by Lucy Smoke
"I'm just saying," Cross continues, moving into the living room with a bowl of popcorn in hand, "that if you like the chick so much, you should just bang her and get it over with."
I scowl as he takes a seat next to me. "I don't want to just bang her," I snap.
Cross blinks at me. "You don't?"
Shrugging, I crack my neck and look back to the television. I can't seem to make my eyebrows go back to normal. They are firmly lowered as contemplation overtakes me. "No," I say. "No, it's more than that."
Cross shakes his head. "Chicks aren't good for much else," he says before popping a handful of popcorn into his mouth. He chews as he talks. "I mean Ally's great, but that's because she's around us all the time. She's not gonna turn into a bitch."
A fresh wave of anger returns. I have to temper myself – hold back the need to put my fist down his fucking throat because I know about why Cross thinks that. In a lot of ways, he’s just as fucked up as the rest of us. Only his demons are decidedly prettier. Sighing, I stand up, blocking his view of the television. "You're gonna have to get over that sooner or later," I say. "You believe what you want to believe. Until you stop wanting to believe that every chick is a cheating whore, then that's all you'll be able to find."
Cross pauses, his hand halfway to his mouth with another fist full of popcorn. I don't give him a chance to respond, though. All this talking just makes me want to get out of the apartment and see the object of my obsession. I head for my room and change into some swim trunks, leaving my shirt on for now. I leave my keys and my phone behind. Cross is still sitting in the living room when I return. His eyes are glued to the screen, but they’re unfocused and the popcorn sits to the side, untouched.
"I'm heading out, but I'm not leaving the building. Don't lock the door on me."
Cross nods and I pass by him, clapping him on the shoulder once before I leave the apartment and head next door.
Love is sure to be asleep at this time of night. When I get to her door and knock, no one answers. But I was prepared for that. I retrieve the heavy-duty paper clips that I shoved into the pocket of my swim trunks. Unfolding the metal wire of each until they have a side that is as straight as I can possibly get them, I shove one into the lock section of Love's front door and twist it one way before sliding in the other, searching for a part that will click when I press down. Feeling the resistance against it, I do the same to the other and press against the opposite side. A moment later, I turn the knob and step inside.
The apartment is silent. The scent of lavender and jasmine blooms in the quiet darkness. I make my way towards the bedrooms until I'm standing in front of Love's door. It's the only door unopened. The others reveal an empty bedroom and an equally deserted bathroom. Pausing with my hand on the knob, I drag in a breath, taking with it more of the surrounding smells. She's not even yet in front of me and I already feel calmer, more relaxed. I turn the knob and step into the room.
Love sleeps curled into herself on her side. One hand rests under her cheek and the other along her side, as she keeps one of the thin sheets clutched to her chest. It's probably creepy – no, it's definitely creepy – that I've broken into her home and I'm watching her sleep. I'll make sure to let her know she can do so to me any time when I wake her up. For now, though, I'm going to enjoy this.
15
Love
I can feel the slickness of sweat sticking to the back of my neck as I roll over in bed. Something tingles in the back of my mind. Muted light spills through the crack in my doorway from somewhere down the hallway. Yawning, I close my eyes and snuggle closer to the wall. It's only when a big, warm body slides beneath the sheets with me and a bare chest touches my back that I realize something is very wrong. I never leave my door open. I couldn't sleep with the door open even as a kid.
Slowly, I turn over, preparing for the worst. Irrationally, my brain shoots back a couple of years and I'm back in Danny's bed and this is one of his friends, coming to collect a payment from Danny – coming to break me down even more. Could he ruin even more? Is it possible to break beyond shattered?
"Hi, Lovely," Tax's low, lyrical voice nearly sends my pulse skyrocketing into outer space and somehow, it brings me back to the present. I'm not with Danny anymore. I left him. I'm living on my own. I have a roommate. I talk to my sister now. And this man, the one in my bed with the bare chest and rigid muscles that sculpt his body, is nothing like Danny's friends.
"How the hell did you get in here?" I demand, my heart still racing in my ribcage.
