by Harlow Cole
He followed right after me, convulsing in hot, wet streams of spilled seed that would stay with me long after he withdrew. I already knew the memory of this night would last even longer.
Long enough to haunt me.
When I’d told him he could go bareback, I’d just wanted to hurry him up. I hadn’t thought that far ahead to the new connection it would form.
Another first.
He’d taken them all.
He pulled back, sliding out of me with a wet pop. Strong arms encased me. Gentle kisses traced across my hairline. He finally propped himself up to look down at me. His index finger drew a line from the top of my breast and down over my belly button until it slid through my folds. He traced it back and forth through the wetness leaking out of me. His eyes traveled down the same path, staring in awe.
“Holy shit. Look at that.”
I couldn’t fight the urge to follow his gaze.
I should have resisted. Seeing his finger against me in the most intimate place, drawing through proof of our reunion, was the most erotic thing I’d ever witnessed.
And the most destructive.
My shoulders shook as they caved in against emotions I’d promised to never let back in.
* * *
Brayden
I held on to her, smoothing my hands over her tangled braids. I kissed her forehead and murmured her name, trying to gently coax her toward a different kind of release.
It felt so good. Having her in my arms, feeling like I was protecting her from something.
Something I wouldn’t admit was myself.
She stayed quiet; her back spooned against me. I thought it was to put some distance between us. Physically. Emotionally. But she let me wrap my arms back around her, let me curve my cheek into the crook of her neck.
We lay there in silence for a long while, lulled by a temporary truce and the sound of our breath intermingled with the crickets and cicadas chirping outside the window.
I’d been in turmoil for so long. I felt peaceful now. Almost drugged. Riding a high I had not let myself experience in a very long time.
Soft fingertips trailed up my arm. They stopped to dance across black ink, tracing the edge of flames and barbed wire that wrapped around the image of a compass at the very top of my bicep. Ashley shifted a little, looking down at it. I propped myself up on my other arm, so she could see more.
“How long have you had it?”
“Almost four years. Got it done at an all-night tattoo parlor just outside of Toledo. It was one of my very first road trips in the minors. Our bus broke down, and we got stuck there for the night. The guy who did it had one glass eye and a tremor, but I showed him a picture of what I wanted, and he got it just right.”
The tip of her finger whispered across the scrolling letters stretched inside it. “What does it say?” she asked tentatively.
“It’s French,” I replied. “Le pardon est gagné.”
“What does it mean?”
“Forgiveness is earned.”
* * *
Ashley
The nightmare woke me. The same one. My mother’s voice screaming. Calling for me. My brother’s voice shouting. Nurses’ faces. Scenes blending together. My brother hurt. My mother ill. Men in dark suits, laughing. The marina parking lot full of bulldozers.
It startled me awake at least once a week. I’d gotten pretty good at rolling over and falling back into an exhausted, fitful sleep, but tonight, I couldn’t do my normal toss and turn.
The warmth of Brayden’s chest soaked into my back.
I eased out of bed an inch at a time, careful not to rouse him. I padded my way down the hall, pausing at his old bedroom door. The hinges still squeaked as it opened.
My hand covered the shock that forced my mouth wide. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. I guess part of me feared a time capsule. Homework on the bed. Rumpled sheets and broken glass. Trophies and old team photos. Shelves of shared paperbacks and a nightstand full of lies.
The smell of cheating.
But, the room held none of it. Not a single shred of youthful memories or broken promises.
It didn’t hold a single thing.
All the furniture was gone. The walls stripped bare and repainted. No longer blue, they were now a harsh, stark white. The carpet had been torn up, exposing plywood. Old nails lay strewn across the floor.
Everything was gone.
He’d wiped it all away. The bad. And the good.
I didn’t know how to feel. About the room and about all the stuff he’d said. Everything jumbled in my mind like heavy bricks layering to form my own tomb.
I crept down the stairs, intent on washing down some of my turmoil. I sat at Grams’s old kitchen table, staring around the room with an odd sense of déjà vu and a juice glass full of tepid tap water.
The sound of a phone vibrating broke through my introspection. It buzzed against the counter next to the fridge. In my little world, a chiming phone at two a.m. still spelled emergency. Reflex forced me out of the chair.
The bright screen provided the only light source in the room. It glowed against the darkness, bringing to life the lock-screen photo of Brayden and a smiling woman.
She was beautiful. Not supermodel gorgeous, but very pretty. Sharp features, nice eyes, and great hair. The soft, not-from-a-bottle blond lay piled on top of her head.
Their arms were around one another’s shoulders. He wore a uniform, a bright navy shirt that brought out the insane blue of his eyes. She had on a form-fitting T-shirt tucked into skinny jeans. His number stretched across her breasts. She looked happy.
I must’ve smiled like that once.
The screen darkened and then immediately lit again. Another vibration, accompanied by more words.
Just got back to ur place and found my package waiting. U r the best. Luv u so much, B. Missing u bad. City is no fun without u. C u soon, bb. Xoxo.
