.
Linc ignores the phone too, and after a second, he clears his throat. “I thought of you . . .” He stops and shakes his head, and I take his wrist, then start moving his fingers on my stomach again.
He looks up at me, and I nod with a silent, keep going.
He takes a breath, but then I see the light dwindling, the dark mass moving back in.
No. No, please.
He sits up and rubs his palms up and down his face. After a moment, he rakes his fingers through his hair and his eyes screw shut. I reach out to him, but then stop myself.
Instead, I grab my shirt and shove it back over my head.
I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.
Desperate times call for desperate girls, I guess, but just as the shirt is back on Linc grabs my hands and pins me back on the bed.
His fists tighten around my bracelets—my wrists—holding them over my head. His eyes look dark, but not like last night.
A beat passes, our noses bump. Keeping his voice low, he asks, “You want to know what I did?”
My eyes widen, but only because he—he sounded more like . . . like he used to— but the tendons stretching in his neck tell me he’s anything but calm.
My body wiggles a bit, trying to adjust, but I meet his unyielding stare with my own dominant, “Yes.”
There’s this fleeting moment of confusion that flashes through his eyes, but it’s gone before I have time to analyze it—I can barely breathe between his smell and his weight —let alone form a coherent thought.
There’s one more sustained moment of eye contact where his eyes light with a wickedness I don’t recognize.
His hands, holding me down. Him on top of me.
But it’s like he’s forcing that thought on me through his gaze —using our ability to connect without words to try and scare me off.
But all it does is piss me off. I’m two seconds away from baring my goddamn teeth at him, but instead I give him a message. A spoken one.
“I’m not fucking scared of you,” I growl.
His chest inflates with a sharp inhale, his hands tighten around my wrists. Only another second passes before he seethes, “I beat my dick into your underwear, Paige. I thought of you, chained up and helpless beneath me, looking at me with everything I don’t deserve from you anymore, and I fucking came more than I ever have in my goddamn life.”
I tighten my face muscles to hide any sort of reaction. He’s telling the truth. I can see that. But there’s an edge to his voice, a cut to his eyes that still feels like he’s trying to intimidate me.
This time I do bare my teeth, an anguished growl of frustration and anger—arousal and rage—it all whirlpools together and rains through me like a fucking storm.
I take a breath and then ignite. My hips bump up as I drop my elbows, catching him off guard, and freeing my hands. In a quick movement, I latch onto his torso, then climb and lock my arms around his left bicep, pinning the arm as I use all of my weight, and pure fucking fury to roll—pushing him to his back as I straddle his hips, and pin both his arms beside his head.
His eyes are wide, blinking up at me, brows furrowed with confusion. My fingers dig into his wrists, and our gazes stay locked.
He could retaliate—he’s still stronger. If I were actually completing the self-defense move, I would have gotten the hell out of here, but I’m not.
Because I’m not defending myself.
My face lowers, closer to his, our noses grazing as I hoarsely whisper, “I’m in charge right now.”
He gives me his eyes, I can see instantly. The memory pings a small glint in his gaze —I’ve got him.
I can’t fight the smirk that tilts my lips as I loosen my grip on his wrists—but only to pick up his hands and plant them on my bare ass, only the string of the thong between my cheeks.
He grunts, but his fingers dig into my skin, his hips grinding up into me as a core-tingling groan rumbles in his throat.
I contain the flutter, the control, keeping his hands in place, his eyes in my trance. “Why would I be scared of you when you’re the only person I’ve ever let touch me like this?”
His response is a tidal wave as his mouth crashes against mine, and my tongue dives into his mouth like a thirsty animal.
His hands lose all resistance and he kneads my ass, pulling and tugging the skin to the same rhythm that he sips on my lips.
My hands dig through his thick mess of hair, making it messier. Nothing—and I mean fucking nothing compares to my deep desire to give this boy —man— everything I can at this very moment.
Our mouths move ravenously—biting, licking. Savoring.
But just as his lips move to my cheek, my ear —the freckles—my phone starts to vibrate , rattling on the nightstand.
