Lead Me Home: A Fight for Me Stand-Alone Novel

by A. L. Jackson

  “Ollie,” she whispered, spreading her hands across her dress that had ridden all the way up to her waist, her hands running the length of her thighs of her bent legs. “You were always more than a fantasy to me. You were everything that was real.”

  God damn it.

  She was going to wreck me.

  Destroy every ounce of self-control I had. I’d done it once. Lost it. Let her wreck me. Didn’t think she could afford for me to lose it again.

  So, I kept myself in check, careful as I let my index finger explore, running over the fabric of that dress and riding up her thigh. I palmed the inside of it and dipped down to kiss across her knee.

  Shivers rolled through her, running her spine and crashing into me.

  Those hypnotic eyes watched me through the pale, muted light, knowing me too well. Seeing too much.

  Each movement measured, I slowly crawled over her, bracing, keeping some distance between us while she fought to get closer.

  God only knew what would happen if I plastered myself against the shape of her.

  A sigh filtered from between her pink lips that were swollen and plump and damp from the force of my kiss.

  So damned sexy.

  I planted my hands on either side of her head, gaze moving over that unforgettable face. “You are real, Nikki. Don’t ever mistake that. You were the most real thing I ever had.”

  Her fingertips brushed down my chest. “I’m still yours,” she whispered.

  I slammed my eyes shut and jerked my head to the side like it might protect me from the impact of her confession.

  Inhaling deeply, I let my forehead drop to hers, our breaths mingling and our noses grazing.

  Both of us hanging at a precipice.

  A breath. A pant. A heated second.

  Bated, suspended.

  Then the band holding me back snapped.

  Our lips met in a collision of greed.

  Taking and giving.

  My lips closed over hers.

  Top.

  Bottom.

  Sucking.

  Releasing.

  Tugging.

  Again and again.

  A perfected dance that wasn’t close to being slow.

  I pressed up higher on my hands, and my head dipped down as I swept my tongue into the wet welcome of her mouth.

  Thought I might die right there.

  It was met with a whimper at the back of her throat and a tangle of her tongue with mine.

  Her fingers scruffed through my beard, and then her hands were fisting in my hair.

  Begging for more.

  Her body lifting to meet mine as our tongues coiled in a desperate play to get closer to the other.

  I took her by the inside of her thigh, making myself room, rocking my cock against her pussy.

  Her cry was quiet and needy. A plea lighting in the combustible air. “Ollie. I need you. I need you.”

  A groan rambled through my spirit, and I tore my mouth from hers. This was not about me.

  I’d taken enough.

  I plucked at her bottom lip with both of mine before I was kissing a path down her chin, her jaw.

  Fingernails scraped my shoulders.

  I sucked and licked along the delicate column of her slender throat and to those fucking collarbones that drove me straight out of my mind.

  Delirium.

  My head spun, and I was kissing across her chest, down over her heart that drummed violently.

  Pound, pound, pound.

  I felt it beating.

  Desperate in its bid to meet with mine.

  As if it could catch up to the bolting thunder that raged within the confines of my ribs. Thrashing at my insides.

  Seeking a way out.

  I sucked in a breath and fought back that feeling. That feeling that she was mine and she was always gonna be.

  I kissed across the neckline of her dress, right over the fabric to the swell of those tiny tits.

  Fuck.

  Why was that so sexy?

  So damned sexy that I was yanking the neckline down, exposing her dark, peaked nipple. My tongued licked across the tip before I sucked it into my mouth. One hand came up, palming the bit of flesh, bringing it deeper into my mouth.

  Nikki bucked, rubbing her center against my dick that begged at my jeans. She moaned, and her hands were everywhere.

  My hair, my face, my shoulders.

  Raking down my back, eliciting the most tortuous, pleasured kind of pain. “Ollie. Oh God. That feels so good. You feel so good. I need you. I need you so much.”

  Her panted words lifted into the dense air, and I sat back on my knees. I grabbed her by the waist, cinching my hands around her. “You want me to make you feel good, sweet girl?”

  Her head rocked back on the pillow. I swore, the girl was so damned pretty it hurt to look at her. A punch right to the center of my chest.

  “Yes,” she drew out, tongue darting out to swipe across her lips. “Please. I need you. I never stopped needing you.”

  I beat back the guilt. I had no clue about the way I’d treated her last year. But I knew full well the way I’d left her when she was sixteen.

  My hands slid up the top of her thighs.

  Shivers raced beneath my palms, the girl quivering and shaking like she was seconds from falling apart, and I hadn’t even touched her.

  I let my hands glide around to her back, lifting her a little as I palmed her ass, her knees dropping open wide when I did. “This ass, baby.”

  And I was wondering if anyone had been in it. Who’d been in her, taking this sweet body.

  Aggression I didn’t have any fucking right to feel curled through my being. A dark, violent sickness.

  I wanted to possess her.

  Every part.

  Every inch.

  She was supposed to be mine.

  I kneaded her cheeks and let my fingers run down her cleft.

  “Ollie. What are you doing to me?” Those indigo eyes met with mine as she sucked frantic breaths into her lungs. “You make me crazy.”