The tears in his eyes, the soft touches, the whispered words and promises—the mirage I’d let myself have for a while—blew away with one breath of truth. He wasn’t here to reclaim me.
Injured birds sputter home, heal, and then fly away again.
He already had someone to go back to.
Does he say the same things to her in the dark?
I am so stupid.
The glass of water I still held slid from my hand. It didn’t shatter. It rolled across the floor, spilling into a puddle along with the contents of my heart.
I wouldn’t shatter either.
I was already broken.
I stepped over the water, staggered to the front hall to gather my old coat, and soundlessly walked out the door.
* * *
Brayden
I woke to the first pink streams of daylight and the smell of her hair. It filled me with short-lived relief. My hand stretched across the sheet, searching for warmth I wouldn’t find. My eyes opened to emptiness.
My empty bed and my empty heart.
She left me. Again.
Loneliness backfilled all the dark fucking holes inside me.
10
Checkmate
Brayden
I found her.
Standing at the counter outside the office with her back to me. Cup of coffee in one hand, a clipboard loaded down with papers in the other. I’d given her a head start, waiting until the sun had fully come up. Long enough to get my shit together and long enough for her to think about what she’d done wrong.
Last night, she didn’t want nice.
She was about to learn how not nice I could be.
She must’ve heard the door shut. Her head turned slightly. She didn’t need to turn around; she already knew it was me. The room immediately with us. With that thing that happened every time we shared space. The extra electrical charge that scorched my brain and shot straight to my dick.
My dick that was still chafed from waking up alone.
My dick that made her come three times and still held the scent of her pussy.
/>
We got it back last night. Our connection. The fucking thing that had lived and breathed between us since the day she walked in that library and stole my chair. Miles and years and broken heartbeats hadn’t killed it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her run away from it now.
I didn’t need hope. I had proof. In spades.
What I didn’t have anymore was patience.
Patience is an excuse anyway, dreamt up by losers to explain why they didn’t win. That wasn’t me. I wouldn’t accept defeat. We’d busted up slow and steady real good last night. I wasn’t going to go back there.
She stayed still as I approached her from behind. I stopped just short of pressing myself against her.
“You left,” I snapped.
She set her things down and let her arms drop to her sides, bracing herself. “I told you, last night was not the start of something. I was very clear.”
I ghosted one fingertip from the top of her hand all the way up her arm until I reached her neck. Her head tilted instinctively into my touch.
“I told you how this had to be, Brayden.”
Her words said one thing.
Her body said another.
I placed my hand flat against her belly at the same time I pressed my chest against her back, squeezing her to me in violent possession.
“Come home.” I wasn’t asking. My tone made that pretty damn clear.
Her shoulders sagged beneath the weight of her world and my simple demand.
“We can’t do this.”
She needed to remember last night. How it felt, being connected to me again. Yes, we’d both left some pain hanging in the air. Yes, we’d torn some stuff wide open. We still had work to do. I got that. But I wasn’t gonna let her walk away from this. If she kept on running, I would chase her.
Anywhere.
I ground my pelvis forward against her denial. Fuck. I was already hard as a rock. I wanted her to feel that. What she did to me.
“Too late. We already have. And we are again. Right here, right now. For as long as needed until you remember.”
Message received apparently because her breathing changed. A couple short, little pants that matched the timing of my hips. Her neck tilted again. I pressed the side of my chin against that sweet spot that made her crazy. Rubbing the scruff of my jaw back and forth. Rough against silky smooth.
She whimpered.
Bingo.
Her hips moved, an almost unperceivable amount, but just enough for me to register she was pressing herself back against me, letting my cock settle in between the cheeks of her ass. I used my free hand to slide up the back of her thigh, tracing fingertips under her tiny athletic shorts, over the seam of her panties.
“Why did you leave me?” I asked the same old question. The one burned forever in the mind of a boy who had been left by his mother and by the only girl he’d ever loved.
They all leave you.
You’re not good enough.
Be better. You have to be better.
The siren voices sang to me their lullaby of bullshit. They mixed with Dr. Wolfe’s nasally accent, reminding me the only path around them was to bleed out the anger and hurt.
I growled deep in my throat, forcing the voices to quiet. Sticking them back in a cage where they couldn’t harm us. I’d let my fucked-up insecurities cost us both too much already.
I could do this. I had to. We both needed it.
I’d waited years to be strong enough. To be ready.
You couldn’t go around the voices. The good doctor’s textbooks had that part all wrong. If you tried to outrun them, they followed. Anytime, anywhere. Singing their broken serenade to level you at most inconvenient times.
I knew better now. I’d played their tune for as long as I could remember. The path around them wouldn’t work. The only sure way to wipe out the hurt was to walk right through it. To sound a battle cry and run headlong forward.
That’s what I came here to do.
I just had to find a way to drag her along with me.
After last night, winning over her body still felt like the best, fail-safe method, to get her on my side.
