Yet all it takes is the disgusting memory of the look of abandonment in her eyes the night I admitted to lying about who I really was—what I really did to maintain the lifestyle I hold—to snap me right back into my undeserving-dick mode. The dick who needs to be who he is in an effort of feeling faultless, his pores wiped clean of the guilt riddling his past, a terminal cancer hell-bent on murdering his future.
The second I fessed up to dealing, I cracked Amber’s already-splintered spirit, deepening the bloodied scars of untrusting cells marring her skin. It was in that moment I knew I had to make up for the harm I’d caused her in whatever way I could, in whatever way possible to keep her by my side.
Still, no matter what, I’ll never be worthy of the girl who flew into my life like an avenging angel, consuming me hard, stealing my heart faster. At first sight my feelings for Amber were nothing but lust, a carnal desire to control her, to sexually conquer her inner demons. But over time they’ve grown into absolute need, something I’m sure I can’t live without. But knowing me, I’ll lose her to my main weakness. Though she’s aware I’m a package of fucked-up goods, and I swore I’d never hide anything from her again, Amber doesn’t know all my truths, my deepest inconsistency. Telling her I sold drugs was hard enough. Introducing her to the real me—the serpent harboring some of the deepest, darkest secrets imaginable—can sink us. One lie left untold, one obsessive desire that’s been awakened, is a truth I’m unsure I’ll ever be able to reveal to her.
Nonetheless, after her relentlessly pressing the parents-meeting-parents issue, and batting those damn puppy dog eyes at me, I caved. Just like that, she chipped away my resolve, crumbling me in her hands like a weakened rock. When it comes down to it, all I wanna do is please her, rip away the pain that haunts her days and terrorizes her nights. That pain, the one that burns like acid behind her eyes, kills me. I need to make this jewel happy, even if it comes at the expense of me being miserable.
Still, I know the second she meets my parents it’ll screw with her. And, damn, I can’t stand the thought of tainting her with any more of my darkness. I don’t want her to experience the painful backlash from the people who despise me. I don’t want her to taste the fiery pain that’ll rip open every remaining scar I bear, every organ holding a ton’s worth of guilt inside its lining when she witnesses the way we handle each other while in the same breathing space. There’s a fuckload of crazy shit I don’t want Amber doing, meeting my family number one on the long list. It will only blacken her to my world more than I’m positive it already is.
With all of this, I still couldn’t bring myself to deny her request. I’m a grade-A fucking son-of-a-bitch, but bitch or not, putting a smile on her face compelled me, urged me to set my family issues aside.
I move my hand to her knee, lightly squeezing her warm flesh. “You seem excited.”
“I am.” She turns those whiskey eyes on mine.
I melt.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen them.” A hesitant pause, a smile flirting with her lips as she wraps her hand around mine. “Are you nervous at all?”
“Who, me?” A smirk whips across my face. “Have you ever known me to be nervous?”
“I think you’re a little off your game today, so yeah.”
“You think so?” I trail my hand up her plum skirt, tickling my fingers along the seam of her silk panties. “Maybe I need to show ya how on my game I am.”
“Brock.” My name rolls off her tongue in a husky warning. “We can’t.”
“Mm. All I just heard was a challenge.”
She laughs, a purr slipping from her mouth. “You’re nervous. Just admit it, tough guy.”
“Nope.” My gaze travels over the flush whispering across her cheeks. So beautiful. “Not a chance.”
“At some point I’ll get you to confess the truth.” She sighs, a reluctant pout weighing down her face. “But right now I need you to remove your hand from in between my legs. It’s . . . distracting.”
I guess trying to finger-fuck my girl right before meeting her foster parents isn’t the greatest way to make an impression. I never, nor will I ever, claim to be perfect. That shit’ll never happen. It can’t. I’m too warped, the person I’ve morphed into blocking any chance of that being possible.
I wet my lips, my smirk, along with my cock, growing as I obey her request. “But it’s distracting in a good way, right? A way you’ll never get enough of?”
“Always,” she whispers through a little moan. A moan that has me wanting to cancel this whole dinner thing so I can give her what we both really need right now.
The best kind of therapy available to the human race: mental cleansing through angry, physical release . . .
When Amber and I fuck, we go at it like we’re running away from something, like our sanity depends on it. While she tries to flee from the ghosts continuing to pull at the last remaining threads of her miscolored past, I resurrect mine, taking out every tormented second of it on her body every time we come within an inch of each other. Tortured, we’re both irrevocably broken, a pair of souls attempting to heal the other through sex. The day I was born, whoever’s running shit up there knew they were going to put us together, make sure our filthy paths crossed somewhere along the way.
But no matter who’s the dick controlling the show, that’s how relationships work. You fight to make up. Initiate war to make love. Fall to rise. Wound to heal. Create to destroy. Casting a never-ending landslide of dirty emotions poisoned by life and the cruel games it plays with our psyches in our paths, I just hope Amber and I can beat the maker at his match. Show the motherfucker who’s really in charge of their destiny.