“Shut the fuck up,” he said sternly as he bent to kiss the warm skin above my heart. It jackknifed beneath his lips. “You have a heart, it speaks to mine.”
He took my hand and trailed my fingertips over his chest. This time I didn’t feel the patter of his heart or the warmth of his skin. Instead I read the poetry scrolled across his skin.
My heartbeats do not flutter
They jab and punch and hook
They beat, bruise, assault
Disfigure.
Gods willing you live through a brutal love like mine.
“Who wrote this?” The edge was still in my voice but it had a double edge that I couldn’t bite back.
“I did.” He grabbed my hand and pushed his lips to my fingertips. “And I’m starting to think I wrote it for you.”
*****
He’d stayed. After all that, Conrad stayed. And he’d read the poetry of his body to me line by line. Kiss by kiss. His soft snores beside me were their own type of verse.
And laying awake, staring at the streetlamp splashed across my ceiling, I was starting to think that poetry maybe made me feel too much.
Cole and Elle were art. Splashes of colors and the curve of steel. I could view a masterpiece without understanding the brushstrokes, I could see the beauty. But I knew the words. I could feel the beauty and the pain. I was comfortable with what hung on the wall, I was almost destroyed by the art whispered in my ear.
My mind kept flipping between painting and poetry. Cole and Conrad. One of them was the edges of my heart but the other was trying to claw at the center. One of them had always been my shadow but the other was trying to be my sun.
One of them stayed.
*****
“You’ve been keeping busy.” Elle’s sweet voice pulled me from my swirling thoughts. I couldn’t help that it always pulled on the corners of my lips.
“I’m a man of mystery Fucktart what can I say?”
The way her cheeks and chest flushed when I called her by her nickname was beautiful. Everything about her was.
“Are you in love?” she asked as she settled into the stool next to me, her body naturally leaning into mine.
I sucked in a deep breath. I couldn’t answer that question and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to formulate the words, it was that I didn’t honestly want to look too hard at Conrad. I didn’t want to figure it out.
“With you? Undoubtedly,” I deflected as I settled into her the way she’d melted into mine.
Her soft giggle was quickly becoming my favorite sound. Just like her soft touch was becoming a second home. She was something soothing on my soul. She never asked for more than I could give. She never asked for anything at all. Except me. Just the way I came.
“You know why little girls ask for ponies for their birthdays?”
I looked into her face, my smile hanging loosely on my lips, an easy reflection of hers.
“Why?”
“They don’t know that they can ask for a Horse.” She twisted and kissed the cap of my shoulder. “I would have asked for a Horse,” she added lowly as she pushed up to kiss the curve of my jaw.
I groaned. She drug those sorts of sounds out of me without trying.
“How’d I’d get so lucky?” I let my hand wander up her thigh.
“To find Cole? I don’t know. I ask myself the same thing every day.” She arched back as I roved a little too high. “He gave me love, he gave me light, he gave me you.”
“Elle,” I moaned at the same time Cole’s warm voice said her name overtop of me.
“Not without me.” Cole reached up and notched her chin beneath his knuckle and pulled her to his lips. He kissed her until she was left gasping and desperate then he turned on me.
His blonde flashed in front of me, his ink poking out, and though I knew the lips that were about to kiss me—I craved them like the air in my lungs—a very different set flashed before my eyes.
Cole’s kiss was ruff and demanding. He took my lips, he took my breath. I couldn’t help but compare to how Conrad gave. He gave me all of himself.
But then those delicate little bird fingers twined with big inked paws and started undressing me. I forgot everything when they did that. I forgot everything but indulging in my first love and the sugar sprinkles Elle brought into it.
“I could live forever here,” Cole breathed into my open mouth. “Between my rock,” his hand wrapped around Elle’s neck. “And my hard place.” His other hand shoved beneath my waistband.
That moment when he grabbed me was still the equivalent of discovering my super powers. I surrendered to the way something unexplained rushed through my veins.
“Let’s just be together,” I managed.
“We are…” Cole murmured. “Kiss her and we’ll be even closer.” He had Elle by the neck and pushed her to me.
And her big plump lips were waiting there for me, his green eyes bright and brilliant behind her. The cherry taste was something I craved, almost as much as the lingering spice of Cole’s skin. Or the coconut of Conrad…
I shook my head. I was with him. I was with them.
Elle’s lips were so soft, so velvet as they kissed me. She was something more pure, more perfect than sunshine, and just pressing my lips to hers was a treat I didn’t deserve. But then the way she kissed me, the way she cared for every single inch of my mouth, showered every inch with affection. Pure and perfect adoration.
All too quickly her lips slipped away from mine as Cole used his grip to push her down to her knees. He pulled off his shirt as soon as he let go then reached over and kissed me, working on my shirt as Elle’s little hands went to my belt. His lips met mine, stealing cherry from where it hung loosely on my lips.
And when my chest was bare, he bent and kissed down between the valley of my pecs. I closed my eyes and remembered all the jagged ways my heart beat for Cole, all the ways Elle filled in those gaps.
My jeans hit the floor a second later and Elle’s hands were on me. I meant to snarl but it came out as a whimper. And when she swallowed me as best she could I wanted to crumple to my knees. Into her lap. Hell, into her if I could. Particularly because I knew Cole would follow and together we’d be happy. We might even be safe.
I was going to lose my mind. Conrad ghosted in and out but when Cole wrapped his arm around me and kissed me, I couldn’t quite remember why Conrad was lingering. They were fighting for space inside me, in my brain, in my heart, maybe even something deeper.
And then there was the blow job…
My hips bucked against Elle’s face as Cole’s fingers traced the dips of my six pack. Her little fingers found my hips and curled in. The selfish monster in me needed more and I scrambled for Cole’s fly. His jeans hit the floor the way mine had and he twisted.
Elle’s hand left my body and gripped on him. Her strokes twinned on us just before those sweet, tart lips wrapped around us both. Cole and I pressed against each other in her mouth. He groaned as her hands split and spread out across each of our washboards.
“Is this together enough for you?” Cole twisted enough to whisper in my ear. He wrapped his hand around my waist and dug into my hips.
I cried out as he shoved me into Elle’s mouth. She rocked backwards but held her own between us. Before I called out again, his lips locked onto mine.
We were a mess of mouths and limbs and lust. We were easy, two monsters with the woman who looked fear in the face and held out her arms to hold us. This may not have been the frantic intensity, the unnerving wild that screwed up my insides when I was with Conrad, but it was delicious, sugared sweet and filled the only hole I’d ever acknowledged in my heart.
The other hole, the one that even now yearned for Conrad, that yearned for goodness and light and to be seen, that hole I shoved that aside with my toe just like my jeans before I fell to the floor to join Elle.
*****
“Fuck.” My head fell into my hands as I sat on the stoop down the street. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Three doors down was Conrad and everything that he represented. He’d been staying there, filling up the nooks and crannies of my house, just like he was trying to do to my heart, but once again, I’d gone and chucked it aside for Cole. I always did. I’d done that to Callum too.
Fuck.
Why couldn’t I keep it in my pants? Why couldn’t I let him see me? Why did I have to linger in the darkness?
The answer was—as it’d always been—that I belonged there.
Cole matched, he mattered, because he shared something deep and inky black with me. And he came with Elle. They were one being, after all, one chest rising to inhale, the other loosing sweet love back into the universe with an exhale.
But Conrad…
I had this feeling he was meant for me in some small way. He saw so many things. So many things that I couldn’t even see about myself. Or so many things I wouldn’t admit to myself.
I snarled into the street.
