Bloodstained Beauty

by Ella Fields

  “It can wait. Work.” He turned fully to face me. “Where were we?”

  “Cop?” I asked.

  His mouth twisted, then he pulled me over to sit astride him, and held my face. “I was too much trouble to head down that road.”

  “I don’t know if I believe you,” I breathed.

  “Believe it, baby,” he whispered, lips meeting mine.

  Six months ago

  “You liked the Care Bears?” Miles snorted, placing Funshine Bear back on his home atop my dresser. “Why am I not surprised and kind of turned on?”

  “Because you’re a freak,” I said, laughing and refusing to feel embarrassed about my inability to let go of some of my childhood.

  He pouted playfully, going through more of my belongings on the dresser.

  “Kidding. And give me a break. Other than college, this is my first time living away from home.”

  “Didn’t you attend college in Riverstone?”

  I tried to remember when I’d told him that, assuming it was probably during one of our many takeout dates or over the phone. We were still in that sickly stage of talking most nights until we were ready to pass out. “I did, yes.” My book shut with a thwack, and I placed it on my nightstand. “But still, I stayed in the dorms for a bit.”

  “A bit?” he questioned.

  “Okay.” I flopped back onto my bed, smiling up at the white ceiling. “I lasted a semester.”

  Miles’s laughter bounced off the walls of my bedroom and could probably be heard from the street.

  His red Henley covered his inked arms, the muscles on his back flexing as he reached up high to a bookshelf and plucked one down. “Little Red Riding Hood,” he read aloud.

  “A favorite.”

  He scrunched his nose at it, then carefully pushed it back in its place. “Not worried about being a little old for fairy tales?” He paused, taking in the Care Bear and then the old ragdolls I had sitting in an armchair by the window. “And toys?”

  A sting jolted my heart, but I masked it with a smile. “Not worried at all.”

  Returning my gaze to the ceiling, I heard something softly hit the floor, and then he was crawling over me. Shirtless. “I’m a dick,” he said, arms flexing as he rested his forearms next to my head.

  I gave him my eyes and nodded. “A little, but I’ve heard it before from my sister.”

  “That’s different.” His head lowered, lips whispering over my cheek. “You shouldn’t have to hear it from me, someone who loves you in a much different way than your family.”

  My breath froze in my throat, my lungs and eyes swelling. “So you love me, do you?” I tried to say it mockingly as if it didn’t mean anything.

  It meant everything.

  “I tried to stop it,” he said, his forehead coming to rest on mine, the scent of cherry gum caressing my lips from his breath. “But it happened anyway.”

  We’d been dating a couple of months. And even though it seemed like a relatively short time, especially when it came to dropping the L word, it didn’t feel rushed. It felt like a natural progression. I’d come to expect Miles in my life the way one expects the sun to rise. Every day.

  “Why would you try to stop it?” I asked, unsure why. Maybe I was stalling. Maybe I was just too damn curious.

  A puff of warm air hit my neck as he lowered his head, using his nose to nudge my chin up and allow him better access to the column of my throat.

  I moaned, my thighs clenching, when he said, “Because you’re too good for some bastard like me. But I want you in every fucking way I can have you, and I’m no good at staying away from what I want. What I need.”

  My legs lifted, toes pushing at his jeans. Soon, our clothes were in a pile on the floor, and he was dragging his lips over my tight nipples, his large palms swallowing my breasts.

  When he reached the apex of my thighs, his mouth and nose were on me, inhaling deeply. The rush of his exhale set my thighs quivering and opening farther as he began a brutal assault with his tongue. I was instantly climbing high, my hands fisting the brown strands of his hair as his tongue dug at my opening.

  “Miles,” I panted.

  He sat up and leaned over the bed, snagging his jeans and then unwrapping a condom.

  Apricot light was fading fast outside my bedroom window, casting his tanned and inked skin in half shadow. He looked like bad news, and when my eyes reached his swollen cock, he looked like he’d split me in two.

