Chapter 15
Dalton
I had made a point to avoid the lower level hallway today, doing my workout from my room and steering clear of Brittany’s new favorite study corner in the courtyard. After my warning from Tommy, I had promised myself not to see Brittany until I had figured out a way to extricate myself from the gang.
Later at night, I noticed a missed message on the request portal. The washing machine was down, and I knew everyone in the building would be angry if it didn’t get fixed quickly. Even though it was late, I headed down to fix it.
The last thing I expected was to see Brittany waltz in wearing only a robe, the opening slit in the front blowing ajar and revealing her cleavage. The sides of her breasts poked defiantly out, showing at least a third of themselves. In my ripped jeans and stained white shirt I must have looked like a degenerate, crouched down behind the washing machine with grease over my hands and forearms.
“Hey, stranger.” I didn’t stand because I knew I had gone stiff in my pants seeing her robe billow open slightly as she jumped in shock at my voice. “It’s just me,” I reassured her.
She dropped a shirt and bra and brought her hands up to her face as if she were hiding tears. She wasn’t crying, but I could tell she was trying not to.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I stood up, not caring if she saw my stiffness or not, and wiped my greasy hands on my shirt as I walked toward her. I wanted to know why she was upset so that I could fix it. Even if I couldn’t fix it, I wanted to try.
“I just want to live my own life,” she said with exasperation, still covering her mouth with her hands but looking at me so fiercely I thought she was going to bore through me with heat vision. “My father tried to introduce me to a potential husband, and we got into a huge fight.”
I wanted to hug her and calm her down, but I knew I would ruin her robe with the grease all over my fingers. “You don’t deserve this, Brittany, you deserve your own life.”
Without hesitation, she flung herself into my torso and locked me in an embrace. If I had been shorter or had thinner legs, her force may have knocked me back, but I stood solid as she buried her face in my chest. She didn’t care about the grease, I realized.
“I smashed one of my paintings today,” she told me, her voice muffled in my shirt.
“Why’d you do that?”
“I thought it would make me not want to paint anymore, but it was just stupid. Nothing can kill my love for painting, but my father is slowly trying to suffocate it. I feel like I can’t breathe, Dalton.”
I wrapped my arms around her, staining her robe black as I did. I could tell she was panicking, her breath came short and shallow. With a squeeze, I said, “Breathe with me.”
Taking in a deep breath, I let my lungs lift my chest and Brittany’s head along with it before falling back down on the exhale. I did that a few times while Brittany synced her breathing with mine, prohibiting the hyperventilation she had started to fall into.
The next words I uttered came from deep within me, a place I had blocked off and kept secret even from myself, and I had only said something similar to one other person in my entire life a long time ago…the time I failed to fulfill my promise. “You can do whatever you want, Brittany, and you don’t need anyone’s help. You don’t need your father, you don’t need a man, you just need you. I know I’m a broke apartment manager who isn’t the catch any girl wants to bring home to daddy, but if you want me I will protect you from anyone who tells you that something is out of your reach, and if they try to harm you then I’ll be the wall that stands in their way. I know you don’t need me, and I know you don’t want me—”
“Stop.” She lifted her head off of my chest and looked up at me.
She doesn’t want me, I kept repeating to myself in my head, she only wants me now because she doesn’t know who I truly am. If she knew who I truly was, then she would run quickly away from me.
“You shouldn’t want me,” I said. “If you knew who I truly was—”
“I said…” She started to say “stop,” but her lips froze and remained slightly apart, quivering as she looked up at me. Her robe had shifted during our embrace and it hung loosely off of her right shoulder.
I moved to replace it politely, but she stopped me by grabbing my hand.
“You’re really bad at listening,” she whispered, our eyes locked as we stood together, bodies pressed tightly to one another. Still clutching my hand, she slowly moved it back down to her own arm, making me undress her. When the right shoulder of her robe was fully removed, she took my hand and brought it to the left shoulder. Still staring deep into my eyes, she controlled my hands and made me peel the top of her robe completely off.
Her breasts bounced playfully when the fabric of the robe fell off of them. Brittany lightly moaned, closing her eyes and leaning her head back as I grew harder against her at the sight of her chest. Unable to control my urges any longer, I grabbed her forcefully around the torso and brought her atop the washing machine. My lips found hers, and all the tension fled my body as we moaned in each other’s mouths. Her tongue flit in and out of my mouth before I went lower to taste her neck down to her collarbone. As I went further, I nibbled lightly on her nipple, and she began to paw searchingly at my belt buckle.
I stood up straight to help her, ripping off my belt with a snap in one fluid motion. She attacked the top button of my jeans and I grabbed her by the wrists, leaning in close so that I could whisper into her ear, “Slower.”
A coy smile played across her lips, and she stared mischievously at me as she slowed her movements down and pulled on the waistline of my jeans. I went in to kiss her again, but she pulled away with a spark in her eye, teasing me by making me chase her lips. One of her hands came up to my neck and she gripped it tight, making me throb even harder inside my jeans. I could feel her hand undoing my zipper before she put the whole of me in her fist.
