Pieces of Autumn

by Mara Black

  Backing me up against the wall, he plundered my mouth again, my neck, teeth and tongue assaulting my senses while his fingers worked their magic between my legs. I was quivering, my nerves sparking on the edge of climax.

  Suddenly, he broke away from my skin to look at me.

  "When was the last time someone fucked you?" he demanded, his hand tightening around my wrists.

  My pulse fluttered. "I...I don't..."

  His eyes narrowed.

  "Never," I finally confessed.

  Something flashed across his face. "Never?" he echoed. His fingers stilled.

  I shook my head.

  "Jesus. Autumn..." His face twisted with something - regret, memories, guilt. I saw the exact moment when he remembered how he'd almost taken it from me, without even knowing what he held.

  "Please," I begged. "This doesn't change anything. I want you so much." I took in a sharp breath, biting back a sob of desperation. "I want it to be you."

  "Why?" he demanded, softly.

  "Because." I licked my lips. My whole body was throbbing, and it robbed me of the ability to lie. "I've never wanted anybody the way I want you. I don't care how fucked up it is. My life's been a whole litany of fucked-up-ness, and now I have a chance at something that'll actually make me feel good. I can't let that go."

  "It won't feel good," he said, roughly, his eyes searching mine. He released my wrists. "Not this time. Maybe not for a while."

  "I don't care."

  Heavy silence hung between us. Then, finally, he took a deep breath and pointed to the bed.

  "Lie down," he rumbled. "I'm going to make you come." My body whole body quivered with anticipation. "Then, I'm going to make you ready for me."

  "I am ready," I told him.

  His mouth twisted. "Do as you're told."

  Breathlessly, I stretched out on the bed. He grabbed my hips and dragged me down to the bottom of the mattress, quickly kneeling on the floor between my feet. His tongue pressed firmly against my needy flesh, and I cried out, bucking and shuddering underneath him. My climax came on quickly, but it lingered - aftershocks twitching through my body until I finally sagged with relief.

  Pulling me back to the center of the bed, Tate joined me there, pulling me into a searing kiss. I moaned, loving the taste of myself on his mouth. His fingers circled my over-sensitized flesh, spreading my wetness, teasing.

  I needed to be filled. I needed him to fuck me.

  One long finger dipped inside. I squirmed. It was a strange feeling, but it didn't hurt.

  "More," I whispered.

  He smiled. "What's the magic word?"

  "Please?"

  Shaking his head, he withdrew his finger. "The other one."

  "Please, Sir?"

  Still, just a smile.

  "Please, Master?"

  "All right then." Two fingers slid inside. I winced. He paused in his movements, waiting for my body to acclimate.

  "It's fine," I breathed.

  He began to thrust, slowly. I gasped at the feeling - so strange and intense, like nothing I could have imagined. I tilted my hips, accepting, wanting more.

  I didn't have to ask for a third.

  There was another twinge of pain at first, then my body relaxed, accepting. I felt a rush of relief. This wasn't so bad.

  "I'm ready," I whispered.

  His fingers disappeared, and a moment later, he was looming over me. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. This whole process had frayed the last of his self control.

  "Please," I said.

  And then I felt it, hard and blunt, pressing into me. Forcing me open. My whole body stiffened.

  Oh, God. I was right to be afraid.

  The pain was intense, but I was determined to endure it. This was what I wanted. A necessary evil.

  Tate froze.

  "Autumn." Some of the darkness cleared his face - but not all of it. He spoke softly, urgently. "Autumn, am I..."

  I couldn't unscrew my face from its obvious display of pain. God damn it.

  "It's fine," I whispered. "It doesn't matter."

  He shut his eyes tightly for a moment, arms tensing on either side of me. "It matters," he said, opening them again, taking even, measured breaths. Making an effort to hold himself back. But I didn't want him to - couldn't he see that?

  The head of his cock throbbed angrily, stretching my entrance, a fiery ache radiating through me.

