by Skye Warren
He still didn’t like how casual she was being about being manhandled, but he recognized she wanted to drop the subject. And short of taking her to an emergency room, which would be more traumatic for her, there wasn’t anything else he could do.
He ran a hand through his hair. “I read your thesis.”
That got her attention. Her eyes widened, two dark ponds in the night.
“That’s what I was talking to my father about. According to him, it was an affair. A consensual affair. He claims to have cared about her, the intern. But when my mother found out, things got ugly, as he put it. I guess we saw a taste of that today.”
“God,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know.”
“My father has done some brave things in his lifetime. Even though I didn’t get along with him, I looked up to him, knowing what he’d accomplished. But in that moment, he was a coward. He didn’t stand up for the woman he cared for, didn’t protect and defend her.”
She squeezed his hand gently until he met her eyes again. “You’re not him,” she said softly. “You did defend me. You always protect me.”
He let out a breath. “Jesus, Erin. I want that to be true.”
“It is true. You’re strong and capable and incredibly intelligent. And you use all of that, the entire force of you, to make my life better. Sometimes I don’t feel…deserving.”
Suspicion formed in his gut. “Is this what my mother said?”
Erin looked away. “Some of it. Maybe I was already worried.”
“Erin,” he said, putting steel into his words. He knew this was uncomfortable for her, but he needed to know what had been said. Especially since it made Erin like this, curled up and somehow ashamed.
Instead of answering, Erin opened the car door and stepped outside. She might have murmured something like “need some air” but she didn’t pause to make sure he’d heard. The car door slammed shut, and he was quick to follow her into the night.
He wouldn’t push her to talk. He realized that much. If there was a risk she would run away from him, he would just have to live without fucking knowing what his mother had said to upset and hurt her.
She stood looking out over the city, and he was struck with a sense of déjà vu for all the nights he had woken up from a nightmare. They hadn’t been sleeping but in essence that was what Erin had just done—woken up from a nightmare. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, warding off the cool breeze. Her gaze was far away, unseeing.
He came to her from behind, putting his arms around her. He held her gently and kissed the top of her head, the same way she had kissed the middle of his back.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“Getting there.” She twined her arms over his, locking them together. “This is helping.”
“Good.” The night air was cool, borderline cold, but soothed him. Still he pulled her in close to keep her warm. “We can find a decent motel on the highway. Stay the night, then head to your mother’s as planned in the morning. Does that sound okay?”
“Sure.” She sighed. “I mean, it sounds like a really good plan. Sorry I’m kind of distracted.”
“Christ, Erin, you keep apologizing.”
“Sorry, I—” She laughed. “I’ll stop.”
He shook his head, a slight smile on his face. God, this woman. He couldn’t get enough of her. He wanted to hold her, breathe her in. In all honesty, he wanted to fuck her. He was hard as the fucking rocks around them. Apparently his body hadn’t gotten the message about extreme emotional distress. Or actually it had gotten the message, but it interpreted his adrenaline rush as arousal. Here he was, holding the most beautiful, sexy woman he’d ever known—and his dick had no idea why it couldn’t be in her. He cleared his throat and took a half step back to make sure she wouldn’t feel the erection against her back.
When she rocked her hips back in a sensual, knowing sway, he knew it was too late. She already knew. Now wasn’t the right time. She was vulnerable and hurt. He shouldn’t touch her. But her body invited him in with a soft moan he barely heard over the crickets and the pounding of his heart, and he was helpless to refuse.
Chapter Sixteen
Erin
Erin turned in Blake’s arms.
She knew they had things to work through. Important things, like whatever doubts she still harbored that had let Bel mess with her head. They needed to talk about them and deal with them…but right now she didn’t have the strength for that.
She’d used all she had standing up for herself and holding her head up high in the few minutes it took them to leave the house. And Blake’s arms felt too good—warm and strong and secure. Like she could let go and be completely safe.
And so that was all she wanted to do, let go in the most carnal way, to pant and rock and fuck until she’d lost all thought, until her body was a mindless mass of pleasure.
Blake’s eyes were dark with concern. “Are you sure—”
She silenced him with a hand on his cock. He was already hard as steel in his jeans. She rubbed the taut denim, savoring his rough groan. “Are you?” she asked.
She didn’t mean sex. She meant sure about them. About their marriage. She meant all the deep things she hadn’t wanted to discuss yet.
He grunted and closed his eyes. “Fuck yes.”
He might have meant sex or he might have meant everything. It didn’t matter. Right answer.
She made quick work of his jeans, unzipping them and shoving them down his hips. His cock sprang out, thick and heavy in her hands. “Someone might see,” he warned.
“Let them.” She wanted them to see, the whole city watching. She wanted everyone to know that Blake Morris was hers. And most of all, she needed to show herself it was still true.
He groaned, leaning down for a kiss. It was blunt, that kiss. A little messy. She loved the way he was with her—raw and unchecked. Except he wasn’t really unchecked. Even now, as carnal as he was, he held something back. She’d always assumed it had to do with him. With his time in the army or his perception of himself as a monster.