  Yet I greedily wrapped my legs around his waist, impatient to impale myself on him anyway.

  “Fuck,” he spewed as the head breached my opening, and my hips rolled, desperate to pull him closer, to connect, to fill myself.

  “Please,” I said, my voice unrecognizable. I was already out of breath. I liked sex, sure, but I’d never felt this burning lust to have it. This feeling consumed me every time we’d gotten close, and now that we were finally doing it, it was dizzying how badly I needed to combust.

  His nostrils flared as he steadied his weight over me with one arm while the other grabbed the side of my face. My lips caught his as soon as his head descended, and then he pushed forward, swallowing my garbled cry into his mouth with a groan.

  He fucked me slow, his hips rocking as though he could do this for days, but I soon learned his control only extended so far. Within minutes, the sound of our skin meeting echoed through the room, accompanied by the sound of my panting and his cussing.

  His nose came to rest on mine, his eyes squeezing shut as he whispered, “Come. Holy shit, please come.”

  It took a minute of my hips meeting his to search for that perfect friction. I only needed a little, and then my head fell back. My thighs became a vise that made it harder for him to maintain the pace he seemed frantic to keep.

  A strangled curse filtered into my hazy brain, and then my thighs were wrenched open. Miles rose onto his haunches, using my body to milk himself with a bruising grip on my hips.

  I watched in rapt fascination as he came, his head angled toward the ceiling, eyes half open, and every muscle seizing. His corded throat bobbed as he swallowed, and slowly, he relinquished the harsh grip on my hips.

  With my thighs resting over his and my ass half on his knees, I listened to his heavy breathing as my own heart rate slowed.

  His eyes hit mine what felt like a full minute later, and I smiled, wondering what thoughts were swirling in those brown depths. “You’re quite a sight.”

  He laughed, lowering me to the bed and moving to sit on the side of it, his fingers running through the messy strands of his hair. “I could most fucking definitely say the same thing about you.” His voice was strained as though he’d exerted a lot of energy just minutes ago. I grabbed the blanket from the end of my bed and pulled it over my rapidly cooling body as he disposed of the condom in my bathroom.

  Miles returned wearing his briefs and bent over to grab his jeans. “Did I hurt you?”

  I hummed. “Nope.”

  He inspected his phone, frowning as he looked at the window for a minute, then pocketed it after stepping into his jeans.

  “You’re going?” I sat up, the blanket falling around my stomach.

  He nodded, walking over to me after pulling his shirt back on. “Sorry, someone needs me to quote a job. I thought I could do it tomorrow, but apparently, they’re expecting me to start tomorrow.” He rolled his eyes, something he rarely did, which made me laugh. “I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

  Though my heart wanted to protest, I nodded. “Sure.”

  He kissed me, light and quick, then straightened and marched for the door.

  “Wait,” I said, wrapping the blanket around me and almost stumbling over it as I hurried after him to the front door of my half-empty apartment. I grabbed his hand, then grabbed the side of his face, rising on my toes to whisper against his lips. “I forgot to say I love you too.”

  His eyes shut briefly, and a ragged breath coated my lips before he kissed me. Our tongues met, and the blanket fell away
, his body melding mine to the wall by the door.

  “What about the job?” I said between breaths.

  “Fuck the job.” Bending, he gripped my thighs and wrapped my legs around him, then carried me back to my room.

  Four months ago

  “Keep them closed.”

  “Why?” I whined. “This isn’t as fun as it looks in the movies. I’m going to face plant or something.”

  A hearty chuckle sparked every one of my available senses. “Where’s the trust, Jem-Jem?”

  “Up your ass, courtesy of my foot if I get injured.”

  He stopped, turning me to the side, and lifted the blindfold. “Is that anyway to speak to your fiancé?” He dropped to one knee on a paved driveway.

  My gasp shook my lungs, and I looked behind him to the red and cream home. Quaint, new, and surrounded by tiny hedges.

  “Miles …?”

  “Down here.” He laughed.

