Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kane
I closed my eyes as the water scoured my skin. Steam filled the air around me, and I inhaled and exhaled deep slow breaths. The ironic thing was, I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the nightmare that had terrified me so much, and yet, I was having a hard time letting the terror go regardless. The feel of it had simply imprinted itself on me.
I picked up Helene’s shampoo, smelling it. It smelled like her hair—of course it did, but it still made my lips pull up. By the time I climbed out of her shower five minutes later, I was clean as a whistle, smelled like Helene from head to foot, and I’d used a loofa for the first time in my entire life. I was also finally calm.
Until I stepped out.
She was sitting naked on the bathroom counter, her legs dangling in front of the vanity. Her palms were planted on the countertop as she lounged there waiting for me, and my heart sped as prickles of warmth settled in my groin. She didn’t have large breasts, but they were so perfectly perky, and her nipples were hard and protruding. I’d always thought large tits were my preference, but it was funny how much you could love something simply because it was part of something else you loved.
She watched me, her face calm. I stepped in front of her, and her eyes moved over my body.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked me quietly.
I looked down at her lap, and when I reached for her knees, I glanced at her eyes. I shook my head, and I pulled her legs apart. Her chest rose as she took a deep breath.
“These are very pretty,” I whispered as I ran the back of my fingers over her nipple.
She gasped as her chest shrank back and her nipples hardened even more.
“So is this,” I said just as quietly when I ran my other hand between her legs. I let my fingers graze gently between her lips, and her thighs trembled.
She watched my eyes when she reached down and pulled my hand away from her body. She closed her legs, never once breaking eye contact with me.
“You’ve been distant since we left my sister’s house earlier today. Then you show up on my doorstep soaked to the bone after walking three miles in the freezing cold rain. You woke me having a nightmare. Moments ago I asked you if you wanted to talk about it, which you politely declined and then rather ineffectively tried to change the subject to sex. And now you want to fuck?” Her behavior was odd as was her expression. She didn’t look the least upset with me. In fact, her expression was serene and calm, almost humored, but there was still a coolness there.
I bit my lip. “Well, when you put it that way, you make me sound unhinged.”
She cocked her head to the side, saying nothing.
“I want to be close to you.” I pushed her knees apart once more, stepping between them so she couldn’t close me out again.
She looked down. “You are close to me.”
I leaned forward, letting my lips nearly touch her ear. “I want to be a part of you,” I whispered.
“You are a part of me,” she whispered back. “You always have been.”
She tilted her head ever so slightly to the side, letting her temple touch mine. An electric shudder of warmth pulsed through me.
“I want to be inside you.” I finally pulled back so I could see her eyes.
She studied me silently, saying nothing at all, and that cool, calm expression of hers continued to toy with me.
I ran my palms up the tops of her thighs, starting at her knees and moving slowly. “Tell me how gentle you want it. Tell me how hard you want it. Do you want it to hurt a little? Tell me you want me to bite your nipples, lick your asshole, stick my finger up it.” I leaned to her ear, whispering, “I will.” And when I pulled back again, her eyes were wide. “Or do you need the control? Do you want to hurt me? Do you need to bite me? Do you want to stick your finger up my ass?” I leaned to her ear again. “I’ll let you,” I said quietly as my lips touched her earlobe. “Just tell me how you want me to give it to you.”
I could feel her thighs shaking under my palms as I pulled back again, and her chest rose and fell deeply. When she swallowed it was a struggle, but she answered regardless of her nervousness. “I want to be under you.”
I stared at her, and when she reached down touching my erection, I moaned softly and closed my eyes for a moment. Her other hand gripped the side of my waist, and she pulled me closer. She scooted her bottom to the edge of the counter, and she forced my cockhead between the lips of her pussy. She was wet, and I slipped easily back and forth as she guided me. She held my dick as my fingers dug into the tops of her thighs, and she glanced down between us. When she pressed the head to her entry and then paused, my jaw clenched tight in desperation. I wanted her to pull my hips forward, so I could impale her. That’s all I needed. One forward tug of my body would drive my cock into her.
But she didn’t.
