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“The good stuff’s downstairs.” That smile again, but this time there’s no humor in it. Because it’s not the stab wounds and bullet holes he’s ashamed of, it’s the rest of it. It’s the wounds that killed his career that bother him.
I don’t want to look but I do because he needs me to. He needs me to see what happened to him. What I’m asking for. Forcing my gaze to his feet, I drag it up slowly. From his ankle to his knee, his left leg is a mess. A column of mangled scar tissue and puckered skin, still twisted and raw, wrapped around his leg from his lower calf to just above his knee. As bad as it is, I know that’s not the worst of it. That his leg isn’t what he doesn’t want me to see.
“I love you.” I say it again and I mean it because nothing he’s showing me has changed that. Nothing I know about him can make me change my mind. “I want—”
He reaches up to hook his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers, stretching it over his hard length of his cock to pull them down. Dropping them down to his ankles, he steps out of them. Straightening, he drops his arms, hands balled into fists at his sides to let me look. More scars. The worse of them concentrated between his thighs, burn scars so severe I can feel myself want to look away, not because I’m disgusted but because this is the thing that almost killed him. Nearly took him away from me before I even knew him and the thought of it scares me so bad I can barely breathe.
“We were somewhere we really weren’t supposed to be—doing something that had to be done—and the team noob stepped on a fucking IED,” he says, his tone low and monotone, like he’s reading it off a set cue cards. “It was his first time in the shit—just got the tap—and when it happened he looked right at me because he spent nearly the entire flight yapping at me about how he’d just gotten married. How she was pregnant and he was going to be a father. How he was going to be a good one. Better than the shit father he’d been stuck with. But when he dropped his boot and heard the click, he knew it was never going to happen. That he was going to die and I knew it too.” He shakes his head, something that sounds like a laugh pushing its way out of his mouth. “So, I kicked his foot out of the way and I pushed him. Took the blast—because I didn’t have anyone at home waiting for me. No one who needed me. Because I was alone, and it didn’t matter to anyone if I died or not.” He looks down at me and smiles. “That’s what happened—I stepped on that IED on purpose. Not because I wanted to die, but because I knew it wouldn’t matter to anyone if I lived.”
“It would’ve mattered to me,” I tell him. “Looking at you—listening to you, that’s all I can think—it would’ve matter to me, Ryan.”
“Grace…” He shakes his head, his hands still balled into fists because he’s unable to believe what I’m telling him. That thing he was so sure would happen if I ever saw him isn’t going to come to pass. That I’m not going to run. “It’s okay. I under—”
I don’t let him finish. Instead I look up at him, reaching into the space between us to wrap my hand around one of his fists. “I’m not going anywhere.” Using my hold on him to pull him closer, I slip to my knees in front of him. Leaning forward, I press my lips against the place where the top of his thigh meets his groin. The place right below his bellybutton. Lifting my free hand to wrap it around the hard shaft of his cock, I give it a long, slow stroke from base to tip. “I’m not changing my mind either.”
Thirty-six
Ryan
Half of me thinks this is another dream. Another fantasy. But it’s not. I know it’s not because not even my fantasies aren’t this good. Not even in my wildest dreams would I be able to imagine Grace on her knees in front of me. Her lips pressed against me. Her hands wrapped around me.
“Grace.” I choke it out on a groan when I feel her fingers tighten around my shaft, giving it a long, slow pump in her fist. I look down, just in time to watch as she leans forward again, her mouth opening. “Jesus—” Her tongue sweeps across the head of my cock, licking at the pre-cum streaming from its tip. Before I know what I’m doing, I reaching down to fit my hands under her arms to lift her up.
“Ryan—” She sounds confused. Maybe a little angry that I stopped her from sucking my cock. Because she wanted to. She doesn’t care what I look like. What happened to me. She still wants me.
Still loves me.
“I let you put your mouth on me, I coming in it,” I tell her, walking her back the half step between her and bed. “We’ve got plenty of time for that, after.”
She looks up at me, her eyes so blue they make me ache. “After what?” she whispers, the hard, swollen tips of her breasts pushing against my chest with every soft, ragged breath she takes.
