Lie to Me (18 page)

I feel totally out of control, except when he touches me. Then I’m under his control.

“Because I want to make it up to you,” he says softly.

I grip the table harder and will myself not to cry. “So this is all about you?” I ask. “Because you just don’t want to feel guilty anymore? You’ll just come back here, hang around for a while, and then bam, no more guilt for fucking up my life?”

Marcus’s expression changes. His jaw clenches, his eyes burn. “I will never stop feeling guilty,” he says.

The world stops. I’m aware of nothing except how close he is, and where he touches me.

“Good,” I finally say. “You can’t make it up to me. Do you know what you did to me? Do you have any idea what it was like for me, when you left like that?”

Marcus moves even closer, his legs coming between mine, pushing me farther up on the table. His hands circling around my wrists, moving up my arms. One hand, finally, underneath my chin, tilting it up to him. Giving me nowhere to run or hide, nothing to do but finally face this.

“Tell me,” he says.

I didn’t expect him to say that.

I open my mouth to speak, but no words will come. I don’t know how to tell him, to tell anyone, what it was like. How bad I felt. How it was one of my greatest fears, the one I never told him about, all those times he asked me what I wanted most in the world, and I told him I wanted Dill, because that’s what I was scared of losing most. But the other person I was terrified of losing was Marcus, because he was the person that gave me faith in the world again, and I never, ever told him that.

I thought he knew.

He must have known. My parents were taken, my only family didn’t want me, my brother was taken, but Marcus was there. And then, suddenly, he wasn’t, and it had all been a lie.

And even those words don’t tell it. I don’t know how to tell this story. I don’t know how to show him what it did to me. How he broke me. What happened to me, in that bar, because of how broken I was.

He’s looking at me, expecting me to say something, and instead my heart is breaking all over again.

“It hurts too much, Marcus,” I manage. “It hurt too much then. I can’t…”

Marcus leans his forehead against mine, his hands, his amazing hands, coming around to my back, holding me up.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You were all I had left,” I whisper. “And then you slept with me, after everything we went through, you were finally mine, and…you were everything to me. Everything. And then you left.”

“I wasn’t everything,” he says, his voice rough, raw. “You needed Dill.”

I feel something new boil up inside me and I put my hands on his chest and push him back so he has to look me in the eye for this.

“No,” I say. “You do not get to talk about him. You don’t get to talk about Dill and me, not anymore.”

And then I break. I just start to cry in anger, and I’m hitting him on his chest, his arms. I’m not speaking coherently, just yelling at him, letting it all come out. He doesn’t fight me. He just takes it, immoveable, not even reacting except for his face, which looks as close to tears as I’ve ever seen it. And when I start to lose steam, Marcus puts his arms around me and holds me while I cry, while the last of that rage and grief leaves my body in great, shuddering breaths.

When I’m finally breathing normally, resting against his chest, feeling his heartbeat in my bones and hating myself for taking comfort in it, he speaks.

“I loved you then, I love you now, and I did what I thought was best,” he says fiercely. “And I would never hurt you deliberately, Lo, not ever.”

I want to believe him so badly, and it confuses the shit out of me. Because that wasn’t an explanation at all, and yet I want to accept it. Am I thinking clearly? Is this just because of this physical attraction? Is it because I’m afraid I’ll never be over him?

I don’t think a broken woman can make good decisions. I don’t think I can make good decisions until I know whether I can get over him. It will always be about the place where I hurt, the place where he broke me, and not about what’s best for me or for Dill.

I have to know. I have to know if this delirium is physical, if I can get it out of my system, finally exorcise the ghost of Marcus Roma from my life and just move the fuck on.

Or maybe the truth is that I can’t fight it anymore.

Maybe him holding me like this, so close to him…maybe it’s just my body overriding my brain.

I don’t even fucking care.

He feels it, too, I can tell. Like a rising tide, something building in both of us, between us. Like on my seventeenth birthday, when I knew he really felt it for the first time. I feel my blood rushing inside me, the pressure that’s been threatening me since I first saw him again pounding a demanding rhythm in my core, telling me to just go, just stop thinking, just do it.

“Lo,” he rumbles.

“Fuck me,” I say.

