Lust (17 page)

I smiled and lowered my mouth to her neck, tasting her cold skin. “Whatever you say, Ivy, but I can’t fuck you with your pants on. I’m good, but I’m not that good,” I teased as I made my way up to her ear and pinching the lobe between my teeth.

“Are you going to fuck me?” she asked and I didn’t miss the hopeful tone she used.

I pulled away to look at her. “What did you think we were doing?”

“You said before that you wouldn’t do that.”

Her words settled on me and I knew exactly what she was talking about. She wasn’t just asking if we were going to have sex, she was wanting to know if I was going to fuck her the way she wanted, the way they did in the books she read.

“Is that what you want? Do you want me to fuck you?”

A shyness swept over her face and her eyes turned downcast. “I don’t know.”

Well, that wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but then again, I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. I wanted nothing more than to pound into her pussy and leave her feeling me there for a week, but it was clear that she wasn’t ready for that. And I wasn’t sure I was either. For the first time ever, I wanted to just go with it. I wanted to start blind and see what happened. I didn’t need to fuck Ivy, although I wanted to at some point, I only needed to be with her. And it didn’t matter what way that was in, as long as it was with her. That thought was enough to have me running for the door, but the moment I felt her tiny hand on my hard dick, I no longer thought about anything else.

I made quick work of taking her bra off, but the moment I attempted to remove her leggings, she stopped me. I moved to the side of her and kept my eyes on hers, proving to her that I wasn’t going to look where she forbade me to. But the moment her pants came off, I was back on top of her, owning her lips with mine.

Soft whimpers and moans escaped from her throat as I teased her with my dick. I was so hard and ready, but I needed to make sure she was right there with me. I ran the length of my cock between her folds, thrusting hard but slowly as the base ran over her clit. I could feel her hips begin to move with mine and I knew I had her. I knew she was with me all the way and not cowering in the darkness of her mind. Her legs began to tighten against my hips and her breathing turned ragged. I knew she was on the cusp of an orgasm and needed to take action before she fell over. I needed to be inside of her when she let go.

I pulled back slightly and then pushed forward, not stopping until I was fully inside of her. She gasped audibly while I stopped breathing altogether. I couldn’t move as I tried to calm down. I felt as if I could explode at any given second. Her warmth invaded me, her muscles hugged me, and the sounds she made vibrated through me until I was on the verge of my own orgasm.

While we were chest-to-chest, face-to-face, her eyes grew large and her mouth dropped open. At first, I thought it was because of my thrust into her, but the more I watched her eyes, I realized it was fear and my instincts kicked in.

“We’re done. You’re not ready,” I said as I started to back away.

Before my dick was out, she was pulling me back, desperately clinging to me while crying, “no, no, no.” A tear slipped from her clenched eyes. I slowly pulled my hand to her face and wiped it away, feeling a dying need to comfort her. That was the moment I realized she was more fragile than I had ever anticipated, more broken than I had ever thought.

“You’re not ready, Ivy, and that’s okay. We don’t have to do this now. We have all the time in the world. Don’t force it. Fuck… please don’t force it.” I couldn’t handle knowing that she making herself follow through with it.

Her grey eyes opened, glistening with unshed tears, and she looked right at me as she spoke. “I’m not forcing anything, Cade. I swear. I’m okay; I just thought you were stopping. I don’t want you to stop.”

I was stunned. She had gotten upset at the thought I would end what we had just started. There was no way she was that insecure about herself, and I found it a necessity to correct that thought. I kissed her and began to move slowly back into her warmth, never taking my lips from hers. I sank all the way into her and felt my balls clench. She was so warm and tight… I wanted to bury my dick in her and never leave. I wanted to feel her wrapped around me all the time.

“Jesus, fuck… you feel so fucking good, Ivy,” I mumbled against her lips.

She moaned softly and then gasped as I pulled almost all the way out before slamming back into her. I was soft and gentle, but I needed to make sure she knew I was there. I needed her to feel me long after I was gone.

“Say something, Ivy.”

She shook her head as if she couldn’t speak.

“Anything. I don’t fucking care what it is… just talk. Do you like this?” I asked and she nodded, pulling her face closer to my ear. “Then fucking tell me you like it. I want to hear it.”

“I fucking like it, Cade.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. She was shy and inexperienced, but I would open her up. I would open her up so far I’d be able to see inside her, and then bury myself there forever. “Tell me how you want it. Harder? Softer? Faster? Slower? Tell me. I need to know.”

