Burn Down the Night (23 page)

“You're so wet,” he breathed. “You're gonna take me so deep.”

I was. I was going to take him so deep. Deep enough to hurt. Just a little. Just enough.

“Ready?” He breathed.

I could only nod, full of anticipation.

He slammed into me all the way. His hips against my ass. I screamed past what felt like the head of his dick all the way up in my throat. I pushed myself up on my toes to change the angle. To alleviate some of the ache.

I felt his head fall down on my shoulder and I pushed back into him, not wanting to catch my breath. Not wanting to get used to the stretch. Just wanting him. All of him. And all of me. I was on fire at this point. Beyond thought.

This time he braced himself and I fucked myself against him. Long, smooth strokes, no power, just depth. My hands made fists against the wall and his hands bit harder into my hips. But what I was doing was far from enough.

“Please,” I begged. “Please, Max.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Let's do this.”

And it was on.

He grabbed leverage where he could. My hips, my hair. I held on to the doorframe of the kitchen. And he pounded into me. The slap of his skin was loud against mine. We were wet and sweating and I kept screaming until he put his hand over my mouth, yanking me up into his body.

I didn't like that, it made the pressure all wrong and I shook off his hand, my body against the wall again.

“You gotta be quiet, Joan.”

“Fuck you, Max.”

That made him laugh and I wasn't expecting it but he smacked my ass. Nothing playful. Real. Hard enough to leave a stinging hand print against my skin.

I gasped and rocked into him.

“Of course you like that,” he murmured and did it again. And then once more. Until finally I was mindless and rocking against him. Fucking him as hard as he was fucking me. And it was game over. I slipped my hand from the wall to between my legs where I barely had to touch my clit before I was blissfully, radically coming apart.

Everything was obliterated. The sun, the sky, the landscape. Every fear I had. Every hope. All of it vanished in the wild seething storm of my orgasm. Nothing mattered but this completely overwhelming pleasure.

Gratefully, I gave myself up to it. Shuddering where he had me. Crying, where he couldn't see me.

“Joan—?”

“So good,” I breathed, and it was enough like permission that he grabbed my hips and fucked me in short shallow strokes, his breathing ragged. I had only enough wherewithal to brace myself, my body still pulsing and sighing with pleasure.

“Yes!” he cried. “Yes. Fuck, God—”

I reached beneath my body to where he was driving into me, just to feel us together like this. I touched his balls and he shook so much, that on the next thrust I grabbed them and he shoved into me so hard my head nearly hit the wall.

“Joan,” he cried, jerking into me while I stroked his balls until he was done. When he twitched I knew it was over. Too sensitive.

I felt exactly the same way.

Slowly, I eased forward as he eased back until he was out of me and we were suddenly back to being ourselves. Separate.

“Jesus,” he sighed, and all but staggered into the kitchen to get rid of the condom.

Utterly replete and boneless, I rearranged my clothes, covering myself up as I made my way to the love seat, where I collapsed.

He came to stand in the doorway of the kitchen, watching me with his unreadable eyes. I had a boyfriend once ask if he hurt me, which only seemed to prove how little he'd been paying attention. And I wasn't interested in some big heart to heart with Max. He'd seen what I needed at that cocktail party and he'd given it to me.

Which only seemed to prove how much he had been paying attention.

Don't trust me. Don't like me. Don't…care.

Fully clothed and a room away from him, I felt more than naked under his gaze. I felt like he'd fucked at the cracks and seams and pulled me apart so he could see all the things I kept hidden. And now they were all over the room. Scattered across the floor, splashed over the walls. My father issues and my mother issues. My guilt and my fear and regret. My insecurity. My belief deep down that everything everyone ever said about me was true—I wasn't any good.

And he saw it all. I know he did.

He opened his mouth and I braced myself for him to say something nice, I prepared myself to start a fight in the face of his kindness. Or to burst into tears. Or to ask him to stay with me. To help me, even if that wasn't the best thing for him. Because I wasn't sure I could do all of this on my own.

And maybe he saw that, too, because all he said was: “Want to go get a beer?”

