Reawakening (30 page)

“I didn’t shoot her fast enough when she went for me. I didn’t. I couldn’t. She would have gone after you, next—
I
would have gone after you. And I just couldn’t.”

It sounded like he was apologizing, which was frankly too awful to bear.

“That’s okay—you know why? Because
I
could. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat if anything laid a hand on you, I swear to God I would.”

It was a surprise, how fierce the words came out. Also a surprise—how hard he kissed her after she’d said it. In fact, it wasn’t a kiss at all. It came out much more like he’d decided to bury himself in her, immediately. As though he could just suffocate inside her body if he really tried hard enough.

And God knows he was trying. She went to do all of the things she wanted to—run her hands all over his body, kiss that gorgeous throat, the strong shape of his shoulders that reminded her of something always knotted—but he pulled her up short before she’d gotten halfway to the good stuff. Pinned her back against the shower wall as though it was just. That. Easy.

Then told her
no, no
. It made her run hot—just that little repeated word. Just the tone of his voice, suddenly gruff and all over the place. But the next thing he decided to say punched deeper, made her wetter, got her hotter.

“Just lemme get atcha,” he said, and her mind tried to tell her that those weren’t even really words. His accent had gotten so out of control that even the first real one—
just
—didn’t sound right anymore. It sounded as though he was speaking another language, though it was surprisingly easy to decipher.

His mouth suddenly on her breasts gave her a bit of a clue. He didn’t even stop to remove her soaking wet bra. He just got a mouthful of material and mouthful of flesh, and sucked hard enough to leave blood red marks behind.

Though it didn’t take her to the place she expected it to. It didn’t even leave her on the safe shores of
it’s okay if he sinks his teeth in, it’s okay, everything’s fine
, the way it had done before. Instead a jagged thought flashed across her mind, angry and filled with want in a way she couldn’t process.

Bite me
, her mind urged him.
Bite me hard, draw blood
.

And that was too sick and too weird and she was almost relieved when he didn’t. When he just mouthed her stiff nipple through the still clinging material, and made her moan instead.

Still, there were more shocks to come. More jolts of wrongness to her unprepared system. Like how much pleasure spilled through her from so slight a touch. He didn’t have a finger on her clit or in her cunt. He had his mouth on her breast—that was all.

But it made her pulse hard and steady between her legs, and her legs didn’t want to hold her up, and when he suddenly twisted his fingers beneath the elastic of her panties, she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt anything so dirty.

Yeah, yeah
, her mind said.
Yank them down
.

Which was at least better than
bite me
. She couldn’t hold it against her mind for wanting her panties yanked down, even if this was only a couple of hours after the dying girl and not five minutes from his meltdown.

Did meltdowns mean she should be doing this for him? Maybe yanking down the underpants he wasn’t wearing, sucking on parts of him until he couldn’t control his body anymore? That sounded great, really great, only he still had her kind of pinned somehow and her ankles were suddenly tangled in panties and God, God.

She tried to make a sound but everything in her had lodged itself in her throat. He was just too fast, that was the thing. Too wily. One second he had his mouth on her breasts. The next he was between her legs. She couldn’t keep up and wasn’t sure if she wanted to, because he ate pussy just the way she remembered and, oh Lord, it was blissful.

Like forgetting
, she thought, which seemed like a weird thing to consider until the edges of her body grew fuzzy with the heat he was stoking at her core. Any second and she was just going to burn away, and that felt good, much too good.

He pressed her thigh back against the cool tile, but it barely made a dent in the fire that was blooming in the swell of her clit. It almost felt like pain with his mouth on her like that and his tongue real firm against her aching bud, but she could take it. She could. She could take anything he had to give.

Including his lust-sparked eyes suddenly on her, and the naked want he left behind between her legs. He ran a proprietary hand over her sex as he looked up at her, and that was almost as knee-trembling as his tongue on her clit. Almost, but not quite.

Whereas his hand suddenly sliding down, then two fingers inside her—rough and steady—yeah…that
was
as good. He knew just where to stroke, and how firmly to do it, and when the sensation forced her inner muscles to clench hard around the invasion, the answering wave of pleasure shocked her.

“You wanna come, baby?” he asked, and it was the first time she suspected he didn’t know something about her, sexually. She was
going
to come any second now. Just like that—so quick and brutal.

It made her want to hold her breath. Keep any evidence of the rising swell of pleasure in so he couldn’t get away with teasing her before she got there. It was obvious that he was going to and she just couldn’t take it, couldn’t have it, she needed the release of it so badly and oh then she could see it in his expression.

He knew it. It was okay. He was going to give it, she could tell. He kept right on rocking the curl of his fingers over that little bundle of nerves inside her, and when she finally dared to let a great rush of breath out, he said such good good words.

“That’s it, baby,” he said. “Come on, come on. Let it go.”

Oh Lord, how she wanted to let it go. She could feel it drawing up tight, teetering on the brink, any second now, any second—

There was a sound from the bedroom, and she looked in its direction. Knew immediately that she
shouldn’t have fucking looked
. Just knew, the way animals know something blindly in their own dumb way, but afterwards are still surprised to find they’ve run into a glass door.

God, she wished she knew what the glass door was. Jealousy? Insecurity? Those two things seemed the most obvious, but then if that was the case why did he stand up, and pick her up all wet with her legs tangled around his body, and say
let’s go in there, with him
?

Those weren’t the words you used if you were jealous or insecure or feeling weird about threesomes. You don’t say to someone, so casually—
why didn’t you go at her? She’s just about crazy for it now, aren’t you, baby?

