by Naomi West
He shrugs. “They know what I used to do. Actually, they know what I currently do too. That I was working for Esposito as a tracer.”
“You told them?”
He nods.
“But you didn’t tell Dare?”
He shakes his head. “That’s different. Dare understands more of what it’s like. All the risks. My mom and Mara, to them, they were just relieved I wasn’t a hit man anymore.”
I take a calm breath. “And did you ever tell Alessia?”
He drops my hand and his eyes snap to my face. It’s like having ice water plunged over me. “Don’t talk about her.”
I stop still. That’s the sharpest he’s ever been with me. Even when he was tranquilizing my father in front of me he was smooth, controlled, polished. The man in front of me is none of those things. He tugs his baseball cap down over his eyes and strides a few feet away from me toward a little public promontory, the ocean crashes onto the rocks a hundred feet below.
Well, experiment successful, I guess. I wanted more information about how he’d react to me bringing up Alessia, and now I’ve gotten it. I can feel a cool, scientific reserve icing over my feelings. Years of practice have me putting any feelings to the side in pursuit of greater knowledge. I have to know. And if my feelings are getting in the way, then I probably won’t be able to parse out what’s really there.
So I swallow whatever it is that’s burning inside me and when I step up to him, I’m calm.
I say nothing, just stand calmly at his side while he rips the cap off his head and then rips his hand, equally violently, through his hair.
He turns to me.
“What is it about you?” he demands.
“I’m sorry?”
He gestures up and down my body. “You’re beautiful, sure. No question. But that’s not it.”
He paces a few feet away from me and then back, grabbing my hand and suddenly we’re racing back down the hill, toward his house.
I sense that this isn’t the time for words. Something riles in my stomach as I realize that I think I’m about to get some answers for some pretty pressing questions.
We get to his house and he punches codes in the front door that I hadn’t noticed him doing before. We enter and he shoves me down on that blue sofa.
“Sit,” he growls and does a sweep of the house.
I stay where I am, gazing out at the volcano in the distance and gathering my thoughts.
“80 hours!” he yells down the stairs as he comes jogging down. “Only 80 fucking hours, Row.”
“That we’ve known each other?”
He’s still pacing now. A taut rope of energy. A fuse that could be lit at any second. “Yeah. My entire life just exploded all over the place and all it took was 80 hours.”
“You mean leaving your job with Esposito? Having to flee?” I ask, trying to follow his line of thought.
“I don’t give a fuck about my job with Esposito. I mean…you.”
“Kennedy-”
He cuts me off as if I haven’t spoken. “You with your calm little questions. And your big eyes cutting me right in two.” He paces back across the room. “And you care. Obviously, but you wait for the information to direct that caring into whatever direction it’s gonna go.”
“What?” He’s losing me.
“You didn’t judge me, Row. When I told you I’d been a hit man. You just took the information and understood it. And then you’re just so calm. And always observing shit. And after everything you’ve been through. Everything. You come in here, throw your arms wide and then rush across the room to ask a hundred questions about a volcano.”
He stops pacing now. He faces me and leans his back against the wall like all the energy he just had has been bled right out of him. We haven’t turned any lights on so the room is a dusky green-blue. He’s almost ghostly across the room. “And you look at me like I put the volcano there, as a gift just for you.” He takes a deep breath. “And just like that you fucking destroy my life.”
Something like frustration rises up within me. “Kennedy, I’m a patient woman. I’m very patient. But you’re starting to confuse me and that’s my least favorite feeling on earth. How in the world would any of that ruin your life?”
“Because I’m in love with Alessia,” he says.
A clinical freeze overtakes me and I cock my head to one side. Interesting. Very interesting. There’s more than one thread to be pulled here. He stares at me plows on.
“I’ve been in love with her for a decade,” he says. “It’s-it’s part of who I am. It’s there with me, wherever I go. No matter what continent I’m on. No matter what shitty job I’m pulling it’s there. Inside me. Defining me.”
“Your best friend’s wife.”
He nods tersely. “The one woman I could never have.”
“You wouldn’t even want her if you could have her, because it would ruin their marriage. Your friendship. Jeopardize their kids.”
He nods again, his face lined and drawn. “Of course. But it was always there.” He pounds a hand over his chest. “Like a little candle. And now it’s gone. Snuffed out.”
Understanding starts to descend over me like a sheet laid over a bed. “And you feel lost without it. Even though it tortured you.”
He stares at me, his eyes like burning coals but he doesn’t say anything. Now, understanding is like a string of dominoes falling over in my brain. In a sudden, exhilarating moment, I understand all of it. All of what he’s telling me. Maybe even more than he understands.
