Chapter 10

We didn’t make it to his apartment.

Still in the car, parked in his dark garage, I shimmied out of his boxers and straddled him again, biting my lip when I felt his stiff erection between us, straining against the fabric of his sweatpants.

“Celine,” he said, hands coming to rest on my waist. He ground his hips upwards, making me gasp from the sudden mind-numbing pleasure. I was so wet that I left a streak on his sweatpants, slick and ready for him.

“You’re perfect,” he said, lifting his shirt up my body, exposing my breasts. “So perfect.”

I rolled my hips when he took one of my nipples in his mouth, my fingers finding their way into his dark hair, gripping him tight, bringing his head down closer. His mouth was hot and wet, his teeth sinking softly on my nipple, sending a jolt down my body, right to my pussy, making me so fucking wet that I creamed myself. He tortured me with his mouth, switching from one nipple to the other, rolling his tongue, using his teeth, sucking and licking and making me moan so suddenly and so loudly that my cheeks reddened in embarrassment.

“Adorable,” he said, looking up at me.

“I need you,” I said, reaching for the waistband of his pants.

“I know you do,” he said hoarsely, helping me roll his waistband down until his cock sprang free. He didn’t say anything, didn’t give me any warning whatsoever, lifting me by the hips, his big tanned hands spanning my caramel skin, lining his cock up with my pussy, his eyes burning dark as I finally sank down onto him. He was rock hard, throbbing inside of me, thick and long.

He kissed my shoulder, looking up at me with those darkened eyes, making my heart stop. It was like all the water of the last twenty-eight years was rushing inside of me, hooking me by the ankles and pulling me down, down, down into the ocean of his eyes, sinking me underwater for just one terrifying second.

“You’re safe with me,” Wes said softly—and my head rose above water.

He was gazing into me, into my center, into my soul, connecting with me on another level, venturing where no man had ever been before. He kissed me, rough yet slow, drawing a ragged breath whenever I moaned, biting down on my lip when my pussy fluttered. We weren’t even going fast, weren’t even as hurried as I thought we’d be, and yet I was close. Really close.

“You need to come, don’t you?” he said, twisting one of my arms behind my back. I looked at him, confused, about to open my mouth and ask what he was doing, but then he was holding me in place, suddenly snapping his hips up, pounding into me, knocking the last of the air out of my lungs.

“Please,” I begged. He punished my body, fucking me like I’d hurt him and he wanted to hurt me back. I fucking loved it, loved the pain, loved the passion, loved the way he made my pussy squeeze tighter and tighter. Close. So close.

He moved my hips back and forth, pounding into me at different angles until I stiffened.

“Oh god, please!” I cried.

“Right there, huh?” He jerked upwards, sharply hitting that sensitive spot again and again.

“YES!” I’d never been a screamer, yet here I was. I don’t know what I said after that, only that whatever incoherent babbling that left my mouth was enough to inspire Wes to fuck me raw, hitting my g-spot so roughly that within just a few seconds, I cried as I came.

“Oh, fuck,” Wes rasped, fucking me through my orgasm, refusing to stop. I sobbed, coming and coming and coming, my entire body trembling when Wes finally slowed. I felt his cock thicken inside of me, jerking and pulsing as he came, groaning into my ear, making my pussy flutter from the sound alone. Ugh, he was so fucking hot.

We didn’t say anything for a while, just breathed heavily, our chests rising and falling. Wes’s forehead touched mine, his pupils blown wide, his gaze like fire, burning my skin. We studied each other, blinking slow, like time had been paused, like all that remained in this world was the two of us, Bonnie and Clyde, two fucked-up people with crazy lives, gunning down anyone who got in our way with words, harsh words, protecting ourselves from the world.

And so I kissed him, his lips tasting like Nirvana, like happiness and euphoria and paradise and heaven all rolled into one chest-aching feeling. My eyes pricked with tears as he took my face in his hands, his fingers slipping into my hair, kissing back so tenderly that I felt it in my center, right where the little girl inside of me resided—the girl stunted by the abuse, by the pain that had been inflicted by the foster parents she should have been able to trust. That little girl was always there, in the back of my mind, crying herself to sleep every night, jumping at the tiniest unfamiliar touch, and drowning in all the feelings, so deep that sometimes it felt as if she’d died.

Wes could’ve asked me why tears were suddenly running down my cheeks, but there was something special about this guy. He seemed to sense my feelings, seemed to sense that I needed the sanctuary of silence, that I wanted nothing more than to be kissed until all of my worries could be forgotten.

So there we stayed, in his car in the dark garage, kissing away all of my pain.

“Celine, I swear I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour,” Lisa said, sounding scared out of her goddamn mind.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault that I was busy,” I said, pulling Wes’s boxers back up over my hips. “Give me an update.”

