Page 68 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

It does, doesn’t it? And not only because we’ve just had the exact same conversation as that night.

Before he told me to take off my clothes and made me crawl naked toward him.

And then he made me ride his boot like a horny slut.

There’s something in the air, some dangerous spark like before.

Some edge that I can’t see but feel right in the center of my being.

Right in the core, because I’m just as wet as I was that night.

In fact, I’m wetter because now I know how it feels.

I know how he feels inside of me. Big, throbbing, threatening, whispering sweet and dirty nothings in my ear.

“Because it is,” he whispers, again in a low, rough tone, and my core pulses so hard I flinch. I feel a thick drop of my juice sliding down my thigh.

“It is?”

“Yeah, only this time,” he goes on, his eyes penetrating, his cheeks flushed and hard, “instead of you riding my boot, I’ll be the one licking it.”

I go still. “What?”

He roves his eyes over my features and it’s insane to call the way he does it…

tenderly, when everything about him is so intense, so brutal, too brutal to bear without going to pieces myself.

But that’s what his look is. It’s tender, like a wound that hurts but also feels so good I could weep.

His look is how he made me feel when he took my virginity, all torn apart, but somehow that pain fed into the pleasure that came later and did actually make me weep.

“I disappeared,” he says, his biceps straining again, bloody, corded, his chest pushing into mine with his long but hitched breath.

“For two days. When you needed me the most. For two fucking days, I had my head up my ass when I should’ve been there for you.

When I should’ve taken care of you, pampered you.

I should’ve cherished you, cherished the gift you gave me and made you feel special because that’s what you are.

You’re special to me, Strawberry. You’re so fucking special you make my chest hurt.

You make my fucking heart skip a beat. You tug at my heartstrings. You tug at my soul, but I…”

“You what?”

His jaw clenches for a second. Then, “I’ve been looking for the right words and I… I don’t think there are any. And if there are, I don’t know them. So I’m going to do what I did weeks ago. On another one of the nights I hurt you.”

I finally give up the fight and hold on to his t-shirt. I fist it with my fingers, crane my neck up, before whispering, “What did you do?”

He looks down at me, his breaths hot and sweet, strawberry-laced.

“I walked out the door. Deleted that video. Deleted all the videos I had no business taking in the first place. Walked to my truck, and then I…” Another lick of his mouth, making it glisten even more, and this time I’m pretty sure he’s remembering something while he does that.

“I sat in it. I took off the boot I made you ride, the one you came on, and…” Another pause. “And licked it.”

I jump and my fist twisting in his shirt even more tightly. “You licked your…”

“Yeah,” he says outright, unabashedly, without restraint. “I licked it. I licked your cum off my boot, because…”

“B-because?”

His eyes burn as they flick back and forth between mine. “It’s bad manners, see. It’s bad manners to let it go to waste when you made it for me. When you gave it to me. As a gift.”

“I—”

“Your cum. You did, didn’t you? Like the most precious gift.”

Dumbstruck, I nod.

“Yeah, you did. You were so innocent. You still fucking are. But you were so brave. You’re always so brave .

Such a good girl. A hard worker, aren’t you?

” I nod again and he keeps going, “And you did work hard for it. So, so hard. Twisting your hips, writhing your body, playing with your perky, plump tits. Giving me the fucking show I asked for. So I had to. I had to, because your pussy made it for me. She made it so I could eat it and lap at it, drink it and fill my hungry stomach with it. And you know I’ve been hungry for a long time, yeah? ”

I blink, my belly feeling heavy with arousal. “A long fucking time,” he almost groans, his nostrils flaring. “So hungry for you, baby. So fucking hungry for your pussy. So. Fucking. Hungry for any scrap you’ll throw at me.”

I shiver so hard at it that my knees almost buckle, but I hold onto him as I say, “But you don’t have to be any longer. I’m here. You can?—”

“So I licked your cum off my boot and kicked myself in my head, cursed at myself for being such a cruel, filthy asshole to you, to my sweet Little Strawberry. And every time your taste would hit me, my dick would get so hard, yeah? It would grow along my thigh, sit fat and heavy, and fucking leaky. But I didn’t touch myself.

I refused to touch myself. I refused to give myself a single ounce of pleasure after what I did to you.

So then it became a ritual. Every time I wanted to punish myself, I’d lick my boot and let my cock get heavy.

And I kept doing it. For days, for weeks, even though I’d licked the leather clean and your taste was gone, I kept licking it like a starving dog because that’s what I was. Without you.”

