Page 49 of Between Passion and Revenge, Part One (The Griot Chronicles #1)

She doesn’t move a muscle at that statement until a moment later when she says, “What kind of thing? She’s our age, isn’t she? You were fourteen when he died, and he was in his twenties.”

Smart girl. Too smart for her own good sometimes.

“Yes. That’s correct.” I want to touch her, mainly because I’m a selfish motherfucker and I know the feeling of her beneath my palm would mean the world in bringing me back from the brink.

“Were they…” Shae begins.

“My brother groomed Bambi for over a year. She thought it was love. I’m not sure she doesn’t still think that to be honest. She’s not…she’s not well. Not after everything that happened to her. She’s fragile, and despite how it might seem, I don’t like to hurt women.”

She bites her lip, the only tell that her frostiness is thawing.

“You’re keeping secrets from me with her?” she asks, her voice going thin.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m being completely honest with you, Sweetness.”

She tilts her head to the side, finally unfurling one arm to place her hand on my stubbled cheek.

“We both know that’s not true, Storm.”

Beep.

The sound from my phone cracks like a death knell, and I throw it across the room.

“Shae, I’m not cheating. I don’t want anyone except you. What do you need me to do to feel safe with me?” I ask, and the words stun me. I have never concerned myself with another woman’s emotions, but when it comes to Shae? It’s my top fucking priority. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”

Goddamn it, I’m begging.

She shakes her head again and a perverse, dark part of my soul gets a thrill when a single tear rolls down her cheek—not because I want to make her cry, but because it means she feels something.

She feels something for me, about us.

“I should be more mature about this,” she says, almost more to herself.

“Do you think I’m cheating on you, Shae?” I grab her hands when I ask the question, leaving my expression completely open to her.

We hold each other’s gaze for a long time, what seems like forever, but after releasing a slow stream of air and breaking the intensity with a blink, she sits on the bed and says, “No.I don’t think you’re trying to be with her, but she wants to be with you.”

She sniffs and squeezes my hand.

“Desperately,” she adds.

I tilt my mouth to the side, knowing I can’t lie to her.

“I’m seeing that now.”

At that confession, she jerks, almost as if she expected me to deny the statement.

“So the question is, what do you want me to do to make you feel safe, Sweetness? Do you want me to end the friendship?”

She bites her lip again and looks down to her lap where our joined hands now rest.

“No.I—that’s a childish response. I wouldn’t ask you to give away a twenty-year friendship because I can’t handle a little jealousy.”

“Is that what it is, Shae? Are you jealous of Bambi?”

An annoyed, irritated look flashes on her face before she says, “Whatever, Storm.”

And then she rolls her eyes and it’s like the sun coming out after a category five hurricane.

I grin. “Nah, jealousy? I don’t think that’s it.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Really,” I say, moving my hand from her lap to the elastic waistband at the sides of her hips. “Because you’d only get jealous if you thought she had something you didn’t. But you know you’re the shit. Right, baby?”

I tug at her sweats, and she lifts her hips without me having to make the verbal request. I take her panties with the outer fabric, making cautious moves as I remove them from around her ankles.

“I’ve already told you all there is to know about me and her,” I say, placing slow, sucking kisses up her thigh.

“Yeah, like you fucked before,” she whispers.

Again, I won’t lie to her. “Sure, but do you think what happened with me and her is anywhere on the level of what we have?”

One kiss on the thickest part of her inner thigh.

Another right where the skin gets a shade darker, right before the crease separating her leg from the heaven between them.

“I don’t know, Storm. Aren’t we just fucking too?”

I pause at that, looking up at her from my space wedged between her thighs. Her breaths break in and out of her lungs as if she’s climbed a mountain, and her nipples are hard like onyx stone beneath the thin T-shirt.

“You think this is just fucking?”

Her mouth drops open, and a choked sound comes out.

Oh, I’m gonna make her make that sound again with my dick shoved down her throat.

I pull her body close to the edge of the bed, throwing her legs over my shoulders. She flops back on the mattress, and I bark, “Sit up and look at me while I eat my pussy.”

She whimpers, but she obeys, resting on her elbows as I give her a long, firm lick between her lips.

Her honey lands on my tongue and fuck if I don’t want to drink it down.

“Storm,” she moans, her hands clenching at the comforter beneath her.

I suck on her clit, pushing one, then another, finger into her pussy. Her greedy muscles suck at the digits, and I’m pretty sure my dick is leaking against the fabric of my boxers.

“That’s so good,” she whispers, whimpers, and when her thighs start to shake, I know she’s close. I pick up the pressure, putting my whole fucking face into her cunt.

“Storm!” She shouts my name as she comes, and I keep licking at her as she comes down.

“Okay. Okay,” she says, panting. “Thank you for the orgasm, Storm.” She looks ready to bolt again, and that’s not gonna happen.