“Portal is back up. I’m monitoring the hold time stats. We’re going back up. Still below goal, but as long as we can keep up with the volume for the rest of the month, we might get close to getting out of the red. I did the math and everything. Right now, I’m personally handling the amendment approvals and some of the urgent complaint calls. I—Honestly Celine, I don’t know how you do it.”

“The same way you just did,” I said with a smile, hoping she’d hear it. “I think the department would have gone up in flames without you, Lisa. I’m proud of you for your hard work today.”

“Thanks, Celine,” Lisa said, and I could hear her smile too. “Want me to keep you updated today?”

“No need,” I said. “I trust that you’ve got this.”

“I do.”

“I’ll just check the stats periodically. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Wes slid me back onto his lap as I ended the call. He hooked a lock of my hair behind my ear, his gaze soft and adoring, smiling at me even though I hadn’t said or done anything. He was just a happy person by default. I’d never been much of a smiler, but I found myself smiling around him. A lot.

“We should go inside and finish our lunch,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, but neither of us moved. Instead, I found myself kissing him again, taking in the scent of his intoxicating aftershave, opening my mouth, letting him slide his tongue along mine, tasting each other. We made out like a couple of teenagers, smiling against each other’s mouths when we both realized that he was hard again.

“Come on,” he said, opening the car door. “Let’s get out of here before I destroy your body.”

I reached over, closed the door, and let him destroy it.

We spent the afternoon together, passing the time with laughs, genuine laughs, talking about everything and nothing, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his living room, playing chess. I’d never been very good, and I was pretty sure Wes had suspected as much because he was going extremely easy on me.

“You’re cheating,” I said.

“Cheating how? I’m not even winning!”

“You’re doing it on purpose. That’s cheating.”

“You and I have very different definitions of that word, Celie.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that.”

He moved his knight, immediately threatening my king. The knight and king had been in those positions for quite some time. I realized that he’d purposefully been holding back.

“Cheater!”

“Check,” he said, chuckling.

“I fucked up,” I said, looking over the board.

“Make your move, Dragon Lady.”

I moved my king one square to the right.

“Checkmate,” Wes said, the corners of his mouth twitching. He wanted to laugh at me. Of all the directions I could have moved, I picked the one direction that put me in his bishop’s path with nowhere else to go. I was an idiot.

“You already had a checkmate,” I pointed out.

“You could have gone left. Too late now.”

“You could have ended this game a long time ago.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Plus, your concentration face is pretty cute.”

“Me, cute?” I said, rolling my eyes.

Wes frowned. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“About what?”

“I highly doubt that you think you’re less than average in the looks department. I know you know, Celine. I don’t understand why you’re in denial.”

“I’m not in denial,” I said uncomfortably.

“Then what is it? Why do you always react that way when I compliment you on how you look?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Wes sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“That’s not gonna work for me,” he said. “We have to communicate. That’s how relationships work.”

“Don’t try and tell me how a relationship works. I thought we were supposed to respect each other’s boundaries. You’re crossing mine.”

“By telling you that you’re cute? That you’re beautiful?”

I got up, but Wes caught me by the wrist.

“Don’t go,” he said pleadingly. “Let’s at least talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Just don’t talk about how I look. That’s literally the only thing I’ve asked of you, Wes.”

“That’s an absurd request to ask of your boyfriend.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be my boyfriend if it’s so hard for you to understand.”

Wes tugged me back down, pushed away the chessboard with his free hand and then pulled me into his arms.

He took my hand and placed it over his heart. “I get that you’re mean, but that one hurt.”

I felt the thud of his heartbeat beneath my palm. He was vulnerable, looking at me with those dark blue eyes, reading me and my emotions. I felt a surge of affection for him, and with it followed my shame.

“I’m sorry, that was harsh.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Wes said. “Look, in my profession, information, or lack thereof, can often be the difference between life and death. As a doctor, I’ve become used to needing to know everything. Except, in this instance, I don’t need to know. Your business is your own. I’m the one who should be sorry, Celine.”

So that was why he was so pushy. When it came to small lives, every little detail mattered, every little fact, every little truth. Out of habit, Wes had become a pushy person, needing to know everything, even the things that were too personal to share.

But you could always share things with your doctor, couldn’t you? Doctors could be trusted.

“I was four years old when my parents died in an airplane crash. It was a freak accident on a small plane. I don’t even remember them,” I said, my throat going thick. “For the first five years of being in the system, I had the belief that I would find my new forever family. I wanted to be adopted so bad. I used to pray every night and then cry myself to sleep, begging whatever powers there were in the universe to grant me my prayers.”

Wes listened quietly, his gaze soft.

“When I turned sixteen, I was sent to go live with a couple in Anaheim. They were absolutely garbage human beings. There were five other foster kids in their house. We were nothing more than government checks to them.