Chapter 21

Sela

I pull off my shirt the minute I step into our room, dropping it to the floor. Beck walks over to the dresser and takes off his watch, setting it on the polished top. He then pulls his own top off, a light gray cashmere V-neck sweater that hugs him in all the right places.

My stomach tightens marginally as his back is revealed to me and I take in the red phoenix on his shoulder. I know in my heart of hearts that Beck was not there that night. Going by simple math alone, he would have been eighteen and in his last year of prep school. JT is four years older, meaning he would have been twenty-two when he raped me. That alone doesn’t add up.

But more than that, I just know Beck would never have that in him. He would never hurt or violate a woman. He would never participate in a brutal gang rape. His violent reaction to JT that night he tried to drug that woman proves it, and besides…I just know it deep in my soul.

At least that’s what I tell myself every time I see that tattoo.

I normally will drop my gaze away, wait for him to turn that beautiful chest my way before I can look upon him again. The overwhelming sadness I’ve been feeling the last few days seems to compound as I look upon it. He toes his shoes off. Undoes his belt.

I stare at the phoenix, hating that there’s a part of Beck that I hate.

Hating it even more because I hate myself for what I’m doing to him.

Ever since last Friday when he caught me sneaking back into the condo…when he called me a liar, not even really understanding how deceptive I was being…I’ve been mired in guilt. During those few minutes when he called me on my lie, and I thought he was going to throw me clean from his life, I knew in my soul that Beck North was the best thing that ever happened to me. When it all seemed to be crumbling away, and I was clawing furiously to get him to see past my lies, I had a moment of clarity when I realized that revenge on JT was not ever going to be worth the hurt I could put on Beck.

Despite that horrid tattoo that seems to leer at me, a constant reminder of everything that was taken away from me, I don’t think I can go through with my plans.

Today I wandered around the condo aimlessly, my copy of his office key tucked into the bottom of my makeup bag in the bathroom. It was the prime opportunity for me to search his office, and yet I steered clear of it, refusing to even look at that fucking office door.

Even if I knew without a doubt that there was a clear-cut answer in there about how I could avenge myself, I just couldn’t make myself do it. I just couldn’t betray Beck in that way. Even more horrific to consider was the effect it could have on him if I was successful in killing JT, especially if he ever realized that he was an unwitting partner in my murderous plot. He’d never be able to forgive himself, and I cannot bear to ever lay a torturous burden like that upon him.

And while I’d been in a funk since our near undoing last week, I sank into a dark depression today as I realized my quest to destroy my rapists was going to go unfulfilled. While in my head I knew that the reward of having Beck in a completely transparent and trusting way would be more than enough for me, I was heavily mourning my loss of vengeance. So sunk into my nasty thoughts, I had pulled the utility knife out of Beck’s kitchen drawer and carried it around with me.

Did I think about using it on myself?

Not really.

But I held on to that vile thing as a reminder of how far I’d sunk before, and that at that point in my life I didn’t have anything to live for.

With Beck in my life, I couldn’t say that now.

So it meant that there was going to be a part of me that would always be damaged, and I would just have to live with it.

I would just have to learn to live with it.

Beck turns to face me, but the tattoo is still in my peripheral vision as his back is reflected in the mirror that sits on top of the dresser. He smiles at me, his hands pulling the belt free of its loops and dropping it to the floor.

I would just have to learn to live with it.

My eyes cut to his reflection, and I swallow hard against the bitterness and hatred within me. I walk across the room as he watches me with heavy-lidded eyes. When I reach him, I step to his side, and with my hand on his waist, I turn him gently away from me.

Lifting my hand, which is shaking with fear, I place the tips of my fingers against the left wing of the phoenix. Beck lets out a sigh as I trace the outline.

“What are you doing?” he asks gruffly. I’ve never once mentioned his tattoo or inquired about it. This is the first time I’ve ever touched it.

“Where did you get this?” I ask softly, running my fingers along his skin…tracing the flaming feathers on the tail.

“A little tattoo parlor in Palo Alto,” he says.

“While you were at Stanford.” It’s a statement I can easily deduce based on the fact I assume this might be a fraternity thing and I knew JT and Beck went to Stanford together.

“That’s right. Got it after I pledged.”

“All members of the fraternity have it?”

“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “Just a small group of us.”

Bile rises in my throat over the implication but I push it down. Beck was not a part of my rape.

He wasn’t.

I make myself lean forward and press my lips to the skin colored with red, gold, and orange feathers of flame. It’s warm and he smells like Beck. Clean, fresh, wild.

He turns abruptly, his arms snaking around my waist. He peers down at me intently, understanding that something is going on that he just doesn’t quite understand.

“Sela?” he asks in question.

“I’m sad,” I tell him truthfully, thinking I should feel self-conscious over admitting a vulnerability to this man, and yet feeling completely and utterly safe in my revelation.

