Breathe Me In (9 page)

“Holy shit,” I said, before I could stop myself. I tried to shove her back off of me, but Anya kept at it, drawing my whole length into her wet mouth. It had been a long time since a woman had gone that deep that willingly and it was so hot for a second I forgot what I was planning and just enjoyed it, eyelids half closed. One suck, two, three. I let it go on until my body was clenched and tight everywhere and I was gripping her head tightly.

Then I pulled it together and pushed her back with one swift movement. Anya made a sound of protest, her hand rising to wipe her swollen and moist lips. Her eyes were glassy and she was so damn sexy. I spread her legs and dropped my mouth onto her lips, sliding my tongue over her clit. She both groaned and jerked forward into a half sitting position.

“Stop,” she breathed.

“No.” My face was buried between her thighs and it was easy enough to hold her down. “Take my tongue.”

“Kane, no.” She squirmed, pushing at my head.

I glanced up and saw she was wild-eyed, uncomfortable. Aroused. Instead of responding, I just sucked her clit lightly before returning to stroking my tongue down into her moist body. She tasted sweet and tangy, the scent uniquely hers. She was wet, wetter even than she had been the night before when I’d shoved my cock into her. I wanted to eat her, all of her. I wanted to make her say my name again, not as a protest but as a plea. In awe.

I massaged her lips as I worked her with my tongue and even though her body remained tense, she started to moan, soft cries of pleasure. It made her sound different, less harsh. Using my finger to stroke inside her while I worked her clit she jerked on the bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked, and her voice was awed, amazed.

Her cheeks were flushed, her chest pink with desire, her eyes wide and glazed. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and her amazement amazed me. I wasn’t doing voodoo, I was just tag teaming her and using a steady smooth rhythm that most women seemed to appreciate. That she seemed bewildered by it humbled me. She was only twenty-one and she was a young mother. Maybe her sexual experience wasn’t as large as her attitude.

I stopped long enough to tell her, “I’m fucking you with my finger and my tongue. And you like it.” There was no going tender with Anya. She’d bolt.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.” I licked her, slowly, top to bottom. Bottom to top.

She moaned. “No. No, I don’t.”

I worked her for another twenty seconds. “Do too.”

“I hate it, actually. Like, I feel like there is nothing worse that you could do to me.”

Inserting my tongue deep into her heat, I reached up and pinched her nipples. A flood of moisture poured over my tongue and she came with a quick gush and a loud cry. Oh, yeah. Now that was satisfying. When her shudders slowed, I raised my head and wiped my bottom lip.

“Nothing worse? Let’s see how much you hate this.” It only took a second to shed my pants and put on a condom. Anya hadn’t even moved. She looked like she wasn’t sure what exactly had just happened to her.

When I drove into her, she was still staring at me, eyes wide. As I thrust again and again she did make a soft cry with each stroke, her fingers digging into my arms, but otherwise she made no sound. It was unsettling. I reached out and brushed her hair off her face, leaning down to give her a soft, tender kiss.

Anya pushed me. Hard.

“What’s the matter, baby?”

“Let me go. Let me go.” She started to thrash. “I have to go.”

Her face was leeched entirely of color and I sprang back, afraid I’d hurt her. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“Don’t call me that.” She scrambled to get away from me after I pulled out, crawling across the bed. “Oh, my God, I can’t breathe.”

“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.” She was freaking me out. “Seriously, tell me what the fuck is wrong.”

“I just…can’t. I don’t want you touching me.”

I just stared at her in shock. She’d been teasing me to touch her since she’d first shown up the night before. We’d had sex and she’d been fine. This morning she’d been in the kitchen naked when I’d gotten out of the shower. Now she didn’t want me touching her? I felt guilty. Like I’d pushed her into something she hadn’t wanted, but hell, that was not true. I knew it wasn’t true. She’d been the instigator and right there the whole way.

“I don’t know what to say,” I told her, and it was the God’s honest truth. I was completely bewildered and somehow felt like I had ruined everything. Even though there was no thing between us at all.

“I’m sorry to be a freak, but I just… changed my mind.” She wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were downcast and that in and of itself was unnerving. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she left my bedroom, still completely naked.

