Shadowboxer: Tapped Out Book 1

by Quinn, Cari

  And then, she stopped me cold.

  “No. Condom.” Her deep, dark eyes beseeched me.

  For a second, I had no response. We’d done it without one once before, when I’d been too stupid and eager to remember. But at least I’d pulled out.

  This time, I didn’t want to. I knew I had to, that some chances were too big to take. But I yearned to feel her against me, just skin.

  Just us.

  “I’ll pull out. Like before. I promise.” It was still a risk, but I wasn’t smart enough to grab that foil-wrapped piece of safety. My desire for her, for us, for everything I couldn’t grasp tightly enough, was too great.

  But she shook her head, eyes brimming. “I’m on the Pill, but you heard me tonight. How can you trust that it’s safe…that I’m safe?”

  “You trust me, don’t you? I haven’t been a saint.”

  “It’s not even close to the same. You’ve never sold—”

  “Mia.” I couldn’t listen to any more. I’d go fucking insane. I cupped her cheek in a hand that shook. “I can’t not trust you. It’s all I know how to do.” I pressed kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “You’re mine.”

  She let out a sound perilously close to a sob as she guided me inside her, taking me so deep that a harsh groan ripped from my throat. She’d never wanted to be on top before, and the angle stole my last bit of sanity. But she stayed still, holding me inside her, swallowing me with those depthless eyes. Telling me more than either of us had words to explain.

  “Ride me, baby,” I rasped, pinching her hips to goad her into motion. So ready to see her bouncing over me that I strained up, my body already poised to leap.

  She braced her palms on my stomach and lifted her hips, adding a swivel, a clench deep inside. Her knees dug into my waist as she started to ride, her beautiful body sheened with sweat in the candlelight.

  Sleek and agile, she blurred above me, her steady movements soon turning erratic and matching my equally wild thrusts. I was so close to losing it that I fisted my hand in her hair to slow her down, to slow me down, but it was useless.

  Without conscious thought, I lifted my hand, bringing it down hard on her ass. She stopped, her mouth falling open. Then she bowed back, seeking my hand again, meeting my next slap with a tormented moan that sounded like both release and agony. I did the same to her other ass cheek, driven by the flags of color that flared on her cheekbones.

  “More. Harder. Please.”

  I didn’t want to hurt her, but every time my flesh connected with hers, she moved faster, soared higher. Her nipples pebbled, succulent buds I couldn’t stop sucking. And her moans…

  God, I’d never imagined anything more erotic.

  Until she slapped me back. Heat sizzled over my chest, sinking talons of raging need deep in my gut. I roared with the burning pleasure and reared up to enfold her in my arms while I ravaged her mouth. Biting her lips, her tongue. Fucking her with everything I was and all that I wished I could be.

  For her. Only for her.

  Crying out, she ground against me, hitting that spot she needed. Firing us both up to the breaking point. She exploded around my cock, shaking me down to the core with the aftershocks and her guttural moans.

  I barely pulled out in time. My cock jerked in my hand, my heated release striping her pale belly. Branding her in the only cocky, illogical way I had.

  An emotion I couldn’t read flashed starkly over her face. Then she shut her eyes and closed me out.

  God, she didn’t think I’d gone back on what I said? I opened my mouth to speak, to explain that stupid, primitive need to claim, but nothing came out except a wheeze.

  What had occurred between us defied speech. And sanity.

  She quivered, finally lowering herself to my chest. We clung to each other in a sweaty, sticky heap. Panting like runners, shaking like junkies.

  “Tray.” When I didn’t move, she tried again. “Tray.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I wasn’t…there never was…” She braced her elbow on my torso, and somehow I raised my head. “I swear, you’re the only man I’ve ever had inside me…except—”

  The roaring in my ears made me drag her down for a frantic kiss.

  No. Don’t say it.

  I’d have to hear those words soon enough, but not now. Not yet. “I trust you,” I whispered instead, repeating it as her mouth met mine.

  Pretending I didn’t taste the salt of her tears.