“I—” she started to speak, but her breath caught as I slid the edge of her panties up to the crack of her ass, exposing creamy skin that needed to be taught a lesson.
I grabbed her there. Rough and harsh and mean—the way I’d felt waking up in that empty bed.
“I never intended to stay,” she answered.
I squeezed harder, exorcising the pain her words caused. She gasped in pleasure.
Good girl.
“I wanted to wake up and make love to you. Sweet and slow. I wanted to taste you while you were still half-dreaming and have you wake up and understand it was real.”
“Brayden, I told you—”
“No. I don’t want to hear any more denials right now. I thought you got it last night. I’m not letting you just walk away. I’m not letting you ignore this . . . us. You and me. You wanted to get fucked last night. And I wasn’t totally prepared for that. But, now . . . now you’ve pissed me off. And a good fucking is just what you need.”
I swatted her exposed backside, pinking soft flesh. She gripped the side of the counter and heaved out a breath. I grabbed on to her shoulders and spun her around to finally look at me. Her bottom teeth dug into her pouty top lip. The cheeks on her face were blossoming, too. I pressed my fingers into the skin beneath her ear, preventing her from looking away.
“Tell me you don’t want it. Tell me you don’t want me to rip these shorts off you and take you here right now.”
She didn’t speak, but her eyes darkened as her arms slowly threaded around my neck. That was the only answer I needed. It snapped clear through the last of my resolve.
My palms cupped her ass, pulling her up against me until she wrapped her legs around my waist. I carried her through the office door, pausing only to slam it shut with my foot. The frosted glass rattled. I marched her backward toward the old wooden desk, perching her just on the edge of it. A sweeping arm cleared the space. I pulled her hands from my neck, slowly letting them fall away until she was forced to reach back and prop herself up on her elbows.
My hands skimmed up her inner thighs and under her shorts until I could trace the damp band of elastic blocking me from my ultimate goal in life. I snapped it against her. Just a little sting to make sure she was with me. Then, I yanked the lace underwear down her legs, forcing the flimsy shorts to follow along.
I inhaled, filling up my lungs, letting my chest expand and contract. Without ceremony, I slid my shorts down, letting them fall to the floor so that I could palm my greedy cock. Three harsh pulls brought zero fucking relief.
She leaned up on the desk more. I froze as her slender fingers reached out and replaced my own. They wrapped around me. Short red fingernails gripped me just right. She ran her hand up and down, testing me.
Torturing me.
Jesus Christ, I need this to happen right the fuck now.
I stared at her movement, crippled by that primal contact. Needing to give it back to her.
“I want you to watch this time, baby girl. I want you to watch my dick sink into you. Watch our connection while I fuck you. Think about why it feels so right. Don’t fight me. You want this. Let yourself have it.”
My hand replaced hers again. I leaned over her, pressing her back down to her elbows. I teased her entrance with the tip of my dick, sliding back and forth to make her wonder when I’d give in and do it.
“Brayden, this is crazy.” She exhaled loudly as I pressed the head inside. “Logan will be here soon.”
“Great. Let’s be real damn loud then. I want him to hear you screaming my name. One more asshole who needs to take a hint.”
“Is that what this is about?” she asked defensively, leaning up more. “You making sure no one else can have me?”
“This is about taking back what’s mine. I told you last night. I’ve never given up on you, Soot. Someday, you’re
gonna finally see that. Right now, I want you to stop thinking altogether. Shut off your brain, and just feel me.”
I thrust into her without preamble. She didn’t need it. She was wet as hell. I slid right in to the hilt, pushing her back against the desk a little. Her eyes were staring directly into mine. I shook my head.
“No, baby. I want you to see this.” I looked down to where we joined.
Slippery skin slid back and forth. Her gaze dropped hesitantly. Her eyes widened as she finally looked.
“See that? You see how we fit together? Perfect. We’re perfect, Soot. You and me.”
Her chest was rising and falling faster. I traced a finger around the folds just above where we met. Pushing in and out of her brutally slow while I teased her clit.
Her head fell back as she groaned.
“Let it feel good, baby girl. Let me have you.”
Her head snapped back up, her gaze intense. That was my cue. I harshly thrust into her, cutting off whatever evil thought she was about to let flood her mind. Her eyes dropped back down to watch me plow into her, pushing relentlessly against the spot I knew would drive her insane.
It drove me pretty crazy as well.
“This is sliding home in the very best way.” I punctuated the last three words as they passed through gritted teeth.
“Fuck, Brayden.” It came out a breathy whisper as she wound her legs back around me, digging her heels into my ass, as the last of her resistance gave way. “Harder.”
“Jesus,” I managed. I leaned over her, pressing my forehead against hers. “You sure?”
She nodded to me.
“Hold on to the edge.”
For once, she did as she’d been told. Her hands grabbed ahold of the end of the desk. My hips got wild. She was gripping me from the inside out. Taking everything.
My cock and my heart.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep my shit together this time. She was making that mewling noise in the back of her throat that always made my balls burn.
“God, I’ve missed that sound.”
