Chapter Three

 

Dante

She’s laughing. I love the sound almost as much as I loved her surprised cry when she came. The feel of her pussy clenching around my dick was almost too much. I almost lost control then, but I bit the inside of my cheek, thought of the phone call my sis received, and it did the trick.

Thinking of the problems always stops the pleasure. Stops me from living my life.

Malcom says I should let go. Tell my sis to change her phone number. Stop feeling responsible for my aunt and uncle. Let go of the past. Be free to live my life.

I don’t know what it’ll take for that to happen. I sometimes feel as if something inside me has dried. Shriveled up. Grown old and dead before its time. A cold wind is whistling between my thoughts.

A drought of the soul.

Charlie moves, then, reaching for my face, her body tightening again around my dick, and a breath shudders out of me. She’s like sunshine. Like warm apple pie. Like all of my tomorrows in the shape of a girl.

Shaking my head, unsure of why I’m even smiling, I bend over her, and she gasps. I groan, the pleasure rising inside me like a wave, drawing my balls tight.

Maybe it’s because I made her come so quickly, so hard, when she was scared. I could tell she thought she wouldn’t be able to.

Girl has had shitty lovers before, that’s for sure. I wonder what her story is, how she washed up on my doorstep. Why Malcom told her to come here.

Why I let her into my apartment.

Why she let me inside her body.

“God, you feel…” She gasps again, her legs curling around mine, allowing me to sink deeper. “So good.”

I grunt, the words lost in the burning need to come—but not yet, not before I get her to come with me.

Go with me.

Follow me.

Shaking my head again, like my thoughts are annoying insects, I start rocking into her, long, slow thrusts to build her arousal back up. She whines, sensitive from having just come, but this will be good for her. I know it.

Soon the pressure in my gut is overwhelming any other thought, and I’m pounding into her, my breaths coming in short huffs, my body clenching.

“Charlie,” I whisper, lifting her legs higher, pushing so deep inside her I can’t go any further, “Charlie, come on.”

Come with me.

And she does, letting out another cry, softer this time, and yet sharper, her back arching, her nails leaving grooves on my arms. With her head thrown back, dark hair running on my sheets like rivers, she breaks apart, and shatters me, too.

Shatters the cage.

She clutches at me, and I try to pull out of her, not sure she’s on the pill or what, but she won’t let me, her pussy tightening, tightening, until I’m spilling, coming in long spasms that wrench a groan from my lips.

Why the fuck is this so intense? Hooking up with a girl rarely does much for me, but this one… There’s something about her.

I slump over her, shuddering as more pleasure wracks me. It goes on and on, until I’m wrung out and empty.

Quiet.

It’s quiet in my head. No wind. No cold. Just her body and mine.

What does it mean?

* * *

She’s wrapped around me like a starfish. I feel her leg thrown over mine, her arm around my waist, her head on my chest as I surface from sleep.

I slept. For how long? No nightmares, no trips to the past, only a faint memory of a rainbow.

Blinking up at the ceiling, I piece together what happened and frown.

My sister’s call. The customer at the bar. No water. A knock on the door.

Charlie.

Sex.

Hot sex.

Charlie in my bed, in my arms.

“You’re awake,” she whispers, her breath warm on my skin. Ticklish. Her dark lashes lift and she smiles at me. “Didn’t want to move and wake you.”

My arm curls around her instinctively. “Where are you going?”

Her lashes drop again. “Wasn’t sure I should stay after…”

“After getting it on?”

A blush rises to her cheeks. “I don’t do that normally, you know.”

“Sleep with guys?”

“Sleep with strangers.”

“I’m Dante. You know my name.”

She laughs. “That’s all I know.”

I nod, and my nose brushes the top of her head, catching the scent of her shampoo. Flowers and light. “Well there isn’t much more. Name’s Dante Romero. I work at Halo as a bartender. I have a sister.” I suck in a breath. “I’m sort of…”

Lost.

Half-alive.

“Sort of?”

“Sort of ordinary.”

She grins up at me. “I don’t think there’s anything ordinary about you.” And before I can examine this statement, she goes on, “Are you from around here? Are your parents close by?”

“No parents. Here, or anywhere,” I clarify. “Dead.”

“I am so sorry.” Her pretty eyes are wide now. “Are those their names inked on your back?”

I nod.

“How?”

“Drowned in a boat accident.” The words stick in my dry throat. “I was little. And…”

“And what?” She rubs her hand over my chest as if that can help with anything.

Weirdest thing is that it does. It eases my breathing. I hadn’t even realized it had grown shallow.

Or that I still ached over their loss.

“And nothing. What about you?” I try to distract her, because I don’t wanna think about it any longer. “Your parents around?”

She shrugs. “My parents are the reason I’m here tonight.”

“What?” That snaps me out of my head. “Why?”

“Too controlling. Don’t like me doing foolish things.”

“Like what?”

“Like leaving my steady fiancé and my steady job and moving away to find myself.”

