Underside of Courage (Beautifully Disturbed Series Book 2)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  What the fuck am I doing with my life?

  Tonight’s no different than any other night. There’s a chirp on my phone from a message coming in. Stupid, stupid me, I grab up my phone thinking, hoping, that it might be that god damned man. Once again, I’m disappointed. The text is from Hart, asking me to come out with him and his girlfriend one more time. Collin hasn’t called, texted, talked to me at work or even looked at me for three weeks. And I’m too damn responsible for my own good. I should be drunk right now, drunk and out of my own head. But I’m not.

  I’m pissed.

  I’m pissed he could so easily shut me out of his life, yet I can’t get him out of my head. Maybe the alcohol’s effects are working their magic after all, because now that I think about it, I’m not just pissed, I’m so pissed that for the first time in my life I’m not going to internalize it. He needs to know all the ways he’s messed up. Tonight, I’m pissed enough to tell him.

  Before I can talk myself down, I grab up my keys from a hook hanging above my computer desk, next to the door, and storm down the steps from my room out to my car. Slamming my bedroom door, the apartment door and my car door, each one making a satisfying clap. It would have been a great exit had someone been there to see it.

  My anger doesn’t ebb from the drive over either, we only live seven minutes apart with decent roads or light traffic. That’s not nearly enough time between my realization and his home.

  What calms me down, well calms my anger with Collin, is the yelling coming from inside his apartment. Two men’s voices yelling so loud I could hear it as soon as I switched off the ignition.

  What the hell?

  My protective instincts kick in and I run from my car up the paved walkway to his door, even though I’d originally come to mete out a browbeating of my own.

  How can one person be so messed up? I’m mad at him, aren’t I? Mad or not, my all-over-the-place emotions egg me on, encouraging me to pound on his door several times. And I keep pounding.

  The men still yell so loudly, they might not even hear me.

  Once the last round of pounding fails to yield any results, I try the door handle. One twist and it pops open.

  Both Collin and his roommate, his best friend Benton, stop arguing long enough to stare at me when I rush at them. They’re standing almost in the kitchen, only maybe five steps away. I don’t think twice about grabbing ahold of Collin to wedge myself between him and Benton Hayes.

  “Go,” I tell Benton through gritted teeth. Arms folded over my chest as I stare him down.

  “It’s my apartment.” His words come at me sarcastic and defiant.

  “Just fucking go. Please.”

  With my back to Collin, I can’t tell his reaction. But Benton stops.

  Whether from me charging into their apartment or my body language, or maybe it’s that he knows how to read people’s intensions. Whatever gets him to stop also gets him to look at me, like he really sees me, like he really sees Collin and what the two of us have or could have if Collin would get his head out of his ass.

  Benton nods once. And spins around, leaving the apartment without speaking another word.

  “What are you doing here, Kip?”

  I turn to Collin and get right up in his space, grabbing his chin to get a better look at his eye. “Did he hit you? You’ve got a fucking shiner.”

  He shrugs his chin out from my fingers, but says nothing.

  “Collin. Did he fucking hit you?”

  “No.” Collin sighs. “It’s from a bar fight earlier. What are you doing here, Kip?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. You’ve only been avoiding me since New Year’s. If you didn’t want me all you had—”

  “Didn’t want you?” He explodes. Then, pressing the tips of his fingers to his forehead and his thumbs to his cheeks, he squeezes his eyes closed to check himself. Inhaling deeply and opening his eyes back up before he continues on an exhale, “I want you so badly it hurts to breathe when I’m near you, when I’m not near you or when I’m thinking about you.”

  “Then why are you pushing me away?” My hand that no longer holds his chin, I move to rest where his neck and shoulder meet.

  “Because I’m scared.”

  Blunt and to the point, that’s more truth than I expected from Collin.