  Thirty-Four

  The marshmallow melted on my tongue, the outside crispy, the inside heated, liquid sugar. So good that all I could do was moan and lean against Tray. “God. So good.”

  I licked my thumb and then held out my index finger to him, loving the way he gripped my hand as he nibbled the puffy sweetness clinging to the tip. Pain junkie that I was, I’d discovered I enjoyed prying the hot marshmallow from the stick and sucking it off my fingers. It was messier that way, but I liked the blaze of heat. I especially liked the way his expression devoured mine each time I offered to share.

  “You sound just like that when you come. All breathy and sexy.”

  He pushed his tongue between my lips in that commanding, take-no-prisoners style I loved. Kissing him felt like breath, like life, and I hadn’t fully inhaled in years.

  We’d cleaned up then sat naked on the log with the blanket beneath us. So far we’d demolished half the bag of marshmallows, stopping every other one for a serious makeout session. My lips would be raw by morning at this rate.

  From the way he kept casting hungry looks down my naked body, I was pretty sure my mouth wasn’t the only part of me that would be getting a thorough workout tonight.

  “It’s not how you sound when you come,” I said hesitantly, letting my hair shield my face. My cheeks weren’t hot yet, but my new hair-hiding habit wasn’t much of an improvement.

  “Don’t tell me I scream.” He grabbed another marshmallow and popped it unheated into his mouth.

  He was so completely relaxed about sex and everything else that sometimes I wanted to smack him. Other times, I wanted to beg him to teach me. How did I unlearn all my fears and unremember my past? How did I go back to being an innocent girl who enjoyed sex as pleasure and release and connection?

  I didn’t. I couldn’t. I could only go forward.

  “No, more of a snarly growl thing.” I caught my lower lip between my teeth and marveled that, for once, it wasn’t split. I was remarkably bruise and wound free. My incredible new trainer pushed me through grueling sparring sessions that rarely left me looking like a train wreck. “Do you miss it?” I asked abruptly.

  “Coming? Constantly. I’d stay inside you twenty-four/seven if you’d let me.” He shot me a sidelong grin and held out another marshmallow.

  “Not that.” Still no flushed cheeks. This might be a record. “I mean fighting. Are you sure you don’t want to go back after you’re healed?”

  “Absolutely sure. I’m done.”

  “You did it for years, and you can walk away, just like that.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t for me. I am enjoying training though, but I suspect my very hot, very trainable student has a lot to do with that. Eat your marshmallow.”

  Dutifully, I pushed it on my stick and held it near the fire until it started to brown. “You’re still enrolling in that sports medicine program?”

  “Yeah. I am. I need to separate my finances completely from my parents so I can see what grants I qualify for—” He broke off, looked at me. “What are you going to do? After fighting?”

  After fighting wasn’t something I wanted to discuss. The here and now held all my interest. “I’ve been taking interior design classes online. Just one or two a year when I can afford them.” Which wasn’t often.

  “So you could redesign this place?”

  “Redesign it? Why?”

  He shrugged and reached for the bag of marshmallows again. He’d be in a diabetic coma soon if he kept up his current pace. Evidently, he’d completel
y thrown off the shackles of his training diet. Though I wasn’t much better, and I had a fight tomorrow.

  “I don’t know. It’s boring. It doesn’t feel like me.”

  “So you want, what, naked girly pics on the wall? Maybe a set of monkey bars you can hang upside down on, since you’re so fond of the pull-up bars at the gym?”

  “Yes. And yes. You are clearly the designer of my dreams.” Without warning, he tossed aside the bag of marshmallows and hauled me onto his lap, leaning back lengthwise on the log so that I sprawled against his chest. “The everything of my dreams,” he added, much more softly, his fingers winding through my hair.

  I snuggled in. I couldn’t help it. Yes, we were on borrowed time. This couldn’t last forever. Kizzy was right. I had plans with my sister, and thinking they could include him was a path to madness.

  Even if I’d been reconsidering leaving the area, my Aunt Patty was right too. Carly needed a safer environment. One far away from men like Giovanni Costas.

  So where did that leave Tray and me? Nowhere.

