Rogue (Real #4)(47)
DEBTS
Melanie
We f*cked before he left town.
Straight from my parents’, he followed me to my apartment, up the elevator, to my door. I stood there, starting to say goodbye. He slammed my mouth to his, scooped me up, and took it from there to the bedroom.
He threw me to the bed and ripped my clothes off, then his. My body trembled and my breaths shuddered out of me as he dropped over me.
He held me down, one hand on my shoulder, the other on my hip, and f*cked me hard. I screamed and twisted, raking my hands down his back.
“Look at me.”
I tried, moaning.
He slid his hand up my back, under the fall of my hair and held me by the skull, tipping my face up. “Say you love it,” he commanded. “Say you f*cking love it.”
“I love it,” I moaned.
His mouth crashed down on me and he gave me the kiss of a lifetime, the f*ck of a lifetime. When he peeled our mouths free he slowed his pace and said again, huskier, “Look at me,” filling me to the hilt with hot, pulsing live flesh.
I looked and he looked back at me, greedy, strong, driving over and over inside me. Not holding back. Every move telling me he needed this as bad as me.
My climax took me over like a storm. With every shudder that passed through me, another, deeper one ran through him until we were both panting and undone. I clasped my thighs and arms tighter around him, holding his hard, heavy body to mine, keeping him a little longer inside me.
I didn’t want to let go. My face was wet again from my orgasm but all of a sudden I felt like crying an ocean.
I’m afraid of what he makes me feel, and of the reality of my circumstances.
I’m afraid that I will owe all this money and have had no buyers for my Mustang, and when my time runs out three days after my birthday, a dozen angry mobsters will come knock on my door and nobody will be able to help me. Nobody will be able to stop them. Not even him.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to do. But nobody makes me feel as emotionally vulnerable and as physically safe as he does when he holds me.
The fact that he came to brunch, unexpectedly, told me more than all his warnings have. He exhaled in my neck and rolled us to a more comfortable position, where he kept me to his side, and I felt strange emotions swamp me.
Don’t be needy, I told myself, but I felt like an imposter. I still heard myself whisper, “Everything my parents said . . . don’t believe it. They just think I’m perfect, but I fake it.”
I eased away from him and clutched the sheet around me.
He sat up in bed. “I know about faking it.”
“My life came at a very high price and it’s just hard to live up to it.”
Instantly he reached out and set a hand on my shoulder, tracing a circle on my skin with his thumb. “My life has come at a high price too. Every day of it.” He brushed one lone tendril of hair back from my face, our eyes locking. “So many days trying to find some f*cked-up meaning in it.”
The revelation left me breathless, and I waited and waited and waited for more, saw there was more in his eyes, but he got up and grabbed his clothes.
“I’m glad to be wanted here, Melanie,” he said, shooting me one of his many winning smiles.
When he started getting dressed, I turned away to the window and clutched my arms around my stomach, trying to ease the ache there. Ugh. Hate that he’s leaving again. Hate that this could be goodbye.
I wanted to ask if I’d see him again, but before I could, he spoke from the door.
“Stay safe, princess.”
I forced myself to answer, “Bye, Greyson.”
How can I know so little about someone and yet need him so much?
He hasn’t called, but this Monday morning I got another kind of call, and with it, an offer for my Mustang.
I ask Pandora as we settle in the office, “So what do you think, is it a good offer?”
Her answer is to ask me why I am selling my car.
Fuck. I try to think of anything but the truth, that it needs to go and I probably need to sell everything but the shirt on my back, and even then the math may not add up, but I just can’t tell her. “It’s impractical.”
“Dude, you live for the impractical.”
“It got flooded! It squeaks now.”
“Which is cute considering you squeak too.”
“Urgh, you’re impossible.”
“Melanie . . . stop buying shit and you wouldn’t need to sell your car. See this shirt? I do something that’s called washing it three times a week. I only need a couple of these and that’s it. See these boots? They’re my signature. I don’t need another pair of shoes.”
“This is not a shopping problem, it’s a different kind of problem.”
“What, like an addiction?” Her brow wrinkles with concern.
“I want to sell it, that’s all,” I mumble.
“Want to sell, or need??” Perceptive dark eyes suddenly probe into me in silence. “I have an idea. Sell the necklace your boyfriend gave you.”
“Pfft! Don’t think so!” I wave that off with one hand, then I become somber. “I want to sell my car, and I need your advice. Is that a good offer, Pan?”
“I’m a f*cking decorator like you, I don’t know shit about cars. Ask your dad. Hell, ask your precious boyfriend.”