  Tears prickled in the corners of my eyes "I'm sorry," I managed, trying to turn my face away. But his hand grasped my chin, holding me in place.

  "Don't," he growled. "It feels...you feel fucking incredible."

  I wished I could say the same about him. Another ripple of pain went through me, and in my frustration, I reached up and grabbed his ass, pulling it towards me.

  His eyebrows flew up, but he couldn't resist. I felt the muscles tense and ripple under my fingers as he thrust forward, dispelling the pain into one sharp burst that made me cry out. The tears spilled from my eyes, but he only paused for a moment before picking up a brutal pace. I'd broken through the last of his resistance, all the self-control he had left. But his eyes stayed on my face, watching me intently, and he didn't truly lose himself in it until he saw my expression relax.

  Eyes falling closed, he fucked me hard and fast, one hand gripping my hair as if to ground himself to the moment. I was panting and gasping at the size of him - such a strange feeling, an invasion, lighting up every nerve ending in my body with the wrongness of the sensation.

  So wrong. So right. It wouldn't be Tate if it didn't feel like something dark and depraved. Like my body was being plundered.

  But it was intimate, too, like he was sharing something of himself that I'd never seen before. Watching him like this, just taking his pleasure from me, was intoxicating. It wasn't like any other time he'd touched me. It wasn't like when I'd sucked him, or all those times I'd humiliated myself for his pleasure.

  The closeness of our bodies, our heartbeats, was binding us together. I was terrified of what was rising in my chest. Terrified he'd open his eyes and see, somehow understand what I was feeling and recoil.

  His breathing quickened. I was high on the knowledge that I'd intoxicated him, that he could lose control inside of me. I watched his face transform to something vicious and sinful, his teeth bared, losing himself in the instinct to take and plunder and fuck.

  Perfect. So perfect.

  One last time, his eyes flew open.

  "Tell me you want it," he growled, his chest heaving with the effort of holding back. "Beg me for it."

  "Do it." I clutched at the strong, tensing muscles of his ass. "Come inside me. Please."

  He let go. I felt the exact moment when his body took control, hips jerking, spilling deep inside me.

  "Ah, ah - fuck." He panted, letting out a long, shaky breath. He groaned softly, a few more sloppy thrusts pressing his length as far as it would go. The muscles of his jaw twitched, his stomach quivered, and I just watched him. Whatever he was feeling, it was so much more intense than anything I had seen before.

  When his body finally relaxed, I curled my arms around his back, wanting him closer. He lowered himself down until our noses touched.

  There was no need for any more words. Not tonight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Normal

  I woke up in Tate's bed.

  It took me a few moments to remember why. Then, visions of last night came crashing down on me. My skin heated, heart thumping at how incredible and intimate it was.

  Of course, he was gone. But he was usually an early riser. Yawning, I stood up, wincing a little at the stickiness and soreness between my thighs.

  After yesterday, I wanted to make sure he was all right - wherever he was. I walked over to the window and peered outside, letting my eyes drift across the property until I caught sight of his head disappearing under the eaves of the house. He was fiddling with something. Probably the water supply for his plants.

&nbs
p; Satisfied, I went to draw myself a bath. The old mirror in my bathroom didn't show me anything different. I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Some new wisdom in my eyes, indicating I'd truly become a woman.

  There was a little blood, but not much. I washed myself clean, trying to feel the difference in my body. But there didn't seem to be one. I was still just Autumn, in spite of everything that had happened.

  Dressing quickly, I went to find Tate. I didn't particularly want to talk about last night, but I did want to see him. Just spending time in his presence would unknot some of the tension in my chest.

  He wasn't out towards the front of the house, so I headed to the side of the property, towards the garden I knew he kept.

  He was there, all right.

  I gawked at him.

  In jeans and a white tee-shirt, kneeling over his herb garden, he was almost unrecognizable. He had his hands buried in the dirt and his eyes were soft, but focused, like he existed momentarily in another world.

