Page 69 of A Brother At My Back

He closed his bedroom door and said, “No worries, have at it.”

I dropped onto the edge of the bed and picked the loose knot out of the top of the pillowcase with my fingers. Max shot out, slinking low to the ground. She sniffed the air, looked left, then right, and immediately did an about-face and shot under the bed. I hung my head and sighed.

“She’s going to be under there a while.”

“Gives us time to set up her things and put yours away, eh?”

“I guess I’m going to be staying a while?”

“We,” he corrected. “We are going to be staying a while, yeah. I wouldn’t leave you here alone.”

“Thank you,” I said again, softly, and he shrugged out of his jacket and vest, hanging it on a hook on the back of the door. He held out his hands to me and I pulled my purse over my head. He took that, and hung it beside his jacket and reached back just in time for me to hand him my jacket. I smoothed my suddenly-damp palms over the denim encasing my hips and ass and asked, “What now?”

“Now we put this stuff away, get Mad Max set up, and then it’s whatever you want to do.”

“Trying to keep me busy?” I asked.

“The only idea I’ve got right now and it needs to get done. I know I always seem to think better when things are in order.”

I nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

He smiled at me and said, “Not trying to be a cheeky bastard, but I know.”

I felt like I suddenly had a liquid center. That was so incredibly sweet of him, taking care of me like that, especially at a time like this. I moved around the room, setting up Max’s food and water dishes, using a bottle of water he handed me out of the mini-fridge he used as a nightstand. The only things in it seemed to be bottled water and some beers. I didn’t want either, even though he offered.

I stood up from filling the little water bowl and he took the empty bottle from me and threw it in thebag of trash he’d collected.

“I’m going to run this out, make yourself at home.”

I nodded and hugged myself, going to the bookcases and letting my eyes rove across the spines as he ducked out, shutting the door behind him. I wanted to check on Max, but I resisted the urge. She was stressed out and pissed off and just needed the time to chill.

I didn’t read a single spine, nothing that went in through my eyes and into my brain really wanted to compute. I didn’t know what to do with any of this. I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. Everything was just open, raw and aching. It was wholly awful and I just wanted it to all go away. I wanted to drown myself in something, anything to make it all just go away for a little while.

Nik came back in and I went to him. He didn’t even ask, he just put his arms around me and I kissed him, pouring my absolute desperation to concentrate on something, anything but how I should be feeling.

He kissed me back and I bit his lower lip, he jerked at the unexpected and exclaimed “Ow! What was that for, eh?”

“I’m sorry, just… I don’t want to feel any of this, you know? All I want right now is to feel you and I really don’t want you to be all that nice about it… if you know what I mean?”

He lowered his hand from his bottom lip and gave me a half charmed little smile.

“You want some rough sex, eh?”

I nodded. I liked it rough sometimes and this was definitely one of those times. When everything was all screwed up and turned inside out, that was the perfect time. Just something about being pounded into the damn sheets grounded me, but I’d never really had to ask for it before. I figured the love bite would have been enough but if it was one thing I was learning from a lot of my psych classes, it was the importance of communication and asking for what you needed.

I couldn’t tell you how grateful I was that Nik made it easy; to ask, I mean. He didn’t judge me. I mean, he had at first, but he’d apologized, we’d talked and things were actually better. It was how I’d always thought a relationship was supposed to work, but up until this point, mine never had.

“You don’t have to ask for that,” he said softly, hands alighting on my hips, pulling me in.

I put my hands on his shoulders and whispered back, “Clearly, I did,” boldly adding, “Now, shut up and fuck me.”

He grinned, and it was a happy but savage thing, his mouth crashing down on mine. I wrapped my arms around his neck and bowed my body into the shelter of his and just tried like hell to let all of it, everything around me, just fall away.

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