Ocean (Damage Control Book 5) (19 page)

Hell.
How am I gonna visit Mom?

Kayla shifts and turns away, and I reach after her, cursing when my ribs scream at me. “Where are you going?”

Funny how panicky I feel at the thought of her leaving.

Goddammit, Ocean.

But she giggles. “Turning off the light.”

A click, and darkness descends. It’s softened by the street light, seeping through the blinds on the window.

Thankfully she turns back around and crawls into my arms once more. Her head is a welcome weight, her soft hair tickling my neck.

“Let’s sleep,” she says. “It’s getting late.”

“Not tired,” I say, interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn. “Can’t sleep.”

She mock-snores, and I laugh, then stop when pain explodes in my ribcage. I press my free hand against my ribs, and her hand covers mine.

It’s damn nice to feel her hand on top of mine. Her warm body pressed at my side. Can’t remember the last time I’ve been so close to someone, that I was touched like this, gently and softly.

But with the tension leaving me, I’m looking at her one moment, and the next I’m gone, drifting into deep sleep. Can’t recall anything else after that, until sometime later the nightmare jerks me wide awake.

Kayla

Blue loves Kay.

His words echo in my head as I try to sleep. Not “I love you,” or even “Ocean loves Kay.”

Because he doesn’t. We screw around, then he won’t answer my calls, then he speaks nonsense words, and I drown in them.

No. The only way to avoid having my heart broken by this beautiful boy is to know what I’m in for: sex. Groping his awesome body. Kissing his sinful mouth. Occasionally making sure he eats and breathes and doesn’t vanish into thin air.

That’s what friends do. And the sex, well…. That’s where the benefits come in. Some fooling around never hurt as long as one is careful. No need for talk of love and hearts and weddings and horse-drawn carriages.

Kay loves Ocean.

No. Nonono. Stop that.
Kay shouldn’t. Kay has to keep her distance from this boy with the golden heart and the darkness writhing inside.

Kay has to stay free and untethered, free to look for happiness. Nobody can make you happy if you don’t make yourself, right? And I still don’t know what I need. Or why this boy seems to fill the hole in my life so perfectly I feel I should stop looking. I barely know him. We’re not together. This isn’t the answer.

The way he makes me feel… protected and wanted and cherished, that’s not happiness. It’s an illusion, the same one my parents walked into and got trapped. An illusion he’ll strip away tomorrow, when he leaves my bed and my side and becomes a stranger once more.

Even if I’ve let him inside me without a condom, something I’ve never done. Promised myself I’d never do.

Even worse, the way I felt when I thought he’d been hurt or worse… That blinding pain in my soul when I thought I might not see him again or hear his deep voice, that’s all the warning I should ever need. He has the power to tear me apart.

I can’t let him.

No wonder it takes me a long time to sleep, my mind whirring away with doubts and contradictions and need. A need I shouldn’t allow to grow.

Tumbling through dark tunnels of sleep, I lose my train of thought, lose the logic behind it. I see my family sitting tensely around the dining table, I see Allie crying in a corner, a shadow looming over, I see my brother Wyatt smirking at me. I’m very small, like Alice in Wonderland after she ate the magical cake, and everything is huge and terrifying.

Then the light turns blue, and Ocean comes to stand in front of me. He’s smiling. He kisses me, and he’s happy, because Blue loves Kay, and Kay loves Blue, and it’s all—

A shout, and shaking, and I’m scrambling upright before my eyes are even open. What’s happening? Danger, my mind screams, pain, something’s wrong, and as my vision begins to clear, I make out my bedroom in the gray light of dawn seeping through the window.

I make out the man lying beside me, twisted up in sleep, his head thrown back and tendons standing out in his neck as he grinds his jaw.

“Livvy,” he rasps, the word barely intelligible, and “why?” and I freeze mid-motion as I sit up.

Who is Livvy? Why is he whispering her name in his sleep, his voice laced with pain and anger? With emotion. So much emotion.

He loves this girl, whoever she is.

And I shouldn’t want to find her and suckerpunch her. Because that would mean I’m jealous, and I’m totally not.

“Ocean.” I shake his shoulder, a lump in my throat. “Wake up. Wake up!”

Suddenly he’s sitting up—so fast he almost head-butts me. “Fuck, Livvy.”