  “Shit.” I exhaled, returning my attention to him and the ring that glinted in the afternoon sun. “You’re …?” I swallowed over the tears invading my throat. “You want to marry me?”

  “It’s not a question,” he said, voice quiet but resolute. “I am going to marry you. You’re going to be Mrs. Fletcher.”

  I sniffed, my head bobbing uncontrollably. “Okay.” I nodded again. “Oh, my god, okay.”

  Miles laughed, shaking his head. “This isn’t going how I planned. But Jem, I love you. I want you with me all the time. In that house behind me, in my bed beside me, and if you agree to take this ring, I promise I’ll cherish you for the unexpected gift you are.”

  I was full-blown crying by that stage, unable to see his face or anything around me through the blur of tears. “Stop it,” I said, sniffing and roughly wiping my hands over my wet cheeks. “I said okay.”

  He pulled me to his lap, where I straddled him in the middle of the driveway in the middle of the afternoon and let him slide the glittering diamond ring onto my finger.

  “Sorry,” I said once I’d finally calmed down a little. “I kind of had an emotion explosion.”

  “If you hadn’t, I would have wondered who I was asking to be my wife.” Some unnamed emotion skittered across his face as I smiled down at him. He kissed the ring on my finger, then lifted his T-shirt to wipe my cheeks with it. “I’ve got you, Jem-Jem. I swear.”

  “Dad, could you please just give him a chance?” I whispered in the kitchen.

  The same one I used to slide into in my socks every winter when the floor was cold and extra slippery.

  He sighed, taking the towel from me and hanging it up. “He didn’t ask my permission.”

  I groaned. “We don’t live in that kind of world anymore.”

  He stabbed a finger at me after popping the tab on his beer can. “Exactly. And we’re all doomed because of it.”

  I crossed my arms, leaning back against the kitchen counter with a brow raised.

  Dad sighed. “Jesus Christ. I’ll try, okay?” He looked out the small window in the kitchen, the one that granted a view of the dining and living room beyond, and didn’t even try to lower his voice. “I don’t trust him.”

  That wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. Miles met my dad briefly when we’d invited him out for lunch not long after we’d started dating, and Miles had been called into work halfway through.

  “A man who gives a damn puts his woman’s needs first. Always,” he’d said after Miles had apologized profusely before jetting out the door of the coffee shop.

  He had a backward, old-fashioned way of looking at things. Always had. He’d never liked my high school boyfriend, and he didn’t even know about the one I had in college, but he had no problem with Hope’s husband, Jace, or the many boyfriends she’d had before him.

  Hope said it was because I was the baby, which I found ridiculous. I might’ve been a dreamer, but I’d always been far more responsible than my older sister.

  Being that she was four years older than me, my early teens were filled with memories of her sneaking out, sneaking back in, and ditching school to hang out at the local skate park on the outskirts of town. Kind of stupid, if you asked me, seeing as Dad was Lilyglade’s sheriff at the time, and word always got back to him.

  He’d retired two years ago to concentrate on the small farm we had. Maintaining it became a full-time job when he let go of the help he’d had while working.

  I thought it would keep him busy enough that he wouldn’t grow more cynical, but I should’ve known better.

  “Everything okay?” Miles asked, walking into the kitchen with some empty plates.

  “Fine,” I said, taking them from him with a smile.

  He leaned down to kiss my forehead, inhaling a deep breath and whispering on an exhale so low I almost didn’t catch it, “Let it go, babe. He’ll come around in his own time.”

  My dad watched Miles leave the kitchen with a twist to his lips. “Look, Jemmie.” He took a large pull of his beer, then looked at me. “I’ll wait for this shitshow to blow up, and I’ll be here when it happens. But in the meantime, he’s not getting any of my fucking beer.”

  He left the kitchen, muttering something that sounded like, “Bad enough he eats my god damned food.”

  Three months ago

  I inspected the price tag on the wooden chopping board. “Holy fuck.”

  Miles chuckled. “Shhh.” He glanced around, then took the board and set it down. “Not the best place for people with potty mouths.”