Marcus stops. His arms tighten around me and then they move, they uncoil, his hands sliding down to my waist. I breathe in when he touches me there and my abs flutter, and that stops him again. I hear his intake of breath. He pulls his head away from mine and looks down at me.

“Not like this,” he says. He’s almost pleading.

“Screw you, Marcus. I know you want me.” I look down, finally, to see how hard he is beneath those jeans. God, so big. “We both know it. Pretending it’s not…pretending this isn’t happening isn’t doing me any good. I don’t care what it’s doing to you, I care what it’s doing to me. Believe me,” I say, gripping hold of his shirt, “when I say that I don’t think I owe you anything. But I am tired of being scared. I am tired of being scared that I’ll lose what I have left of my ability to love, I’m tired of being scared that I’ll lose my job, I’m tired of being scared…”

I stop here, have to gather myself, force myself to continue.

“I’m tired of being scared that I’ll lose Dill,” I say. “And, most of all, I am tired of being scared that I will never be over you.”

I am so angry I can barely see, and I want him so badly it actually, physically hurts. Like the absence of him inside me aches.

I’m pulling at his shirt now, twisting it, and Marcus’s fingers are digging into my waist, pushing under the waistband of my shorts, almost like they have a mind of their own. They must, because Marcus himself is rock solid and rigid, his body riddled with tension, his muscles working with restraint.

“Lo,” he whispers, shaking his head.

“I don’t want to have to think about this anymore,” I say. “Please just help me to feel something else. Please.”

His thumb sweeps along the inside of my waistband, coming around the front, dipping low so that I shudder, even while the muscles in his shoulders pop and it looks like he’s struggling.

I want to scream.

I do.

I rip at his shirt; I go for the buttons on his jeans. I say, “I don’t want to be scared of being broken forever because you fucking broke me…”

I think he’s about to snap and finally take me when his hands move, lightning fast, and grab mine, pinning them to the table. Marcus is breathing heavy, his whole body hard and alive and pulsing between my legs as I sit on this stupid table, and when he looks at me, it’s with a fierce hunger.

“Not until you tell the truth,” he says. “Not until you say why.”

I know exactly what he means. He can still see through me.

“Because I hate that it’s you that does this to me,” I say. “Why does it have to be you? I hate that it’s you that makes me feel this. I hate you, Marcus, because I…”

Because I love him. But I can’t say it.

He’s leaning into me now, his head close to mine. He’s smelling me. I can feel his lips move along my jaw, my ear, my neck…

“Please don’t make me say the rest,” I say. “You already know the truth, you bastard.”

One hand moves to the back of my head, the other to my hip, and I can already feel the complete control he has over my body. Like he’s just deciding. Feeling it out, the way he does.

I hate him so much for making me love him.

“Marcus, I need you to—”

He doesn’t let me finish. With a growl, he threads his fingers through my hair and pulls my head back, his face hovering just above mine. For a beat his eyes pierce mine and I see what I feel echoed there: a wild need, a fierce, burning fever, the desperation of needing someone you can’t have.

And then when it happens, it happens all at once: his mouth crushing mine, his hand pushing into my shorts, beneath my underwear, his fingers sliding between my wet folds, and then his hand gripping me there. He stops for a moment, as though just wanting to establish ownership, and his tongue parts my lips savagely. I moan into his mouth and grapple at his shoulders, trying to get him to move, to just do it already, because I feel like I might burst, but he’s the one in control, and that drives me even higher. His other hand tightens its grip on my hair, and he takes what he wants, kissing me deeply until I yield to it, until I’m not thinking about anything at all.

My lips start to tingle, and it spreads downward. I move my hips against his hand and whimper, feeling how wet I am against him. I need him inside me, and he knows it. Slowly, too slowly—God, horribly slowly—he slips one finger inside me, drawing back to look at my face while he does it. I curl around him, biting my lip, my fingers digging into his shoulders.

“Please,” I say again.

His face is dark, so dark, so hungry. This is all new even if it’s not, even if my body responds to his as though we’ve always known each other like this. I remember what is was like the first time he was inside me, when he was so gentle and I was so nervous.

