Delusive (48 page)

The reins I had on the hurt and pain he inflicted on me with his words began to fall from my grip. “I know my mother left Holden everything, and I know why she did it. I don’t blame her. You don’t understand.” I gulped down a sob. “I—”

“When are you going to stop looking at the both of them with childlike eyes? Can you distinguish between letting the past rule you and living in a fantastical version of it? Because you, Hanley, are doing the latter of those two.”

“W-why are you doing this to me?”

“Do you need to ask?” He clasped his hands to my face, holding me still. “I can’t stand seeing you this way. It’s worse than if you showed me the full extent of the pain I know you’re feeling. I can't fill every empty part of you if you keep pretending the spaces don't exist. No matter what you do or say to me, I will never stop wanting and doing everything I can to make up for the life you should’ve had.

“I know it hurts, Hanley. Show me how much it does so I can make it better for you. I
need
to make it better for you. Allow me to do that.” With his lips grazing mine, he whispered, “Let go.”

I pressed my lips together to abate another sob. My vision drifted, and he caught me, forcing me to look into his eyes.
 

Time crawled to standstill as thoughts made me think about what I’d barely digested. My father’s last conversation with me that sounded like a final goodbye. The sinking sensation that I’d been wrong all along about the cause of my father’s depression dissolved my strength. It was his guilt eating away at him. He had the lives of four men and my mother on his hands. Men he killed, not out of a possessive and crazed love for my mother but for money. The love I thought my parents had for one another was all a lie. It had to be.
 

The more I stared silently into Elias’s eyes, the less I was able to numb myself from everything. Sobbing, I clutched my stomach as it began to ache. His arms enveloped me, comforting me.
 

The feelings inside me continued to churn and bubble to the surface in an effusion of emotions. I remembered what I’d felt and suppressed when my father brought Holden and me inside my mother’s hospital room and told us she was brain dead. Holden cried for twenty-four hours straight, but I couldn’t shed a single tear. I recalled what I’d felt when I saw my father leap from the chair to hang himself. I further remembered the hurtful things said to me by Roth and the person I loved more than anything, my mother—the things I thought I’d erased from my mind.
 

In Elias’s arms, I cried the tears I never allowed myself to shed. The tears I kept away to be the strong woman I was berated into becoming.

He held my face, his eyes softer, looking at me in a way I missed. “Anything you need from me tonight, ask and it’s done."

I sobbed, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “You have every right to be smug right now.”

Reaching down, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted the tears from my eyes and the drainage from my nose. “I know your father manipulated you. I know he coerced you into doing what he was too much of a coward to do himself. When I realized that, I stopped trying to hate you.” He shoved the cloth into my hands and took a large step backward.

I found myself seeking his touch again. I stepped closer with my hands up, wanting to be near him. Slipping my empty hand into his, I pressed my body against him. “I missed you…so much. I couldn’t sleep at night, because I couldn’t sleep without you. Ten minutes after I went to sleep, I’d move over to the left side to try snuggle up next to you, but you weren’t there. I kept busy so I wouldn’t have to miss you. Turns out, there’s nothing I can do to stop what you make me feel when you’re here…and when you’re not. You have no idea how bad I feel about what I did to you. You are who you are and—”

Crashing into me, his warm and heavy body made my back meet the opposing wall. When he began to tremble, I reached out for him, placing my hands behind his head.
 

“I apologize for the things I put you through,” he whispered, “and the things I did to make you pay. I didn’t know what was true and what was false with you. A part of me doesn’t care as long as it means you’ll stay with me. But I will not make you out to be your mother.” As he repeated, “You're safe with me,” over and over again, I almost believed him.
 

I’d never been safe and was cognizant of the reason why. “I don't want to be safe; I want to be with you.”

He immediately pulled apart from me, searching my eyes for answers.

What's wrong with me?
I questioned myself more times than I could count. There had to be something wrong with me when I continued to fall for a man who hurt me repeatedly and told me that I was the reason for it. The same man who hurt people without remorse. There was everything wrong with me for falling for someone like him.
 

I smiled to myself, more out of an uncomfortable realization than a true happiness. I turned my back against the worst things that occurred in my life and pretended they didn’t exist. He made me see some of the dark truths about my life and the people in it, and he unapologetically showed me the worst in his life.
 

My feet were surrounded in concrete blocks, stuck with nowhere else to go, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. “I’m such a fucking hypocrite, aren’t I?”

His brow furrowed as he took my hand to his heart, reacting as though he ached in the specific area and my touch was the cause. “You had all of me—things I didn’t want to give you. I tested you after I found out—and sometimes before—hoping each time I did, things would change and you would give me all of you and prove we were real. Every single time, you held back from me. Do you understand why I punished you?”

I nodded yes, because I finally understood what it was all for. He was scared of giving me pieces of him no one else had, and was deathly afraid I would destroy the most susceptible and human parts of him; the parts he gave me.
 

I closed my eyes, my posture sinking. “You haven’t been paying attention. Elias? You have it. All of it. I…would do anything you asked me to.”

“That was never a question. My question was why you would.”

“Because of the way I feel about you.”

“Show me.”
 

“What do you want me to do?”

He spun me off the wall, and with my back against his chest, he walked me toward the coffee table. When he spread my legs, I collapsed forward. My hands steadied me when they slammed down on the table and broke my fall. My knees hit the floor with a hard and painful slap. “Later.” The sound of his zipper came down and the rustle of clothing caused me to shudder in anticipation. “Tonight I want you in every way I can possibly fuck you.” He bent down to kneel behind me. Pulling up my skirt, he allowed it to bunch up at my waist.