No one ever calls me. And someone’s been calling Linc.
The thought manages to find us both, easing our lips, but not breaking free immediately.
Our kissing slows as my phone stops buzzing, and I press my mouth harder into his, not ready to end it yet. But then my phone starts to buzz again.
I groan just as Linc releases me, and I reluctantly pull away, rolling off him and looking over at my nightstand, the phone screen lighting up with Ellis’s name.
It’s what I suspected, but a wave of guilt sways heavily through my chest at the sight of his name. Watching it ring.
This is how I disappeared from him last time. Ignoring calls, texts. If he’s been calling Linc too, I don’t want him to think the same thing is happening again.
The call goes to voicemail, and I sit up, grabbing the phone off the nightstand. “It’s Ellis,” I mumble, my voice still raspy, the heightened feeling still buzzing through my veins. “I’m gonna call him back really quick, so he doesn’t worry.”
From the corner of my eye, I can see him do his old dance move—”the boner tuck,” as Ellis affectionately named it.
My mouth tilts as I click Ellis’s name, and put it on speaker. If we’re about to be yelled at, I’m including Linc.
I tried to leave.
But then I also silently demanded he get into bed and touch me. Stripped myself down to nothing.
Ellis answers the phone. “Paige?” he asks with a deeper urgency to his voice than I’m used to.
“Y-Yeah. Hey, sorry. I—uh—I decided to head back to Venice—”
“Is Linc with you?” he cuts me off.
I nod, but realize he can’t see me.
Linc clears his throat, then says, “Yeah, I’m here.”
A heavy sigh pushes through the phone and it feels like a dead wind. The kind that sweeps through a space when someone’s soul leaves their body —but I have no idea why.
“You guys need to come back here,” he finally says, his voice still deep and serious, and the hair on the back of my neck lifts.
I shudder, already regretting it as I ask, “Why?”
My eyes hold Linc’s, searching for any clue of what this could be about, but he looks confused too.
Ellis speaks up again. “Wade, he—uh . . . he found something.” His disturbed tone, the ambiguity—it all sends my heart rate into a fucking frenzy, and I swallow hard.
The flash drive.
It’s where my mind instantly goes. A thousand other thoughts and questions blaze through my mind, but none of them make it to my mouth.
The quietness in the room, the silence from Ellis on the other end of the line—my eyes lock with Linc’s, which are widening and drifting by the second. I take his hand in mine, and he blinks, his eyelids fluttering rapidly.
I watch for an indication that he’s fully back , then give him the silent message— stay with me.
As if he hears it, he dips his chin in a jagged nod. After another beat, I take a breath, then ask Ellis, “What is it?” Linc’s grip pulses around my hand, and I can feel Ellis’s thoughts pushing and running into each other through the phone. My impatience gets the better of me—”Ellis!”
He clears his throat. “It’s . . . it’s a video of . . . you guys.”
My heart drops at the confirmation.
It was always a fear—one that had also grown into a steep reality I wasn’t brave enough to face.
The existence of this eleven-minute monstrosity has been something I’ve kept to myself. But there has always been the looming knowledge that it could be viewed by other people. I’ve just been too scared to even try and find it.
I kept it in my box.
My stomach turns at the reality. The dread. I have no words, and Linc doesn’t seem to either.
“It’s—” Ellis starts to say, but then it sounds like he gags, and my spine stiffens.
My mouth snarls. “Did you watch it?”
“What?! No!” he barks through the phone. “As soon as it started—as soon as I saw it was you guys, I turned it off—but . . .”
Buffy bless. What else could there possibly be?
Truthfully, my heart can’t take anything else. It’s already barely fucking flickering in the bottom of the well.
But suddenly, it’s like Linc heard me slipping down —falling— and I’m suddenly surrounded again by his strong inked arms, holding me tightly to the wall of his chest. His heart races against my ear, and my fingers grapple for him —anything to ease the anxiety barrelling through me.
I take a breath. I breathe him in, just as Ellis says, “It’s titled Raw Footage. And it’s six fucking hours.”