Chapter 6

6

Meg

K oen splits my shorts down the middle in his bare hands and tosses them sideways like yesterday’s newspaper. Looking me right in the eye, his cheekbones high with color, he gets down on his belly and in the grass, hooks his grip around the outside of my knees and drags me toward him with a possessive curl to his upper lip, resting it on my mound and closing his eyes, his inhales, exhales hot and shallow.

This is when I should kick him as hard as I can in the face. Fight for everything I’m worth. Scream.

I do none of those things. Instead, my fingers bury in the earth and a wave of dark excitement rides so furiously up my chest, it knocks my head back and I inhale the night air and lingering rain, my flesh weeping between my legs in a way I don’t understand. No one has ever explained in detail the business between a man and a woman when it comes to pleasure. The mechanics of baby making, sure. I get that.

But I don’t know why Koen’s mouth is on me there, his lips pursed and rubbing to side to side against my slit. I’m still wearing my panties, but the sensation leaves me feeling naked. I feel everything —and while my body seems to know exactly what it wants, my mind is in turmoil.

To be honest, I don’t know what I was running from when I got off the bus.

Fear of Koen.

Or fear of having to lie to him.

This man is a locked chest full of untapped emotions and they’re all clamoring to break free. Unbelievably, it’s because of me. I’m doing this to him.

Even more unbelievably, he’s having a similar effect on me.

Ever since leaving his house, I’ve inwardly strained to get back there. To him.

I’m losing my objectivity where he’s concerned. I’m supposed to be convincing him to go back to work. But without even knowing exactly what he does for Etta, the thought of being anything but authentic with this man holds me back from even questioning him. Or making any meaningful strides in the direction Etta needs him to go.

“These aren’t the panties you were wearing when you left me.” He kisses me through the thin material of my underwear, his lower lip stiffening and working my flesh apart and oh my, oh my God , when he travels over this one particular spot, my hips twist and I’m convinced he’s discovered some terrible secret of mine. My privates are ticklish. It’s more than a tickle, though, it’s like this spot is connected to my breasts and brain and ability to think, affecting everything. Everything. “Where did these come from?”

“Uh. Uh,” I stammer, because he’s teasing that spot with his thumb now while he works his mouth in rough kisses against my opening, still through my panties, which I’m causing to be soaked more with every second. “Uh. I don’t know.”

Danger sparks in his eyes. “You don’t know where your panties came from?”

“Oh. I keep spare clothes at Becca’s house. She’s…she runs the cleaning serving out of her garage and she lets me shower there if I just came from my Uber shift.”

“But you didn’t go to your Uber shift, Meg.”

“Are you always so curious about everyone’s day?”

“I don’t give a good goddamn about anyone’s day but yours.” He licks along several inches of my inner right thigh, followed by the left, making a savoring sound each time. Like I’m made out of chocolate mousse. “I want to know why you changed your panties when you hadn’t done an Uber shift.”

My face is on fire. “Because…”

“Because?”

“When I left your house, they were…”

He snaps his teeth around the waistband of my underwear. “Wet.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

My panties are ripped in half and all I can do is whimper. “Somebody enjoyed the way I licked her all over and called her mine.” He plants soft kisses down my parted slit, then his tongue flickers out and touches me there. In that spot. “Didn’t you, Meg?”

I can’t do anything but nod when I’m this vulnerable and he’d see right through me. “Yes.”

He rewards my honesty with a groan. By melting into me. There’s no other way to describe how his tongue slides through and parts me while his face is flush to my sex, as if he would inhale me were it possible, his mouth opening and drawing on me with suction, before switching into a more concentrated attack, the flat of his hungry tongue riding over that secret spot, over and over again, his hands growing more demanding on my knees. Squeezing and pressing them open, his assault becoming eager, deep, animalistic resonances coming from inside of his chest.

“You are fucking delicious,” he growls, his eyes catching the moonlight and making him look otherworldly, the shine of me on his cheeks and chin. There’s no time to feel embarrassed about that, not when he’s licking it off and savoring it, lowering his mouth again to take and give and take and give, scooping up the cheeks of my backside and kissing them when he needs to come up for air, his chest heaving powerfully, obsession projecting on me through his eyes. That’s what this is.

I feel it, too. Oh God.

“What do you think, baby? Is my tongue worth a little fear?”

“Yes,” I sob.

Triumph dances across his features, but it’s quickly blanketed by lust, the middle finger of his right hand pressing slowly past my opening, slowly, slowly, until it’s fully inside of me and I’m gasping for air. “Jesus Christ ,” he pants. “I’ll tell you what, this pussy is worth losing my fucking sanity over. I’m happily kissing my common sense goodbye tonight, because I won’t see reason now. I’ll only be thinking in terms of fucking my little Meg. Fucking and fucking and fucking her!” he roars, spitting on me once, twice. “You’re my asylum now. And this cunt is tighter than any straitjacket they could put me in. God. God. Throw away the fucking key.”

I’m crying out, opening my thighs for him, and a gripping rush is beginning that I can barely comprehend, only that I know he’s building me toward something I couldn’t do alone and he needs me to need him, and I do. And I show him that. My filthy fingers leave the earth and bury in his hair, a hoarse call of his name blasting from my lips when the clenching starts. The rhythmic clenching that seems to make him crazed, his eyes locked on me while he licks that spot furiously, his thumbs pressing into the insides of my knees. I can’t stop the crash that hits me, blurring my thoughts with cranberry-colored fuzz and taking hold of my entire lower half, the tickle turning into something big, bright, essential, pulsing deep in my sex, tension gathering, ebbing, gathering, ebbing while I scream myself hoarse, my shaking thighs wrapped around Koen’s head.

Blackness hits me like a two-by-four and my body goes limp. I attempt to struggle through the sudden lethargy, and it has almost beaten me when I notice a granola bar sticking out of Koen’s shirt pocket.

He notices me looking at it, stunned. “Eat, baby.”

I’m too undone and overwrought and hungry to do anything but take the granola bar and unwrap the damn thing, biting into it with gusto. “Chocolate chip,” I sigh.

His left eyebrow arches. “You thought I’d bring you oatmeal raisin?”

Uh oh. Belonging to this man is becoming more and more acceptable.

The last thing I remember is being carried to Koen’s SUV and, once I’ve finished the last bite of my granola bar under his watchful eye, I’m laid gently on the backseat, the engine rumbling beneath me as he takes me back to the Bat Cave on the cliff, his eyes finding me in the rearview at every single stoplight. Tonight, I’m letting myself forget all the reasons I can’t get attached to this man.

But tomorrow?

Tomorrow, I have to remember.