Craving Redemption (16 page)

I felt the moment he gave up the fight.

It was the same moment that I gained the euphoric feeling of oblivion from everything else.

He growled down my throat as his hands began to move over the curves of my body. One hand slipped inside the t-shirt I was wearing to wrap around my breast and the other slid to the bottom of the shorts I wore to bed. My hands were braced above his shoulders, holding my weight, and I groaned, my elbows almost buckling when his fingers found my nipple and pinched it lightly.

I was a frenzy of movement the more turned on I got, and I arched my hips even harder into his, trying to get the friction I needed—then he made a sound in his throat like I’d punched him. His hands slid out of my shirt, causing me to whimper and push even harder, but he suddenly grabbed my hips and practically shoved me back, ripping his face from mine.

“Jesus Christ, Callie! You’re gonna push my balls into my throat!” he winced, gasping for air.

I’d had sex in that position before, and I thought I knew what I was doing, so his words were like a splash of ice water to my face.

I sat back hard on my heels in shock before shame swamped me and all I wanted to do was get as far away from him as I could. I thought it was dark enough in the bedroom that I had a little protection—but he must have seen the look of horror on my face, because before I could make my legs move to scramble off him, he sat up straight and wrapped his arms around my back.

“Where you going?” he rasped, trying to get a good look at my face as I tucked my chin into my chest. I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. Because unfortunately, I was feeling so embarrassed that I could feel a lump forming in my throat.

“Hey, look at me. Where’d you go, baby?” he asked quietly, trying to force my face up with a careful hand.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled pitifully to his chest, wishing I was anywhere but there.

“Sorry for what? What am I missing here?”

“For, you know, attacking you. Pushing your, uh… into your throat,” I told him, cringing.

He barked out a laugh, startling me enough to have me raising my head.

“Baby, you wanna attack me, you feel free,” he told me with a wide smile. “Nothin’ you did was wrong. You obviously needed somethin’ and you were tryin’ to get it. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

“Okay, well, okay,” I replied stupidly, “I’m gonna just go to bed now.”

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me, Callie,” he replied incredulously. “Get over here and kiss me.”

I leaned forward to get it over with, as I didn’t see him letting me go if I didn’t, but the peck on the mouth I had planned turned into something else when the minute I got close, he bit my bottom lip and pulled me toward him.

“You needed somethin’ and you weren’t getting it, Callie,” he told me against my mouth, the words separated with little bites. “I’ll give it to you.”

His hands quickly stripped my t-shirt up and over my head before I could process his words, and my hands flew to his hair as he arched my back and pulled one of my nipples into his mouth. My head fell back and my hips twitched, but I was too worried about moving wrong to let them rock the way I wanted to. If I was doing it wrong before, I wasn’t going to magically know how to do it right then. So, against everything my body was yelling at me to do, I stayed still.

His mouth pulled away from my breast with a small popping noise, and he looked at me in confusion before his face cleared. His hands moved to my hips and started rocking them. I concentrated on the movement until I was sure I could replicate it, but it wasn’t doing anything except getting me wetter than I already was. I felt swollen and needy, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Everything he was doing felt good, and by far surpassed anything I’d gotten out of past encounters.

He watched my face intently as he let go of one of my hips and ran his hand along my body to my breast. When he pinched my nipple again, my hips jerked down into his, and he nodded slightly and let go of my other hip.

“Keep moving, Sugar,” he ordered, sliding his hand down my belly and into the front of my shorts. When his thumb hit my clit, I jerked again and he gave a small shake of his head.

“You keep moving the way I showed you,” he growled, circling my clit over and over with his thumb. “It feels so good. You’re so fuckin’ wet; I can feel it through your shorts.” He paused in his dirty talk for a moment, watching my body move against him, before capturing his train of thought again. “You’re not gonna be able to get off from this angle,” he explained roughly, “so you were pushin’ and pushin’ and it was just getting you more frustrated. And with our clothes on, you were fighting a losing battle.”

