Never Let Go: Top Shelf Romance Collection 6

by Steiner, Kandi

  I’m insane. Obviously, he’s driven me insane with sex. I mean... my God above, his dick is something else. I feel deflowered. My lips curl into a mad little smile. I shake my head. I just got my brains fucked out. By Kellan Walsh. I blink at his moving form and wonder who the fuck is he? Why did I react this way?

  The sex was just intense. That’s what I tell myself as I get to my feet. My cheeks and neck are hot, my body is unsteady, but the sex we had was so intense, of course I would react differently. I’ve been with other guys. Kellan’s more intense. It’s messing with my head.

  I step over to the wall beside the door and drag my palm along it, feeling for a light switch. When the room lights up, I draw my first deep breath since being pulled atop his lap.

  See? I’m totally good now. When I turn around, things will be just the way they were while we were studying. Just business. Okay—maybe some occasional heart-thumping... but definitely nothing serious. These squishy-wishy feelings I’ve been having in the last few minutes: they’ll be gone. Because I don’t even know him. And what I do know, I don’t like. There’s no reason I should feel drawn to him in any way.

  I stand there facing the wall, breathing slowly, and allow myself to admit that I’ve been lonely. Really lonely. The kind of lonely that always feels like after Olive died, when Mom and Grans were never home and I would find Mary Claire standing in the street “on accident,” and I would curl up in my bed at night and pray for someone to come take me to another house. Any time life gets quiet, the image of that sharpens in my memory. I start needing things I can’t get. Things I think maybe no one ever gets. Things that don’t have names.

  So maybe I’ve been a little like that lately.

  So his hands on me felt good. No big deal.

  Deep breath... blow it out my nose... five, four, three, two, one...

  I turn slowly and it’s almost a shock to see him there. My nerves spark as I look him over: Kellan in his unzipped slacks. He’s freaking beautiful. And perfect. Those wide shoulders, and his heavy chest—that look is one I love. The way his abs are dusted with gold-brown hair, trailing down...

  I jerk my eyes up to his face and find his mouth curved into a gentle, sideways smile. His eyes seem to twinkle. Is that a smug look? Happy? His smile widens and I realize that it’s both. He’s pleased with himself, and he looks also pleased with me. I had you, and I liked you. Yeah, you. That’s what his face says.

  My leggings are draped around one of his forearms; there’s a tissue in his hand. He steps to me. I tell myself to look down at my feet, but my eyes look to his eyes. Low-lidded. He looks satiated. His hand, clutching the tissue, raises.

  “I would have cleaned you up.” He trails the tissue along my chin, the motion soft and teasing. And he smirks. It’s...intimate, that smirk. As if he knows me.

  “I’ll take care of you while you’re with me. You’ll like it,” he says. He drops a light kiss on my forehead, and I take a step back.

  “When I’m with you, my ass.” I hold my hands out, as if his tissue will hurt me. “I’m not going with you! I’m not going to your house. I can’t do this. This.” I wave wildly at the room, then snatch my leggings from his arm. “I’m not a crazy person, Kellan Walsh, you make me feel crazy!”

  When my eyes return to his face, I’m surprised to find he looks thoughtful—almost relaxed; the bastard. “You’re a person who likes pleasure,” he says, reaching for my shoulder. I step back, though it doesn’t get his eyes off mine. “What’s so crazy about that?”

  I blink at him, because it’s too hard to explain. “I know guys like you,” I stammer. Guys like Kellan Walsh are bad for girls like me. It’s a cliché, even. “Doing this in here—” having wild sex in the library—“it’s not my thing. I’m not that kind of girl. I know you’ve been with tons of them. You’ve got the wrong girl, Kellan.”

  He chuckles, tilting his head a little to one side. He folds his arms. “Oh, Cleo. You have no idea what kind of girl I like. You are my kind of girl. And you know what I think?” His sea blue eyes look through me. “I think you’re surprised how much you liked what we just did.”

