DEBT (20 page)

His hand stopped, grabbing my ass cheek hard again. "As of last night, this pussy is mine. And what's mine is mine alone. You don't even tempt someone with the idea of a taste, got that fucking straight?" he asked. And, helpless to do anything else, I nodded frantically into his neck as his finger did another swipe of my clit and my orgasm slammed through me hard, unexpected, making my legs give out suddenly as I clung to him and, unable to help it, moaned out his name.

He fucked me through my orgasm before planting deep and growling out my name. We stayed that way for a long minute, my heart slamming hard in my chest as my body trembled slightly, feeling overworked and frazzled. There wasn't an absurd urge to cry like there had been the night before, but I didn't want to let him go either. So I didn't. I held as tight as I had during sex, keeping my face buried, breathing in his scent, enjoying his strong body holding onto mine.

"Ease up, babe," he said, his tone infinitely softer than it had been before. When I shook my head and squeezed tighter, his hands went around my back, giving me a tight squeeze for a second. "I need to deal with this condom. You need me after that, I'm right here." With that, I slowly unfolded my arms from him, the muscles sore from holding on so tight as I moved to press back against the counter. Byron took a few steps back, grabbing his suit jacket and tossing it to me. "Throw that on. I'll be right back," he declared and walked out of the kitchen.

I shrugged into the jacket, fastening two buttons then bringing my hands up to cover my face, trying to deep breathe through the weird warm feeling in my belly and chest again. What was it about him? Why was he able to get to me so much? Not just sexually, though that was certainly intense, new, life-changing. But as a whole. I barely knew him, but him showing up late sent me into a hissy fit that made me go seek attention elsewhere? That wasn't me. I wasn't that kind of woman. I wasn't the one who needed to run to her best friend for a pint of ice cream and a bottle of wine when shit hit the fan. Mainly because I never fostered any close relationships with anyone, but also because that just wasn't who I was. I was very self-possessed. I didn't need to branch out. I didn't need a shoulder.

But maybe that wasn't the case.

Maybe that was just something else I had been trying like hell to make true about my life.

Maybe there had always been a part of me that wanted more, that wanted to connect.

Byron walked back into the room, stopping short at seeing me, eyes raking over me in a way that made me feel naked. "That's a good fucking look," he declared, moving over toward the island where the rest of the tarts were situated. He snagged the plate, then turned back to walk out of the room, making my heart feel like it plummeted to my feet. But then he turned back, brow raised. "You coming or what?" he asked, then turned and walked out of the room, leaving me to scurry behind, grabbing my clothes off the floor as I went.

He led us up the stairs and into his bedroom, putting the plate down on his nightstand and moving to discard all his clothes. As in... all of them. Then he pulled back the sheets and slid underneath. "Take that jacket off and get your ass in here," he demanded as I stood at the foot of the bed dumbly. And, well, I was helpless but to follow. I unbuttoned the jacket and shrugged out of it, picking up the sheets, and quickly climbing under, pulling the sheets almost up to my chin, something that wasn't lost on him if his smirk was anything to go by. "You gonna snuggle in or what?" he asked, reaching for a remote and flicking on the television in his cabinet beside the bedroom door. When a man like Byron suggested you snuggled in, yeah, you snuggled the hell in. I turned on my side and rested my head just under his shoulder blade, my arm resting on his chest. "Alright, so what do I have here?" he asked, reaching for the plate and resting it on his stomach.

"The strawberry with vanilla icing you requested, of course," I started.

"Of course," he agreed and I could swear I heard a smile in his voice.

"Then there are the brown sugar cinnamon ones."

"Classic," he agreed and I
knew
he was smiling.

A part of me wanted to tilt my head up and see it, not a condescending smile, not a wicked smirk, just a genuine smile. But instead, I just finished with, "And a Nutella, chocolate, and peanut better recipe I made up."

"Did you, now?" he asked, his one arm snaking around my back and giving me a squeeze. He reached for that one first, bringing it up to his mouth and taking a bite. "Fuck, woman. No way should your ass have been working in a fucking bank. Wasted talent."

I felt his compliment settle somewhere deep inside, seeming to break open and seep through my system, mingling into my bloodstream and becoming a part of me.

And maybe that was why I heard my mouth run away with me before my brain could weigh in on the situation.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Don't need to fucking ask me if you can ask me a question. Just ask," he said, putting down the Nutella tart and reaching for the strawberry one.

"Why did you come to live with your uncle when you were eighteen?"

There was a short pause. It was barely five seconds, but it was long enough to make me feel like I should have kept my mouth shut. "Ella's been talking, huh?" he asked, but went on before I could say anything. "I was seventeen," he surprised me by going on, "not eighteen. I ran away from home. If you can call it that at that age."

"Why?"

"Dad was a fuck up. Mom was too jaded to give a fuck that he whipped my ass every time the mood struck. Which was often. I got old enough, I got wheels, I got the fuck out of that shit situation."

"You and your uncle were close?"

"Not at first. I was a shit. No manners..."

"You? No manners? I can't believe it!" I teased and he surprised me by chuckling.

"Yeah, well, think of a testosterone-flooded, immature, headstrong version of me with a massive chip on his shoulder..."

"Your poor uncle," I said, smiling a little at the idea.

"He took me in under the understanding that I would earn my keep, do what I was told, and respect my aunt."

"Reasonable."

"You'd think. I bitched about it, but it was that or back to the shithole I came from and I knew enough about my uncle to know he could give me opportunities I could never find anywhere else."

"Was he your maternal or paternal uncle?"

