2017

When I open my eyes, Conner is awake and lying next to me, propped up on his elbow. The shirt I borrowed from his drawer is pulled up, exposing my back. I’m not wearing panties.

And he’s looking at me.

“Don’t let those sparkly vampire novels fool you.” I narrow my gaze on his face, doing my best to scowl at him, despite the way his eyes on me makes me feel. “It’s considered creepy to stare at people while they’re sleeping.”

He cracks a smile.

“I’m not staring.” He leans toward me to whisper in my ear. “I’m counting.”

I’d like to count them someday.

My freckles.

Conner is counting my freckles.

I can’t help but laugh. “Still the weirdest guy I’ve ever met.”

I feel the lift of his mouth against the shell of my ear. “Still not ashamed of it.”

I have a feeling there’s not much he is ashamed of, but instead of pointing it out, I close my eyes. “How long have you been up?”

“I don’t know...” His mouth moves lower, following the curve of my jaw. “A while.”

Worry slams into my gut like a wrecking ball. “You didn’t sleep?” I open my eyes and pull back, turning enough to look at him. “You closed your eyes… I thought—”

“I slept.” He flattens his hand against my back and presses me flat again. Catching the hem of my shirt, bunch up under my arms, he pulls it higher. Over my head and down my arms until it’s off and tossed over the side of the bed. “Four hours.” He trails his fingers along the nape of my neck. Between my shoulder and down my spine. “That’s more than I usually get in a week.” His callused hand skims over the curve of my ass, taking the sheet that’s pooled around my waist with it. My hips lift off the mattress, instinctively pressing into the rough warmth of his hand, even as I feel my face fall into a scowl. A real one this time.

“That’s not enough, Conner.” His name catches on a soft gasp when I feel the brush of his fingertips against me from behind. “You need to go back to sleep.”

“That’s not going to happen.” He drops his hand from under his head, sliding down until he’s lying on his side, his face inches from mine. “I’ve been lying here for hours, wide awake and bored out of my skull.” The fingers between my thighs reach lower, skimming the seam of my wet pussy and my gaze drops to his mouth. “And you know what they say about idle hands…”

Instincts take over again and I draw my knees underneath me, opening them wide enough for him to push into me. When he doesn’t, when all his does is tease me, his fingertips stroking my entrance, I let out a frustrated sigh, shaped around his name.

“I want you to look at me, Henley,” he murmurs. “Not until you look at me.”

When our eyes connect, he gives me what I want, sliding two of his fingers so deep inside me I moan, long and low in my throat.

“This…” He breathes the word, the push of it hard and guttural against my neck, his gaze still locked on mine. “I should have been doing this, every fucking day I had you with me.”

I tilt my hips into the pressure of his hand, pushing myself against him. Taking him in deeper. Until I’m whimpering and gasping with each stroke he’s giving me. “Conner…”

He slips the hand that’s still between us under my hips, his fingers finding and slicking over my clit in slow, lazy circles. Suddenly, I’m trembling on the edge. “I’m going to come…” The words tumble out of me even as I feel my thighs begin to shake. The rush of heat snaking down my spine to pool, low in my belly. “Wait—”

“I want you to...” He pushes his shoulders off the bed, his abs contracted to raise his mouth to mine. “Fuck.” He groans like he’s the one who’s about to come. “Henley...” He skims his tongue along the line of my upper lip. “I should’ve been kissing you. Touching you. I’m so—”

I don’t want him to say it. I don’t want to talk about regret. What we should’ve done. What we shouldn’t had said. I want this. What he’s doing to me now. I to feel him moving inside me. To feel how much he wants me.

Raising myself up onto my hands, I angle myself over him, so I can take his mouth with mine. Pushing my tongue between his lips, he groans again when I find and keep the rhythm he’s set between my legs. I kiss him with my eyes open, watch his expression flicker and dim with every stroke of my tongue against his. Lifting one of my hands I let my fingertips glide over his pecs. His tightly packed abs. The soft skin below his bellybutton, to hook around the waistband of his flannel sleep pants so I can pull them down around his hip. Tearing my mouth from his, I wrap my hand around his cock. “I don’t want you to be sorry, Conner.” My thumb sweeps across the head of his cock, gathering the pre-cum leaking from it. “I want you to fuck me.” I give him a long, slow stroke. “Yes or no.”

Something in his gaze flickers, something that tightens around the back of my throat like a fist. Something that causes prickly heat to rise behind my eye but before it can register, I’m on my back, staring up at him, his hips pressed into the cradle of my thighs. The head of his cock straining against my throbbing entrance. “Yes.” He stokes into me, slow and deep. “Yes.” Making room, he slips a hand between us, his thumb finding and teasing my clit. “Yes.” Bracing a hand against the wall above my head, Conner gives me what I want. He fucks me, each pump of his cock inside me harder and deeper than the last, his thumb a sweet, unyielding torture as it sweeps over me, again and again, until I’m writhing and moaning beneath him, legs wrapped around his waist. Pelvic tilted against his. Nailing digging into his shoulder blades. I feel them sink into the flesh of his back and I immediately ease up when he hisses out a curse.