Midnight eyes sparkle as Tax grins down at me and leans down to press a soft kiss to my lips. I'm shaking, but I let him kiss me. When his mouth moves over mine, it's soothing. When his lips press mine apart and his tongue invades, I moan into the sensation. Fireworks dance under my flesh and I reach up, raking my hands through his hair. He's a pillaging Viking in my bed, ready to take something I didn't even know was valuable anymore. But even when I lay back and move to pull him over me, he doesn't take it. Tax backs off and stares down at me. My chest expands and deflates with the force of my breathing. His lips are wet.
"I can get anywhere I want to go," he finally says, "I just have to have the right tools."
Before I can reply, he slides backward, out of the bed. "So, you break into my apartment?” I lift an eyebrow. “Why would you do something stupid like that? I think this is the definition of creepy.”
He smirks. "It’s only creepy if you don’t like me back.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“It’s only creepy if I make you uncomfortable.” Tax arches one brow. “Do I make you uncomfortable, Lovely?”
“No,” I say quickly. Too quickly?
His smirk blossoms into a fully amused smile. “I'm gonna go wait for you to get changed."
"Why do I need to get changed?" I sneak a glance at the clock bouncing across my laptop screen. It reads 3am, which just serves to confuse me even more.
Tax leans down and presses his lips to mine once more. He pulls back and smiles even wider. "Put on a swimsuit and meet me out in your living room."
"What about Beverly?" I ask.
He lifts a brow. "She's not here. Now," he pops my bare thigh as I slide to the edge, "no more stalling. Hurry up. If you're not ready in five minutes, you'll go as you are."
I don't doubt that Tax would try to drag me out of my apartment in nothing but my pajamas. As he slips through the door, I hurriedly pull off my sleep shirt and throw it across the room. Rummaging through my underwear drawer, I come up with a black bikini that I haven't worn but once in the year and a half since I bought it. I drop my panties and yank the bottoms on. I barely have the triangles of fabric over my nipples before the door pops open and Tax is standing there.
"Ready?"
I glare at him as I hold the triangles in place. "Out!" Though he's already told me Beverly isn't here, and I can't hear her snores from anywhere in the apartment, the word comes out a quiet hiss.
Tax, for all his arrogance, simply waits as one side of his mouth curves upward once more. He tips back, pressing his spine against the doorframe and tracks his eyes down my body. His eyes on me make my skin heat. I growl and spin, giving him my mostly naked back as I let the triangles hang over my breasts and I tie the top around my neck. Warm fingers brush against the nape of my neck, startling me. I don't get the opportunity to turn, though. Tax's hands on my hips stop me. I shiver as the sweat from before pops back up on my skin. This time, it's not the heat of the apartment. It's the stifling fires between Tax and me that are causing this reaction.
Goosebumps raise to meet his fingers as Tax holds me with one hand on my hip and then strokes the ridges of my spine down to the edge of my bikini bottoms. Then he reaches up and pulls the remaining strings at my sides around the middle of my back and ties them. The loops he makes as he pulls the strings tight take my breath away. I've had so many men undress me, but never once have any of them helped me dress.
Slowly, when I'm sure my top isn’t
going to twist or slip off and I'm covered, I turn and look up. Tax's face is sober, thoughtful. He bends and kisses me again and almost immediately, I'm right back where I was before. With my hands in his hair and my body pressed against his. When my naked legs brush his shorts, I realize he's in swim trunks.
"Let's go.”
Downstairs, Tax leads me by my hand out into the pool area behind the apartment building, and warm air brushes my hair across my shoulders. “I thought it was locked up at night?” I ask.
We bypass the outdoor shower just in front of the iron gate surrounding the pool area. Tax looks over his shoulder with a devious smirk. “They do.”
“Are you going to break into the pool the same way you broke into my apartment?” I ask.
He scoffs, stopping in front of the gate. “No,” he says. “There’s no need.” He grips my waist and before I know it, he’s swinging me up and over the gate. I gasp when my feet land on the concrete on the other side.
He releases me and Tax’s hands grip the top of the gate. The muscles of his arms bulge and strain as he swings himself over as well. “Ready?” he asks.
