I Will Revel in Glory

by Stunich, C. M.

  He looks over at me and we stare into each other’s eyes.

  “It’s over, Gidge. I’m tired of running from this. You’re mine; you were always meant to be mine. I explained that to you.” He sighs like I’m an idiot and scoots up the bed so that he can lean into the pillows with an agonized groan, like this conversation has drained the life out of him.

  This pregnancy thing is … I shouldn’t say unexpected because how stupid is that? Gee, I had unprotected sex, I wonder how I got knocked-up? But still, I wasn’t thinking when the club burst onto the scene and Grainger appeared like a ghost in the night.

  How could I have ever imagined that I’d get from there to this?

  Assuming, again, that the baby is Grainger’s. I started my pills again as soon as I got home, but there’s about a seven-day delay in effectiveness. The mystery is still up in the air.

  “Is this a monumental fucking disaster for you?” Grainger asks, and while the words are something I might expect him to say, the tone is completely different. He’s posing a legitimate question, not trying to insult me.

  “No,” I reply honestly, turning and crawling up the bed toward him. He looks down at me just in time to see me on all fours, and he curses with a viciousness that I didn’t expect. I pause beside him, sitting back on my calves and watching the way his gaze rakes over me with desperate hunger.

  “It’s been too long, Gidge. I need it.”

  “You almost died,” I repeat, and he stares at me like I’ve lost my fucking mind.

  “What’s your point? That I deserve pussy now more than I ever did before? I swear to God if you don’t ride my dick right now, I’ll turn over and fuck this mattress so hard that I’ll tear all of my stitches out.”

  “Don’t you dare threaten me,” I warn him, but still, I can’t get his words in the cathedral out of my mind. I missed you so much; I hate you so much. I could masturbate to those words alone and get myself off a thousand times on the darkness in his voice. The need. The sick desperation. He wanted me so bad that he couldn’t wait. That’s how much he wants me now. Maybe more.

  “Threaten you? Sweetheart, that’s a promise.” Grainger reaches down to undo his pants, and I watch in fascination as his thick cock springs free, a bead of pearly pre-ejac resting on the tip like an invitation. I force my eyes back to his face as he fists his cock in his hand, stroking himself as he stares at me in challenge.

  I’m still sore from fucking Sin, but I also can’t seem to resist Grainger either.

  I’ve missed him. If he’d died … All I can think about is the quiet, restrained chatter in that room, the feel of his limp hand in mine, the tears that ran hot and salty down my face.

  I’m wearing an oversized t-shirt now along with a pair of Sin’s boxers, that’s it. I’ll admit, when I woke up this morning with a bizarre craving for orange juice (is this pregnancy shit or something?), I found myself entertaining a strange thrill at the idea of digging through Colton’s dresser drawers as he slept.

  I’ve never had the opportunity to wear a boy’s clothes before. Well, okay, man’s clothes, but Sin is the closest thing I will ever have to that giddy, champagne-bubbles-in-the-chest feeling that I’ve heard other high school girls talk about.

  The thing is, I could never get that feeling from a high school boy. Even now, thinking about Trevone Hundley kissing me in the cold waters at the church camp, I feel nothing. Less than nothing. Blank.

  I don’t want a boy; I want a man.

  And Grainger, dickhead that he is, is most definitely a man in every way that matters. He’s big and hard—in more ways than one—with a chiseled jaw and dark stubble, his rust-red hair a similar color to my eyes.

  He offers me my own version of those champagne bubbles, like fluttering bats in my belly instead of butterflies. It’s the sort of dark, morbid love that can only be built on a foundation of tragedy. It’s the only thing a girl like me can really dig into.

  I swing my leg over his lap, spreading my thighs and hovering above the thick heat of his erection. The boxers are easy enough to push aside, so I don’t bother to remove them. I like the idea of fucking Grainger while wearing Sin’s clothes anyway.