  A low chuckle of warning escaped my mouth. “Safe to say it’s the other way around, Sunshine. You make me insane. That mouth, and this body. I want to fuck you wild, Nikki. Mark you. Keep you.”

  I was saying things I shouldn’t be saying. But I couldn’t stop the words from scraping from my mouth.

  Her dress was bunched all the way up to below her tits, the one I’d been sucking on peeking out the top, nipple still hard and wet from my licks.

  Her hands spread out across her flat, naked belly. “Please.”

  And I knew she’d let me. Knew that she’d let me use her. Maybe . . . maybe she’d use me, too.

  The passion roiling in her eyes was untamed. Fierce and savage.

  She wanted to get reckless with me.

  I snagged my fingers in the edges of her underwear and began to peel them down.

  “Shit,” I hissed. The ground quaked beneath me as I revealed what was waiting underneath.

  Totally un-fucking-prepared for seeing her this way.

  Spread out for me.

  Pussy wet and glistening.

  Lifting her legs between us, I unwound the lace from her ankles and dropped her underwear to the floor, setting one of her ankles on my shoulder as I barely dragged just the tips of my fingers through her slit.

  I almost went off right then.

  I’d been wanting this girl for far, far too long.

  Just that little touch had her hips hiking up, pressing from the couch.

  “You want me to touch you, sweet girl? Is that what you want?” The words rumbled from me as I shifted, planting a single hand next to her head.

  Caging her in.

  She nodded, hair swishing across my couch. “Don’t tease me, Ollie. My heart can’t take it tonight.”

  My chest tightened, and I had the wayward thought that there’d be plenty of time for that later.

  Teasing and playing.

  I knew better than to let m
y thoughts go wandering that direction. I forced myself back to her in this moment.

  To the girl who was shaking on my couch. Desperate for relief.

  I slicked my fingers through her pussy, watching the way her lips parted, tasting the sigh that slipped from her tongue when I tucked a single finger into the tight clutch of her body.

  Her hands flew to my shoulders and held on. “Ollie.”

  I drew back, added another. I drove them in slowly.

  “Like that?” I murmured at her mouth, teasing her a little.

  She swallowed hard, searching for air. “More.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I rumbled, nipping at her chin. “I’m gonna take care of you. Sweetness. Sunshine,” I rumbled, lips moving across her cheek.

  A little moan jetted from her mouth, and I edged back, pulling my fingers free.

  Protest had her loosing a tiny groan, and I gave her a lopsided grin. “I’ve got you. Trust me . . . I’ve got you.”

  Those words were out before I could stop them.

  Trust.

  I deserved none of that.

  But she could count on me to give her this.

  I spread my hands wide and slipped them up the insides of her thighs, spreading her wide. Hands going back to her bottom, I lifted her from the couch when I leaned down and licked.

  She yelped, and those needy little hands flew into my hair.

  I turned, kissed the inside of her thigh, whispering against the flesh. “Is this okay, sweet girl?”

  Sweet, fucking, delicious girl.

  “If you stop, I will stab you, Oliver Preston.”

  There she was. My smart-mouthed Nikki.

  A smile pulled free, one I hid against her skin before I buried my face back in her heat.

  Kissing her cunt like I had kissed her mouth.

  Laps and licks against her lips, tongue driving between. I licked back to the tight pucker of her ass before I moved to lave at her clit.

  Swollen and red.

  I rolled my tongue around it.

  Sucked.

  Licked.

  I pressed my hand to her belly, pushing down as I pressed two fingers into her pussy.

  Her walls clenched around me, and she gasped, arching and begging and rubbing herself on my face.

  Going a little wild the way I knew she would.

  My dick pressed painfully at my jeans, so goddamned hard I was pretty sure I was gonna lose my mind if I didn’t get inside her. That was all right because this girl had always driven me insane.

  After tonight, I feared I would never come back down.

  Feared I was never going to be the same.

  Guessed I hadn’t been since the first time I’d kissed her.

  It was Nikki who’d marked me. Written herself on me. Hers when I could never belong.

  I fucked her with my fingers, slow and hard while I ate her frantically.

  Matching the frenzied beat that hammered my heart.

  Driving her mad the way I knew I could. Wishing I could say screw it all and fuck her right.

  “Ollie . . .”

  She started chanting my name. Lifting her hips and begging me for more.

  I could feel it coming.

  Pleasure winding her tight.

  So tight she was gonna take me with her.

  I sucked and licked and drove my fingers into her tight body.

  Everything lifted.

  Her body.

  My spirit.

  She cried out as her entire body arched and bowed. Her stomach flexed, rippled with her sexy little six-pack, and her head rocked back, pressing into the pillow.

  Bliss streaked through her and slammed into me.

  Swells of pleasure.

  A full-body glow.

  So fucking gorgeous.

  I wanted to sink inside her so bad I couldn’t see.

  Wanted to disappear in her.

  Get lost.

  Or maybe find my way back.

  Because I didn’t think I’d ever felt so close to home than I did while I was holding her like this.