  “It hurts too much to feel what I’m feeling,” he continues, dropping his head in defeat. “I put his picture away. He gave me a ring and then he died. What’s left of him is lying in the bottom of a plastic bin in my closet. Because now you—you’re here and I feel things for you, for me, which have been absent for the past three years of my life. How did you do it? How did you make me care?”

  Now my other hand goes to the crook of his opposite shoulder for my hands cup his neck and I use my thumbs to push up on his chin to get his eyes back. Once I’ve got them, I tell him, “It’s alright to be scared. I’ve had my heart broken, too. But we owe it to ourselves, our chance.”

  He shakes his head vigorously, arms wrapped tightly around his body now, protecting, closing himself off from me. So much hurt. The room is filled to the brim with it, his face, his body language screams it, “I’m hurting”.

  The last thing I want is for him to hurt. Even though we need to talk this out, he’s on the verge of shutting down on me. And I have a horrible feeling that if he shuts down on me now, I won’t be any better than any other man, in his eyes. Then I’ll never get him back.

  Collin leaves me no choice but to change the subject. “You want to talk about the fight?”

  “Not yet.”

  All right. What now?

  Searching his eyes, exactly what now comes to me. “Then let me do something for you. Let me help you feel better.”

  I promised Collin on New Year’s, not with words, but with my actions, that I’d be the man to take care of him. Though it wasn’t my intension in coming here tonight, there are only a few ways I can think of, so early in our relationship, to do that with him being so closed off. He’s skeptical, the skepticism is written all over his face, but he offers his hand and I take it, walking him down the hallway from the living room to his bedroom.

  “Okay,” he whispers, slicing me open with that one word. He sounds so insecure or unsure of me, or himself. How has the world let Collin Pratt down? This is not the man I met in the writing center. That man’s confidence was unshakable.

  As I secure the door behind him, Collin begins lifting the heather gray GHU T-shirt (which by the fit around his abs and biceps looks a size too small for him, but by how it fits through the shoulders, I know is the right size) up over his head and drops it to the floor while he walks over to the bed. He was skittish about me undressing him the last time we found ourselves here, and clearly that hasn’t changed.

  Tonight we’re going to expand his trust in me.

  We’re going to whether he’s ready to or not.

  Eventually he’ll let me peel all his inhibitions away. But eventually isn’t supposed to be tonight, so what he does next comes unexpected. He pulls my shirt up over my head, balling and tossing it with a good throw onto the desk across the room.

  And then he moves his hands back to the fly of his jeans, flicking the button and unzipping them. I wait and watch, letting him momentarily take the lead, take what he needs. Turning, he does the same to me.

  I’m so damn hot. In temperature and for him, and it’s all from him.

  The only thing I know is that watching him push his pants down over his muscular thighs and over those strong calves, and then as he kicks them off, it’s one of the sexiest things I’ve seen a man do in a long time. And the kicker is, he doesn’t even know he’s being sexy. It’s Collin. It’s the way he is.

  Collin moves back to me, pushing mine down until we’re both standing next to his bed in just our underwear. My gray ones. His, navy blue.

  I’m so hard for him the sensation becomes painful. He sees it. My erection is hard to miss, but tonight isn’t for me. It’s for him. I wish he’d r
ealize it now, because when Collin falls gently back onto the mattress, it’s with a hesitant smile and it hurts seeing that hesitant smile knowing all I’m about ready to give him. He’ll remember soon enough though, that I’m not like every other guy he’s been with.

  Even though I feel a great urgency on the inside, I go slow for him. He watches me slink up his body like a lynx stalking my prey. He bites down on his bottom lip, and just as I hoped replaces more and more of the uncertainty showing across his face with want and trusting. That is, not out and out trust yet, but he’s so much closer than I thought he’d be this early on.

  Going off his reaction, I know exactly where to start to give him what he needs tonight, and dart my tongue out to lick the skin just above his navel. Mmm…

  Salty.

  Manly.

  The taste of him I feel in my heart, my gut and all points further south.