His breath hitched as I rode him, his fingers tightening on my breast before he continued.

“You need me right here,” he rasped, pushing his thumb harder against my clit. “This right here is going to push you over that ledge.”

He dipped his thumb farther down and when he pulled it back up, my entire body clenched. It was winding tighter and tighter as he whispered to me, and when he sucked my nipple hard into his mouth and pushed down hard with his thumb, I came with a high pitched moan.

He held his thumb where I needed it as I rode out my orgasm, but as soon as I finished, both hands went straight to my hips to move me faster over the length of him. He latched onto the inside of my left breast as his breathing grew more and more ragged, sucking hard as he came and groaning into my skin until finally stopping the movement of my hips.

“Holy fuck, Callie,” he mumbled, as he fell backward on the bed, taking me with him. “Shit, when I get you naked you’re gonna fuckin’ kill me.”

I lay there on top of him, blissed out and relaxed, until he made me get up so we could clean up and use the restroom.

More than an hour passed before my mind grew dark again.

Chapter 24

Grease

Our second week in Sac started with a bang, and shit didn’t settle down after that. Callie was hot on my dick—pushing for us to have sex—and after the night we set up the bed, I was having a hard time telling her no. Fuck, that was an understatement. I had a feeling I was grinding my back teeth down to nubs with the strain of holding back. The idea that I was the one telling her no was fucking ridiculous, but I was trying to do the right thing. I didn’t want her freaking out afterward—it’s not like she had anywhere to go if she lost her shit.

We were fooling around—that didn’t stop. We weren’t doing anything beyond what most kids her age were doing— hands and all that shit. But
holy hell
, I wanted her. I’d made the mistake of cleaning off my fingers with my mouth after one of our rounds, and
goddamn
if my mouth didn’t water now every time I got anywhere near her. It was a joke. I was being a fucking pussy and I knew it. She didn’t have any reservations about fucking, and thank god she wasn’t a virgin, but there was something…off. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

She was almost desperate for it—my touch. And as much as I wanted to strut around like I had balls made of gold, I knew her craving for it was too extreme.

We took her in that week to sign her up for school, and I swear to Christ, the secretaries in that piece of shit high school kept looking at her belly. The fact that some tattooed guy brought her in to get her shit taken care of confused the hell out of them. I guess the conclusion they came to was that I’d knocked her up. It was so far from the truth is was fucking funny, and she elbowed me about fifteen times as I rubbed on her belly. The secretaries could suck my dick. They’d better not give her any shit when I wasn’t there.

We set it up so she could start school the following week, and that afternoon we picked her up a little car that I’d bought from one of the brothers. The Aces Sacramento Chapter was pretty small, but it had some good guys in it. Several of them were close to my age, and I’d partied with them quite a bit whenever I was in town, but I was fucking dreading introducing Callie to any of them. I’d claimed her, and I knew they wouldn’t touch her, but fuck if I wasn’t jealous of any time they’d get to spend with her—especially after I headed back to Eugene. I didn’t want them even looking at her. I knew where they’d been. Shit, I’d
seen
where they’d been. I didn’t want Callie anywhere near that shit.

The clock was ticking down on my time with Callie, and it was wearing on me more and more each day. I got her the car so she’d have a way to get around when I wasn’t there—I was worried that she’d hole herself up in the apartment if she didn’t have a way around. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She didn’t want to go anywhere without me.

Every time I asked her to run to the store or pick us up some dinner, she’d come up with some excuse so she didn’t have to do it—she wasn’t feeling well, she’d just gotten comfortable on the couch, she wanted to cook something herself. It was never fucking ending, and by the end of the week, her neediness was getting on my last fucking nerve.

“Callie, get off your ass and go to the fuckin’ store!” I sniped at her. We’d been arguing about shit we needed, like fucking milk, and once again she was outright refusing to leave the goddamn house. I was going to lose it. I was still into her. That hadn’t changed, and I fucking loved taking care of her, but it felt like I was turning into her freaking parent.