“How is this any different than being on top of me?” She glanced down between us again. “You’re between my legs. You’re even standing taller than me.”
I looked over her shoulder at her back in the mirror. “Because there isn’t a floor behind you, and you can get away from me,” I said quietly.
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t want to get away from you.”
I wanted to give her what she was asking for. The very notion of putting my weight on her was intoxicating. I couldn’t deny that. And were she any other woman in the world, I could give her what she wanted. But she wasn’t any other woman in the world.
She was my nightmare.
I stepped back from her, and her fingers slipped from their hold on me. She closed her legs again, and her focus shifted to the ground. She looked rejected, and I felt like an asshole. When she slid from the countertop, she turned to walk out. I grabbed her wrist, pulling her back, and her eyes popped open wide. I turned her toward the sink, and I reached for the back of her neck, gripping it as I bent her over. I held her there, stooped over the counter, and her eyes watched me in the mirror.
The irony was, the two times I’d made love to her, she was well and fully under my control. I’d pinned her in place on top of me the first time, and I’d pinned her down to the bed while she was on her stomach the second time. But it wasn’t about the control I had over her. It was the image. It was the sight that had been burned in my mind that had scarred me. It was that and nothing else.
I used my other hand to guide my cock between her legs, and then I tormented her the way she’d been tormenting me. I slid the head up and down along the wet seam of her pussy. “Tell me this is enough for now,” I said as I nudged slightly—just enough to pop the head of my cock past that tight skin at her opening.
A rush of breath left her along with a quiet groan. She nodded.
I pushed then, slow and steady, and her eyes widened even farther as I penetrated her body. It was a torturously slow progression, and I refused to take my eyes off hers the entire time. Her sheath gave way under the insistent pressure, and I felt the warmth of her body hugging my cock the more I pushed. She felt so tight, so wet, and so fucking hot, that when I settled balls deep inside her, I didn’t want to pull back out.
But I did—just as slowly as I’d penetrated her, I left her. I let go of my hold on her neck, and I moved my hands to her hips, using my thumbs to pull her butt cheeks apart. I could see her anus, puckered and tight, and knowing Helene, completely untouched. Fuck, I wanted to touch. Instead, I fucked her, keeping her cheeks open so I could watch. My focus shifted between her ass and her face, moving back and forth as I thrust into her over and over again.
I bounced her body forward into the vanity with every thrust, and she grunted as I’d smack hard into her bottom, pushing in deep. When she reached down between her legs and started toying with her pussy, I was almost shocked my frigid girlfriend had the nerve. How could she be frigid and feel so fucking hot? I leaned over her, bringing my mouth to her shoulder as my hips continued to rock.
I bit the back of her shoulder, and she groaned, and when my hips sped as I got closer and closer, she gasped and whimpered. She cried out when she came, and her head dropped to the counter top. I reached up, twisting my fingers into the hair at the back of her head, and I pulled, forcing her face up to watch mine.
I fucked her fast and hard, holding her head back and forcing her to watch until I hit my limit, slammed into her, and then held still as my muscles went rigid. I emptied myself inside her, biting into her skin again as she cried out, and then I pushed harder, forcing myself to go deeper as she winced.
I collapsed against her back, letting go of her hair, and I dropped my forehead between her shoulder blades, breathing heavily against her skin. I stayed there, catching my breath for a minute, and her back rose and fell as she did the same. I kissed my way down her back, pulling my cock from her body as I moved, and I kissed over the cheeks of her bottom as her muscles flinched.
When I dropped to my knees behind her, I was still kissing her bottom. I ran my hands up the insides of her thighs, and I parted the lips of her sex with my thumbs. She was wet with my cum, and I stared at it, touched it, and finally played with it as I thrust two fingers into her. She groaned as I slid my fingers in and out, and when I abruptly stood, spun her to face me, threw her over my shoulder and walked out, she squealed. I chuckled as I reached up, gripped her ass, and squeezed a cheek hard with my hand. I dropped her on her bed, coming down on top of her, and I kissed her.
