I have to tell him something; I can’t let him think the worst of himself.
I have to make it better. I have to.
“Tell me what happened,” he says in a low, pulsating voice. “Tell me what they did.”
With stuttered breaths, I look up at him and see all this anger on his face.
On my behalf.
It makes my stomach clench in that achy way that I used to feel whenever I thought about him in my bed. Achy and heavy that I felt last night, and I whisper, divulging my illicit secrets. “I had this pillow and when everyone would go to sleep, I’d put it between my legs. I’d press down on it. Really hard. And after a while, when I’d get really restless, I’d begin to rock. I’d rock against it and I’d bite my lip. Because I’d want to moan and call out your name. But I’d be afraid that someone might hear me. So I’d keep quiet and I’d keep going. I’d keep rocking against the pillow because I wanted you so much.”
I can’t believe I’m telling him this.
I watch a crimson flush overcome his cheeks. I watch the dilation of his pupils, his breaths going low and heavy, as if he’s sleeping, but I don’t think he’s ever been more awake.
More aware.
Because I’m the same way and I can tell.
“A-and we had this maid, she’d do our laundry and everything. And she’d come to my room to change the sheets and she’d always give me this look. Because I think she could… she could smell me on them. She could see the wet spots and then, when everything happened, I heard her talking to Fiona downstairs and she was calling me a slut. Like everyone else.”
I’ve been breathing really hard through this. Panting, almost. But then he puts his hands on me and my lungs forget to draw in a breath.
My heart forgets to beat.
My eyes go wide and I have to look down.
I have to see his hands on me. They are wrapped around my waist. His bronzed fingers over my red dress. They are so long, his hands, that he can span my entire waist with them.
His thumbs meet in the middle where my belly button is, and they dig into my flesh, press into it, and my thighs clench.
But not only my thighs; my core clenches too.
My pussy.
That I used to rub on the pillow because I wanted him so much.
“You’re not a slut,” he growls, and I look back at him.
His face is made of furious lines. His brows snap together angrily as he continues, “Not for that kiss. And definitely not for what you felt. Never for what you felt. Whoever said it, I’m going to take them apart with my bare hands, you understand? And that maid of yours, if you waste a single thought on her, on that pathetic excuse of a human being, I’ll hunt her down and make her wish she was dead.”
By the time he finishes, his hands are squeezing my waist so tightly, massaging the flesh almost that I have to go up on my tiptoes. But it’s okay. I don’t mind.
I’ve got him to lean on.
My arms have wrapped themselves around his neck and I’m leaning into him.
I’m leaning into him the way I was on my eighteenth birthday. The way I’m beginning to think that I was always meant to do. “Y-you will?”
He nods slowly. “Yeah.”
I take a moment to process this. To process the sheer enormity of what just happened.
He not only absolved me of all the crimes I thought I committed against him, he single-handedly destroyed all the voices that belonged to those people.
The voices that called me names.
And the truth is that I believed them. I’ve always been so ashamed of my desires for him that I believed that I deserved to be called a slut for kissing him, for wanting him, for crushing on him.
I didn’t think I’d feel any freer than I did a minute ago, but this is barely keeping my feet on the ground.
Now it’s his turn.
“But then, if you do those things, you’ll end up in jail,” I whisper, my nipples going really, really hard against his chest as I give him more of my weight.
A second later, he makes me give him all of it.
He brings me forward, tugging on my waist, and crashing our torsos together. It’s all very sudden and violent and glorious and I gasp as my soft, melting body clings to the hard planes of his.
“You think I’m afraid of that? I’m afraid of going to jail for you?” he rasps.
I lick my dry lips and shake my head rapidly.
I shake it like my heart is shaking inside my chest. With thrills and excitement and a dark sort of pleasure. “No, I don’t think so.”
“No, I’m not. For some very strange reason, I’m not. Not for you,” he says like he doesn’t understand it. But then, his tone becomes firm as he promises, “Anyone who hurts you goes through me, you got that?”
“Why?” I ask, melting and melting, drop by drop. The only reason I’m standing on my two feet is because he has a grip on me.
At my question, he brings one hand up and cups my cheek and I think that even his grip on my waist won’t save me now.
I can’t be saved from melting away because he’s holding my cheek with his rough, callused fingers and it’s so tender and scrape-y that I could almost be his rose.
“Because you’re my Jailbait.” He presses the pads of his fingers on the apple of my cheek as he continues, “And I’ll destroy anyone who dares to hurt you. All the people who made you feel less and called you names for that kiss. Everyone. You’re not a slut, all right? I won’t let you think you are.”
I grab his wrist and whisper, my heart so full of him and his words and his dark promises, “Okay, I won’t think that. But only if you don’t think you are what they say you are.”
Going still, he watches me a beat. “Is that right?”
Swallowing, I nod. “Yeah. I don’t want us to be ashamed anymore. I don’t want all the guilt and anger and pain. I don’t want us to be what they said we were. I don’t want other people defining us. I just want us to be… us. Just you and me.”
