Eventually I stood up and unlocked my bedroom door, it seemed like the light had changed so maybe it was close to morning. After making my way carefully down the steps, I walked through the great hall to the front doorway and peeked out the window.
A figure stood in front of the house like a sentinel, the cherry from his cigarette going bright when he inhaled. I unlocked the door and stepped out into the humidity. The heat had finally broken and immediately a soft breeze lifted my dress and the hair around my shoulders.
I ran barefoot through the grass and he turned when he heard me coming, just seconds before I dropped the gun and flung myself into his arms.
“Wyatt,” I cried. He grabbed me and pulled me into his chest.
“Harley, it’s okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I could feel him smell my hair and kiss the top of my head, and his strong arms held me almost too tightly. I knew he’d said no, that he didn’t want to sleep with me or get involved, but my emotions were ragged and I felt needier than I’d ever been.
When I tipped my head up to him and angled my face so that he could kiss me, I closed my eyes and prayed again, but this time I asked for Wyatt to find solace in me. In my arms, with my body, with my love and support. My dreams were big but my prayer was short. He grabbed my chin with his thumb and forefinger and dragged my lower lip down.
“Fucking Christ,” he said, before he captured my mouth.
He crashed into me with all the same emotions that were already bubbling from within my core, pain mixed with desire, all of it heightened by a potent dose of fear. He tore at my mouth with anger and with love, his tongue seeking, teeth biting, and his lips caressing mine with velvet. When I felt his body tense, I told him, “Please, don’t stop.”
That spurred him on and he kissed me ever harder, stole the breath from within me and I felt my soul slipping away. I’d never been so lost in another person, nor had I ever been willing to deep dive like this. I wanted to tear him open and see it all—the good and the bad—and I wanted him to see all of me. And I didn’t just want it once, I wanted it forever. With his big callused hand in mine, I pulled him toward the house.
“I’m supposed to look out for you. Treat you like one of my own,” he lamented as I pulled him up the front steps. When we entered the house, he closed the door and I did my best to push him up against it.
“Hush,” I said against his lips. “I want you—”
He didn’t let me get the rest out as his mouth crushed mine in a kiss that shook me like an earthquake. He attacked my jaw, below my ear, down my neck and across my collarbone, licking and sucking, gently biting and leaving kisses that felt like wounds as they bit into my skin.
“I can’t stop,” he panted, crushing my breast in his hand.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered. There was enough light from the incoming dawn for us to walk up the stairs. I took him to my room and locked the door behind us. I tore off my dress as soon as his hesitation seemed to fill the whole room.
“Harley,” he said. He was trying to pull away, but I knew I’d won with the way his eyes consumed my body. He ate me alive with his expression alone.
I wanted to surrender to him, give him both my body and heart. A gift of flesh and soul to make up for all he’d been wronged. I slipped my thumbs under my bra straps and he did the rest, pulling the black lace down until it sat at my waist. He cupped my breasts and thumbed my nipples looking at me with his dark eyes flashing. When he sucked a swollen and tender nipple between his lips, I let my head hang back in pleasure. There was something about the roughness of his hands that made me flood with desire, and as he dragged them across my skin, all of my senses heightened acutely. There was no hum of electricity, only the soft wind, our hearts thundering and crickets singing in the distance. One hand slid down my abdomen and into my panties where Wyatt gently caressed my clit until I was whimpering and pushing into his hand.
He kissed me again with his punishing kiss, forcing me backwards until I hit the bed, then I backed up while he tore his t-shirt off. I’d seen his perfect body before from afar, but now I reveled in touching it, the hard lines and soft skin, the thick sinewy muscle of his biceps that flexed as he moved over me. Wyatt wasn’t a pretty boy and neither was he sheltered, and I could feel in his hands that he’d touched more than a keyboard and tennis racket, piano keys or croquet mallet. His were the hands of a man who’d gained his hard earned keep with sweat and brute force, determination and grit.