Page 24 of Into the Blue (Shades of Vengeance #1)

He chuckles softly, “I remember her sayin’, ‘Spent all this damn time pickin’ out a nice name for my boy and he picks somethin’ dumb. A damn color.’ She didn’t ask if I picked it, but I guess in a way I did.”

I had assumed that it was a family given thing or some story behind it. The turmoil in his eyes suggests that there is much more to it. “If you didn’t pick it, who did?”

He bites his lip before breathing out slowly.

“Man, Black people will give you the most crazy nicknames for dumb shit. My friend used to call me that because she gave me a black eye that looked blue. Playin’ ball, being kids, y’know?

The teasing, jokes were relentless from the other kids for months. It fucking stuck. Then, I earned it.”

“Earned it?” I ask.

He’s silent for a long time. I try to be patient, twisting his locs into something of a style while he breathes deeply with his eyes closed over whatever memories he’s fighting.

Then he gets up and pulls the shirt over his head.

At first, I’m taken back by his sudden nudity.

Then I start looking over the art inked on his pronounced chest and strong, sculpted shoulders.

I knew that he worked out, we often did together.

His body is perfection, lickable and taut.

All that toned mahogany brown skin, begging for me to explore the art he's decorated it with. He spends so much time training to make sure it looks that way. I suppose he can’t rely on gators to save him if anything were to go awry in his day to day.

Until this point, I never saw him without a shirt on. What catches me off guard completely are his arms.

The scar tissue.

So many scars.

My eyes widen against my better judgment telling me that I should keep my mouth shut and look away.

But he’s showing them to me.

I won’t look away.

I take a hand in mine, turning it so that I can see his forearms. This right one is worse than the other. At first glance, you likely couldn’t tell. There’s so much ink, shading, shadows, and snakes writhing along the strong length of his arm.

Underneath the ink though, angry lines where his arm was opened, had to be surgically, with how precise all the incisions are. Those would maybe not have been noticeable if it weren’t for the keloids.

Raised and jagged along those incisions.

Some look like they have been reduced but formed again.

I look up at him and he’s watching my face, hard as stone. No emotions in the line of his mouth or the cut of his gaze.

“What happened?” I ask tentatively.

He takes one of my fingers and runs it over the scar closest to his wrist, it’s the least raised scar.

I can tell from the way the skin jumps that it is not a comfortable feeling.

“My thumb collapsed. A bone splintered. Took months before my dad believed I should see someone. By that time, two different tendons had been damaged and partially severed. Hand almost shattered from overuse and inexperience.”

He takes my hand to feel the next scar up from this one, more raised than the last. “They had to search for the tendon that split and replace the one in my thumb with a piece of it higher in the arm.” His skin is warm as he guides me to the next scar.

“Why—” my words come out choked, but he doesn’t allow me to trip over the clumsy way I was going to ask just why his dad wouldn’t take him to a hospital.

“Told me that a man knows how to fight. I fucked my shit up bein’ a pussy.” He sucks in a breath and continues, “Said to use my left and figure out how to manage without it. That it would heal in time.”

“But it didn’t,” I whisper.

Looking over his hands, I try to see what’s underneath the tattoos there. So many nicks and if I look closer, I could see the smaller incision marks on his thumb. A couple on his other fingers.

“Nah. It didn’t.” He shows me the other arm. “So, I used my left like he said. And I didn’t learn anythin’ from the first time.” The sound he emits is one of old pain and resignation. “As much as I hurt the kids who called me out of my name, I hurt myself two times more.”

The scars on this arm aren’t as pronounced. But imagining him having to use it while his other hand was damaged is too painful to imagine. I wince even as I softly run my fingertips over these surgical scars.

“I met Redd by then. He had learned much more than I had havin’ been a light skin with curly red hair and freckles. They been messin’ with him long before people got on my ass. He taught me how to fight without using my hands the same way. First one to recommend a knife instead.”

My eyes are still stinging, thinking about that young boy who endured that with no one there to protect him. Hands ruined trying to defend himself. “Will you tell me your given name?”

I knew it. Of course I did, with how many files I had on this man. But I wanted him to give me permission to call him by the name his mother called him.

A silly and selfish thing to ask of him.

He tilts my chin with the hand that suffered the most damage. Emotion so fierce rests behind deep brown irises that have experienced so much. “No one calls me by it. No one is allowed to.” My eyes drop preparing for the rejection, even when I know I don’t deserve to have that kind of access to him.

He lifts my chin again, “Look at me.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have—”

“To do anythin’ but stay Black and die, I know.” A small smile plays on his lips when he says, “But I want to tell you.”

“Okay,” I murmur, eyes flitting left and right between his.

A snake, I am.

A manipulator, I am.