We went across the street to the Conch Republic, a busy restaurant on the main drag. It reminded me of every other restaurant in Florida, with its fishing net décor. It was pretty comforting, actually. Or maybe I'd just been fucked into complacency. I'd find prison comforting at this point—that's how chill I was.

Joan sat on the barstool to my right and that whole side of my body was tuned to her. I felt when she moved. When she glanced away to look at the specials board. When her eyes lifted to look at the side of my face, still bruised from the beating a week ago.

“You draw a lot of attention, you know?” she said.

“Maybe it's you.” She was wearing a different skirt and a different tank top, but it was still her outrageous body under the clothes. Her “fuck you” attitude was dialed back and in its place was a kind of peace I never thought I'd see in her. She was easy right now, unwound. Her shoulders relaxed out of her battle stance.

She was painfully pretty. Like punch in the gut beautiful with that smile lingering around her lips.

Apparently fucking each other raw against a wall was exactly what we needed.

“I'm a dime a dozen around here,” she said, glancing across the restaurant. “You're the only motorcycle club guy who looks like he survived a beatdown.”

I glanced around, too, and saw a lot of suburban dads with their families watching me out of the corners of their eyes. Moms pulling their kids in a little closer. Dudebros with their ball caps on backward, sizing me up.

There were women, too, looking at me. Some turned on by my size and my bruises and my tattoos. Others not so much.

“We never used to go to places like this,” I said.

“Like as a family?”

I laughed. “Like as a club.”

“Yeah, hard to imagine you guys here ordering the mahimahi special.”

Man, that sounded good.

The bartender came by and tossed some cardboard beer coasters in front of us, not giving us any of the happy patter he gave the other couples around the bar. “Happy hour,” he said. “Two for one.”

“Bud draft,” I ordered.

“White wine.”

The guy came back with two drinks for each of us and we ordered some food.

“Are we on a date?” I asked. I turned sideways on my stool and leaned over to shift her so her legs were between mine. If I could put her in my lap, I would. That had been so good between us. The kind of good that made a guy curious.

The kind of good that made a guy obsessed.

“A date,” she laughed. “When was the last time you were on a date?”

“High school. You?”

She opened her eyes wide and blinked. “It's been a while. There was a girl a few months ago. She used to like going out for movies.”

“Good Girlfriend #1?”

She laughed and I liked that sound. “Something like that. So if this is a date, you buying?”

All that money I had and most of it was going to be going to Dylan's fancy lawyer. But of what was left, I couldn't think of a better way to spend it than buying my girl some happy-hour drinks.

My girl.

Just like that. That's how it was. Joan was my girl. For how long, I couldn't even begin to guess, but for now and for as long as I could make it work, she was mine. I smiled, thinking about what she would do if I told her that. The ballistics that would go off in this restaurant.

“I'm buying,” I told her.

“Then I should have gotten the crab legs.”

I ran my hand over her thigh, from the top of her knee to the bottom edge of her skirt. I wanted to push it up and slip my hand under there, but I felt the eyes of all those suburban dads.

If we were in the club right now, I'd do it anyway.

“Do you miss it?”

“What?” I asked and took a sip of my Bud. It was icy cold and perfect. Fuck, I was agreeable.

Like she'd been reading my mind she said, “The club? Those places you used to go to? Being king?”

“I wasn't any kind of king. And no…I don't miss it.” I had always been looking over my shoulder, constantly braced for disaster. I didn't miss it at all. It was a goddamn relief not being king.

“I know you told me not to worry and you told Eric the same thing. But those guys in jail…They talked about you.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“But…,” she tilted her head. “Are you worried? I mean between them and what I have to do—”

“I got a lawyer.”

“What? Really?” She lit up with relief.

“Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to need one yet. But when I do. I got one. A good one. Dylan got him for me.”

“Dylan? When did you talk to him?”

“After you tried to kick me to the curb.”

“Well, I can see how well that worked.”

Not at all. We grinned at each other like idiots.

