Dreams of 18(67)

And then, he pulls.

He pulls it so much and with such force that I gasp mid-kiss and scrape my nails over his biceps.

Our lips part and I look into his eyes, his dark, beastly eyes, and groan when I feel his fingers tugging on those straps.

My breath halts when the fabric digs into my shoulders like a rope and I have this silly thought that it’s going to snap. That he’s going to tear off the straps of my dress.

And just like that, he does it.

The straps give way under the unrelenting pressure of his fingers and I jerk again. I gasp when it happens. My hands fall away from his biceps and grip his sides.

He actually tore off my dress.

He actually did it.

“You tore off my straps,” I whisper uselessly, like he doesn’t know. Like he didn’t do it with his bare hands.

One hand, actually. One hand for each strap.

That’s all it took to lay waste to my dress.

“I did,” he pants, watching me like before when he promised he’d go to jail for me. Like he can’t believe he did that, tore off my straps, but he likes it. He wants to do it over and over again.

“I bought it for you.”

“You did?”

I nod, my chest moving up and down, grazing his up and down moving chest. I’m not wearing a bra and the dress is still tight enough that it clings to the curves of my breasts but I don’t know how long he’ll let me be covered up. I don’t know how long I’ll wanna be covered up.

“I-I knew red was your favorite color and I bought it for my seventeenth birthday. Kinda like my gift from you.”

He searches my features, which I’m sure must be as red as my dress. “But you never wore it.”

I bite my tingling, wet-from-his-kisses lips and shift on my feet, which are still up on his bigger ones. “Because I thought I’d look… stupid. I mean, I’m not a dress kinda girl, you know? So I just bought it and wore it in my room. I’d look at myself in the mirror and I’d wonder what you’d think. If you saw me.”

Now that he’s done tearing my dress off, his hands move away from my shoulders and go back down to my waist.

In fact, they grab onto my waist and pick me up. It’s so sudden that all I can do is feel the air beneath my feet as they leave the floor and obey his command when he growls, “Put your legs around me.”

I do that.

I practically grapple him with my thighs that go around his slim strong hips and my hands that go around his neck.

When I’m eye-level to him and all wrapped around him, he splays his palm on the back of my head and whispers, “You know why my favorite color is red?”

I shake my head.

“It’s because it’s the color of your lips. It’s the color of your smile.”

The said lips part and I breathe out, “No way.”

“I didn’t have a favorite color before you.”

My mouth falls open. “Seriously?”

His nostrils flare. “I didn’t notice colors before I met you.”

My heart squeezes. It squeezes and squeezes because it’s so sad, as sad as him being dreamless. So sad that I wanna hug him. I wanna touch his face. Caress it. Trace it with my fingers.

Suddenly, I realize that I can.

I can now.

I can touch his beard, and as if I needed that reminder to be able to feel the marks on my skin, they come alive.

I feel the sting of his beard, all over my chin, my jaw, around my lips. I feel the belated scraping, the rustling of it over my face when he was kissing me.

How did I miss that? How? Those marks are burning now, burning so deliciously.

My hands move up and I finally, finally touch it.

I touch his beard. I feel it with my fingers, all rough and soft, silk and sand, as I whisper, “God, I wanted to touch your beard for so long.”

He rubs his jaw against my palm and I almost moan. “Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I had dreams about it.”

“What dreams?”

“Of rubbing it with my hands. Rubbing it all over my body. It’ll make me all red, won’t it?”

He rubs his jaw harder against my palm, as if trying to make it red, trying to make my dream come true. “Red as a rose. Red as my favorite color.”

I shake my head at him. “You know, for an asshole, you say the nicest things.”

His eyes go heavy at that. Heavy and hooded as he boosts me up higher with his arm under my butt and again, it makes me feel like a bag of feathers that he can lift and throw around just like that.

“Do I?

I kiss his beard, then. I lick it, feeling the scrape and rustle that I missed before right on my tongue. “I think if you tried you could write all the poetry for me that I’ll ever need.”

He fists my hair, tugging my lips away and stares down at me. “I can’t do poetry, Jailbait. But I’m going to do other things for you.”

“Like what?”

He bounces me in his lap again and I bite my lip to keep from moaning. “I’m going to buy you a hundred dresses. A thousand dresses. And you’re going to wear them all. You’re going to wear them all for me. And I’m going to tear them all off with my bare hands. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll buy them all in red. They’ll be as red as your pretty lips. And I’m going to lose my mind over it. That color will call to me, call to my blood like I’m this bull of a man who just has to get to you. Get to your red as fuck mouth.”