As soon as the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back. Fire filled his eyes and his mouth pinched into a frown. At first I was afraid I’d offended him, but then he swallowed hard and stepped toward me with my towel in his hand.
Leaning over the tub, he pushed a strand of my hair from my face and ran his knuckle softly down my cheek.
“That was probably the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard a woman say. Was it the truth?” he said as he handed me my towel.
I stood and covered myself at the same time. Cold water dripped from my body and I shivered. I stepped out of the tub, but he stood his ground. He was so close, so big and tall compared to me. I looked up into his eyes once I had my towel wrapped around myself.
“Yes,” I said.
I could hardly believe I was talking to him like that. It wasn’t something I ever did. My cheeks burned as usual and I wanted nothing more than to leave immediately—even if I had to do it in wet clothes.
He shocked me when he cupped my cheeks with his hands and ran his thumb across my bottom lip. His touch did something to me. Pushed away the past and brought me into the future—one where Finn hadn’t broken my heart. The chill in my body slipped away and was replaced with a heat I hadn’t felt since I was seventeen.
I swallowed hard and licked my dry lips. His eyes darted to my mouth and he slowly started to move in. Nerves loosened my knees and made me wobble a little. I leaned my head back a bit and closed my eyes. It was wrong letting him kiss me, but when his lips pressed again mine, it felt so right.
A soft moan slipped from my mouth. I’d waited so long to feel that way again. I’d waited so long so be touched or kissed. I hadn’t planned on it being Finn, but there was something almost comical about the fact that it was.
His arm slid around my waist and warmed me more. I didn’t resist when he pulled my body to his. I should’ve. I should’ve pulled away and slapped him, but my body was begging for just a taste of what Finn could give me. I’d had it before. I knew what he was capable of, and I was seconds away from begging him for it.
My body throbbed with the beat of my heart, and I feared he could feel it when he wrapped his other arm around me and held me tighter.
I opened my mouth and let him in as he slid his slick tongue across mine. His kisses were so strong and intense. He took so much from me but gave a lot. The minute I gave in completely, my body melted against his. I wrapped my arms around his neck, forgetting about the towel that was covering me.
He started to back me up against the bathroom counter and I let him. The cold granite stung my backside and I gasped into his mouth. As if I weighed nothing, he lifted me onto the cold counter and continued to kiss me. My mind was screaming for me to stop him, but my body longed for everything he was doing.
The pulse between my thighs was beating hard and begged for his touch. When his finger pressed against that moist pulsing point, I called out against my will. It felt so amazing and I needed it. I’d deserved to feel this good. After the four years I’d had, I deserved it. When he slid his fingers into me, I almost cried happy tears.
“God, you’re so wet, baby,” he said against my mouth.
His words slid down my throat, past my stomach, and straight to the sensitive part of me he was stimulating.
My body tensed up, on the verge of release, when suddenly he pulled his hands away from me. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. He stared down at me with aqua irises and ran his nose across mine.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he said as he unzipped his jeans.
My conscience was kicking in, but the sinner inside me pushed it away. The crackle of his condom wrapper echoed into the bathroom. The sounds of our heated breaths muffled it a bit.
My mind was going a hundred miles per hour. He’d worn a condom before, too, but that obviously didn’t work. I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve said no and walked away, but once I felt the tip of him pushing inside me, every thought I had crashed and burned.
I threw my head back as his hips began to thrust over and over again. My palms held me up enough so my back didn’t touch the cold mirror behind me.
“I want you to think of this moment the next time you touch yourself,” he said as he moved hard and fast against me.
The room around me faded away and my body began to tingle. A rush of heat moved through my core and dropped down into my thighs. My release was just out of reach, but it was definitely there.
The sound of our bodies coming together echoed throughout the room. It was an exotic sound that intensified everything I was feeling.
He pushed his fingers into my hair and forced me to look at him. His mouth slammed against mine and his tongue worked with the rhythm of his hips—fast and hard—nothing like that the last time we’d had sex. I didn’t hate it.
I tried to close my eyes again, but he wasn’t having it.
“Look at me. I want you to look at me when you come.”
His words sent me over the edge. Every nerve in my body climbed high before crashing and colliding where our two bodies met. I kept my eyes on him like he’d asked as I moaned and cried out my release. It felt like nothing I’d ever known.
Within seconds, he threw his head back and growled before slamming his body into mine one final hard time.
His breathing was hard against my neck as he trembled between my legs. I leaned up and wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him close to me. Residual shivers went through my body and caused me to jerk a little every now and again.
I expected him to look up at me and smile. I somehow thought things might be different since we’d come together so beautifully again, but when he pulled back and looked down at me, it wasn’t happiness I saw on his face. It was anger.
“What did you do to me?” he said as he pulled away. I slid down from the countertop and collected my towel. I wrapped it around myself and followed behind him as he left the bathroom and righted his clothes.
“Finn? Is everything okay?” I asked.