Oh Christ.
“Who is she?” I ask quietly. “This Livvy?”

He’s frozen, gripping his arm over the tattoo, his breathing shallow. All the color has drained from his face.

“No, that’s… I don’t wanna talk about it,” he whispers and closes his eyes. “About her. Not now.”

The pain flashing over his features is hard to watch. It matches the ache in my chest.

See?
See?
That’s why love is not even in the equation. Love hurts. Thank God I’m not in love with him.

Phew.

When he reaches for me, I don’t let him drag me down to his side. Instead, I help him lie back and prop myself on my elbows to look at his handsome face.

I’m pissed with him. So I honestly don’t know why I need to kiss him so badly, to run my fingers through his blue hair, to touch his long, dark lashes.

Lust, I remind myself, is also a powerful feeling. And he’s awfully pretty for such a tall, ripped guy.

Trying to control the kissing, petting urge, I slide my hand up his muscular arm, over the tattoo he was rubbing when he woke up.

“How are your ribs?” I ask. “Would you like more painkillers? Or an ice pack?”

He looks up, those long dark lashes sweeping across his cheekbones. “Kay.”

Just that. Just my name, but there’s a crack down the middle of his voice, and he doesn’t sound okay, at all. Despite the knot in my chest when I think he loves another, and the certainty I for one don’t love him, I lift my hand to his cheek.

“Want to go back to sleep?” I stroke the stubble on his jaw. “Or talk?”

His eyes, still dark with some remembered fear, dip to my boobs, then lift to my face. “I wanna fuck you.”

The starkness of the statement, the roughness of it echoes the raw need in his voice. In his face. In the tension of his body and his thickening cock. In my mind I call him a boy, but he’s very much a man, and the sight of his hard-on sends heat through my body.

Despite the misgivings of my mind, my body’s one hundred percent on board with having sex with him and his snake.

His hand comes up to cover mine. He slides my hand over his mouth and kisses my palm. I gasp. A jolt shoots down my core, and my nipples harden.

“You’re the hottest girl I’ve ever known,” he whispers. “I want to put my mouth on every inch of you. I want to eat you up. I wanna lick your muffins, and your pussy, and then push my dick so deep inside of you you’ll have no choice but to come all over it, calling my name.”

Oh God.
I’m burning. I could call him cocky, and wouldn’t that be funny given the state of his hard cock, but a shadow of uncertainty passes over his gaze.

So I pull my hand back, passing my fingertips over his mouth, and say the first thing that comes to me mind. “I want to taste you.”

“Christ, girl.” He’s hard against my thigh and the feel of him pressed up to me turns my blood into fire. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

“I mean it.” And I do, I realize. I’m curious and strangely excited about taking him in my mouth.

He shifts restlessly, his hard-on burning into my skin. He swallows. “Are you sure?”

In reply, I scoot down the length of his body until I can straddle one thick thigh and take his cock in my hand.

It jumps in my hold, and Ocean groans, his body arching on the bed.

“I’m sure.” It’s something I’ve never tried before. I thought it would disgust me, but my mouth is watering at the sight of his long, hard length, the flushed head, the scent of musk.

The way his whole body tenses when I squeeze his cock, when I tug on the thick girth, the growl that rumbles in his chest.

Never thought I’d be so fascinated by a man’s crotch. With my other hand I cup his heavy balls, feel them shift in my palm. I squeeze them lightly, and that powerful, beautiful body shudders.

“Christ, Kay.” Ocean’s hands are fisted in the covers, and he’s watching me, his lashes low over eyes that glimmer like stained glass in the light filtering through the slats of the window. “If you keep this up, I’ll fucking come all over your hand.”

The image shouldn’t excite me so much, but heat spills between my legs.
God.
I rub my thumb up and down the underside, and somehow his hard dick gets harder, the head darker, and white precum seeps from the small slit.

The only sound in the room is his harsh breathing, mingling with mine. I’m as excited as he is, I realize, my boobs heavy and hard, my pussy wet and hot.

For him.

I bend over, taking the head of his cock in my mouth, and the heartfelt groan he gives echoes in my insides. His length is hard like steel between my lips, on my tongue. It’s salty, with a hint of sweetness. I lick the underside like candy, then take him deeper and grip the base with my hand.