He was agony and ecstasy, I just wasn’t sure I was cut out for either extreme. I felt too much when he was around and it threatened to pull me in two.
I sighed and shoved up from the stairs, keeping my eyes on the tennis shoes draped over the telephone wire as I trudged down to my front door.
Would he see what I’d done scribbled across my face? Would he be able to see Elle’s lips on me? Cole’s handprints?
“Hi.” His smile split his face into beautiful bright white when I slipped into the house, shadowed in sin. “You okay?” He asked as he looked me over a second time and slid off the couch to greet me.
“I…uh…” Feel like a complete ass. “Had a rough day at work,” I finished instead.
“Being a hulking brute take it out of you today?” He laughed low and husky as his hands wandered up my chest.
I shuddered at his touch. Or maybe at the reminder of whose hands had been on me an hour ago.
“I…we…” I really did want to come clean.
“Come here,” he interrupted before I found the words, pulling me toward the couch then pushing me to the floor.
A moment later, his thick thighs were on either side of my shoulders and his hands were searching for the hem of my shirt. He worked it off only for his hands to come right back. His big strong fingers started kneading on my shoulders and tracing my shoulder blades, moving in deep, soothing circles as he went.
“Mmmmm Conrad,” I purred as he massaged.
“Is your name tiger, because damn do you know how to purr.” He meowed before he bent down and kissed the cap of my shoulder.
“And would that make you a lion tamer?” I couldn’t help but laugh warmly at the whole conversation.
“I prefer Catwoman.” He drug his nails across my back and it made me groan. “She had her way with Batman, right?”
His warm laugh, his magic hands were nothing compared to how his simple presence chased the demons away. He loosened the hate I held for myself in my heart, he shone light on the deepest, darkest parts of me.
I purred again just before I murmured, “Get down here and find out.”
*****
Conrad’s hand fit in mine. The rough callus on his left hand from where he always held a pencil drew me in and had be stroking on his skin. The circles I kept tracing were to soothe my soul and keep me grounded as Cole and Elle walked arm in arm in front of Conrad and I.
Well, arm in arm was an understatement. They had this way of wrapping up in each other that was so beautifully complete, I thought they might meld into one another. Their bodies, their breaths, made more sense together than they ever had apart. And tonight, out on the town with Conrad, I had to bite back every desire to weave myself into those aching breaths.
I had to anchor myself to Conrad. To that callus itself. But honestly I didn’t mind.
“It’s a beautiful night,” he said softly as he adjusted our arms, looping around his shoulders where we were still entwined and then making me pull him close. Coconut filled my senses as it had for the past few easy weeks.
“I haven’t been down here on the pier in years.” I smiled as I drank in the warmth of that smell, the way Conrad always seemed sunbaked.
“You’ve been waiting for me in more ways than one.” He playfully knocked into me just before I caught him wink out of the corner of my eye.
He was right. He was mine the way Elle was Cole’s. And together… It was selfish, monstrous even, but the moments I was with them all, I felt whole.
We followed Cole onto the ferris wheel but I sat as close to Conrad as the seats would allow. Even as we pulled away from the ground and took in the view of downtown Chicago, I simply inspected the blonde buffet surrounding me. Cole, my Cupcake, that still had muscles my fingers yearned to explore. Elle, my Fucktart, my sunshine, the sweetness that made each day worth swallowing. And Conrad, my coconut creme pie, that was quickly becoming a treat I’d never seen coming, one my lips yearned for.
Together they made me happy. And I couldn’t remember feeling this full before.
I reached for Conrad without thinking about it. He was my automatic reaction, my instinct and compulsion. My lips found his and started coaxing him to move. We danced that perfect dance we had together, tumbling, sliding, tangoing, sucking. I would never get enough of the way we kissed.
The idea that Cole may be watching didn’t hurt either.
I’d watched him so many times, felt the want, the need course through my veins. I could only hope that he felt some sort of similar desire, possessive or not, inside.
My soft hums vibrated against Conrad’s lips. His callus that seemed to draw me in deeper roved over the echo in my chest. My dick was coming alive beneath my fly and I wanted nothing more than to use it. To fuck hard and fast up against the windows. To lose myself in flesh.
As if Conrad could read my mind, he slid from his chair and straddled me. His hips started a steady rock against mine that encouraged my fantasies to play out. My fingertips set about exploring the muscles I was starting learn like a second skin.
I was devouring the sounds that I loved best when a different one pulled my attention from all-consuming Conrad and reminded me of who else was there with us. And how much lust really ebbed and flowed in my little world.
It was Elle’s sinful groan. The one that tightened my balls, hardened my dick and fed the flames inside me. Conrad’s lips blanketed mine while I pictured what Cole was doing to Elle just feet from me. Conrad’s hard-on pressed harder into mine and I morphed into a ball of lust. The three of them together was my brain’s kryptonite, killing any real thought process and turning me into a beast.
When Elle’s cry broke free, I grabbed Conrad and twisted him. I needed to devour her orgasm, needed to watch Cole steal it from her. I needed Conrad to be the weight on my body, keeping me from taking flight. I needed them all.
“Without me?” I asked.
“Sorry man. Some moments are too good to pass up,” Cole answered in his newer, softer voice. The one that sought to stroke Elle every bit as lovingly as his fingers traced on her neck. “And if it’s any consolation, she got really excited watching you two. Gives me ideas for next time.”
My chest rippled with pride. Conrad really was something, and the pile of muscle we became was worth putting on display. The only concern I ever had was lighting people on fire that stood too close.
“Next time? Next time what?” Conrad’s piercing voice deflated my thoughts like a small balloon.
I’d never told him, never explained why I was staying late at Cole’s—I mean what would I have said?—but it had become so second nature, I’d gone and slipped in my own shit. And he saw. Of course, Conrad looked deep into my eyes and saw everything.
“As in you’ve been in?” Conrad’s question turned more into fact as he shoved off my lap.
“I told you I was bi.” I tried to stay calm.
“You never told me you fucked my best friend.” The sharper his voice got, the more it pierced at my chest.
“Your best friend. My best friend. A lot of other somebodies’ best friends, too.” I shrugged, not sure what else to do besides be honest. “I’ve never made out with them on a Ferris Wheel though.” I reached for him, hoping that some sentence I was managing to string together was passing for consolation.
The car swung the slightest bit as we came to a stop. My heart started racing as his body tensed and rippled like he was going to swing.
“Like fuck if that matters. You’ve been in her Dolly Parton singing Jolene.”
Sure enough he leveled a blow, it just wasn’t the one my body was anticipating. My heart either. The second the door unlatched he bolted for it. I stood and reached after him.
“Jolene, Nine to Five and the rest of the Grand Ole Opry,” I added as he slipped through my fingers and took off running.
Fear. Blind fear clouded my vision as I barreled after him.
This was the price of secrets. I’d always known that but for all the hardships in my life, I’d never had to pay. And while I refused to admit a lot of things about Conrad, losing him wasn’t an option. Not now. Not when things were good.
“Stop, Conrad.” I yelled, heavy breaths crashing in my chest. “Fucking stop!”
“Why?” he roared as he slowed and turned. “Why the fuck should I listen to a thing you have to say?” He started walking backwards, his eyes narrowed on me as if he was looking at a stranger.
“Because I can explain.” I clenched my fists and dug my fingertips into my palms as I begged.
“Explain what? That you’re a selfish bastard that goes around breaking more hearts than Taylor Swift?” His shoulders heaved in the lights of the pier. His face was shrouded in shadow as he added in a smaller, quieter voice. “That you’ve crushed me into small John Mayer sized pieces?”