Not until we get some more shit straight.

“Nuh-huh,” I grind out, licking my lips to savor her pussy juices. “We’re just getting started, baby.”

Her eyes widen like a startled deer.

I fucking love her expressions.

“O-okay, if you wanna fuck now, that’s cool,” she says, amping up that red-hot part of my brain that goes haywire whenever I’m around her. It’s part aggression, part obsession.

Part possession.

“See? That,” I say, running my thumb around and around in circles over her nub. “You think this is just fucking?”

She sucks in a breath when I get the right angle to reactivate her slide back toward climax. I climb up her body, leaning over her with my lips close to hers.

“Here’s what fucking looks like, baby,” I say, and I slam into her after pushing my sweats down far enough to free my dick and balls.

I surge into her so hard that I knock against the bottom of her, which has her yelping at the intrusion.

I pull back, ready to ram into her again, but force myself not to go as deep the next time.

I want her to feel me tomorrow, not hurt her.

“Fucking,” I say, wrenching her legs over my arms with my elbows at the bend of her knees. “Fucking looks like this. Just two parts sliding together until one, or both, come.”

She moans again with her lips clenched tight, and her hands go to the hem of her shirt, wrenching it off in one move.

It gets tangled at her wrist, but she leaves it there.

“Fucking is mindless, Shae. Fucking is unemotional. Anybody can fuck and completely forget about it.”

I push into her one, two, three more times before dropping her legs and bringing my hand to her swollen clit. Rubbing it hard and fast just like she likes, I say, “Fucking is about the end goal. It’s about coming. Just like you’re about to.”

“ Fuck , Storm!” bursts from her lips as her entire pussy ripples around my dick with her climax.

“Again,” I grind out, still rubbing, still giving her punishing slaps of my balls against her ass as I bottom out inside her.

“I can’t,” she rasps.

“You can,” I command. “Feel it. Take this dick and come on it again.”

Her eyes roll to the back of her head and she releases a deep, fucking animalistic groan and comes again. Once she’s at the high, I keep going, moving my angle to rub my dick head against the raised patch near the mouth of her perfect cunt.

She’s still riding the high, still orgasming, so when I say, “Do it again, Shae,” she does, this time coming so hard that her entire body clenches and she squirts all over the base of my dick with her release.

“ Fuuuuuuuck, ” she says, her hands flexing at her sides.

“Yeah, baby,” I say after reciting the alphabet backward to keep from nutting immediately. My strokes slow to a steady, rocking rhythm. “Fucking can be pretty nice, right?”

She doesn’t say anything as I stare into her eyes, into her goddamn soul.

I lower my head until my mouth is an inch from hers. “But then there’s this,” I whisper.

With a gentleness that feels foreign but right, I kiss her. A soft press of our mouths together, followed by the touch of our tongues as we taste each other.

She sighs into my mouth, and I unleash the groan trapped in my chest for the last several seconds.

“Hold me, Shae,” I murmur when I pull back. “Wrap yourself around me.”

She untwists her hands from her shirt and pulls me into her arms. Her legs circle my waist until her ankles lock together at my lower back.

Now, in contrast to the punishing strokes I gave her minutes ago, I roll in and out of her. I use my dick to say the things I can’t say—to confess the things I’m too fucking scared to admit.

With each in and out of my body into hers, I let myself imagine a future for us. I let myself believe I can have it all—the thing I’ve always wanted but didn’t think I could ever have.

Love.

“What we do, Shae? We make love. That’s the foundation of our intimacy, baby. We can fuck sometimes, but I want you to always remember this is what we do.”

I pick up the speed when her breath hitches. The moment the tears start to flow freely down her face and into her hair is the moment I stop fucking with my own emotions.

I love Shae Olivya Rivers.

I’m obsessed with her. I’m possessive over her.

And I’m in love with her.

“Say it. What do we do, Shae?” My voice is damn near unrecognizable.

“We…” she starts.

“We what, Sweetness?” I ask, still holding her gaze.

“We make love, Storm. We fuck and we make love.”

“Yes,” I hiss, moving with more determined strokes when her pussy jumps—another sign she’s close again. “And you’re my first. The first girl I’ve ever made love to.”

She releases a breathy sound, the tears coming faster.

“My first and my last. I swear it on my life, Shae.”

“Oh, god!” she shouts, and her fingers flex against the muscles of my back, pressing into my lats as she stiffens and comes again for what seems like minutes.

When she screams my name, I finally allow myself to let go, shooting rope after rope of hot cum into her battered pussy.

When our heart rates start to slow, and our breaths start to go back to normal, I press my lips to hers again, a long seeking kiss.

And when it finally ends, I still stay close and say, “If you knew the depths of my feelings for you, it’d terrify you, Shae.”

But when I return her searching gaze, I’m stunned by what I see here.

“Ditto.”