Shit. I’d done it again, put my whole-ass foot in my mouth.
Lauren’s arms loosened around me, and I pulled back enough to look at her. “I didn’t mean to keep that from you, I swear. I just had all this other shit filling up my mind.”
“Okay,” she said, and I could tell from the look on her face that this time, she was finally willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, thank god. “Can you please tell me what happened?”
“There’s not much to tell. He found out about the diary somehow and beat the shit out of me. Then he told me if I ever so much as looked at you again, he’d kill me.”
Understanding dawned on her face. “That’s why you weren’t there the Monday I went back to school.”
I nodded. “My face was so swollen I could barely see, so my mom let me stay home most of that week.”
“I’m sorry he did that to you,” Lauren said. “Even at my angriest, I never would have wanted you hurt.”
Too good. She was too good. I couldn’t believe she was even talking to me after the way I’d yelled at her, after the things I’d said.
I took a deep breath. “That’s not the worst part.”
“What else did he do?”
“Not him. My dad.”
Her expression turned wary. “Do I even want to know?”
“No more lies,” I said. “Not even by omission.”
She nodded. “Tell me, then.”
“My dad threatened you, too.”
“What’d he say?”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t said so much as implied that it was good things ended the way they did before you really got hurt.”
“Because he would be the one to hurt me?”
“That’s the way I took it.”
She blew out a breath. “What a pair of fathers we have.”
I snorted. “At least yours is out of the picture.”
Her fingers dug into the back of my shirt. “When do you plan on telling Senior about going legit?”
“At our next family dinner.”
She bit her lower lip, eyeing me. “Can I come?”
Holy shit, was she serious?
Her smile was a small, evil thing. “I want to see the look on his face when you tell him to go fuck himself.”
I groaned and rolled her onto her back, trying desperately not to get my hopes up. “Does this mean that you forgive me?”
“Not for everything,” she said. “Not yet.”
“That’s fair.” This was more than I’d hoped for on my way over here. I’d expected her to take one look at me and call the cops.
“I do forgive you for the other day, though,” she said, wincing. “Especially since I opened that conversation by tasing you.”
I grinned. “You should see the burn on my back.”
She slapped a hand over her eyes. “Oh, god. I’m so sorry.”
I chuckled. “Don’t be. The knife wound on my side has entered the itchy phase, and it was driving me crazy to keep from scratching it. The pain of the burn is a welcome distraction.”
She let out a tortured sound.
I sat up enough to yank my shirt off, turning so she could see. “Look. It’s really not that bad.”
She was so quiet that I turned back around, and fuck, I wasn’t in the right state of mind to see her like this, sprawled beneath me, legs akimbo, heat in her gaze as it raked over me. I started to reach for my discarded shirt, but she stalled me with a touch.
“Don’t,” she said. “I want to look at you.”
“Lauren.” My voice was low, guttural. I had just gotten her to relax around me again. The last thing I needed was to scare her off by getting ahead of myself, and yet there went my dick, reminding me that I still hadn’t gotten fully inside her.
She dropped her gaze to my crotch, but instead of looking freaked out, she looked turned on. I held myself perfectly still, worried that I was misinterpreting her expression, not wanting to say or do anything to ruin the tenuous peace between us.
She reached out and stroked her fingers down my lower abs.
I leaped off the bed, putting as much space between us as possible. Less than five minutes ago, she’d almost keeled over right in front of me. Less than ten minutes ago, she’d been convinced I killed her father. No way was she in the right headspace for something physical.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood, stalking forward. “What was it you said the last time you were in my room?” she asked, her voice low, sultry. “I need to fuck you?”
Jesus Christ.
“Lauren, I don’t think this is a good idea. We still haven’t talked everything through, and I don’t want to put my hands on you only for you to turn around and regret it.”
She shook her head, pulling off her T-shirt, and, goddamn it, she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I won’t regret it. Physical touch is healing for me. I need it to feel close to you, especially after a fight.”
“But nothing’s settled between us,” I argued, telling myself to lift my gaze up from her tits and failing spectacularly. In my defense, they were perfect tits.
“It doesn’t need to be settled for me to want you.” She stopped a foot away, her tongue peeking out to trace her bottom lip. “In fact, I like that it’s not. I’m still mad at you, and I know you’re still a little mad at me.”
I started to shake my head, but she pressed her finger to my mouth.
“You are. Don’t lie.” She ran her finger down my lip, lower, between my pecs, over my stomach, stopping to hook it into the top of my pants. Her eyes bored into mine, lust and anger turning them bottomless. “Taking it out on my body will make you feel better.” She shoved her sweatpants down, and then she was nude in front of me.
Fuuuck.