  There was such an intensity to him, and his movements were so delicate. My throat tightened a little, watching him. Yet another side of Tate I hadn't imagined. One that I couldn't reconcile with everything I already knew about him.

  His hair was more or less unkempt, falling down over his forehead as he bent forward. Tenderly, ran his finger along a big yellow flower that bloomed open to the sunlight. His eyes were evaluating.

  Tate raised a pair of clippers, and snipped the flower from its stem.

  I watched as he tore the petals away, one by one, discarding them thoughtlessly. What the hell was he doing? Was his garden really just a playground for his sadistic impulses, as he worked his way up the food chain?

  You're being ridiculous, Autumn.

  With nothing but the center of the flower in his hand, he leaned forward, seeking out another of the flowers. He cupped it gently in his hand, examining it. Then, with practiced movements, he took the ruined flower and dabbed it gently into the center of the one still blooming.

  I let out a breath.

  He was pollinating them.

  And I was being a tad bit melodramatic.

  His head jerked up at the sound of my breathing, and I almost expected a scolding. But he simply returned to his task, tearing off a bit of masking tape from a well-worn roll and wrapping the pollinated flower's petals securely shut.

  "What does that do?" I asked him, cautiously.

  "Have to make sure my pollen's the only one that gets in there," he said, lightly. "Otherwise there's no telling what kind of seeds this plant will yield."

  I wasn't sure if it was meant to be funny, but I laughed a little anyway, walking towards him. "Possessive."

  He glanced up at me with a secretive smile. "That surprises you?"

  "No," I said. "Not at all."

  The birds were warbling very loudly this morning.

  "Can I help?" I asked him, gathering my skirt around me to kneel down on the ground.

  He handed me pollen-covered stamen. "Spread some to the other female flowers that have bloomed. They all look like this." He pointed to the one he'd taped already, with a tiny squash as its stem. "Easy to tell apart. They only bloom for a few hours before they wither and die, so make it count."

  "Reproduction is so high-stakes, in the plant world," I commented, stroking the female flower with the stamen. "No wonder they don't rule the world. Too busy just trying to survive."

  "The way things are going? I wouldn't rule it out."

  Tate's smile was rueful. It was the first time I'd really heard him comment on the situation in the world, and it felt like such an odd thing to be discussing. In spite of myself, in spite of what I knew, I found that I was imagining everything as "normal." Out here with Tate, miles from anyone and anything, I could pretend. Out there, for all I knew, things were peaceful again. There was no Stoker. The world was exactly like it had been in movies and TV shows, like it was when I was born, the time I barely remembered. When people still believed things could change.

  When there was still a chance of everything getting better, instead of worse.

  "Do you keep an eye on what's happening?" I asked him. The only newspaper I'd ever seen in the house was the old one, with the reports of my parents' death in it.

  "More or less." He tore a weed out of the ground and tossed it aside. "But it's hardly ever news worth knowing."

  "Do you keep an eye on Stoker?"

  He shot me a sharp look.

  "Sorry," I said, quickly. "I didn't...I just wanted to know if there's anything to be worried about."

  "Nothing that concerns you," he said, flatly.

  Damn it. I hated that I'd ruined his good mood. They were so few and far between, and here I was, invading his gardening with questions about the one thing he never wanted to talk about.

  I expected him to make some reference to punishment, but he kept silent, sliding further down the patch to pull more of the weeds. We worked together in silence for a while, looking for all the world like a normal couple just doing a bit of gardening together. Maybe having a little argument.

  Thinking of what Tate did as "the silent treatment" made me snort. He looked up at me.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Nothing," I said, shaking my head. "Just trying to imagine us as normal."

  "No such thing anymore," he grunted, standing up and brushing off his hands. "If there ever was."

  "You don't think so?" I finished the last of the flowers and sat back on my heels, surveying my work. "There's nobody out there who's just looking down on the rest of us from an ivory tower, laughing?"

  Tate started gathering up his supplies. "There are no ivory towers left. They tore them all down. There's no amount of money that will buy you any version of 'normal' now."