  It’s true. There is nothing I can say to deny that, and I’m too strung out to lie. I shake my head. “I told you, I don’t like surprises.”

  “I thought surprises were okay as long as they’re good,” he says. His face is hung between emotions, totally unreadable to me. So I’m honest. I turn slightly away and yank my leggings on as I say, “Maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re never okay.”

  I turn back around to face him just as his face tightens, unreadable to gravely serious. “Someone hurt you,” he says, low. “Tell me who. Did you lose someone, Cleo?”

  “What are you talking about?” My voice rises, then cracks.

  He blinks, and stares right through me. Right down to my bones. “It was a surprise, wasn’t it? Was it your dad?”

  My throat knots as my pulse goes haywire. “How...do you know that?”

  “The poem in the painting.” His eyes blink again. “That Plath poem. A Post It note from ‘Mom’ was in your textbook, so I know she’s still around.” His gaze pulls at mine as his lips fold down, apologetic now, remorseful. “It was just a guess.”

  Uncanny. I push the thought away and focus on his chest. His stupid, gorgeous chest. “I don’t like you guessing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like you.”

  He steps closer to me, moving cautiously, as if he knows I’m a flight risk. “I don’t think that’s true.” He wraps an arm around my back and spreads his hand over my shoulder blade. He brings me gently against him, so my breasts press against his warm, hard abs, and then—before I can move away—he smooths his thumb along my jaw, tipping my head up. His mouth finds mine. He kisses me so gently I drift toward the ceiling. I grab onto him, his elbow, and pull away panting.

  His thumb brushes my lips. “Three weeks, Cleo.” His eyes burn. “Three weeks you’re mine. We’ll start tomorrow.”

  I whirl away from him and push through the door, spin back around to grab my bag. He stands there, fastening his pants, although his eyes are stuck to mine. My mouth flails as I throw my bag over my shoulder; tell him “no” again. But I can’t breathe. I’ve got no moves, no words—but I can feel his eyes on my back as I flee.

  I jog the whole way to the Tri Gam house, pulling all my leg muscles and making my chest over-tight. When I reach the top of the stairs, I find Milasy holding the brick.

  Ten

  Kellan

  The breeziness of the afternoon is gone. The night is heavy and still. It’s neither cold nor hot, but tension warms me as I stand on the balcony outside the windowed room, watching the treetops as they sway.

  All I can think about is Cleo.

  Tomorrow, I will bring her here.

  It hasn’t been like this before. Not the urgency. Everything is different now. I am different now.

  Cleo is a relapse. Bringing Cleo here is letting go. No more logic. No more restraint. Finished. The word swells to fill my head. I let it have me—giving myself over as I shut my eyes and touch the cement railing.

  Moments later, the phone rings. I pull it from my pocket and blink at the name I knew would flash across my screen: PACE.

  I never answer on the first ring, even though I always know when he’ll be calling. I want Pace to feel that I am difficult to contact—always one ring out of reach. It’s important: the control. Not just because I enjoy control, but because Pace is so closely aligned with Robert.

  I bring the phone to my ear and let the static fill my head while I wait for him to speak.

  “Kellan?”

  “Pace.”

  An ocean breeze whips over his phone’s receiver, muffling his question: “How’s it going, man?”

  I let my gaze fall through the pines, landing on the gushing river below. It’s narrow here—not even the width of a tennis court—so the water is fast-moving.

  Pace gets my point and clears his throa
t. “Got some teddy bears coming your way. Double nickel and penny. You ready for ’em?”

  “Always.”

  “They’re good bears.” He pauses, as if thinking. As if we haven’t had this conversation thirty times before. He adds, “Made in America.”

  I roll my eyes. Pace and his love of talking in code. I can only assume that ‘Made in America’ means the weed he’s bringing me from California is higher quality than what he usually sends.

  “Sounds good. I’ll be ready.”