  Sure, he might think he was up for traveling with us, but he had a pretty great life in the city. He was enrolling at NYU. Why should he have to telecommute when his family was right here? His friends. His world. I was just one tiny, impermanent part of it. Easily forgettable.

  God, I wanted to pretend for a little while longer.

  “You might not say that if you knew everything about me.” I tried to keep it light, to stay playful. But I hated keeping my past from him, and one day, I’d have to stop. Soon.

  “And vice versa.”

  I lifted my head and laughed. “What could you possibly be hiding? How many women you’ve slept with? You’re not hiding it if everyone knows.”

  He brushed my hair off my shoulders, his thumbs skimming my skin and setting off a round of goose bumps. “You’re not the only one who has done things you aren’t proud of. Who keeps doing them every day.”

  Something trembled in my chest. I had no right to ask. But I couldn’t not, when he’d given me an opening like that. “Like what?”

  “Lots of things.”

  His evasion struck me wrong. Way wrong. “Give me an example.”

  He clenched his jaw. “Don’t do this tonight. Please.”

  I sat up and frowned, the warmth from the fire and being in his arms dissipating in a cold rush of fear. “Tell me. Now.”

  “You have to promise me something.”

  I shook my head. Kept shaking it when he gripped my shoulders. “No. Tell me.”

  “Promise me, Mia, or this stops here. Promise me you won’t run without telling me. That no matter what is said tonight, no matter what happens, you won’t leave without telling me you’re going.”

  The anguish in his voice made my eyes smart. With no idea why I was agreeing, I forced out the reply he was waiting for. “Yes. I promise.”

  “I can’t pretend any more. I can’t look in your eyes and pretend I don’t know.” He stared into the fire before finally directing his attention to my face. “I looked up your name, weeks ago. Near the beginning. Mia, I know.” He smoothed his fingers over my cheek, the tenderness in his tone breaking me. “I know.”

  My heart stuttered and stopped. I tried to breathe and gasped instead.

  No. He couldn’t mean what I thought. That night on his bar, when he’d made me come and I’d started to cry, I’d seen something in his eyes. Something that had cut to the deepest part of who I was. The real me, the one buried beneath bravado and lies and a veil of normalcy. I’d run because I couldn’t face the possibility. Then he’d gotten hurt, and I’d pushed it all aside.

  He couldn’t know anything about Amelia Anderson’s past in Georgia. Seven years had passed.

  Seven minutes in my head. Seven minutes in my gut. Seven minutes in a place not nearly as mystical as my soul, but way down deep at the very heart of me. Where I was still that crazed animal who didn’t care about anything but survival. I’d killed for it once.

  And he knew.

  He knew.

  I stumbled back, falling off his lap to the pile of sand. It got all over me, clinging to skin still misty with sweat, and I couldn’t get it off. I scrabbled backward, crab walking like some crazed sea creature.

  I’d ended a man’s life to make sure I didn’t die. What would I do now to ensure the me I’d created, this falsified version that fooled no one—that hadn’t fooled Tray—would live?

  This time, I would kill us. Him and me. Done. Over. Dead. Just like Darren.

  We weren’t real. We weren’t anything but a joke. I was his charity case. Because he knew.

  He knew.

  “Mia. Baby. Come here.” He fell to his knees and reached out for me, the tips of his fingers brushing my knees, my calves. I slapped him away as if he was a spiderweb sticking to my flesh. Binding me in an intricate, nearly invisible web.

  He’d been so clever. All the lines he’d used. The way he’d made me laugh. How he’d spanked me tonight and dislodged that block of congealed glue in my chest that contained all my emotions. I’d opened myself up to him in every possible manner.

  The only thing I’d held back was the truth. I hadn’t given that to him, because I didn’t want to be Amelia Anderson, broken girl any longer. I wanted to fall in love. To be normal.

  Just…normal.

  But everything between us was a lie. Especially me. The girl I’d become in his arms was already disappearing, shriveling into the shell she’d come from. I was a fake. A pretender. Scarred and battered and unclean.

  Unwanted by everyone, even myself.

  “Let me explain. Please. I didn’t mean to find out. It was an accident that I even searched, just based on a hunch. I had no idea I’d find…that.”

