He pressed inside me, stretching me with a slow stinging ache that had me groaning harshly. His grip on my neck steadied me, keeping me in place as I adjusted to him.
“Fuck, goddamn it…” I panted, my legs shaking as he drew his hips back and thrust forward again, slamming against me. The sensation overtook me, melting into every corner of my brain like sticky goo that drowned everything else in its path. No fear, no frustration. No swirling, chaotic thoughts.
Only pleasure. Only agony. Only us.
“Is this what you needed, pup?” The words were guttural. He spoke them with his mouth against my back, teeth grazing my skin as if he meant to plant the words in my flesh. “Is this what you fucking deserve?”
I tried to answer. But he spat in his palm and reached around me, gripping my cock and stroking me. His fingers moved over me with a twisting and pulling motion that had my eyes rolling back. My usual efforts at stoicism were abandoned; the groans he forced out of my mouth carelessly loud. I thrust my cock in his hand, my breath hitching.
“I deserve it…” My voice was ragged and my muscles grew taut as I plummeted past the point of no return. I couldn’t move other than to shake. I couldn’t force another word out of my mouth.
A chill went through every nerve, from the tips of my toes all the way to my head. Cum spurted across his hand as I came, losing myself in ecstasy. I was unbearably sensitive almostinstantly, gasping as he kept stroking me until I wanted to curl up into a ball to escape.
“Take it for me,” he grunted, his thrusts coming harder, with new urgency. He leaned heavily against my back, his panting breath hot as he buried himself deep inside me. His cock pulsed as he came, his body shuddering.
For nearly a minute, neither of us moved. It was all we could do to stay on our feet, legs shaking, leaning there as we caught our breath.
Finally, although the words still trembled, I said quietly, “I love you.”
He rested his head against my back, his breath warm on my skin. “I love you, too.”
He pulled out of me, keeping a grip on my arm as we crawled into the back of the Bronco again and collapsed.
“I don’t tell you enough,” I said. “I think about it all the damn time. I look at you…” I glanced over at him — at the sweat on his skin, the blissful afterglow on his face. “And I think of how much I love you, but I don’t fucking say it.”
His eyes were half-lidded in the fading light. “I know you try.”
“I need to try harder. I know I don’t always get it right. Not with you or…or with Jess, or Vincent, or Jason. But I’m trying. And I’ll keep trying. I want you to know that.”
It used to scare me the way I loved him, just like it scared me to love Jason and Vincent. It was so much to lose, too much. And now…
Now there was Jessica.
God, she terrified me.
We laid side by side, curled against each other as we lit up another cigarette and passed it between us. The sun was gone and crickets chirped in the long grass. The air was cooling, the heat finally beginning to fade.
“I think she loves you, too,” I said suddenly, and he shiftedbeside me.
“Jess? I doubt that.”
“You shouldn’t. You should have seen how worried she was about you when you left the house.” My head was resting on his arm, and he curled it closer around me. “I think if I’d fought your dad, she would have joined me.”
I hadn’t expected much of her at first. A guy like me wouldn’t be wise to expect anything at all from a woman like her. But she never failed to surprise me. She was ferocious, a force to be reckoned with — yet now, I could see the cracks in her armor, the insecurities, the worries, the fear.
She wasn’t as different from me as I’d thought. Maybe that was why she made me feel this way, as if I wanted to cling to her and push her away at the same time.
“I don’t think she could love me,” I said, and Manson scoffed.
“If that’s what you think, then I wish you could see how she looks at you,” he said. “You’re both too damn prideful.”
“It’s not worth dwelling on,” I said, taking the cigarette when he held it out. “We won’t have her around for much longer.”
I didn’t like the thought at all. In fact, I hated the idea of her disappearing from our lives again so much that it made my fingers shake with anger. She needed to stay and give us a chance to figure this shit out.
“Do you remember what I used to tell you?” Manson said. “When we were teenagers and we’d drive out here to talk about shit…you’d tell me you didn’t want to see another day…”
I remembered that, of course I did. I remembered the despair I felt, the pain we shared, how hopeless I’d been.