I felt her shake her head against my face and let out a soft grunt. Her inner walls tightened around me as I circled my hips, making sure to brush my pelvic bone over her clit. I needed to watch her come undone before I finished. As much as I wanted to cross that line with her, holding her hand as we made it home, I needed to watch her face as she came around me.

I began to thrust harder, keeping up with the circular motion she seemed to like so much. My eyes remained on her, watching every facial expression she made. Her walls grew tighter and tighter as her breathing slowed down, almost stopping completely. She was close… so close.

“I want to hear you say my name when you come. I need to hear it,” I panted as I continued with my thrusts. Once she held her breath, I knew it was only a matter of seconds before she let go. “My name, Ivy. I need to hear you say my name.”

The waves began to take hold of her, pulling her down like a riptide. Her eyes popped open for a moment, locking on to mine. Then they closed tight as she screamed my name, grabbing my shoulders and digging her nails into my skin, and her legs locked my hips between them like a vice. Her pussy walls clenched my dick so hard I thought she would strangle it, but it was the best feeling in the world. I had to fight to keep from coming.

And that’s when everything around me began to close in. The outer rim of my vision turned black and fuzzy. Ivy’s screams changed and sounded as if they were far away. My ears began to ring, making some noises faint while others became more prominent. The bed springs creaked, rapidly. The grunts, not sure if they were hers or mine, grew deep and desperate. And instead of hearing my name calling out in pleasure, I heard fear and desperation in the loud cries. Sweat formed on the back of my neck and I felt lightheaded.

“Cade? Cade… are you…?” Ivy’s voice slowly brought me back.

I looked around and noticed I was in her room, not my parents’ room. But it didn’t do anything to calm my nerves once I looked down and saw us on her bed. The one place I couldn’t be intimate with someone. My eyes traveled down her body until I reached the place where we were joined. I was no longer inside of her and I was no longer hard. Thoughts, questions, and fears attacked my brain all at once. Was I rough with her like I had been with Alyssa? How long was I trapped in the black hole of my memories?

“I… I have to go,” I mumbled and then jumped up, trying to ignore the sounds of the springs in the bed as they gave way to my movements. I couldn’t look at Ivy. I knew she wouldn’t understand. No one understood.

I grabbed my jeans from the floor and pulled them on without bothering with my boxers. I didn’t even bother with my shoes as I picked up my remaining belongings and ran out the door as if Ivy’s father just caught us fucking on the couch. My heart was beating so fast I worried it would never calm down and my head was so fuzzy I felt drunk.

I stopped as soon as I reached my car and bent down, holding myself up with my hands on my knees, and threw up on the pavement. I knew a panic attack was coming, but I didn’t waste any time trying to control it. I got in my car, blasted ice-cold air in my face, and took off, hoping I’d make it home before my memories crushed me.

I somehow managed to send out a mass email to all of my clients and the therapists I used to refer patients to me. I couldn’t tell you what it said other than I needed personal time. It was probably full of typos and incomplete sentences, but I didn’t care. My mind was too dark and too loud to comprehend anything I was doing. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had ruined Ivy, Ivy had decimated me, and my life was completely crumbling down all around me.

Everything was a blur. I had no idea what day it was, what time it was, or what was real versus imaginary. At first, it was panic-induced, but after that started to wear off and my conscious began to return, it was alcohol-induced. I didn’t eat, and if I slept, it was because I had passed out; all I did was drink, hoping to numb myself enough to forget everything.

But it did the complete opposite.

I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, staring down the hall that led to the kitchen. My dad walked in, and he looked the same as he did when I was seven. It was weird because I knew that had been twenty-seven years ago, but he hadn’t aged a day. He had a baseball in one hand and a mitt over the other. His smile was large on his face, just as I remembered it looking. And he seemed so carefree.

He knelt down in front of me and opened his mouth to talk, but the words didn’t match his face. They were angry, harsh sounding, and went against the smile and happy eyes that were in front of me. “Are you fucking my wife?”

“What are you talking about, Dad?” I asked, hoping my words weren’t as slurred as they sounded to my own ears. If he knew I was drunk, I’d be sent to my room.
Wait… this isn’t real
. I kept trying to tell myself even though it felt as if I could reach out and touch him. It was if I had been inserted back into that moment, back in time.

“You think you can come into my house and fuck my wife?” he roared again, but again, his face was soft and his smile was bright. It didn’t make any sense. Why was he saying those things and why did he look so happy? His words were the complete opposite of his actions, of the look on his face.

I looked around me, wondering whose house I was in. I started to question everything. He mentioned going to his house, but I thought I was in mine. Fear began to envelop me as the questions became worse. “Dad?”