“You and me, huh.”
I nod before whispering, “Besides, I don’t wanna be their slut, anyway.”
“What?”
I close the last inch.
Our bodies were already touching. My breasts were already at his ribs and my stomach was already pressing against his pelvis and now, I get up on his feet to reach his mouth.
“I’m tired of being their slut, Graham. I wanna be yours.”
A current goes through his body that transfers from his flesh to mine, and I feel it right in my gut. In my pussy.
His eyes go blazing as his fingers jerk on my face and I know it’s going to happen before it does.
I know he’s going to kiss me now.
And he does.
He puts his mouth on mine.
His mouth is on me.
His mouth. Is. On me.
His mouth is on my mouth.
People call this a kiss.
I have to tell these things to myself. I have to run them in a loop inside my head because I can’t believe it.
I can’t believe it’s finally happening.
I can’t believe he’s finally kissing me. And it’s not like the kiss that I gave him on my eighteenth birthday, when he was an unwilling participant. When he was a big mountain that wouldn’t be moved.
He’s big still but he’s moving.
God, is he moving.
In fact, he has this intensity rolling just under his skin, this heat, this passion, that I can feel in his touch.
His touch.
He’s touching me. I could just smile about that till the end of my days. The fact that I thought he didn’t wanna touch me, and now he can’t stop.
His hands are all over my body.
They grab my waist and squeeze, making me arch up against him, making me rub my hard nipples against the lines of his pecs. Making me drag my trembling, shaking stomach against the grooves of his abdomen.
And when I feel the hair on his chest rub against my cleavage, I go crazy. I grab him back. I dig my fingers in his long, untamed hair and push back against him.
That just makes him even more frantic. It makes him roam his hands even more.
They leave my waist but they seem to be reluctant. They fist and bunch in my dress as if he doesn’t wanna let go of my hips yet.
They drag my pretty red dress up and down my legs as he rubs his hands in circles and sweeps. He goes down to my thighs and then comes back up to my waist. He’s making me feel his fingers through the fabric of my dress and it’s creating this hollow inside my stomach.
This hollow that is rapidly filling up with need and lust and everything sweaty and sticky.
So much so that I clench my thighs. I clench my stomach and my pussy.
My wet, wet pussy just because he’s playing with my dress. Just because he doesn’t wanna let go of it like it’s a toy of some sort and he hates to be parted from it.
But then, he does.
He does part with it and goes up to my neck. He grabs the back of it, covers the entire width of it with one of his hands while the other makes a fist out of my hair. Out of my thick and straight hair that never seems to curl even though I’ve tried to a million times before. Now, the strands give so easily beneath his fingers. They twist and curl and get wrapped around his grip like they are his slave.
Like every other part of my body is.
Like my lips.
They open and close and go loose and pliant under his and I wasn’t even paying attention to that. I’ve been so distracted by all these new sensations that I forgot about the kiss itself.
I forgot about his mouth. That’s moving on mine and making me do things for him.
It’s more than moving, actually.
It’s sliding and slipping and almost groping.
He sucks on my lower lip, makes it all slippery and swollen and achy before nipping it with his teeth and making me jerk.
And he likes that.
He likes me jerking for him so he makes me do it again. He tugs on my string like I’m his puppet, a doll, and bites my lip again and I jerk and twist in his arms.
I rub my needy breasts against his bare chest. I rub my nipples and I swear I can feel the coarse hair of his chest on them, even through the fabric.
He lets go of my lip and pants over my mouth. “You like that, huh? You like me biting your lip.”
Oh God, his voice.
I’ve never heard it before. I’ve never heard this rough, low, raspy tone from him before and it makes me twist again, roll my hips against his body.
“Yes,” I whisper with a tingling mouth.
His lips, those beautiful, gorgeous lips that were just wreaking havoc on mine, stretch on one side and he gives me such a sexy smirk that I almost melt away.
“Yeah, my baby likes it.”
Okay, so there’s no almost about it. I am melting away. I have melted.
“You called me y-your baby,” I say uselessly as my arms go limp and leave his hair, almost falling down to the globes of his shoulders.
“And you called me Graham.”
“I’ve wanted to call you that forever.”
He tugs at my lower lip with his thumb. “Yeah, me too.”
My eyes go wide and I blurt out, “For me to call you Graham?”
“Yeah, that as well.”
And then, he goes for my lips again and I realize what he meant.
I realize that he wanted to call me his baby like I wanted to call him Graham. We probably wanted this for ages.
We probably wanted it ever since we saw each other. Ever since we first laid eyes on each other and got stung by this obsession. This need, this craving, this fever that made us outcasts and different. But most of all, it made us bad.
You’re the girl who makes a man go bad.
I made him go bad, didn’t I? My need for him was contagious and he caught it too.
And me? I always liked bad things anyway.
Things like this.
Things that he’s doing to me right now.
Things like feeding.
He’s feeding on my mouth now and I love it. It isn’t even a kiss, anymore. It can’t be.
