by Ella James
“Sit down.” I wave at the couch. “Take your coat off. Someone brought some good stuff by—Miss Laura?”
“Miss Alice’s twin,” she murmurs with a nod.
“Yeah.” I don’t remember who Miss Alice is, but I walk toward the kitchen as I say, “Sit down. I’ll get you some.”
It’s darker in the living room than here in the kitchen. I hope she’ll wait there. When I don’t see her in the doorway, I run the sink’s faucet and stick my arm under the cold water.
Fuck. It still looks like shit. Like one big bruise, but you can see the needle marks along the hump of my vein. Would she know what that means? Yeah, dickhead. She’s not an idiot.
My gaze flies to the knives. The worst of the damage is right there in the crease of my elbow. That bad bruise is probably what she saw in the moonlight. If I could make a little cut there, she might notice that and not the other shit.
With another glance over my shoulder, I grab the knife and set it in the sink. I look back again before pulling the plate of bread closer, like I’m fucking with that. Then I lower my arm into the sink and, with shaking fingers, drag the knife tip over my skin.
As I set the knife back into the sink’s trough, she says, “Declan?”
Shit.
I nearly jump out of my skin as she strolls over.
“Oh, it’s friendship bread. We do a lot of that here lately.” I fold my arm up as she looks from the plate to me. “Have you tried it?”
Sweat prickles my hairline as I feel blood drip off my arm. Right on target, Finley’s eyebrows scrunch up. Then her eyes pop open wider, and she looks me up and down. “Are you all right?”
Her gaze dips to the floor and then snaps to my arm.
“Oh no. Sit down there.” She points at the kitchen table. I pull a chair out as she leaves the room. Then I double back and stash the knife back in its slot. You fucking idiot. I sit down and dig my fingertips into my bicep, raise the arm over my head.
Just take some deep breaths.
I do that, so I’m not shaking quite as bad when she comes back with a first-aid kit. Her brows are drawn together in concern, and her red, puffy eyes are kind enough to make me feel another wave of hatred for myself as she sits in the chair beside mine.
“There now. Let me have a look…”
I don’t want to show her, but I’m out of options. I stretch my arm out, shut my eyes. I feel weird and sweaty, kind of tingly. Her hand on my forearm makes me feel like I’m about to get sick.
I pull in some deep breaths, waiting for the gasp or murmur. Instead, she tears a packet open.
“All right. I’ll get cleaning it. All I have is alcohol on hand, so it will burn more than a bit. I’m terribly sorry.”
It does burn. I feel it in my head and throat—a deep, deep sting that makes my eyes and mouth water. I must have gotten veins with that knife cut and not just flesh. After she’s done cleaning the gash with alcohol, I start to shake again because…endorphins. Pain—and then the absence of it—feels like pleasure to me.
I feel calm for just a minute. Calm enough to get a few deep breaths with my face hidden behind my right hand. Then her fingers drift along my vein.
She’s quiet as she cleans the puncture marks, but I’ve got my eyes shut, and everything feels like it’s spinning. She said she didn’t want to see me anymore, which means she doesn’t want to see this shit. I dig my fingers into my temples. She rubs something over the marks.
I can hear the beeps and robot voice of the defibrillator. For the thousandnth time, I wish I’d never been brought back. I think about the lines of light crisscrossing—light on water; of the sinking and the thick, pervasive cold that was my death dream…and I feel so much worse.
Finley rubs my forearm. “I’m going to do a gauze wrap so the Band-Aids don’t tug at your hairs here.”
She wraps my whole forearm, starting at the top, where she takes for-fucking-ever wrapping the cut. Before she ties it off, she whispers, “Does it feel all right?”
I nod, and she does the rest. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t look at her. Not even when her hands are off my arm, and it’s becoming weird not to. I run my hand into my hair and hold my forehead. Force myself to swallow. Speak. “Hey—could you go now?”
I fucking pray she’ll take the out. When she doesn’t reply, I exhale slowly. “Just a sewing needle.” I train my eyes on the tablecloth. “Kind of like a fake-out…for cravings.”
