by Meli Raine
This is a main course.
“Drew, I -- ” Lindsay sucks in a huge breath and tightens as I seek warmth, one of my fingers inside her, the sound of appreciation that she makes all I need. I want to make her feel good. I want to make her let go. I want to be the one person in the entire world who gives her what she deserves.
Permission to be herself.
Every breath I take as she falls deeper and deeper into a place no one – not even I – can touch, makes me love her more. My hands and mouth can perform magic on her skin, but can they work to mend the years of hurt?
All I can do is try.
And try.
And never, ever stop trying.
She pulls away, but I tighten my hold, determined to make her lose herself so she can find herself again, bigger and better than before. There is nothing in the world more honorable than having someone choose to be raw and vulnerable with you. Nothing. Having Lindsay trust me enough to shatter and buck, to writhe and groan, is a gift.
“I want you, Drew. Deep inside me -- ” She gasps, her throat closed by the spasm that wraps my fingers in a tight clench, her sweet flesh swelling under my lips and tongue, her body swaying above me.
She folds. I follow. I chase her down, down, down to the ground where she quietly burns as climax after climax bring her to ecstasy, my singular goal to keep her in that place where all she knows is sensation and goodness, where her fine bones and supple flesh are the entire world, and where she can only say my name as if it were the singular lifeline she has to keep her tied to reality.
I’m doing this for her.
Me.
But she lets me.
Emotion pours through me, combined with arousal, catching my throat off-guard, making my eyes pinprick, my heart slamming in my chest like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I spiral inward as Lindsay’s hands cover mine, her thigh against my mouth as she twists, her voice a pale hush that says, “Oh, God, I need you.”
She sits up and pulls me to her, the taste of her willing surrender now on her lips, too, as we say so much with anything but words. Soon, I’m over her, the bed next to us, looming like a sentry, the floor more than enough for our connection, our linking, our reunion.
I’ve never been inside her before.
She has to ask. I won’t come uninvited.
“Please,” she whispers, the vibration low and soft. I feel it against my abs, her request diffusing out from her skin as well as in words. “Please, Drew. Make love to me. I want you in me. I want you everywhere.”
Stage fright isn’t my thing. Unlike other guys in my unit, I never froze when the pressure was on. And that’s not happening right now. It’s not.
Really.
But I lean down on one elbow and take my other hand, cupping her jaw. We look at each other without walls. Without pretense. But the past is there, hovering, watching.
It needs to see us together.
The past cannot be put to rest, put in its place, until it knows we’ve healed.
Our kiss lingers, the seconds chasing away all the fears, the worries, the condemnation and the insecurities. As we kiss, she moves under me, widening her legs.
“I’m on the pill,” she whispers, removing that concern. The comment brings me back to reality, and I suddenly am hyperaware of every aspect of my body. The cold push of air as she breathes against my sweat-soaked skin. How the moonlight curls into the grooves of muscle in my forearm. The way the curtains billow and make Lindsay’s eyes look like wet lace. The view of my hip against her ass cheek, resting together like two old friends.
How her perfect breasts settle against her chest when she’s flat on her back, her nipples tight like little crowns.
“You’re my queen,” I blurt out. Her eyes dance with amusement, the arousal still there.
“That’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard you say,” she replies, her fingertips giving me butterfly strokes up and down my side, halting at my hip, then moving with a bold perfection until she has me wrapped in her palm, all fire and rigid need.
“But you are,” I groan as she strokes me.
“Make love to me, Drew,” she says, taking me in. The tip is at her entrance, waiting, holding back as I move over her, knees on either side of her nude body, our fervent eagerness making us both shake. She is ready.
I’ve been ready forever.
And now it’s time.
Second by second, with aching slowness, I enter her. Lindsay looks at me the entire time, our eyes locked, and as I move into her, it is like finding holy ground without knowing it. I’ve stumbled across a portal into a place where nothing else matters. Just her. Just me.
Just us.
Just this.
“Oh,” she moans, the tiny hairs on her legs going to gooseflesh, the bumps shimmying up her leg from shin to hip, rippling. I feel it against my own hair-covered legs and I cannot describe it. The sensation is excruciatingly unique. It’s chilly and exciting, in contrast to the warm, wet glory of being inside her. I sink down, deep, and she widens for me.
“Come into me, Drew,” she says in my ear, licking my neck. “Come as deep as you can, until you touch the part of me I’ve kept from everyone else.”
For a split second, I freeze, a single image from that night hitting me full force. No. No. I am not going to let it contaminate this homecoming.
Fuck, no.
They do not get to destroy this. I can’t change the past, but letting thoughts of that hideous night touch one single second of making love with Lindsay isn’t happening.
It takes everything I have not to whisper the word no.
And that no isn’t for Lindsay.
“Drew?” She touches my cheek with one manicured finger and I twitch, jumping out of my own thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“I’m better than okay, baby.” I lose myself in the kiss, her warmth infusing me, coming back into the amazing moment. “You make me better.” I slowly pull back, then move in her, the feeling superb.
She makes a breathy sound of pleasure. “I love you,” she says, eyes closed, a smile on her lips.