  My hands come up to touch either side of Cade’s face, digging my fingers into his hair and searching for the edge of that sun and moon tattoo that rests partially beneath his hairline. The first time we had sex—first time ever for me—he had the sides of his head shaved, and this tattoo was highly visible. Now, it’s hidden, almost private.

  I brush my thumb across that ink, feathering his hair, and he quite literally growls at me, reaching up to snatch my wrist in strong fingers.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, voice accusatory. I scoot back, brushing my hips over the straining length of his cock until it’s pinned between me and his rock-hard stomach. Keeping most of my weight on my thighs, I rock against the underside of his shaft and make him curse so violently that a smile rises to my lips.

  “Grainger,” I say, giving him a look that he returns with a fierce one of his own, the fingers of his left hand burning as they hold my wrist in a punishing grip. “Don’t fight this.”

  “Fight what?” he asks with a harsh laugh. “Sex? Because you know I want to fuck you, Gidge. I’ve wanted that for years. Unfettered. Unrestrained. I thought maybe there was something about that, about you being off-limits and taboo as fuck.” He shakes his head as I lean over, brushing my mouth against his, but just barely.

  He’s still recovering; I’m in complete control right now.

  It’s a rare opportunity, to have Cade Grainger this vulnerable. I don’t imagine anyone has ever seen him like this. If I have my way, nobody else ever will. This is for me and me alone, and so I’ll give him something that he can have all to himself.

  I rock my hips against his cock again, already regretting keeping the boxers on. The material is thin enough that I can feel his heat, that I know I’m soaking through the fabric with my own arousal, but I want—no, I need—his skin to touch mine.

  Using the wrist he’s still holding, I move his hand to my chest and place my left one over the top of his, pushing his palm against my beating heart.

  “That night … if you’d fought just a little harder, it might’ve been just you and me.”

  The words fall between us like stars, winking in a distant sky. The light is there, but it takes eons for it to reach the eyes. That’s what my words are like, just hanging there, waiting to be perceived, flickering and dancing and burning.

  Cade looks at our entwined hands on my chest and not at my face. He’s breathing hard; I can feel him underneath me. Oddly enough, I feel like I can sense his heartbeat in his cock. I push my hips down harder, pinning that impossibly rigid shaft between our bodies. He grits his teeth and finally lifts his eyes to mine.

  “If you’d asked me, just one more time …” he trails off, and I see that not only are my words like stars, but that we are also like stars, shooting stars. Passing comets in the night. We came so close to being wrapped up in one another inextricably, forever. “I would’ve stayed.” He actually finishes the thought, rather than leaving it hanging the way he usually does, unspoken but implied.

  I don’t want implications anymore; I want the bold, honest truth.

  He slides his palm down my chest, and I let him, watching as he pushes up Sin’s t-shirt so that he can lay his bare skin against my belly. I know what he’s thinking as he looks at me, wetting his lips, lifting his eyes to mine.

  “Before anything else, I always make sure that I have a condom,” he says, almost absently, but with such a gravity to his words that I know this is the most honest and the most real that Cade Grainger has ever been. “Every time I fuck someone, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. If I don’t have one, it doesn’t happen. I don’t trust anyone.” He wets his lips and caresses his hand over my stomach, and I can see that even while he parades around with this macho male excitement at the idea of being the one to actually get me pregnant, he wants m
ore than that.

  He wants something that feels impossible to put a name to.

  “Except with you. Only with you has my need obliterated everything else. When I saw you in that cathedral, wearing that dress, there was this moment, just after you picked up the gun …” He trails off and his nostrils flare, lifting those dark eyes from my belly to my face. I press my hips down harder and thrust along his length, making him curse again. “You weren’t sure which side you were going to be on and damn it, I knew that if you started firing on the club, I wouldn’t be able to do it. To kill you.” He exhales and then reaches over to the nightstand, opening the drawer and pulling out a knife.

  I watch in abject fascination as he slides the blade through the waistband of the boxer shorts, chucks the weapon aside, and then reaches down to grab both halves of the garment. With a bunching of his coiled arm muscles, he rips, and the fabric rends apart, baring my cunt to him.

