by Stacey Lynn
My self-control was astounding.
And made me an asshole.
I watched her ass and her legs carry her further away and wondered how long it would take for my control to snap.
* * *
“UNO!” Brayden threw his hands in the air and shouted the words.
How a five-year-old could kick both my ass and Meg’s in a game, multiple times, I had no clue.
The kid was a master.
For the first few hours we were there, until Meg came back inside to cook dinner, they’d stayed in the yard and down by the lake while I got to work on the ever-increasing to-do list. The cabin looked decent, but little shit like gutters and doors and dripping faucets hadn’t been taken care of in years. I’d busied myself with crappy little time-passing chores until dinner was ready.
Then we’d sat around the table in an awkward silence before Brayden had begged Meg to play UNO with her.
Somehow I’d gotten roped into joining them—I couldn’t be a dick and say no.
I had to try. Had to try to get over my own bullshit if I wanted any chance of getting Meg under me.
That was my only motivation.
But fuck it if the kid hadn’t had me laughing for the last two hours while we played game after game.
I mock-scowled at the cards in my hand. I still had at least a dozen to his empty hand but Meg had so many she had to hold them in a pile.
Whoever created a game where cards shot out randomly through some contraption until your lap was full of useless pieces of paper should be shot.
“No more games,” I stated and threw the cards on the table.
“One more?” Brayden asked and his hands clasped together in prayer. “Please?”
I looked up as Meg snorted. “Brayden, it’s not nice to beg.”
“Yeah, but I’m winning!”
She pushed back from the table we’d commandeered in the middle of the room and tossed her cards into the pile. “Maybe more tomorrow, it’s almost bedtime.”
His jaw dropped. “I don’t need to sleep.”
“Sure you don’t,” she said and took his hand. I watched the whole thing in silent wonder: how she could go from a game to bedtime, convince the kid to do what she wanted, and do it all without whipping the kid or screaming at him. I’d never witnessed anything like it personally.
I shook those dark thoughts out of my head as Meg and Brayden headed down the hallway to where their rooms were, and then I began cleaning up the mess of cards.
It was amazing the mess one kid could make when two adults were trying to keep him distracted.
Brayden was into everything and had the attention span of a gnat.
And I hated to admit it, but I’d actually had fun playing with the kid.
Something I never thought would happen. But for being five, he had a quick, sarcastic wit with a dry humor that had me biting back a chuckle several times.
Meg came back into the room just as I was putting the rest of the games away, making sure I had all the pieces in the Mouse Trap game before I slid everything onto a shelf in a closet she had found loaded with games.
I turned and watched her walk into the room and the way she looked, disheveled and tired, her hair falling all around her shoulders and her eyes falling from my eyes to the floor when she caught my gaze, hit my gut.
“He asleep?” I asked when she stopped at the small kitchen counter and slid onto a barstool.
Her eyes slid to the liquor bottles with lust.
“Yeah.” She covered her mouth as a yawn escaped her lips.
“You should go to bed.” I found myself walking closer to her.
Meg shook her head just as she fought another yawn. “I’m not tired yet.”
“Eyeing the wine you bought like it’s calling your name isn’t going to help you stay awake.”
She laughed. It was tired and soft but it still made my dick twitch inside my jeans.
“Yeah, but sometimes what’s really bad for you sounds like a really good idea.”
Her eyes flashed to mine and then dropped to my crotch.
Hell.
“Meg.” Her eyes snapped up and she looked away. “Thought we went over this.”
But hell if I wasn’t moving closer, slowly stalking her until I was right next to her at the bar and leaning over her.
She nodded and looked back at the alcohol. Then she cleared her throat. “I want your whiskey.”
She twisted on the stool, putting her back to me.
Without thinking, I put my hand on her shoulder and stopped her. Her breath made a small hitching sound.
My dick hardened and pressed against my zipper.
I leaned toward the side of her neck before I knew what I was doing.
My lips dropped to her skin.
Her shoulders tightened and her back went straight in front of me. My thumb brushed against the skin at the back of her shoulder, trying to get her to relax.
“Meg.” Her name was torn from my throat on a growl.
But fuck if she didn’t smell so damn good—clean and pure, just like always. Her hair brushed against my cheek and smelled like mint.
“Finn,” she breathed out. “What are you doing?”
“Beats the fuck out of me,” I whispered, and then my lips were back to her neck, slowly tasting, like I had all day to discover every inch of her.
My fingers dug into her skin, holding her in place, and she turned her head, giving me better access.
My tongue tasted the column of her throat and then her jaw. I inhaled her scent and tasted her sensitive skin, loving the way she shivered at my lightest touch until I reached her ear.
She let out a breathy moan and goose bumps appeared down her neck. My other hand came up and tangled in the back of her hair. I tugged firmly, tilting her head until she gasped in surprise.
Our eyes locked right before her lips parted and I dove in, sucking on her bottom lip. My dick was leading the charge and my brain was way too far behind, fooled by lust into thinking this was a good idea.