  This is where I’d choose to end the conversation, but my cousin never can just let things be. Pace is an awkward motherfucker. Coming up on fifty, he’s a beach bum with nothing to his name except a lot of good intentions. I like Pace well enough—as kids, we called him Uncle Pace—but these phone chats can get tedious.

  “You doing okay?” he asks after a silence.

  I shut my eyes. “Fine.” The word is sharp.

  “Really?” he asks.

  Fucking Pace.

  “Just checking, dude,” he says defensively. “Robert has been sniffing my ass crack, wanting to know if you’ve decided anything.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, Pace.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Fuck him,” I growl.

  “You just... you can’t say that, man. Robert is—”

  “Who do you work with, him or me?”

  It’s a simple question with a complex answer. I’m not being fair to Pace. Not that I really give a fuck. He’s not being fair to me, either.

  I hear him breathing. Biding time as he tries to figure out how to broach forbidden subjects. I hear the phone brush the scruff of his beard, followed by his low voice saying, “Whitney called him. She said she hasn’t been able to get up with you.”

  Whitney. Of course.

  My fingers rearrange themselves around my phone. “I haven’t noticed any missed calls from her,” I lie. Whitney has been calling weekly for three months.

  “You’ve got everyone all stirred up,” Pace says in his low-but-nasally voice. “Man, I’m worried too. Don’t get all butt hurt, but we all have the same horse in the race. We’re a motherfucking family.” In a low voice, he says: “No one wants to see you wind up like Lyon.”

  The mention of my brother makes my eyeballs ache. Pressure builds inside my head. I suck a deep breath back and clutch the phone. “Don’t go there, Pace. Ever. You have a problem with Robert, deal with it. He’s your burden—not mine.”

  I hear a shuffling sound: Pace’s flip-flops on that little deck that hangs over the beach. He puffs some smoke out; I can hear his breath. “I just want to help you, man.”

  “You can’t, so stop trying.”

  I want to punch him in the teeth. I want to roar at him. I can’t believe he mentioned Ly. Instead, I say, “Till one-one, then.”

  The shipment will arrive at the old toy warehouse on Fifty-First Street on the eleventh of September. That’s what he meant by “teddy bears” and his made-up drug trafficking code, “double nickel and a penny,” as code for the eleventh.

  “Next week,” he says finally. He sounds defeated.

  I still feel enraged.

  I slide the phone into my pocket and stalk down to the basement. I tear into the punching bag that dangles from the ceiling, and imagine that it’s Pace’s pug-dog face. It turns into my father’s face, and then Ly’s. Which is almost indistinguishable from mine.

  I’m tired of fighting. I’m so tired of fighting me.

  I wait until the darkest part of night to go to Nessa’s house.

  * * *

  Cleo

  September 9, 2014

  R.~

  Okay. Deep breath. So…I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. Please don’t be too mad at me.

  It was stupid. It was a breach of trust. I know. But I was desperate. After all that time, you just stopped writing me, and I was worried. At this point, I’m pretty sure this letter is irrelevant completely, or you really are an icy cold stunna, in which case you don’t care that I’m worried past the point of logic. (I’m not sure which scenario I’d prefer…probably the ‘stunna’ option).

  But OKAY. I placed this stupid call to BTM and said you’d told me you would be out of the country for a few months. I said I had been writing you through them, but I didn’t think my letters had been reaching you.

  “What address do you have for him?” I asked them. “Is it in America or England? Because I think you’re sending my letters to the wrong place.”

  That was the ruse: That I at least knew what country you were in, and they didn’t.

  The girl on the phone seemed young, almost as young as me, and I tried to sound really casual and friendly so she’d tell me the address she had for you.

  “Who?” she said. She was clearly confused.

  I said, “Robert. The person I’ve been writing to? How can you not know his name?”

  I was sort of a bitch, and she totally fell for it.

  She was all like, “Oh yeah, right. Robert…D. Yep, that’s your guy.”

  She asked for my address and said, “I’m not sure I can do this,” and I was all like, “Trust me, you can. C’mon, Lainey,” (that was her name) “this isn’t the secret service!”