I couldn’t believe what we’d done. We hated each other, but apparently the attraction was still there for both of us. A lot of things were still there for me when it came to Finn, although I’d never admit it.
“No! Things are definitely not okay. We shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake,” he said.
His words slammed into my chest and broke my heart all over again. He thought I was a mistake. He was looking at me like I was disgusting. Maybe he wasn’t so attracted to me after all.
A mistake. The word burned through my brain and spiked my anger. I went to his dresser and pulled out one of his T-shirts and a pair of his boxers. I folded them; I knew where they were.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said loudly.
I looked over at the clock and knew I was running late to get Jimmy from the daycare. I’d been playing around with someone who obviously never gave two shits about me. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. How could I have fallen for his games again?
“My clothes are wet and I need to get out of here.”
I almost let it slip that my son was waiting for me. I had to be more careful around Finn.
I tugged on his T-shirt and pulled the boxers up over my hips. He stood beside his bed and watched me like a hawk—a really angry hawk.
“I can’t believe I fell for that again,” I said clearly as I walked around him and left the room.
I heard him behind me and then I felt his hand wrap around the top of my arm before he swung me around to face him.
“You? I can’t believe I fell for your shit again. You’re not the victim here, Faith. I am! And you know what I say to that? I say fuck it! And fuck you for even thinking for a second that you could slide your pretty little ass back into my life and all would be right with the world. The world ain’t got shit on a man with a past like mine.”
I flinched at his words and I felt the tears coming. I tried to pull away again. I was sick of crying for him, and I was determi
ned he’d never see them fall again.
All I could think about was Jimmy and how I’d almost died giving birth to him—the pain that I went through all alone because Finn was such a jerk. The beatings I took just to be with him even for an hour to two. I’d bled for him and this was how he was going to treat me again? I was done.
Everything I’d felt over the last four years of my life came together in that moment and filled me with so much hurt that I thought I’d fall to the floor and curl up in the fetal position. Tears slipped from my eyes against my will, and I swiped at them.
“You asshole! I bled for you!” I yelled as I pushed against his chest and tried to get away.
His cheeks flushed red in anger; his nostrils flared as he breathed out hard. Then he was in my face, staring down at me with red-hot eyes. All signs of the heated moment we’d just had in the bathroom were gone.
I gasped when his fingers dug hard into my arms and he tugged me closer to him. His nails burrowed into my skin as he held me close. He was all heat and fury, wrapped around me, scorching my skin in the all the places that we touched. I couldn’t decide if I should run like I did before or stay and face the consequences for my past actions. Somehow that didn’t seem fair since he still hadn’t paid for his.
I decided to stay and face him. Looking up at him, blue orbs swirled back at me, his eyes leaving no part of my face untouched. I couldn’t breathe. His hard chest was like a brick wall squeezing the oxygen from my lungs.
“You bled for me? Well, I didn’t bleed for you, Faith. I died for you. There’s a big fucking difference. You didn’t wound me; you killed me. You murdered the boy I used to be in his sleep and he’s never coming back. All that’s left of that boy is me, and all you’ll ever get from me is a quickie and a door in your face.”
He released me and the spot where his fingers were digging ached. Wrapping my arms around myself, I rubbed at the sore areas. He looked down at my arms and closed his eyes hard as if he were feeling my pain.
When he opened them, his expression had softened. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.” He reached out and ran a finger down my arm. “Even now the thought of hurting you hurts me. It’s a bad habit I can’t seem to break.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get away from him and I had to stay away. I turned and walked away. I snatched up my keys and walked out his front door and out of his life again.
It wasn’t until I was about to climb into bed later that I realized I’d forgotten my purse.
“Fuck!” I yelled out loud as I punched a hole through my bedroom wall.
I’d fucked up a lot in my life, but having sex with Faith was by far the worse and best thing I’d done in a long time. It was amazing—beyond amazing. It was everything I’d fantasized about for the last four years of my life. And while I’d experienced a release like I hadn’t since the last time I was with her, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d just royally fucked myself.
After years of dealing with the loss of Faith in my own way, I’d taken one big step back. The only way it didn’t hurt to be without her was to hate her, and I’d definitely done the opposite of that in my bathroom. The worst part was all the emotions I’d spent the last four years burying had resurfaced just that quickly and I didn’t know what to do with them. After going so long not feeling, it was scary to feel again. The way I saw it was emotion was a bad thing and Faith brought out entirely too many damn emotions.
It wasn’t like when I fucked a random girl, which is what I’d been doing for the last four years. It was so much more. There’d been eye contact and touching. I actually cared about how she felt and whether or not she got off. It felt so wrong and so right all at the same time.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I walked into my bathroom and found her naked in my bathtub. I watched her as she bathed. The way the light reflected off of her moist skin and the way she’d rubbed the water and soap onto her body. I thought for a second I was going to come in my pants right then.
It had been so long since I’d been with a woman, and when she told me she touched herself with thoughts of me, I was done. There was no way I would’ve been able to control what happened next.
