Seth (Damage Control #3)

by Jo Raven

  Let’s see where this takes us.

  First it takes us to the snakes, of course. The Herpetarium. It’s warm inside the dimly-lit space with its glass cases, and I tighten my hold on Seth’s hand.

  “Afraid?” he whispers, and I jump.

  “No, of course not,” I scoff, then step closer to him, biting my lip. “Okay, maybe just a tiny bit?”

  “Of snakes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “Because even though I’m scared, I want to see the snakes. They’re beautiful, and move like dancers.”

  He chuckles low, and I smile, despite our fight. Which wasn’t really a fight. Shaking my head, I walk with him along the cases.

  He stops in front of the boa constrictor and lets go of me, turning his full attention on the animal. It’s huge, half-curled around a branch, its skin light brown with dark diamond patterns. Its forked tongue flicks out.

  I shiver.

  Seth presses a hand to the glass, and I jerk a little, an abortive attempt to pull him away from danger.

  There’s no danger, I tell myself. The animals are inside cages and boxes.

  He keeps doing that, putting his hands as close to the animals as possible. Thank God for barriers. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have tried it without the glass between him and the snake.

  “Fuck me…” he mutters, and the awe in his voice is worth the uncertainty and panic. “This thing’s badass.”

  “Yeah, it’s big,” I say, my voice small.

  “They eat rodents and birds, and they give birth to babies, not eggs.” He taps his fingertips on the glass and the boa stares at him with a beady eye. “They’re so strong. They just grab their prey and wrap around it until it dies.”

  “Jesus. Right.” I know all this, so why am I shivering again?

  He glances at me and frowns. He pulls me against his side, slings a heavy arm over my shoulders. “You okay?”

  I wrap my arm around his slim hips and smile up at him. “Why do you like the boas so much?”

  He shrugs. “I… I wanted to be a herpetologist. I just love snakes, they’re so strong. Ancient creatures. Survivors. I wanted to study them. Christ, I just wanted… Fuck.” He pulls away from me, turns his back, draws an uneven breath.

  And then another, and another, a tremor going through his shoulders.

  “Seth?”

  Jesus, what have I done?

  He shakes his head, starts for the exit, and I hurry after him, grabbing his hand. He doesn’t let go, or push me away, and we walk out into the watery sunlight. He keeps going, stumbling, until we reach the relative privacy of a tree shade.

  He releases my hand and turns away, leaning on his stick. “Gimme a minute.”

  “What happened?” My heart’s in my throat. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. Fuck, I didn’t want to remember.”

  “Remember what?” I walk around him until I face him again. “Remember what, Seth?”

  Christ, his cheeks are wet. He’s just standing there, clutching his stick, tears tracking down his face, and it’s as if he can’t feel them.

  “Remember everything I used to want,” he breathes. “All I can’t have.”

  When I wrap my arms around him, he doesn’t resist. His stick clatters to the ground, and he does nothing for a long while, letting me hold him.

  “Didn’t mean to hurt you,” I whisper against his shoulder, close to crying myself. “Only wanted to make you happy.”

  “I’m fine,” he says, although his voice catches. He finally lifts his arms and hugs me back. “I promise, I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” I cling to him. “My fault.”

  “Manon,” he whispers my name, low and soft, like a prayer. Then he draws back and kisses me—salty with sorrow and sweet. Sweet and filled with a promise I can’t decipher.

  ***

  A light drizzle has begun. The sky is weeping.

  I keep stealing glances at him as we make our way through the park, heading to the exit. My lips tingle from his kiss—hard and hot and all too brief. He says he’s fine, but the tears drying on his face and the pain in his voice when he told me why tell another story.

  What a disaster.

  Stop it, I tell myself. Okay, so I can’t quite tell if my idea of coming to the zoo was a fiasco or not. Can’t tell if his tears were only sad, or also happy. But in any case, I broke through some barrier he’d erected around him. Learned more about him in a couple of hours than I had in the past weeks.

