Stain (20 page)

“How far are you willing to let me take you, Aylee?” He breathes onto the shell of my ear, still slowly swiping over my tender nipple.

This time the question comes through with clarity, but there was really never any need for him to ask. He already knows my answer. “All the way,” I whisper, breathless with conviction that possesses my whole body. 

He growls low in his throat at my response before covering my mouth with his. Pulling back, he moves around and swiftly tugs me from the chair, his skilled hands promptly gripping my hips, and he lets them slide down the sides of my thighs before bunching my skirt up my legs so that it won’t interfere with his next action. He displays his breathtaking strength once again and hauls me up his body. His hands immediately gliding down to grab the globes of my butt as I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms grip his neck. He takes us to his bedroom and sets me down on his bed. It’s all done in perfect succession. All done with care. He’s a predator on top of me. Large, formidable, and terribly, terribly hungry. And I’m the quarry, trapped, desirously anxious, and with my fate in his hands. But I’m eager, so breathlessly eager for his first, second, and third bite. I want to be devoured until there is nothing left of me, until I come apart in his arms

Throwing a doe-eyed look in his direction, I bite the inside of my lower lip, restlessly anticipating his next move. And that only causes him to lean in closer, hold me tighter. “You won’t be hurt, Aylee,” he murmurs next to my mouth, his hands threading in my hair, sliding down my back to expertly unhook my bra. “Never here.”

His fervency is unwavering but there’s a tenderness in his passion-drenched eyes that obliterate any last bit of doubt I may have unconsciously been harboring. Having discarded my cardigan back in his living room, he makes short work of my shirt and my skirt, tossing them somewhere into oblivion.

Vulnerability is the moment I’m left completely nude beneath the unerring, burning scope of his gaze. I can’t possibly imagine what he sees. But I know my body. I’ve memorized every tiny imperfection and I know it can never compare to the dozens of others he’s undoubtedly seen. I’m too skinny. Too fair. Lying down as I am, my breasts have flattened down to my chest from the unfair crush of gravity so that I feel horribly flat-chested. He doesn’t need to look too hard to make out the scars from my battles with my demons. My skin is littered with cuts, and the most recent ones between my thighs bring home the fact that my body isn’t made for intimacy.

“Goddamn.” Blinking at the words, I look at him. His eyes narrow, but they glint like diamonds on his face as he trails his gaze down the length of my body. Shivers ripple along my skin as though he just touched me. Goose bumps rise as I get caught in the intensity of his eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

My first and only instinct is to deny him. “No.” I smile weakly to fight the sting of tears behind my eyelids. “I’m not.” I reach for the sheets beneath us to cover myself but he grabs my wrists and pulls them over my head before I can, trapping them there with one manacling hand. He uses the other to cup my chin to look at him.

“You’re so fucking stunning.” It’s a fervent, uncontested assertion, and he bends over me to seal it with a kiss. It’s gentle and slow. So hot and carnal. It awakens an electric storm inside of me that crackles uncontrollably beneath my skin, shooting out sparks in every direction of my being. I come alive for him as he laps the inside of my mouth like he’s trying to savor my taste.

I’m so incredibly aware of how my body responds to him, and I begin to writhe beneath him. “So damn stunning to me.” I gasp and strain against him, dazed by the current of arousal buzzing through me. I don’t realize his hand is in between my legs until he hooks a finger between my soaking flesh and panties. He moves them aside with ease and very delicately slides the tip of his finger down and back up again, gently, slowly, teasingly playing in my slickness. I shudder as more heat melts my flesh.

Instantly my eyes are clenching shut, my kiss-bruised lips press up against his, needing his breath because mine isn’t enough. I wriggle to free myself of his grasp, needing to touch him, needing to wrap my arms around him to feel with my entire being how real this moment is. I need to know it’s not just a spectacularly vivid fantasy my mind is conjuring for my sake. “Maddox…please. I want to touch you.”

He shakes his head, and his grip on my wrists remain unyielding as he breathes harshly in my ear. “If I let you touch me, I’m going to bust.”