None of that would stop me from taking this little piece of him.

“It’s…” I lean in, even as he pulls me toward his face with his touch at my chin.

Our lips are moments from touching.

His breath on my lips sends tingles along my nerves and my eyes close. “Milo Leonel Dupont,” he confesses between the seam of my lips.

The kiss is unlike any of the ones that preceded it.

He’s gentle, soft with me. Softer than I deserve but as soft as I yearn to be with him. His vulnerability tastes like serenity on my deceitful tongue.

Blue takes his time to show me what it means to belong to him and hold those painful parts that need to be shielded from the world. I don’t know if I can bear to hold them when I know I’m unworthy.

And yet, he continues to kiss me slowly.

Unbearably slow as his true name rings around in my head though his voice was so low I almost missed it.

His hands are roaming my body. The covers that once separated us, forgotten and gone.

“You always smell so damn good,” he pants, rolling me over to straddle him. His nose pressed into my neck, buried in my hair.

I kiss his forehead to his temple, down his chest over other scars he didn’t tell me about, to his taut stomach, tongue running over the grooves there until I reach his joggers. His length is pressing against the front of them.

He watches me from where I kneel between his legs, hands poised to remove this final barrier between his dick and my lips .

He helps me by lifting his hips, so that I can take the pants and boxers off at once.

Before me, he’s completely naked.

This is an achievement.

Something to brag about.

I don’t know anyone who could have the same badge on their vest.

I could understand why he never took his shirt off with me before. There’s too much raw vulnerability there. Too much to explain and give power to.

But I saw it.

I see him.

His dick bobs in front of me and I’ve never been more eager to slide my lips around someone as I am right now.

He gave me the power, not knowing that I should be the last person he exposes himself to.

Lust and greed mingle in a dangerous dance through my blood, kneeling between his legs like this.

It’s too late to take it back now.

Milo.

The first drag of my tongue up the thick vein along the underside of his dick is the surge of power I didn’t expect. He grits his teeth and a hand combs the hair from my face so he can see what I’m doing better.

“Fuck, yes. Put that hot mouth on me,” he barks.

Oh yes.

This is gonna be good.

The dark wide crown of him is tight with need and smooth as I hold back his foreskin with my fist. It’s barely a grip that I can maintain. Either my hands are small or he’s really just that big. I have to get my other hand involved just to fully enclose the shaft.

Licking all around the flared head, I take my time going from side to side with the tip of my tongue. Then in tighter circles around the sensitive opening, my tongue flattens down that vein again .

“Yes, bae. Take me into that mouth,” his commanding tone requires me to. It’s somehow sweeter because of what he’s called me. What he always calls me when he’s hard and horny for me.

It was a stretch for me to get my lips around him. The wide head of him pulling my lips taught and drool begins to run from my lips. I use it to help me stroke his length all while my cheeks are stuffed with him.

A shallow bob is still a bob nonetheless when it’s all I can manage. I rely heavily on my hands to give him head and I’m proud of that. This is expert level management of a big fucking dick.

I couldn’t fit it down my throat if I tried.

Gagging over him trying to get close is messy work when more drool coats him and I’m still giving it my best.

I don’t think he can take it anymore. With a hand in my hair, he pulls me off of him with a pop and straight to his lips.

Here is the rough and commanding man who ruined sex with any other person in my eyes. The brief sting at my scalp pales in comparison to the pleasure that I know he’ll give me.

Wasting no time, he’s pulling my sleep shorts off and burying his face between my legs.

He’s voracious and unyielding as he pays my sensitivity no mind.

He wants my cum and he wants it now. Tongue fucking my center, lapping at the juices coming from me like he’s dying of thirst.

I throb and buck, trying to control this orgasm, but it’s coming too fast.

Nonsense noises fill the room with the sound of my pussy as he prepares me for my next high.

He eases three fingers inside me when I’m shaking over his face. I’m spilling over his fingers.

It’s too good to care about any of the mess we’ve made. The mess he’s made of me.

Let me tell you, taking that dildo yesterday is nothing like the feel of being stretched and filled by Milo.

“Oh God. Milo, that feels so goddamn good.” He shudders under me, even as he’s slamming my body onto his thick shaft, touching something deep inside me.

“Say my name again, Racquelle.”

I can barely hear him over the slapping of our skin and the slippery sounds of my pussy taking him deeper. I’m too blissed out.

Has he asked me something?

I’ve fallen into the blue again and I’m not trying to get out. The only thing keeping me upright is his dick inside me and his hands squeezing my ass.

“Say it again,” he demands.

My hands cover his as I moan his name, “Milo.”

On an exhale as he drives into me harder, “Milo.”

And in a scream, when I finally meet the edge and fall over it, “Milo.”