“I can’t, Asa. I don’t have very good night vision,” she told me with fucking doe eyes. Since I’d met her, those eyes had been able to get me to do anything for her, but right then, they just pissed me off more.

“Calliope, I’m paying for your fuckin’ apartment,” I hissed as I pulled her off the couch. “I pay for your fuckin’ shampoo and your makeup and your goddamn toilet paper.”

I pulled her through the apartment by her arm, ranting at her the entire way. If she wasn’t going to pull her weight, I’d make her do it. I wasn’t asking her to milk a cow, for God’s sake; all I asked was for her to go to the grocery store only two blocks away. When we got to our dresser, I picked up her purse and shoved it at her, letting go so it would fall if she didn’t reach up to grab it.

“I’m fuckin’ done with this shit,” I mumbled as I pulled her keys out of my pocket and put them in her hand.

I drug her back out to our living room and pushed her out the front door before I turned to walk back inside. Before I could take one step, I froze at the sound of her hiccup.

Then I kept going.

When I turned around to close the door, she was standing there, shaking, with tears running down her face—but I wasn’t about to coddle her. This shit had to stop.

“We need milk, Callie. We also need toilet paper, coffee, and some fuckin’ fruit or something. Bank card is in your wallet,” I told her before shutting the door in her face.

I leaned against the door and listened to make sure she left. I waited there for ten minutes and there was no sound except for an occasional sniffle. When I’d finally reached my breaking point, feeling like shit for what I’d done, I heard her walking down the stairs outside.

My gut clenched.

I fucked up. I knew it.

I should’ve done shit differently.

She was fragile and sweet, and still trying to figure out her new life.

I knew she was scared; I held her after her screaming nightmares woke us both up in the middle of the night.

But I had to do something.

I had three days before I had to head north.

If she couldn’t even go to the store when my ass was sitting on our couch waiting for her—how the fuck would she survive on her own?

Chapter 25

Callie

When Grease left me on the doorstep, clutching my purse and wearing pajama pants and slippers, I was stunned.

I knew I was being a pest, following him around like a lost puppy, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from doing it. He made me feel safe, and it wasn’t something I’d ever willingly give up. So, yes, I knew what I had been doing, but it wasn’t until that night that I knew it was bothering him.

The foundation of our relationship was based on my need for his strength and his need for my weakness—but apparently my weakness was no longer something he wanted.

Unfortunately, I was still weak.

I stood outside the door, waiting for him to open it back up and tell me it was all a mistake. That he didn’t really expect me to go to the grocery store all alone, in the dark, and with my boobs hanging out of the thin tank top I was wearing without a bra. I waited, but he never came.

I eventually made my way to the car, jumping at every noise, and jerking my head from side to side as I tried to watch my surroundings. I felt exposed, like at any minute, someone would drive up and it would all be over. My eyes searched the backseat before I unlocked my door and climbed inside and my mind raced with scenarios of someone hiding back there, lying in wait for me to leave the house.

I knew it was ridiculous, but the shock of Grease pushing me out the door, and the lingering fear that the gang in San Diego would find me, were the making of a perfect storm for my imagination.

I turned the car on and drove to the grocery store, but once I parked I couldn’t make myself get out of the car. I sat there, hyperventilating and crying like a lunatic for over an hour before I finally snapped and turned the car back on.

He’d said that he was done.

Done.

I was in a car that didn’t belong to me, in an unfamiliar town, and I had nowhere to go.

So I followed the signs that lead me to the interstate, and I started driving south.

I was two hours into my drive when I remembered that I hadn’t called Gram yet that night, so I pulled my purse toward me and started shuffling through it, finally pulling out my silenced cell phone. I’d called her like I promised I would the night we got to Sacramento, and since that first call we’d talked every night. It grounded me to know she was there, waiting until the day she could move north to live with me, and I think it gave her a little peace of mind to have me calling to check in.

There were missed calls, but I didn’t look through them before I dialed Gram’s number.