“Do you forgive me for being distant because I was trying to process what your life is and how I can deserve a place in it?” I asked her when I pulled back from her lips. But I didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Do you forgive me for walking all the way here in the rain because I desperately needed to see you, but I needed time to compose my thoughts? How about my desire to make love to you rather than rehash a nightmare I can’t remember anyway—am I forgiven for that?” I leaned to her ear then. “Do you forgive me for fucking you hard without your permission? For staring at that tight little asshole of yours and fantasizing about doing all sorts of naughty things to it while I was fucking the hell out of your pussy? Tell me I’m forgiven for that,” I whispered. “What about coming inside you? Making a mess of that sweet pussy and playing with my cum because there’s nothing quite as sweet as knowing I’m inside you even when I’m not inside you.” I finally pulled back from her ear, studying her wide eyes. “Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me for that?”
I watched her throat struggle to swallow and the tendons strain against the tension as she watched me, but she nodded this tight little movement as a breath escaped her and touched my lips.
“Thank God.” I smirked, and I winked. It wasn’t the only thing in the world I needed her forgiveness for, but it was sure as shit the only thing I was willing to deal with at the moment.
I moved off to her side, collapsing onto the bed beside her and rolling toward her. She did the same, and I lifted my top leg as she snuggled up close and slipped her leg between mine. I ran my palm down her cheek, kissed her gently, and then wrapped my arms around her. I rested my chin to the top of her head as she snuggled up close.
“Can you forgive me for not being ready to make love to you the way you want because it terrifies me to remember the sight of you like that?” I whispered.
Her fingers ran down my back, stroking gently and soothingly. “Yes.”
She was silent for a while, and I reached back turning the lamp off. I closed my eyes, and I listened to her breathe as she relaxed.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked a few minutes later.
I’d actually thought she’d fallen asleep. “Of course.”
“How do you have sex with other women?”
I froze, not knowing how she expected me to respond to that. “Hell, what are you—”
“I just mean … is it like this? Or…” The hesitance in her voice was almost painful to hear. “I don’t know,” she finally said, clearly giving up what she was asking.
I reached back and turned the lamp on again. I was almost afraid to face her, because I still wasn’t sure what she was asking me, and I wasn’t sure if this was something I could talk to her about. But when I faced her, she looked even more terrified than me.
“Helene—”
“Please forget I asked,” she said quietly as she looked down.
“I don’t want to forget. I want to understand what you’re asking.”
She sighed, but it was troubled. “Are you gentler with me, because you’re afraid of—”
“I wasn’t gentle a little while ago.” I tried to smile, but her face was too serious, and my smile faded.
“But you use … things … with other women.” Her eyes glanced to mine so fast I nearly missed it.
“Things,” I repeated. “I don’t need things.”
“But … maybe you want things even if you don’t need them. I mean, if it were completely up to you, my feelings aside entirely, how would you choose to have sex with me?” She bit her lower lip. “Is it somehow different—”
“Of course it’s different. Shouldn’t it be?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t offended.
She stared at me, biting her lip again.
“Helene, what are you trying to say?”
“It makes me feel inadequate.” The words rushed out, and then she took a deep breath. “You’ve been with other women in ways you don’t want to be with me.”
“Yes,” I said adamantly. “There are absolutely things I’ve done with other women that I don’t want to do with you.” I sounded nearly angry, and I forced myself to take a deep breath.
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Like what?” Her voice was too quiet.
I’d hurt her feelings.
She watched me for a moment, waiting for an answer, and when I failed to deliver, she scoffed angrily. “I can’t stand knowing there are answers in your mind you’re not willing to say to me. Images, memories that you think I can’t handle or think will hurt my feelings. Imagine what that feels like. Please don’t overprotect me, because it makes me feel … pathetic.” She stared at me for a second. Her eyes were begging me to understand what she was saying.
“I need to move on from what came before this. I need you to let me.”
“But I’m not talking about that.” She pushed herself up to her elbow.
I rolled to my back looking up at her. I reached for her long bangs that were hanging in her face, and I tucked them behind her ear. “If this is what you want to talk about, then I’m not sure we can avoid going there, baby,” I said gently.
When she sighed it was heavy. She was frustrated.