  He grabs my hips and pushes me down, and I can’t help it, I drag my slickness along the length of him, spreading my arousal across his hot skin. The sounds that slip past his lips are wild, unchained things, things left to carouse in the darkness alone before my demons joined them.

  I put my hands on his shoulders for better leverage, but he pushes them aside so that he can take his shirt off. Once the fabric lies pooled on the floor, he takes my hands and puts them back on his shoulders. I see now all the bandages on his chest, and I wonder how lucky we both are to have survived what we did.

  Our eyes meet.

  “While I was gone, how many women did you fuck thinking of me?” I ask, expecting a cocky answer and a violent smirk, some absurdly high number thrown in my face that’ll make me both jealous and horny all at the same time. “For those three months, how many?”

  He squeezes my hips even harder, forcing me to grind down against him in a way that I thought might be painful but that he seems to love.

  “Do you know how fuckin’ pissed off I am right now?” Grainger grinds out, letting that familiar rage of his climb to the surface. He pushes me down even harder and we both groan. I end up leaning farther forward, reaching past him to grip the headboard so that I can increase my pace without putting too much pressure on his healing body.

  It’s so wet between us, and it turns me on because there’s nothing but my arousal and his pre-ejac to lube us up. Just us. Just our bodies. We don’t need anything else. The motion and angle of my hips causes the head of his cock to bump against the almost painful nub of my clit, and I know I’m not going to last much longer before I’m sliding down the length of him.

  “How pissed?” I ask, unsure where this is going but finding myself almost past the point of caring. I want Grainger; he wants me. Whatever else there is, it doesn’t matter half as much as that. This is basic, primal. That’s how we are, me and him. A man and a woman who just fucking want each other, who can’t get enough of one another’s bodies. “How pissed, Cade?”

  He jerks my hips forward, angling himself at my opening, and then pulls me violently down the length of his cock, slamming my pelvis into his and filling me completely. I gasp at the delicious torture of the invasion, wanting more, needing more, but unsure if I can even handle this much. My lower belly muscles ache as I suck in a huge breath, my eyes meeting Grainger’s.

  “You actually think I would fuck some random bitch while you were with the mafia? Gidget, I couldn’t eat. I barely slept. I was a goddamn wreck.” He moves my hand from the headboard back to his shoulder and gives me this imperious look that makes me hot all over in so many different ways. “Ride me. Now.”

  It’s a command that I want to obey, but my body seems frozen; my heart has stilled.

  “You waited for me,” I whisper, but he’s shaking his head and letting out a harsh, angry laugh.

  “Waited? Gidge, I fought like hell. I spent every spare moment I had helping to organize that fucking raid.” He narrows his eyes on me, and I hate that he can look so tough, so badass, when he just nearly died. There’s so much fire in him; it calls to the fire inside of me, too.

  We are both as wild, as unpredictable as those wildfires eating away at the Oregon landscape.

  “Thank you,” I tell him, and the words seem to surprise the shit out of him. He opens his mouth like he’s about to respond, but like, he’s fucking Grainger, so I don’t want to hear whatever else he has to say, just in case he ruins this moment.

  I rise up on my knees, dragging my silken pussy up his shaft. The delicious friction between us burns like a fresh spark on dry tinder. Only … there’s nothing dry about this. It’s so slippery and wet between my legs, I might be worried that I started my period if I weren’t … I exhale and reach down, grabbing the hem of Sin’s shirt and yanking it over my head. I toss it aside as Grainger makes this low, dark sound in the back of his throat, reaching out and running his palms up my sides to cup my breasts.

  He isn’t gentle, kneading and caressing them with every ounce of strength in those powerful fingers. His grip is insane, those corded forearms of his bunching with each movement of his hand as he palms my breasts and lifts the heavy weights.

  I drop my hips again, sliding back down his length and making his breath hiss out in a rush.

