Redemptive (Combative, #2)(46)
But f*ck, I wanted to.
I wanted her.
I’d thought about her while I was at that stupid f*ckin’ party last night, surrounded by girls the same as age as her, girls who probably spent hours, days even, trying to look the way they did and still, none of them came close to Bailey.
And then I watched the guys, rich and obnoxious as they teased the girls and the girls teased them, and I wondered what Bailey’s life would’ve been like if she’d been brought up different. She could’ve been any one of them. Wealthy, smart, successful, and even if she wasn’t one of them, she’d attract them. And they’d offer to give her the world, a world which she didn’t really want, but the most f*cked-up part is they could give her the world. They could give her everything. And all I had to offer was a f*cking concrete box and a living hell.
That thought alone had my fingers digging into her hips, bringing her even closer to me. I wanted to give her everything those guys could offer, but more than that, I wanted to possess her, to own her, and as shitty as it sounds, I’d never wanted to f*ck her more than I did right then. I wanted to f*ck her until the only sounds I could hear were our moans and the slapping of our sweaty bodies as I pumped into her. I wanted to knead her breasts, not gentle like my fading willpower had encouraged me to do—but rough. Rough and hard. Because she was f*cking mine, dammit. And as her legs shook, and her back arched and her fingers tightened in my hair, she exploded on my tongue with the sexiest f*cking moan I’d ever heard. I kept her there, her movements jerky as she rode out wave after wave. It was then that I felt the grinding ache in my shoulder. I was jerking off. I didn’t realize I was jerking off, but I needed to relieve the ache, the need, the want.
“Nate.”
I looked up at her, her body a blur behind the lusty haze of my vision. Her hand landed on my shoulder, my pathetically aching shoulder. Then she smiled and said, “Take me to bed.”
I stood quickly, not bothering to turn off the shower, not even bothering to dry our bodies. Instead, I carried her with her legs around my waist and half placed, half threw her on the bed. She didn’t try to cover herself like I thought she would. Instead, she lifted her knees and slowly spread them apart, inviting me.
I hesitated, just for a moment, because this isn’t at all what I wanted it to be like—her first time—I wanted to show her love, give her romance—and this sure as f*ck wasn’t it. But then she said the words that tilted the entire world off its axis and set my whole body ablaze. “I want you, Nate. I want you inside me. Please. Make me yours.”
I should’ve been more careful, more understanding of the pain she was about to receive, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything other than my cock buried deep in her *. I kneeled between her spread legs with my dick in my hand and the tip at her entrance and glanced at her one more time. “Please, baby,” she said, covering my hand with hers before guiding me inside her to the point where I claimed her as mine.
The point where she gives up something that I’ll forever possess.
To the point of no return.
Her nails pierced into my back, her teeth digging into my shoulder as she used it to muffle her cry. Whispered apologies fell from my lips, landed on her skin, over and over as I moved inside her and after a while, she began to move with me. Names, prayers, promises, all of it shared between panted breaths and desperate declarations.
*
We showered again, only, this time, I washed her, washed the mess I’d made mixed with the blood of her purity off of the place that was now mine and mine alone. Then we replaced the wet sheets from the bed and climbed back in, a tangle of limbs as we held on to each other.
“So…” I started, stroking the wet strands of her hair as she laid half on top of me. “Tiny and I have some stuff we have to do tomorrow morning, but he thinks it’s a good idea for us to lay low for a few days.”
She looked up at me, her eyebrows raised. “So that means you’re home for a while?”
I nodded. “Tiny’s going to be staying here, just as an extra precaution, I guess, so I’ll probably spend a bit of time with him. I feel bad him being here and me locking myself away with you.”
“That’s cool,” she said, attempting to hide her smile. “I’m just happy I get to be with you a little more.”
“Me too.” I kissed the top of her head. “He says he wants to check out a gym to go to together. I’ve promised him since you moved in, and I keep putting it off.”
“That sounds like fun.” She settled back in the crook of my arm and traced my stomach muscles with her finger and this strange calm—a state of nirvana—washed over me. I realized that I’d give anything for this to be my life. For her to be my life. And for the first time since I was sixteen, since I made the choice to give The Family my life, since I stood in front of Uncle Benny and made a promise to him to honor my father’s death—at the same time I promised myself redemption for my mother’s—that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t want the job anymore.
Bailey’s giggle cut through my thoughts.
“What’s funny?” I asked, peering down at her.
“Tiny sure could use the gym time,” she said, the joke rolling off her tongue. She looked up at me, her smile so pure and so genuine and I wished more than anything in the world, that this wasn’t our life. That we were able to be out there, loving each other freely and honestly, because I’d give up the world if I could’ve met her as her and have her fall in love with me for me.