Page 12 of Violent Things
I look back at him over my shoulder, my heart burning in my chest when I see the awe on his face. He looks almost stunned. I nod, feeling my cheeks burn that little bit hotter. “I need to wrap myself around you,” I whisper. “I need you inside me. I need you to hold onto me so tight I can’t breathe. I don’t want to know where you end and I start anymore.”
Zeth makes a guttural, sexual noise that sends chills through my body. It’s thrilling. “Lay down on the grass, Sloane.” His tone is soft, but it brooks no argument. I know there’ll be hell to pay if I object.
The grass is cold and tickles my skin, but my whole body is hypersensitive right now. It feels incredible. Zeth stands up, towering over me, every muscle in his body tensed. The tattoos, the black sweeping ink he’s worn for as long as I’ve known him, look stark against his skin in the half-light. The fleur de lis over his right pec rises and falls quickly along with his chest as he fights to control his breathing.
“Open your legs for me,” he commands.
I open them, my nipples hardening to painful buds as he drops to his knees. “You’re so wet for me, angry girl. That’s all for me. Now I’m going to claim it.” He drops to his knees and immediately falls between my legs, groaning as he licks at my pussy, licking me clean. Just as he said he would, he claims every single last drop of my moisture between my legs, replacing it with his saliva. My body reacts explosively. He is so good with his tongue. I feel like I’m going to pass out as he teases his mouth over me time and time again, slowly licking at first and then sucking, speeding up until I’m shamelessly rocking my hips against his face, begging him to let me come. It’s not until he slides his fingers inside me that I really lose it. I hitch my legs up, crushing my thighs around his head, barely aware of my surroundings as he fucks me with his fingers and his tongue.
When I come, I scream silently, unable to even make a sound. The intensity of the orgasm rips through me, my back arching off the ground as Zeth continues, regardless of the fact that my entire body is close to breaking point.
The sensation becomes too much. “Stop, stop, stop, fuck, please, stop,” I pant.
Zeth carefully withdraws his fingers, but he doesn’t remove his mouth. His movements become less demanding, though. When he runs his tongue over me, gently circling the swollen bundle of nerve endings there, it feels more affectionate than anything else. He’s not trying to bring me to another orgasm—I doubt I could take that right now. It’s more like he’s soothing me, and it feels wonderful.
When he does finally pull back, sitting on his heels, he takes his fingers into his mouth and sucks them clean. “It’s fucking criminal how good you taste,” he says.
I twist onto my side, wanting to hide, mortification catching up with me at last, but he takes hold of my hip and pushes me so that I’m on my back again. With one hand on either side of my head, he braces himself over me, staring own into my eyes. “Don’t you fucking hide from me. Don’t you fucking dare,” he whispers. “You’re amazing.”
I say the only thing I can think of that seems appropriate in this moment. The words come out nervously, barely audible. “I love you, Zeth. God, I love you so much.”
I can see the light from the gas lamp reflected in those deep brown, soulful, angry, wounded eyes of his. He told me that he loved me a while ago, and it’s been enough. He’s said it a couple of times since, but not very often. Most women would be freaked out by that fact, but I know how hard it was for him to admit it to me in the first place. He’s a thing of chaos, a thing of destruction. Chaos and ruin were the only things he knew for so long. It’s taking him time to move past that. Pressing his forehead against mine, he closes his eyes and nods slowly.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Again, this might not be what a girl wants to hear when she tells a guy she’s in love with him, but the emotion on his face is clear. His thank you is filled with relief. Filled with love. Filled with so much hope and gratitude and sincerity that it takes my breath away all over again.
He says it like me loving him is the most precious gift anyone has ever given to him.
Chapter Five
Mason
I wake up to crying. Of course I do. Every night, it’s the same.
Covered in my own sweat, I charge blindly from my bedroom out into the hallway and into the room down the hall, my heart hammering in my chest.
Millie’s on the floor already, her tiny body bowed so badly it looks like her spine is about to break. I stop myself from grabbing her up and holding her to me. Instead, I lace my fingers around the back of my head and press my face in the chipped paintwork of the wall beside me, trying not to scream through my clenched teeth.
Fuck. This is so fucking fucked. Mil’s heels begin to kick against the bare floorboards as the seizure worsens. Her eyes are rolled back into her head, her jaw clenched tight as he body spasms over and over again. I want to smash my fist into the wall. I feel fucking useless. There’s nothing I can do to help her until the fitting stops, so I just have to stand here and wait like an evil son of a bitch while my six-year-old sister goes through this again.Again.
I sink down into a crouch, covering my mouth with my hands, just watching her, waiting for the moment, the veryinstantshe stills so I can go to her. The seizure lasts for two more minutes, which is a long fucking time. I’m lifting her into my arms, cradling her to me as soon as it’s done. She starts crying, tiny little breathless sobs, her small hands curling into my t-shirt, and I feel warmth spreading over my legs as she pisses herself.
Fuck.
“I’m—I’m sss—sorry, Mase. I’m ss—sorry.”
“Oh, god.” I feel like my heart’s being ripped up through my chest and out through my fucking mouth. Holding her closer to me, I stand up and carry her into the bathroom. “Don’t be sorry, little mouse. Don’t worry about a thing. Here, c’mon, hop into the bath real quick. We’ll get you cleaned up and then you can go back to sleep, okay?”
This is our nightly ritual. I wish we had a fucking shower; it takes the bath so long to fill with the water barely dribbling out and the pipesthunk, thunk, thunking away, and poor Millie standing in her piss-soaked PJs, looking like she’s about to cry some more. She rubs at her eyes, tired and sore from fitting, and all I want to do is pick her up and walk out of this shithole. Take her somewhere clean and fucking nice. Have enough money to get her on the books with a proper fucking doctor, who will look at her as an individual and not just another kid living below the poverty line who can’t be helped.
I jam the plug into the plughole and collapse onto the cracked tiles, and then I pull my sister’s tiny form into me, not caring about the pee. I hold onto her until there’s enough water in the tub for her to wash without her freezing her ass off.
Winter was bad. Going through this on a nightly basis with the place so frigid we could see our breath hanging in the air was seriously something I never want to go through again. I’ve promised myself, fuckingpromised, that next winter me and little Millie will be in a place that at least has fucking heating.
I don’t care if I have to sell the car; I’ll carry her three miles to school every morning if I have to. I don’t care that I have to wear shitty clothes, covered in grease and dirt from work, and I don’t care if we don’t have a TV. I don’t give a shit about drinking with my friends, or going to the fucking movies. All I want is for Millie to be safe and clean and happy. There has to be a fucking way to make that happen. I refuse to let her down the same way our mother did.
I’m not perfect at this, but I’m trying so fucking hard. The last thing I ever expected as a twenty-three-year-old was to be taking care of my little sister. She’s quiet as I bathe her. She’s always quiet, like she’s afraid to fucking speak or move or do something wrong. She’s all skinny arms and skinny legs; she’s gonna be tall like me eventually, but right now she’s just a skinny, underfed kid who needs proper parents, and all she’s got is me.