“Oh fuck,” he hisses, as his hips come off the bed, bucking. “Fuck, Kay. So good.”

He’s so big it’s not really possible to take him into my mouth, so I drag my lips over his width and rub my tongue underneath, and that seems good enough, because his hips buck again, and his balls tighten in my hand.

“I’m gonna come,” he says, “Fuck. No.” He pushes at my shoulders. “Kay.”

Frowning, I pull back, leaving his cock dark and glistening and bobbing, pointing at the ceiling. “Did I do something wrong?”

“What? No.” He grabs my hips, and a crooked grin spreads on his face. “It was so fucking good, but I wanna come inside you. I wanna feel you around my dick.”

I breathe out, letting his strong hands lift me up, and straddle his hips. My boobs sway in front of me, and he almost goes cross-eyed trying to look at them.

It makes me smirk. Then he slips his hands up to cup them and squeeze them, and a moan escapes me. All my anger, all my doubts flee when he touches me.

I reach down and guide his hard-on to my entrance, then sink down, taking him in.

Oh God.
Every time is like a first, my body stretching to accommodate his size. Almost painful, almost, almost—until it turns into unbearable pleasure.

I bend over him, gasping when he pushes deeper, filling me up until he’s fully seated in my core, and I’m trembling.

Somehow it’s even better than it’d been in the shower, and I’m not just talking about the lack of a hard floor under my knees. Or even the feel of his mouth landing on my boobs, sucking on my nipples as he thrusts up, into me, or the feel of his big hands trailing down my belly and stroking my clit.

No, it’s his face when he draws back to gasp my name and rock harder into me, when he whispers my name as his cock jerks inside me. That wide-eyed look, the surprise and pleasure and something else, something sharp that cuts me like a blade to the heart.

And then I’m coming, too, the pressure in my core snapping so suddenly I cry out. I cry out his name, just like he wanted, unable to stop myself.

I
think
I call his name.

But later, as I roll by his side, trying to catch my breath, I realize I called for Blue, this elusive Blue who loves Kay.

Not Ocean.

I wonder if he noticed.

***

He walks into the kitchen about an hour later, after having taken his turn in the shower. I left him dozing and washed myself, not wanting to wait for him.

Why? Not sure. I needed to think. Not sure thinking is doing me any good, though. My thoughts are all mixed up.

Especially when he appears at the door, clad in a towel and nothing else, that sculpted chest and arms on full display, his wet hair looking black.

The splotches of dark bruising all over his torso act like a splash of cold water, reminding me how close I came to losing him.

Though he’s not mine.

He rakes a hand through his hair, mussing it up, and I have to remind myself not to drool as he ambles over to the counter and props a hip against it.

“Morning,” he rasps, and I get a flashback of his body moving underneath mine, his voice moaning my name.

God.
I throb between my legs, and my skin grows hot from the memory.

Flames lick my face, and I turn my back to him, pretending to be checking my plants. “Morning yourself.”

“You were gone when I woke up.”

Surprised, I glance at him over my shoulder. I can’t read his face. He’s glaring at my pack of Tarot cards. I didn’t remember I left them in the kitchen.

“I took a shower,” I say. “Didn’t want to wake you up.”

Is it me, or does he look kind of sad? Or maybe mad at me? Hard to read his face when my gaze keeps slipping to his chest.

Good God.

I turn back around to my plants and check them for imaginary parasites. “I made coffee.”

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says quietly, and I tense.

“About what?”

“My family. Myself. Last time we talked, you said you wanted to know.”

This time the shock is too great for me to pretend otherwise. I turn around fully and grab my mug from the counter to keep my hands busy.

“Then tell me,” I say, like I did last time, when he told me I don’t know him. I consider his serious expression. “Does it have to do with what you were dreaming about earlier, when I woke you up?”

With Livvy?

Color touches his cheekbones. It makes his eyes very blue. “Yes and no.”

Right.
Not confusing at all.

Then again, with this boy, everything’s confusing.

“I grew up in a trailer park outside Milwaukee.” He pokes at my Tarot cards, and okay, what’s the deal with that, huh? “With my folks and my brother Raine. It was kinda rough. Mom was rarely interested in shopping, or cooking anything, or looking after us.”