Page 51 of All That Glitters
I could still function with a broken heart.
I could still function and love him.
That thought, those words in my head brought me up short and my breath caught.
“Stop looking.”
“Ashton…”
“Stop looking. You look…disgusted.”
“I’m not and that’s not what that look was for.” My fingertips skated over his skin, tracing his scars, memorizing the feel of them, the edges. I wanted to remember him like this. This Ashton, this version of him was more beautiful than the one before.
His uneven breathing told me that he wasn’t as unaffected as he’d like us both to believe.
He needed to be accepted for the way he was now, whether he was able to admit it or not, to himself or to me.
He thought every mark was a flaw, but I didn’t see them that way and I needed to show him that.
“Then what was it?”
“Fear.”
“You’re scared of me?”
“No.” In a bold move, I leaned toward him and kissed one of the scars that ran across his chest, a long puckered white welt. I didn’t know what it was from and I wasn’t going to ask.
“Then what?”
“Losing myself.”
I thought briefly to hide behind little fibs to protect myself, but he’d been brave enough to ask for help and I knew it cost him a lot of pride to do that. The least I could do was be honest with him and in the process, with myself.
I couldn’t be honest with Hale. I couldn’t tell him what was going on between Ashton and me. But I could be honest with Ashton. Honest within reason, that is.
I looked up, met his gaze, and wasn’t quick enough to duck away, or to open my mouth before his lips captured mine.
His kiss started soft, but turned hard, rough between one heartbeat and the next. He hauled me up against his body, slid his tongue against mine.
I couldn’t escape his hold. Not that I wanted to.
My defenses were down and I felt that the kiss was his chance to rebuild his walls.
I met him tilt for tilt, nip for nip, lick for lick.
I gave as good as I got.
When he lifted me and I wrapped my legs around his hips, his cock pressed to my flannel covered pussy, I could’ve come. He walked until he could brace me against the wall.
“Ash…”
“Just… Don’t talk. Please. I haven’t…”
I nodded, held on, kissed his face, his jaw, his neck… He rocked into me. It was the first time I’d been dry humped since I was a teenager and it was always so fucking frustrating, but this, with Ashton… It was different. It was…
I stiffened, pushed myself into him, gasped, and the wave broke over me. I couldn’t stop meeting him thrust for thrust, crashing into him. I felt his smile and his hold on me tightened before he mirrored my movements from moment ago.
He stiffened, pushed himself into me, gasped… He grunted, groaned, and his knees gave out. We slid down the wall until I was kneeling across his thighs, but with a grunt of pain he quickly had me on my back, his mouth coasting down my throat, his fingers clawed at my nightshirt baring one breast, one pointed nipple. He dove on it, sucking, nibbling, biting. And still his hips pushed against me, rocked against me.