I couldn't help the smirk that tugged on my lip. “You’re the furthest thing from skinny, whiny, lady voiced John Mayer. Most of the time anyway.” My husky laugh laced with my words.
“This isn’t fucking funny, Horse.” He threw his hands up and walked away, only to lean over the railing a few feet from us and stare into the swirling lake below. “You’re with them. You’re with them and you’re with me. Who the fuck else? Does any of it matter?”
His voice was that deep and rich one, the one that was hidden from just about everyone but me. The one that I’d betrayed.
“It all matters,” I answered softly as I stepped up beside him.
I went to nestle into his side but he stepped away and slid down the rail away from me. His body was balled in on itself, beautifully broken muscle and madness slumped toward the black of the night. I swallowed on the lump in my throat that formed when I realized I did that to him. I bruised his insides.
“You asked me once what mask I wore,” I started, staring off into the darkness, the mirk that had to resemble my soul. “I wear one that covers up all my secrets. The secrets like I’m a murderer because my soul wasn’t ever worth much more. The secrets like I’m bi because I crave the love I never got from anyone growing up. The secrets like I’ve met two soulmates and lost them both. From secrets like I deserved it all.”
“I want to go get a fabulous manicure, complete with cat claws and scratch your eyes out for what you just put me through but I still know that’s not true.”
I felt his gaze shift to me, my skin reacted in it’s wake, but I couldn’t make myself look at him.
“It’s all true, Conrad. Every last bit. And all the shit you’re thinking about me is too. I’m a mess, a wreck, and nothing in me has ever made sense.” I sighed and hung my head lower. “You keep saying I’m a hero, I’ve said I’m a villain, but if I’m being honest, I’m one of those giant balls of death and destruction that threatens existence as we know it.”
I wrapped my hands up around my head, hoping to drown out the voices screaming at me. The ones that told me how honest I’d finally been, how rough hewn and volatile my insides really were. The ones that told me to jump.
“Cole tames it, he always has. He made me see something worthy in myself for the first time. But I lost him.” A heavy weight crushed my chest, the weight of honesty. “I lost him to Elle, and I thank god he found her, but…”
“Soulmate number one,” Conrad filled in the blanks.
I blew out a world weary breath, trying to find words that never came to me.
“I loved someone else for a while. Callum,” I choked on his name. “He… understood me. He understood everything. The darkness, the wicked, the chaos.” I never talked about him. Not even to Cole or Siobhan. The words wouldn’t come. “He died in my arms.”
“Soulmate number two,” he whispered as he wrapped himself around me and squeezed. Something about his arms made me feel as if I wasn’t disintegrating to dust.
“I deserved to lose them. For my shortcomings or sin, I don’t really know. I mean, it doesn’t really matter.” I sighed again. “But I don’t know how to let it all go. I don’t know how to be right in a relationship. Fuck… I don’t even know how to be right in the head.” I finished and slumped into his hands.
He leaned down to rest his forehead on my shoulder, his big ole arms still wrapped around me.
“You’re not fucked up, you just fucked up,” he murmured against my skin.”And I’m sorry you lost them but do you ever think that maybe it’s for a good reason?” His hand left my shoulder and pushed through my hair. I couldn’t help but nestle into his touch. “You hold so tightly Horse, and I’m starting to understand why, but maybe they just needed to free your hands up for something else. Someone else.”
I simply grunted, lost to the churning waters beneath me and the similar emotions inside.
“Let them go, let them all go, and pick me. Pick a life with me. And not because it’s your only choice, but because it’s the right one. It’s the right one and you deserve it.”
I couldn’t listen any more. I’d turned myself inside out for Conrad tonight, I showed him all my dark filth, and here he was saying I was worthy. Believing him would kill me faster than betraying Mickey. So I did the only thing I could think of.
I shoved out of his sweet hold and sprinted down the boardwalk.
Until I found fiery red hair blowing in the breeze, just feet in front of me.
*****
Siobhan took my breath away. And not in the good way. In the holy fuck we’re dead kind of way. Fury had become her best friend in my absence and I was about to crash head on into both of them.
“Cole, where the fuck are you?” I prayed to any unholy god that would listen that he heard the panic in my voice. He needed to know right now what we were dealing with.
“What are you doing here, Horse? And where is that traitor you’re covering for?” She spat the words like venom and I automatically reached for her.
“Leave it be, Siobhan. He’s not a traitor and no one’s covering anything. You can’t possibly think we’re that stupid.” I didn’t mean to shake her but every emotion was careening around inside of me, whipped into a fervent storm by the sequence of tonights events.
“Love makes you do asinine things.” The pinch of her face told me she’d claw me if her hands were free to do so.
“Agreed.” I blew out a deep breath. “But don’t forget that I love my family too. I love you.”
“You love everything that goes bump in the night.” She rolled her eyes. “You should have been named puppy, not Horse.” There was the hint of laughter in her voice.
“I’ll bump you in the night and you’ll remember exactly why I’m named Horse.” I arched my eyebrow at her.
“I miss this Horse. He ruined it. He and that little blonde buttercup,” she sneered and it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The tightrope we were walking was too precarious for me but at this point, I just had to keep walking.
“You’re just made because you can’t have them. Either of them. And trust me, I know the feeling when it comes to the buttercup.”
She scrutinized me for a second, seeing what, I could never quite tell because of her pained and piercing eyes.
“You wouldn’t feed me lies would you now, Horse?”
“Just go Siobhan, get laid, and stop stomping around town like you’re trying to cut holes in the concrete with your stilettos.” I pointed toward the parking lot and for a second she considered.
“Horse, what in the hell?” Conrad asked from behind me, my back no doubt blocking the hellcat from his nightmares from view.
“You.” Siobhan’s fury unleashed with that word. “And with you.” She shoved a finger into my chest and I swore she was going to carve out my heart.
“You know this guy, Siobhan?” My voice noticeably wavered.
“Don’t.” Her jaw clenched.
“So… That’s a yes?”
“I thought you were different. I thought you were family.” Her nail dug into my chest. “Callum would hate what you’ve become.”
I crumpled beneath her hand, beneath the weight of every word spoke tonight. I couldn’t help it. The turmoil inside me was going to eat me alive. I was going to cave to her simply because I couldn’t stay upright any more at all. Tonight was going to kill me.
“Tell me where, Horse.” She could sense my weakness. “Tell me now! If you don’t, I’ll take it out of your pretty little piece of ass right there. And then Cole, again, when I find him.”
Something primal broke through. She was not going to hurt Conrad. She could slit my damn throat with her cat claws for all I cared. I grabbed her by the throat, closing around the small skin with no concern for her ability to breathe. I drug her to the metal siding of the building beside us and slammed her against it. Her bones would shatter to shards before she got at Conrad.
“Not if I kill you first.” My voice was death personified, I saw the flash of it in her eyes.
“Horse!” Conrad probably had too.
“Do it. I dare you,” she squeaked out. “See how long your precious Cole and his little whore last if I’m dead.” My blood ran cold.
Hurting Elle would kill Cole, and between his broken heart and the Poptart shape she left on my soul, it would kill me.
“If you threaten her ever again…” I slammed her as the exclamation point on my sentence.
“Next time you slam me into a wall, you better shove your dick in me. This whole Elle thing is rather frustrating.” She arched her body in pleasure and for the first time in a long time, the sickness in Siobhan made my insides recoil.
“Fuck you.” I dropped my hand and let her crumple to the floor.