“I want all this. Right here.” She bit my ear.
I pushed her from away from undoing my fly so that I could finish taking all of her clothes off of her. I yanked her bottoms off, revealing panties with lace weaving intricate patterns, and freckles on her thighs. I ran my finger underneath the elastic band of her waistline, hesitating to make sure I had permission. She gave it to me by once again placing her own hands on top of mine. I looked into her wide, bright eyes, ablaze with nervous anticipation, as we slowly pulled down her panties together. I dove into her lips again and we shut our eyes. I ran my fingers through her golden hair, rays of sunlight slipping through my grip, and took a hold of her head with one hand while reaching down in between her thighs with the other. Impatiently, she reached out and shoved my pants and briefs to my knees, our lips still locked together. She clawed my lower back, shoving me deep and hard in between her legs.
She threw her hands against the cement wall of the basement as I slid inside, groaning and noticing the fog that was accumulating on the slit of a window a few feet above Brittany’s head. I wondered if anyone could see us. I told myself, let them watch, as I rocked deeply into Brittany, back and forth. She told me to go faster, and at first I slowed down, just giving her the tip of me until she begged for the rest. Then, I started to ram into her, banging the washing machine so loud I was sure that the entire building could hear us.
Brittany brought her arms around to my back and slid them under my shirt which was the only article of clothing I hadn’t taken off yet. She scratched down my shoulder blades, her cheeks fiery red and her breath heavy as she started to say the naughty things running through her mind. “Next time my father is over, I want to make him wait in my apartment and then go into your room and I want you to make him hear us.” She started to put pressure on my back, pulling me hard against her to the rhythm I had set.
“I want you every day from this moment forward,” I told her. “I want to drive you to art school where you’re living your dream and happy as hell and I pick you up every day to take you home and have you all to myself.” It spilled out of me, and the instant I said it, I told myself I had ruined the moment with mush and emotion. I hated revealing that side of me to anyone, ever, especially someone like Brittany.
She put a hand on my chest, stopping my thrusts. “Please, don’t be leading me on, Dalton.” Her words halted me. “I want this too much…it’s scaring me.”
I cupped her cheek in my hand, forgetting all about how she was naked in front of me and that I was still inside of her. “I’m scared with how much I’m falling for you, Brittany.”
“I know this is what I need, and what I want, and that no matter how bad my father says you are for me that you’re really good for me. I’m just afraid to disobey father. Talia disobeyed my father and ran off with a bad boy, and it got her killed.” She blushed. “That was my sister’s name.” She lowered her eyes and seemed to be internally reprimanding herself for telling me Talia’s name, but I already knew the whole story.
Talia. Her sister’s name pierced straight through the tattoo on my chest to my heart. Brittany hadn’t named the man who had killed Talia, but I knew that name, too: James Krall. The image of Talia’s face rushed through my mind and filtered over Brittany’s face, my imagination accentuating the features that the two sisters shared. I searched Brittany’s face for signs of Talia and spotted the same upturned nose, the same freckles in the eyes, the same squint she made while trying to smile through pain, right now smiling through the pain of mentioning her sister’s name.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring down the mood.” She took her hand off my chest and covered up her breasts self-consciously after she noticed my speechlessness and the look of pain that had flashed across my features.
I was experiencing a multitude of emotions ranging from wanting to run as far away from Talia’s sister as I could and hiding forever, to smashing my fist into the washing machine out of anger that I had been unable to protect Talia who I had loved but who I had only dated a short time before she had gone off with James Krall.
Instead of doing either of those things, I leaned back in toward Brittany. “You didn’t bring down the mood, I promise.” I lightly kissed her, and instead of transitioning back into roughly wrestling on top of the washing machine, I began to slowly ease into her. We began making love.
She wasn’t Talia—she never would be, and I didn’t want her to be. I would always love Talia, and I had sworn to myself that I would never get involved with anyone else ever again…but Brittany wanted my heart and had managed to melt the ice I had coated it in. When I was with Talia I had never met her family. She had kept me out of her family life with the reason being that her father was too overbearing. Now that I had met her sister, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized Talia in her instantly, and then I realized to myself that I was attracted to Brittany for entirely different reasons than the ones that had attracted me to Talia. Brittany was her own unique woman, with a fire inside of her that burned bright and hooked me in such an irresistible way that I felt I could never escape the gravity of her beautiful sun.
I sent a prayer to wherever Talia was, asking her to guide me and tell me if this was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t get an answer right then, but Talia was never one to respond to any question right away.
Brittany and I left sweat and fluid dripping off the washing machine and we ended in each other’s arms on the floor. We talked about each other’s dreams before making our way upstairs, hours later. I walked her to her door before heading off to my own apartment and gave her a kiss on the forehead goodnight.