48. Utah

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

utah

I t probably took less than a minute to have every article of clothing between us removed.

If Memphis was the one asking to be saved, I apparently had a fucking savior complex.

There weren’t giggles or jokes this time, though. She wasn’t arguing or picking a fight just for the sake of being difficult to see what I’d do about it. There wasn’t any sass.

There was only a silent plea for connection, for salvation, for freedom.

This wasn’t a time to play with positions or kinks.

She’d wasted no time in shifting underneath me until her knees were raised on either side of my hips. I took both her hands in mine and laced my fingers between hers to hold them above her head against the mattress.

I’d learned pretty quickly that every single time the full length of me was inside her with that first thrust, her back arched, her eyes closed, and the softest sigh came out of her. I had to remind myself this wasn’t the time to respond to those things by turning into an animal who couldn’t get enough, but that was exactly what it did to me internally. I’d spent all this time trying to get her to a place where she was comfortable being out of control of some things without even noticing that she was completely erasing every bit of my own control.

This girl owned me.

In every way.

She could ask me to do anything, tell me to do anything, and I’d be finding a way to make it happen.

“Your hands,” she whispered out on a gasp. “Use your hands, Colt. Please.”

Anything she wanted.

This probably wasn’t the time to praise her for being able to speak up about what she wanted from me. She was after something else tonight.

I let go of her hands, forced my arms under her body so I could keep my hold on her, and rolled us both so she was on top of me. I could see the instant concern on her face because she wasn’t actually sure what she was supposed to be doing in this position, but that panic was gone in a matter of seconds. I held onto her hip with one hand, used my other thumb on her clit, and pumped into her from below. She leaned forward immediately and put both her hands on my chest to stabilize herself. She didn’t even seem to realize she’d started bouncing her own hips to meet each of my thrusts. With my thumb on her clit, it didn’t take long before her bouncing turned into erratic grinding. Her hands weren’t just holding her upright anymore, because her nails were suddenly trying to carve their way right through my chest. I put all the power my hips had into thrusting when her mouth dropped open with the quietest gasp. Her entire body tightened, and she stopped trying to hold herself up. She laid the rest of the way down onto my chest, so I wrapped both arms around her and crashed right into my own orgasm with the feel of so much of her skin on mine.

“Sorry if I’m supposed to last longer,” she whispered and giggled. “I keep thinking it’ll stop feeling like that. Maybe that I’ll get used to it and be able to do more for you. Then your monster dick touches me, and I can’t help but think that’s probably what the water feels like when electricity hits it.”

I couldn’t even stop myself from laughing at that.

“We’re not competing against one another, angel.”

If she ever figured out how to last longer, I would be in so much fucking trouble because I already struggled to outlast her now.

“No? Everybody else makes it sound like it’s supposed to be a competition.”

“ Everybody else ,” I repeated and laughed again. “Your only interaction with another couple is Triss and New Jersey. That is not the relationship to use as an example, baby.”

“That’s probably fair.”

“If you want to turn it into a competition, we’ll make it a much better game than the kind of crazy shit that they do to each other.”

“What kind of game?” She asked and lifted her head off my chest to look at me.

“I already told you we could do anything and everything until you figure out what you like.”

“Sex games,” she said and laughed. “Literal sex games.”

At least she was laughing. She was thinking about something that was just between us in this moment. I imagined the next few days were going to suck giant donkey dick, so I needed to start planning now if I was going to be in charge of distracting from that kind of weight behind the scenes to give her a break from it.

“Can you promise me something if we’re going to do this?” I asked.

“About the sex games?” she asked. “I’m hesitant to make any promises in regard to sex games without knowing what it is beforehand, Utah.” She kissed my chest, and then the little menace bit me. “Even if it is you.”

“ Even if it’s me ?”

“The only person I’d trust to play sex games with,” Memphis clarified. “What promise do you want me to make?”