“I just offered.” She rubbed her throat as she collected herself and righted her pencil skirt. “You even know how much I like a good double dicking. We can all play.”
“Jesus Christ, Horse. Just when I think I’ve heard the worst of it,” Conrad screeched from beside us.
“Shut up,” I bellowed and I honestly didn’t know who it was directed at.
For a moment the only sound on the pier was the music that seemed to blow on the breeze. All too quickly it was interrupted by Siobhan’s cackle as she rose. She checked me with her shoulder before she strolled down the boardwalk.
When she was almost out of earshot she turned. “Tell him I’m coming for him, Horse. And with any luck I’ll come again using his corpse.”
“Fuck,” Conrad whispered beside me as we watched her stroll into the darkness.
The moment she was out of sight and I knew she wasn't coming back, I collapsed up against the building I’d had her pinned to.
“Horse,” Conrad called as his hands went to flutter around me. “Are you okay?”
I tried to breathe in but I couldn’t. I tried to right the world from it’s tilted axis but couldn’t do that either.
“No,” I gasped, barely able to make the word.
They were a hurricane inside me, devastating everything in their wake. All of them. Conrad, Cole, Elle, Siobhan. It had made landfall tonight. I was a wreck to begin with, but tonight I’d had to admit it and then suffer the damage that came from laying my soul bare.
I hurt. Every inch of me. My insides were raw and even though I wasn’t bleeding, my soul was seeping out onto the boardwalk.
If only I’d know that was just the first patter of raindrops and the full storm was yet to come.
Part Eight
Things Fall Apart
“Morning hot stuff,” Conrad said softly, sleep still hanging on his words.
“Morning.” I reached out for him and wove my hand around the back of his knees and slumped against his hip.
“Coffee?” he asked as he played with the edges of my hair.
“Second pot.” I pointed to the freshly brewed on the counter.
“She’s been up that long?” He blew out a heavy sigh before bending to kiss the top of my head and step away to pour a cup.
Things had mellowed in the last month, and after that week—hell, after that night, the one when Elle met Mickey, and my thigh met a bullet—I thanked God every day that was quiet. I only wished that Elle’s soul hadn’t gone silent too. Her whole being seemed fragile, or maybe hollow, where she sat in the morning light, her hands clasped around a coffee mug, desperate to find warmth.
Fucking Cole.
He made my blood boil. Elle had killed for him. Leveled her family to nothing, and he… He was a fucking ass for leaving her alone in the cold.
“I don’t think she sleeps anymore,” I answered with a low snarl in my voice.
The honest truth was that I really didn’t either. Conrad worked so hard to pull the splinters of my soul back together but it was still a wild, untamed landscape. Some wasted planet, inhospitable and almost inhumane. I mean I sure as shit didn’t want to live there.
Killing Siobhan had fractured me in a way nothing else had. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her struggling beneath my hands, her hands clawing at the plastic sack I used to suck the life out of her. Well, that or the time that she’d consoled me in the dark, when for a brief second she’d cradled my soul. I couldn’t decide which was worse.
I couldn’t regret the decision. If the question was Cole or Siobhan—better yet, Elle or Siobhan—I knew who my heart clung to.
When Conrad finished pouring himself a cup, I grabbed the pot and a fresh Poptart and took them to her.
“You gotta eat something, Fucktart.” I set the pastry down as I warmed her barely sipped coffee.
She flinched then curled in on herself when I used her nickname.
“Fuck, Elle. I’m sorry, I’m trying.” I knew the wounds that name spliced open. All I wanted to do was heal them.
“I know, Horse.” She flashed me a half hearted smile before taking a small sip of her coffee.
Whatever vision I saw of Siobhan behind closed eyes was nothing compared to the one of Elle simply smiling. Her bright and brilliant smile. Her after sex smile. The one she managed to hold just for me.
I gathered her tiny body and pulled her into my lap. The sun had warmed her skin and the sweater she wore but it hadn’t gone much deeper. I nestled into her hair and breathed in, hoping to still smell Cole. Instead she just sighed and cuddled into my chest. That was a different type of comfort.
“I have to go to work, but I’ll be back later.” Conrad took my lips by nuzzling in between Elle and I; I had to fight the urge to push him away. “I owe you something special.” He arched his eyebrows suggestively, leaving no question as to what he had in mind.
I found a smile for him despite the turbulence rattling my insides.
Elle waited until Conrad shut the door on his way to work to break the silence.
“I’m happy for you, Horse. I’m happy you’re happy.” She rested her head on my shoulder like she couldn’t possibly hold it up on her own anymore.
Something about the beauty that always seeped from her insides pulled my words out.
“I’m not happy, Elle. I don’t even know how to be anymore,” I whispered.
“But Conrad…?”
“Is only part of my puzzle. Him and I are like Black Widow and Iron Man without the rest of the Avengers.” I traced the pattern in the carpet as I thought about the hole left in my heart, the loneliness I felt even with two roommates. Or better yet, two lovers.
“You think you’re Iron Man?”
God, I died when I could spark a little something in her voice. It was the only reason I let her poke fun at Iron Man.
“Who do you think I am?”
She mused for a moment, even stroking her chin and sipping on her coffee, before answering. “The Hulk.”
“Because I’m big? Come on, Elle.” I jostled her against my chest then let my laugh rumble against her shoulder.
“No.” She reached up and let her delicate fingertips trace the edges of my shortly trimmed beard. “Because you’re pure and goodness despite the size. Your heart shows through. So does the fury at what you’re forced to do sometimes too.”
Those tiny fingertips never failed to grip my heart and squeeze.
“Damn you for seeing straight through me.” I whispered just before I took her lips.
Conrad would rail on if he saw this. Or maybe even run again and I’d have to give chase, but the idea of warming Elle’s soul was tempting. The taste of cherry too.
She kissed me back so sweetly, as if she honestly wanted to taste me.
“I can’t chase him to Seattle again. I can’t see my former life in ashes as my reality sifts like silt through my hands.” Salt tinged her words as they grazed my lips and I sat back only to find her tears trembling on her plump pout.
“This life isn’t so bad is it?” I spoke softly, my words mingling with her breath.
“It’s the most beautiful black and white sketch.” She clung to me and my fingers tightened on her in response.
Before I really thought it through, I lifted her onto the small table Conrad had insisted I put in our breakfast nook. Elle was splayed before me as I shimmied off her sweats, determined now to make her more than smile. Maybe make her feel that tight grip she kept on my heart.
An orgasm or two never hurt anyone anyways.
She balled her fingers into her sweatshirt and pulled the sleeves up and over only to cover her eyes with the well-worn fabric. I knew she was hiding herself, maybe even her tears, but I had to try. Maybe I’d catch the smallest bit of Cole on the tip of my tongue. Maybe I’d send the smallest bit of the magic he’d been racing through her veins.
It was only at the last minute, before my tongue traced her clit that I heard her heart heavy words and wondered why I did it. Why I did any of it. Well, except keep on loving her the only way I knew how. They were the words that thumped through my heart, a mimic of her own.
“I miss his splash of brilliant color.”
*****
There was a weird dichotomy in my life. Life with Conrad was easier without Cole but everything else was fragmented and hard. Particularly my heart.
At home I missed him. I craved his touch, his bastard-ass laugh. That easy bit of warmth and understanding he always brought into my life. And when I saw the little shell of Elle sitting around, I was desperate to have him come back and breathe life back into her body.
Then I’d see him at Mickey’s.
