by TM Frazier
Like he was made to be there.
It was as if it didn’t matter how deep he was inside of me, it wasn’t deep enough.
I had a feeling it would never be deep enough.
Finn lifted my legs so my knees were bent against my chest. “I’ve thought of you like this a thousand times since we met.” He entered me again hitting me at an angle that made me scream over the sound of the thunder booming outside. “You’re better than I ever imagined. You are everything to me. You make me want to be better. You make me better.”
My eyes began to sting. He slowly moved in and out of me, keeping his eyes trained on mine. Neither one of us willing to break our connection. I barely blinked as the first tears I’d cried in years fell down the side of my face.
Finn leaned down and kissed my temple, wiping my tears away with his lips.
With his love.
“Every single part of you tastes so good,” he murmured. His expression grew pained. “I thought you said you didn’t cry?”
“Not for years. These are happy tears. They’re because of you. They’re for you.”
“Say,” he groaned, his shoulders tensing. His voice scratchy and deep.
The pressure in my lower stomach began to unfold, releasing a shockwave of bliss throughout my body as my core contracted and Finn’s name tore from my lips. The tears continued to flow as my body erupted into a fireball of endless waves of pleasure I didn’t know I was capable of, yet wanted to experience over and over again from the second it grabbed hold of my body.
The same way Finn had grabbed a hold of my heart.
“Say, oh fuck. Say!” Finn shouted, pushing into me rougher and deeper. He stilled, groaning, coming in long spurts I felt to the very depths of my soul. The pulsing heat of his release caused me to gasp and tighten around him, riding out the last wave of my orgasm while milking the last drop from his.
Finn rolled us both over, pulling out of me slowly and adjusting me against him. His erection was still hard, wet and hot, sticky against my skin. He kissed my temple and wrapped his hand lightly, but possessively, over my throat. “Mine,” he whispered again, squeezing my throat lightly. A gentle reminder that wasn’t necessary.
I was his.
I’d known it for a long time. Long before I’d admitted it to myself.
That night Finn made sure it was a fact I’d never be able to forget.
Finn
I couldn’t tell her in words how I felt, so I’d told her with my body. I worshipped her with my mouth. My fingers.
My cock.
I was her first.
Her first everything.
It was a good thing I wasn’t planning on dying anytime soon because there was no doubt in my mind that after taking Sawyer’s virginity on the floor of the library that I’d be going straight to hell.
I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about it though. I didn’t regret it. Not a single moment of it. My only thought after watching her come was how soon I could make her come again.
And again.
The thing was, after having Sawyer… Taking her… ALL of her… I’d gladly jump on the reaper’s raft and whistle my way down to meet the devil.
Sawyer Dixon was well worth going to hell for.
There are moments in your life, seconds even, when something happens that changes everything. Changes you. I’d been through those moments. So had Sawyer.
In that library, on that floor, I had one of those moments.
It was like I suddenly stopped trudging along the same rocky dirt road I’d been on for two years and finally turned off an exit ramp.
I wrapped my arms around her and felt myself trembling.
“Are you cold?” she asked, pressing her warmth up against my chest, her tits smashed up against my skin making my cock twitch with excitement all over again.
“Yeah,” I lied, barely able to contain the shakiness of my voice.
A shakiness that had nothing to do with it being cold. It was eighty-nine degrees outside, if not hotter. It was more like a side effect from feeling things I wasn’t used to feeling.
Things only Sawyer had ever made me feel.
I’d given her everything on that floor, including my heart. It wasn’t shit, but it was all I had. And when I saw her tears spilling down her beautiful face it took everything I had to keep my own tears from spilling, because that’s when I knew she’d given me everything in return.
And so much more.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Finn
“You bought me a library?” Sawyer asked, wide eyed as she glanced at the newly cleaned and stocked shelves.
I’d waited until my brain cleared from the best-damned orgasm of my life to give her the keys and fill her in on the surprise.
Watching her flit from shelf to shelf was almost as amazing as watching her come undone underneath me.
Almost.
“Not really, I already owned it. I just figured since I wasn’t doing anything with it that you might want it. You can run it. Do whatever you want with it. The city has a library budget this year. You can open it and make it the best library Outskirts has ever seen or you can keep it closed and use it as your very own reading den,” I said, laughing nervously.
I watched Sawyer innocently fawning all over the books, running her hands along the spines. The first book she plucked from the shelf was a book of fairytales. She skipped over to the couch in the middle of the room and plopped down, propping her legs up on the arm.
I lifted her feet and sat down, setting her legs across mine. “Fairytales huh? You know those aren’t real,” I teased.
“Trust me, I know life isn’t a fairytale,” she said, turning the book around to a picture of a library with a princess and a beast standing in the middle. “Yet here I am, in my own library…with my very own beast.”
Sawyer
Finn smiled. “Well, beast makes more sense than prince.”
“Or swamp ape,” I added.