  “Faster,” he snarls, digging his fingertips into my milky skin. I’ve still got a few marbled bruises here and there from the bomb blast, but it’s nothing compared to the ones on Grainger’s chest and arms, barely visible in the dim lighting of the room. All we have is the vague dimness of a night-light that leaks under the door from the hall, and the effused light of early morning as it brightens up on the other side of the wood blinds.

  “No, Cade,” I tell him, looking deep into his eyes. “I’m not letting you push yourself past your limit.” I lift up again and then slowly, to the point that it’s almost agonizing for me, slide back down him again. My eyes drift to the space between us, where it’s clear even in this low light that our bodies are joined together. There’s no mistaking the sounds of it either, the wet slide, the moans, the heaving panting. Up and down, over and over and over again.

  I can feel him beneath me, his strong thigh muscles quivering as he tries to hold himself back from the edge.

  “Fuck this,” he growls out and then I’m being flipped onto my back and Grainger’s on top of me.

  “Grainger,” I murmur, even as he drives his hips deep and hard against mine, grinding his pelvis into me. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

  “Shut up,” he grinds out, dropping his head to lick and kiss the edge of my mouth, refusing to allow full contact between our lips and tongue. He’s teasing me, and I love it. I also hate it.

  He powers into me hard and fast, and I spread my legs wide, welcoming him in, bringing my thighs toward my chest. My hands grip his ass cheeks, digging my coffin-tipped nails into his skin as he moves with a ferocity that I didn’t quite expect.

  “I hate you so much,” he tells me again, and then he puts his lips right up against the side of my throat and bites me hard enough that I cry out. “I love you so much.”

  And there it is.

  The words hit me like a punch to the heart, and I’m groaning and writhing and thrusting up to meet him. I’m thinking about that moment in the resuscitation room where I almost lost him, and then I’m reveling in the raw, masculine strength of him above me, driving into me, claiming me.

  He pulls out at the last moment, and then comes hard, his cock pulsing and throbbing as white ropes of cum spatter my lower belly and the dark patch of hair above my aching clit. Grainger grinds the head of his dick against that raw, needy flesh before he collapses facedown beside me with a groan, panting and shaking from exertion.

  “You idiot,” I murmur, rolling over and straddling his bare ass.

  “The hell are you doing?” he grinds out, but he’s in no state to move. What the moron needs now is rest, rest, and more rest. Not wild, uncontrolled sex. I straddle that firm ass of his and then grind my hips against him, like I’m fucking him from behi
nd. I’m not sure that he likes it, but he’s also exhausted and missing me, so he lets me do it, use his body to get myself off.

  My hand sneaks between my legs, and I ride my own fingers as I thrust against his ass. The orgasm hits me soon enough, and I close my eyes, enjoying the feel of my own body as it works hard to pleasure my fingers with its contractions.

  When I curl up beside him, he surprises me by wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close. This’ll be our first time having sex and then actually sleeping in the same bed together,

  It feels monumental somehow.

  He curls his body around mine and bites me in the side of the neck again, making me shiver.

  “Everything about this makes sense but for one thing,” he whispers, his voice as dark as the fading shadows at the edges of the room. If we’re going to sleep through part of the day—it seems like that might be a regular thing for these guys—then we’ll need curtains in here. It’s already starting to get too light.

  “But for what?” I whisper back, almost too afraid to move, to break this moment apart and realize what I’ve feared all along: that life is dark and bloody and thick with bullshit, and that moments of beauty are too few and far between for it to be worth it. I’ve been rethinking that lately, but I’m scared. I don’t want it to be true. Please, prove me wrong, I beg, but I’m not sure who it is that I’m asking. If Reba were here with me now, she’d suggest asking God.

  Personally, I think I’m asking myself that question.

  If I make the right choices, if I fight with everything I’ve got, can I make a beautiful life amongst all of these shadows, all of this ugliness?

  “Sharing you,” Grainger adds, drawing me so close that there’s no saying where exactly his naked skin ends and mine begins. “You should be mine and mine alone. I’ll regret the mistakes I made that night for the rest of my life.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all.