The cold, smug face he wore made me picture strangling him. The abandonment and fury warred in my chest until snarls rattled my very bones. I’d kill him for what he was putting us through. And since he didn’t seem to care, to feel, I didn’t mind shanking him one bit. I wondered if the bastard would even bleed.
“Elle,” I called as I climbed the last few stairs to her room. “ElleBelle,” I called again, remembering to use Conrad’s nickname for her despite how it stuck on my tongue.
There was no answer, not even a rustle on the other side of the door. I didn’t want to invade but there were days the sorrow living inside the hollows of Elle’s deep eyes seemed like it may eat her alive. I had to check she hadn’t been bitten by her own hand and left to bleed out onto the floor.
I had to clench my hand into a fist to steady it before I could shove the door aside. Even them that deep, almost Morgan Freeman-style voice, whispered what if in my ear. I had to face it every time I went looking for her. What if this was the day she couldn’t live without him any more? What if it was the day I couldn’t?
Knowing I had her, my twin soul struggling in the deep, gave me strength and I pushed open the door.
No Elle was to be found. And yet every single inch was reminiscent of her. The room she’d adopted was bare but more than blank walls it was an utter emptiness. A few ratty sweatshirts laid in a pile and the sheet she tangled up in at the end of her long days was another wild heap. The only sign up life was the beautifully expressive eyes that littered the space.
Cole’s eyes were sketched on every single free surface in the room. Hundreds of loose, crumpled papers but also one of her walls which she’d tried to erase and a pillow case she’d turned inside out. He was the ghost that haunted this house when he’d died and left his body to rot in Mickey’s crypt. He’d shattered her fragile little wings after promising to be the one to make her fly.
I wanted to hold her.
I wanted to choke him within an inch of his life.
Instead, I reached for the nearest sketch and folded it then slid it into my pocket. I’d been collecting them, storing them in the folds of my wallet only to look at them in my darkest moments. The moments when I wanted him back despite it all.
*****
What happened? Like what in the ever loving fuck just happened? A few days ago I’d been hoping—no praying—that Cole would be the man Elle couldn’t stop sketching. I’d prayed he’d loose the Bruce jerk-off Wayne and become Batman. He’d swoop in and save her.
He’d swoop in and save me.
Instead, he’d pounced on her like a big ole rapey cat. He’d even sharpened his claws down her back as he took any shred of life she had left to give. As he fucked the last little bit of gold out of her. But I was left wondering if he’d meant to feast on her soul too. If I weren’t riding in the backseat of Mickey’s black SUV, I would have strangled Cole until I got answers.
I had a feeling he had his own version of sketched and serious eyes somewhere, the mirror to Elle’s, but it made me all the more furious.
“You seem somewhere else, lad.” Mickey’s voice had an edge that made me shift in my seat.
“Just thinking,” I answered automatically.
“About Elle? The sweet cunny sack of cherries you’ve brought me?”
His voice was so casual, his tone so flippant that I couldn't help but growl at him, hoping it was hidden in the backseat like so many of my advances and interferences had been in his lair.
“You saw what happened to Cole when he put her first.” He arched his eyebrow and I caught it in the rearview mirror.
“I…”
“Have a choice to make,” Mickey finished for me as the crap metal siding of The Butcher’s shop came into view in the wash of headlights.
The moment the car stopped, Mickey stepped out and reached for my door then gestured for me to slid out. I swallowed a hard lump in my throat as I followed the unspoken command. I usually walked in front of Mick into places like this but today, something about the feral fierceness in his eyes told me to watch my back every bit as close as I would my front.
I was so busy flitting between Mickey and the door in front of me that I didn’t notice the bat that came out of nowhere until it thudded and splintered across the back of my head. After that I noticed next to nothing in the few moments as the world woozed and then went dark.
*****
“Horse,” a voice taunted in the dark. “Horsey.”
I shook my head a little then froze, feeling my brain slosh in my head. I went to rub my temples but was met with the thick grind of rope into the tendons of my wrists. My eyes snapped open as I pulled harder. Concrete flooring with a single drain was in front of me and nothing but skin roped to metal behind.
“Breathe,” I murmured to myself.
“He’s awake.” The Butcher’s evil hiss made my heart stutter step.
“Does she have the ledger?” Mickey asked, his voice like an arctic breeze where he leaned in close.
“What?” I couldn’t quite get my bearings.
“Does she have the ledger?” he repeated just before his elbowed wheeled on my jaw.
“Who?” I had to spit out blood to ask.
“Elle!” he shouted just before he kicked the chair out from under me.
I hit the ground with a thud as the air rushed out of my lungs and my head rebounded against the concrete. Mickey’s feet stomped next to my shoulders a moment before his knees crunched onto my chest. He bent his body so his nose was far too close, the bloodshot of his eyes was too vivid.
“I don’t think…” I stammered.
“What is it about this lass that keeps everyone from thinking clearly?” He asked as he reached down and wrapped his hands around my throat. “You’re mine, Horse.” He squeezed and I uselessly tried to fight against his grip. “You don’t think about her. You know about her. You report that knowledge to me.” He used his grip to crack my head against the concrete.
The world flickered off and on.
“Does she have the ledger?” he asked again, fury fringing his voice.
“No,” I gasped through chapped and cracking lips.
“And if she did?”
I knew what answer he was looking for. I knew he wanted to detail how I’d tear her to shreds. But she was my little fragile bird and the God’s honest truth was that I’d do anything to keep her safe. I already had.
“If she had the ledger, Horse?” His voice went still, a sign that real wrath built behind it.
The words wouldn’t come and it had nothing to do with his hands strangling me. Or the whomp in my head that faded in and out with the florescent swinging light.
“Last chance, Horse.” Mickey’s hands finally left my throat, instead reaching for the hook that The Butcher held out for him.
I couldn’t. She’d melded her soul to mine courtesy of Cole and I’d connection. She’d smoothed it out with Conrad’s. Like she was the missing piece to a puzzle I’d tried so hard to solve. I wouldn’t lose that. Not even for Mickey.
But true to his villain fashion he was determined to pry something from me. He wanted my life whether by loyalty or blood. He fisted on the hook and punched into my stomach, hard enough that something dislodged and I coughed wildly. He answered with a similar smash to my jaw. Pain seared through my tongue as it caught in my teeth. Salty, iron heat poured into my mouth.
I bellowed, feeling the spatter of blood on my chin and cheeks.
“Say it, Horse. Say it and it stops.” Mickey shoved at my shirt, exposing my bruised side. He drug the tip of The Butcher’s hook down my side, gently, almost as if it was a lover’s caress. “Say you choose me.”
When I didn’t answer—when I focused on my beautiful bird and her big doe eyes pleading with me—Mickey pressed the hook harder into my flesh. The give of my skin happened just before the pain tore through me.
I screamed ferociously, feeling my voice claw at my throat the way the steel shredded my skin. My hands ached where the metal dug into them and as I screamed I pulled on my bonds and split across my ribs. Mickey simply cut in further. Blood burned and bubbled as it poured down my body and puddled on the floor.
“I hope she’s worth it, Horse. I hope she’s worth your life.”
I wanted to tell him that she was. That she loved me despite it all, maybe even because of it all. I wanted to tell him that she saw the tough guy and the soft gumdrop. She saw Batman and Robin. She saw Hulk. And she loved them all. That was enough for me.
But for Mickey, my silence wasn’t filled with brilliant words, it was simply a reason to slam his fist into my face and turn my world back to black.
*****
Weird things happened when consciousness slipped between my fingers. Flashbacks. Bright light. A hazy alternate world.