How she’d said that, like it wasn’t the most significant thing anyone had ever said to me in the history of my life and then just blown right over it, was terribly distracting. Someone who’d had all of the power over her own body taken from her against her will was willing to trust me enough to hold that power right alongside her. I had to nearly shake my brain loose to focus on anything else after that.

“Don’t spend any amount of time thinking about what we’ll do,” I said. “I’m going to tell you right now that you’re in charge of every bit of it. Even if you tell me to be in charge of a moment or a game, I’ll play along, but it’s still just me—and you’ll be in control. I want you to understand that now so you can let it happen in the moment without having to panic about it. Go into it open-minded so you can just enjoy it knowing you’re still safe.”

“You’re pretty confident already that I will just enjoy it ,” she teased.

“I’ll be making sure of that, angel.”

Memphis and Indy transformed back into computer-nerd-worker-bees within minutes of making their way into the kitchen the next morning. Having to listen to her explain how she’d kept her and her sister alive without returning to their parents after they’d escaped the trafficking house made it difficult to continue cooking breakfast for everyone. I wasn’t sure why I did. I couldn’t imagine anyone had an appetite left after listening to her stories about homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and learning to pickpocket or steal anything they needed until she had regular access to the Internet again to start taking larger sums of money in various ways.

Having the opportunity to witness just how far New Jersey had come was eye-opening, to say the least. Between last night and this morning, Memphis had told several stories that would’ve sent the old New Jersey right into an uncontrollable, murderous downward spiral. I’d had the pleasure of seeing those moments before on more than one occasion. I watched him stand right at the edge of several of them while Memphis spoke about her past. And I watched him close his eyes and reach for Trista to keep himself grounded each time instead.

Either way, he wasn’t alone in those murderous feelings this time. Memphis’ desire for revenge was becoming dangerously contagious with every word out of her mouth. Part of me could understand feeling abandoned in the world from an early age. While I’d made it a goal of mine to help some of the kids who grew up in the shitty circumstances with me, I was never responsible for anyone else’s survival. I didn’t have to find a way to provide basic necessities for a younger sibling who’d also suffered unimaginable trauma while having to figure out how to deal with my own.

Indy suggested splitting the workload now that New Jersey was back. We could continue trying to persuade teams to join our little crusade and make ground on uncovering the trafficking connections between these two worlds if I did part of it and he did the rest. They’d started negotiating with Salem about bringing her and Nevada on board. Salem apparently wanted too much information up front, and it made Memphis nervous, so she was stringing their team along to see how far they were willing to go to actually join us.

They handed out the next assignments for Jersey and me. They arranged for me to leave today and for him to leave tomorrow. I tried not to be upset that Memphis didn’t intend to join me for this outing, and I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t at all about Jersey being back here. She was going to be directing his assignment, but she wanted to stay connected to everything in the house to continue monitoring what happened with Salem.

She did at least follow me out to the truck when I was getting ready to leave this time, though. She smiled at me when I turned back to face her after I had everything loaded in the backseat. It fucking killed me that she was still able to smile after the kind of things she’d spent the morning telling us. I grabbed her perfect little face and kissed her.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“If I can’t handle one whole night without you here, you might want to reconsider getting invested in this with me,” she said and smiled again. “Isn’t it supposed to be a giant red flag if I’m that clingy?”

“It’ll probably be three whole nights, sasshole.”

“I’ll miss you,” she said and leaned her entire body into mine to put her arms around my waist.

“Don’t let New Jersey convince you that you hate me while I’m gone.”

“He’s leaving tomorrow, too,” she reminded me and laughed.

I surprised myself by how much I was stalling. I didn’t want to leave her. The last twenty-four hours were painful. If they were painful for me, they had to have been hell for her. Leaving her alone with that felt like the kind of thing an asshole would do, even though she was the one sending me out on this job.

“I’ll be fine, Utah,” she insisted, like she’d seen right into my thoughts. “Jersey and Triss will be here tonight. Indy is always here. Kyle’s usually around somewhere. And I’ve lived with this for my entire adult life. I’m okay.”

“Call me anytime, angel,” I said on a frustrated sigh.