Steel My Love Page 16

  All of those other women, they had just been practice for this moment. When he finally had Lexi trembling underneath him.

  "You are so fucking beautiful," he rasped against her ear, tasting that delicate lobe again with a flick of his tongue. "And I'm going to make you feel what you do to me."

  He pulled himself up to look her in the eye. Those wide cinnamon eyes were gazing at him with a tantalizing mix of passion and trepidation. He meant to wash that trepidation away with his tongue.

  When he lifted her shirt, she wiggled and threw it over her head impatiently. He dove immediately for the soft rise of her freckled breasts, letting his lips seek and then find the soft pink nipple. He drew it into his mouth, feeling it pucker and harden against his teeth as he gently dragged them upward. A flick of his tongue had them flushed and standing at attention, just like his cock was.

  The need pounded in his groin but he ignored it. This had been too long in coming to rush though to the end. Instead he let his lips travel down from the peak and into the valley between her breasts. She snaked her fingers into his hair, trying to draw him up to kiss him, but he had another goal in mind. He let his tongue flick downward, stopping to trace the outline of her navel, before he pinched the pull of her zipper and unfastened her jeans tooth by tooth.

  "I got it," she breathed, sitting up, the bloom of frustration coloring her cheeks.

  He grinned at her from between her legs. "I've been thinking about taking your pants off for five years. You really going to ruin this for me?"

  She looked shocked for a moment, and then burst out laughing. The she cupped his face in her hand and smiled so sweetly that his heart hurt. "Just be quick about it," she gasped, pressing her lips to his. She smoothed back his hair and raked her fingernails down through his beard. "I like this," she murmured. "It tickles."

  He grinned and bent his head back to her zipper. "I'll show you how much ittickles," he growled.

  She lifted her hips slightly to accommodate him as he pulled down to reveal the creamy flesh of her thighs and the sweet, white cotton covered mound that was his focus. He could feel the heat rising off of her already. The unmistakable scent of her desire permeated the air. He couldn't wait to taste it. He heard the sound of stitches popping as he tore her panties free to reveal the glistening pink wetness they had hidden.

  "Lie back," he ordered.

  She leaned backwards with a soft, hissing noise, and pressed her hips upward. He caught the soft mounds of her buttocks and lifted her until her thighs rested on his shoulders. When he knelt upward, lifting her hips to the sky, her strength gave out and she fell flat on her back, completely at his mercy.

  At first it was just a lick. Just to see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled. But when that slick honey poured over his tongue, he became a man possessed. Pulling her roughly closer, he buried his face into her cleft. She stiffened, clamping his head between her thighs and he let her grind herself against him for only a moment before he pressed her belly down. When he had her on the bed again, he slipped a finger inside of her and pressed his other hand downward, catching the spongy flash of her G-spot while he let his tongue dance along the scalding hot folds that hid her buzzing clit from view.

  "Jesus!" she cried, panting hard, and he felt the walls of her pussy clamp down on his finger, trying to drag him upward. He groaned at the slick tightness, wanting nothing more than to plunge himself inside of her with wild abandon.

  But not yet. Not yet. She was poised at the precipice and he meant to send her flying.

  He bent his head again and concentrated his full attention to that furious nub. When his first lapping strokes exposed it to the air, she gasped and bucked upwards, pressing into him to tell him exactly where to work. Her fingers raked through his hair and down his shoulders, clutching and clawing blindly. Her mouth was opening and closing soundlessly. She was nearly there.

  He pressed down onto the nub with an authoritative thumb and slipped another finger inside of her. She gave a strangled cry, arching clean off of the bed as she panted and gasped his name, her pussy tightening rhythmically as her juices poured over his hand. He watched her as she came, wild and uninhibited; her eyes squeezed shut in a grimace of pain and ecstasy. He couldn't wait a second longer. When he felt her subside, he yanked the condom out of his wallet.