I let go of his t-shirt and go up to his face, cupping his hard jaw. “Shepard?—”

“I call everyone who wants to sniff under your skirt a dog, don’t I? But the truth is it’s me. I’m the dog. An animal. Who wants to sniff under your skirt, lick your skin, bite your body. I’m the one who wants to rut inside you and leave my mark everywhere. Even on the inside.”

“Shepard, please, listen?—”

“And then, every time I saw you during those weeks, every time I stopped by the coffee shop during your shift and saw you, all sad and heartbroken, talking to your fucking boss, I…” He grits his jaw.

“I wanted to barge in and fucking punch him in the face and while he was lying on the floor, bleeding out, I wanted to say sorry. For everything.”

I felt him, back then. In those days. I felt him watching me, and while it completely makes sense now that I know him, know the crazy level of obsession he has for me, it still steals my breath away. It still makes my heart hiccup and skip a beat. That he watched me even when I thought he hated me.

“Everything?”

“For blackmailing you. For showing up everywhere in those early days. Forcing you to give me a lap dance every night, sneaking into your room. Recording you without your knowledge. Asking you to let me fuck you for money. I wanted to say sorry for every single day I’ve been in your life since the night of my engagement, when I chased you down all so I could get to talk to you. ”

I know I’d figured it out already. That that’s what he wanted to do.

That’s why he came after me, because he wanted to be close to me.

Because even though he was fake-engaged to his girlfriend, he was still obsessed with me.

I was the other girl and he wanted to make a connection.

But him saying that, acknowledging that, makes me so happy, and also makes me want to burst into tears.

Because only he would do something like this.

Make me feel so much I don’t know what to do with myself.

“But I didn’t know how,” he goes on, breaking my thoughts.

‘I haven’t been very good at saying sorry.

So I kept licking my boot. Because I had to find some way to apologize,” he tells me, regret slashing and chiseling his features into hard points.

“Some way to soothe the hurt I caused. Because the thing is, baby”—he leans closer—“that one way or another, I keep hurting you, don’t I?

I keep doing fucked up things to hurt you. ”

Still cupping his jaw, I go up on my tiptoes. “Then, stop. Stop hurting me.”

His jaw goes back and forth under my palm as he rasps, “I don’t know how.”

“Just talk to me,” I insist. “Tell me how you feel instead of shutting down and disappearing. Just?—”

He shakes his head. “I’m not good at that.”

“But—”

“It’s not even about that,” he cuts me off. “See, I thought about it on the way over.”

“Thought about what?”

“I have this thing ,” he says, with clenched teeth, “inside of me. This crazy fucking thing that won’t let me stay away from you.

It makes me obsessed with you. It makes me need you in a way I’ve never needed anyone.

It makes me break out in sweat every time I think you’ll leave me.

That you’ll realize how toxic I really am and you’ll run.

This thing inside of me, Jupiter, won’t let me do the right thing and leave you alone.

It makes me a wrecking ball for you and…

I’m so afraid that it will only hurt you.

I’m so fucking afraid now that you’re really mine, you’ve let me in, I’m only going to hurt you more.

More than I did the night I took your virginity, and I don’t want to.

I don’t want to hurt you, baby, but I also don’t know how to stay away from you. ”

“Are you saying you can’t love me?” I ask, point blank.

He flinches at my question. Like I smacked him in the face. It’s not even that, actually. Because I have smacked him in the face, and he never gave me that reaction. This is more like a stab in the back. A knife he didn’t see coming, so he couldn’t contain his shock.

Then, swallowing and gulping, he shakes his head. “Not again.”

So this is it, then. He’s afraid he can’t give me what I want. He’s afraid that since his heart is already taken and broken, he’ll end up breaking my heart. God, he’s so…

He’s an idiot. But he’s also the most adorable man I’ve ever met.

I said he was made of love and loyalty, didn’t I?

And I was right. This is love and loyalty.

Not that kind of love, but definitely that kind of loyalty.

What he doesn’t know and probably will never know is that that ship has already sailed.

I fell in love with the idea of him a long time ago and only fell deeper when I met the flawed man

I’m not afraid of getting hurt or burnt or stung. What I’m afraid of is not getting to feel his bite, his teeth sinking into my neck, my heart, my soul. Not getting to drink his poison and sweeten his blood. I’m afraid of not getting to be with him even if for a little while.

I press my hands on his cheeks and stretch my legs up as high as they will take me.

“If you ignore my calls or texts or disappear on me again, I will seriously be so very pissed that no amount of apologies or flowers will ever be enough.” Surprise passes through his features before something like satisfaction takes its place, but I keep going.

“And I’m not afraid of you. I never was and I never will be. ”

He stares into my eyes for a few seconds like he doesn’t ever want to look away, like I’m the most fantastical thing he’s ever seen, before his mouth comes down and he takes my lips in a kiss.