In saying that, he eases one thick finger inside my entrance and gives me exactly what I’ve been yearning for but haven’t been able to name until he shows me. “And we’re not even close to that yet.” A long, toe-curling moan slips from my lips as he rubs his thumb across my clitoris, while his finger moves in and out of me. I buck, driving his hand deeper as I jerkily move my hips, trying to find the rhythm of his finger.

His lips descend on my right nipple, taking the perked, dusky tip into his mouth. He sucks gently, circling it with the hot wetness of his talented tongue before flicking at it until I’m a writhing, shuddering mess beneath him. My body arches into the wetness, twisting and moving to receive more. I gasp and moan with a fluttering pulse and racing heart. He lifts his dark head and moves to the other breast, kissing and sucking all around until the crawling heat of his mouth finds the other nipple. He clamps it between his teeth and allows his tongue to swirl and stroke while carefully nibbling the hardened bud into a stunningly sensitive peak. I suck in a breath and then another, just when I think I can’t stand it, just when the coiling tension gathers like a volcano ready to burst, he pulls away, leaving me a delirious and frustrated on his bed.

Looking to my left, I see him rummaging for something in his bedside table before he turns back. Eyes like a hawk are train on me as he removes his clothes with speediness that astounds me. Shirt, jeans, and socks fly in the air. He’s masculine perfection in his fitted, black briefs. My eyes trail the length of his muscular physique before landing on the all-too-noticeable bulge tenting the briefs. I swallow hard. My soaking core pulses, clenching and unclenching my walls, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s from anticipation or fear. But then it becomes clear that it’s most definitely the former when he slides those briefs down his powerful legs to reveal the entirety of his gloriously hard nine-inch manhood.

Hard, dark, and raw desire strokes my insides like a lover’s tongue. Like Maddox’s tongue. Arousal drips between my already-soaking flesh just looking at him. I’m a willing pagan ready to sacrifice at his altar, wanting, needing, craving the invasion of his nine inches like life itself depends on it. What’s even more arousing is watching him grab himself, tear a small square platinum foil between his teeth, and bring the glistening condom to the bulbous head of his cock. Slowly he slides it down the veiny shaft before climbing back onto the bed. He stretches out over me and instinctively I tilt my hips up to cradle him. Bare skin to bare skin, we’re the same scorching temperature. Taking first my left arm, he drops breathy kisses along my skin, provoking a burst of goose bumps that cover me from head to toe. Setting that arm around his neck, he carries out the same heart-wrenching and tender action to the other arm, before bringing it to join the other one. He gathers me up close to him with raw, masculine need and I succumb to his power.

Lowering his head, he looks down at me with fire in his eyes. “Last chance to stop me.” He says it so softly against my lips, I can taste the strain in his voice.

I can feel him at my entrance and I can feel the amount of control it’s taking him not to do what comes naturally for him. He’s shaking from the force of it.

I kiss him. “No stopping.” Brazenly, I lick his lips. “I want to feel you. Make me feel every inch of you.”

He gives me my wish. Gently, slowly, he pushes in at first, and his thickness stretches me, fills me, and then he comes across the paper-thin wall of my virginity. “Aylee…” It’s a tortured groan murmured against my cheek. “Jesus, fuck. You’re so tight.”

I hold him tightly to me, my arms locking around his neck and my knees keeping him firmly between my thighs. I close my eyes and whisper against his neck, “Give me all of you, Maddox.”

He takes my face in his hands to swallow my pained whimper when his impaling thrust breaks through my hymen. Everything in me wants to recoil from the invasion, from the throbbing stretch of pain, but in a twisted way I enjoy the burn, it comes natural to me, and he pins me down and drives in deeper burying every last inch of him inside of me. He doesn’t move after that but holds perfectly still as we both breathe hard.

“I can pull out,” he whispers roughly, “say the word and I’ll pull…”

I shake my head and anchor my gaze to his. “Don’t.” 