I was about to pull back when she reached out and grabbed onto the back of my neck, holding me against her.
“Finn.” She gasped against my lips and her eyes opened. She held me captive with just a glance.
I swore she could see everything—that her blue eyes were somehow bright orbs of knowledge that knew what I hid. Knew my demons.
And wanted to soothe my fucking pain and the beast inside that was beginning to prowl.
She awoke the bastard in me until I heard the voices whispering “Take her, use her…destroy her.”
I pulled back and gasped for breath.
Meg licked her lips, her mouth still open.
“Stop,” I said. My hands fell from her skin like she’d burned me. Pain laced her eyes before she looked away.
“Meg,” I called as she got off the stool.
She didn’t say anything. She moved to the bar and grabbed the whiskey and a shot glass.
“I can’t do this with you,” I told her. And fuck if I wanted to tell her why. She’d leave my bed after multiple orgasms feeling like the biggest fuck-up in the entire world.
She was too good, and I didn’t want to hurt her.
I just knew it would happen.
But I couldn’t explain that shit—not without giving her more, and I didn’t have that inside me to give her. Not to anyone.
Not anymore.
“This is a really bad idea,” she said and stared at the bottle. My eyes came to hers, but she didn’t look at me. She shrugged, looked at the bottle, and then poured it into the shot glass. Then she filled a second and a third.
She didn’t make a move to slide them in my direction. I shoved my hands into my pockets and watched her, tried to figure out what she was planning.
She threw back one shot and her face twisted into displeasure before she spoke again.
“But since I’ve been full of really shitty ideas lately and haven’t been able to do shit to keep my kid safe
, I figure…what’s one more shitty decision?”
Before I processed everything, realizing that she was blaming herself for not only my fuck-ups but her dead husband’s as well, she tossed back the other two shots and refilled the glasses.
She looked at me then, her eyes staring at my forehead between the eyes. It was the smallest difference, but I felt it everywhere.
Her look chilled my bones.
Down went two more shots before I finally caught up and ripped the bottle away from her.
“Stop it. This isn’t you.”
She made a choking sound. “Really? How do you know what’s me, Finn? You’ve known me a week and avoided me for most of that. Do you have any idea what I’m going through? Any idea what it feels like to be the one person your kid can depend on and know that every time you turn around, you’re fucking it all up?”
Jesse’s tiny veined body covered with tubes and wires and beeping machines flashed in front of my eyes.
“Do you know what it’s like to love someone so much you’d die for them? Except they go and do that all on their own and you’re left with the knowledge that you didn’t know them at all?”
Jesus. My head fell and I shut my eyes, but memories kept flashing like a video behind my closed lids.
“Meg,” I warned her, my voice low and thick. I was fucking growling, the beast panting and roaring inside.
But she either didn’t care, or didn’t hear—too wrapped up in her own tirade to heed the call to shut the hell up.
“Let me tell you, Finn. I know what it’s like to bury the love of your life. To toss dirt on their coffin, wondering how you could ever manage to go on with your life knowing you didn’t have them next to you to keep you sane. I know what’s like to lose them all over again. I know what it’s like to hold a child in your arms and swear to God and any other deity that may exist that you will do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Anything.”
My skin grew tight and beads of sweat burst out. My hands came out and curled around the edge of the bar until I thought my knuckles might burst. Or the bar would break in half. She needed to quit talking. And she needed to do it now.
“Shut up, Meg,” I growled.
She didn’t listen.
“I know!” she shouted, and I looked up just as she threw back another shot from a bottle of vodka. This time she didn’t make a face at all as the liquor slid down her throat. “I know what it’s like to live in fear every single day, watching over your shoulder, and crying at night because you can’t silence the nightmares that find you when you close your eyes. I know what it’s like to trudge through every day feeling like nothing is going to give. That nothing is going to change where you can break through and finally feel like you’re finding traction in life, doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And I know the guilt every single damn time I look at my kid, wondering how he’s going to feel when Mommy fucks up, again, and he loses every single damn thing he already loves. His house…his toys…his fucking life. And you have no idea what it’s like to carry the weight of that shit on your shoulders, day in and day out—”
“I do know!” I roared. My outburst caught me by surprise and I glanced up as the glass bottle slipped from Meg’s hands. It crashed to the tiled floor at her feet.
She didn’t move. She didn’t move a single inch to clean up her mess, and I wasn’t even sure, as the echo of my shout rang in my ears, that she’d even realized she dropped an entire bottle of vodka at her feet.
“Finn.” She finally exhaled.
I squeezed my eyes closed and scrubbed my face.
“Forget it,” I muttered and turned around to catch my breath.
Fucking hell. That had been too close. I still heard her voice, felt her accusations like needles against my skin.
Jesse.
Piper.
My first murder—that I’d done with a smile on my lips and revenge in my eyes.
Damn it. It was like she knew it all.
Knew just what to say to fucking break me, to rip me wide open, and make me face the shit I’d left behind years ago.