Not sure what to do, I yanked the condom off so hard it snapped back when it cleared my dick, causing a sharp sting. The pain helped focus my thoughts. I moved faster, waiting in the living room before Anya left. She was dressing in the doorway to the kitchen with anxious, urgent movements.

“That’s it? You’re just leaving? In the middle of sex you’re just going to take off and not tell me what the hell is going on?”

No response. She got her leggings around her waist then she shoved her feet into her boots. Her combat boots. So appropriate for her. She was always combative. “All right. I guess it was nice meeting you, Anya. Good luck with everything.”

Because clearly this was it. I’d never hear from her again. It was obvious in the way she refused to look at me. She was embarrassed, ashamed. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she’d been planning a con and now she’d gotten a conscience. I didn’t know. I just knew that I couldn’t crack her skull open and see what was going on inside and I wasn’t actually sure that I wanted to. Probably I would find out that I wasn’t even a talking dildo. That she hadn’t even enjoyed sex with me. I had been a task, a job, a mark. Or maybe that it had surprised and upset her to realize that she could lose herself in the moment, forget her purpose because she liked the way I made her feel.

Going to the door, she swiped her keys off the side table there. “Kane, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick tease. It’s just the way you looked at me, like you kind of liked me or whatever, it freaked me out.”

Okay. That just annoyed me. “So what, I’m supposed to have my cock inside you and look at you like I despise you? That’s fucked up.”

Her cheeks flushed with color. “That’s not what I meant. I meant you kissed me and it was like you liked me.”

That wasn’t any better of an explanation. “Yeah. So? Again, am I supposed to hate you?” I didn’t get it. I was naked and frustrated. The blue balls didn’t thrill me but that wasn’t why I was angry. I was pissed off that she seemed to want me to treat her like shit and I just wasn’t going to do that.

“Just never mind. Don’t worry about it.” Her chin went up. “I’m leaving.”

“Fine. Run away. You seem to have some practice doing that.” It was a rude thing to say but I was angry. If she was scared or had been mistreated or something, I was the last person who would be insensitive to that. But I didn’t think that’s what it was. It was like she wanted me to be a prick so she didn’t have to feel any emotion whatsoever.

“Fuck you. You don’t know shit about me.”

“You’re right, I don’t. But I would like to. I’d like to understand what’s going on. Why you panicked in the middle of sex.”

“I didn’t panic. I don’t panic.”

That seemed to strike a nerve with her. She looked so upset, so vulnerable, I wanted to reach out and pull her against me, give her a hug. But I knew that she wouldn’t be receptive to that. At all. Most likely she’d punch me.

So I decided the only thing to do was to bow out. I couldn’t make her share her thoughts with me. I couldn’t make her trust me. And frankly, it wasn’t smart for me to have her around, becoming invested in her feelings when I had no idea what her motivations were.

“Okay,” I told her. “Got it. You know where to find me if you want to talk about it or anything.” Then I did eliminate the space between us and ran my finger across her bottom lip. “Take care of yourself. I know you always do, but be safe, Anya.” I kissed her forehead before she could pull away.

“Yeah. Sure.” Her voice was gravelly. “See you around, Kane.”

For a second she just stood there and we stared at each other. Her rainbow hair was disheveled and she was playing with her lip ring. Her t-shirt was falling off her shoulder, exposing her tattoo.

I am not afraid to walk this world alone.

Yeah, well, sometimes you may not need someone. Sometimes you just wanted someone.

I wanted to turn my back on her and walk away. Dismiss her. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t me. I also wanted to take her in my arms and coax her to confess what the hell was going on. But I couldn’t do that either. So I did nothing.

And she walked out.

My whole life the one thing I could count on was that at some point, everyone would let down their mask and reveal how they really felt about me. Familiarity breeds contempt is how the expression goes and that was my truth. Everyone had expectations of who they thought I was or who they wanted me to be and when I failed to deliver, that disappointment, that disdain surfaced. It didn’t really matter what I did or who I was or how hard I tried, I was always going to let them down. I’d never be good enough or loved for me¸ just as I was.

I knew that.