I saw the moment Cole walked into my life as a brash little kid and every single moment that he’d been a warm blanket for me to snuggle up to since. He was comfortable and seemed to fend off the monsters that hid under my bed. Under my skin.
I saw Conrad, too. The moment he shined something bright into my life and the monsters shied away completely. It was blinding around him and his perfectly white smile, so blinding in fact, that at first, I slunk away. I retreated to the shadow where my life was dark but made an easy sense.
The blanket was so tempting, so familiar and cozy. And as my side wept I wanted to wrap up inside him despite what an asshat he was and feel the love of something known. Something intimate in a way almost nothing else could be.
I never thought to ask for the thing that might burn, but might chase away the demons with it’s brilliance too.
So I clung to him, to them—to Cole and Elle—as if they were the soft down that might shield me from the nightmare I was living. The hurt and the pain. They were the soft pillow my head could rest on.
I never considered that I needed a steel cage around my heart rather than fluff around my shoulders.
Cole’s hand fit so well in mine. Not only in a callused and rough reality but also as a reflection of the life that I clung to with full hands in those first few hours after Mickey hoisted me up to bleed to death.
It wasn’t until I could breathe easy again that I realized I’d clung to the wrong security. And more over, that violent grip to what I knew had fractured something far more elusive. The unknown. The things I was unworthy of. The future I could have had Conrad.
*****
Sometimes it still felt like a fever dream. Like clinging to his hand so hard as I bled on his couch. More than once I had to check that my skin wasn’t still split open from The Butcher. But it was healing. And I was intact.
More than that, Elle was loving me in her tender, easy, all consuming way. And Cole… Cole was folded beneath me. Apologizing for all the wrongs between us. Apologizing the only way he knew how.
This was his warped way of telling me he loved me. Unconditionally.
Letting him, losing myself to his lips on my body, was my way of accepting everything that was and wasn’t between us. For good.
But when an orgasm courtesy of the mouth I’d always dreamed about ripped through my body, something broke inside me. It carved out this fragment I hadn’t known was hidden inside. Something foreign. Something that said this moment was wrong. That my dreams were nothing more than illusions in a bone dry desert.
I’d done a ton of fucked up and devious sexual shit but sharing in the love that ebbed between Cole and I—or Cole and Elle and I—never qualified. But this time… This time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was cheating on Conrad.
He’d told me this was the line. I went and crossed it anyway. I always had. All through childhood, and too many times to count with Callum. Tempted by the gorgeous, ripe fruit of my repeated sin. The guilt shouldn’t have been eating at me. Not when Cole had been.
But it was.
A mean and wicked monster clawed at my stomach. And when Cole, Elle and I basked in the intimacy of an after glow in the tattoo shop, it continued to snarl in my stomach. I should have known what it was signaling. That it was foreshadowing of the thing that would eat me alive. Instead, when Conrad burst in and caught me red handed, I treated the feeling like a feral animal.
I fought him. Hard. I fought for what I knew, what I was comfortable with, what I thought I always wanted, not once considering that I fought the fear of wanting something new. Something real. That I fought fate itself.
Conrad was mine, but I was the last to admit it. The last to accept it. I’d done everything I could to sabotage it including feast on forbidden fruit. And what was worse, when I realized it, when I spat out that snake’s damned chunk of apple and cleared my throat, Conrad was already gone.
Part Nine
Save the world, get the girl. Sort of.
I lost him. I lost him because I’m selfish. I lost him because I deserved it. I repeated my mantra as I washed my gritty face in the motel sink just as I’d done everyday since I’d left Chicago.
Terrified. That was what I’d been then—when I realized how much I cared about Conrad. If only my fear hadn’t manifested in pushing him as far from me as I could. Paralyzed. What I was now that I was traipsing through central america, hoping to find him, desperate to win him back.
Elle was what had spurred me on. Her unwavering faith in Cole. The love that seeped from her every pore. Cole never believed himself worthy of that specific type of honest worship, but somehow he accepted it. As if God himself had demanded Cole take the gift he was giving, and miraculously Cole—for once in his ever loving life—listened.
It had been a thunderclap that struck me when I admitted that I might get that too. The deep dark recesses of my heart didn’t want to hear it, they didn’t want to hear anything besides the unworthy, unworthy, unworthy and monster, monster, monster that beat in my head and heart. But the moment I realized, the moment my heart cracked open and I let the possibility of him in, those words beat in time with his name.
My heart twisted up and tore in a million pieces as I followed his clues from city to city. I worked so hard to collect them all and pile them back into the right shape on my own, but I knew they needed bright pink duct tape like only Conrad would carry.
He was my quest and damn did it hurt.
Mercifully, the minutes Cole needed me to ride in and be his white Horse were some of the most peaceful chaos of my life. It was death and mayhem and all vagrant sins of my life, but it was normal. It was easy.
Saving Elle was something my soul yearned to do. She was my Fucktart, my dove, my inspiration. I couldn’t let that flame of love die out. And Cole was a piece of my very being, something I couldn’t shake from the depth of me no matter the time and space. Saving her was saving us both in that sort of way too.
When the dust settled and Cole looked at me like a hero, and Elle’s hope smoldered deep down as the most faint ember it was worth it. But we were different. They had become something new, something broken and beautifully reassembled. I didn’t really fit any more. I was in awe. I was jealous.
But I finally fucking understood.
And each day, despite how it hurt to seek out something light and lovely, I did it. I did it for them. For Conrad. Hell, I sort of did it for me. I just wasn’t quite able to admit it yet.
Mexico was equal parts beauty and broken. The colors stuck in my mind like one of Elle or Cole’s paintings, vibrant and alive. Breathtaking. The flavors burst in my mouth, splashing something similarly vivid across my tongue. Citrus, lime, octopus, pork. It was all animated, energetic, in such a different way than Chicago. Music punctuated every bit of life.
There was the grime too. The trash and the tear stained faces. The lone dogs with bared ribs scrounging the streets. But for me, that just made it real. And when the waves crashed upon the ever present shore, it washed anything ugly away.
I wanted to share it all with Conrad. I wanted to hear his comments about eating tentacles, about eating my tentacle. I wanted to watch him dance to the music, I wanted him to get me to try. I wanted him to paint stories for the sad and lonely people that littered the side streets, breathing new life into their defeated eyes.
But it was the street markets that made me miss him most. The hand knit shalls with long flowing tassels and the carved little hair combs. Maybe most of all were the most decorative hand-painted fans made of small wooden slats that clacked open when I snapped them. His eyes would light up and he’d bite his cheek until I told him to go ahead.
As I ran my fingers over the wares of some vender in Akumal, I found a fan with a wild stallion painted on the folds of fabric and couldn’t help but buy it. The hope that one Conrad would hold it, that he’d make one of his stupid scenes with it pulled a smile across my face.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to see that smile again. I figured I would know whether I forgave you when I saw it.”
I knew that voice. I knew the sharp sting of sass and the caress of all the syllables in between. It was like an old lover’s voice caressing my skin. I turned into that caress.
And was slapped by the sight of him.
His skin had baked to a dark caramel and his hair had bleached out. He’d shaved his mustache and goatee but the scruff was filling back in wild like the hair that fell in his bright, appraising eyes. His tattoos peeked out out of his V-neck and added color to his tanned shins.
I blew out a deep breath before I could respond. “Well?”
He simply cocked his eyebrow and pursed his lips.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time.” A shy smile split across my face.
“Not hard enough, Horse. I didn’t make it fucking difficult.” He shoved his hands on his hips.
“I had to take a detour.” My eyes fell from his, the things I’d seen to heavy to show him plain.