  Not that he likes snakes, or that he wanted to be a herpetologist. Not only that. He feels and keeps the emotions trapped inside. He has dreams, but he’s buried them deep. I don’t think he’s the kind of person to bare himself to others. He hides. Tries to be strong, but he’s cracked inside.

  What the wound was… I can guess from the things he told me: his junkie mother and her abusive boyfriends. Stealing to survive when he was little. Having a brief stint at happiness with his cousin’s family, and then losing that, too. Thinking his mother was dead, when in fact she’d abandoned him.

  That’s enough to break even the strongest.

  His childhood was so different to mine, maybe I should be running the other way. How could he understand me, and how could I understand him when our backgrounds have no middle ground?

  And yet… I’ve never felt as comfortable in my skin as I have with him. So happy.

  The thought sends a shiver through me.

  It’s the cold, I tell myself, because meanwhile the drizzle has turned into rain. Somewhere above, thunder booms and the wind picks up.

  The clouds burst open, pouring a sea of ice-cold water down on us.

  “Shit,” Seth mutters and grabs my hand. Half-limping, half-running, he leads me out of the zoo, past the parked cars, searching for mine. “Where the fuck are we parked?”

  People are overtaking us, running, unprepared for the sudden storm. The spatter of the rain drowns out other sounds, so they seem like ghosts, fleeing past.

  “There!” I point out my blue Kia Rio through the downpour, and we hurry that way. Cold water is running through my collar down my back and front, soaking my dress. “Quick.”

  I press the electronic key to unlock the doors, and we scramble inside. Jeez, it’s cold! The temperature must have suddenly dropped ten degrees.

  The rain closes around the car, a solid wall, trapping us inside. I turn on the ignition and start the heater. Rubbing my hands together, I look over at Seth. He’s struggling to get rid of his drenched jacket. He manages after a moment, and throws it at his feet with a low curse.

  I forget myself staring. With his dark hair plastered to his temples, long lashes wet, the T-shirt stuck to his body, he should look like a drowned rat.

  Except he looks good. Crap, he doesn’t just look good, he looks frigging hot. My lower lip catches between my teeth as I observe a shiny droplet trickle down his neck, disappearing into his white T-shirt. A T-shirt that’s gone transparent, molding to every hard ridge and plane of his chest and shoulders, outlining his firm pecs, his taut abs.

  Then he grabs the hem and pulls that one off as well, and my brain self-combusts.

  Mayday. Hot, shirtless guy in my car.

  Takes me a while to realize he’s staring right back at me.

  “You should take off that coat,” he says, his voice flowing over my skin like rough velvet. “Need help?”

  Snapping out of my daze, I manage to twist in my seat until I can shrug the coat off. I throw it on the back seat, and I can feel his eyes on me, a line of heat.

  I turn toward him, start to ask if he’s okay, to say again I’m sorry, but the words stick in my mouth.

  He’s undoing his pants. The top button on his jeans pops open, and he unzips his fly slowly. Click, click, click.

  “What…?” I have to stop and swallow, my mouth dry. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s wet. Taking it off. You should do the same.”
/>   “Taking… We’re in the middle of a parking lot. Outside the zoo.”

  “In a storm. Lots of rain. Nobody can look inside.”

  “But I could just—”

  He slips a hand behind my neck, pulls me to him and licks my mouth. “You could just take off your panties and climb on top of me. We could warm each other up until the storm is over. Told you that’s what I’d do with you on a Sunday morning. Or did you think I was joking?”

  He sounds serious. His words, his taste, his touch is intoxicating. When he deepens the kiss, I moan. When he reaches with his other hand between my legs, I gasp. He tugs on my panties, sliding them down my legs until they pool at my ankles. I slip my feet free.

  With one last lick at my lips, he leans back and gives me a crooked grin. “You should never wear panties. If I was your boyfriend, I’d hide all your underwear so that I can touch your pussy whenever I want, stroke you, make you come.”

  I’m panting, clenching so hard deep inside I think I’ll come just like that, from his words, the intensity of his gaze. He tugs on my arm, and I climb over him, tucking my knees at his sides.

  “Oh God, at last,” he breathes, his gaze going heavy-lidded and darker than the storm clouds outside. “So beautiful. Need you.”