“But what does that mean for you? Getting a lawyer?” She meant what was the cost. Oh, this girl, how well she knew me.

“It means I can't ever go back,” I told her. “Not to the Skulls.”

“Do you want to? Really?”

“It's all I know. All I've ever known. All I've ever been.”

She touched a finger to a tattoo on my hand. A smiling grim reaper. It wasn't a Skull tattoo, I mean it wasn't pretty. But it wasn't club. So I wasn't going to have to get it covered. That was part of the price of leaving the club, you had to get all the tattoos covered, blocked out.

The big one on my shoulder—like the one my pops had—that was going to be a bitch.

“I'm sorry that it makes you feel bad, but I'm glad,” she whispered. “I'm glad you can't ever go back.”

I was, too. I just wasn't quite ready to say it yet.

She tilted her head and took a sip of her wine. The sun hit it and turned it to gold. Her lip was a little swollen where I'd bit it. I ran my tongue over my own lip where it was cut from her slapping me.

My cock got hard. Fuck. She really did that. She hit me and then let me fuck her face so hard she could barely breathe. She was grinning at me like she was reading my mind. “What are you thinking about?” Her eyes dipped to my lap and my obvious erection.

“Your smart mouth.”

“Yeah?” She breathed, leaning in closer. “What are you going to do about my smart mouth?”

Screw the drinks. I nearly got to my feet and would have grabbed her hand and pulled her out of there. Into the nearest room with a door I could find, but a waitress came by and dropped our order of calamari in front of us and I could hear Joan's stomach growl.

My girl needed to eat.

“Feed it,” I said. “I'm going to feed you and then I'm taking you home.”

“Then let's eat fast.”

We dug into the food, which could have been the most amazing calamari in the history of the world, but I barely tasted it. I was too distracted with watching Joan lick her fingers and knock back her glass of wine. For some reason I couldn't forget what Fern said about finding out about her father. About how that would tell me something about why Joan did the stuff she did. Why she hurt the way she did and spent so much time trying to cover it up.

“Tell me something.”

“Is this about my name again?”

I laughed and took a swig of beer, stalling for time, not quite ready to change this mood. “No, I learned that lesson. You're not telling me your name.”

She dragged a calamari ring through the lemony sauce that came with it and put it in her mouth, her eyes twinkling at me. I wanted to warm my cold body by her bright and wild light for days.

“Tell me what happened to your dad.”

She practically fell off her barstool she jerked back in such surprise. She swallowed, wiped her mouth with a napkin.

“My dad? What the hell does he have to do with anything?”

Probably everything, I thought. Just like my mom and my dad were the root of all my compromises.

I took a sip of beer and shrugged.

“There's not much to say.” She drained her glass and asked the bartender for some water.

She wasn't going to tell me. I could see it in the set of her chin. All stubborn. All fuck you. And it was weird to feel sad about something like her keeping her life private. She didn't owe me shit, as much as I might want it.

I ordered another beer and then Joan surprised me.

With all her attention focused on the little cardboard coaster she was bending and then tearing into shreds, she started to talk.

“Dad was…I don't know…a simple guy. He didn't graduate high school. He ran this junkyard and we lived there in a trailer—I told you that. He liked that job. He liked hunting and fishing. And us. Me and Jennifer. He loved us. I don't have a whole lot of experience with that, but we felt loved. When I got old enough, I kind of…did the stuff parents are supposed to do, that he never thought of. Registering for school. Getting vaccinations. Making sure Jennifer did her homework. Buying vegetables. Making us food for dinner and not just chips or donuts.”

I wondered if she saw the picture she was painting. I mean, it's not like I could objectively look at my childhood. But she was painting a rosy picture with some pretty dark fucking colors.

“What happened to him?”

“I was fourteen. Jennifer would have been twelve and it was October. The end of the month and it was so cold. Really cold. And Dad decided he wanted to go ice fishing out on the lake. He did this a lot. He'd go for a few nights and come back with a ton of fish for the freezer. Jennifer and I got so sick of fish in the winter. Anyway, it didn't seem any different than any other time. He packed up his stuff and headed out before me and Jennifer even got up. He just…he never came back.”

