Ruin Me (13 page)

I glance at his fridge, wondering if things’ll be like that time I came over without permission. Rough and frantic. When he steps to me and leans in close, I know it’ll be nothing like that. I wrap my arms around him, feeling the pilled fleece of his jacket with the cold still clinging to it, breathing in that wintery, lumbery Patrick Whelan scent from his neck.

“He’s about to leave you,” he says, “and it’s still not enough to keep you away from here.”

I shake my head.

“What does that mean, Robin?”

“That I’m lousy at learning my lessons?” I offer, knowing it’s too trite a reply to the question he’s really asking.

“Is this only about sex?” He steps even closer, stubbing the toe of my shoe with his boot.

“Is it only about sex for you?” I ask.

“Of course not. You think I’d fuck around with somebody else’s relationship just over sex?”

“That’s sort of how you packaged your offer,” I say.

He comes so close I have to step back, back, until I’m against the wall. Patrick braces a hand beside each of my shoulders and leans in. “Things’ve never been simple between us, have they?”

I shake my head again, looking into his eyes, remembering all those hours I stared into them from across the visitation room table. Definitely not simple, no. Though it could have been.

“I really thought we’d give something a try, after I got out,” he says.

“I was too afraid of how I feel when I’m around you.”

“You feeling it now?”

I nod. His breath flares against my temple.

“I seem to have a real knack for complicating your life when you’re only trying to help me,” I whisper.

He pulls back, face so close I can’t bring his features into focus.

“I don’t regret that night,” he says. “In the parking lot.”

I frown. “You lost seven months of your life because of that.”

“Even if you’d never visited me in prison, that night would’ve still been worth it, because I got to spend those couple hours with you at the sheriff’s office. But then I ended up getting to see you every week, just you and me. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

I put my fingers on his stubbly jaw as I ponder this. “Do you think you’re in love with me?”

He nods.

I laugh, soft. “Do you wish you weren’t?”

He shakes his head. “Nope.”

I press my mouth to his, a long, shallow kiss while my hands explore his face.

He licks his lips as we separate. “I’ve been real good about not badmouthing your man this whole time,” Patrick says. “But I’d like to make a case for myself. Or at least try and explain how I see things.”

“Okay.”

“He wants you so much, he’d let you be with another man if that’s what he needed to do to keep you.”

I nod.

“I want you so much that if I was him, I’d kill that other man.”

My eyes dart between Patrick’s as I try to guess if this is poetry or hyperbole or the honest-to-God truth.

“And I’d spend another fifty years in prison,” he says, “and it’d still be worth it.”

I blink a few more times.

“Me and your man,” Patrick says, “we’re both fucked-in-the-head crazy in love with you. You need to figure out which kind of crazy you want to be with and cut one or both of us loose.”

I nod, slow and long, studying his zipper pull before I look up. “I think I know which kind of crazy I want.” I bring my lips to his neck and kiss his cold skin from his collar to his ear. His big fingers tangle in my hair and I feel his moan as much as I hear it.

He pulls away. “You think you might ever love me?”

“I think I might already…but I’m not sure. I know what I’ve felt for Jay is love, but with you…it doesn’t feel anything like that.”

“What’s it like, then?”

“With Jay, it was always comforting, like a warm glow or whatever. With you, I look at you, and I feel…itchy. Like I’m going to claw my skin off, I want you so much. I don’t know if I know you well enough to say if I love you yet.”

Patrick’s eyebrows bob up a moment. “You know me better than anybody.”

“Oh.” I try to comprehend the loneliness of this statement. “Really? I feel like I hardly know anything about you.”

He shrugs. “There’s not that many layers to me.”

I bet he’s wrong. I picture him as a tree for a moment, with all those rings. He probably only sees the bark or the leaves, not the inside parts, the ones that reveal his violent and self-sacrificing layer, the helpless, sexual, passionate layer, the boy in the center who grew up amid the clutter and misery of his mother’s beloved squalor. I want to cut in deep and see the different layers of Patrick Whelan and get my hands sticky with sap from all the unpleasant bits.

I unzip his jacket and put my hands against his work shirt, tracing the thread spelling out his last name with my fingertip.

“Make love to me,” I say.

Patrick kisses me, first. Sweet and thorough.

He pulls away and takes my hand and we walk to his room. He switches on the light. “Hang on,” he says and leaves me.

I hear him starting a fire in the living room and I notice how cold it is. I unwind my scarf, taking in his room for the first time. His walls are wood-paneled, stained a dark oak color. He has a couple nicely framed photographs on his walls and I wander over to one. It’s black and white, a picture of pigeons on a busy urban street. I’m still staring at it when Patrick comes back in.

“Did you take this?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I bought it because it reminded me of you, actually,” he says, and he blushes, visible even by the dim reading lamp’s glow. “I always think about you when I see pigeons.”

I walk over to him and walk my nails up his arms in a creepy manner. “All those mites and ticks and diseases,” I tease.

“You know why,” he says, quiet.

“What does it mean that our common character flaw is whaling on idiots who are ten years younger than us?”

“I don’t care what stuff means,” Patrick says, still quiet.

I let him hold my jaw and tilt my face up to meet his. His kisses come slow, perhaps a celebration that I don’t have to leave tonight after we’re done using each other’s bodies. He covers my mouth with his, slips his tongue between my lips, just enough to taunt. He lets my face go as I push the sleeves of his jacket down his strong arms. Our clothes fall away—shirts and pants and socks and underwear—until we’re standing in the warming room, naked, studying each other.

Patrick’s the first man I’ve seen who looks sexy with his clothes off. Not that naked men aren’t sexy to me if I’m in the mood, but usually they seem a bit dopey with all their stuff just dangling how it does. Not Patrick though. Everything about him seems right, as if he were designed without clothes in mind. I smirk by mistake.