  When she heard the jingle of his belt buckle, her eyes flew open and she sat straight up and stayed his huge hands with her tiny, trembling ones. She looked up at him and gasped, still catching her breath. ""I've been thinking about taking your pants off for five years, " she grinned. "You really going to ruin this for me?"

  His laughter trailed away as he watched her fumble with his belt buckle. He had to grit his teeth and resist the urge to swat her away and do it himself. But when his cock was finally freed from its prison, he had his blessed relief from his torment when he felt her lips close around his tip.

  She looked up at him and closed her hand around the shaft. "I don't know if I'm going to be as good as you," she murmured. "So you tell me what you like."

  "Baby," he groaned in sweet agony as her hot mouth enveloped him. "You are better than you'll ever know."

  She moaned slightly in response, her throat vibrating against his shaft. He snaked his fingers into those wild curls, gripping tightly, having to hold himself back before he thrust himself deep into her throat. She moaned again when he gripped her hair tighter. "Oh god," she gasped, pulling herself free with a wet smack, "keep pulling my hair."

  "You like it a little rough?" he growled in surprise.

  She cocked her head to the side. "I guess I do," she grinned lazily, and slid her lips down the length of him again.

  He needed no more encouragement. Gripping her hair firmly, he thrust himself into her mouth. She made a small choking noise and then moaned louder. He could feel her throat closing around the head of his cock and he nearly lost it.

  "Get up," he ordered. "Now."

  She scrambled back onto the bed, watching him fixedly as he unrolled the condom. He crawled over top of her to position himself, but instead of waiting, she grabbed him and guided him to her entrance.

  He tried to be gentle as the hot walls enveloped him and welcomed him inside, but it was impossible. He thrust himself upward and her eyes flew open. "Sorry," he grunted. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm more than fucking okay," she growled into his ear. And then she clutched his buttocks and pushed him even higher. "I want you to take me, Case. I want you to have me however you want. I want to feel you everywhere."

  He sank himself inside of her all the way to the hilt and stayed there for a moment, feeling the rhythmic pulse of her against him. And then he began to work his hips, slowly at first, swirling himself inside of her. She was moaning and gasping underneath him, but this slowness wasn't for her. He wanted to feel every inch of her. He wanted to touch all of her secret places and claim them as his own.

  She shuddered again. "Case!" she cried as the sensations took her for a second time. She bucked underneath him, grinding herself wildly against him and her pleasure took him too. He thrust faster and faster. Somewhere in the back of his mind he worried that he was hurting her, but she took every punishing inch as she screamed his name over and over, until at last he joined her in her ecstasy. He felt his muscles twitch and his breath caught in his throat before he roared out her name while he spent himself furiously inside of her.

  His strength left him and he pitched forward on top of her.

  "Case." Her lips brushed his earlobe and his spent cock stirred again. "Case?"

  "Yes, Lexi?"

  "You're crushing me."

  He laughed and flopped off the bed. "You stay right there," he ordered. He didn't usually give a fuck about the aftermath, but something about being in Lexi's childhood bedroom made him want to clean up a little.

  "I'm not going anywhere. As long as you keep doing that thing with your thumb and two fingers, you're stuck with me forever."

  “I'll hold you to that.
" He brushed a kiss across her belly before hurrying out the door. The sooner he was done in the bathroom the sooner he could be back in her bed.

  But when he stepped on to that familiar tiled floor, he stopped as if frozen. The memory of the day he had met her at the playground was too damn strong for him to move. It grabbed him and held him until he was fourteen years old again, alone in the house with his mother during one of her benders.

  She didin't move from the mattress on the floor of her room for days, not showering, not eating. All of the assistance money for the month was gone. There was no food in the house and no money to buy it. But she had been able to scrape together enough change for rubbing alcohol and send him to the store to retrieve it. Those were the times he was glad his brothers were still in foster and that their bid to get them back had failed. Hunter and Jonah didn't need to see this.