Looking up at him, a strand of black hair falls over his forehead. “You’re an enigma,” I think aloud.
He blinks at me, his smile dropping away as he reaches for me and pushes me back up against the iron bars of the gate. His deep blue eyes sharpen, like the deadliest of knives, as he gazes down at me. “Nah, not really.” He leans down and takes my mouth.
Barreling heat smacks into my chest and ignites a fire in my veins, flooding the rest of my body. I thought perhaps the kiss in my room was a fluke. Nothing but the combination of being woken up suddenly and the shock of finding him in bed with me. It’s not. I clench up, my hands sinking into his hair. “Tax?” I mumble his name – a question on my lips when we finally break apart.
Dark eyes seek me out under the light of the moon. I feel like there should be emergency lights or motion sensor lights. But there’s nothing. Not even the pool is illuminated. It makes it seem like we’re locked here – together – in a whole new world.
He turns away from me, leaving me feeling cold against the iron at my back. Before I can blink or do something stupid like reach for him, he dives into the deep end of the pool. Water laps at the sides, spilling up onto the concrete as he disappears beneath the surface. The waves ripple outwards in circled rings. They draw my attention, almost hypnotic until Tax’s dark head reappears above water and he shakes the water away from his eyes. Drops hit my legs as I approach. I feel stalked, trapped, by the deep cavern of his angry blue eyes. Angry? Why is he angry? Maybe it’s not anger. Maybe it’s just pain. In that regard, we are the same.
I take a deep breath and I step off the edge and sink down, letting the water flow over my head. Once I’m submerged, I open my eyes. I can’t see a thing. Just as I’m about to break the surface, though, strong arms pull me further down and away from the surface. Lips press against mine. Shocked, I open my mouth to protest and realize my mistake when water flows inside, cool and choking. I squeeze my eyes closed against the darkness once more and fight to go up. He doesn’t let me.
Tax grips me tighter, holding me fast as he continues to press his lips to mine. The heat from him burns away my fears and I find myself – despite my aching lungs – sinking further, not only into the water, but into him as well. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, letting him cage me in – relishing in the warmth of his skin sliding against me. I wonder, why do I like it? Why do I find Tax’s embrace so entrancing, so captivating that I’m willing to drown myself just to feel him close to me? Perhaps because it’s the one place I don’t feel naked and broken, even if I am.
Floating in the pool, I don’t feel anything but him. The water encompasses us both, blocking the rest of the world out, making this place seem as though it’s on a different plane of existence entirely. With the water cool against my skin, it makes Tax’s heat that much hotter. Almost as though I’m burning alive. All my ice melts under the wave of volcanic emotion he pours into me.
When we finally break the surface, I suck in air, heaving it in as quickly as possible. I’m not scared of suffocating anymore. I want to go back down. I don’t want to feel the night against the flesh of my shoulders and cheeks and eyelids – freezing my skin. It reminds me that we’re not alone. There are other things out there, other people. I want to go back down – down into the darkness with him. But he stops me before I take the next dive. He holds me, shivering, in his arms, floating in the middle of the pool, gaze boring deep, eyes seeking something inside me. What? I’m not sure. I can’t ever read him. He’s crass, sometimes – violent and bloody others. He’s sarcastic. And in pain.
Does it make me a bad person that I don’t want to see that pain disappear? Because that’s the one thing I truly understand about him. I’m nothing like him. I’m cold where he’s scalding hot. I’m soft and weak where he is strong and impenetrable. But in his pain, I understand him. In his pain, I see him. And me. I see how we’re not so different after all. If all of that pain and darkness disappears then there’s nothing left I can give him. No acceptance that he would take. No understanding that he would cherish. Because no one would have to understand, no one would have to accept what isn’t there.
Is it wrong of me to want to keep him in the dark with me? Is it wrong to not want to be alone?
“Love.” I’m shaking when he says my name. I don’t understand why, but I’m scared. No. I’m terrified. He takes my hands in his and then gently pulls me until my face is pressed against his chest and he’s swimming towards the edge of the pool. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to do something to you that we’ll both regret.”