  As I led her through her orgasm, I climbed back over her and swallowed every one of her pants like they might be able to sustain me. The girl my breath.

  “Ollie,” she whimpered as she came down, her hands going back to my bare chest, sliding down my quivering stomach.

  She went for my fly.

  Quickly, I reached between us and snatched her by the wrists. I pinned both of them over her head. “Told you I was gonna take care of you, Nikki. I meant it.”

  Hurt washed across her face, and I leaned down and kissed it away.

  She sighed into my mouth.

  I eased back, grabbed her underwear from the floor, and helped her back into them before I resituated her dress.

  Something about it felt so damned intimate.

  Like I hadn’t been closer to her than right then.

  Her eyes tenderly watched me.

  “Now, you rest,” I told her.

  I scooped her up the same way as I’d carried her inside.

  Though this time, I carried her to my bed.

  I laid her in the middle of it and stood at the side staring at her through the faint light that filtered in from the hall.

  It left her nothing but a silhouette.

  Still, laid out across my bed, that spellbinding girl was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.

  Magic.

  Doing something crazy in me.

  “So beautiful,” I murmured, my damned hand shaking when I reached out and ran my knuckle from her temple to her chin.

  She lifted to it, relishing in the touch, her voice a whisper in the night. “You, Ollie. It’s you who’s beautiful. You just don’t see yourself the same way as I do.”

  I didn’t say anything, I just moved to my dresser and pulled out a tee, helped her from her dress, and tugged my shirt over her head.

  It swallowed her, and I couldn’t help but grin.

  I shrugged out of my jeans, leaving myself just in my underwear.

  Could feel the fever in her gaze.

  A smirk pulled to my mouth. “Told you, one look and you wouldn’t be able to think straight.”

  “I can’t see you that well . . . why don’t you turn on the light?” The tease spun through the air, and I chuckled, climbed into my bed, and tucked her back against my chest.

  So maybe it was stupid, but I pressed my hard cock to her ass. “Then we’d really be in trouble.”

  She snuggled deeper into my hold. “Don’t pretend like we haven’t always been.”

  Somberness moved between us, that awareness that had always been ours.

  Magnetic.

  I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, all distance erased, my mouth at her ear. “I’ve resisted you for so long.”

  She danced her fingertips over the mourning blazing stars on my forearm. “Until last year.”

  My eyes closed, and I pulled in a deep breath.

  It was like inhaling life.

  “I can’t tell you how fucking sorry I am that I did that, Nikki. I . . . lost myself that night. Instead of getting easier, it seems to get more difficult every year. I needed you.”

  Even though my mind didn’t process it, remember it, my soul had sought her out.

  “And tonight?” she quietly asked, a million questions in the two tiny words.

  What did we just do?

  What does this mean?

  How long until you hurt me again?

  I nuzzled my nose into the locks of her honeyed hair, comfort gliding through me like a balm. “And tonight, you needed me.”

  I paused for a second, gathering my thoughts, my words. They trembled with the quiet truth. “Stayin’ away from you is getting harder to do.”

  She weaved her fingers through mine and pulled our entwined hands to the thunder of her heart, so loud it ricocheted through my room. “Things are changing, Ollie. I can feel it.”

  What terrified me most was that I felt t
hem changing, too.

  18

  Ollie

  Sixteen Years Old

  The sound of water crashing below them filled their ears, the spray of the falls cooling their skin as they stood at the edge of the cliffs with the sun beating down above them.

  “Hey, pussies, are you coming, or what?” Rex hollered from the lake below, his head bobbing as he treaded water, moving out of the way so the three of them could jump.

  Kale was already swimming back toward the beach so he could climb back up to jump again.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Rex,” Sydney shouted.

  He laughed, swiping his hand across the top of the water to make a wave. Like it could possibly fly all the way up to splash her.

  Ollie chuckled under his breath. Sydney was right. Rex was an asshole. Constantly throwing jabs and gibes, Kale and Ollie throwing them right back.

  Didn’t mean Ollie liked him any less.

  They’d just gotten back from football camp. Third year they’d gone. All of them would be starters on the varsity team this year. It’d been . . . exhilarating. Pushing himself, testing his limits.

  But fuck.

  He’d missed home.

  He’d missed this.

  He glanced to the girl, to her trembling hand wound in his.

  He’d missed her.

  Nikki Walters.

  The girl who was supposed to be his best friend.

  His second sister.

  In that second, it slammed him.

  The admission no longer something he could deny.

  He’d missed her.

  More than that, he wanted her.

  Wanted her in a way he wasn’t supposed to, but with the way he’d been feeling at night in the dark—hell . . . with the way he’d been feeling in the light of day—it was getting harder and harder to ignore.

  She’d had a boyfriend all last year, even though he’d told her he didn’t like it.

  Not liking it was a damned disrespect to the way he actually felt.

  He hated it. Abhorred it. It made his insides feel like they were shriveling up and disintegrating.

  Not that he could say a whole lot since he’d gone through at least ten different girls in that time. But not one of them made him feel like Nikki.

  Sweet, timid Nikki who was shaking in her floral bikini that showed off her rail-thin body, the girl nothing but skin and bone.