So that’s why I freaked out with Kane deep inside me, his expression tender. He had looked at me like I was… something. Like I could matter to him. He’d called me some stupid term of endearment that as I backed Chloe’s car out of the parking spot at his apartment building I couldn’t even remember. I just knew he’d said it and it had made me wish it were real. That was a luxury I could not afford. I couldn’t start wanting things that would never be mine.

When I was six, I’d hidden in the front coat closet to play and I heard my parents talking. How it wasn’t working out, how they’d bought a lemon. I didn’t understand what that meant, exactly, but I did know that they were talking about me.
She’s just so strange. She doesn’t think like us. Have you seen the way she looks at the cat? Like she wants to kill him. I think she’s a sociopath. You know what they say about Russian orphans and how they weren’t soothed as infants and how they have no feelings. That’s definitely her.

No feelings. I had
all
the feelings. That was the ironic part.

Anya Strange. That’s who they saw, what I was to them.

And unlike biological parents who would go to jail if they dumped their kids, the Richardsons were well within their legal right to jettison me like I was a shelter dog who couldn’t be housebroken. I knew it, that day in the coat closet when I let the door creak open slowly and I peered out from behind the jackets and dangling scarves. When he turned and looked at me, my father wore that expression- the one that said he disdained me. That I had failed to please him, to be what he had ordered, what he had expected. And I knew he didn’t love me and never would.

I’d seen that look repeated over and over in my life until it seemed to me that no one was capable of being selfless enough to actually love another human being for who they truly were, as opposed to who they wanted them to be.

That’s what I had to remember. Not think that maybe Kane liked me. I amused him. I entertained him. I got him off. That’s all.

I had lied to Chloe about having my license. I’d had my temps briefly at sixteen but I’d let them expire when there was no car to drive. I wasn’t that great of a driver and I was upset for reasons I didn’t even want to look too closely at. Fortunately, it wasn’t a long ride back to Chloe and Ethan’s apartment. I parked the car in her spot and I walked the block to the pizza joint and filled out an application. Making my own money was a better plan than using Kane for money and protection. So many people had used me over the years. I didn’t want to do the same thing to him. It wasn’t honest and it wasn’t right and I had enough reasons to feel guilty and disgusted with myself. I didn’t want to add “treats people who don’t deserve it like shit” to the list.

Given the way I’d left I was sure I’d never hear from him again and that was for the best, really. I was in Maine, how many freaking miles from New York City? Diego would never find me. If he did, I’d make sure I had the money to repay him. It would take him a while to track me down if he ever did and by then I could have his five hundred bucks to pay him back. Taking the money from him had been stupid but I had been desperate. I had never, ever intended to give him Asher. The very thought made me sick. Hell, given my experience with adoption I couldn’t even bring myself to give him up via legit channels. There was no way in hell I was selling Asher on the baby black market.

But I’d let Diego think that I was willing to because I’d been desperate for money. I’d met him in a crack house when I’d been dragging Sam out of a three day heroin bender and while he’d given me the creeps, as all those dealers and petty criminals did, Diego had said the words I needed to hear then. He’d told me that he could help me. And I’d needed help. He’d been the one to carry Sam out of the house and help me get him home. He’d given me fifty bucks as a refund on taking back the heroin still in Sam’s pocket and he’d told me he knew people who would pay big time for healthy babies. I’d dismissed that last part and I’d taken his help knowing there would probably be a price to pay for it. Then when Sam had died, I’d even let Diego pay for the cremation, which was stupid.

It was a deal with Rumpelstiltskin. I’ll give you my first born. Yeah. Not happening. But I’d been desperate and willing to chance it. Sam’s parents had told me to go fuck myself when I’d called them and I wasn’t sure what else to do. Addict or not, he was a good person. A kind person with a gentle smile. He was the father of my son. I couldn’t just leave his corpse in our apartment and get on with my life and I’d been afraid to call anyone, afraid they would flag me and try to take the baby when he was born. So I’d had Diego pay for the cremation and I’d taken Sam’s ashes and I’d scattered them in the park where we met when he’d still been a student at NYU and he’d been stroking his guitar in the park.