I can see the moonlight on the water up above me. That’s how I know it’s a hell nightmare and not some peaceful heaven vision. The way it squiggles? That part’s how I know that it’s the ocean: waves. As I drift underneath the surface, I feel pain in every part of me. Not just my chest, where it makes sense because they were doing chest compressions as I dreamed.
I feel fury. Agony. A helplessness that’s so profound, I feel it ripping at my fucking soul. I remember trying to kick my way up. It felt so urgent, like I’d be okay if I could just get to the surface. Up to…someone.
I was dead, but I remember someone waiting for me up there. Ever since then…
I squeeze my eyes shut as I hear her push her chair back.
Finley
He can’t look at me. That’s what hurts the most, I think: to see him with his eyes averted, asking me to please just go—so that he doesn’t have to speak about it.
I imagine that he must have struggled quite a lot and jabbed himself to simulate a pleasure feeling, and then run to fire up his endorphins. When that didn’t work, he wound up at the cliffs, racked with so much pain he thought of jumping.
I think of how he seemed outside, the odd look on his face as we stood near the automobile. Just a look of pain, really. I saw it mostly in his eyes, the sort of squint about them. Now I understand. He was poorly the entire while, even as he offered to drive me home, telling me I would feel better tomorrow. My poor Sailor.
His hand remains over his eyes. I see the tension in his frame, his shoulders. How long has he struggled this way? Since the burrow? Thinking of the burrow brings to mind the time when we stood by the cave’s mouth—just before he moved the stone—and he crouched down in front of me so I’d be forced to look at him.
I take a deep breath, and then I sink down to my knees beside him. I crawl partway beneath the table cloth and tap his knee. When he shifts a bit, I laugh.
“Peek down at me. Please,” I whisper.
“What are you doing?”
“If you won’t look up…” I scoot my entire body beneath the table, and he gives a rough laugh.
For a second, he won’t move. I’m just sitting by his knees. I lean my cheek against one of his thighs and wrap my arm around his calf. I cross myself. Then, with whispered words, I gamble.
“If you knew how wonderful I find you…simply lovely—really in all ways. And I know you’re wildly wealthy and quite sought after.” I smile. “But that part doesn’t matter to me.” I press my cheek against his thigh, against the softness of his running pants, and hug his calf. I feel him trembling. “I could never pity you because I have so much affection for you, Carnegie, that I can tell you only from beneath a table. Because you’re right. I am shy.” I stroke his hard calf, feeling a bit surreal.
“I know you must be in such a horrid state, but that’s not what I see most clearly. I simply adore you…and it’s you I see. I think I cannot stay away.” I gulp a breath back, my heart racing even as my words are soft and measured. “Before tonight, I was afraid of being hurt. Then I saw you on the ledge, and the fear I felt…” I shake my head. “Not only was I terror-stricken, but… I wanted you. My heart ached the moment I saw you.” I blink against my tears, and his leg shifts slightly.
“I’ve decided I don’t want to stay away. If it hurts—if feeling this way for you simply hurts—I’ll bear it. I want to be near you. I want you to hurt near me. I feel certain that together we’d be…better.”
I feel him shift a bit. I peek up, but I don’t see his face. I duck out from beneath the
tablecloth and find him with his head down, his forehead resting on his right forearm. For once, his body seems completely motionless.
“I’m frightened now.” I try to laugh, but the sound catches. “If you feel I’m mad… If all of that seems quite apart from how you feel—”
He lifts his head, and I see that his eyes are red. His face is stoic.
I wipe at my tears. “I suppose I simply wanted to jump for you, and to hell with the consequences.”
His chair scrapes the floor, and then he’s wrapping me against his chest, holding me in a near-crushing hug. I feel his ribs flare, and I cling to him with returning force.
Then he’s scooping me up, carrying me through the living room as a groom carries a bride, his strong arms beneath my back, behind my knees, my cheek against his warm chest. Never, as he carries me to the bed, does he look at my face. Neither does he as he stretches out atop the covers beside me, drawing me against himself, his hands trembling.
