“Okay.” He took his hand back and stood before me, glorious, naked, huge in every sense of the word, his muscles carved and defined to perfection, as if by my own design. “Get on the bed so I can fuck you, Lake.”
My chest stuttered as I exhaled, everything inside me coiling with a fierce need. Biting my lower lip, unable to look away from the heated, almost angry look in his eyes, I staggered back and sat on the mattress. I had no choice but to crawl up the bed as he climbed over me, propping himself up with his arms.
“Say another,” I pleaded.
“I want to feel your hands on me.”
I ran my nails over his dark stubble, touched the veins in his neck, grazed his chest hair and silently counted his abdominals with my fingers. He let me explore, but after a few moments, he took my hand and lowered it between us. When he placed it over his penis, my throat went bone dry.
He shut his eyes a brief moment, groaning with that one touch. Encouraged by his response, I pushed my palm against the length of him. He twitched in my hand, pink and thick and alive. He was beautiful. All of him.
“God, Lake,” he muttered, inhaling through his nose. “Touch me.”
I tried not to look as nervous as I felt. I couldn’t even wrap my hand all the way around him. I tried to make my fingertips touch, surprised by how hot he was. How had he even gotten it in? Bleeding the first time was normal but he must’ve torn right through me.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked. “I want to hear it all.”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You have to be a hundred and ten percent honest with me when I’m in your bed,” he said. “Do you hear me? Nothing, I mean nothing, is more important than trust when we’re like this. That was the last time you’ll stay quiet when I’m hurting you.”
“What if I want you to hurt me?”
He gritted his teeth. “Then you say it. We talk about it before we get in bed. So I’ll ask again—what’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know how you fit inside me earlier,” I said simply. “It defies physics.”
His eyebrows rose, as if he’d expected any answer but that one. “It’s not anything our bodies weren’t made to do.” He kissed my chest, then slipped a hand under my bowed back, pointing my breasts to the ceiling. He licked his lips, looking torn, then sat back on his calves to remove my underwear. Cupping the undersides of my knees, he slid me to him, holding my legs open, his penis dangerously close. “It’s still going to hurt,” he said, reading my expression. “No matter how wet I get you, I can’t fix that. I’m just going to go slow. At first. Until you get used to me.” Holding my leg in one hand, he spread his other over my stomach, maybe to soothe my trembling. “And you’re going to get used to me, Birdy.”
When he lowered his hand to touch me, I arched my back, but didn’t look away from what was about to go inside me. “Manning?”
“Mmm?”
“Even after I turned eighteen, you wouldn’t come near me. Did I not turn you on?” I knew how he’d answer, but for all the times he’d shut me out, I wanted to make him squirm. “What’s different now?”
He followed my line of sight down to his erection. “Nothing. I’ve been hard for you before.”
Manning didn’t squirm at all, but I did, wiggling with excitement, biting my bottom lip. “When?”
“That turns you on, huh?” He grunted, lazily exploring me with his hand. “All the times you tortured me just by being close?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“A lot.” He removed his finger and licked it. “I’ve barely even touched you and I can taste you on my hand.”
My heart beat in my stomach. Manning may have kept quiet about these things in the past, but it definitely wasn’t because he was shy. He took me under the knees again, spreading my legs to lie between them. “Wrap them around me.”
I locked my feet behind his back.
“Now your arms,” he said. “If it gets to be too much, tell me. Or dig your nails into my back and I’ll stop.”
I circled his neck and tugged on the ends of his hair. “Is hair-pulling allowed?”
He dropped a kiss on my lips. “You can do anything you want. Can’t hurt me.”
With that, he started to push inside me. He paused to adjust himself, working only his head in. I sucked in a breath but it didn’t hurt as much this time.
“There was that time on the horse at camp,” he said. “You were between my legs and your hair was so soft. You were scared. I felt protective.”
I wondered if all the love I felt showed on my face as I looked at him, thinking back to that time when I’d been head over heels for him. It’d affected him, too. Manning got up on his hands and pushed harder into me.