I shook my head and turned toward the door. I needed air. I needed the darkness that had settled outside. My hand was on the doorknob when I heard Meg’s voice hesitantly call my name.
“Finn?”
And hell if I could ignore her. I looked back at her over my shoulder and arched a brow. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry,” she muttered and pink rose on her cheeks just as a tear fell from her eye.
Aw, fuck.
I closed my eyes, erasing the image of her pained expression, and flung the door open. “Stay the fuck inside. I’ll be back.”
Then I left, slamming the door behind me. I made it to the truck out front before I bent over the hood, head dropping to the chilled metal, and let all the memories wash over me, forced myself to face them all over and over again.
It wasn’t until much later when I finally felt the tension in my chest ease, the pain that laced my heart every time I thought of that day, when I finally realized my own cheeks were wet with tears I’d never allowed to fall.
And somehow in the midst of that, the pain became less, as if I was purging all the anger, all the rage and regret after years of burying it deep.
Meg did that.
She fucking made me feel it and deal with it.
I didn’t know whether to hate her for it—or thank her.
I slammed my hands to my face, scrubbing it to erase the drying tears, trying to figure out what in the fuck to do when I heard the screams.
12 Meg
His hand gripped my hips and pulled me back against him.
God, he felt good. His thick dick pressed up against my backside as his other hand slid around to my clit.
He pressed two fingers inside me, stretching me and forcing me toward the bed with the weight of him at my back.
“Finn,” I moaned and my head dipped forward. My hands, on the edge of the bed, curled into the mattress as his fingers began pushing and pulling inside me. I panted, needing more yet too afraid to ask.
He hadn’t gone this far yet.
“Fuck, you feel good,” he groaned and his lips dipped to my back. His hand on my hip trailed up my spine until it curled around my shoulder. He tugged me back against his erection that I needed inside me, and his fingers were playing with me, teasing me, and I was so…damn…close…
“Finn!” I cried and arched my back. His hand on my shoulder held me possessively and firmly against him. I could barely move, just had to take what he was giving me.
And he was giving it to me good.
“Need you,” I moaned. Screw fear of him pulling away now. I needed this too much. I needed the dick I felt against my backside pressing into me, pounding me into the mattress.
I needed the release I felt building from his fingers inside me and then his thumb on my clit.
“Give it to me, Meg,” he whispered harshly into my ear and my body began shaking.
I felt the fire, the tightening in my stomach and then in my thighs, and I was so close…
Until he pulled away.
“No!” I yelled, my orgasm so close, and so far away.
Hands moved to my hips and I was flipped to my back.
Yes, I thought. Better.
I wanted to see Finn completely lose it with me.
Finally.
My eyes closed and I felt his body move over me, his hands trailing from my hips up my sides until he covered my breasts and pinched my nipples.
My eyes flew open from the sudden sting of pain.
And then I screamed.
“No!” I shook my head as Maurice Moscoe shifted and pushed inside. “No!” I shouted again before his hand clamped down and covered my mouth.
His black hair brushed against my cheek.
His slimy smile leaned toward my ear and his wet tongue licked my skin.
“I told you I’d have you…”
“NO! Finn!”
“No!” I sho
uted. My eyes flew open and I flew up to a sitting position.
My heart pounded against my ribcage.
Sweat dripped down my forehead.
The door flew open and my head snapped in the direction as a shadow filled the doorway.
Terrified, I scrambled back against the edge of the couch.
“Go away,” I said, my voice sore and raspy.
I blinked, suddenly remembering where I was, and looked around.
“Where’s Brayden?” I said, my eyes on the shadowed figure who stayed in the doorway, his hands braced against the frame.
“You yelled my name.”
I blinked and jumped off the couch.
“Where the hell is Brayden?” My hands flew to my hair and I hurried toward the hallway.
Spinning around, panting and sweating, I finally recognized the darkened figure.
“Finn,” I gasped. “Where the hell is Brayden?”
He stepped into the doorway, his hands up and palms out. “He’s in his room.”
“Oh my God.” My knees collapsed and I sank to the floor. I shook my head, tried to erase the last vision in my dream and tears filled my eyes.
“You okay? You were screaming, darlin’.”
My nose burned as tears fell down my cheeks and landed on my bare knees.
I couldn’t shake it.
I could feel him.
Feel Moscoe touching me…violating me…
I could feel…
My head snapped up and my mouth dropped open as the rest of the dream—the better part of the dream, the part that I’d been enjoying—pieced together in my mind.
I could feel Finn.
“Meg,” he said and took another step toward me.
My hands flew up. “Don’t.” I shook my head but couldn’t look at him. “Go away.”
“You haven’t told me if you’re okay.”
I couldn’t. Not now. When my body was buzzing with fear but heating in a different way as I remembered the earlier part of the dream.
The fantastic part of the dream. Hell, I’d wanted that.
Nothing could burn that from my memory.
But I needed to bury it—bury it somewhere really deep inside me where I could never dig it out.