When my back meets the pool wall, I yank my head back and stare up at the underside of his jaw. “I wouldn’t,” I say.
Tax’s entire body tightens against me. I wait for him to say something. When he doesn’t, insecurity creeps into my chest. “Would you?” I ask. “Would you…regret it?”
“I’d regret,” he begins, “anything that would hurt you.”
“And if it doesn’t?” My chest rises and falls against him, our cold, wet skin sliding against each other. “If it doesn’t hurt me, would you do it?”
Tax’s lips quirk as he leans down into my face, his breath against my lips. “Do you want me to, Love?” Tax’s lower body brushes against mine and I inhale a sharp breath. He’s hard. It’s like a scorching pipe between my legs as he pushes my thighs apart with one of his knees and sinks himself in the valley he has created. One wide palm skims along the outside of my thigh and anchors my leg around one side of his waist as he pushes against me. “Do you want me to do this to you, Love? Do you want to feel me inside?”
I gasp. “Yes.”
“Why?” he demands.
“Why?” My brain is fogged, the lack of clarity makes it difficult to process his words. What man gets this close to the prize and questions it? Tax. Tax is that man. Of course, he would be.
“Because,” I answer between pants as I anchor my other leg around his waist and slowly reach up to undo the tie holding my top closed. “I want to feel how hot you can make me.” I let my top fall, reaching around my back to undo the other strings tied together against my spine. The top floats away, sinking beneath the surface of the water. “I want to see if you can burn me from the inside out.”
“You want me to burn you?”
“Yes.”
His lips slam against mine, bringing the flame back to life for a split second. He pulls back. “Your wish is granted,” he whispers before taking me once more.
Hands skate up and down the ridges of my spine, coasting down to my curves, holding me close, squeezing me impossibly tight. No one has ever held me so tightly, with such reverence. When Tax’s lips meet mine, the hollowness inside my chest expands, filling with him. Silence erupts into noise. Slow, at first. Building. A buzzing sound – like hundreds of thousands of little wings fluttering in my ears. Little bursts
of light pop up behind my eyelids. My heart races, galloping in my chest as his hands travel further down and slip my bottoms away.
I drop my legs to allow him access and two solid, warm fingers find my core. I’m shaking, listening to the sounds of my pants in between kisses. His fingers slide deep and I clench down hard, wincing. If only the water could keep me wet rather than washing it away. I don’t want him to think that I don’t want him. He might be the only man that I’ve ever truly wanted in this way. He must have felt my wince because he pulls away and lifts me up.
I gasp as my bare ass hits the cold concrete. He spreads my legs. “Don’t worry, Lovely. I’ve got you.”
Tax’s head descends between my legs, both of his palms flat against my thighs, keeping them apart. He blows warm air against my pussy before slowly leaning forward, stroking his tongue up one side and down the other. My limbs tremble as one of my hands braces against the ground and the other sinks into the depths of his dark hair. The wet strands are cool to the touch as his hot mouth works to tear me apart – eradicate all my barriers.
I want to say that it feels like becoming whole, but it doesn’t. It feels like being broken. When Tax pauses, his dark stormy eyes meet mine, it’s as though my soul comes screaming back to me. I curse and clutch at his hair harder, grinding my hips into his face. I can feel him smile against me and for some unknown reason, it makes me want to laugh. Here I am with Tax’s mouth between my legs and I want to laugh. I feel like bubbles are filling me to shattering heights. Lifting me from a dark, dark place. I don’t want to come like this. I want – I cut my gaze to his, fist his hair and yank him away from me.
His dark turbulent gaze meets mine. “Please,” I whisper.
“What do you want?”
“I want you,” I say. I just want…him. I see him completely. There’s no Danny, no Todd, no one else here with me.
Tax nods and pulls me back in, straight down. My legs wrap around his hips once more and he thrusts deep before the moment is lost. I cry out. It feels like he’s breaking every single part of me. From my bones to my blood vessels, Tax is a dangerous sun, conquering the vast lands of my body. From every hollow endless cavern to every sharpened peak, he takes them all and he shatters them.