This time when he thrust, it felt good. Slick. My arms loosened, and he grabbed my wrist, putting it back around his neck. “Don’t let go, Lake. Please.”
I squeezed him more tightly, even as he stayed propped over me. “Then what?” I asked.
“I got hard for you. I was so fucking confused.” He started to move, sliding in and out of me. His neck went veiny as he groaned. “And ashamed.”
For all the times over the years I’d felt confused and ashamed, I didn’t want that for him. I knew how hard this was for him, letting himself have the girl he wouldn’t even allow himself to want. I gripped the back of his neck. “I’m glad it’s you.”
“I don’t know if I deserve this.”
I pulled on him. “You do. Please. Show me how much this means to you.”
He bent his head to kiss me, and the moment our lips touched, he let loose. Now I knew what he’d meant. Our bodies were made for this. Each thrust came more slippery, more out of control. I opened for him, taking him deeper, a man who’d never been anything but composed around me. This was a side of Manning I hadn’t yet seen, and I couldn’t believe I was doing this to him.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked through clenched teeth, even as he seemed completely lost in it. “Fuck.”
“No,” I said, accepting all of him now. “Don’t stop.”
He kissed me hard on the mouth, sliding one hand over my hip to lift my thigh. He ground into me with more force, driving so relentlessly that the ache deep in my stomach became more of a throb. It was no longer a feeling I wanted him to ease but a place I needed him to fill. He tore his mouth away, keeping his forehead against mine. “How does it feel?”
I was sure I had tears in my eyes when I said, “I can’t even answer that.”
“I can. You make me so fucking crazy, Lake.” With the emotion in his voice, in his face, I started to understand what this was all about—why people confused love and sex. The urgency of his kiss, the sudden build of pleasure, the slapping of skin on skin. If my life were a song, this was the crescendo. I hadn’t truly known what it’d meant to love anyone, even Manning, until now. “When I think about you between my legs back then, about all the times I wanted to say fuck it and steal you away . . .”
As he took me back years, the present came into focus. The climax building inside me was almost painful, the way everything up until now had been. “It’s too much,” I panted.
“Then let go,” he said. “Let it take over.”
Hearing Manning’s voice, feeling him on top of me, inside me, his face close to mine, I’d never needed anything more than to take what he wanted to give me. My face burned as I arched my back and gave in to him. He took up a pattern, each hard thrust with a grunt. All I could do was hold on as his back slickened with sweat, as my climax obliterated every thought in my head other than yes, God, yes. Every noise but my pained moans. Every feeling but unadulterated pleasure and Manning shuddering over me.
He slammed into me and said, “I can’t hold back anymore. You feel too goddamn good.” The thought that I weakened him brought me back to earth. Fascinated and sated, I watched his face screw up, his teeth clench. He grabbed one of my hands, lacing our fingers together as he buried himself in me and came hot and fast.
/> He gave me all his weight, his chest heaving, our bodies stuck together with a film of perspiration. After some time, he lifted his head. His brown eyes had looked upon me with a rainbow of emotions, and not always positive ones. In them I’d seen regret, anger, frustration. Now, they held a depth of love, something I’d gotten glimpses of and had tried to convince myself was all in my head.
Still hanging on to him with five fingers dug into his back, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Am I?” He grinned. “Birdy, I have never been better.”
“You’re shaking, too, you know.”
“Yeah, no shit. Am I crushing you?” His body covered all of mine, pressing me into the mattress, hiding me from the rest of the world. The apartment’s icy air cooled my limbs but wherever our bodies touched, I was warm. “Yes. It feels perfect.”
He readjusted his grip on my hand so it no longer felt like he was hanging on for dear life. “I guess I should’ve warned you the first time would be fast,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend I had any control.”
“It was fast?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I plan to lose hours of my life learning all the ways to make you come.”
I blushed a little. He’d shown me pure bliss, yet that was only part of why I was so at ease. “I feel so close to you right now.”