Even now, buried as deeply as he is in me, pulsating with driving need until he has his fill, he still thinks about me. Everything stops in that instance, and I become aware of everything. Cocooned in a small world where only he and I exist, where his breath sustains my life and mine his. Where food and water are in the kisses and touches we share, I come to the soul-rending realization that this is the moment Maddox becomes my everything. This is the moment I fall, swim, and drown in love with him.

Because here and now, he’s naked. Not in flesh, but in soul. He’s bare naked for me to see all of him. He gives me complete access to the depths of his emotions. He lets me see the ugliness along with the breathtaking beauty of his vulnerability, his fears, and his pains. I’m in awe. So incredibly in awe that I can do nothing but take his lips in a deep, tear-soaked kiss. “Don’t stop,” I choke out. “Don’t ever stop.”

He starts moving. Shallow thrusts at first, just enough to let me get used to his size, his length, and the overwhelming sensation of being so full of him.

He leaves me empty with every temporary backward pull of his hips, but when he drives forward, stretching, filling, and practically crawling inside my walls, there is no better euphoria.

Pulling my arms from around his neck, he pins them up over my head and palm to palm he interlocks our fingers and grips me tighter. He leans his forehead against mine. Drenching with sweat, his muscles quivering, he says, “Fuck…Aylee.” He sounds ragged, overcome as his thrusts gain to an almost savage pace. “Fuck, baby, too fucking much.” 

I understand exactly what his foggy mind is trying to say because I feel it too. He feels so, so good, and I can hardly bear it. But I think I will die if he stops this beautiful friction of his hard-pulsing heat moving in and out of my clenching walls. He teaches me the cadence of this timeless dance. Our laboring breaths, my whimpers and moans, his growls and groans, and the unbelievably erotic slap of our drench flesh is the melody to which we dance to. And then he strikes at something deep, something dark and sinful, and the blinding pleasure it evokes wrenches a sobbing gasp from me.

“Maddox…” I breathe in wide-eyed wonder. “Oh Maddox, it feels…it feels…” I can’t describe it. I can’t even think.

“I know, baby.” And he keeps moving. His soft, ragged coercion utters against my lips. We lock eyes and it becomes so much more than the interlocking of our flesh. It’s soul recognition; it’s divine intimacy. It’s the enmeshment of two broken beings coming together as one whole entity. We breathe as one. We move as one. He’s the beginning to my end. “Let yourself feel how good my dick is inside you. Jesus, fuck. I can feel your G-spot. So damn hot, you’re gripping me so tight, Aylee, so damn tight…”

His thrusts are faster now. Frantic. Like he’s trying to climb inside of me. He has my hair entangled in his hands while he holds the sides of my face with the tips of his fingers and drinks my pleasure cries like they’re sea water. Every dip of his tongue inside my mouth seems to only increase his thirst for me.

I hold onto him, my fingernails raking down his back as his hands move from my face to grip and push my legs higher up his waist. He slams in deeper, hitting that bundle of dark pleasure over and over and over again until I scream and scream like death has come for me. A torrent of unadulterated rapture rends my very soul apart. I come undone. Mind, heart, and soul. Everything that I am is torn to spectacular pieces by the force of my release.

I feel him shuddering on top of me, his head burying between my shoulder and neck as he drives his hips hard, deep, and then I feel the flood. Even with the thin barrier of the condom, I still feel the hot spurts of his release. His length pulsates like a heartbeat at my core. Undulating beneath him, I greedily clench my walls around his cock. With a raw, animalistic sound, he bites down on my shoulder, his teeth scoring my skin before he soothes it with his tongue.

His mouth finds mine and just like his teeth branded me, his lips and tongue do the same to my mouth. 

Chapter 22

Maddox

I am so fucked.

I’m sitting on my bed, feet on the ground, my legs partially open. And I’m bent over slightly, my arms carrying some of my weight as I rest my forearms on my thighs. I turn my head to the right to find Aylee sleeping peacefully on my mattress. I can lie and say the sight of her in my bed right now isn’t stirring up some base, primal sort of satisfaction in my chest. But why the fuck even lie at this point?