“Okay,” I finally said. “I don’t want another woman in bed with us. I don’t want to watch another woman eat your pussy while I fuck her ass, and I sure as hell don’t want to watch another man fuck you while you suck my dick. Is that what you want to hear?” I gave her a second to respond, but she just gaped at me. Yeah, I’d shocked her with that one—exactly what I didn’t want to do. I reached for her cheek, brushing my thumb along her skin as I cupped it and tried pathetically to reassure her after that bout of brutal honesty. “I don’t want to treat you like a body, a thing, a sex toy to me. I don’t want to value you for what you can give me physically. Those are the things I’ve done that I’m not willing to do with you?” I focused on her eyes, my heart pounding. “I promise you don’t want me to be that man with you, because … he fucking sucks, and he’s pathetic. Think better of me, please. Let me be more for you.” My jaw clenched tight as I waited for her to react.
When she finally nodded, I sighed.
“I’ll ask you to fuck me,” I continued. “I’ll beg you to fuck me. I’ll tell you how much I want to fuck you. But I will absolutely never truly fuck you. It will never be as shallow and pointless as that. It couldn’t be.” That last sentence came out on a whisper as I failed to keep my voice steady. “Outside of that, if there’s something you want, tell me. If you want me to buy you some sex toys, I will. If you want me to touch, lick or fuck some other hole than your pussy then you need only ask. I’ve told you already, I’ll give you what you need. But…” I shook my head as I looked away. “Don’t ask me to push you. I can’t do that to you. I have to know it’s coming from you and not what I want, and not what you think I want. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand why I need it to be that way?”
She didn’t nod. She didn’t agree. She just stared over my shoulder. When she finally did look at me, she was expressionless. “I don’t want to be shared, and I don’t want to be objectified, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to push me,” she said quietly, and then she bit her lip. She was being shy again even if her words weren’t. “And I need you to trust that I’ll tell you if I’m uncomfortable with something you ask for? I need you to be as open with me as you expect me to be with you? I’m a big girl, Kane. I don’t need you to handle me like I’m fragile.” She hadn’t smiled once while speaking.
When I didn’t respond, much less agree, she rolled away from me.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath before I reached back and turned the light off again, and then I stared into the dark as she laid out of reach. I let it go on that way for what had to have been five minutes before I moved closer to her and pulled myself up to her back.
“It isn’t just you,” I said quietly as my lips touched the back of her ear. “It’s us. Everything about us is fragile—our relationship, the way we communicate, the way we fuck. I always feel like I’m two seconds away from letting you slip through my fingers. It’s all so very fucking fragile.”
“That scares me,” she whispered.
I didn’t say a word. It scared me too.
* * * *
Monday I rose when it was still dark out. I had an eight o’clock meeting with a care facility in Scranton, which meant I needed to be on the road no later than seven in case I got lost or ran into traffic. I wrote Helene a quick note and left it on her nightstand under her cell phone explaining my early departure, and then I hoofed it the three miles back to my place on foot and in clothes that were still damp. I froze my ass off the entire time, and when I entered my dad’s house, I immediately stripped out of my clothes and hopped in a hot shower.
Scranton was a bust. Of course it was. No one wanted a curmudgeonly old man with a track record of being physically violent. I was running out of time. I was also running out of money. My dad had squirreled away enough cash to keep his expenses paid for a period, but not an indefinite period. His accounts were dwindling, and the personal money I’d saved from working over the years and keeping my living expenses low was earmarked for the illustrious Ross Bernstein—though justifying his expense was becoming more difficult by the day. I wasn’t going to see my money tied up in my father’s house, because his stroke and his mess of a life were his problem and not mine. I had my own to worry about, and if that made me a shitty son, so be it. Perhaps if he’d not been a shitty father, I might care.
It was all a balancing act when it came to this house. I was smart with renovations and real estate. I needed to spend just enough to maximize the return when I sold the place. The faster I could work, the more profit. My father’s mortgage payment was not an investment, which meant it was nothing more than a carrying cost that was effectively going down the toilet every month until I could unload this property. If I’d sold the property as-is, the return would have been pathetic, but if I could pull this renovation off on a good budget and in a decent timeframe, then the return would far outweigh the investment.
