God, his hand tightens in my hair, holding me exactly where he wants me, and I’m losing myself, grinding up and down over his shaft. He feels so good. I feel so good taking him, owning him, a powerful man like Darius, for this moment, taking what I want from him.
His jaw clenches, eyes darken even more. “Harder.” He rises a little on his knees, swats my ass and the stinging hit sizzles across my flesh. “Faster.” Another swat leaves me gasping.
Skin slaps against skin, and I ignore the tension in my muscles, knowing nothing but how perfect we fit togethe
r. How amazing we are like this, being reckless and raw and dirty.
A low growl escapes from his throat and the sound tightens my nipples, flooding me with heat. I’m thrusting faster, harder, and faster yet, until my muscles tense, building with a pleasure so intense tears leak from the corners of my eyes. I arch my back, hearing Darius shout, “Fuck,” but I’m lost to the waves of satisfaction rolling through my body as I feel man and muscle buck and jerk beneath me. as Darius loses himself in his release.
And I don’t stop, giving him my all, as I take his all too, until all that’s left is breathlessness and sweaty flesh.
—
Sometime later, he rises with me in his arms, my head buried in his neck. He takes us into the bedroom, placing me gently onto the bed. He removes the condom with a tissue, placing it in the wastebasket by the door before sliding his hard body next to mine.
I’m staring into his eyes, lost in that glowing warmth of orgasm. My thoughts are quiet, worries all gone, as promised.
For a long time, he stares back at me, silent. But slowly, I begin to see the intensity return to his eyes, the determination to get the answers to questions clearly on his mind. And I nearly laugh in amusement at just how right I am when he asks, “Will you tell me now?”
I slide my hand between my face and the pillow. “Tell you what?”
The soft lighting from the table lamp spills over Darius’s naked torso, detailing the peaks and valleys of his muscles. “Why you lied to your father about pressing charges against Shawn?”
I can tell by the softness in his eyes that he only wants to understand. This isn’t about going after Shawn or using the information to be my hero; he genuinely wants to know what happened. And I know now that I owe this to him. “Shawn has some pretty bad history.”
Darius’s brow arches. “A history that makes you feel bad for him?”
“Yes, extremely bad for him. He was sexually abused.” I shrug against the pillow. “Does my sympathy make me weak?”
“No.” Darius smiles gently, brushing his fingers across my face. “It makes you Taylor.”
“Which means?”
“Your heart is warm.” When my brows furrow in obvious confusion, he chuckles, and soothes away the lines between my eyebrows with his thumb. “You’re also strong, and I don’t doubt that the second Shawn got violent you left.” His eyes follow his hand as he tucks my hair behind my ear, and my heart trips at the way he smiles so softly at me. “But I suppose now it explains how you got wrapped up with a guy like that. You didn’t know he had previously been violent, did you? And then once you found out, you cared about him because he explained this past to you?”
“It’s just…” I sigh, not really knowing how to answer this question. “I guess I feel bad for what he went through. It gave me a reason for why he sometimes got so angry. I hoped loving him would fix him.”
“You can never fix anyone,” Darius states.
I almost want to laugh at that, because how true is that statement. If I could’ve fixed a man, I would’ve fixed the guy in the bed with me. Instead of commenting on that, I reply, “I hoped that love would be enough to help him through his past troubles and to see that life can be more than what he thought it could be. That he deserved more.” I shiver a little as Darius slowly drags his fingers up and down my arm, and add, “Everyone has a past, and until that past affected me, I wouldn’t hate him for it.”
Darius processes that. Then, “Do you hate him now?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because people deal with pain differently.” I see the hardness that comes over Darius’s face as he recognizes that I also mean him. “Shawn deals with his with alcohol, and alcohol is what makes him violent.”
Darius pauses again. “And how do you deal with your pain?”
I snort softly. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“I never deal with my pain, always trying to see the good in everything and hoping for the best, so I’m in this stupid circle of life where everything keeps repeating itself.” I laugh, but I’m the only one who does.
Silence cuts harshly into the air.