My entire mouth is inside his and he’s sucking on it. He’s sucking on it like I’m his candy. Like my bee-stung, cherry red lips are made of sugar and he can’t get enough. He wants me to melt in his mouth; he wants to pierce me with his teeth, lap me up with his tongue.
And like a good little candy girl, I let him. I moan to urge him on. I stretch my calves so much that they burn but it’s such a small price to pay when I get to be closer to him. When I get to give him all the access to me. To my open mouth.
Which he takes in a flash.
In a flash, his tongue is inside and he’s tasting me, the thing I’m made of.
And I moan again.
I moan into his kiss and suck on his tongue like he was sucking on mine. I moan because it’s glorious to be fed on. It’s glorious to feel the sting of his feeding and his tasting.
I’m a masochist, aren’t I?
I fall in love with the sting. I fall in love with his kiss.
I fall in love with him as I kiss him back messily and sloppily.
His hands start to roam once again but this time they do something that I never even dreamed of.
My innocent, schoolgirl dreams weren’t made of this stuff.
The stuff his hands do and completely ruin me in the process.
In response to my shameless kissing, he moves his hands away from my hair and my neck. He moves them down feverishly and gets them under the straps of my dress.
And then, he pulls.
He pulls it so much and with such force that I gasp mid-kiss and scrape my nails over his biceps.
Our lips part and I look into his eyes, his dark, beastly eyes, and groan when I feel his fingers tugging on those straps.
My breath halts when the fabric digs into my shoulders like a rope and I have this silly thought that it’s going to snap. That he’s going to tear off the straps of my dress.
And just like that, he does it.
The straps give way under the unrelenting pressure of his fingers and I jerk again. I gasp when it happens. My hands fall away from his biceps and grip his sides.
He actually tore off my dress.
He actually did it.
“You tore off my straps,” I whisper uselessly, like he doesn’t know. Like he didn’t do it with his bare hands.
One hand, actually. One hand for each strap.
That’s all it took to lay waste to my dress.
“I did,” he pants, watching me like before when he promised he’d go to jail for me. Like he can’t believe he did that, tore off my straps, but he likes it. He wants to do it over and over again.
“I bought it for you.”
“You did?”
I nod, my chest moving up and down, grazing his up and down moving chest. I’m not wearing a bra and the dress is still tight enough that it clings to the curves of my breasts but I don’t know how long he’ll let me be covered up. I don’t know how long I’ll wanna be covered up.
“I-I knew red was your favorite color and I bought it for my seventeenth birthday. Kinda like my gift from you.”
He searches my features, which I’m sure must be as red as my dress. “But you never wore it.”
I bite my tingling, wet-from-his-kisses lips and shift on my feet, which are still up on his bigger ones. “Because I thought I’d look… stupid. I mean, I’m not a dress kinda girl, you know? So I just bought it and wore it in my room. I’d look at myself in the mirror and I’d wonder what you’d think. If you saw me.”
Now that he’s done tearing my dress off, his hands move away from my shoulders and go back down to my waist.
In fact, they grab onto my waist and pick me up. It’s so sudden that all I can do is feel the air be
neath my feet as they leave the floor and obey his command when he growls, “Put your legs around me.”
I do that.
I practically grapple him with my thighs that go around his slim strong hips and my hands that go around his neck.
When I’m eye-level to him and all wrapped around him, he splays his palm on the back of my head and whispers, “You know why my favorite color is red?”
I shake my head.
“It’s because it’s the color of your lips. It’s the color of your smile.”
The said lips part and I breathe out, “No way.”
“I didn’t have a favorite color before you.”
My mouth falls open. “Seriously?”
His nostrils flare. “I didn’t notice colors before I met you.”
My heart squeezes. It squeezes and squeezes because it’s so sad, as sad as him being dreamless. So sad that I wanna hug him. I wanna touch his face. Caress it. Trace it with my fingers.
Suddenly, I realize that I can.
I can now.
I can touch his beard, and as if I needed that reminder to be able to feel the marks on my skin, they come alive.
I feel the sting of his beard, all over my chin, my jaw, around my lips. I feel the belated scraping, the rustling of it over my face when he was kissing me.
How did I miss that? How? Those marks are burning now, burning so deliciously.
My hands move up and I finally, finally touch it.
I touch his beard. I feel it with my fingers, all rough and soft, silk and sand, as I whisper, “God, I wanted to touch your beard for so long.”
He rubs his jaw against my palm and I almost moan. “Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. I had dreams about it.”
“What dreams?”
“Of rubbing it with my hands. Rubbing it all over my body. It’ll make me all red, won’t it?”
He rubs his jaw harder against my palm, as if trying to make it red, trying to make my dream come true. “Red as a rose. Red as my favorite color.”
I shake my head at him. “You know, for an asshole, you say the nicest things.”
His eyes go heavy at that. Heavy and hooded as he boosts me up higher with his arm under my butt and again, it makes me feel like a bag of feathers that he can lift and throw around just like that.
DREAMS of 18 Page 20