Now I just needed to figure out how to focus my attention on this fucking house when finding my father a place to live kept trying to interfere—never mind the woman I was infatuated with. My focus on anything at all went out the window the very moment I let myself think about her.
Much as it had on my drive to Scranton.
I’d spent the entire drive forcing myself into her mind. I put myself in her place and made her perspective my own—and not the perspective I wanted her to have or assumed she’d have, the one she simply did have because it was her mind to operate in the way it was programmed to. She didn’t appreciate my need to let her call the shots in our physical relationship. My brain was offended by this, because my thought process said she should appreciate that for obvious reasons. Her brain was offended because she knew that taking all the control meant she would never fully know or understand what my needs were. And apparently that didn’t sit well with her.
Chivalry was clearly dead in this relationship, and by the time I’d reached Scranton, I finally understood why it needed to be. Our dynamic was simply too unique to survive the niceties of politeness. She needed to see all of me—my desires and wants especially. And I needed to trust that she understood my desires were firmly rooted in something more than mere sex with her. They were. Of course they were. I didn’t question that. I just needed to stop questioning that Helene understood that—which was a difficult thing for me to do, knowing just what she’d seen of my debaucherous, pathetic past. And now as I pulled out of the old folk home parking lot, I hadn’t forgotten that bit of crucial knowledge.
I pulled into the parking lot of the store I’d spotted on my way into town before I had the chance to talk myself out of it. I sat in the parking lot dreading this. This wasn’t how such … things … should be purchased in my opinion. The advent of online shopping had removed the humiliation of such occasional needs. But I was worried even Amazon’s two day free shipping wouldn’t get these items into my hands as quickly as I wanted them.
I dialed her as I sat there in my dad’s old pickup truck.
“Hi,” she said a bit hesitantly.
“My sweet Hell.” I stretched and yawned before I could stop myself. There was something very relaxing about nothing more than her voice. “What are you doing?”
She sighed. “I just got off the phone with my dissertation director. It didn’t go well. I’m ready to give up.”
“You have until spring. This is a work in progress. Give yourself time.”
“Or a coronary,” she muttered. “Are you still in Scranton?”
“I am. I have a couple questions for you. I need you to answer them honestly, and if you have questions for me, I’ll answer them honestly too.”
She was silent for a moment, but she eventually said, “Okay.” The word was drawn out as though she weren’t entirely sure she was okay with saying okay at all.
“Are you okay with me touching your asshole?”
“What?” She nearly cut me off.
“Answer the question.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Licking it?”
She paused again, taking another deep breath. “Yes.”
“Penetrating it?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like having your nipples sucked?”
“Yes.”
“Pinched?”
She went silent for a second. “I don’t know.”
“But you’ll let me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Do you want to ask me anything?”
“What do you want from me that I haven’t given you?”
I smirked. “Talk about your broad sweeping questions.” I chuckled. “I want to stick my cock down your throat. I want you to suck it until I come, and then I want you to swallow my cum.”
“Where can I touch—”
“Anywhere I’m allowed to touch you. There’s nothing you should be afraid to try with me.” I was getting a hard-on just sitting in the fucking parking lot. Of course, my hard-on couldn’t possibly be the first for this property. “Anything else?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“Are you as turned on as I am right now?” I smiled even as I spoke.
She finally laughed, showing some lightness to her mood. “Yes.”
“It’s going to have to wait until another day, baby. The cabinets are being delivered first thing tomorrow morning, and I have more work than I can reasonably get done before then. Shawn is coming over to help me this afternoon and tomorrow. It’s going to be a long couple days.”
“Will you be in class Wednesday night?”
“Yes, Professor. I promise.”
“Good.”
“I better let you go. I have some shopping to do before I return to Hazleton.” My lips pulled up, and I shook my head. God, I did not want to go in this place.
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
When I climbed out of the truck, I cleared my throat.
Quiver: An Adult Bookstore.
Why the fuck did they call these places bookstores? Did they even sell books?
“Fuck me,” I muttered as I walked toward the entrance.