  My life distilled to one word, uttered in horror. That.

  I didn’t speak as I rose to my knees. I’d get up and get dressed, just walk out the door. My mind was already putting up a wall, layering bricks that wouldn’t let him in again. He was a stranger. A liar. He’d betrayed me in the worst way possible. He’d pretended to believe I was a regular person. I could be someone to love. When all along, he’d known that wasn’t true.

  The wave of sickness spread through me so swiftly that all I could do was clutch my arms around my stomach and moan.

  “Mia. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck, my shoulders, my back. Frantically. As if he were trying to pin me in place, to hold me here when he sensed part of me was already gone. I might’ve felt sorry for him, if I hadn’t been more sorry for myself.

  “Don’t leave. Don’t go.” He sounded like he was choking. Running out of air.

  I could barely hear him over my keening moans.

  “We’ll get through this together. I don’t know how to fix you, but I’ll try. God, I’ll do anything.”

  “I knew you weren’t happy, Amelia. I saved you.”

  “You think you know? You think you understand?” The question came from way down deep, echoing out like we were in an empty, drafty room.

  He said nothing, but his breath sawed out from between his parted lips. It blew hot over my back, creating more goose bumps. I would’ve shivered, if I’d still been connected to my body.

  I was floating above. Separate from myself. From him.

  “I walked home the same way every day. Two miles from the door of my school to home. But one day, I changed the route.” I sounded completely detached from the story I was telling. My own twisted fairy tale. “I went down another street, because I wanted to see something new. For the longest time, I blamed myself for picking another road. Thinking I could’ve changed it. I didn’t know then that he’d been watching my sister and me for weeks. Picking his moment. If she’d been with me that day, he would’ve taken her too.” I tightened my grip on my stomach. “I convinced him he didn’t want her. Only me. I would be everything he needed.”

  Rocking, I stared sightlessly at the torch blazing above
my head. Instead, seeing my face as I’d been that day, the curls I’d put in my hair before school, the carefully applied forest green mascara. By that night, the curls had been tangles, and the mascara had turned into glittery tears.

  “She doesn’t know he wanted her too. I never told. I didn’t want her to be afraid, like I was.” I made another one of those wrenching sounds, half moan, half scream, helpless to stop it. “Like I am.”

  “I’m here.” His liquid voice trembled beside my ear. More wet than my eyes. His arms came around me, banding so tight. “I’m here.”

  “He didn’t look like a monster. He looked normal. Even…attractive. I didn’t fight when he touched me. I just…let him. I barely even cried. I wasn’t even there anymore. Like how you go into auto-pilot when you fight, reacting without thought. I did what he wanted, so he wouldn’t think about Carly.” I rubbed my nose with the inside of my wrist, scarcely aware tears trickled down my cheeks. “I always kept her safe. He couldn’t have my baby sister.”

  Heat at my back, enveloping me. Strength without words. He gulped back his own tears, as if from a great distance away. I couldn’t comfort him. Nothing left inside me to give.

  “He’d bring me the paper and show me the articles about my disappearance. At first, there were a lot. Then time passed, and they got shorter. There was no news. I’d vanished without a trace. They started to forget me. I was just…gone. But I wasn’t. I was still alive, just barely, a prisoner in a gorgeous house with a…with a handsome man, who let me sleep in his bed and took me shopping like I was his wife. My child-bride, he’d joke to the saleswomen, and they’d laugh. He let me walk free, because he trusted me. He knew I wouldn’t run, I wouldn’t tell. Because if I did, even if I got away, he knew where to find my sister.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, felt tears force their way through. “I had orgasms with him, several times. I didn’t want to, but my body did things I couldn’t control. And he used that as proof he wasn’t a bad person. After a while, I realized I was just as bad. I’d wanted to leave home, to stop being responsible for Carly and my dad, and I’d willed him into taking me. He was twice my age, more than, and I’d sold myself for pretty dresses and a fancy house. He saved me.” I bowed my head, my shoulders shaking from the sobs trapped in my throat. “Just like you.”