But a new thought occurred to her, especially after the events of the day, after the careful and cruel incision into her fears. What if he held back because of her? Because he didn’t know if she could handle him.
There was a time she would have scoffed at the idea. Of course she could handle anything he did to her body, her mind. She craved it. But now, feeling stripped down and abraded, she wasn’t so sure. And yet that didn’t stop her from wanting him.
If she was going to break, she wanted him to be the one to break her.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
“What?” He pulled back to meet her eyes. It wasn’t the language she usually used with him, and there was a question in his eyes. Did she really want this? Was she too upset to make decisions for herself?
It made her angry. And it made her sad. She shoved at his chest with her fists. “I said fuck me.”
“Erin, baby. I’ll make you feel good.”
That was him, making her come, making her shudder and scream her way through climax. Let me take care of you. He was such a good man. But for tonight, she wanted him to be bad.
She shoved him again, her forearms against his body. “Not good, Blake. Hard. Do it hard.”
His eyes flashed with something dangerous—and seductive. “You don’t want it like this.”
“Don’t tell me what I want. I want to feel…” She considered all the things she wanted to feel. Pain. Pleasure. The soul-deep uncertainty that she had somehow named love. In the end, it was simpler than that. “I just want to feel.”
He took a step back. “I love you.”
She followed him, placing a hand on his chest, petting him, apologizing if she’d hurt him. “Then fuck me like you mean it. Do whatever you want with me.”
The decision came faster than she was expecting. And it came in the form of his hand in her hair, pulling back, turning her face up to the sky. She gasped but let her body hang
by his touch.
“You want me to be rough, is that it?” His words were soft against her cheek.
“Yes,” she managed.
“You want to see what I’m really like when I don’t hold back.”
“Yes.”
“Because you still don’t know me.” His words sounded more sad than offended. “You still think there’s going to be something sweet and loving. That I can just give you a spanking on the soft part of your ass, like this is a game, and I’ll be able to stop there.”
She shivered. “Show me then.”
His hand tightened in her hair. “It’s not a fucking game.”
He bent his head and licked at her throat. Then he bit her, teeth scraping along her jaw as she cried out to the moon. Her hands fumbled for his shoulders, his arms, trying to hold on.
“No,” he said coldly. “You don’t get to hug me and cuddle me, not when you want me to fuck you. Not when you want me to show you the real me.”
He dragged her by her hair in one hand, and her upper arm in the other, to a tree. Then he pushed her against it, face-first. He positioned her arms around the tree as if she were a doll, making her hug the tree. He undid her jeans and yanked them down to her knees, using them like a rope, tying her still. And he shoved her shirt and bra up, exposing her skin to the air and the tree.
“Like that,” he said, a hardness in his voice she didn’t understand. “You stay just like that no matter what I do to you. And when I’m done, your breasts will be red and raw, and I won’t even have touched them. Understand?”
She whimpered, aroused and nervous and somehow floating. It was freeing for him to speak to her this way, for him to hurt her like this. It was freeing not to know what would happen next.
What happened next was a blunt finger pressing inside her pussy from behind. She gasped, her mouth open against the tree.
“Wet,” he murmured. “Are you always this wet? Do you walk around all day during class or work with your pussy slick as a waterfall? Or is that just for me, every fucking time?”
She shuddered. “For you,” she said, her voice high and thin. “It’s for you.”
Then his fingers were at her mouth. “Taste yourself,” he demanded.
Before she had a chance to respond, to even think about saying no, he pushed inside. She sucked on his fingers obediently, licking her juices off his coarse skin. When he was satisfied, he removed his hand. Then his heat was at her back, his cock nudging her entrance.
“You want me to scare you,” he whispered. “That way you can walk away tomorrow for what happened today. Prove that I’m really like my father. That I’m a rich bastard willing to take what he wants, who he wants, and damn the consequences.”
Dark realization washed over her. He thought she was doing this because she wanted out. He thought she was using his sexuality—his pain—against him. “No,” she cried.
“Yes,” he gritted out, thrust inside her.
The fullness shocked her, and she lifted up on her toes, trying to escape. Her breasts shoved against the bark of the tree, making her whimper. There was no escape, only invasion, only pain. Only the knowledge that he was finally letting her in.
“Blake. Blake.”
“I shouldn’t touch you when you’re like this, when it’s going to be the last fucking time, but I can’t help it. You pushed me and pushed me, and now you’re getting it. How does it feel, baby? How does the bark feel on your skin? How does my dick feel in your cunt?” As if to punctuate his words, he slipped his hand around and pinched her clit—hard. “This is what I want to do to you, all the fucking time. This is how it would be if I didn’t hold back. Fucking you, using you, tearing you up.”
He pulled back and thrust inside, and she couldn’t deny that she was being fucked and used. It even felt like being torn, rent into two parts from the inside, his cock so deep and thick inside her.
“I never want this to end,” she gasped.
“You will,” he promised.
And then he sped up, moving quickly as he thrust, his cock pulling far out only to slam back inside, her breasts bouncing against the rough curve of the tree, her cries echoing around the clearing and over the city.
“Tell me what she said to you,” he gritted out. “Tell me why you’re hurting.”