“Me too, Lake.” He smoothed a hand over my hairline, and his fingers caught in my tangles. “You’ve never been more beautiful.”
I started to laugh but stopped when I saw that he was serious. I was sweating, and I knew without looking that my face was red. “But I’m a mess,” I said.
He shook his head, as if in awe. “I did this,” he said, thumbing my warm cheeks, then a mark on my chest. “And this.” He kissed me gently on the corner of my mouth. “Pink swollen lips,” he whispered. “How can you not be the sexiest thing to me when this mess is because I just had you?”
I moaned involuntarily as he took my earlobe between his teeth, the ache between my legs returning. “Can we do it again?”
“Give a man a minute to recover.” He shifted between my legs, still inside me, and I inhaled sharply at the unexpected thrill. But as he reached down to pull out, I noticed the stickiness between my legs and gasped so loudly, he froze.
Oh my God. Oh fuck. We’d had sex without a condom.
It hadn’t even occurred to me until this moment. Being with Manning felt so natural. So real. As if anything outside of us didn’t exist. Except that wasn’t true.
“Manning, we didn’t—”
“I know.” He stared at me, his expression unreadable.
“What do we do?” I asked. Was he in shock? Angry? “What’s wrong? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I’d like to know if you’re on birth control.”
“I’m not . . . why would I be?”
He dropped his eyes to my chest. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or upset, but it wasn’t like it was my fault. If anyone should’ve spoken up, it should’ve been him. I couldn’t get pregnant. I was too young. Too broke. I was still in debt because I’d spent the past four years in school to follow my dreams. Dreams that didn’t include children. As the possibility of a baby hit me, the reality of our situation did, too. It’d been easy enough to ignore before we’d given in, but now that we’d had sex, I almost couldn’t wrap my head around what it meant. I’d not only had sex without a condom, but Manning was still someone else’s husband.
I began to sweat for real. “I need to get up,” I said.
He looked up. “Lake, listen.”
“Can you move?”
“Freaking out isn’t going to change the situation.”
“I need to get up.”
“And I need a goddamn minute to lie here with you, Lake. Do you have any idea what this meant to me? I’ve never had this—”
“You’re crushing me,” I cried, avoiding his eyes. He was a married man, and he was unbearably heavy, pinning me, his mistress, to the mattress. And he wasn’t just someone else’s husband. He was Tiffany’s. “Get off. I can’t breathe.”
He rose onto his arms, and I ducked out from underneath him. I pulled the top sheet off the bed, crossing the room as I wrapped myself in it. Maybe it was subconscious guilt, but on my way to the door, my eyes landed on the tiny wooden box on my dresser. The gift Tiffany had given me as her maid of honor. Val had stood in this same spot last night and reminded me of the truth.
He chose your sister, Lake. He married her.
Val would be so disappointed by what I’d done. Once again, I’d ignored the consequences like Manning had said I would. I hadn’t even cared enough about my own sister, my own future, to protect myself. Manning knew I couldn’t say no to him.
Look what you’ve done, Lake.
Tiffany’s accusation the day Manning was arrested was never far from my mind, and this time, there was no doubt it was true. I’d done something awful, and like Val had said, I had nobody to blame but myself. I was an adult now, and using a condom was as much my responsibility as Manning’s.
“Lake, come back here.” I turned to Manning, who sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. “I see your mind spinning.”
“We barely even talked about her,” I said. “We didn’t even . . . we just . . .”
“I know what we did.” He stood and turned away to search the floor. The sight of his naked, tight behind nearly made my heart give out. He was as fit as he’d been that day on the construction site, every muscle visible just beneath the surface. And there, staring back at me, was his subtle, almost invisible tattoo. The thin, black, uneven triangle on the back of his shoulder both warmed and taunted me. I’d always be there, inked onto his skin, but so was that third point. Was it her?
He bent to pick up his boxer-briefs, then pulled them on. “Let’s make something to eat, and then we can figure this out.”