She’s gotten under my skin. She gradually dug through the layers of muscles to dive into my bloodstream. She’s gotten at a heart I never wanted to acknowledge again. And as much as I’m fighting it, tooth and fucking nail to keep her out, she’s torn at my walls. I can feel how raw I am right now. I clinch and unclench my hands into fists, hating the turbulence of my emotions. I’m not focused. I can’t think about anything else because she’s become my main thought.

She’s turned herself into something I need and I’ve learned the minute you find yourself needing someone, that’s when it’s game over.

You’re living for them now. Your heart is out there walking in flesh and blood, fucking exposed to everything and everyone and there’s not a fuck of a lot you can do about it. I look down at her. Mine is fucking lying here in my bed. So damn sweet, so peaceful and angelic. I almost feel like a demon intruding on her moment of tranquility.

Her hair is mussed around her soft face, her kiss-bruised mouth is dark pink, drawn partially open as she slowly breathes. She still has that post-sex flush in her cheeks and again that sense of raw, male pride rushes in me. I’ve had my share of pussy, an entire fucking variety in fact. Virgin, slightly used, and worn the fuck out. None of them have been any different than the other. They’re nothing but holes to me. Fleshlights with faces.

Being with Aylee, being inside her tight, virginal walls, holding her, looking at her facial expressions as I moved inside of her, hearing and tasting the delicious little sex sounds she made?
Those
are things I’ve never, ever come close to experiencing. Connecting with her, attuning to her needs, her wants, are the only things that push me to see how much pleasure I can give her, how slow or fast I will move so that she is able to enjoy everything about being with me. Because I want to be with her again right fucking now. The way she’d looked at me earlier, her beautiful, bicolored eyes glowing with so much damn emotions for me tore me apart.

She’d looked at me like I had the answers to the fucking universe. The sincere way she stares at me makes me believe in things. She makes me believe in her, and me, and the concrete possibility that we could have a future together. She makes me believe love is possible, the sort of love that will take a goddamn lifetime to get over if I ever fuck up. She’s unknowingly knocking the fucking breath out of me and I can’t remember how to start again.

Shifting and leaning slightly over, I pause for a beat and hold very still, mesmerize with the blinding light of beauty in front of me that seems to radiate from the inside out. Taking a slow, low breath, I graze fingers that are too filthy to touch her down her smooth cheek and suddenly I remember again. Again I breathe deep, lean in closer, and this time bring my nose to the curve of her shoulder and inhale her scent. She smells so clean, so fucking sweet that my mouth waters. I want a taste. Need her juices on my tongue again.

She’s on her stomach, one smooth, shapely leg extending from the navy blue comforter while the other curls halfway up on the bed. I slowly pull back the covers from her back to reveal her ass and the way she’s positioned I can see every beautiful inch of her. I’m behind her in a flash, my fingers skimming over the dark red skin of her pussy lips when…

“No!” It’s a distressing scream that follows with her shooting straight up from the bed and scrambling away from me like I’ve just threaten to kill her. I quickly get over my shock when I notice her whole body is shaking as she huddles close to the headboard. She has her legs to her chest, her arms holding them tightly there while her chin rests on her upraised knees. I’m torn between going to her and gathering her close or just waiting until she shakes off the obvious nightmare she just had. But the second I hear the sounds of her sniffles I’m by her side, no longer indecisive on what to do. When I reach for her, she shakes her head and scoots farther away from me, as if she wants to become part of the black headboard.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, hugging her legs tighter like that’ll stop the tremors in her body. “I thought…I thought you were…” She stops and turns her head to look at me. Her large, expressive eyes are glassy with unshed tears. There are shadows in them that the tears can’t hide. She looks haunted. “I’m so sorry, Maddox…”

Learning from my first mistake, I don’t make the attempt of touching her again, but I move to sit next to her, leaving enough space between us not to make her feel threatened. Sitting on my bed with her, I say nothing for a while, but my mind is racing. Her reaction triggers memories from my fucked-up past. I remember waking up from nightmares just like she just did, scared out of my fucking mind thinking that motherfucker was still alive. I remember that feeling of being preyed on. Of being made to feel weak and helpless every single minute of my life. I remember being too damn afraid of letting anyone touch me because the only touches I ever received were violent and revolting. I look at Aylee, see the way she can’t even stand my touch, and I’m quick in putting two and two together.

