Come to Me Quietly(109)

Those butterflies flitted and spun, tumbled around in the lowest part of my core.

He twisted his fingers in my panties, and he shed them slowly. My pulse stuttered, my body aching, begging. Once again, it’d taken Jared two seconds to strip me of every ounce of control.

“Please,” I whimpered.

Jared growled. His face contorted, and hot, aggressive hands grasped my knees, forcing them apart. Then his mouth was on me.

Sensations burst behind my eyes. Desperately, my fingers dove in his hair, curled and held and gripped. Every inch of my body moaned. And I thought maybe I should be embarrassed, that I should try to contain the muffled cries that spilled from my mouth. But there was no place in me where I could find shame.

Not with him.

Again I begged, “Please.”



Then he was touching me, sure fingers filling me in the most exquisite way.

I arched. Came undone. Pleasure surged and rushed, spread out to saturate every crevice in my body. Still it was not enough. It was never enough.

I fumbled between us for the fly of his jeans. I freed him of all his barriers, shoving them down his hips. Jared twisted out of them and kicked them aside.

He completed me in one solid thrust.

My mouth dropped open in a soundless gasp, and my nails raked down his back. His hands rushed up the back of my thighs, and he wrapped them under to grip me by the hips, my knees hooked over his forearms.

“Beautiful,” he grated from his throat. He took me hard and fast, then torturously slow, never looking away from my face as he tempted and teased, then brought me back to the brink. Our bodies pitched and strained, grasped and clutched.

“Jared, please… don’t… just… ”



He understood my plea. He quickened as he filled me again and again. “Aly, baby,” he grunted.

It hit me in a shocking wave, this blinding rapture that ripped through my core and erupted as an aching cry from my lips.

“Fuck… Aly… ” Ice blue eyes sparked like wildfire when he crushed his chest to mine, his hands leaving my hips to grip the counter. Jared’s movements were harsh and rushed, his body jerking, his breaths short and ragged.

I bowed as he came.

In the mirror on the wall behind him, I saw him as he struggled to catch his breath. His back flexed beneath the scars that wept where they bled, a pattern of despair, and I knew he could see me in the vanity mirror behind us. Through the two, our eyes met, almost hesitantly, the reflection like this illusion of us that went on forever.

Infinite.

Something like torment filled his eyes. He buried his nose in my hair behind my ear and whispered his praise. “Aleena.”



And I loved him.

I loved him with everything I had.

We stayed that way for the longest time, neither able to move, our bodies locked. My fingertips strayed, traced, and explored. They gentled over the flames on his right arm. Here, under the color, the skin was too smooth, but on the edges it gave rise to rough ridges that felt like hardened seams.

Jared sucked in a jagged breath, then released it in a slow hiss as I trailed down to the tortured eyes that writhed in the fire. I caressed them, my voice soft. “Is this you or her?” It was as if I could sense every nerve in his body fire, his brain only registering pain.

“Me, Aly. It’s me.” That pain bled from his mouth in bitter agony. “It should have been me.” His fingers dug into my sides. “I f*cking tried to make it right. I tried.” The last fell as a breath of defeat.

I wanted to shake him, scream no, tell him how wrong he was.