I fit my hands around her hips, pushing her back on to the bed. “After I fuck you.” I growl it at her, dropping to my knees, nudging her thighs apart with my shoulders so I can bury my face between them.
She whimper softly, her hips shifting against the wide plank of my shoulders, lifting off the mattress to brush my mouth with the seam of her pussy, my cock giving an impatient jerk when she shudders at the feel of my beard, brushing against her most sensitive spot.
Wrapping my hands around the tops of her inner thighs, I grip her tight, holding he open while I give her a deep, hard stroke with my tongue, dragging the flat of it up the length of her slit before giving her clit a gentle nip with my teeth that nearly brings her off the bed and breaks her out of my hold. “Ryan…” She reaches down, her small, delicate hands cupping around the back of my head, her hips rocking against my face while I feast on her, devouring every inch of her pussy like I’m starving. Like the taste of her is the only thing that can save me.
“Jesus...” I groan against her between strokes, changing positions, I slide my arms under her thighs to wrap my hands around the tops of them so I can open her wider. So I can fuck her with my tongue, every lash and stroke of it driving us both wild. Every suck and nip of my mouth against her clit pushing her toward an orgasm so hot and fast, it takes us both by surprise when her thighs give a hard clench and she opens her mouth on a sudden, sharp intake of breath that has me surging up the length of her to cover her mouth with my own, my tongue licking and tangling against hers while she comes.
Braced on my elbows so I don’t crush her, I flex my hips, teasing us both by stroking the swollen seam of her pussy with the head of my cock. “Fuuuck…” Tearing my mouth away from hers, I groan, dropping my forehead down to the crook of her neck. “Condom—I have some in my—”
“Now, Ryan,” she moans, lifting her hips off the bed, to notch the head of my cock in her the slick, hot entrance. “Fuck me now. Please. I can’t—”
I slide my bare cock inside her on a long, slow stroke that turns her words into a soft, shuttering moan. Her knees come up, her ankles locked around my hips, hers raised off the bed so I can fuck her deep, plunging in and out her pussy with slow, languorous thrusts that pulls soft, incoherent cries from her open mouth. Braced above her on one elbow, my hips flexing and pumping against hers, I reach down to press my thumb against her throbbing clit, keeping a steady rhythm that slowly drives us both to the brink.
“Ryan…” My name tears out of her throat on a sob. “Oh god…” her hips rock against my cock and my hand, the feel of her moving against me, me moving inside her, so much better than I imagined. “Yes…” Her back arches in invitation and her knees dig into my ribs while she comes on my cock, the grip and pull of her orgasm setting off a chain reaction that has me fucking her hard and fast, unable to stop the orgasm that barrels down on me out of nowhere.
Too soon.
It’s too soon but I’m unable to stop the orgasm from shooting through me. “Christ.” I groan, the base of my spine tightening against the need to come, rocketing and spiraling up the length of my cock, my hips pumping against hers while I come. I keep fucking her until my deep, hard thrusts trigger another release for her and she gasps, her short, sharp nails, digging into my ass as she moans low and deep in her throat as we finally come together, the rising tide of it crashing over us, again and again until we’re both spent and still.
Finally unable to avoid it any longer, I lift my head from her neck and look down at her. “I’m sorry.” I feel an ugly red flush spreading against the back of my neck.
“For what?” She smiles at me, reaching up to smooth her fingertips across the scowl dug into my forehead.
“Too soon.” I close my eyes and lean in to the pressure of her hand when it changes course to slide over my jawline. “I came too soon. I—”
She laughs at me, the sound of it loud enough to pop my open and re-dig the scowl I had trenched into my brow. “Are you laughing at me?”
“You just gave me three orgasm, Ryan O’Connell.” She lifts a hand a shoves three fingers in my face and wiggles them. “Three.”
“It’s not enough,” I tell her, bending my elbow to bring myself close enough to kiss her. “Three hundred wouldn’t be enough.”
Her hips shift under mine and she lifts a hand to press it against my shoulder. I let her roll me onto my back, my spent cock stirring when she straddles me. Leaning over me, she braces her hands on either side of my head, to bring her lips to within a breath of mine. “Don’t you remember?” Grace murmurs, each word brushing her mouth against mine. “We’ve got plenty of time for that—matter of fact, we have all the time in the world.”
The End