“Oh Jesus. Joan—”

“When he had been gone for over two days, I hiked out to the lake he usually fished on and the ice had cracked. Even his little hut thing he fished in was gone. The ice must not have been thick enough.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I try not to think about it too much. Him being scared—” She stopped and shook her head as if shaking off the memories.

“That's when you came down here?”

Joan took a deep breath. “No. Not for a year, really. We kept my dad's death a secret. And Jennifer and I just kept going like everything was normal. School. The scrap yard—”

“Wait…what?”

“It's not that big a deal. You practically did the same thing, right? Raised your brother since you were kids?”

“Yeah, but I wasn't all alone in the woods of Wisconsin! In winter!”

“It was cold,” she said as if it were a fond memory, but then the smile slowly drained from her face and she scooped up all the little pieces of the coaster and put them in her empty wineglass and then shoved the glass away. Almost across the bar. I saw what she wasn't saying. Like she was covered in graffiti, I saw it. Yeah, it had been cold.

And it had been scary.

The kind of scary that years later came up out of nowhere to make you feel unsafe—even in the safest places. The kind of scary that carved its mark on your bones.

I knew that kind of scary.

I knew how it put up walls you didn't even see half the time.

“I tried to get her into a fancy gifted school and that's how we got found out and ended up with Fern.”

The waitress was back with our dinners. I had the shrimp po'boy and she had the mahimahi special and we tucked into our food like it would save our lives. We ate to keep our mouths full. Or I did anyway. Because I knew the shit I wanted to say to her—that she was brave and tough and loyal and smart—she'd tear up all those words and put them into a wineglass so she could push it far away.

And I knew, somehow, that it wasn't because she didn't want to hear it. But because she didn't know what to do with it.

We ate like it was our last meal.

I had forgotten how sexy it was to eat and drink with someone you wanted to have sex with. How it made me feel sleepy and turned on all at once. Like I'd been cared for. Like I was a pampered pet.

And the way Max watched me eat, it was like it was his job to make sure I got every bit I needed. Everything I wanted. If I'd demanded another meal—he'd lift his hand and make it happen. He would have fed me his dinner. With his fingers.

No wonder dates always happened at restaurants. I had forgotten that it was all just foreplay.

In an indigo twilight, we walked back to the condo, carefully not touching. I wasn't sure why he wasn't touching me. But my reasons for not touching him were purely for self-preservation. I needed closed doors for what I wanted to do. I needed darkness and quiet for the things I wanted to say.

I was lush and exposed and ready. On the very edge of a cliff I'd never seen coming.

Silent, we walked into the condo unit and I was breathing hard. Not from the walk, but from him.

I wanted to ask him what this was between us. If he felt it, too. Like we were standing on the edge of something pretty great. Kind of wonderful. More wonderful, really, than I had the vocabulary for.

Talking about Dad had been stupid. I felt like I'd left a door open. Or I'd lost a key. Like if he wanted, Max could just walk in and ransack me. Take everything I had.

I tried not to let that vulnerability make me lash out.

I tried—and it was hard—to just be.

The shadows were dark in the condo and the crash of the ocean through the windows was the only sound in the room. He tossed the keys on the counter and sighed.

And I felt that sigh wrap around me. Lift me up. Hold me close.

“I'm going…I'm going to take a shower,” I said, inanely. Like some teenage girl terrified of putting out.

“Cool,” he said and I took off down the hallway into the bathroom. I just…needed a second to get my head on right. To ground myself. The shower was as hot as I could take it and I stayed in for as long as I could, so when I stepped out, the cold of the air-conditioning was a total shock. I dried my hair and wrapped the towel around my body.

He was in the bedroom. Propped up against the wall, in his plaid boxers, his legs stretched out across the bed. He was looking at something on his phone and he put it down when I came in.

“Anything from Lagan?” I asked and he shook his head, reaching out for me.

“You don't need me to bring you Lagan,” he said. “You have Eric.”

“Yeah. I guess you're right.”