"Maternal. But he and my ma had a falling out when I was still biting ankles. Probably over money knowing the two of them. My dad couldn't keep a job and my mom never tried to get one. And my uncle didn't believe in loaning money to family. He knew that once you started, there was no stopping," he added, giving me another squeeze. "He and my aunt Mandy couldn't have kids. I think they were happy to have my surly ass around, no matter how big a fuck I was."

"Mandy?" I repeated.

"Yeah my uncle and his wife had one of those stories every woman thinks that, if she looks for long enough, she will find."

"What story is that?" I asked, knowing damn well what he meant.

"Babe, you're favorite movie is
Beauty And The Beast,
you know exactly what story I am talking about. The great love story. The happily ever after. Until Mandy took down with cancer."

"Oh, Byron..." I said, detecting a hint of pain there, whether he intended to share that with me or not.

"It was quick, not some awful, drawn-out affair. But my uncle just... couldn't take it. His heart gave out just a couple months later." Unsure what to say, if there even
was
something to say to that, I turned my head slightly and pressed a kiss underneath his clavicle. His arm tightened around me again. "Long time ago, Prue. Don't feel sorry for me."

"I don't feel sorry for you. I feel sympathetic for what that must have been like. It's different."

"If you say so," he said, but the cockiness wasn't in his tone. He reached for the remote and flicked through a couple of channels. Figuring that was the end of our little sharing circle, I turned my head slightly and watched him channel surf.

"Hey!" I snapped, reaching out and making a grab for the remote.

"What?" he asked, sounding amused.

"You just turned off
Don't Trust The B.
"

"I turned off what?" he asked, hand closing tighter around the remote as I tried to pry it from his fingers.

"
Don't Trust The B In Apartment 23
," I clarified. "It's a generational modern classic that didn't get the love it deserved and you just shut it off," I said, watching as he stretched his arm out toward his side, out of my reach.

"Babe... I'm not watching some show with fucking eleven syllables in its title."

"It's way better than this
Forensic Files
crap," I objected. "There's enough awful in the world. I don't need to watch shows about it. Now give me..." I started, throwing half my body over his to lunge for the extended remote. "Yes!" I hissed as my hand closed around it. But then I was flying backward, hitting the mattress hard, with Byron's body suddenly covering me, a big, white-toothed smile on his face. "I still got the remote," I pointed out, wiggling it around as I smiled up at him.

"Yeah?" he asked, giving me his full weight for a second as his arms shot up and snagged mine at the wrists. "Try using it."

Arms pinned over my head, his inviting body covering mine, his disarmingly open smile shining down on me... yeah I kind of forgot what the hell a remote control was. As such, it fell from my hand, utterly forgotten.

"That's what I thought," he said, smile turning into a smirk before his lips pressed down on mine. With my arms pinned, I had expected hard, rough, dominant. Instead, he gave me slow, sweet, explorative kisses, planting a row of little ones across my lips before pressing in hard, his tongue slipping forward to claim mine until every inch of my skin felt like it was buzzing, until my air got tight in my chest, until my legs went up to wrap around his back and my arms fought their imprisonment, wanting to wrap around his shoulders and hold him against me.

His grip slipped slightly until his hands pressed down on mine. And instead of pulling away at the intimacy of it like I had expected the second I felt the contact, his fingers slipped between mine and closed up tight.

And I swear, the second my bare hand touched his bare hand, my soul sang a song my heart understood. And I realized in a moment of blinding, Earth-shaking clarity, that I had never felt anything even akin to it before.

It was too soon. It was stupid. It was reckless. It was completely and insanely unlike me.

But I loved him.

I loved him in a way I wasn't familiar with: wild, unstoppable, nonsensical.

It wasn't something I had known before. Love had been something that grew from mutual interest, long conversations, shared meals, shared spaces, shared... everything. It came from knowing the ins and outs of your partner.

It came from, well, my head.

This wasn't that.

This was all heart.

And that was the scariest thing I had ever felt in my entire life.

But the fact of the matter was, I wasn't the woman I was, or more accurately, thought I was, when I first walked through Byron St. James' door. He had systematically ripped the false layers away, the guards, the masks. He had shown me what was underneath. I was so myself with him that it was painful. My whole body ached.

"What's the matter?" Byron's voice asked, jolting me out of my own thoughts to find him pressed upward, eyes on mine, seeming to see right through me.

"Nothing is the matter," I lied.

"Babe... I stopped kissing you like twenty seconds ago and you didn't even notice. So fuck off with that shit and tell me what's up."

"Not everything in my head is your business," I countered, my words a little harsh to cover up the swirling, all-consuming fear working its way through my system.

"If your head is in my bed, everything in it is my business."

I exhaled slowly, fighting against the hold he had of my hands. "Fine. Then let me up and I'll get out of your bed and then you don't have to worry about it."

"The fuck is up with you?" he asked, brows drawing together, but he released my wrists and pushed himself back until he sat on his ankles and looked down at me.

"I'm tired," I lied, wiggling out and away from him, moving off to the side of the bed and making a grab for my jeans and tee, standing and slipping into them as quickly as possible.

"You're not tired," he countered, moving to sit back against the headboard, watching me. "Don't lie to me, Prue. You know I see right through that shit so you're not accomplishing anything. You want to leave, go, there's the door. But don't lie to me."

"Then don't ask questions it's obvious I don't want to answer."

"Babe, you never want to answer any fucking questions. It's like pulling teeth to get anything real out of you."

"I never asked you to get to know me, Byron," I said, my voice a little hollow because I knew that, while I never asked it of him, everything in me was begging it of him.