  Need you, too, I think, dazed at how much I want him. The windows are fogged over, and the rain pounds on the roof of the car like a drum. It matches the frenzied beat of my heart.

  His brown nipples are bunched up, tight little peaks. I tease them with my fingers. He grabs my hands, kisses the palms, slides them down his chest to the thin dark trail leading to the bulge in his briefs.

  My breath quickens. I palm his erection through the cloth and he hisses. Under my hand, he swells more, the tip of his cock pushing under the elastic.

  I pull his cock out.

  He gasps loudly as it springs free, thick and long and flushed—so sexy—and I clench painfully between my legs. His broad chest rises and falls on a deep breath, and he moves my hand up, to press down on his cock. His face contorts—pleasure, so sharp it hurts—and his cock jerks under my fingers, growing hard as steel.

  “My turn,” he mutters, and before I know what he’s talking about, before my brain catches up, he tugs the straps of my dress down and puts his hands on my breasts. He buries his face against them, kissing them, then mouths my nipples, sucking and teasing until I’m breathing hard, aching for him to fill me.

  His hands travel down to my hips, and slip under my dress, finding my naked parts, spread wide. I fall forward, bracing my hands on either side of his head, lightheaded, as his fingers rub over my clit and further down, pushing into me.

  “So wet,” he whispers. “Fuck. You’re so hot.”

  Lights explode behind my closed eyelids when he strokes me inside, while his thumb presses on my clit. Oh God, I can’t… I’m going to come. This is crazy, he’s just only started touching me, and I can’t hold back.

  “Seth!” I cry out as I tighten around his fingers, my hips rocking, the rain a counter-beat to a pulse that’s echoing deep in my core.

  “Oh fuck…” He pulls his fingers out slowly, panting as harshly as I am. “Need to feel you around my dick, right now. Shit.”

  I blink heavy lids while he fumbles with something one-handed. He’s holding his wallet, and he extracts a condom from it. He tears the foil open with his teeth and reaches down between us.

  The sight of his cock, so big and wet, sends another pang of pleasure through me. Holy crap. Can’t believe we’re doing this, in the parking lot, a few yards from the zoo entrance.

  “Fucking hell,” Seth rasps, rolling the condom over his hard-on, his eyes slits of dark desire. “Want me to put it in you, baby? Can you take it?”

  “Yes,” I whisper, my pulse speeding up again. “Please put it in me, Seth.”

  “Jesus. Fuck.” His breath is now hissing between gritting teeth. He grips his hard-on, the muscles in his chest seizing. “Lift up.”

  I rise on my knees, and he guides his cock between my legs, between my folds, into me. The head presses into my passage, slips inside, inch by inch. Big. Hard. Perfect.

  A moan catches in my throat. He clasps my hips, his body arching off the seat, his cock slipping deeper, impossibly wide. Stroking every sensitive part of me. Taking my breath away.

  The pressure is mounting in my core again. Feels like I’ll come just from this first thrust, just from the blissed-out look on his handsome face. His eyes flutter closed, open once more, gazing down, where our bodies are joined.

  Then his hands on my hips tighten, lifting me up—lowering me again on top of his cock, and we both groan at the rush of pleasure.

  God help me. As he does it again, as he fills me up so completely nobody else could ever do it for me, a second orgasm hits me, sharper, sweeter than the first. I grind myself on him, keening his name, unable to keep quiet. I moan with each spasm of pleasure tightening my insides, clenching so hard around his cock I can feel the moment he starts coming.

  Can feel his cock surge and jerk, his hold on my hips keeping me down, keeping his hard-on as deep inside me as possible as he groans and stills. His cock is still pulsing inside my pussy, and he pulls on me until I’m lying on his chest, my head tucked between his neck and shoulder.

  “I wish,” he mutters against my hair, “that I could stay inside you forever. With you. Like this.”

  Not sure what he’s saying, how to interpret his words. Probably just post-sex talk, I think, unable to move or think. I’m a boneless heap on top of him, not caring if anyone passing by can see us, not giving a damn that my breasts are mashed against his chest and his cock is still buried inside me.