  "You've got a pretty good thing going," I pointed out. "Don't you think somebody else out there..."

  "No," said, shortly, turning back to the house. "Everything that you hate about me is the reason I'm alive."

  I hurried after him. "I don't hate you," I insisted, as he pushed the front door open. "Why would you say that?"

  "Because." He dropped his supplies and whirled around to face me, his jaw clenched. "As you so astutely pointed out, I'm not normal. The reason why I have the things I have - and live the way I live - is because of what I did. It's because of Stoker. That's where I made my connections. I'm a force to be reckoned with, but I had to sell pieces of myself to get it." He let out a long breath, flaring his nostrils. "It's that way for everyone. No one buys power and influence for free. And you can't buy it for money, either - not anymore."

  The intensity of his gaze shook me to the core. Breathing hard, I had to resist the urge to kneel at his feet. What a sick way to react to him staring you down, like he wants to flay you alive.

  I was surprised to feel the sudden awareness between my thighs - not arousal, not yet, but I was on the verge. Something about the whole thing - the tenderness he showed to his garden, the strange intimacy of us working together, followed by the sudden reversal, his hackles showing again - it was intoxicating. I wondered if it would always be like this.

  Always.

  My heartbeat quickened as I realized something.

  Always. Forever. Now, for the first time in my life, that was a concept that meant something. I was no longer hunted; at least, not while Tate was around. With Birdy cowed, I had a whole life ahead of me, and I couldn't imagine what I would do with it.

  But I knew I never wanted to leave this place.

  I swayed, overwhelmed by the realization. This - whatever it was. Me and Tate. It was no longer something I simply had to face one day at a time, one moment to the next. We were more than that.

  It must have showed on my face, because Tate's forehead creased slightly. Trying to understand what he was seeing.

  I love you.

  The words were on the tip of my tongue, before I managed to bite them back. What the hell was I thinking? I didn't - couldn't -

  Marry me.

&n
bsp; Holy fuck, I was losing my mind.

  I felt all the blood drain from my face as I stared at him. He didn't make a move, or a sound, as I brushed past him and ran up the stares, barricading myself in my room before I did anything stupid.

  Taking a series of deep breaths, I sat curled up on the smooth polished wood, with my back pressed against the door. I already knew my feelings for Tate were out of control. That was a given. But I had always been able to control myself, or at least control what came out of my mouth. But after what just happened, I wasn't so sure anymore.

  I felt a very distinct sensation, deep in my chest. A presence.

  He was waiting on the other side of the door.

  He knocked. Once, twice.

  "What?" I asked him.

  He tried the handle, but the door didn't budge. I leaned back harder, for good measure.

  "Autumn," he said, sternly. "Let me in."

  "No." It actually, physically hurt to refuse him.

  I heard a soft noise, and I thought I knew what it was. I pictured him standing out there, his forehead and his hands pressed against the door, sagging with defeat. No matter what games we played, there were some things he could never force from me.

  "Tell me," he said. "Please."

  He sounded so quiet, so broken. But there was nothing that could have swayed me. My heart was like an iron lockbox, snapped shut tight and guarded by fear.

  I couldn't trust him. How could I love someone I didn't trust?

  Whatever my feelings, as long as I kept them a secret, he could never use them against me. I had to believe that. Otherwise, I was lost.

  I knew him now. I knew so many things about him, so many of the reasons behind his cruelty, but that didn't change who he was. That copperhead only bit me because he was threatened. Trying to survive. Didn't change the fact that I almost died.

  Didn't mean my ankle wasn't still stiff and sore, sometimes, in the mornings.

  Reasons didn't matter, when it came down to it. I was glad I knew what kind of man he was, now. I was glad I knew his pain.

  But loving him?

  No one could survive that. If I asked him, I was sure he'd agree.

  I could still hear him breathing, softly. Not wanting to give up. Feeling the same connection I felt - our bodies, inches away from each other. Our souls bare, raw, both of us unwilling to take the risk of admitting just how lost we were.