“Do it,” he growls at me, his command punctuated with the sound of his hips slapping against mine, hard and rough. The moans and whimpers crowding and pushing out of my mouth. “Fuck… I need you to do it.” He closes his eyes for a second, his shoulders rolling and pressing against my fingernails. His cock, hot and heavy, pounding away inside me. His jaw clenched tight. His thumb, relentlessly stroking my hot, swollen clit. When he opens his eyes again to look down at me, the green of them are nearly black, shot through with gold that looks like hellfire, the heart of them wild, almost feral. So far from the boy I fell in love with it scares me, even as it tips me over the edge.

“Do it, Henley.”

I rake my nails down the length of his back, from his shoulder blades to his ass and scream his name, the sound of it getting lost in his mouth as he lowers it over mine. His tongue and teeth nipping and swirling against me. Inside me.

Every part of me invaded.

Every inch of me claimed.

I come hard. Shoulders pressed against the mattress, the slick walls of my pussy gripping and flexing around the stiff, swollen length of his cock. He says something, the sound of it getting lost in my mouth, and he starts to jerk and spasm inside me, filling me with his release.

I stare up at him, eyes wide, hands pressed against the weeping red welts I scored into his back, breath heaving against my chest, fast and harsh. As soon as his eyes refocus they skate past mine, finding another place to land.

“What was that?” I say softly. When he doesn’t answer me, I slip my hand around to the front to push against his chest. Against the Claddagh inked across his pecs, the point of its heart aimed toward his own.

My heart.

He looks down at my hand, where it is, and visibly stiffens. I push harder, trying to get him to look at me. “Conner. What just—”

He leans into my hands and grins, but it looks wrong. I’ve been around him enough now to know when he’s pretending. “That was the fuck of the century, Daisy.” He skims his lips against my cheekbone before levering himself up and away from me completely. I sit up and watch him walk naked to the fridge to pull it open. The welts I left on his back are raised and red, blood pebbling, smeared against his skin in spots where I dug into him. Hurt him.

Because he asked me to.

I think about the library. The way he encouraged me to bite him. Seemed to need it. Want it. Last night when I pulled his hair. The fact that he practically begged me to, even though his scalp was still tender from slamming his head into the hood of the car he was working on only minutes before.

That’s when it hits me.

He wants me to.

He wants me to hurt him.

“I won’t do that again.” I sound a lot more convicted than I feel. The truth is, I would. I’d do anything he asked me to do. Not because he asked but because I’d want to. I like the out of control, careening-around-a-blind-corner-at-break-neck-speed feeling that being with him gives me. I like it so much that I’m starting to need it. Crave it like a drug.

“Won’t do what?” He bends slightly, rooting around for something. I expect him to pull out one of the beers I brought, but he doesn’t. He pulls out a bottle of water. Turning around, he faces me, hips leaned against the counter. Cock half-hard and still glistening from being inside me. “Fuck me or hurt me?” His tone is light. Casual. Not my Conner. Not anymore.

I feel the blood rush away from my face so fast it makes me glad I’m not standing. If I were, I’d probably lose my knees and fall on my face. “They’re the same thing, aren’t they?” I’m not sure why I say it. The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s true.

He cracks the cap on the water and takes a deep drink before lowering it from his mouth. “Yes, they are,” he says, tightening the lid on the bottle before tossing it to me. It lands in the bed next to me. I don’t even reach for it. “And yes, you will.” He pushes his hips away from the counter to stand up straight. “You’ll keep fucking me because you can’t stop.” He grins at me again and it’s the same grin as before. The one I watched him give countless girls when we were younger. Dozens of women since I’ve been back. It’s a grin that says he knows exactly what we think when we look at him. What we see. What we want. Feeling the cold weight of it aimed at me is like a knife in my gut and I press my hands to my stomach to keep them from spilling out. “Because when it comes to my cock, you’re a goddamned junkie—” He looks down at himself and laughs. “—and I’ll keep letting you hurt me because I’m in love with you, Henley.” He lifts his head and shows me his palms like his hands are full of something I’ll never be able to see. “Fuck, I’ll even beg you to do it because I’ve been so goddamned desperately in love with you, for so fucking long, that I can’t remember what it feels like not to love you and I’ll do anything—anything—you want me to, because I learned my lesson. I said no to you once and you sent me away. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

I just want to be with you, Henley. Why won’t you just let me be with you?

Before I can even fully comprehend what he just said to me—that he loves me, that’s he’s in love with me and has been for years—he turns away from me and disappears into the bathroom, followed by the distinct sound of the door being locked. A few seconds later I hear the shower turn on.

When I look down at my hands, they’re streaked with Conner’s blood.