I couldn’t believe I was standing here thinking about his ass after what I’d done. What kind of a person—what kind of a sister—did that make me? Tiffany was no angel, but this was another level of betrayal. “Eat?” I asked. “We just had sex. How can you think about food now?”
“Well . . .” He turned, a corner of his mouth cocked. “I know it was your first time, but typically—”
“I’m serious, Manning,” I said, closing the sheet more tightly around myself. He had a life with her. I knew nothing about it, except I could picture them holding hands, kissing, sleeping in the same bed, because it’d all played out in front of me. Every time they’d come up in conversation with my mom, I’d gotten off the phone. I couldn’t handle it then, and I certainly couldn’t now, naked with Manning’s cum dripping down the inside of my thigh. “We shouldn’t have done this,” I said.
“No?” he asked, wiping the crooked smile off his face. “You look me in the eye and say that, because I’m thinking the exact opposite. That I’ve been a fucking fool for letting so much time pass without you underneath me.”
“You don’t even care that you’ve hurt her,” I accused.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked. “Just because I’m not hysterical doesn’t mean I don’t care. I was trying to shield you from some of the pain, but if you want to have a chat about Tiffany, let’s talk.” He cracked his knuckles. “You want me to say I feel like shit for hurting the woman who’s stood by my side the past four years, then—”
“Stop,” I said, covering my ears as I dropped into a squat. “Please stop.”
He got down in front of me, taking my elbow. “Lake, calm down. Come sit and we’ll talk through this.”
“We didn’t use protection,” I choked out. My stomach churned, and for a moment I worried I’d vomit. I wrenched my arm out of his hand. “What were we thinking? You should’ve said something. You should’ve insisted.”
“Don’t pull away,” he said. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to stay away from you while you did nothing but make it hard for me. Do not pull away now that I can touch you.”
“But it only makes things worse.”
He ran his tongue over his bottom teeth, raising two angry eyebrows. “Worse?”
I hadn’t meant it that way, but the truth was, I’d never been able to think straight or make the right decisions while Manning was around. I was blind around him and always had been. Consequences never mattered until it was too late. I stood and dropped a hand to my side, clutching the sheet closed with the other. “Maybe it’s best we take some time to think. Separately.”
“Too late for that,” he said, taking a firm step toward me. “You can be pissed, or ashamed, or whatever’s happening with you, but you’re going to do it with me here.” He reached for me. “You had your chance to tell me to go, and—”
I stepped back.
“Lake,” he warned. “What did I just tell you? I need to be able to touch you right now.”
Seeing his frustration, how unraveled he was after we’d only had sex once, excited me. I continued to back away and then spun to bolt from the room. The apartment was so goddamn small, the only private place was the bathroom. I went for it, but Manning was faster, blocking the doorway. I retreated around the living room, my back to the wall as he advanced on me. I dragged a kitchen chair between us and he tossed it aside. The front door was my only exit. I knew I’d never leave the building in a sheet, that I was being irrational, and that he’d catch me before I even got to the door—but I ran anyway, to make him chase me, to make him angry.
He caught up with me in the entryway, picked me up by my waist, and threw me over his shoulder. My stomach dropped with excitement and shame. “We can’t do this again,” I said, struggling against him.
“We’ll be doing it for a lifetime, so you’d better get the fuck over it. I’m not going to chase you down every time.”
I had the sensation of falling before my ass hit the kitchen counter. I sucked in a breath, surprised as the sheet fell open, baring me to him. “Manning, I’m serious.”
“So am I, goddamn it,” he said, yanking me to the edge until he was pressed right between my legs. “I’m dead fucking serious. What’d I tell you outside the theater? Once you’re mine, you’re mine, and I’m not going to let you run off.” He took himself in his hand, gliding his head along my slit. I looked down, fascinated. I hadn’t seen us come together before. His tip came back glistening. Was it any surprise that our struggle had left me wet and him hard as granite? Our whole relationship had been push and pull, one long struggle. “You want to know the truth?” he asked. “I’ve dreamed about it more times than I want to admit—coming inside you and claiming your cunt in the most irreversible fucking way.”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 61
