Page 12 of Between Never and Forever

I pulled the string slowly as I held his gaze, and the triangles fell to either side.

“Fuck.” He dragged out the word. “You still look divine. Why do you have to be so flawless, huh?”

His words were laced with pain, threaded in regret and turmoil. I knew I’d feel those same emotions later, but I couldn’t stop from listening to him. He watched me and I watched him. But my eyes drifted shut as he told me to pinch my nipples. The sensation of the wind over my nearly naked body, the birds chirping in the distance, the smell of those lingering lilacs, and Dex. Dex here with me after I hadn’t had a chance to be with him in so long.

“Look at me when you come, Keelani,” he commanded, and when my eyes shot open, his were on fire with hunger.

I whimpered for him to go faster. “I need it. I need all this. Just one more time with you, Dex.”

He went slower instead. “Just one more time, huh?” He shook his head as his eyes darkened to something sinister in them. “Tell me why you need it, Kee. Ethan not taking care of you the way he should?”

My gut twisted at his words. We were suddenly back to that. Talking to him wasn’t working. We weren’t solving anything, yet I’d missed him so much I couldn’t stop trying to convince him. I needed him any way I could get him. But I’d lost him.

And I didn’t know if I’d ever get him back. Maybe the Dex I knew was gone forever and this man was left in his wake.

ChapterFour

DEX

“Fuck you,”she ground out.

She had always fought fire with fire. I deserved her swearing at me, but I didn’t care, not after what she’d done, not after she’d left me for ruin. And then she asked for alast time. Didn’t she know we’d never even really gotten started?

“I’m not going to fuck you here, Kee. You only get my hand. Want to know why?” I picked up the pace, and her hips rocked with me. Her body still knew what it needed from me, and I wasn’t above giving her that.

We stared into each other’s eyes until I saw hers drifting shut. “Just tell me, Dex. Get it over with.”

“Because you don’t deserve that part of me when you can’t give me all of you.”

“I want to, Dex. I’ve always wanted to,” she whimpered.

“Look at me when you say that. I want to know you mean it.”

Her eyes shot open, and her deep-brown irises were filled with pain. “I’ve only ever meant it for you, Dex.”

“Is that so? Is this all for me too?”

And then I pushed her clit in and rolled it fast as I pumped my fingers into her again and again. It was the perfect rhythm. I saw how her skin started to glisten, how her breath hitched, how her whole body clenched in anticipation. Her pussy tightened on me, too, as she screamed out my name. Over and over.

It wasn’t enough to heal the pain she’d inflicted, but the anger and the turmoil stopped flowing through my veins for a second. She was here with me, and it was all I really wanted. I loved the girl even if she didn’t love me enough to stay.

Her gaze turned hazy as she sat up and reached for my belt buckle fast, her movements jerky. “I want all of you here, where we always did everything. I want this memory with you.”

Another memory. Not a present or a future, just a past. Did she realize it felt like a dagger every time she talked about us this way?

I stood up and stepped back away from her.

She looked ravished in the sun’s setting rays that poured in through the trees. Her long hair had fallen from its bun, and tendrils of it floated in the wind while all the birds chirped around us. The lilacs brought out a hint of violet in her eyes even though they looked devastated as she realized what was happening.

“I don’t want to fuck you in the middle of a garden, Kee.”

“Dex—”

“I don’t really want to fuck with you at all anymore.” I said the words aloud so we could both believe them.

“I want to talk. I can explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain. Neither of us lives here anymore. You’re not a part of my life. And I never want you to be.”