I stand up from the couch and pull the scarf off my head. I look him in the eye as I begin to unbraid my hair. “Kennedy, you’re not lost without your feelings for Alessia. You’re lost without the pain of it. Pain you think you deserve. Because of your past. You felt that you would be ok, as long as you tortured yourself over it. You say that I didn’t judge you and that opened the door to some new world with no footing, where you could get swept away. But that world is forgiveness. To yourself. For being someone in a terrible situation. Who did what he had to do. And kept living.”
I take a step toward him and he holds as still as a statue.
“You kept on living,” I say. “The way people are meant to do. The way humans have been doing for millennia. They keep living in any way possible, trying to grab as much of the good stuff as they can along the way.”
I give a little laugh and take another step. “You thought Alessia was your good stuff. That loving her was what gave you your humanity back. It was what made you a worthwhile human. Loving a woman from afar but not taking her, because she belonged to your best friend. How convenient. You get to feel human and be a good person all at once.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” he growls.
“Oh I think I can postulate a great deal,” I growl back and he goes still and surprised at my tone. “Also how convenient that you tie your humanity up in someone who can never give you happiness, huh? So you get all sorts of redemption along with a little bit of torture too. For your sins.”
I take another step toward him, drawn like a magnet. “But then, suddenly, you meet someone interesting, and all of it flies out the window. Everything you’ve told yourself was true is suddenly up in the air like confetti. Because of one simple fact.”
“What’s that?” he snaps at me. He’s close to the edge, ragged and panting. I can tell I’m pushing him toward temper, toward a break. Good. I want to. I think it might be the only way he gets this.
“The simple fact is that you don’t have feelings for Alessia,” I say as I slip my dress over my head and stand in front of him in the black silk bra and panties he’d bought for me on the ship. “You have feelings for me.”
His hands twitch at his sides as his eyes tumble all over me. Taking me in.
I’m not finished. “And you don’t want to have feelings for someone who could make you happy. For someone who is brilliant. And kind. And calm. And generally fucking awesome.” I take another and another step toward h
im.
A pained smile slices across his face while he still looks at me. “I can’t, Row.” His voice is strained, like he’s holding himself on tight leash.
I shrug. “That’s fine. Because I can.”
With that, I’m standing directly in front of him. I look him in the eye, our breaths mixing in the air between us. And I drop to my knees.
He inhales like a knife through the air. “Row,” he warns me and I know he’s on the edge. But I can’t be stopped. Won’t be stopped. He has to know. He has to feel what’s between us as clearly as I do. He has to feel the intensity so clearly that he can’t turn away from it, can’t deny it the way he’s been doing.
So I unbutton and unzip his jeans and pull out his cock, straining and as hard as steel. I swipe my thumb over the tip, and lick at the pre cum that’s beading there. Mmm. Tastes like Kennedy.
And then I’m gone. And so is he. I swallow him down as far as he can go. Twisting one hand around the base and swirling my tongue around the tip. I’m rewarded with a tight groan and his hand fisting in my hair.
For a second he tugs at my hair, as if he’s going to pull me off. But I swallow him even further and he’s not fighting it anymore. He’s pushing me down on him, his hips starting to move with the motion of my head.
He’s taken control of the moment, fucking me the way he wants to, and I love it. It means he’s surrendered as much as I have. He’s not fighting me or how good this feels. My eyes are watering from having him so far down my throat, but he’s paying attention, he lets me up for a break before pushing me back down. Soon, my hands are extraneous, almost in the way, so I grip the backs of his thighs and just concentrate on swallowing him as far down as I can.
His breaths are violent and ripping out of him, his entire body tense as a high wire. I can feel him racing toward the edge, his salty pre cum dripping down my throat.
Yes, I want him to come so badly. I want him to feel the way I feel when he masters my body.
But then he’s pulling me off of him and ripping off his shirt. I mewl in protest, I wanted him to finish in my mouth, but he’s shouldering me back, to the ground, our bodies pressing against one another. The cold tile is gritting into back as he smashes me to the ground. He yanks my underwear to one side and then he’s inside me.
My body arches up as I take him, I’ve never known anything so pleasurable in my entire life. He rears back and slams into me again, rotating his hips as if he’s trying to press into me as far as possible.
“What is it about you, Row?” he asks me for the second time that night. He’s growling in my ear, his voice a mixture of passion and aggravation.
“How did you do this to me?” His thrusts are guttural and punishing, he’s scooting us across the floor, and he jams his face into my neck, his stubble scratching my skin.
“You destroyed me,” he growls. “You’re destroying me right now.”
He rolls then and puts me up on top of him. But he holds my hips still and he fucks me viciously from the bottom. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
I fall forward onto him, fuse my mouth with his. His arms immediately smash us together, banding around my ribs. His strokes are punishing and relentless.