“I thought I told you to stop apologizing for shit that’s not your fault.”

She makes an attempt at a shrug. “It’s a bad habit.”

“You thought I was who?”

She shakes her head again, her expression tightening into a frown as she curls her bottom lip between her teeth, an attempt to probably keep herself from talking.

“Aylee?”

“Maddox, please don’t make me. If I tell you, you’ll see how dirty I am. And then I’ll lose you. You’ll see my stains and you’ll tell me to leave you alone.”

“One thing you’re going to have to learn about me is that I don’t scare easily. Unless you plan on telling me you’re not into guys with tattoos there’s not a fuck of a lot you can say or do that’s going to push me away.”

“I’m only into one guy with tattoos.”

I can’t help reaching out to swipe a falling tear from her cheek. “Then do your worse.”

She turns away with a small, sad smile. “You asked me once why I was in therapy. And I guess you figured out it’s because I cut myself. I, um…I cut myself because I feel dirty most of the time. Like so dirty that if I could bleach out my insides I would. Sometimes it’s too much, too revolting, so I have to bleed the stain just to feel a little cleaner. Rachel and Tim, they adopted me when I was nine. They were a really nice couple, so I thought I’d finally found a good family that could love and care for me. And it was like that at first. They really doted on me. Especially Tim.” With her head still turned away I can only hear the steady sounds of her whimpers as she tries not to cry. “He worked a lot so when he was home he took over caring for me. I didn’t think anything of it at first, the way he’d ask me to leave the door open when I was showering. Or after I went to bed and he’d come in my room, lock the door, and just sit at my bedside. The first time he touched me, I was almost ready to fall asleep and I felt his hand between my legs…” She chokes on a sob. I make another effort to touch her but she shrugs me off. “Don’t…” She shudders and looks at me with watery eyes, desperate eyes. “Please don’t. If you touch me now I won’t finish. You need to know me, Maddox. You need to know the sort of fucked-up girl I am. You deserve that much.” She rakes a trembling hand through her hair, probably now adding to her stress by worrying about cussing, before she continues. She could say ‘fuck’ twenty times a day and I wouldn’t care.

“He made me think it was okay. I didn’t fight him, and I didn’t cry. I just let him do it to me. He said it was our little secret. Just for me and him. He told me if I ever told our secret, they’d send me back to the foster system. Return me like I was some puppy they no longer wanted. Every time he’d whisper that threat to me I told myself I was securing a place in the house. If I made myself accessible to him in this way then maybe he’d eventually see me as his daughter. It happened a lot afterward. Especially when Rachel wasn’t home. We never had sex. Just him touching me. And then one night when I was sixteen he decided he wanted more. He was drunk, I remember screaming and then Rachel came running in. He told her it was an accident and that he just stumbled into the wrong room. She believed him. She believed every single lie he’s ever told her. We never spoke about that night after. Even when I sliced my arm open and they took me to the ER. Nobody said anything. Nobody said a fucking thing.”

***

Aylee

What the hell am I doing? Is this really happening? I grab a small bit of skin between my thumb and index finger and press down hard. The bite of pain tells me just how very real this all is. But I’m still confused as to how we went from a moment of the purest form of rapture two people can possibly feel to me word-vomiting all over him. Is this my own form of sabotage? Revealing the vilest part of myself to him, letting him see just how truly filthy I am inside so that he’ll run before my demons push him away. I’m on my feet as quick as I can manage. My nudity is an embarrassment that I need to cover. I find my clothes a few feet away from the bed. I start with my panties and shirt, hastily slipping them on and completely forgetting about my bra.