Fierce, pure love shoots through me like someone blasted a cannon filled with blood in my veins. “I love you too, Lindsay. God, I truly do. Let me show you.”
“You are showing me, Drew. Let’s show each other.”
And we do.
The build-up comes fast, with lightning speed, until we’re all moans and sighs, our names cried out and she’s so slippery, so wet for me, until all I am is her. We come together, Lindsay clinging to me with a shuddering finality that makes me explode, carried off by waves, the privilege of letting go with her a kind of love I didn’t know we could share.
Sweaty, sated, and breathing hard, I collapse onto her, still in her. She jolts and I move, just enough, face buried in the hot mess of her tangled hair. A sense of accomplishment, of pride, radiates out from my core to my hipbones, my quads, my glutes, up my spine, making me heady and dizzy.
I did it.
We did it.
Four years of pain and heartbreak, of recovery and hiding – gone.
Four years of the unknown, of mourning what we lost, of strategy and hope, of bitterness and regret – gone.
Her breath goes slow, my own steadying as the hot rasp of everything we just shared cycles back against my skin, feeding me, nourishing us. I pull up to say how full my heart is, how much she means to me, and how I will never, ever let her go.
Our eyes meet.
And she bursts into tears.
Chapter 10
Alarm replaces the sense of completion, my gut tearing to shreds as I feel wetness from her tears against my shoulder.
“Oh, my God, Lindsay,” I say gruffly, sitting up, getting off her. “Did I hurt you? What’s wrong? I didn’t mean to -- ”
She grabs me and sits up, burying her face in my chest, her arms wrapping around me. My heart beats so hard it’s like I’m punching her in the face.
“No, no,” she says, muffled. �
�I’m not crying because of pain.”
“Well...I...” Shit. I can barely say the next few words, but I have to. “Was the sex that bad?”
She half-coughs, half-laughs, half-sobs. “No! No! It was amazing. You’re amazing. We’re amazing together.”
I let out my breath. Didn’t realize I was holding it.
“I don’t know why I’m crying!” she confesses, her mouth against my nipple. The vibration feels weird, chaotic and out of order. I swear it makes my heart skip a beat.
I cough. It’s instinctive, but my rhythm resumes.
“It’s okay. Shhhhh,” I say, soothing her, brushing her wet hair off her face, kissing the salty tears.
“It’s not okay. I’ve been such a bitch to you. I couldn’t trust you.”
I choke, the air shooting out of me, surprised by her words. “What? That’s why you’re crying?” We’re naked and sweaty, covered in each other’s slick, and she’s crying after the most phenomenal emotional moment of my life because she’s been mean to me?
This can’t be real.
“Y-y-yes,” she whimpers. “I didn’t know I could love someone this much. I knew I loved you, Drew, but not like this!” Her little fists rub her tears away. She sniffles. “And you’re the first person I’ve ever asked to do that. To be inside me. I didn’t know it would feel like this.”
“Like what?” I prod gently, trying to understand. I run the tip of my nose across the crown of her head, breathing in the tropical scent of her shampoo, her hair impossibly soft.
“Like I’ve been living in half the world, not knowing the rest existed.”
I’m dumbfounded.
What the hell do you say in response to that?
“That’s exactly how I feel,” I confess, tightening my hold on her. She wiggles closer, into my lap. We link ourselves, breathing as one, until I untangle our bodies and bring her to the bed. An afterthought, for sure, but she relaxes in my arms when we’re under the covers, as if she feels safer.
Covered.
Not quite so exposed.
Only our naked bodies underneath the surface know the truth.
Her tears subside. I understand them now.
“I never told anyone who the fourth man was in that video.”
“You didn’t? Not a single person? Not even your dad?”
She shakes her head. The admission makes me feel good for some reason.
“Why not?” I gently ask. Prodding this truth out of her feels like it’s a fulcrum that allows me to crack open the future.
“Because I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe you’d do that to me. Just...let them.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know. Even in the face of what looked so obvious, I just...knew. I knew you wouldn’t do that to me, but God, Drew, it hurt so much.” She tightens her hold on me, her body starting to tremble. When you’re pressed naked, toe to shoulder, against someone, you feel everything.
“So you had to hold two truths inside you at the same time. Two truths that couldn’t co-exist.’
She jolts, her head popping up, eyes beseeching. “Yes. Exactly. How did you know?”
“Because that’s what I hoped for four years. That some part of you trusted me enough to know that the obvious couldn’t be true.”
“It’s the same with that picture they texted me. The one with you and part of my red scarf.”
Breathe, Foster. Breathe.
Bzzz.
“Reality,” I sigh, letting out a sound of relief that I pretend is frustration as I search for my phone. Lindsay ends the sound by kissing me. The sound turns, twisting into a decidedly different groan.
“Thank you,” she says.
“No need.” I kiss her forehead. We just breathe together, so much unsaid.
We have time.
Bzzz.
Or not.
“Besides,” I add, standing grudgingly, searching for my clothes, knowing the phone’s in there somewhere. “This time, you’re not stealing my weapon.”
