Chapter Thirty-Four
Doe/Ray
One Month Later
I spent time with Nikki’s parents as soon as I was able. I needed for them to know that Nikki didn’t die alone as a junkie seeking a high, but as a friend, protecting her very best friend, until her very last breath.
We laid Nadine to rest near Nikki, and just like at Preppy’s funeral, I gave the eulogy for the woman who was more of a mother to me than anyone else. Looking back at all the times Nadine defended my father, all the times she stood by him when his own wife hadn’t, I couldn’t help but think that maybe the two of them had more than an employee/employer relationship.
My mother hadn’t officially split, but when the word traveled to wherever she had secluded herself about Tanner and Nadine and what had happened that night, she’d just never came back.
Nobody cared.
And in the end, when it really counted, my father turned out to be a real father after all.
We were standing in the bathroom and King was yet again replacing the bandages on my back over my burns. Since it had to be done three times a day, he’d become an expert. King had also been doing research on tattooing over scars and visited the artist who had done some of the work for Jake’s wife, who had scars all over her body and tattoos covering a lot of them. He had a sketch ready for me, but I wasn’t ready to look at it just yet. I still had to shut my eyes when King changed my bandage, not yet able to come to terms with my ruined skin. But when I was healed, both physically and mentally, I knew King would be able to make something beautiful over something so ugly.
I was in rough shape for a couple of weeks, but I was finally starting to feel like myself again and just in time too, because in less than twenty-four hours, we would become full-time parents.
“I took the last of the boxes down to the Goodwill,” King said, pressing his lips into my neck.
It would’ve taken King only a few hours to clear out Preppy’s stuff from the house. But he didn’t want to just get rid of his things, or push them aside like it was a job that needed to be done. Bear felt the same way, so the two of them spent two days and nights holed up in Preppy’s room, going through his stuff, reminiscing about old times, and drinking their way through a case of tequila, getting high, and doing God only knows what with the whatever they may have found stashed in Preppy’s room.
It was done, and Preppy’s room had all been cleared out. Just in time too. Because it took a lot of adjusting on all of our parts, but with the help of Tanner’s parents, who I had to reassure a million times weren’t going to be cut out of Sammy’s life, he was finally coming to live with us in the morning. I didn’t want to rip him away from them suddenly; it wouldn’t be good for anyone. Plus, I’d needed time to heal. The last few weeks had been a transition, not just for Sammy, but for all of us. “I’m so happy he’s coming home today, especially now that I’m mobile,” I said.
“Some other things come to mind that we can do now that you’re mobile. Dirty fucking things,” King said, giving my waist a squeeze. My stomach fluttered and I’m not sure if it was his words, or the baby. I clasped my hands over his and looked at King’s reflection in the mirror. I couldn’t help but think about Max and what could’ve been.
“I see that look, and know what you’re thinking, Pup. But you have to stop focusing on the bad shit. We’ve done enough of that. Max will have a good family who will take care of her and give her everything she could ever want. Yeah, it fucking sucks, and there isn’t a second that goes by that I don’t want to be in her life, but she’s been through enough shit as it is. She doesn’t need to spend the next fifteen years in foster care just because I was too fucking selfish to sign off on her having a real life or because I wanted to fight the system some more and not get anywhere. Besides, when she’s older, maybe she’ll want to meet me. Meet us. And that’s the day I’ll focus on when shit gets heavy in my head,” King said.
“Where did I get such an amazing strong man?” I asked.
“You came to his party one night…” King laughed. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said, mischief glinting in his eyes.
King led me through the grass. I had to hop over bricks from the fire pit that had met their end in some sort of explosion. A burnt hole in the center of the yard is all that remained. Whenever I asked about it, King would just shrug and tell me that it wasn’t his story to tell.
We passed the dilapidated garage, which was falling over more and more every day. King had plans to tear it down and build a new one. A bigger one with a new tattoo shop and apartment for Bear.
If he wanted it.
King led me over to the dock, the place where he’d first shared with me his deepest secrets all those months ago.
Max. His Mom.
It seemed like a million years ago yet was as clear to me as if it happened that morning. “You know, with all the shit that’s happened over the last few months, there were a few times I thought I’d never be standing on this dock with you again,” King said.
“Just so we’re clear, you’re not letting me go this time?” I whispered. King spun me around in his arms. I placed the palms of my hands over his hard chest. The warmth of his skin warmed my hand through his shirt.