Beck’s eyes go soft with sympathy and his hands come to my face. He cradles me gently, bends down further, and kisses my forehead. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Your best friend raped me.

While I don’t think you did, I have maybe a sliver of a doubt. No, not really. I’m sorry to even think that.

I care for you more than I care about justice for myself, and that makes me miserable.

Yet I can tell him none of that. If I’m going to let it go, that means I can never burden Beck with my knowledge, my memories, or my suspicions. I need to take him as is, and let him be oblivious to my darkest days.

That will be for the best.

So I vow to myself that this will be the last time I lie to him. “I tend to get blue around the holidays. Missing my mom, I guess.”

He tilts his head, his blue eyes darkening in sorrow for me. “What can I do to help?”

I shrug, but then throw out a suggestion that I’m not sure will really make anything better for me, but might make him feel like he can help. “Maybe we could put up some of her decorations for Christmas. My dad has them boxed up for me.”

“Of course we can do that,” he says, and then pulls me into him. I bury my face in his neck and feel his warm skin against mine as we press together. “Where are the decorations?”

“At my dad’s. We’d have to go get them.”

“So I get to meet your dad, huh? Is he going to like me?”

“He’s going to adore you,” I assure him with a smile. My dad will utterly love him.

“Like you adore me?” he asks, his voice amused, but I also know this is a serious question.

“Not as much as I adore you, but it will be close,” I assure him.

Then Beck’s mouth is on mine, and I know he adores me too just by the ferocity of his kiss. Maybe he can’t say it in words, but that’s okay with me. I can read enough into his actions to know that Beck is on the same page as I am.

His hands come to the back of my bra and he flicks it open before pulling it from me. Then he’s opening my jeans, pushing them down my hips and dropping to his knees before me. Fingers going under the elastic of my panties, he pulls them down enough to gain access and runs his tongue up my center. My knees threaten to buckle, but I’m saved when he wraps his arms around them, picks me up, and turns to deposit me on the bed.

In moments, he has the rest of our clothing off and he’s climbing onto the mattress. I part my legs, welcome him against me. He lays his body flush against mine and kisses me, hands roaming up my rib cage, his cock swelling against my pelvis.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful, Sela. Inside and out,” he says, tracing a path with his lips down my neck, over my collarbone. His body inches down mine, blazing fiery trails of warm kisses over my breasts, down my stomach. With his hands to the backs of my thighs, he lifts my legs and brings them over his shoulders.

Beck’s fingers dive into me as he gives my pussy a hot, wet, openmouthed kiss that sends shock waves of pleasure zinging through my body.

“Taste so goddamn good too,” he mutters in between licks and sucks.

My neck arches and my hands go into his soft hair. “Beck.”

“That’s right,” he praises me. “Say my name.”

Lick.

Suck.

Plunge of fingers.

“Beck,” I moan, crazed with lust and adoration for this man worshipping between my legs. “Please.”

“What do you want, Sela?”

“I want to come,” I plead with him.

He pulls his mouth from me for a moment and it causes me to raise my head to look down at him. He gives me a mischievous grin. “Want to come by my mouth or cock?”

I give him a salacious smile back. “Both.”

His teeth flash at me and he growls in appreciation. “Good fucking answer.”

Beck then hits my clit hard, pursing his lips around it and sucking while he thrusts two fingers in and out of me. My pulse skyrockets, my hips gyrate in crazy circles attempting for more friction, and then he beats his tongue against me so hard and fast I splinter into a million fragments as my thighs tighten against his head while every muscle in my body trembles in release.

“O-o-o-o-h,” I moan as the climax tears through me. “So good, Beck. So, so good.”

I’m still trembling when Beck surges up my body, bringing my legs up high as they stay resting on his shoulders. My abdomen contracts inward as he folds me practically in half and then he’s driving into me, bottoming out in one hard thrust.

“Goddamn,” he grits out as he places both hands on the mattress for leverage. His eyes are glazed with lust but he manages to ask, “You okay?”

I nod, not really able to form coherent words of assent.

“Good, because I am going to fuck you so hard, Sela,” he promises darkly as he starts pounding inside of me. “Going to come so deep in that pussy. Mark you as mine. It’s my fucking pussy, you go that, baby? Mine.”

His words thrill me. Dark, dirty, filthy words that speak to something deep inside of me. Knowing how turned on he is, how possessive of something that should only belong to me but truly doesn’t. It’s his to do with what he wants and he knows it.

It’s purely ironic that after my rape, I always felt dirty…unworthy. It’s why the barrier of a condom was more than a protection against pregnancy. It was a way for me to keep the dirt to myself and not taint another unsuspecting soul. While technically and from a purely health perspective, I’m as clean as they come, I always felt nasty when it comes to sex.

But not with Beck.

Not ever with Beck.

With every punch of his hips and every time his balls slap against my bottom, I feel whole and beautiful and completely worthy of what he’s giving and taking.