He tugged on the edge of the towel and it fell off, revealing me in muted moonlight. His knuckles brushed my stomach and I twitched, ticklish and cold.

“God, baby,” he said. “You're freezing.”

He untucked the covers and moved out of the way, pulling me into the cocoon made by his body and the blankets. I was instantly warm. My back was against his wide, warm chest and I shifted until my ass was pressed against his hips. I felt him under the cotton of his underwear start to stir and I had a corresponding reaction. My body loose and ready.

A soft kiss landed on my shoulder and his hand came around to softly touch my breasts. It was slow and very nearly tender.

And somehow deeply uncomfortable.

I reached behind my butt and found him with my hand, squeezing his cock through the cotton. He groaned and kissed my shoulder again, thrusting into my hand. But that was all. Me squeezing his dick and him rocking slowly back and forth with his open mouth against my shoulder.

“Touch me,” I said.

“Slow down.”

I didn't know how to tell him that I didn't know how to do slow. Or tender. I started to turn toward him, but his arms came around me like a cage and I lost my grip on him.

“Shhhh,” he breathed, like he could read my mind. “You've got one speed, Joan. One setting. Annihilate. That's it. Burn it all. And I don't want to be burned.”

“One date and you think you know me.”

“You think I don't?” he whispered. His arm underneath me held me in his grip while his other hand slid down my body to my pussy. Yes, there we go. But he only put his hand over me. Cupping me. His fingers teased my lips, the pressure of his palm a reminder of that fist he'd made earlier. I sighed and arched back into him, encouraging more of that kind of behavior. But he didn't take the invitation. He just kept slowly stroking me. Across my belly. My hips and thighs.

I wanted to tell him to stop. That I wasn't a cat. But my mouth was dry and my body felt so good. His touch was so beautiful.

“There,” he whispered. “Just relax.”

I sighed, all of my muscles turned to feathers, and I was rewarded with his thumb slipping up high against me, finding the edge of my clit. I was all feathers and sexual tension. He chuckled, laughing again like he knew how I felt. But his thumb was making me feel too good to get mad at him for it. His thumb only rubbed in tiny little circles. Soft, barely there touches.

Normally it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't even be close to enough. But with the petting and his breath against my shoulder and neck, I was growing electrified. I felt like I glowed.

His other hand cupped my breast, stroking my nipple until it was a hard point. But that, too, was a tender touch.

I whimpered.

“Get the condom,” he said. “It's on the floor by the bed.” I rolled over as far as he would let me, his thumb giving me a harder touch. The kind of touch I needed. And I purred like the cat I didn't want to be.

He laughed and I picked up the condom.

“Open it, my hands are full.” He squeezed my breast and his long middle finger slid deep inside of me.

“Yes,” I sighed.

“Babe.” He kissed my ear. “Condom.”

I tore it open and rolled over onto my back so I could put it on him. I would have kept rolling right on top of him. I imagined myself riding him, grinding myself down against his dick. Braced against the wall, I could find the right rhythm and friction—

But he rolled me back over onto my side. His arms were back around me holding me still, but not in the way I usually liked.

He lifted my leg and pushed it over his hips, and I felt his cock notch against me and I pushed down against it, ready to make this happen, but as I pushed backward he pulled away.

“Stop teasing me,” I breathed.

“I'm not teasing you,” he said. “I'm making love to you.”

My body froze at the word love.

“I don't…” I said, unsure of how I was going to finish that sentence. I don't love you. I don't love anyone. I don't want to be loved.

All of those things were true and at the same time not true at all.

“Me too,” he said.

His hand was back to stroking me. My breast, my tummy, the hard bony edge of my hip. The tops of my thighs.

“Please,” I whispered. But for some reason it was hard. Different. Begging like this wasn't like begging on my knees with my hair in his fists. That begging was a game. This felt unbearably real.

He pushed inside of me so slowly, I felt like I was being split in half.

“Oh my God, oh God,” I moaned, gulping down air. I was pinned by him. Filled. By him. I ached to thrust backward against him, to satisfy this growling hungry need in my belly and between my legs.