  He shouldn’t taste different to me. It’s only skin, and he’s only a man. Yet somehow, he does. Everything about Collin tastes different. Feels different. Is different.

  We match our moans and groans sound for sound. First his, then mine. His responses to me, damn. Addictive. It’s a wonder how any of those men before me stayed content with just one night.

  I don’t know how there’s not a line of former lovers banging down his door right fucking now.

  I do know that I’d fight any one of them who tried to steal what I have laying almost naked underneath me right now.

  Chapter 7

  Collin

  Biting. Tugging. Kissing and licking. Kip works his way down the ridges and valleys of the taut muscle of my abdomen, along with working down my boxer briefs. I slip my hand between the elastic of his briefs and smooth, olive skin to palm him. Getting a feel of him, the weight, how my hand fits around him, how he fits in my hand.

  Then I begin to stroke, slowly at first. Just to get him used to the feel of me, until he pulls my hand away.

  He shakes his head no.

  “For you,” he says.

  I don’t understand.

  I lean up on my elbows to look at him, the way his mouth and tongue glide a seductive, happy trail down to where I want his mouth most. When I catch Kip’s eyes, they glint as the corners of his mouth tilt up, making it appear as if he enjoys giving as much as I’m enjoying the receiving.

  That can’t be right, right?

  Doesn’t he want me to—“Don’t you want me to?”

  He cuts me off with another headshake.

  “For you,” he says again, then pushes at my chest to push me back down. “My treat.”

  Who am I to go against his wishes? I fold my arms to rest the back of my head on my hands, and close my eyes. He finally, finally takes me all the way into his mouth, running the length from tip to base.

  God damn, I like how he makes me feel. Relaxed. Like I’m sinking into the mattress, until he hits the point of no return. I didn’t expect to get here so fast. Not with such a slow rhythm to build me up.

  I pull my hands from under my head, letting my head drop to the pillows while I press the palms of my hands over my eyes. My breaths turn heavy, panting.

  Jesus, fuck. It might just be the greatest blow job ever.

  And it’s from Kip, the man has gotten under my skin. I want to make him feel as relaxed and happy as he’s making me feel, but the urge to go harder becomes too overwhelming to stop and turn us around.

  When I start pumping my hips to create more friction with his mouth, Kip uses his free forearm, the one he’s not using the hand of to stroke me along with his mouth. He uses that free forearm to still me again.

  This is about to end hard and fast until he takes me deep, all the way to the back of his throat, kicking in his gag reflex.

  We both laugh.

  Me probably harder, since he has a dick in his mouth. As I laugh, my dick jiggles, catching on one of his teeth, which—ouch!

  I sit up fast.

  He kisses the red mark his tooth caused, but combining our foibles together, it’s enough to slow us back down to that torturous, meandering pace he started out with.

  I kind of wonder if his torture of me and that tooth thing aren’t a way to get a little bit of payback for leaving him hanging all those weeks. I know I deserve it.

  Well, whether intentional or not, there’s no denying what he’s giving me is good. So good, it starts to build in me again. By the point where his cheeks hollow out from sucking so deep, I squeeze my eyes shut. My breaths come harder, needier. I feel the sweat bead along my upper lip.

  I’m close.

  So close.

  Right as he pulls his mouth away, I open my eyes, thus, I get to watch myself come all over his neck and chest.

  “Christ! That was—” My breaths still haven’t calmed yet, still panting. “That was—incredible.”

  Watching him pleasure me was about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen until Kip, with a wicked grin on his face, traces a finger through the mess I made on him and sucks that finger in his mouth.

  That just moved up to the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

  And I have a feeling that each new experience we share will elevate to the fucking sexiest.

  So I reach for him again, thinking to give him something in return. Yeah—no.

  He grabs my hand to intercept, kissing my fingers.

  “What about you?” Kip needs to feel good too. I need to make him feel good.

  “Don’t worry about me. We’ll get me next time.”