He presses his cheek atop my head. I wrap my arms around his neck.
“Since the burrow,” he says hoarsely.
He breathes deeply, and I kiss his throat as my heart hammers wildly.
“The first night back, I was afraid,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry I left you.”
A tremor moves through his shoulders. “Don’t be sorry.” He kisses my hair, hugs me closer. “You’re so fucking perfect, Siren. Sometimes it’s the only thing that gets me through.”
“I’m so sorry that you’re suffering.” I run my hands into his hair. I kiss his throat, and then his chin. I stroke his forehead with my fingertips. “My poor darling… Is it this way every day?”
He gives a little lift of his shoulders, shuts his eyes.
“You’re so strong. A lion,” I whisper. “You’re so good and kind. Relief will come.”
His fingers strum my back like a guitar, even as I feel him trembling.
“You’re so brave.” I lean back a bit to look into his eyes and find them closed. I kiss his cheek. “I won’t leave you alone again. I’ll stay here with you.”
His mouth covers mine, and together we groan.
Four
Finley
He kisses deep and hot and hard, as if he means to claim me. One hand fists my hair. The other cups my cheek as his tongue cravenly explores my mouth, its probing rhythm making my thighs press together as a warm weight drops low into my belly.
I’m spun ’round in the frenzy of his onslaught: his rough cheeks scratching mine, his mint-tinged breath in my nostrils, the way his lips are bruising mine and my mouth is opening for more, my jaw aching till we wrench apart to breathe in frenzied tugs.
Then he’s moving, shifting so he’s crouched above me. All I see are his eyes, asking questions that I try to answer with my own. He lowers his hips atop mine, and I can feel his thick erection.
“Siren—are you sure?”
I can’t answer for my tight throat, but I grab his shoulder, pulling him down on me. His head nuzzles my throat, and then he’s kissing me there. His hips rock against mine, his sex dragged over my softness until I cannot take it anymore.
I’m pulling his hair, groaning. “Please…”
“Please what?”
I wrap my arm around his hips, pressing my palm against his back, and lift my backside so my sex rubs his.
He groans, and then his mouth is moving over my throat. His kisses are so hard, I feel heady with a sort of fright which fuzzes into to velvet bliss and then near pain as his long, stiff sex rubs against me and my insides tremble in primal response.
I can’t stop myself from stroking every inch of his warm skin. I drag my nails along his sides, caress his shoulder blades. His muscles quiver and his breathing quickens. We reach a point where every time his sex catches on mine, we moan and thrust our hips. I hold his face between my palms. His eyes reach into mine.
You know what I want, Carnegie. Now give it to me…
His mouth finds mine—tender, slow, an answer. I can’t discern if it’s “yes” or “no,” and so I simply kiss him back and tell him that way: Yes, I want this. I want you.
I want you.
I want you.
We pant with our foreheads pressed together. Then we’re back in motion, nothing but our hungry mouths and grasping hands. He can’t hold out much longer—I can feel it in the tremor at his hips, can hear it in the way his breaths come from the throat.
He takes my pants down…then my panties. He’s there where I’m slick and ready, rubbing his round tip through my folds.
“Ohhhhh.”
My back arches, and suddenly he’s off the bed. “Hang on a second.” And it is merely a second—just a breath—before he’s returned, sitting on his haunches with his large sex jutting from his hips. I hear the rip before I see him roll the condom over his sex.
He looks back up, his dark eyes wide and glassy. “Tell me no if you don’t want it.” He crawls over me, tracing his fingertip over my puffy slit. “I can lick this pussy, make you come like that.”
“I want you,” I whisper.
When he presses his tip into my slit again, I moan and thrust against him. My heart races, and my head feels light and hollow.
“It’s gonna hurt.” His words are groaned, as if he’ll feel the pain as well.
He rubs his thick tip where I’m slick, the latex-covered head of him brushing deliciously against my clitoris before he drags himself back through my folds, making me lift my hips. Then he’s there—he’s where I’m pooled wet with desire and swollen with need. I can feel the pressure of him as he fits himself against me.