“What?”

“Sorry. You just look so damn good naked.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to do with this compliment so I go ahead and kiss him again, pressing my body right up against his. He moves close as he did in the kitchen, pushing me into the wall. He has to crouch to keep us kissing since he’s over a foot taller than me. I feel his cock growing hard against my hip as our mouths wrestle.

“Can you do what you did, that time against your fridge?” I ask. “Can you hold me up against the wall?”

He reaches down and grabs me behind the knees, lifting me up so I can wrap my legs around his waist, pinning his erection between my pussy and his stomach.

“Is this how you want to do it?” he asks, not sounding at all as if he’s burdened by a hundred and thirty pounds of woman.

I shake my head, smiling at him. “Not tonight, anyhow. I just like that we could, if we wanted to. I’m just objectifying you.”

Patrick’s eyes narrow until they’re nearly closed and he laughs—a throaty, sweet, manly chuckle. “You get weirder and weirder, the more I get to know you.”

“Want to go to your bed?”

“Sure.” He carries me over there and lets me tumble onto his comforter and the anxious grappling begins in earnest. He climbs on top of me, that big body casting mine in its shadow. I hear him through the kissing, delicious wet grunts full of hunger.

“Do you have condoms?” I ask.

“Someplace.”

“You better get them.”

Patrick leaves me to disappear into the bathroom and return with a box, frowning. He pulls out a plastic square.

“What’s wrong?”

“How expired can a condom safely be?” he asks, squinting at the wrapper.

“Golly, I don’t know. A year, maybe?”

“We’re cutting it close.”

I remember that scene from
Grease
in the back of Kenickie’s car, glad I’m not at risk of repeating its cautionary tale. “I’m on birth control,” I offer. “And I’m clean. You know, in case it like disintegrates on us.”

“Me too. I don’t get around much,” Patrick says and we both glance at the boxful of corroboration he’s holding. I scan his body again and all I can think is,
Damn, what a waste.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I say and pat the covers beside my hip.

He tosses the box on his nightstand and joins me on the bed again. I push his shoulder so he lies on his back and I touch him. I love the way his eyes fly to my hand as I grip his shaft, how they go a bit vacant as I make his cock heavy and hard and big.

“Robin.”

I keep all my attention on him, running my fist up and down, torturously slow. He covers my hand in one of his and tightens it, making the strokes rough. His voice is sexier than any other gorgeous, obscenely masculine part of him, that deep voice moaning and grunting and telling me just how badly he wants this.

“I thought about this a lot,” he says.

“About me touching you?”

He nods. “Yeah. You’ve got really soft hands.” He watches a few moments longer and swallows, deep. He looks me in the eyes.

“What?” I ask.

“Do you think this’ll ever happen again? After tonight?”

“Yeah. Why?”

He swallows again. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be really lousy. I promise I’m usually better than I will be tonight.”

I pause with my hand still wrapped around him and lower my chest to his, burying my face against his neck, and I laugh. Patrick laughs too, his ribs jumping beneath me.

“Just a disclaimer,” he says and I hear a wide smile in his words.

I push myself back up and straddle his hips, settling my pussy on the underside of his cock. I slide up and down, slowly to start. He watches for a minute, breathing labored. Then his hands grasp my hips and he speeds up the friction.

“God, Robin.”

“You feel…awesome.” Literally. I am full of awe from how wonderful he feels beneath me. I lean down and suck in two brimming lungs’ worth of Patrick Whelan. He probably showered after work but it’s all there, his smell.

Patrick flips us onto my back and I feel his hips take over for mine. There’s a force behind his thrusts, a strength that intimidates me as much as it turns me on. For a gorgeous minute he rubs his cock over my wet lips then my impatience comes to a head.

“I want you.”

“I want you too,” he says.

“No, I really, really want you.” I tug at his hips to tell him it’s an order, not a sweet-nothing. “I need you. Now.”

His breathing halts. He takes the condom from the bedspread beside us and gets it open, rolls it on, angles his head to my entrance.

“Now,” I say, tugging on his hips. “Now, Patrick.”

Nearly six years, my body’s been screaming for this. Patrick puts his weight behind his cock and though my pussy’s probably wetter than it’s been ever before in my entire life, it’s not a perfect moment. I suck in a breath as he starts to penetrate.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Just stay right there for a minute.” I ooze out a long exhalation, ordering my body to relax. “Okay, go a little deeper.”

Another couple inches and he feels wonderful, now. Patrick pulls out all the way then drives back to that depth.

“Wow,” I say, staring between our bodies.

He doesn’t say anything, looking as though he’s in deep concentration. He gives me another inch, starting to pump faster. I want all of him, deep, deep, deep until our hips touch.

“More. Please, Patrick.”

He pushes into me, hard, and I yelp at the sharp cramp he triggers. He pulls out halfway, looking down at me with wide eyes, half concerned, half out-of-his-mind horny.

“Sorry,” he says. “Use your fist. Gimme a couple more inches.” He guides my hand to his cock and wraps my fingers around him at my pussy lips. He starts to fuck again, and I love the feeling of his skin sliding through my hand, his balls hitting me when he pushes deep. There’s something sweet and so elementally
us
about the fact that we don’t fit. We’re wrong together, right down to our anatomy. I smile so hard I can’t even bite it back.

Patrick looks insane in the best way imaginable—eyes wild, muscles clenched. I watch with wonder as his shaft drives in and out between our bodies. I never knew a cock could get so stiff and swollen. I never would have guessed the man attached to it could be so attached to
me
. Amazing.