Because those were the words he used in Blake’s direction and it stung in a way she
did
understand. Completely. She’d read it wrong, that sting said. He wasn’t jealous or uncomfortable or insecure. He
wanted
her to be with Blake. Maybe he even knew how much she cared for him and wished it wasn’t so. Wished that he’d saved Kelsey so he could have her instead of someone he was only trying to force himself to love or want.

Then it struck, even harder than his words.
That
was why the dead girl had upset him so much. Because the girl had been pretty and blonde and the opposite of her. Something about her face, still innocent and not damaged the way she was.

It made her swallow too hard and throw herself into kissing Blake because if she stopped moving for even a second she was going to start crying. Actually crying over something so stupid! As though he didn’t love her enough—he loved her enough, didn’t he? When Blake spread her back on the bed she could see him over his shoulder, gazing at her with those eyes so full of everything.

She couldn’t even make out what he was really feeling, because nothing stayed still for a minute in them. Everything looked all mixed up and dark and…soulful. Yeah, that was it. His eyes were soulful.

As though she represented, in some small way, all the things he could now never have. Like the pretty blonde girl with the innocent face.

She kissed Blake hard, hard. Hard enough that he said
ow, Jesus June—
though she could see it on his face that it had excited him. Her hands on him, rolling up the t-shirt he’d put on for some unaccountable reason, her heels digging into the clean set of sweatpants he’d also donned, pushing and pushing until they were halfway down his legs.

Yeah, that excited him too. He fumbled out a
are you guys sure I didn’t interrupt something
, but she could tell he didn’t want to hold back. He didn’t look at Jamie as he said it and she wondered how he could be such a fool. Did he really think she and Jamie had anything special?

Stupid
, she thought, then found herself flinching when Jamie said—

“Get on him, baby.”

It still ran through her hotly, of course. There would never not be something deeply and primally compelling about Jamie being the one who told her what to do, Jamie orchestrating things, Jamie’s voice so cut up with lust and other complicated things, and yet part of her suspected an awful reason for him suggesting it.

If she got on top of Blake, she’d have her back to Jamie. It was clear before she even obeyed him. And worse than that, she didn’t want to do anything
but
obey. She could feel that pulsing heat between her legs again, driving her onwards. He’d spent all day working her up into a frenzy, for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t do anything else.

And especially not when Blake mouthed
are you sure?
Just before she sank all the way down onto his thick, hard cock.

It was the two things, she felt. Him saying something so sweet and considerate, then the feel of him, like putting something cool against a burn. He was solid inside her, good and grounding, and though she couldn’t stop herself shaking and knew she looked wild, it helped. His expression helped—so openly desirous and pleasure-shocked.

And the sound he made, too. Like the words
are you sure
had melted and he’d decided to push them out in their new form. Squished and lacking air—a total mess.

It made her slicken further around the push of him and the urge to grind down hard grew strong. Irresistible, in fact. She moved a little without even meaning to, and the answering slap of pleasure struck hard.

“You know what you look like, June?” Blake said, and there was something about his tone, so light-hearted that it made her grateful. “Like a guy who’s trying to stop embarrassing himself. Like a guy who knows he’s going to come and is trying to hold off.”

She was glad of the laugh. It burst out of her, good and strong—and maybe she could have carried on like that and been grateful to Blake for turning things that way, if he hadn’t then fixed his eyes—suddenly sharp and electric—on Jamie, over her shoulder.

And said—

“Come on and kiss her. Kiss the back of her neck.”

Just like that. So kind of casual-like. Only she could hear that Jamie had moved far off because it took him a while to come back—and that gave a different tenor to Blake’s request.

For one, it didn’t let it be just a request. It sounded more like an order. It sounded the way Jamie had just been, only a few moments earlier. The orchestrator. The person in weird control of everything. For another, it meant that he’d been leaving.

But he kissed her just the same, all right. The mattress dipped, when he moved onto the bed. His hand slid beneath the heavy weight of her hair and lifted it, so he could put his mouth to that thrillingly sensitive place.

And it was, it really was. It felt as though he’d jabbed her with a pin, there. She jumped when he kissed and almost fell over Blake, but Blake had his hands firmly on her hips and there was nowhere to go. His cock was like an anchor inside her, and when he held fast to her like that it rubbed her nice and hard against that good place.

She gave a little shout. Couldn’t help it. Jamie was right up against her back, now, and his mouth was hot and wet and hungry just like it had been in the shower, and even sweeter than that, she could feel his stiff cock pressing into the curve of her ass.

It took her a long, agonizing moment to fully process that he was rutting against her. Really rutting—not like in the storeroom, when he’d been behind her. This was hot and heavy and she could feel him leaving trails of slickness on her skin.

She couldn’t stop herself urging back against it. And when she did, Blake’s cock slid back and forth inside her, back and forth. Not like fucking at all—more like just pushing against each other. Like animals, rubbing their bodies over something rough.

Blake’s eyes had narrowed down to slits. She thought of what he’d said—about how she looked like someone trying to hold off—and saw the exact same thing in him. Only this was…it was more like he wanted to keep himself on some edge. More like he’d decided to immerse himself in the pleasure, and draw it out, and it took her a moment to realize why it seemed that way.

Because he was rolling his hips. Just rolling them. No jerking thrusts, no pounding up into her. Slow sweet rolls that lulled her into a false sense of security, then suddenly, suddenly—

“Oh God, I’m coming. Oh God, no no. Ohhhhh I’m coming.”

It seemed like something that needed announcing. It was too big, too much, and she just had to escape she had to. She had to dig her hands into Blake’s fingers and ride out each swell of pleasure, even though each one threatened to never end. Each one made her bite down hard on nothing and squirm in their two grips and miss things, vital things.