  “But I—” I start to protest.

  “Next time.” He insists. “Still… you’ve got to get dressed while I go clean up because you lying there looking so fucking hot, next time will come sooner than I planned. I don’t want us caught with our knickers down when your boy gets home.”

  I smile. “Our knickers?”

  He shrugs, then laughs. And then he kisses me before pushing up from the bed, picking up his discarded jeans and underwear on the way to the bathroom. I get to watch the beauty that is Kip Daniels’ ass walking away from me.

  “Looking a little hard there, buddy.” I call out to Kip as he reaches the door to the bathroom. “There’s a washcloth hanging on the towel bar next to the sink. Might want to use it to, you know, release some of the pressure.”

  He’s gone at least ten minutes. I guess that means he took me up on the offer to use my washcloth.

  My back rests against the headboard and I’ve got my knees bent, with my arms draped over my knees when Kip comes strutting out of the bathroom. His beautiful, bare chest on display because he hadn’t taken his shirt in with him.

  It’s still balled up on my desk. And that’s where he heads first.

  “You look pleased with yourself.”

  Kip pulls the shirt over his head, pushing his arms through the armholes, letting it drape the rest of the way. “You have really soft washcloths.” He jokes, and winks. “Meltdown contained. Crisis averted.”

  “What’d you do with the washcloth?”

  “I washed it out. It’s hanging over the tub to dry. You shouldn’t have to deal with my mess.”

  I blink. Then I blink again. Then I blink for a third time, unsure of what else to say now. Unsure of what the proper protocol in this situation should be.

  I’ve never had a man only want to take care of me before. Even Andrew wanted something from me in return. He always gave, and gave unforgettably. But he wanted that return on his investment.

  Cocking his head, Kip rests his hands on his hips. He looks me over. “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  I’m granted a Kips smile, and he keeps on smiling as he climbs on the bed next to me. Back resting against the headboard too. He bends his knees too. Though instead of draping his arms over his knees, he places one hand on his thigh by his crotch, the other he uses to grip my hand.

  “Tell me, what was the fight about?” He moves from gripping my hand to lacing our fingers together. A symbol of unity that he doesn’t e
ven realize he’s giving. Or maybe he does. Kip’s a smart man.

  “Ben, he started to say something he never has before. The man’s under a lot of stress right now. Our best friend Elle, he’s in love with her. But she’s fragile and a runner. We don’t want to risk losing her. Once you meet her, you’ll understand.”

  That’s another change. She’s decided to dump the Elly in favor of Elle. It’s beautiful and sophisticated, like Elle, so it works.

  “You want me to meet her?”

  “I want you to meet all of them.”

  “Col, that’s huge. Are you sure?”

  I suck in a long breath, then let it out slowly, bringing the hand intertwined with his up, I pick at the cuticle by his fingernail to avoid looking at him while I lay out the honesty. “Okay, Kip. What you have to understand, letting you in, god. Its super fucking hard for me. But these people are the only family I have left. They mean the world to me. Ben’s been like my brother since we were sophomores in high school. And you, you mean…” Another long breath. “Let’s get through meeting Elle first, okay?”

  “Why her?” He lets me off the hook in a way that I know he knows what he’s beginning to mean to me, but doesn’t make me say it yet.

  “Because she’s Elle, you’ll get it when you meet her. She’s like our own personal oracle. Can sniff out the keepers. She’ll test you. And if you pass…”

  “What happens if I pass?”

  “I’ll introduce you to the rest of the family. Because—wow.” I stop to collect my thoughts for a minute. After Andrew died, I never thought I’d be here again. Okay. Wow. Shit. “Because we can date.”

  “I thought we already had.”

  Well that come-to-Jesus moment appears to be bigger for me. Not exactly the reaction I thought he’d give.

  “We did, which, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, is part of what freaked me out. But, what I’m saying is I’d like to introduce you to them as more, as my boyfriend.”

  “Holy shit!”