  And so he wandered the neighborhood to get away from the stinking shadow that called itself his mother. He spent his whole day outside, in the heat, wandering the rim of the park. If he saw another person, he shied away, but that usually wasn't necessary. Decent people seemed to know to avoid him.

  He had seen the three girls go by his house in their Catholic school uniforms a bunch of times. The oldest one had hair that fascinated him. As did the way she cared for her little sisters. Seeing them made his heart ache for his brothers. He started watching the little trio more and more, standing on the edge of their life looking in.

  On that hot day, he was already at the park, poking listlessly at the dry, dusty ground of the playground, hoping to find a lost wallet or some dropped change so he could buy something to eat. He had been stealing from the corner store, but the man behind the counter was getting suspicious and started following him around immediately whenever he set foot in the door.

  When the three girls arrived at the playground his heart leapt in a queer way. The listlessness that had been dragging at him since CPS had taken his two small brothers seemed to lift when he spied them. Especially the oldest one with her halo of flame-red curls.

  He knew she didn't know him. He knew she wouldn't ever look his way. He was a shadow to her, unless he could get her attention somehow.

  Fate had intervened in the form of three bullies. Brianna and her two gorillas, Chad and Derek. He knew them from his brief enrollment in the public school when they first moved in to 451. He was tense and ready for a fight from the moment he spotted them. He wasn't going to let the flame-haired girl hurt like he was hurting.

  And so he had leapt from the top of the swing set.

  And banged his head like an idiot.

  But it was all worth it when Lexi had taken him into this bathroom. She closed the wound over his eyes so tenderly. No one had ever touched him with such love before. He had kept his eyes fixed on the tile floor, trying to slow his breathing as she fussed over him. That was the day she had taken his heart.

  She never gave it back to him.

  He splashed water on his face and wiped the droplets from his beard. He wasn't going to fuck this up again. Not this time. All those years he had wasted hating her when it was everything else he had been hating. His mother for ruining everything she touched, including the house that was supposed to turn their lives around. His grandparents, wherever the fuck they were, for giving her the house in the first place and letting him hope that things might turn out happy. The house itself.

  When he returned to the tiny little bedroom, his heart sank a little to see Lexi had gotten dressed. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her toes tapping frantically on the carpet.

  She shot him a despairing look. "Fuck," she groaned.

  "What?"

  "I just remembered, my dad said my mom would be home to make supper."

  "Why is that bad?"

  She stood up and threaded her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him down. The kiss was both passionate and sweet, and he wanted to linger there, but she gently pulled away. "I don't want you to have to go."

  "So I won't."

  She gave a small laugh. "I don't think they're ready for how much you've...changed."

  "So you come with me."

  She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. "Okay, where?"

  "I need to see something." He grabbed her hand and led her down the narrow stairs and out the front door on to the porch.

  "Wait," she squeaked, slamming the door shut behind her. "Okay." She let herself be led, trusting him in a way that made his heart hurt.

  Chapter 33

  Lexi

  He was standing at the back window, his hands shoved into his pockets, staring in to the empty house. I hadn't wanted to let go of his hand. But I knew he needed to be left alone for the moment as he stared into the tumbledown breezeway of 451.

  We were in the back yard, hidden from the street. I looked up and around at the silent, gray world. Over my left shoulder, I could see clear into our backyard and the massive pine tree that was my secret hiding place from my family. It was tall enough that the morning sun could cast its shadow all the way over here, five houses down. That tree was where I kept watch on Case's family that day the social worker had returned his brothers to their mother's care. I had seen who Case really was from up there, and fallen in love with him from that vantage point.

  But the inside of the house may as well have been in another country. I never knew what happened once the doors closed.

  Case seemed to snap out of his reverie and lifted his gloved hands to test the door's strength. It was a flimsy looking thing, with a pattern of six squares of glass arranged in a rectangle. He leaned his shoulder against it, touching the handle as he did so, then seemed to think better of it. "Stand back," he called to me.