After we caught our breathes Finn had gently cleaned me up and we’d gotten partially dressed so that I could inspect the books in my very own library.
“No, that probably makes the most sense,” he said, leaning over to scan the book of fairytales in my lap. “Have you actually read any fairytales? Some of them are great. But a lot of them are weird. Stories about witches luring children into her home and eating them, wicked queens wanting to kill an innocent princess just because she’s pretty. It’s some pretty twisted shit.” Finn shrugged. “I could come up with something better than that.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, curious as to where he was going with this. “Like what?”
Finn slid my legs off of his and reached over, grabbing me by the waist and lifting me so I was sitting across his lap. “Once upon a time there was a man,” he started, “a recluse so caught up in his own pain he couldn’t stand to face the world. Then, the strongest and bravest girl he’d ever met came along with her sassy mouth,” he kissed the corner of my lips, “and innocent pliable flesh,” he squeezed my hip, “and made the man want things he hadn’t wanted in a very, very long time.”
“Is that all?” I asked, my voice a whisper. My thighs tightened around him on instinct and his eyes darkened.
Finn shook his head and gently pushed me off his lap onto the couch. “The man told himself he was better off without her,” Finn continued, sliding off the couch until he was kneeling in front of me. He toyed with the waistband of my shorts and pulled them and my panties down off my legs, spreading my knees. He licked his lips at the sight of my embarrassingly swollen clit. “He told himself it would be best if he went far, far away,” he said, his voice deep and rough, his eyes dark and hooded. “For a short time, he even believed it was true,” he said, bending down and whispering the words across the sensitive flesh of my inner thighs. My core clenched in anticipation.
“Until one day, he couldn’t fight against the need to claim her and make her his.” He looked me in the eye as he swept his flattened t
ongue over my clit. I bucked off the couch and my book fell off the arm rest to to the carpet.
Finn chuckled against my outer lips. “You see, the man didn’t just want her incredible body.” Lick. “He wanted her mind.” Impossibly slow lick. “Her spirit. Every part of her she was willing to give.” He glanced up at me. “And more.”
“What did he do?” I asked, fighting the urge to crush my thighs against his head. He pushed his hands on my knees and spread me wide open.
Finn’s eyes were downright wicked when he looked down between my legs. He smirked. “He took it.”
And then he did.
Finn opened his mouth wide and sucked my clit and my swollen outer lips into his mouth, rolling his tongue over and over again until everything around me blurred and I saw stars in the middle of a bright sunny day. He darted his tongue inside my hole and using a wave like motion he massaged my inner walls.
Finn wasn’t just tasting me. He was devouring me. This wasn’t a simple act, this was an oral claiming.
A claiming I wasn’t going to deny because my core squeezed around his tongue and a pressure so great built inside me that when he reached up under my shirt and pinched my nipple at the same time he lightly grazed my clit with his teeth I couldn’t hold on any longer. I ran toward the edge with no parachute and without hesitation, I jumped straight into an eruption of pleasure that exploded from within me and didn’t give way until it had wrung every last bit of bliss from my body.
“The end?” I huffed when I could finally see again. Finn licked his lips, tasting my glistening wetness around them and slid me off the couch to the floor.
He chuckled. “No, baby,” he pushed down his jeans and stroked his long thickness with his hand. Slowly, up and down. “This is just the beginning.”
Finn was right after all. Anything could be a fairytale. And as he took my body again I knew there was no reason for me to ever want a prince.
I already had my very own beast.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Finn
In an attempt to help Sawyer figure out her past, mainly her mother’s connection to Outskirts, I found myself alone, scouring the back room of the library to look for any evidence that Caroline Dixon or Caroline Ellen had existed on paper in this town. I’d gone through a couple of hundred dusty files from boxes that fell apart the second I removed the lid when I finally came across a document with Caroline Dixon’s name on it.
And then I got angry.
“Why have you been lying to Sawyer? About knowing her mother?” I seethed, bursting through the back door of Critter’s. He was in the back alley smoking a cigar.
“Why hello to you too, Finn. Nice seeing ya,” he said in that low baritone of his. “I’m fine. Business is great. Thanks for asking.”
“We can do all that later. First, I need to know why you’ve been lying to Sawyer.”
Critter leaned back against the wall and took a drag of his cigar, blowing out the smoke in rings into the sky. “It’s a long story. Longer than you are old.”
“I need to know it.”
“And why is that?” Critter asked.
I gave Critter a knowing look.
“I swear to God boy, if you fuck that girl over imma give you a beatin’ the likes of which this town has never seen. Is that understood?” Critter asked.
Critter’s threats used to piss me off but this one didn’t. I liked that Sawyer had another protector in Critter. He’d been like the angry uncle I’d never wanted my entire life.
“Good. I’d expect you to.”
Critter nodded and held out his hand. Instead of shaking it I placed the document in it. “Now tell me why you’ve been lying to my girl.”