And it hurt more than the bark, more than his cock, to answer him. “She said I wasn’t good enough for you. That I was trash. That I would always be trash.”
“Fuck,” he growled, sounding savage. Like he could rip her apart. “That’s not fucking true.”
“I know,” she sobbed, but she didn’t know, not really. And it was hard to talk with him still fucking her, not as fast as before, but still enough that each word rode on a breath, choppy and short. Because as hard as it was to talk like this, it was the only way she could talk. “But I thought… I didn’t know… God, we’re so different, Blake.”
Another growl, this one wordless and animalistic. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’re the same, you and me. I’ll fucking make us the same.”
It seemed impossible that it could work, that he could somehow fuck them into the same person. But that was how it felt, his cock impaling her, the incredible wet friction between their bodies fusing them together.
His other hand slapped her ass, the sound resounding in the stillness. “Moan,” he said, guttural. “I want to hear you.”
So she let herself moan—and also talk and babble and cry against that tree, hugging it and being hugged by Blake, even while he brutally fucked her. There were words and apologies and explanations. There were garbled sounds even she couldn’t make out. And then there was only a steady litany. “I love you I love you I love you.”
His hips jerked roughly as he came, and it was the feel of him coming, his hands gripping her hips, surely leaving bruises, a hot gush of seed deep inside, that made her come too. She rocked her hips, humping the tree, as her orgasm slammed into her.
He rode the last of the pulses with languid patience, letting her pulse and spasm around his cock, feeling his seed slide down on him. When she had finished and slumped against the tree, he gently pulled away. He righted his clothes, and then hers, and then placed a kiss on her nape.
“Thank you for telling me.”
She smiled into the dark, her face half hidden by the tree. “Thank you for fucking me.”
“It’s bullshit, you know. The idea that we’re so different. That you’re not good enough.” He turned her around and leaned her back against the tree, letting her rest against it but looking her right in the eye. “When I look at you, I see everything I want to be.”
She let her eyes fall shut as he kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
“Love you too, baby.” He ran a finger over the curve of her breast. “Are you sore?”
Her breasts would be tender for days. She loved it. “As awful as this day was, it might be worth it for the tree sex.”
He laughed softly. “You know, there are a lot of trees on the property back home.”
“We should probably draw a map. For surveying purposes.”
“Mhmm. We wouldn’t want to miss one.”
Chapter Seventeen
Blake
Blake took in the thin carpet of the apartment hallway, the faint smell of mold overlaid with something sweet—chocolate. With the dim overhead lights and all of the doors shut, it was grim. Hard to imagine a young Erin bounding home from school with a backpack slung over her shoulder and a cheeky grin on her face. This wasn’t a building that inspired smiles.
But that’s what Sofia was doing when she opened the door—smiling. She had a huge smile on her face as she embraced her daughter.
“Mama, I missed you so much.”
Sofia turned to him, and he was shocked to see tears in her eyes. Then Sofia collected him in a hug. Somehow it happened exactly like that despite her being shorter and smaller—he found himself embraced and even squished by her. After a beat of surprise, he hugged her back. Erin looked
at them with tears in her brown eyes—so like her mother’s—and he knew this was how they both looked when they were happy.
His voice was surprisingly thick when he said, “It’s good to see you, Mrs. Rodriguez.”
In his life he’d been a son and a boyfriend and a fiancé. But he had never been hugged, only hugged, until Erin. And her mother. He supposed this is what family felt like.
“You don’t know how much I worried about Erin,” she said. “She is so strong, too strong. I worried she wouldn’t let anyone in.”
It felt like she was giving him her blessing, and it was a gift. He was grateful when she didn’t make him respond, just nodded as if something had been decided there in that dingy hallway.
He picked up their bags and followed both women inside.
In the bright light of the kitchen, Sofia gasped. “Erin, what happened to your face?”
Guilt raced through him because across her jaw was a raw, red mark from the tree. Apparently his own scars couldn’t shock Mrs. Rodriguez, but the evidence of their sex would need to be explained.
A pink blush covered Erin’s cheeks. “We took a detour to a hiking spot Blake knew. I ended up face-first in a tree.” She sent Blake a secret smile. “Clumsy.”
Sofia seemed to consider her daughter. After a moment, she relaxed. “I’ll get some ointment. It doesn’t look too deep, but just to be sure. Meanwhile both of you have a seat. And have some cookies.”
He and Erin obediently sat at the small kitchen table where a plate of warm cookies sat waiting for them.
She grinned at him as she took one. “Busted.”
He blinked. The sex? “Your mom didn’t know.”
Erin took a bite. “She knows.”
“No way.”
“I got my Trailblazer patch when I was eight. I’ve hiked all year round. I don’t run into trees. But don’t feel bad. She knew and she let you stay. That means you’re in.”
A warm, full feeling entered his chest. It didn’t help that the cookie tasted like sugar and heaven. This felt a little like he’d thought home should feel. And family. And a childhood he’d never had. In some ways he’d grown up privileged, and for that he felt both shame and gratitude. But in other ways, he’d never known until now the quiet, powerful contentedness of belonging.