  Then he pulled his sleeve down over his fist and punched through a small square.

  I winced, expecting the sound of splintering glass to echo through the neighborhood and bring the cops raining down on us. But the wood around the window was rotted and spongy, and the glass didn't even break on contact. It just gave way with a wet suction sound and then crashed to the floor inside the house.

  Case pulled his hand away and rubbed his knuckle mechanically for a moment. Then he pulled his sleeve back down and reached his long arm through the narrow opening.

  "Lock was always shit," he muttered as he turned the handle and let himself in.

  I tried to follow him, but my feet were suddenly not working. I had feared this place for so long. This was the bad house. It had loomed in my life like a shadowy tower on a hill.

  Stepping over that threshold was hard enough for me. Getting past the barrier in my mind that allowed me to set foot into the bad house took a Herculean effort.

  I have no idea how Case did it.

  But there he was, standing in the breezeway. The abandoned house smelled close and stale with the unmoving air sinking down on us like a dead weight. My familiar claustrophobia tried to tell me that I was going to suffocate, but I smashed those thoughts down. Now was not the time for me to have a panic attack.

  I stepped gingerly around Case to look at his face. It was twisted into a grimace halfway between pain and nausea.

  "Are you sure you want to do this?"

  He snarled and then coughed. "It's just a fucking house," he finally grunted. I could see him visibly pulling himself back together. Gingerly I slipped my hand into his. He didn't look down, only clutched it tightly.

  There was a step up from the breezeway into the kitchen. "Watch out," he muttered and I stepped quickly to the side before I could turn my ankle in the sunken patch of the linoleum. "Still there."

  "That was there when you lived here?"

  "The pipes froze the first winter we lived here, and one burst," he was looking around the kitchen, his face unreadable. "Water rotted the floorboards."

  He kept scanning around him, his eyes darting wildly. I followed his eyes, taking in the grimy kitchen. There was a sour smell in the air, like food long gone bad. The dark wood of the cabinets only added to t
he gloom.

  Case kept staring, his breath coming faster and faster. I followed the direction of his eyes and saw he was staring at a radiator in the corner, his lips twisted into a snarl.

  "What?" I breathed. It was a normal looking radiator, with chipped white paint peeling back to reveal the layers of avocado green and blush pink of previous eras.

  He didn't answer, only strode up to it and stared at it. He knelt like he was looking for something and when he found it, he sat heavily back to the ground. He turned to me and pointed at the pipe that emerged from the wall. "Do you see that patch where the paint wore away?"

  I sank to my knees next to him. His breathing was heavy and labored as he ran his finger over the pipe. The paint had been completely rubbed away here, exposing the rusted metal underneath.

  "I see it."

  Case sucked in his breath and let it out in a burst. "So it's real then?"

  I looked at him. "Of course it's real."

  He looked up at the ceiling. "Sometimes," he paused. "Sometimes I just hope that the shit I remember was just stuff I made up in my head."

  I swallowed, unsure of what he could possibly be talking about. I remained silent, hoping he would tell me more, but not wanting to press him to reveal his pain.

  He was silent for a long time, so I startled when he finally started to speak. "I was getting too big for her to slap around," he began. "She told me she was tired of me getting in the way all of the time. So she and her big-ass gorilla of dealer got the bright idea of handcuffing me to the fucking radiator." He rubbed his finger over the chipped paint while I swallowed and blinked back tears. "She got that Neanderthal to hold me down cause I was too big for her to handle herself." He sniffed in derision. "She just had to get the cuff on me."

  He started rubbing his right wrist absently while he stared at the ceiling. I looked closer and saw a pale line across the skin where the hair didn't grow. "Once I was stuck there, everything was perfect for them. My little brothers were too fucking terrified to do anything but stay quiet and that's all they fucking wanted. I was stuck here in the kitchen, out of the way, so nothing prevented them from shooting up right there in the living room in front of Hunter and Jonah."