  Not wanting to accept that soon this will be a crazy memory—the feel of his cock inside me, his arms around me, his warm presence, his boyish grin—and we’ll both go our separate ways.

  PART III

  You think a dreamcatcher can free you from bad dreams. You think bad luck is something that happens to other people. You think things can’t get any worse.

  Until the dreamcatcher breaks, bad luck turns worse and your life swirls down the drain. Then you realize you haven’t known misery until now. You haven’t had nightmares before, only bad dreams. You didn’t know.

  Now you do, and still you keep fighting.

  Because the last thing to go is hope.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Seth

  Monday morning and Manon’s not in my arms when I wake up. She left late last night, saying she had to wake up early today to talk to her college advisor.

  I fucking hate Mondays.

  The weekend I spent with her is a magic memory lodged in my brain, making me grin as I shower and brush my teeth, as I stir some instant coffee and hop into my jeans.

  Christ. It was so good I should stop thinking about it—’cuz it won’t be on repeat. One week, right? Did we agree on that, or did I imagine it? One week to show her how much she means to me, before she leaves me far behind in her rearview mirror.

  And of course speaking of rearview mirrors—fucking hell, the sex in her car yesterday was damn hot. She was so fucking sexy, so soft and warm and…

  Fuck. Not mine. She’s not mine. Not for real.

  Lucky for her. I’m not who she needs. Can’t take care of her as she deserves. I can barely take care of myself. Need to get my life back on track.

  Somehow.

  Going back to Damage today. It’s about time. My knee is much better, and I need to ask the guys if anyone can recommend me for a job. Any small gig will do—small enough that nobody will go digging into my records. Now that I can stand on my own two feet, that the dizziness from the concussion has cleared, too, I need to put a patch on my life, regain control.

  Zane and Rafe will grill me, for sure. I’ll have to fend their questions, keep them at bay. Bark and bite. Which is so unlike me it’s bound to raise some eyebrows and make them come at me harder, but I’ll hold strong. It’s what I gotta do.

  But fi
rst… Shivering in my jacket, I wait for the bus. My first stop is an illegal car wash run by the Chinese further north. I’ve worked there before, when I was on the street. The money isn’t enough to buy you more than a cheap meal, but right now it’s all I can think of doing.

  Turns out they have a new boss. He doesn’t look too impressed with me and my walking stick, but puts me to work nevertheless.

  Five hours later, drenched in sweat and a few bucks richer, I head to Damage. I’m ready. I’m goddamn ready for anything.

  I keep repeating the mantra in my head all the way there. I arrive first and settle down to do my cleaning shift for the first time in months. It feels good, although after my stint at the car wash, it leaves me winded, my knee aching, my shoulder throbbing.

  Getting better, though. Definitely. Getting there. Hopefully soon I can return to the gym and do some serious weight-lifting and cardio with Rafe and the guys. I missed that.

  Jesse arrives first, the newest inker of the shop, and he whoops when he sees me. He shows me the new section of the shop, his work station, and seems mighty pleased that I barely need the walking stick today.

  It’s goddamn nice to be back. Maybe it’s gonna work out okay.

  Turns out Zane won’t be coming in today. He’s out of town, and Ocean takes over my training. Which is cool, because Ocean is a nice guy, quiet and relaxed and obviously not set on chewing my ears out about missing so much training or getting a job.

  By the end of the afternoon, I’m tired but pleased with what I’ve learned. Plus when asked, Ocean says he’ll see if he can find some gig for me with a buddy of his at a small diner nearby, and the others seem genuinely happy to see me and don’t ask questions.

  The week has started well.

  That should have been the first warning sign, I guess, the first alarm bell.

  But after the weekend I had, anything seems possible. Time with the girl I want, awesome sex, and even the zoo. Christ. The goddamn zoo. Bringing back memories of a time when I had hopes for myself. For my life.

  Manon texts me, asking if I’d go to her place for dinner, and I grin like an idiot as I reply.

  Shit, what does that imply, though? Flowers, right? I should at least take flowers. I count the cash in my wallet and my grin fades.