King shook his head and tipped my chin up with his fist. “Fuck, no.” Slowly, he ran the tips of his fingers down my arms from shoulder to elbow. My skin prickling to life with awareness as his feather light touch traveled up and down the sensitive skin. My lower lip quivered in anticipation. My knees trembled. He grabbed my wrist and pressed my hand against his lips. “You and me…” I felt his smile against the palm of my hand. It was like I’d touched an electric fence. Sparks shot through my hand and up my arm, coursing through my chest before settling between my thighs. “We’re a forever kind of thing.”
“We are?” I asked, unsure why it came out as a question, because it’s something I’d known since the second my eyes had locked with his in his tattoo studio. It was something I’d spent far too much time fighting against.
I was done fighting.
My future was with King.
“Fuck yeah we are,” he said, nipping at the delicate flesh of my wrist.
If King were to dip his fingers between my legs he would find out very quickly how much he’d affected me with just a few words. One word, actually.
Forever.
“I’m going to do everything to you but let you go,” he murmured against my ear. “That’s just not an option.” He pulled back slightly, holding my head in his hands, his thumbs digging into my temples, and pressed his lips against my forehead. “Never again,” he added. Tangling his fingers through my hair he surprised me when he yanked back on it roughly, forcing my head back suddenly. Anyone else might mistake that gesture as him wanting to inflict pain, but when I looked up into his eyes and witnessed the look of pure satisfaction crossing over his face, I knew exactly what he was doing.
He was making sure I was real.
His smile turned straight. His expression serious. King licked his bottom lip, leaving it glistening under the moonlight.
Pure. Primal. Hunger.
In my life I’d been hungry before to the point where I’d felt like I was on the verge of death. Yet in front of this man, the most brilliantly beautiful and perfect creature that’s ever occupied the earth, that hunger seemed like a mere stomach growl compared to the starvation I felt for him.
I wanted to lie in bed naked with him and watch movies on a Sunday. I wanted to help him in his tattoo studio, creating art that would change people’s lives.
I wanted to raise our children in the house built on stilts.
King’s kisses moved to right underneath my right eye, and for a moment we just stayed there, our cheeks pressed together. I didn’t realize how much I missed the feel of his stubble against my face. How much I missed having to crane my neck to look up at him. I missed that he could toss me around like a rag doll, while at the same time worshipping me like I was the most precious object in the world to him.
We stayed there, lingering in the feel of one another, existing in one another’s space, breathing each other in.
Until it was no longer enough.
Because with us, it never was.
He was real, and right in front of me. I was like an addict who’d not just fallen off the wagon, but leapt off blindly, while it was still in motion. In that moment, I was willing to do just about anything to feed the insatiable hunger that was erupting inside of me, occupying every sense I had. I wanted to touch him, taste him, smell him, drink him in.
I wanted it all.
We weren’t starving for one another.
We were fucking ravenous.
We were still kissing when he reached behind him and yanked his shirt off over his head, but he didn’t do it fast enough. I needed to see him. I needed to feel his warmth against me. I needed to taste the sweat on his skin on my tongue. When he was free of his shirt he tossed it onto the dock.
King was even less patient. He didn’t remove my shirt entirely, just yanked it down to expose my breasts.
That was exactly how I felt.
Exposed.
Being vulnerable in front of King was a risk I was more than willing to take, because it was well worth the reward. His gaze dropped to my breasts. He growled from deep within his throat, looking down at me with both animalistic need and something that I didn’t expect from King.
Appreciation.
“I love your fucking tits,” King said, droping to his knees. He wrapped his full lips around the very tip of my nipple, licking ever so slightly. I moaned at the contact, needing more. So much more. King chuckled. “I got you, baby,” he said. Flattening his tongue, he slid it over my stiffened peak in a long lick that made me want to cry out. And then he did it again, at a pace that was so torturously slow, I’d rather him bite me and draw blood than continue the lazy lapping of his ridiculously talented tongue. “So fucking perfect.” He released me just long enough to speak the words against the swell of my breasts before he started back up again on the other breast. This time he started off slow but then increased the speed until he was interchanging licks for light sucking, leaving me almost unable to stand on my own. Sensing my imbalance, King held me upright by my waist. I writhed against him, holding on to the top of his head. His short hair bristled against my palms as he brought me to the edge of oblivion.
And then he stopped.
King was still holding onto my waist, but his attention was elsewhere. His gaze firmly fixed on my belly. Tentatively, he reached up and placed his hand flat against the slight roundness of my stomach. “It’s so crazy,” he whispered. He traced circles around my belly button, pressing a kiss to the skin right below it, inhaling as he made his way back up to my neck, lifting himself off his knees. There was a certain reverence in his eyes, but that didn’t dim the fire, if anything it blazed brighter. Hotter. I was almost overwhelmed by the way he was looking at me so when King took a step toward me, I took a hesitant step back. “You running from me, Pup?” he asked with low ferocity in his voice.