Everything in me is screaming for me to retreat. I’ve said too much. Revealed too damn much to the one person who I never intended to see the ugliness coating my soul. I need to go. Need to get away. The faster I run, the faster I can get to my blade and…

“Aylee.” He blocks my path and when I try to sidestep him, he moves with me. When he reaches out to touch me, I swat his hand away.

“I need to go.” God, my voice sounds so strange. I don’t have much control over my emotions right now and the harder I try to remain calm, be poised, the faster I feel my composure crumbling. If he doesn’t let me leave, I’m going to burst, and I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.

But I guess he’s driven by determination, his own sense of control far more rigid than mine allows him to move toward me with marked focus forcing me to take a step back just to avoid his touch. “Let me go.”

He shakes his dark head and pins me with a too serious stare, “Not gonna happen.”

“Maddox.”

“Aylee.”

The instant he takes me into his arms, using strength to subdue but not hurt me, I fight him like he’s my enemy. I’m not a strong girl, and I’ve never felt the need or the urge for such violence. But with Maddox, I rage. I scratch and punch and kick until we’re on the floor. I use whatever part of my body I can to hurt him, even my teeth to catch the skin on his arms. This isn’t cutting. These emotions aren’t from sadness, they’re from something meaner; uglier. It bypasses the sadness completely and lets me tap into pure, raw, white-hot anger. And I sink into the attack like a well-worn pair of shoes. I battle my demons. I fight memories that have haunted me. I fight what was done to me. I punch and kick through the black tar pooling at the base of my soul, forever trying to pull me under. Through it all Maddox holds me, takes the brunt of my abuse, utterly calm in the face of my brutality—he’s a haven in the tempest of my fury. It’s only when I’ve completely exhausted myself, my breath ragged, heart galloping, pulse spiking with sweat staining my skin that I finally fall into the waiting arms of my anguish. He doesn’t deserve this. He’s not the one that hurts me. But Maddox is there to catch me. The first sob is followed by a second and then a third, and soon enough it’s all too much for me to count. Gasping for breath, I cling onto him. 

“Shhh.” I end up underneath him on the floor. He passes a hand through my damp hair and kisses my forehead. He kisses my tear-stained cheeks and my nose and lips. My body is shaking from the violent sobs that shoot up from the deepest, darkest part of my soul and he drinks them. Covers my mouth fully and swallows my shame, my guilt, and what’s left of the anger he knows so well. In his kisses I taste his soul, and it hungers for mine in ways that go so much deeper than mere sex.

“I’m here. I’m here, Aylee. Nothing and no one is ever going to hurt you again. I promise you that.” His voice is low, torrid, and he whispers with such rough emotion against my wet mouth that not even God himself would doubt him. His hand in the back of my hair clenches to a fist and draws my head up slightly to meet his gaze. The intense emotion in his voice radiates in his pewter eyes; they’re too overwhelming for me to hold his stare but too powerful for me not to.

I know I shouldn’t. I know most would ridicule me, believing it’s because I’m so vulnerable right now, and that it’s a bad time but memories are made through time and right now making this memory with Maddox is as vital to me as the blood rushing through my veins. “I love you,” I whisper, and then I kiss him hard, slipping my tongue between his lips to stroke at his. If he doesn’t feel the same at least I’ll have this moment.

I expect nothing. I give him all of me because doing otherwise is not an option. My soul reaches for his and is simply content knowing that he’ll catch me. Or at least I hope he will.
Please let him feel the same.
I hear his growl, feel the vibration of it in his chest before he takes control of the kiss. He devours my mouth with hard, insatiable hunger that has his body crushing down on mine. Moving his hand between us, he slips my panties aside and slowly glides deep inside me. My legs grip his waist and we rock together with every in-and-out plunging motion of his hips. He grips my hair and only allows me a few short whimpers and gasps before he claims my mouth again. He’s driving into me, hard and deep, and I can hear my sweat-slicked back squeaking against the wooden floor as he drives long, deep, and hard inside me, coming up against that mind-blowing bundle of nerves he calls my G-spot. He rubs relentlessly and I see stars when he hits it—a breathtaking galaxy of stars centering in the universe between my legs.