But he put his hand on my hip, keeping me still. “Like this.”

It was excruciating how slowly he moved. I could feel every ridge of his cock, every centimeter of my body that touched him. I squeezed my pussy trying to force him into something more, but he only groaned and moved even slower.

“I want to come,” I said.

“You will.”

“Not like this.”

“Trust me, baby.”

Ridiculous. Didn't he know me? Didn't he get it?

But somehow, I didn't fight him. I didn't force him to use me the way I wanted.

He put his mouth against my shoulder and I felt the sharp edge of his teeth, but he didn't use them. He just held them against me. And all I did was lie there. Still and powerless, I let him slowly make love to me.

It was like being unraveled. It was like having everything about myself that I knew to be true pushed aside, leaving me fresh and raw and naked.

Unknown to myself.

But totally known to him.

I stretched and shifted my leg back further and he groaned, low in his throat. His hands covered my breasts, the nipples caught between his fingers. Every time he thrust into me it was as deep as he could go and it was so good. I was so full.

He thrust and I arched and we found a rhythm that caught fire.

“Just like that, baby. Just like that.”

He kept on like that until we were soaking in sweat despite the air-conditioning. I was mindless. Boneless. I lived for the next push of his cock into my body. I was making some kind of sound. Some soft whimper that sounded like begging.

I couldn't even form words.

I didn't have anything while he was pulling me inside out.

“You ready?”

I whimpered and he slipped that hand between my legs and with one touch, hard and sure and just the way I liked, he sent me rocketing.

It was wild and loud, a roar and a rush and I lost myself in it.

He rolled me forward onto my stomach and he covered me from shoulders to feet. His knees split my legs, pushing me open, and he braced himself on his hands, one on my ass and the other against the wall. I felt his thumb touch my asshole and I came harder, a second wave lifting me up and out of myself. I screamed into the pillow.

I heard him telling me how good I was like he was down a long hallway. How hot. How perfect. Dark praise that filled me up as he hammered into my body. And then he was coming and I touched myself again, riding my orgasm out with his until we were both done.

I was breathing hard, my hair in my face. I blinked; the room seemed different though it wasn't.

It was me that was different. Like I'd been set down on the other side of something.

He pulled out and I flinched, my body too sensitive for any more touching. Even his breath against my spine was too much. Him being in the bed was too much.

All of it. Everything was too much.

He got off the bed and went to the bathroom and I tried to organize myself into sitting up, but my body was having no part of it.

When he came back into the room, I pretended to be asleep. Because there was no conversation after that. He chuckled and climbed into bed with me, pulling the covers over our bodies.

“I know you're awake,” he whispered. “And that's cool. But sooner or later, we're gonna talk. I'm not going anywhere, Joan. I'm here.”

A coward, I kept my eyes shut until I knew he was asleep. And then I opened my eyes and stared at him and let myself wonder. I let myself pretend that I was someone else and he was, too. And maybe we'd met at a bar one night. I smiled, imagining him playing pool and maybe I'd pretend to accidentally bump into him or some shit. And then I'd have to buy him a drink for screwing up his shot and then he'd buy me one because the chemistry between us was thick. I would let him take me home. And the sex would be good. Kind, even. We'd kiss with our eyes open because we didn't have all these ghosts and secrets and skeletons we were terrified of revealing.

We'd go out for breakfast and to the movies. We'd argue over what to watch on TV and who would make dinner.

It was a whole life we could have—if only we were different people.

Because I was awake and the room was so quiet, I heard the buzz and rattle of my phone in my purse in the other room. I eased out of bed and ran quietly into the other room, fishing through my purse, throwing stuff on the ground in order to answer it before it stopped ringing.

It was an unknown number and I swiped hoping I wasn't too late.

“Hello?” Silence. “Hello?” I was just about to hang up when I heard it. The choking whimper and then a voice.

“Olivia?”

Only two people in this world called me by my real name. And this wasn't Aunt Fern.

“Jennifer?”

“Yes! It's me. Olivia. I need help.”