How was she able to pull me back in that way? And why wasn’t I able to just blow it off as a fuck like I usually did? It was as if she’d weaved some crazy web of innocent seduction all around me and I was stuck and couldn’t get out. I was thoroughly tangled in her snare and I fucking hated it.
When I turned around, Zeke was standing there staring back at me.
“You okay, man?” he asked calmly.
Nothing shocked Zeke and he was always so chill about everything.
“Yeah, I’m good. Just need to blow off some steam,” I said as I rubbed my busted knuckles.
“Want to talk? There’s some beers in the fridge.” He started toward the kitchen.
I followed behind him. He tossed me a beer over the counter and I popped it open and sucked down half of it.
Zeke and I weren’t big on heart-to-heart talks, but I guessed if anyone understood relationships, it would be him. And while the rest of the guys would have ragged me about it, Zeke would understand since he was in a relationship.
I spent the next hour telling Zeke all about Faith. He listened carefully and shook his head from time to time. He almost spewed beer on himself when I told him that our new maid was the Faith I was talking about.
“Damn, man. That’s fucked up,” he said. “So what are you going to do about her?”
“I don’ t know. She makes me fucking crazy,” I said as I took another swig from my third beer.
He chuckled softly to himself. “That’s all women. They’re nuts, but love makes you that way. Don’t let the past get in the way of your future, dude. If you love her, you have to try. Pride’s a bitch, but it’s not worth losing the girl you love.”
He gave my shoulder a squeeze as he stood up from his stool and walked by me. “If you need to talk again, you know where I am.”
I watched him walk away. His words moved around in my head while I finished my beer.
I spent the rest of the night mentally kicking my own ass. I felt bad for the things I’d said to Faith, and even when I pulled out her letter and read it, it still didn’t anger me enough to not worry about whether or not I’d hurt her. I clutched her cross in my palm until I was sure it would puncture my skin and I’d bleed all over—bleed for her the way she swore she bled for me.
I drowned myself in vodka with Chet and Tiny when they got home and smoked so much cush that I went into my room and passed out. I had dreams of her face in pleasure. I could practically hear her moaning in my sleep. I had dreams of her body as she took me in and held me like no other woman ever had.
I woke the next morning feeling even worse. I couldn’t help but hope she came back to work so we could talk things out. Obviously, there were lies floating around. I figured that out when she mentioned the letter I’d written to her. I never wrote her letter. Honestly, I hadn’t even known where she was even if I wanted to send her a letter. If there really was a letter out there from me to her, it wasn’t a real one. And if hers wasn’t real, who’s to say the letter I got from her wasn’t real either?
My brain was practically smoking I was thinking so many things. Finally, I had to climb out of bed and move or I was going to make myself crazy. I needed to stop thinking for just a second and take a few deep breaths. Things were getting chaotic in my mind, and I didn’t want to have a meltdown.
I went into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge. Orange juice spilled down my chest as I downed it straight out of the carton. After finding a Pop-Tart in the cabinet, I sat on a barstool and devoured it. Anything that made me feel better at that point was my friend—food was my friend.
It was then that I noticed her purse sitting on the counter. I looked around to see if maybe she’d come in when I wasn’t paying attention, but she was nowhere to be seen. Everyone else was still in bed so the condo was completely quiet. If
she was anywhere cleaning, I would’ve heard her.
I pulled the purse over to me and unzipped it. It was wrong, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. There were so many things I wanted to know about Faith—things about the last four years of her life that I couldn’t help but wonder about. Had she been in any other relationships? Was she in one now?
It wasn’t a big purse, so I was surprised when I pulled out a full-sized journal. Smiley faces and crosses covered the outside cover. The binding was unraveling it had been opened and closed so much. It sounded like it was cracking when I opened it, and the pages all looked as if they’d been wet by some dark liquid.
I flipped through the pages quickly and landed on a page with a dried flower stuck in the center. The flower was old and cracking. I wondered briefly if maybe a boyfriend had given it to her. I felt bad for that thought when I read the passage and realized the flower was from Amanda’s funeral. The words on the page told how Faith had felt when Amanda died and how she wouldn’t have made it through without me. I felt tears sting my eyes. I could remember how she came to me and how badly I’d needed her, too.
I slipped the flower back inside the book and moved on. Flipping through the pages, I found my name a few times and every time, it had been something sweet written in there about me. I smiled to myself when I got to the page where she talked about being with me at the beach. When I found the page about the night she’d given herself to me, I had to wipe tears from my cheeks.
It was wrong to read her journal, but it was so insightful. It made me angry that I’d missed so much of Faith’s life when she was such a big part of mine. If I went by these words, I was a big part of hers, too.
I flipped through a few more pages until I didn’t think I could read another word. There was so much truth. She had so much love for me, yet she had walked away to keep me from going to jail. It had killed her to walk away from me. I could see that in the painful words that were written for me, blurred by stale tear drops on the old paper.
Get Rocked Page 61