  I laughed like a phony bitch, and today I got a print-out with your information on it.

  Robert D. The last address she had on you was a P.O. Box in Alabama. Are you KIDDING me?

  You live in Alabama, and I haven’t met you yet?!

  Please tell me you just think I’m annoying. That’s okay with me. Tell me now that you’ve grown out of our correspondence. Maybe you’re engaged, or with the Peace Corps. The Marines. That would be so hot. Everybody likes a sexy man in uniform, and I know you’re a sexy man.

  See? I’m flirting shamelessly.

  Just reply to me.

  Did you know my name is Autumn Cleopatra Whatley? What do you think? You know a fucking Cleopatra. C’mon and tell me that that isn’t cool as hell.

  Actually…tell me more than that. I need your advice.

  I’ve gotten into some trouble with the head of my sorority, and I’m unofficially kicked out. I’m going to keep on serving in my role as an officer, because the president wants to keep this hush-hush, but I’m not allowed to stay at the house or do anything fun.

  I’m in trouble because I AM trouble. I regularly do something most people wouldn’t approve of. Something I started doing for money (which I needed and also wanted) and have kept up because it’s exciting, and adds some light to my boring little world.

  And why does my world need light? Because I’m kind of gray at heart. I used to think I was exciting and original – nothing gray about me - but as I’ve gotten older I realize I’m just one of billions of people here on planet Earth, and I feel like a boat without an anchor.

  I guess I’m kind of lonely. I can hear you gagging. First world problems, right? I know.

  I’ve met a new guy, and he’s going to help my first world problems go away. I can feel it. He leads this ridiculous double life. I’m about to live with him for three weeks, because we made this deal.

  Would you like to write me there? Please?

  I’ll mark his address as the return, because I don’t trust my sorority president not to go through all my mail now that she’s mad at me.

  I want to end this letter with something profound. Because I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, and I feel the need to make some sense of things.

  And you know what, Robert D., the wood chopper?

  I don’t have a thing to say. I don’t know the first thing that’s profound. My younger sister, who is deaf and goes to a deaf high school, is sleeping with her teaching assistant. My youngest sister’s grave doesn’t even have fake flowers by it, because people steal those. (I know, you warned me not to try that anyway, but my mom did, and they get stolen every time). I just broke up with a guy who used to call me “bebe” like for real (think baby but more like beh-beh) a
nd believed me every time I faked it during sex.

  TMI?

  I know. That’s my other middle name.

  When I get upset, I get a little crazy. It can be a good thing and a bad thing, but it’s more bad than good I guess.

  Just so you know, I’m considering going to this little town’s post office and figuring out where you really live. I need information. I’m in knots, and not the good kind.

  -Shamelessly Sloth.

  P.S. If I don’t hear from you this time, I won’t write again. I swear. And I’ll probably only hunt you down if a series of terrible events occurs in my life, and I need an anchor. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

  Just reply, please!

  Eleven

  Kellan

  I’m up before the sun, pacing the balcony outside the glass-walled room. Gulping chilly air into my lungs.

  My knuckles are bruised from my assault on the punching bag. My body screams for sleep, because I stood outside Nessa’s window for three hours last night: a silent ghost, eviscerated. Now I’m drinking coffee—black and hot.

  After a while outside, listening to the river slosh below, watching the pines tip in the breeze, I pull on some basketball shorts and go down to the basement. Fifty minutes on the treadmill, and it doesn’t tame my hunger. I do my weight routine for longer than my usual, making sure that by the time I’m done, all my muscles are shredded. Then I make myself two waffles and choke down every bite.

  I wander back up to the room: her room. I take a small, black remote out of the night stand drawer and press the button that makes the middle part of the indented ceiling retract. I take the canopy off the bed and lower the harness down to the mattress. I caress the ropes and smooth the sheets and rub my cock as I imagine Cleo lying right here, her wrists and ankles bound to the four ends of my X-bar, her wet, pink pussy ripe and ready for me.