But now there’s no gentleness, only hunger. I’m not scared of this. He’s not scared of hurting me. He’s only taking what he wants, and I’m giving him what I need him to take.

So he moves that finger inside me, and the younger me remembers what it was like the first time he made me come like this, looking into my eyes, all soft tenderness and not knowing how it would end, what would happen after, how it would feel. And now, today, looking into those green eyes and feeling him start to find the rhythm, my own hips guiding him, I know that tender man is under there, just like he was before, and I don’t want that. I can’t. I can’t remember what it’s like to let him love me, to trust him to love me, because I will fall apart.

I need something else from him. I need him to take me. I need him to posses me.

“I wish to God it wasn’t you,” I say again, panting while he watches me, while he’s the picture of self-control as he’s making me lose mine. “I wish I could want someone else the way… I’ve tried, with other guys…”

It’s like I’ve slapped him. I have, in a way, telling him I’ve tried to love other men the way I love him. I’ve done it on purpose, and he knows it in the way that only he could. I’m goading him to get what I want.

Provoking him.

It works.

Marcus looks like he’s just been hit, and I wonder if I will feel bad about hurting him later, and then I don’t have time for that, because it’s like he’s been unleashed. He slams me down on the kitchen table with a growl, and his hand is ripping away my shorts, my underwear, leaving me completely bare. I moan as he pushes my shirt up to my neck, exposing my breasts, and I squeeze him with my thighs while he rips at the zipper of his jeans. I feel his big hands on my hips, hauling me back to the edge of the table, and then his thick, heavy cock nestles between my folds, moving up, down, taunting me.

"Oh God," I say. "Yes. Do it."

Marcus tightens his grip on my hip while I groan, and slips his other hand behind my head, forcing me to look directly at him while he’s poised right at my entrance.

“You are
mine
,” he says.

And he drives into me, filling me to the point where I scream in relief.

It hurts just right.

The shock of it dissipates, spreading outwards from deep inside me, until my nipples throb and my pussy aches. My body folds around him and it feels…oh God, it feels like I don’t know how I lived without it, and like I’ll die if I don’t get more. I throw my arms out, trying to get a grip on something, anything, and I manage to clear the table, sending salt and pepper shakers, plates, whatever, all of it clattering to the floor. I’m looking around everywhere, wildly, crazed, and Marcus jerks my head up, making me look at him again.

And once those eyes have me, I can’t look at anything else.

I. Can’t. Speak.

“Mine,” he says again, almost desperately, and thrusts into me again, hard, harder. Deeper.

Yes.

I cry out and try to wrap my legs around him. Marcus grabs one of them and pushes it up over his shoulder, withdrawing until he’s almost out of me completely, and then he plunges back into me, hitting so deeply that I scream.

This isn’t gentle. This isn’t even healthy. This is brutal, animal, desperate claiming. This is Marcus giving in. This is me working out every conflicted thought, every troubled emotion I’ve had for the last five years.

And he knows it.

“Mine,” he growls, reaching up to take hold of my breasts, pinching my nipples.

“Then fuck me like it,” I say again. Damn the consequences.

“You know you’re mine,” he says, his voice ragged, sounding like he’s coming apart, sounding more beast than man. He punctuates each word with a thrust, pumping into me again and again. “No one else. No one. You’re mine, I’m yours.”

He says that, and I know he’s right, that no one else will ever make me feel like this, and, God help me, that’s what starts to put me over the edge. It’s already building. That pressure that’s been gathering inside me is coalescing, drawing together, spinning me higher and higher until I float so high that I burst into nothingness, my body clenching around his while the rest of me shatters with a single, long scream.

I haven’t come like that in years. I haven’t come like that ever.

I’m not done.

Marcus isn’t done.

I’m not really able to speak, and my senses are slowly coming back to me, almost piecemeal, but when Marcus starts to move inside me again I can tell he must have stopped. He waited. Now he’s fucking me shallowly, sweat starting to gather on his brow, waiting for me to come back down to earth. He throws my arms up above my head and removes the rest of my clothing, so now I’m completely naked, letting him fuck me on my kitchen table. I don’t even object. My limpid, liquid body is starting to heat again, and I know I’ll do anything he wants.