Even as he’s fucking me in this moment almost mindless with animalistic need, racing toward release the same as me, he makes me feel pure.

That’s something I’m never giving up.

“Are you close?” Beck asks.

“Huh?” I groan as he tunnels deep into me.

“Close, baby. Are you close?”

“I think I am,” I pant out as he continues to fuck me almost mercilessly.

“Need to know,” he grunts. “Because I am and if you’re not, I’m going to pull out and eat your pussy again.”

Just the thought that he’s so intent on getting me off again sparks that little kernel of tightly wound passion to start to expand and pulse deep within me. “Oh, I’m close all right,” I tell him with an almost hysterical laugh.

“Good,” he says, and doubles up on the pace of his fucking.

Beck’s jaw tightens, his eyes focus on me with laserlike intensity, and he undulates against me in a perfect rhythm that seems to stroke every single inch of my flesh. His hips pump furiously and his cock hits me like a jackhammer, and he lets out a huge huff of breath just before his eyes squeeze shut.

It’s almost in slow motion as I watch his brow furrow, his teeth grab on to his lower lip, and his head tilt back as he starts to come. It knocks and rattles my own orgasm loose and I cry out in surprise at its power.

Beck grinds into me and mutters, “Fuck. Fuck that’s good. Fuck, Sela…coming inside of you is so goddamn good.”

“Yes,” I manage to gasp out as my channel clenches on to him tightly, ripples of pleasure going up and down my spine, curling my toes and my fingers almost spastically.

“Oh, Christ,” Beck pants as he lowers my legs off his shoulders. I realize at once that I was barely able to breathe being almost folded in half, and a rush of oxygen into my lungs makes me dizzy.

It causes me to let out an almost maniacal laugh of relief as I suck in more air.

Beck drops down on top of me, holding most of his weight off by digging his elbows into the mattress. He presses his face into my neck, kisses me softly, and then pulls up to stare down at me.

“That was kind of ‘wow,’ ” he says with a grin.

I nod, feeling lighter in heart and soul. Still that little bit of underlying sadness that my quest for vengeance is over, but considering what I just had with Beck…and that I could have that forever if I give this an honest effort, helps to lighten the burden of my loss somewhat.

Beck winds his hands under my back, rolls off me, and turns me into his arms until we are both lying on our sides face to face. He pushes a leg in between mine, brings a hand to the back of my head, and tucks it into the crook of his neck.

“When do you want to go to your dad’s to get the decorations?” he asks while the fingers on his other hand stroke up the middle of my spine.

“This weekend?” I ask him back, assuming he can’t take off time during the week. “I’m assuming he and Maria will want us to stay for dinner.”

“How about Friday night?” he asks hesitantly.

“Sure. That will work.”

We’re silent for a moment and I start to relax into Beck’s embrace, feeling sated and drowsy. I wonder what it would be like to take an afternoon nap with Beck. Just be naked and lazy in his arms.

“Sela?” Beck says after a cough that clears his throat. His voice is tense and hesitant.

“Yeah?”

“JT wants to get together with you and me for dinner on Saturday. I kind of accepted, but I totally understand if you don’t want to go. I can make up an excuse or something.”

There’s no stopping the white-hot flash of rage that turns my blood to lava, and for an instant, I can’t even speak because the feeling is so painful it robs me of words.

“I know you don’t like him,” Beck rushes onward. “He hasn’t given you any room to, so I’m totally cool if you say no. It’s just…he’s still my business partner, and assuming he gets his shit together, I’m going to have to do functions with him and I hope you’re by my side at them. You’re going to run into him, and I thought…well, maybe you could get to know a little of the JT that I happen to like when he’s on his A-game.”

I take a deep breath in, let it out. Another in, let it out. I try to think calming thoughts and banish the red haze of fury from my vision.

“You’re awful quiet,” he says softly. “I’m taking this is going to be a no to the invitation.”

I think about the red tattoo on Beck’s back…a permanent part of him that I’ve decided to live with. I think of JT, the living embodiment of what that tattoo represents to me, and my choice to just live with what he’s done. Can I seriously be around the man who brutalized me? Can I look him in the eye and have a polite conversation?

Will I ever be able to be in the same room with him and not lust with murder?

I don’t know. It’s unfathomable to me.

But I do know one thing.

I’m committing myself to Beck, and that means I’ve got to accept JT is in his life until such time as he screws up that privilege. Knowing JT, that will happen. A zebra doesn’t change his stripes, I remind myself, and while he might be putting on a superlative effort to snow Beck at this moment, I know it’s only a matter of time before he falls back onto his old, treacherous ways.

So I swallow my pride and my anger and my thirst for justice once again.

I do this all for Beck.

I commit myself even further to him when I say, “Sure. I might not like him very much, but I’ll have dinner with him if that’s what you want.”