“Really?”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t convinced, but the money was only half my concern. “What about the commune?”
“What about it? Me and Lena settled there because I’d forgotten how to live like a normal person . . . how to own things, build things . . . love anything that wasn’t her. Life has changed for me, Jas. I’ve changed. I want a future with you.”
“What about the meetings?”
“We can host them anywhere. It ain’t about the location.”
I chewed on my lip and mulled over Kim’s words as he drove towards the sea. I waited for him to ask for directions to Haven Cottage, but of course, he never did. Why would he, when Porthkennack natives knew everything about everything?
He pulled up outside Haven Cottage a few minutes later. “Sulk all you want. I’m going inside.”
Sulk? Me? Was he having a fucking laugh? But as the urge to stay in the car and pout remained strong . . . perhaps he was right. I was sulking, but why?
Who the hell knew? And who cared, when Kim was inside a deserted cottage without me?
I hurried out of the car and followed him. Knowing my family’s goldfish-like attention span, I half expected to find the place derelict, but I was sorely mistaken. The interior of the cottage had fresh new plaster, shiny wood floorboards, and crooked polished beams that fairy tales were made of. An open fireplace was the crowning jewel of the lower floor, and there was even a bed and a claw-foot bathtub upstairs.
Kim was sold, I could tell.
“Red’s getting married,” I blurted.
He turned around, his expression unreadable. “What?”
“Red’s getting married . . . tomorrow, to the girl she met in California.”
“How do you know that?”
“She called me.”
“During dinner?”
“Yes.”
Silence. My heart began a slow, painful descent into my stomach.
“Why did she call you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
“She wanted to know how you were before she told you.”
“How I am?” A dangerous humour glittered in Kim’s convoluted gaze. “Jesus. You two think I can’t handle reality without hurling myself off the wagon? That ain’t fair, Jas. You can’t baby me.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, while you look at me like I’m an unexploded bomb. Do you really think I wouldn’t be happy for her? That I’m selfish enough to have my life with you and deny her the same happiness?”
“Are you happy?”
It wasn’t what I’d meant to say, but whatever my intended words had been evaporated as Kim crossed the room in two strides and seized me by the shoulders. He pushed me hard onto the plastic-covered bed, his face a potent mix of fury and amusement. “You don’t get it, do you? You’ve got no idea how much you mean to me, even after all this time?”
I had a fair idea, but I wasn’t going to interrupt him while he was digging his cock into me the way he was right now. I wound my arms around his neck and pressed myself up against him. “I know you love me, Kim, but I know you love her too.”
“It’s not the same, damn it!”
“No?”
“No. How many times are we going to have this fucking conversation?”
Kim growled and abruptly flipped me onto my stomach. A thrill that only his touch evoked shot through my veins, and I shivered, my eyelids already fluttering as sensation consumed me. Time hadn’t dulled the electricity between us. If anything, it had deepened, solidified, and he could bring me to my knees with the intent behind his stormy gaze.
And his intent was clear now—he was going to fuck me, and I was going to let him . . . more than that. I’d beg him if he kept me waiting too long.
But we weren’t playing that game today—the game where he tied me with no tangible binds and drove me slowly mad with his sensuous tongue. No. This wasn’t about making me crazy with need, desperate for any part of him he’d give me. This was about him, and me, us, and everything in between.
He shoved my jeans away and unbuttoned his own, and then with a slick of the lube we always carried, slid into me in a smooth motion that made my toes curl.
I cried out, arching my back as the sensation of taking him bareback overwhelmed me. We’d stopped using condoms a while ago, but the ridged heat of his hard dick never got old. Each time was like the first.
Kim gripped the tops of my thighs, my hips, my back, and pounded into me, nailing me with sharp, hard thrusts that left me in no doubt of how he felt, if there had ever been any. Has there? I couldn’t be sure. Fleetingly, I thought of Red, and tried to find a place for her in the world Kim and I had built for ourselves. There was one, I was sure of it, but perhaps until this moment, I had honestly believed that there was a part of him that would forever belong to her.
But there was no him. And there was no me. Not anymore. My soul belonged to him, and his to me, and there was nothing else—nothing but his hands on me, his cock inside me, and my name falling from his lips as he came like a fucking freight train.
I wasn’t far behind. My climax was harsh, painful in all the right ways, and it wasn’t until I collapsed face-first into the plastic sheeting below me that I remembered we weren’t at home in my flat. I laughed, giddy and high. “Well that didn’t take long.”
“Long to what? Convince you that you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not?”
“I do like it.” I rolled over to face him. “I meant that it didn’t take long to break this place in.”
Kim’s intense gaze brightened. “Does that mean we’re doing it? Buying it from your ’rents?”
“If you want to.”
“What do you want, Jas?”
“I want to be where you are . . . and I want a reliable internet connection, a desk, and a bed that doesn’t turn me into a ninety-year-old man overnight.” Kim seemed able to sleep on a pile of rocks and still bounce out of bed in the morning. Me? Damn. The sofa bed in the trailer was just about killing me, and without sacrificing his art space—over my dead body—there was little that could be done to rectify it. “And I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“I know you are, but I want you to embrace it . . . believe that you deserve it, no matter if things go wrong from time to time along the way.”
Kim pulled his jeans up and sat down. “You know me so well.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. I’ve never been able to articulate how this—” he stopped and rubbed his chest “—thing, this addiction, makes me feel, even in meetings where I know people will just get it. But you get it. You get me, even if addiction makes no sense to you.”
All at once, I felt like crying, because apart from the obvious, it was the most profoundly moving thing he’d ever said to me. “Things don’t have to make sense to matter. You matter, Kim. We both do.”
“And we both deserve to be happy, right?”
“Yes.”
“So let’s do this, Jas. We can build something amazing here, I know we can.”
“We can.” I spoke as much to myself as to him, but his bone-crushing embrace was instant and wonderful. I fell headfirst into it and clutched him against me, losing myself in all that was him. All that was us. Our journey had barely begun, and we couldn’t predict the good or the bad, but together, we were ready for anything.
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Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id, Riptide Publishing, and Fox Love Press.
Garrett's debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards. In 2017, she won the EPIC award in contemporary romance with her military novel, Between Ghosts, and the contemporary romance category in the Bisexual Book Awards with her novel What Remains.
When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.
Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com with photographer Dan Burgess.
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Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack Book 7) Page 16