“Follow me,” Critter grumbled. I followed him into the kitchen where he poured us both a shot of whiskey into red Solo cups. “Cheers,” he said, we clanked our cups together and took our shots.
He walked over to his desk, just a rectangular piece of wood in the corner with mountains of papers and receipts scattered over the top. He opened a drawer, pulled out a yellow piece of paper and handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“This is everything. The reason why I’ve been lying to Sawyer. The reason why she doesn’t know half of what’s been going on since she’s gotten here.”
I read the flyer several times to make sure what I was reading was right.
CHURCH OF GOD’S LIGHT
TENT SERVICE
Brillhart County Fairgrounds
Dates to be announced
I remember Sawyer mentioning the name. “It’s the church she grew up in, right?” I asked, glancing up at Critter who downed another shot and walked into the bar area. I followed and slapped the flyer down on the bar.
“What does all this mean?” I asked, growing frustrated.
“It means that I need to tell you a story about a man by the name of Richard Dixon. The lowest cocksucker that ever crawled across this dirt ball we call earth. That rat bastard is one of the heads of that church.”
“But it’s just a coincidence, right? Sawyer told me that her dad doesn’t know where she is and that he can’t find her because he never knew about the land,” I said, knowing right as the words left my mouth that I was wrong.
Critter raised his bushy brows at me.
“That’s not true though, is it?”
Critter shook his head. “Sawyer thinks it is. And for right now it’s better that way. That girl has already been through too much. She don’t need to worry…unless the time comes when she needs to worry.”
I started to panic. Sawyer was with Josh at her place but I needed to know what we were up against. “Critter, you have to give me something here,” I was practically begging. “I have to protect her. Tell me what you know. I can’t fight for her if I don’t know who or what I’m fighting.”
Critter sighed. “I got that today. I was coming to talk to you tonight,” he said, and by Critter’s standards, it was about as close to an apology as anyone ever got.
“Richard Dixon knows exactly where Sawyer is. He’s probably known where she was before she even got here,” Critter explained.
“How?” I asked, still not a hundred percent understanding.
“Because it’s the only way he’s like me. Knows the comings and goings of everyone around him.” Critter looked around like he was searching for something. “Just know, that for right now, I’ve got eyes on that bastard, and when he comes,” Critter reached under the counter and produced his shotgun. He pumped it and the click echoed throughout the empty bar. “We’ll be ready for him.” He leaned forward on the bar. “Are you in or you out?”
“I’m in,” I said, without hesitation. “Of course, I’m in.”
Critter clapped me on the back. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Then it’s about time I tell you a little story about a man named Richard Dixon. The motherfucker who calls himself Sawyer’s father.”
“Why do you keep calling him Richard Dixon?” I asked, realizing that Critter kept going out of his way to say his name instead of calling him Sawyer’s dad.
Critter set the gun down on the counter. “Because, he’s not Sawyer’s dad,” he grated.
He opened his wallet and handed me a picture of a woman who looked just like Sawyer except with blonde hair. She was smiling at the camera and had her arms around her good-sized baby bump. He then slapped down the document I’d given him. The marriage license listing Caroline Dixon as the bride and Critter Templeton as the groom.
He looked me in the eye. “Because I am.”
Chapter Forty
Finn
“This will be the last time I come here,” I said. For the first time, I was on top of the slide without a bottle or joint. Just me, a cigarette, and the feeling of peace.
“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. For blaming you, for not moving forward with my life when I realize now that I was the only one in my own way.” I took a deep breath, breathing in the smell of the salty swam
p. “I know that now. I know a lot of things now. I did love you. Not in the way you deserved to be loved, but I did love you. I always will. I hope you’re at peace now because I think…I think I’m finally getting there.”
I bent down to the cardboard box and pulled out the wind chimes Jackie had made for me. I tied them to the top of the slide where they immediately began to clink together wildly in the breeze, singing their delicate song without a beat.
Exactly how I loved Jackie. Wildly. Beyond reason.
“Goodbye, Jackie,” I whispered, tossing my cigarette into the pool below.
I stood, feeling the weight of the past two years rise off of me. I felt lighter knowing I was going back to a life I loved again.
A life with Sawyer.
And it was because of Sawyer I knew now that it was okay to remember Jackie. Okay to think of her. Okay to even still love her.
More importantly, it was okay to be completely in love with Sawyer.
Because I was.
I was about to head down the steps when I spotted a line of bright yellow trucks and cars driving down the highway. That wasn’t what grabbed my attention though. That wasn’t what had me flying down the steps in a rush to get to Sawyer.
It was the blue logo each of the vehicles had painted on the doors.
A sun rising over mountains.
He’s here.
Chapter Forty-One
Sawyer
I was on edge.
Something was off. And it wasn’t just that I wasn’t feeling great. I’d been feeling dizzy on and off all day, but it wasn’t that. It was Finn. He’d been acting different lately and when I asked him about it he told me not to read too much into his broodiness. He’d laughed, but it hadn’t reached his eyes.