“Caden!” my mother’s voice rang out from somewhere in the distance, but there was no mistaking the fear in her tone. I turned my head briefly, trying to see where it was coming from, but when I turned back, my dad was gone. He was no longer in front of me with the happy smile I remembered him always wearing. I tried listening again for my mom to say something else, but there was nothing.

The room was silent and the only sounds I could hear were my heart racing in my chest and my own erratic breathing. The lights were bright and blinding, causing my eyes to constrict and send a pain throughout them. My head began to throb, and the next thing I knew, I was on my back on the kitchen floor, staring up at the blinding florescent lights.

“He’s okay. Not a scratch on him. But he’s severely dehydrated and lethargic.” A woman was speaking above me, but I couldn’t see her, nor could I see the person she was talking to. There were other sounds around me, metal on metal, rustling around, but I couldn’t see anything. The only thing that was visible was the blinding lights that made my head swim.

“Okay. Whom do we have here?” a deep voice boomed close by. It was a male, but it didn’t sound familiar. It wasn’t my dad or anyone I knew. Who was there and what were they talking about? Nothing made sense and the fear crept in even more… nearly consuming all of me.

“Caden Morgan, age eight,” the woman spoke again. Then her voice went soft as she whispered, “He was found in the Morgan house and has been in and out of consciousness since arriving. No one knows how long he was there or what he witnessed.”

I heard that sentence before. I remembered listening to that same conversation once upon a time. And the realization that it was from my past made the fear deeply penetrate me. It took over and my breathing grew short and erratic. I was having another panic attack and I couldn’t stop it. I needed help, that was all I knew for certain at that point.

The voices faded in the distance as I tried desperately to piece everything together. Was I dreaming? Was I hallucinating? I remembered that moment so vividly, but it had never felt so real. I literally felt as if I was back in that hospital, listening to the doctors and nurses speak around me but never to me.

The cold tile against my back answered my questions… no, I wasn’t dreaming. I was officially losing it. First my dad, then my mom, and now the hospital. I was going crazy. I needed to end it. I needed it all to go away, but it wouldn’t.

I could hear the faint whispers of the kids at school, talking about my family like they would talk about a movie: “Did you hear what happened to Caden?” … “Ask him what he saw.” … “No, you ask him; I’m sure he’d tell you.” … “Do you think he had anything to do with it?”

I heard the people on the TV reporting about it. My aunt always tried to keep the volume down so I wouldn’t hear, but I still heard it all: “Tragedy … horrific … avoidable…”

I switched on my television set and flipped through the channels just to prove to myself that it wasn’t real. Even with the sound up as high as it would go, along with my music on in another room, I could still hear the voices. They were coming at me all at once.

“Post traumatic stress.”

“I can’t even imagine what he witnessed in there.”

“He’s probably going to be scarred for life.”

Yes, faceless voice that echoes around me, I’m fucking scarred for life
.

I accepted that fate long ago, but hoped that if I were successful in my professional life, it wouldn’t matter how many scars I hid on the inside. So that’s what I did. I finished school, I became a highly successful and talked about therapist. I even bought a house and a fancy car to prove how normal I was. I did all of those things to show the world that no matter what I had gone through when I was eight, I was capable of anything.

And I was capable of everything except a relationship. But I didn’t care about that. I didn’t want a relationship, never needed one. I knew firsthand how destructive they were and never cared to be in one.
Until Ivy
. But I wasn’t stupid; I knew without a doubt that a relationship with Ivy would be beyond destructive. It would be catastrophic. And that was being proven by my hallucinations and self-induced lockdown.

Realization crept in, taking hold of me and making it difficult to breathe. I was alone. I had no one, and if I died on the kitchen floor, no one would know. I could be there for days, months even, before anyone would find me. And I was the only one to blame. I had pushed everyone out to avoid ending up like my parents, yet there I was, exactly like them. Alone.

I stumbled around the house as minutes blurred, giving me a false sense of the amount of time I searched for my phone. I found it plugged in on my bedside table and had no idea who had plugged it in or how it had gotten there. I had email alerts and a few text messages from Doctor Klaussen, but I didn’t even look at any of those. I bypassed the popups and scrolled through my call list until I found Alyssa. I needed her. Even though I had no idea why I needed her, I just did, so I called her.

“Hello?” She sounded off… sleepy? Was she confused? Was it all in my head?

“I need you,” I barely got out past the lump in my throat. Was I crying?

I heard a sigh. Was it hers? Was it mine? I wasn’t sure.