“For Cole?” he sneered.
“For Elle,” I snapped back.
“Elle Belle? What happened?” His heart poked through in his tone, his anger going tepid.
“Not here.” I rubbed the back of my neck, wondering where to even start.
“Is she okay?”
I let the question hang in the air. I didn’t know quite how to answer Conrad. At the most basic level, yeah, she was. She needed food and water and a doctor and a million other things but she was alive. Cole was determined to save her, he’d gone to the depths of hell to do it, so eventually…
“Horse!” Conrad yelled to snap me out of it but it was his hand clasping on my shoulder that shook my very core.
I was reaching for his shirt before I had a chance to check myself, fisting into the fabric to drag him to my lips. He was still off kilter from grabbing me, from me whirling on him. All the better for me to pull him flush to me and kiss the ever-loving shit out of him.
It wasn’t a kiss, it was the clash of Thor’s hammer, completely with some god-like spark that stung my lips when they took his. For a moment he didn’t respond, he stood shocked beneath me, but then that jolt between us brought him to life. His hands came to the curve of my back and rubbed once before the dug in. He pulled my hips flush to his, telling me exactly how happy he actually was to see me.
Every touch, every kiss was more needy than the last. Sweet and urgent became claw and nip. I had to talk my hands into letting go of his chest even just to slide down below his belt.
“Not here,” he echoed my words breathy and into my open, wanting mouth. “And not before you fucking explain.” He leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth to soften the blow.
“Fine. Where to?” I held firm to the waistband of his pants.
He pushed my hand from his clothes and pointed toward the beach. I watched his fine ass and even more beautiful back take a few steps before I followed. He flipped sand with his sandals a few times before he bent to slide them off. The view was fantastic.
Just before the hard and wet sand he folded down and prepared himself up on his thick arms. I took a second to watch him digs toes into the sand before I sat next to him. Little moments like that were so simple, so sexy. I leaned into his shoulder when I planted next to him then twisted to kiss his shoulder.
“You can’t just kiss this away,” he said without really moving away from me.
“I can try.” I flashed the best smile I could in his direction.
“Tell me about Elle.” He sighed still staring out at the ocean rather than making eye contact with me.
I wanted nothing more than for him to bite, for him to play with me—literally or figuratively—but he wasn’t wavering. The waves crashed, hypnotic and soothing on the sand nearby and I forced my breathing to match the sound before I found my words.
The story was shaky at best, my words stuck in my throat and on my tongue. They hitched in my teeth. The image seared into my mind of her shattered self was nothing compared to giving voice to it. The shape and sound of each syllable dragged in something stormy across the coast.
“She…” His voice quaked. “She’s alive?” he managed.
“She was when I left.” I loathed that was the best answer I could give.
The silence stretched out between us, almost as deep as the rolling sea itself.
“The last thing I said to her was so bitchy.” He flopped back onto the sand and started to rub on his temples.
“The next thing won’t be.” I shot him a shy smile over my shoulder.
“That’s not much consolation, considering…” His hands contorted his sweet face as the scrubbed at his skin.
“Every day is a grind, Conrad,” I sighed. “But every day is a gift too. She lived when so many others died. She has Cole when so many other people are alone.”
“Always look on the bright side?”
“You taught me that.” I turned toward him and this time, planted my hands on either side of his body, bringing my nose within inches of his. “You taught me so much about life and love and light. It’s all things I shared with Elle.” I was hovering closer and closer, my lips so close to his.
“It’s the fucking sharing that kills me.” He ripped his hand from his eyes and crashed it down into the sand.
I jerked back and fell into my seat in the sand, staring out at the same sea as he shot up after me, still rubbing his temples as he arched over his knees.
“I can’t change that, Conrad. I wouldn’t, either.”
“It’s the thing that keeps breaking us and you wouldn’t make it disappear?” he sneered, incredulous.
“We keep breaking us. Not them.” I stood, feeling all the conflict build inside me and stomped to the edge of the wave. The cool enveloped my toes and spattered up my ankles. “I am what I am Conrad. I’m a selfish, monstrous murderer who likes dick and pussy. I try to be better. I try to be worth it…” I kicked an oncoming wave. “And you? You judge and run and wallow. You love fiercely but you hate fervently, too.”
A few waves crashed at my feet and I sensed him step behind me.
“I get that I’ve fucked up, I do.” My voice was ratcheting up, competing with the roar inside me every bit as much as it was competing with the waves. “But you have too. This whole chase, this whole hunt is pretty fucked up, dude. I wanna talk to you. I wanna apologize. I wanna make up but you’re fucking zigzagging across a continent, filling up Hemingway pages and waiting for me to prove something.”
“Horse…” he tried to still me, to stop my words.
“No, Conrad. I always take it, I sit by and let things happen to me, and I’m not going to anymore,” I snarled and shrugged his hand off my shoulder. “Fucking cats,” I swore under my breath. “I don’t want love to just happen to me. I want you. I want to be with you. I traipsed an entire fucking continent for you. Why isn’t that enough?”
“It…” he stammered behind me. “It…should be.”
He stepped in front of me and placed his hands on my pecs, letting his thumbs move in small circles on my skin.
“So why isn’t it?” I couldn’t pull my eyes from the horizon.
“Because I’m vain and insecure.” He leaned in and notched himself beneath my chin. “Because I love you, but I worry you love him more. Because I’m afraid of getting hurt this time.”
Those words coaxed my arms around his shoulders. I knew how raw that vulnerability felt and I wanted nothing more than to shield him.
“I will always love him, Conrad, but I can’t be in love with him.” The truth left my lungs in a long and beautiful exhale. “He and I weren’t meant to be together. Even before Elle that was true. And I’m starting to think it’s because I was always meant to be with you.”
“I always wanted to be Lois Lane. She knew how to rock a pencil skirt.” His words were littered with his breathy laugh. Each syllable punctuating on my skin.
“Be serious,” I scolded as my fingers felt up the curves they’d been desperately seeking.
“I am.” He hooked his fingers into my belt. “I’m serious about you.”
*****
The heady smell of Conrad’s coconut skin was playing with my senses. And the kisses he peppered up the sides of my neck were jerking on my heart. His fingers kept finding their way to the hem of my shirt and he’d start to pull. It took everything I had to shove them back down.
“The miles between us don’t just disappear.” My voice was breathy and hitched as the white curtains of his hotel room blew around my shins.
“Seems like a distant memory to me.” He pressed his body fully to mine and his hands wandered down the ripples of my stomach.
I couldn’t help but roll my head back onto his shoulder and watch the shadows that danced across the ceiling, a dark reflection of the way sheer fabric that wove around my legs.
“Conrad…” I scolded.
“I know they don’t, Horse. But right now, I’m focused on you,” he breathed. “I’m focused on us.” He drug his teeth up the edge of my ear.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“And on the fact that you said we may belong together.”
This time when his hands slid to the hem of my shirt, I didn’t shove him away. There were so many things left unsaid between us, so much unresolved bullshit, but as he pulled the cotton over my shoulders and freed my chest, I figured a few of them could wait. My worries hit the floor with the same soft rumple of fabric as my shirt fell to the tile.
“Escape for a few hours,” Conrad whispered. “Leave the cape at the door.”
“I’m a villain, Coconut.” The name just came out, more a moan than anything as he kissed squarely in the ridge between my shoulders.
“That’s cream pie to you,” he snarked as he bit into the meat of my traps. “And leave your cape at the door all the same.”
There it was, so simple and yet riddled with complex. We could just be, could just bumble through whatever darkness, but there were reasons to be afraid of the dark.