“And did you? Leave him?”

“Months ago. Moved out of our apartment, out of that town.” She bites her lower lip. “Though I’m still searching for myself, if you must know.”

She makes me crazy. And she also makes me wanna pet her and hold her. So fucking weird.

I fight to control myself. “Will you tell me now?”

“Tell you what?”

“The long story that brought you here tonight. And what your parents have to do with it.”

“I don’t know if I can. It’s locked up inside me.”

I reach down, cup her head, tilt it up and kiss her. “Here. I’ve unlocked you.”

“You have,” she says in wonder, and I fight laughter.

She’s so cute. And sweet.

And I really wanna know her story. I listen to people’s sorry stories at the bar all the time, but for the first time in my life, I’m hanging from the storyteller’s lips, needing to know her secret.

“My parents don’t like ripples in their social circles,” she eventually says, her words hot puffs of air on my chest. She won’t look at me as she speaks. “Justin was perfect.”

“Justin?”

“My ex. Good job, good manners, good, rich family.” She’s silent for a beat. “I don’t hate him, you know? I just never cared for him. Never loved him. He never excited me. Never made me laugh. Never made me come.”

“That’s a crime.” I kiss the top of her head.

She’s beautiful when she laughs, and when she comes.

“I wanted to leave him for a long time. Ever since I moved in with him, in fact. But my parents wanted us to get married. Said he was right for me. That I was blind not to see it. And for a long time I tried.”

I squeeze her closer to me and she sighs. “I’ve always done what they told me. That was my big mistake. But one day I got up from bed and decided that wasn’t my life. It was someone else’s life. Half a life.”

Like mine.

I open my mouth to say something, make a sound, but she rubs her hand on my chest again, in a small, soothing circle.

“I grabbed my clothes and books and left,” she whispers. “Didn’t even go back for the rest of my stuff.”

“That’s… good,” I breathe. “I’m fucking glad.”

And I realize I am. I’m so glad she’s here.

“But my parents kept pushing for me to go back. Talk to him. Work it out. As if there was ever anything to work out. Our problem was that we had no problems. No topics to discuss. Nothing in common. Nothing to share and nothing to fight over.”

“What, you like fighting?”

“No.” She slaps my chest lightly and I smile, more of the tension leaving me. “I like being able to talk to someone, to feel understood, connected, like…” Her gaze flicks up at me. “Like this. Like now.”

I stroke a hand down her face, finding her mouth, pressing my thumb into her soft lower lip. “Yeah.”

Her breath catches. She squirms a little, and I swear under my breath because I’m hard and her pussy is pressed to my leg, warm and wet and inviting.

“Your parents,” I remind her, desperately trying to control myself, not to roll her under me and fuck her until neither of us can remember our own names. “What happened?”

“Ugh.” She pouts a little, which makes me grin again. What’s up with that, huh? “Well, they finally convinced me to give him another chance. So I traveled here, thinking to surprise him in the evening. I still had my keys to the apartment we shared. I opened the door and…”

“And you found him with another woman?”

“Justin? God, no.” She laughs out loud, and my grin grows wider. “I found him as he has always been, and just by looking at him I realized it would never work.”

Good. I’m glad the fucker didn’t cheat on her. “So you told Malcom…?”

“That I was done with Justin, that I was in town, and I asked whether he knew of a hotel where I could stay. He offered his room.”

I’m grinning now. “I owe him one.”

“Malcom?”

“Justin. For being so boring he drove you away and here to my bed.”

She huffs, lifts her head off my chest and finally meets my gaze straight on. “You’re something, Dante Romero. I think I like you.”

“You think?” I scowl at her. “Clearly I haven’t fucked you properly yet.”

“Is that your answer to everything? Fucking?”

I finally give in and tackle her, rolling her under me, a lightness in my chest and in my mind, the likes of which I haven’t felt in forever. “It does answer lots of questions, I find.”

“Get off me,” she shrieks, laughing, batting her fists on my chest. “What are you doing?”

“Gonna give you a good orgasm,” I say firmly. “Prove to you how important good orgasms are.”

“Stop it. You gave me two already.”

“Not enough,” I tell her. “Obviously not enough, if you’re not sure you like me. So I’ll keep getting you off until you make up your mind.”

She looks delighted. “You’re crazy.”

Maybe I am. But the prospect of giving her more pleasure makes me feel like I can float right up to the ceiling, makes me feel drenched in bright light that seeps through my skin into my bones.

Maybe that’s what hope feels like.

“I want someone,” she says as I bend down to kiss her, “who understands me. Who likes the things I like. Who feels passionately about things. About me.”

I feel passionately about her. Still don’t know why. But I feel it. I feel so much about this girl I only met today—her uncertainty, her shock at the pleasure, her pain, her need to live life to the full.

Like me.

I sink inside her and she flows around me like water, closing over me, welcoming me. We fit so well together, and we’ve only just begun.