  I scowled at him, and he wrapped an arm around me and kept us moving. “You’re way worse than I am.”

  “True, but I don’t have a job where I need to tone it down. You should know better,” he teased.

  I inhaled the crisp, clean scent of his cologne, then pressed a kiss under his jaw as we stopped at a selection of dining tables. “Now I’m hungry.”

  His hands landed on my hips, squeezing. “Dirty girl, not here.”

  I stepped away, smacking him lightly in the chest. “For actual food, smartass.”

  An older woman a few feet away, wearing her hair in a tight chignon, frowned at me before scurrying off. I shrugged, plucking out a white dining chair and taking a seat.

  The wood of the table matched the chairs, the surface smooth beneath my palms as I ran them over the paint. My ring stole my attention, something that had happened often in the weeks since Miles slipped it on my finger. I’d dreamed of happily ever afters since I was a little girl, using books as a crutch to liven my sad soul after Mom died.

  It worked, so much so that the love and the way I depended on them never left.

  Had I imagined a more elaborate proposal than what I got, I couldn’t remember. It was finding love and being in love that held my complete and utter fascination when I thought of happy endings. Not the ostentatious gestures.

  “I’ve gotta say, I love how much you stare at that.”

  My lips thinned as I tried to hold back a grin, then rose from the dining table. “It’s too big.”

  “The ring?” he asked, his voice raised from shock.

  I laughed. “No, that’s perfect. I meant the table.” A look at the price tag attached to it had me adding, “And too freaking expensive.”

  Miles took my hand after I’d tucked the chair beneath the table, steering me toward a smaller one that seated four but extended to seat six.

  “We’ll need it for visitors.” My shoulders slumped a little. “Not that we have many.”

  Miles chucked me under the chin, then sighed as he slipped his hands into his jeans pockets and glanced around at the almost empty store. “We’ll invite your dad and sister over.”

  He said it so casually as if he didn’t care one bit that my dad hated him and my sister had yet to even meet him.

  “When will I meet your parents?” I asked again. He rarely spoke of them unless prompted, and when he did, it was always the basic facts. They lived in a small town two hours north. His dad was a carpenter, and his mom ran the local library. F
or that fact, I really wanted to meet her, certain we’d have loads in common.

  Miles’s shoulders tensed, his eyes moving to the dark oak dining table. “Soon, I hope. I should call them.” He nodded as if making a mental note to do that. “It’s been a while.”

  Humming, I brushed a hand over the wood, imagining a cute lunch spread sitting atop, smiles and laughter from those helping themselves. “Does your mom like to cook?”

  “Um, yeah. I guess.” He shook his head, some of his hair falling to his forehead before he pushed it back. “She likes to read and listen to my dad in his workshop.”

  That made me smile. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

  A tattooed arm slid around my shoulders, pulling me against his hard body. “She’ll love you,” he murmured to the top of my hair.

  A saleswoman approached, asking if we needed any help. I was about to shake my head and say no thank you when Miles stopped me. “This one. We’ll take it.”

  Present day

  “Your ass is mine tonight.”

  “Uh-huh. Hey, pass me my brush, would you?”

  Miles huffed but did as I requested, watching as I dragged the brush through my dark brown hair. He was wearing his gym shorts and a white band T-shirt that wrapped snug around his huge chest.

  I loved the way I felt tiny next to him, even if I wasn’t tiny at all. Something about it made chills spark over my skin and caused my heart to swell with anticipation.

  His wavy brown hair was damp, and I watched him rake a tattoo covered hand through it as I applied a nude gloss to my lips.

  “Stop it,” I said, tucking my gloss away and smacking my lips together while inspecting the rest of my face.

  “Stop what?” His chest met my back, thick arms banding around my middle as I tried to leave the bathroom.

  “I’m going to be late,” I whined as he pushed my hair aside for his lips to glide over the sensitive skin below my earlobe.

  “Live a little, babe.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m trying but living requires working in order to pay for living. Necessities and all.”