With a groan, I reached for her, but she was already moving, crashing into my chest. My back slammed against the wall, picture frames rattling. A yank on my neck had me jerking forward so she could kiss me, her hands everywhere, needy, impatient sounds crawling up her throat. The cut on my side burned with fresh pain—at this rate, it was never going to heal—and the chair rail dug into my taser burn, but I ignored them both, infected by her sudden desperation.
A gust of air at my crotch alerted me to the fact that my dick was free from my boxers. I hadn’t even felt her undoing my pants. Lauren scrambled up my body, and I caught her, cupping her ass as her legs wrapped around me and her tongue continued to ply my mouth. Her hand slipped between us and—oh, fuck—I was inside her.
I groaned, lost to the feeling of her working me, working to take me without enough foreplay. She pulled her lips from mine and bit her way along my jaw, teeth pinching hard enough to hurt, ass bouncing in my grip as she sank deeper and deeper onto my cock.
Was this what it felt like to get fucked against a wall? No wonder women were so into it.
Her mouth parted on my neck, and then she was sucking at me in a way that would absolutely leave a hickey. I used my grip to help her fuck me, shoving with every rise, tugging with every drop, gaining inch by precious inch until she was fully seated on my cock and I couldn’t just stand there anymore.
She’d made her point. Now it was my turn.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, I took us to the ground, plowing into her, pushing her thighs wide so I could get as deep inside her as possible.
She cried out, hands scrabbling at my back, begging, “Harder, harder.”
I grabbed her hair and wrenched her head to the side, marking her neck like she’d marked mine, thrusting into her with so much force that she was going to end up with rug burn from the way she was sliding across the carpet. I’d been waiting to fuck her for ten years, had imagined every scenario under the sun, dreamed of getting her off over and over before I let myself come, but now that it was finally happening, all I could think about was unloading inside her wet, welcoming cunt.
With difficulty, I pulled myself back from the brink. “Do I need to put a condom on?”
“No,” she said, her spine bowing, hips slamming up to meet mine. “I need you, Nic.”
“You have me,” I told her. “All of me.”
Not just my cock, but my protection, my loyalty, my trust, and even my heart. I loved this woman. I’d always loved her. Always would love her, no matter what other crazy-ass shit happened in the future. She was who I was breaking free for, she was who I wanted to build a life with, a real life, lived out in the open and not in the shadows, where I’d spent every moment up until now. I wanted to explore my kinks with her, go to brunch with her and her friends, watch TV together, do all the other cute couple shit that I never thought I would get to experience.
She made me feel alive. She made me want to fight to keep living, to not let the monsters and the darkness win, because it was so much better being surrounded by her light. And if her penchant for taser play had taught me anything, she could more than put me in my place if necessary. She was my match, my queen, and I would spend the rest of my life worshipping her like one if she let me.
“Nic,” she moaned, hips rolling, head falling back, pussy clenching and, oh, god, she was coming.
My balls tightened, dick stiffened, and then I was coming, too, unloading into her, feeling her tight little pussy milk every last drop out of me.
Afterward, we lay there panting, her legs dropping away and her arms splayed wide as she went boneless. I rolled us, holding her close to my chest, her head tucked under my chin and her heart beating erratically against mine.
“You bought the building,” she said in disbelief.
“I’d buy the whole goddamn block if you asked me to.”
She snuggled closer. “I don’t think that will be necessary, but I’ll let you know.” We were quiet for a minute, relearning how to breathe, before she spoke again. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I know. I’m mad at you, too. But I don’t want to be.”
She said nothing.
I tightened my arms around her. “Do you want to be mad at me?”
“No,” she finally huffed. “I think it’ll take a couple more hate fucks for me to get over it though.”
“I could never hate you, Lo,” I said.
She sighed. “I could never hate you either. But this has to be the end of it, Nic. I can forgive you for everything you’ve already done, but I can’t be with you if you continue to do bad things.”
“I’m done,” I promised.
She relaxed back into me. “When is the next family dinner?”
Hope flared in my chest. “You’re serious about wanting to come?”
“Are you kidding?” She sat up enough to look at me. “I might try to find some way to film it.”
“It’ll be a few weeks,” I said, relaying the plan Josh and I had come up with, watching the smile spread over her face and wondering if maybe Lauren had a little more darkness inside her than I’d realized.
“I wouldn’t miss that for the world,” she said.
“So we’re doing this?” I asked. “Really trying to see if we can make this work?”
She bit her lip, looking scared, but finally nodded. “Slowly. Because trust takes time to rebuild.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, too,” she told me. “I just got so mad and so scared that you were breaking my heart again.”
I pulled her to me, my pulse picking up. “Does that mean I have your heart?”
She nodded, cheek rubbing over my chest. “Be careful with it this time.”
“I’ll guard it with my fucking life.”