“Maybe I am,” I teased, turning and bolting up the dock back toward the house. King caught up to me and spun me around, the barbarity in his gaze forcing me to retreat again until my back pressed up against the wall. He was being rough, but cautious at the same time, taking great care to make sure the burn on my back stayed out of harms way. It was then I realized I wasn’t backed up against a wall. It was a pillar.
The pillar.
The one where King and I had first had sex. Angry, hot, hate filled, love fueled sex.
“There,” King said, “much fucking better.”
“Reminiscing, are we?” I asked, biting my bottom lip. King reached around to the back of my neck and tipped my head up to him.
“Maybe,” he whispered. “And later, when I’m done with you out here, I want to take you upstairs and reminisce some more. Maybe cuff you to my bed. He traced my lower lip with his, and when I made a move for more contact, he pulled back. “Would you like that, Pup? Do you want me to cuff you up so you can’t move? Run my tongue between your legs, make you come so hard it fucking hurts? Or should I use a belt again? Wrap it around your neck so I have you right where I want you.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, tasting me, teasing me. Making me wild with lust.
Anyone could have walked by us and I wouldn’t have paid them any attention. They could fucking watch for all I cared. All I wanted was for him to touch me in a way that didn’t leave me throbbing and trying to press my thighs together for relief.
He ran his tongue behind my ear, sucking the sensitive skin into his mouth. I practically launched myself at him, throwing my hands around his neck in an effort to get closer, but again he denied me what I was seeking, what I needed. “Not yet, Pup.”
I was going to strangle the asshole.
“Are you trying to piss me off?” I asked. My chest rising and falling with my impatience. I was going to be the first person in history to ever die from lust.
Female blue balls.
“Maybe. But I remember how hot it was to fuck you when you were angry. Right here against the house. I get so fucking hard every time I think about being inside you that first time, all the while you wanted to claw my fucking eyes out. I wanted to make it all okay between us, but at the same time, I wanted to make you even angrier. Make you burn hotter. You were so fucking pissed off, but so fucking beautiful. You burned so hot it was like your pussy was begging for my cock to punish it. Punish you.”
“Yes. Punish me,” I whispered. “Please. Punish me.”
I was past having any shame and had moved onto begging. And then, if he ever did fuck me, afterward, I was going to drown him in the bay.
King grinded his huge erection against my thigh. “You see what you do to me? Do you feel how badly I want you?” All I could do was nod. I wasn’t even sure of what he was asking. At that point, the answer to everything was going to be YES. “Don’t fucking move,” he ordered. Inserting two fingers in the waistband of my shorts, he pulled them down my thighs. On his way back up, he pressed his nose between my legs and inhaled deeply, darting his tongue out for a lick.
“Holy shit. You’re fucking dripping.” He sucked my clit into his mouth.
“I missed the way you taste, Pup. Fucking sweet and innocent. You taste like more.” His words vibrating against my core which was so beyond ready for him to put the monster throbbing against my leg to good use. Instead, he stood back up, forcing me harder against the pillar. He reached between us and between my folds, spreading my wetness, pushing his thick middle finger inside of me.
His finger was barely halfway in but I was already clenching around him. “Your pussy missed me,” King said, his voice rough and strained. The confidence he possessed just moments ago now an obvious struggle as he attempted to stay in control.
I dropped my head back against the pillar. He pushed all he way in and hooked his finger slightly. When he began to pump I writhed against his hand.
Each and every time he pulled out it felt just as amazing as when he pushed back inside. He started to pump faster, steady at first, then more erratic. More desperate. More like King’s only mission in life was to tear an orgasm from my body.
I was lost in the sensation of the in and out.
The push and pull.
The clench and release.
The throb and pulse.
The fucking mind-blowing amazingness of being able to not only see this man again. But to kiss him. Touch him.
Have his baby.
There was a time not that long ago, when I truly thought I’d never see him again. I certainly never thought he’d be finger fucking me back against the pillar where it had all started.
Where we had started. It was in that very spot where I gave myself to him the first time. And it was in that very spot again where I gave myself to him all over again.
Even though in my heart I’d never really stopped being his.
Sensation started building on top sensation. Pleasure on top of pleasure. I could no longer tell a push-in from a pull-out. I was so charged up, I felt like I could power an entire city on the energy humming inside me.
The mounting pleasure became almost too much. I desperately needed some sort of release before I fell apart under the pressure.