I raise my head and look into his eyes. I’m usually docile, accepting, pliant, when we have sex. But this is too important. There’s too much riding on this moment. I feel a deep urgency. If he doesn’t get this right now, he might never get it.
So I tear my mouth away from his and glare down at him, planting my hands on either side of his head.
“This is happening, Kennedy. I’m here. I’m yours. I’m not going anywhere.”
Lightning strikes across his face as he rears up. A sound rips out of him like a lion’s roar. And then he’s lifting me up and charging across the room. He throws me over the back of the couch, my ass in the air.
“You’re fucking right you’re not going anywhere.” And his hand slaps down on my ass. I gasp and yelp at the sensation but the pain of it immediately spreads and deliciously dissolves into my blood. He does it again, another smack, right over the first.
And then he’s plunging back into me. The sun has gone down completely and the night is inky black outside. I can see our murky reflections in the glass of the window. Just two bodies, fucking like animals.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says again, fucking me ruthlessly.
“I’m staying with you,” I scream and grip the cushions of the sofa, gaining purchase and pushing back on him as he pushes forward.
He grunts and reaches up to grip my hair, cranking my head back with one hand and gently circling my throat with the other hand. He pounds into me. “You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine.”
He’s chanting it with every thrust, like he’s pounding the words into me. Planting them inside of me where they can never escape.
I can’t move very well in this position, but I take everything he has, pushing back against him and gasping as I feel myself rising faster and faster toward release. And then he’s tightening behind me, groaning and pulling. His fingers yank my hair and his other hand tightens a thrilling amount over my throat. I gasp, tighten to the size of the head of a pin and explode.
Chapter Fourteen
Kennedy
I pull out of her and immediately gather her into my arms. Carry her upstairs to our bedroom. It’s simple. Just a queen sized bed with a big white blanket. The walls are the light blue of the sea in the morning. Gauzy curtains float in the breeze. I hope she likes it.
I lay her on the bed and quickly strip her out of the rest of her clothes. Her bra and now-completely-destroyed underwear. I strip off my jeans and socks and shoes.
Her eyes are half open and her breaths are stuttering. She’s as wrecked as I am. Good. She’s the one who made me that way.
“You’re mine,” I say again and lie down next to her. I stroke a hand over and over her. I kiss every inch of her I can, her face, her neck, her breasts. She giggles when I nuzzle into her armpit.
“Wow,” she eventually murmurs. “That was really something.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “That was like all the sex I’ve ever had in my life rolled up into one insane orgasm.”
“Um,” she laughs. “Thanks?”
I laugh too. And search her eyes. “You’re incredible.”
She looks back at me, her expression quiet, calm as usual.
“You weren’t jealous of Alessia,” I say. “When I told you how I felt about her.”
Row nods. “Sure I was, a little bit. But I more felt urgency to clear things up. I really felt that you had things backwards.” She looks me right in the eye. “I’m the one you have feelings for. I just needed to make sure you knew.”
I kiss her slowly. “Yes. I do.” Laughing, I fall back onto the bed. “You’re a hell of a woman, Row.”
Suddenly, an idea occurs to me, and I’m up like a shot.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, coming up to her knees on the bed as I yank my pants back on.
“I just thought of something, and I have to get there before the shops close.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see,” I say as I remove a picture of a sailboat from the wall and reveal a wall safe. Her eyes go wide as I remove a roll of cash the size of a baseball. “I’ll teach you the combination tomorrow,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t use your credit cards or anything here, traceable, so all that cash is yours too.”
Her eyes go even wider. “I would pay you back as soon as I could for anything I used.”
“Sure you would,” I say, leaning across the bed and stealing a kiss. “In booty.”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Ph.D. booty costs extra.”
And then I’m the one laughing on my way out of the bedroom. “I’ll be back in an hour. I’ll pick up some dinner on the way. Don’t go out, don’t let anyone in.”
“And oh,” I pop my head back in the room. “There’s a full bookshelf in the other bedroo
m.”
I’m rewarded when her eyes light up with instant joy.
I jog down the stairs and tug my t-shirt back on. I’m well aware that I probably reek of pussy, but honestly, I couldn’t give a fuck. I feel light as air as I jog up the hill toward the shops.
I shake my head at the memory of what just happened. I wasn’t lying when I said that she absolutely destroyed me. But she did more than that. She built me up from new. I honestly feel like a new man.
I think she’s right. That maybe I didn’t love Alessia. I was just fixated on her as a way of punishing myself. But the farce didn’t hold up anymore, once I met Row and I felt what love was actually supposed to feel like.