“Please,” I cried in desperation, not remembering the last time I had ever felt so distressed. “I’m fucking losing my mind. I need you.”

“What’s going on? Are you having a panic attack?” She sounded worried, that I knew for sure.

“I don’t know. I’m hearing things… seeing things.”

“Are you drunk?” And just like that, the worry was gone, replaced by irritation.

“I don’t know. I have been drinking. What day is it?”

“Where are you?”

I looked around, trying to find the answer to her question. Why didn’t I know where I was? Why was I having a hard time thinking? “My room. I’m in my room.”

“Send me your address. I’m calling 9-1-1.”

“No!” I shouted, feeling my own spit fly out of my mouth. “I can’t go back there. I can’t see those doctors again. They know me. They’ll talk about me.” Hysterics had officially set it and that’s when I lost any remaining composure I had left in me. I started crying out loud, feeling the pressure of it all wrap around me. My entire body constricted and everything started going black.

“Just text me your address, Cade.”

I sent Alyssa my address four times. I messed up the first three times but I was sure I had it right the last time. If not, I would die alone. But then I started to question why she would need it. She knew where I lived. Was I hallucinating that as well? Had I even called her? I checked my call log once more and her name wasn’t there. I hadn’t called her. I had imagined the whole damn thing.

I chose to give up in that moment. I couldn’t even call for help correctly. I wasn’t able to call for help when I was eight, and I couldn’t do it at thirty-four. I should have known that moment would come. It was written in the stars. My life was mapped out from early on and there was no way to change it. All of the years I had trained myself to avoid the inevitable was worthless.

I climbed onto my bed, not bothering to get under the covers, and closed my eyes. Images crossed in front of my eyelids and invaded my mind, flashing like a movie reel. This had happened once before, but I knew I wouldn’t wake up this time. I knew it would be the end. Ivy Jaymes had blinded me until I found myself reliving the worst days of my life.

I had thought about Ivy so much I conjured her up. She was everywhere—next to me, touching my face, running her hands through my hair, walking around, talking softly to me. She was so imbedded in me that I would die, taking her memory with me. I was sure of that.

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered to her as she brushed my hair away from my forehead.

“I won’t,” she promised on a whisper.

I knew I would never see her again and needed to tell her things. And if admitting them out loud to an empty room full of images of Ivy was the only way to relieve the ache, then that’s what I would have to do. “I am in love with you, Ivy. I don’t know what love is or what it’s supposed to feel like, but I love you.”

“No… you don’t love me. You own me.”

“And you own me. All of me, including my heart and soul.”

“Sleep, Cade.” That was the last thing I heard before everything went black. And I knew it was okay to leave. It was okay to let go, knowing that my last memory was of her. The only person to ever own my heart, body and soul.

*****

The first thing that my brain registered was the sensation of a drum pounding in my head. It brought me out of the dark depths of numbness and back to the land of living. The next feeling I had was the blinding light in my face. And I was back there. I was back at the hospital; I knew that before I ever opened my eyes. The one thing that struck me as odd was the quietness of the room. There was no beeping of monitors or feet shuffling around me or orders being shouted out. Where the fuck was I?

That’s when my eyes shot open and focused on the ceiling fan above me. Not a hospital room, but my room—in my house. How was I there? I couldn’t comprehend anything as my mind bounced around. My dad had been there, but that was impossible—my dad was dead. I had heard my mom, but again, my subconscious reminded me that my mom was also dead. The nurses, the doctors... everything—all a dream, my mind rationalized. But it all felt so real. Including Ivy. Ivy… I had heard her voice and I had felt the emotion in it.

I slowly sat up and the room whirled around me. My ears were ringing and made it impossible to hear anything. Was I deaf? Was I dead? Was this heaven? I didn’t know anything anymore. My knuckles were black and blue, crusted over by blood. I fought hard to think about why that would have been, but came up empty.

My phone was next to me. I checked it for the date and time—Thursday, eleven o’clock in the morning. The last thing I remembered to be true was leaving Ivy’s apartment, and that had been on Friday. Where did five days go? And what happened in that time?

I got up, steadying myself on my feet as my limbs tingled and my sight began to fade. I waited a few moments before the tingling subsided and my vision came back, along with my hearing. My mouth tasted like battery acid had dried in it and I realized I was still in the same jeans I had on when I left Ivy’s place. I wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes and vomit was crusted along the bottoms of my jeans. I stripped them off as fast as I could without falling over and headed straight for the shower. I needed to wash off the stench and clear my head.