He yanked down my panties and they pooled around my knees. He spread my thighs farther and pushed his hips against me. Spreading my ass, he flexed his hips and shoved his full length inside my sex, filling me to the hilt.
 

The full sensation made me squeal in contentment. Wrapping my hands around the edge of the table, I braced myself in preparation for the ride. He remained still, only his cock moved as it pulsed inside of me, expanding my walls. The walls of my sex contracted, holding him in a vice like grip, encouraging him to stop teasing me. Reaching around my neck, he placed his palm against my throat. His fingers surrounded my neck and forced my back to curve.

He inclined forward to bite my ear. “Never—ever—leave my side again.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “I can’t.”

He withdrew and slammed into me once. I cried out, firming my grip on the edge of the table. The tease rendered me into a pliable mess of desire and submission.

“Tell me how you feel,” he rasped, brushing his lips against the outer curve of my ear.

I remained silent.

He contracted his hips, withdrawing almost completely from inside of me. His fingers spread and tightened around my throat. My neck craned to accommodate the span of his fingers.
 

His breath heated my ear as he opened his mouth and sank his teeth into my sensitive lobe. “Tell me how you feel,
minha amada
.”

“I felt hollow without you,” I rasped, straining to breath, “because…
Te-amo
.”

Although I couldn’t see him, I felt his reaction. He pressed his body against me just a little more. His cool breath tickled my ear. His lips kissed my ear softly. His hands loosened their grip on my throat.
 

He dove into me again, hitting an area deep inside my sex that made me shake against him. “Tell me you love me again,” he requested in barely a whisper.

I said it again, losing my grip on sanity and strength.
 

He stopped teasing me and pumped inside me at a steady rate. Each hurried and hard stroke was met with one more intense than the last. Each time he demanded I say it again and again, I obeyed, whispering the words he needed to hear over and over again until my throat rebelled.

My slippery wet core clenched around him, responding to his ethereal speed. My lower half mashed against the wood coffee table with every hurried and violent thrust that pushed my hips against the edge of the wood.

Slamming into me with a momentum that was robotic and intense, his groin crashed into my ass. The sounds of slapping flesh on flesh and my drenched sex echoed loudly in the grand room. My overly wet pussy gave him easier access, allowing him to stretch me and drive me crazy.
 

He wound his hand in my hair, forcing me to turn around and sit on the edge of the table. Spread for him, I was in the perfect position to take everything he gave me. As he moved me down until the middle of my back rested on the edge of the table and my hips tilted up, I reached out for the table again, clenching it tightly as my eyes rolled back and a shocking effusion of pleasure began to consume me. He grabbed my hips, sliding me down on his lap and pushed his cock farther inside of me. With my hands in his, he held my face, kissing me with a passion that made the room spin around me.
 

He rocked beneath me, pumping me with an extreme amount of force. Mind-numbing chills diluted my natural senses and I came apart, crying his name.

He fucked me violently; my body jerked with the force as he filled me. He bit into my ear, almost piercing through the sensitive skin, and released a sexy, throaty groan. The grip he had on my hands began to hurt but did nothing to diminish the high plane he made me ascend to. Slipping his hand from mine, he slid a thumb up my bottom lip and pushed down. Rocking against his vicious pace, I struggled to take his finger into my mouth. His free arm snaked around my body to roam in the cleft of my ass. With his finger in my mouth and the fingers of his other hand inside my ass, he succeeded in doing exactly what he promised.
 

My lips surrounded his fingers as they thrust in and out. My puckering hole relaxed around his finger, accommodating each digit that was added to the next. His cock slid easily in and out of me, creating a spine-tingling, almost unreal friction. My sex soaked his groin and hardness in so much liquid, it slid down the crux of my thighs and the crease of my behind.
 

I wanted to shut my eyes and let the rush consume my nervous system. A nagging pull inside me wouldn’t let me. Through half-closed eyes, I stared at him, sharing an intense eye exchange that spoke louder than words.

With a rigid series of thrusts, he overfilled every part of me, bringing me to one more soaring flight into euphoria. Accompanied by a resounding groan, his body stiffened. Lengthening his strokes, he pumped inside shallowly and filled my pulsing core with his arousal.

Sated, he collapsed against me, falling into me until my body was squeezed between him and the coffee table. The weight of him and his panting breaths, strained my already unnatural breathing pattern.

My knees ached and my core throbbed, but I felt…different. The internal holes I pretended were filled, were only superficially patched. Elias had revealed them for what they were. I could no longer pretend to be strong and unfeeling when I wanted to feel…everything.
 

I closed my eyes and ran my fingers in his hair, twirling the soft, short strands around my fingertips. Wanting to be closer, I wrapped my arms around him, unwilling to let go.

I opened my eyes after a few seconds of calm filled with our erratic breathing. I rolled my head from left to right and gazed at my father’s remains on the floor.

Lifting his head, he softly brushed his lips against mine before giving me an open mouth kiss with just a tinge of tongue. “Being without you—or punishing you when I’m with you—is no longer an option.” Kissing me again, he whispered, “I forgive you.”

“Thank you,” I said, my words full of emotion. I held him tighter and slid off the coffee table. We moved together until I sat on his lap with my legs surrounding him. I rested my head on his shoulder, feeling the chaotic beat of his heart reverberate through my chest. I closed my eyes again to truly appreciate the strange sense of peace, because I knew it would be a while before I felt it again.

Peering at the mess on the other side of the room, I was faced with what I didn’t want to see—my father’s ashes strewn across the floor. “I hate his actions…I hated my mother's, too, but I can’t hate either one of them.”