“Fuck!” I cried out.
“That’s the plan, Pup.” King removed his fingers and sucked them into his mouth. “Fuck. My tongue is going to be spending a lot of time getting reacquainted with that beautiful pussy of yours, but right now I need to put my cock inside you.”
“Yes,” I panted.
King made quick work of his belt and jeans. His cock sprang free of its confinement. Without another beat King wrapped his hand around the thick shaft and pushed the head into my folds, soaking it with my wetness, before pushing inside with a long hard thrust that made us both cry out at the same time.
King gripped the back of my thighs, his fingers pressing roughly into my flesh.
And then he kissed me. Hard.
He kissed me as if it were that very kiss sealing our connection. Our fate. Our lives.
Together.
I was close. So close that I was almost afraid of how hard I was going to come. King’s breathing changed from steady against my lips to erratic as he hammered into me hard and fast. My nipples grazed his chest with every thrust. My clit rubbed against the base of his cock.
The man who I was once so fearful of, a man who was capable of so much violence, and yet so much love, was struggling for control.
Because of me.
Because he was fucking me.
Because he wanted me.
Forever.
We’re a forever kind of thing.
It was my undoing.
The tension that had been building inside of me tightened to the point of pain before it finally broke, sending every single part of my body into spasm after spasm, rolling over me in brutal waves of blinding white-hot pleasure. I cried out, a strangled sounding moan, holding tightly on to King, who when I started to convulse around his cock, released a moan of his own. I rode out my orgasm, writhing against him until he’d wrung out every last bit of pleasure from my weak body.
He followed me over, thrusting with wild abandon until he exploded inside of me, filling me with warmth.
With love.
With him.
* * *
King rested his forehead against mine as we tried to catch our breaths, but he didn’t put me down. My legs still wrapped around his waist.
Our bodies still one, neither of us in a rush to break the connection we’d waited so long for.
“What do you want to be called now?” he asked out of nowhere. “Doe? Ray?”
“Why does that even matter? Because whatever I choose, you’ll just call me Pup anyway.”
“True, but we need to know what to put on the form.” King said, pressing tender soft kisses all over my lips and face, even the tip of my nose and eye lids.
“What form?” I asked.
“It’s upstairs on the counter. Grace picked it up earlier for me. We’ll have to go and sign it together, but we can fill it out here. I figured since we were changing your last name, you might as well change the first one at the same time. Save some trouble.”
“My last name?” I asked. “What form? What thing?”
“Always with the fucking questions, Pup.” King teased with fake annoyance.
“The paper you need to fill out when you get hitched. The fucking…marriage paper.” King said dismissively like we’d talked about it a million times before.
I gasped. “Are you proposing?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Fuck, no.”
“But you want me to fill out a marriage form…” I started. “Where we…” I pointed between the two of us. “Would be the ones getting married?” King nodded. “To each other,” I added.
He smiled against my skin and nodded again, continuing his assault of soft kisses on my shoulder and down my arm.
“You do realize that proposing is asking someone to marry you, and that very much seems like what you are doing here,” I argued. King’s cock, still deep inside me, started to twitch back to life, growing and stretching me again, when he brushed his lips over my nipples. His smirk turned downright wicked. His bright eyes danced with mischief.
“We,” King said. “You and me, are getting married. Seeing as how I love you, and I know you love me, and we’re about to have a couple of kids running around the house. But I’m not asking you anything. Asking would give you the impression that you have a say in this. So no, I’m not proposing.” He pulled out of me a little and then pushed back in. I groaned.
“You’re insane,” I said, moving my hips with his, trying to bring him in deeper.
It was the most unfair one-sided non-proposal ever.
And I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“So I see we really are back to where we started,” I offered as King slammed into me and we both had to pause a second to take in the sensation. I tried not to smile. I tried to pretend to be angry at his marriage demand, but I failed miserably.
I think it was the ear-to-ear smile that gave me away.
“Yeah. We’re back to where it all started,” King said. He cupped my face in my hands and looked deep into my eyes. “And there’s no place in the entire fucking world I’d rather be.”
King started to move again but this time was different. Slower. Less urgent. He rolled his hips and my mouth hung open as I drank in every lingering sensation of his slow thrusts. He punctuated each one with a slight twist of his hips until we were both seeing stars again.
King didn’t tear his eyes from mine when he made me come for the second time. He didn’t look away when he found his release deep inside me either. And as my orgasm began to fade, there was only one thought running through my mind.
I felt free.
With King, I was the me I wanted to be. The me I was supposed to be.
And that girl, belonged to King.
Body and soul.