The laughter pours out of her like a contagion and she sits up, pulling me back to the bed. It’s hopeless. I can’t not laugh. I curl up around her, cocooning her, arms and legs tucked in.
She’s shaking in my arms, the vibration making my skin tingle.
It’s good to hear her laugh.
It’s even better to laugh together.
“I’m sorry,” she finally gasps. “I couldn’t trust you.”
I stop laughing.
Her skin is dewy and warm, a light trace of heat along the pores making her flush.
“Talk to me,” I say. “Tell me more.”
She sighs, a little sound of vulnerability. It makes my throat tighten. That’s the sound someone makes when they are about to be real.
I’ve wanted nothing more than the real Lindsay this whole time.
Thank God she’s finally here.
“Drew,” she says, her hand snuggling on my bare chest, the lines of her tendons standing out as she moves. “They broke me. Ripped me apart – literally.” Her thighs shift and my shoulders tighten.
“I know.”
“When I woke up, it was like I’d been turned inside out. I was nothing but pain. The physical pain subsided, eventually. But in some ways that was worse. Not having my body hurt.”
Oh, man. I know where she’s going with this.
Because I’ve been there.
Only she doesn’t know that.
“Because then all that was left was the pain in my mind. And that was a different kind of agony. Worse.”
I squeeze her gently. I have to. If I don’t hold on, I’ll fall off the edge of the world.
She’s giving words to my pain. My madness. Four years ago, she wasn’t the only one those assholes destroyed, but she doesn’t know that.
And I can’t tell her.
My skin erupts into a furious tingle, as if my blood’s trying to escape but hits the wall of skin and can’t. That same mind that contains all the insanity of being brutalized is the one that manages to love her, too. I’m ten thousand Drews inside a single body right now.
And only one of me can listen to her.
“Nothing I thought about stopped the intrusions,” she whispers. Her breathing is even, and she’s resting against me, skin to skin. Trust. She’s trusting me. Lindsay is opening herself to me. She just gave me her body. Invited me to share it. Welcomed me into her so we could find pieces of ourselves we lost four years ago.
Now she’s inviting me into her heart. Into her mind.
Into that inner space where we protect our core.
I don’t take this lightly.
I am honored.
“Nothing.”
I make a sound of comfort. I don’t know what to say.
“They medicated me into oblivion.” She snorts. “I didn’t care. It was easier to take the little cup of pills twice a day than to argue. Easier to crawl into bed and sleep. Even though I had bad dreams.” She shivers. I absorb all her pain. I take in her memories.
It hurts.
It heals.
I don’t have a choice.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, rubbing her shoulder, staring at the moon. If I look at her, I might lose the pieces of myself I just found.
“And so,” she continues, breathless now. It’s as if she’s relieved to finally talk. I close my eyes and take in the way air passes through her throat. When she speaks, the vibration of her voice touches every cell in me.
“And so I just lived like I was hollow. Insert medication. Hope it dulled the memories. Wait.” She sits up, eyes finding mine. They’re impossibly wide, big and pleading, needing more of me. “Do you know what that’s like?”
Yes.
“No,” I lie. “I can’t imagine.”
“The hardest part was thinking you had let them hurt me. Or worse – that you were in on it.”
That snaps me out of my own reactions. “For the rest of my life, until the day I die, I’ll regret that I couldn’t stop t
hem. Couldn’t.”
“I know.”
“No, Lindsay, I don’t think you do.”
Her face morphs. Emotion flickers in ten thousand licks across the fine bones of her face. The moon conspires against me, giving her a grey shadow as clouds cover the light, making her eerie. Dangerous.
My heart seizes.
“You cannot fathom how hard it was to be drugged and -- ” Helpless.
I cannot say that fucking word.
“ -- and unable to stop them.”
“I can now. Now that I know the truth. They hurt you too, Drew.”
I jerk. What’s she implying? Does she know the full truth?
I stay silent. Don’t give away a thing. She’ll reveal what she knows, and I can make sure I don’t tip my hand.
“They drugged you. Made it so you couldn’t stop them. And that blood on you in the picture – they beat you up, didn’t they? I know.”
I hold my breath. What else does she know? Because yes, they beat me.
But they did worse, too.
“You told me,” she continues. “I believe you. I rewatched the video.”
“You what?”
She shrugs, her breast sliding down my rib, nipple peaking. “I had to. After you told me what happened, I went online and watched it.”
“You found the video online?”
She makes a huff of laughter, a sad sound. “I have my ways, as you know.”
“I thought we’d put a stop to that,” I say tightly.
She bats at my chest. “You can’t outsmart me.”
I snort. Her eyebrows go up. She kisses me.
As her lips brush mine, I find the passion is gone. In its place there is a sense of regret. Of peace. A kind of sad acceptance that the past has damaged us, but somehow we’ve found our way back to each other. We’re scarred and battered, bruised and broken, but we’re together again.
That is its own miracle.
Bzzzz.
I groan. “My phone.” I stand, searching again for my clothes, finding the damn device and checking.
Seven a.m. staff meeting in two hours. You want me to get a suit for you? Senator Bosworth plans to be there, Gentian texts me.
I should be worried.
I’m not.
