Page 18 of Sullied Saints

"Yeah. Sometimes.” He’s turned away now, beginning to clean the kitchen, and I can tell he’s just being flat-out uncooperative on purpose now.

I stand up, walking around the counter. “Let me help you.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m helping,” I repeat, and take the bowls out of his hands. Looking up at him, I realise how close I’ve come, and his gaze catches briefly on skin now revealed by my singlet before he turns away.

Trying and mostly failing to ignore the electricity between us, I turn and busy myself with putting the bowls in the dishwasher, then wipe down the bench next to it. I turn around at the sound of him loading the pan at the same time as he straightens up, bringing us much too close. Taking a small step back, I come up against the oven. Almost instinctually, he follows, cornering me against the bench, his brow low and dark.

A little thrill jumps into my throat. “Dirk…” I don’t have anything to say next, and the tone I was trying to keep light, like maybe he’s only accidentally towering over me, expression somehow deep and blank at once, comes out husky instead.

“I don’t want to,” he murmurs, head staying dipped down.

“Don’t want to what?” I ask, resisting the urge to clear my throat and bring my real voice back as my eyes catch on the hollow of his throat.

Lifting his head, he rests his hand on the bench by my hip, coming closer. I’m not sure I ever appreciated the broadness of his shoulders enough in the past. He’s an imposing figure, and now, coming so close, cornered by him, a little thrill flips in my stomach. “Be friends,” he says, voice low, close enough now that I brace a hand on his chest.

I open my mouth, but no words come out. I’m mesmerised as his other hand rests on my hip, so warm and sure and right. Wetting my lips, I stare at his, at the same time pushing back on his chest, though that appears to have little effect, since he pulls me against his body, anyway. He’s all steel, hot unforgiving hardness. Of their own accord, my hands slide up to the crest of his shoulders, feeling the muscle slide under his shirt as his arms close tighter around me, pulling me onto my toes.

I could just touch him for hours, but something tells me I couldn’t stop him from pinning me down for that long.

We only just reached a kind of truce, agreed we’re not good for each other like this, and it’s turning out to be the shortest ceasefire in history. This time he’s moving slowly, leaning towards me, eyes on my lips. My attempt to save myself and push back out of his arms is rewarded only with his grip tightening, and he leans down, closing the distance suddenly, claiming my mouth.

All resistance dissipates instantly, replaced with need. My fingers are in his hair, gripping, my body arched to feel his even more through our clothes. Dirk groans, low and animalistic, against my mouth. Pulling me back from the bench, he steps against me, bringing my back against the fridge. A handful of fridge magnets fall down.

I'm not sure if this, in particular, is solving all our problems, but I let him leave me briefly to tug my pants roughly down my legs, bracing my hands on his shoulders as I pull my feet free of them. Coming back up, Dirk lifts my knee to hitch over his hip, leaving my other toes just barely on the ground. I'm wearing only the singlet now, which his hands pull askew, curving the lip of my bra inwards as his mouth trails down my neck, my chest, triggering explosions through me as he lightly bites my nipple. The fridge rocks backwards and settles again.

"Here?" I gasp, more of an invitation than a question. Like last time, the need to be consumed is everything. I can feel the need in him too, but he lingers another beat, sucking my nipple harder, and I gasp as heat rushes between my legs. Pulling back, Dirk positions himself and wastes no time as my hips tilt to invite him. In one long thrust, he pushes into me, jamming me back against the fridge.

Panting, I lift against him, feeling my sensations lift too towards ecstasy, so suddenly and abruptly. My head tilts forward, feeling his collarbone against my cheek, his own groan hot against my temple. My fingers tangle in his hair, still slightly damp, pulling his head back enough to find his mouth with mine. We're linked like that, him thrusting hard and slow for several moments before he breaks off, voice strained, "Fuck, I can't last. I'm too close."

I'm about to tell him to keep going anyway, regardless of everything, but he pulls me off the fridge, my legs wrapping around him, and we stagger, still making out, to the couch. As I land on the firm seat, I don't know what I'm expecting, but when he kneels in front of me, it’s not his mouth, covering me so hot and wet where I'm already hypersensitive. Lying at an angle across the seat, my knee is curled over his shoulder as he chases me in my jolt backwards, not letting me escape the intensity of his mouth as his tongue slides along me.

"Oh my god." I'm writhing, gripping his shoulders, overstimulated so much that my climax comes almost against my will, but very much with a welcome release at its peak. My tension, my need, finally falls away.

I'm sliding off the seat to kneel with him on the floor before I've had time to languish in the aftershocks, before his touch can start to tickle. His dark hair has fallen across his brow, eyes hungry as I press to him, from our knees to our chests, and find him hard and still wet in my hand.

His breath hitches as I slide my grip along him, and I relish in the feeling, finally of gripping his thickness, twitching and responsive to my fingers, bobbing sharply upwards when I touch his head. Hands gripping my upper arms, I realise he's resisting his urges to control and take, swaying slightly as I bring him closer, eyes half closed, and brow drawn together. I’ll remember his face like this forever.

When his fingers tighten against my flesh, head dipping down, I know he's close, and I feel his pulse through my palm, twitching, before he groans and releases into my hand.

Chapter three

Iwakeupnotquite sure of where I am, and certainly not somewhere I ever expected to be.

Dirk's nose tickles the skin on the back of my neck, long body curled around me with his muscular legs pushing up against the backs of mine, his forearm resting along my side. Dim sounds of traffic from far below are a soft hum.

Oh dear.

From the light glowing through the open blinds, it’s mid-morning at least, and I've somehow slept through the night and more. I haven’t managed that since giving up the bottle. And as my eyes drift closed, I realise I could easily slide back away, seemingly at the height of comfort. His sheets are white and clean, the room minimalist, everything hidden behind the mirrored sliding doors of a wall-to-wall cupboard. I blink to see us reflected there, his pale arm draped over me, hair half over his face, black lashes closed, peeking out over the top of my own reflection.

Silently, carefully, I slide out from beneath his arm and off the bed, stepping back into the open living room to find the bathroom. As I pass the ruffled couch, I remember more vividly what took us there.

The trick, after I’ve used the bathroom, is to remember where my clothes are. Ah yes, the kitchen. The only thing I can't find is my shirt, and that takes me back into the bedroom. I'm tiptoeing, afraid to wake him, to see a look in his eye like I shouldn’t be here, to know I’m now relegated to the emotionless void of the women I always half-pitied for the hope they held out of something more.

I can't,won'tbe that to him.

I find my singlet half under the side of the bed, and when I stand up, looking down at Dirk, I pause to take him in. So peaceful, brow smooth, face turned slightly into the pillow, a me-sized space in front of him where his hand still rests, turned up slightly. That’s when I see his forearm for the first time since the attack, the underside where the skin is smooth and vulnerable.

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