But instead of pressing in, he leans back over me, his lips and tongue teasing my nipple, his sheathed sex pressed into the crevice between my hip and thigh as our taut bodies quiver.
I run my fingers through his soft hair, tugging. “Let it hurt, then.”
He gives me his eyes—careful as ever; even beneath the glaze of lust, I feel his kind concern for me—and then he’s bowed again between my thighs, lapping at me with his silken tongue when what I need is his thick sex. He’s stoking my fire, and I can scarcely bear it.
“Please…oh please!” His tongue skates around my clit, making me gasp, then groan low. Finally, he fills me with his fingers. He pushes in and then drags out, and my knees clench around his shoulders.
“Oh!”
He probes deeper, and his mouth—
I try to fight what’s overtaking me, but I can feel it rolling in—the sort of tide that stretches smooth before it gathers in a round fury and crashes hard against the rock. I come apart like white caps spraying, making rainbows.
Then I’m fuzzed about the edges, so much so, I nearly fail to notice him; he’s risen up onto his knees, and his large hand is wrapped around his sex. He’s pushed it down toward his thigh, out of the limelight. But I can see it, long and condom-white and thick, still begging for attention.
Tears are drying on my cheeks. I laugh though them, and when he smiles at me, his handsome face is warm and kind—indulgent.
He shifts, as if he’s moving to stretch out beside me. I shove at him.
His eyes round in inquiry.
“Sit up—please. I want to see it.”
He does—and I do. It’s standing tall and thick and proud, its thick tip pressed against his navel. The weighty globes below look taut, distinctly darker than the pearly latex.
“May I…touch it?”
Just the barest hesitation, then he’s stretching out beside me, lying on his side with his hips near my shoulders, putting himself within my reach. I grab hold and rub gently from tip to base. Then I cup his balls, my fingers trembling as I stroke there.
His eyes close. The rough sound from his throat is both grunt and groan. Something in me coils more tightly.
“Does it feel good?” I trace a fingertip around the flanged rim of his tip, and his whole lower body jerks.
“Ahh…Jesus.”
There’s a notch there on the underside of his head. I ca
n see it plainly through the latex. I press there, and he barks out a groan so loud, I jerk my hand back.
“Fuck.” His arm covers his face, and his hips rock toward me. I feel so wet and ready, somehow both heavy and empty, buzzing…as I rise up on my knees and urge him onto his back. His sex juts over his flat belly, inviting me to wrap my hand around it. I lean down, curious if I can lick it…and I do. I lick at the tip, grinning as I find it tastes like candy.
He fingers thread through my hair as I tease him with my tongue, then suck the tip of him into my mouth. Anna told me what to do, the way you need to stroke the shaft and do as much as you can to the tip; men like to be teased there. If you take it into your mouth, swallow back deeply and don’t let your teeth touch.
I do everything I know to. It works like magic. Throaty moans and raspy whimpers come from his throat, and his hands cinch in my hair. I can feel it building in him, feel his hips shift as he tries to keep himself from shoving down my throat. I suck his thick tip, tracing the rim with my tongue.
My hands tremble as I realize I’m doing this.
This man is my lover—this beautiful man. I want nothing more than his pleasure. I draw more of him into my mouth, and his backside comes off the mattress. He starts breathing hard and heavy, groaning as if he can’t help himself. I can sense his burgeoning discomfort. It’s in every line of his big, smooth-skinned body with its thick, round muscles and its hard, male angles.
“What do you need?” I’m quite evil, and what’s worse is I delight in it. He cannot even answer for a time, just smooths my hair out of my face as his intoxicated gaze clings to mine.
“Wrap your hand around the bottom.” His eyes squeeze shut as his jaw clenches. “Just…go up and down.”
Instead I rise on my knees, scooting closer before rubbing him where I need him.
“I want you here.”
His eyes peel open. They seem pained, and when he speaks, his lovely, warm voice vibrates. “No.”
