My voice catches, and I have to stop, my breath hitching.
“Is that why you’re scared of thunder?” he asks. “Your stepdad?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe. Maybe it’s like his footsteps thundering around when he’s pissed. I used to hide in the closet when he was coming, and he’d go apeshit trying to find me.”
Maddox pulls me in closer, ignoring the straining bed, and presses his lips to my forehead.
I take a breath to calm myself, my usual defenses falling back into place automatically. “I’m not that scared. It was mostly the dream. I mean, I’ve gotten through all the other storms myself. I’m fine. Really. You don’t have to stay.”
“And I’m fine staying,” he says. “Really.”
I nod, swallowing hard, my eyes on the dark ink on his neck, illuminated by the next stroke of lightning. I raise a finger and run it slowly down the front of his neck, over his Adam’s apple and the crow’s body. “What about you?” I whisper. “What are you afraid of?”
He takes my hand, gently moving it from his throat and bringing it around the back of his neck before letting his hand fall to my hip. I swallow hard and look up at him, sure he’s going to kiss me instead of answering. My heart hammers in my chest, and I can hardly breathe with the anticipation.
“You,” he murmurs, his dark eyes burning into mine as his thumb strokes my cheek. “What you’re doing to me. To us.”
“What am I doing?” I whisper, my throat tight.
He chuckles. “You tell me, little girl.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Sure you don’t,” he says, smirking. “Want to take this to my bed? I’m not sure this cot is going to hold us much longer. You can stay until the storm is gone. I’ll even be a good boy like Lennox.”
I gulp down my nerves, ones that have nothing to do with the storm still raging outside. In his arms, I feel safe and warm, like he’ll hold out the rain and wind, drown out the thunder. I guess he already has, because I’ve stopped shaking and I’m not thinking about anything but him, how good he feels against me, how right we feel together. “I’m not afraid of you, Maddox,” I say, looking up into his fathomless gaze. “Or what you’re doing to me.”
He sits up, swinging his legs off the bed. “You should be.”
I sit up too, watching him stand, his powerful body displayed before me like a work of art, drawn in a thousand masculine lines, so beautiful that it makes an ache build behind my sternum. I want more than the seconds of flickering lighting to look at it, to memorize it.
“I’m not,” I whisper. “I’m not scared to be alone with you. I know you could take what you wanted, and I couldn’t stop you. But I know you wouldn’t.”
“Then you don’t know me at all,” he says, holding out a hand. “Venga, little mama.”
I want to say more, to make him understand that even when he stepped through the curtain, I never had a moment of fear. Not even after the last two weeks, when he’s been cold and bitter as day old coffee. I know that if he wanted me, I wouldn’t try to stop him. I want him, want whatever comes next. I don’t know what that is, but I’m ready for it, even if he breaks my heart afterwards. Whatever he’s doing to me, whatever he’s going to do, I’m all in.
So I follow him into their room with the two twin beds in the two halves, one so messy and the other so neat, one with regular teenage boy posters of movies and bands and scantily clad women on the wall and the other with beautiful art, each side reflecting the boy who sleeps there.
When Maddox picks up the blanket, I slide under, huddling down into the bed that’s still warm from his body. He scoots in with me, under the blankets, curling his massive frame around mine like armor to keep out everything I fear. When he pulls me into the curve of his body, spooning me from behind, I can feel that he’s hard. I squirm against him, frustrated and wanting, and he lets out a low, sleepy moan. “You better stop that, little girl,” he growls into my ear. “Unless you want me to rail that ass so hard you can’t walk for a week.”
“What if that is what I want?” I whisper.
“You don’t,” he says. “I told you, I’m too big for a virgin. And Lennox may be a heavy sleeper, but he won’t sleep through your screams when I make you cum so hard the whole block thinks I’m killing you. And neither will our mother.”
Shit. Their mom is sleeping just down the hall.
I’m suddenly awkward, unsure how she’d feel about finding me in her son’s bed after she was kind enough to take me in. Would she kick me out? Think I’m a slut?
And why does the thought of her finding me in his bed, or Lennox waking up and hearing us, make me even hotter instead of dousing the fire raging inside me?
I try to stay still, but the sensation of Maddox’s long, thick cock pressed against my ass, with just his thin, drawstring pajama pants covering it, makes it hard to breathe, let alone sleep. All I can think about is the night on the living room floor, how it felt against my bare skin, how dirty it felt when he came on my back—and how much I liked it. His cock throbs against me, and my pulse throbs in return.
“Maddox?” I whisper.
“Mmm,” he murmurs, slowly rolling his hips forward, grinding his cock against me. He sounds like he’s half asleep, but I’m so hungry for him I could scream. I wonder what he’d do if I pulled my pants down, freed his cock, and impaled myself on it. Would he stop saying he was too much for me? Would he see that I’m not some innocent little girl who needs to be shielded from him?
I’m ready. I want to see where it goes, even knowing it goes nowhere. Even knowing it won’t last, that he doesn’t last in anyone’s life except the Crows. Lennox told me to watch, and I have. I know he disposes of girls when he’s gotten what he wants out of them, used them up. I know, and I’m not afraid. I want to be one of them, want to him to use me up, devour me and leave nothing but bones, less than what was left of Poe after the animal got to her body.