I groaned when his hands slid beneath my waistband. And when he stepped around me and fell to his knees, a ball of bright and beautiful sunshine, I surrendered, ready for light or dark. Maybe even a life just lived in between.
The ocean crashed on the shore we overlooked but the way my heart pummeled my chest dulled the sound. Blood rushed through my body, and tunneled the sound further as he slid my shorts downward.
I’d been hard since I saw him in the market. The push and pull between us had only made it manageable, but here, now, I winced as I fell out towards his lips. When he didn’t take me in his mouth, when he waited until I looked down into his brilliant blue eyes and saw the fire blazing behind the ice, I became nothing but sensation.
There wasn’t judgement or a war of feelings. There wasn’t hurt or question. There wasn’t fear or confusion. There was just need. Want. Lust. Bright and alive as if they were the makeup of my every cell.
He pulled off his shirt, so slow that the poetry inked across his body read itself to me straight from skin to soul. I twitched in front of his face and his crooked smile pulled at his lip. His chest flexed inward and he shivered as his hands came to my thighs. His fingers traveled the dips and valleys of my legs as he slid upwards.
The waves kept crashing in my ears, still more inside my body than out. Sweat and sweet coconut filled the room with the most heady scent. Every bone in my body hummed lyrics to the songs scrolled on Conrad’s chest.
I wanted to murmur please but there weren't words anymore. My tongue was heavy in my mouth and my lips going bone dry but it was more than that. He’d robbed me of the ability to think, to reason. He’d replaced it with only the capacity to feel.
Feel as his warm, wet lips wrapped themselves around me. As his hands curled into my ass. As he hollowed out his cheeks and took me to the back of his throat. Feel the bones in my fingers unhinge only long enough to grasp his surf soaked hair and pull.
He purred as he took me all the way back into his throat. It wasn’t the breeze that made my nipples go hard.
I shook as he moved up and down, his hands pulling my hips to meet his mouth. I wanted to control the pace, to move faster and deeper into him, but my body wouldn’t do anything but hold on for dear life. And when I thought I might shatter into pieces the size of the shells on the beach, he slowed down.
And took me deeper.
Then swallowed.
He moved up equally as slow, letting his tongue make a lazy S along the base of my cock. When I fell from his lips, I actually whimpered. It was the only sound that was sharp enough to cut through the constant boom wreaking havoc on my ears.
His answering husky chuckle was cut short when he took my balls into his mouth. The waves beating inside my chest turned into tsunamis, one right after another. I let him suck and play until my knees quaked with the same earth changing force as my heart.
Conrad’s lips only left me long enough for him to lick his hand then wrap it around me. His strokes started out in time with the way his mouth massaged. Then the bastard mixed them up.
My world went bright white and it wasn’t the reflection of the glittering sun off the water or even as it bleached the brilliant sand. It was him. It was the shit he could do with his mouth. It was me abandoning myself. And surrendering to someone else.
I crashed to the floor like the water on the sand, both natural and surprising all at once. Conrad’s wide and wild eyes met mine, his mouth still open and waiting. It only took him a heartbeat to feel the pull of the tide and smash back into me, mouth first. Salt crusted his lips, tasting distinctly of the sweat that hung to my body, the flavor we made together. His hand went back to stroking.
“Fucking cats,” I whispered into his open mouth.
“Fucking something,” he answered.
Our tongues began their wild dance again, tumbling until I trembled under the weight of his kiss. His stroke. As if he knew, his big hand slid across my back and supported me as he lowered me back to the floor behind me.
The sunbaked tile warmed my skin while Conrad seared where he touched. The sheer white curtains still billowed at my calves. He folded neatly between my knees and bent down, his tongue touching my skin as he licked from between my thighs and up my dick where it laid heavy on my stomach. Then the space between my abs and across my breastbone. When he crossed my lips, I moved to kiss him, my mouth begging for his, but he simply flicked his tongue as if I was the best tasting ice cream he’d ever had and moved to shove off his pants.
He shimmied up along my body until he sat on my chest, his heels wrapped under my shoulders. My mouth opened automatically, needing to take him more than anything else. Needing that earth quaking connection back. He teased me with his perfect tip, and I sat up for more as best I could each and every time.
More.
God, I wanted more. I would pray for it, too. To heaven, even if the angels wouldn’t listen. To the minions of hell if it would deliver what I craved. To Superman, Iron Man and Batman too if it fucking helped.
Once again Conrad read my ass like a book. He sat up, pushing his dick down my throat and as I swallowed on it, he turned himself and locked his lips on me.
I’d sixty-nined a chick before but this was different. I just had to keep up. And he was treating me so right, sucking every single inch so unbelievably well, I had to use every godforsaken trick I could vaguely remember as he picked up pace.
His body was sprawled out on top of me, rolling ink against my rigid muscle. My hands wrapped up and around his thick thighs. He hummed when I dug in and I arched off the floor, our bodies bowing together, my head chattering against the tile.
I expected him to push up and completely take over. To take what he wanted from me, to use my body.
But Conrad slid his mouth off me and kissed the base of my cock. His fingers slid back between my thighs in time with another kiss. He crooked up inside my ass as his thrusts switched back to slow and steady in my throat.
“Horse.” His voice was low, ragged as he buried his face between my hips.
Something about the tone—or maybe the way he pushed up inside me—ran through me. My body tremored and jerked a moment before my orgasm barreled through me. Cum spattered onto my stomach and a little on his shoulder but it was my primal growl, cut off by his still pistoning hips.
His lips came back to my stomach, his tongue swirling in the jizz on my skin. He didn’t stop the assault on my throat. I didn’t want him to. Conrad deserved the release I’d gotten. And then some. I closed my lips and hollowed my cheeks just to make sure.
“You’re my kryptonite.” His admission was so pained, so naked, that I choked back something beside his cock.
And when he released, I swallowed a fuck ton more.
Conrad collapsed beside me, his head by my hips as we both stared at the ceiling. As our breathing slowed, the sound of waves just below filtered back into the room.
“Kryptonite huh?” I finally asked.
“Yeah.” He was still breathing heavily.
“It’s the thing that destroys Superman. It’s what kills him.” I wasn’t sure of my words, mostly because I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was saying.
“Yeah, and?”
The sounds of the ocean filled the room again, gulls shredding into the silence that grew between us.
“What am I supposed to do with that, Cream Pie?” I brushed my fingers against his thigh, tracing words I couldn’t read from here.
“Do you love me?” he asked, his voice warm, breathy, otherworldly.
I took a deep breath. I’d said it before but this time it was raw and naked, deeper and more solid. But I still wanted to say it. Needed to actually.
“I do,” I said with conviction but still warm as honey. “I love you.”
“And tell me that might not rip you to pieces somedays.” He grabbed my fingers and wove our hands together.
“Already has a few times,” I murmured.
“I can die a thousand deaths but the only one that decimates my soul is the one at your hands.” He brought our hands up to the V of his hips. “I mean it’s either you or them leaving the ending of the Netflix Gilmore Girls as is.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. He let me then let the husky sound fade back into the roll and crash of the ocean.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked, the words almost swallowed by the water.
Conrad sat up, his beautiful prose filled body becoming the art canvas that filled my vision. He pulled our hands to a spot of brighter ink than the others. New words were tattooed in the shape of a horseshoe over his left breast.
You keep me safe. I’ll keep you wild.
I clutched my hand into his chest and leaned in to kiss him, to taste my future, my Cream Pie, all over again. Those two sentences were all the answer I needed.
*****