Page 141 of Things We Left Behind

The tendons in his neck stood out fiercely, and his biceps bulged as he relentlessly drove me toward heaven. Or maybe it was hell. It didn’t matter.

I was quivering from the inside out.

“Lucian!” It was a low, keening wail.

His erection seemed to swell even bigger, and he gritted his teeth. “Damn you, Pixie,” he snarled. He brought one hand to my jaw, holding my head still. Those beautiful storm cloud eyes went glassy as I clamped down around him.

“Please,” I whispered. I didn’t know what I was asking for, what I wanted from him. But Lucian understood. He gave one final vicious upthrust, and his body went rigid.

I didn’t think. I just reached up and grabbed his face in my hands and we stared into each other’s eyes as I experienced my first second orgasm of my life.

A shout tore loose from his throat, and I felt him ejaculate. For one stupid, fleeting moment, I wished there wasn’t anything between us. No protection to stop me from experiencing every sensation of Lucian’s climax.

He was moving again, short, jerky thrusts as he used my orgasm to milk his own. He used my body for his pleasure, and that made me come harder.

We kept right on coming, muscles trembling, breath panting as we stared into each other’s eyes.

“This is the dumbest, hottest mistake I’ve ever made,” I moaned.

22

Sloane to the Rescue

Sloane

Twenty-­two years ago

Six days. That was how long Lucian had been behind bars. He’d turned eighteen and missed his own high school graduation because of me. Well, technically because of his horrible, disgusting monster of a father, but also because I hadn’t listened to him.

I told my parents everything I knew the night Lucian was arrested. They hadn’t been happy with me keeping that kind of secret from them. Their disappointment in me only made me feel worse.

My dad had put everything on hold and was fighting tooth and nail to get Lucian out of county jail. From what I’d gathered through pointed questioning and blatant eavesdropping, Chief Ogden was pushing to charge Lucian as an adult. The judge seemed amiable and set the bail at an astronomical $250,000 during the arraignment, which I hadn’t been allowed to attend.

According to what Mom told Maeve over the phone, Dad had nearly had an aneurysm on the spot.

I was listening outside his office later that day when hetook a call from the district attorney, who had suggested Lucian accept a plea deal for eight years in state prison. My father, one of the nicest, most polite human beings in the entire universe, told the DA to go fuck himself.

Meanwhile, Mom had visited Lucian’s mom twice since she got out of the hospital with a pair of broken ribs. Both times, the woman had refused to talk about Lucian or what really happened that night. She had also declined Mom’s offer to let her come stay with us “until things were sorted out.”

Ansel Rollins appeared to be behaving himself, for the moment.

I’d overheard my parents talking on the front porch the night before. Dad broached the subject of a second mortgage to Mom for Lucian’s bond.

“Darling, of course we’ll do it. We can’t leave him behind bars.”

In that moment, I realized what a privilege it was to grow up with good people for parents. I’d pressed my teary face up against the inside of the window screen and scared the shit out of them by yelling, “You can have my college fund too!”

I came from a family of heroes and wasn’t about to be left out. Certainly not after my mistake had caused the current situation.

I had a plan.

I’d done enough research on abusive relationships over the past year that the librarian was starting to give me funny looks every week when I checked out a new batch of books.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to blame Mrs. Rollins. She was a victim of domestic abuse. I was savvy enough to understand that systemic abuse did things to the psyche that other people couldn’t fathom. However, even with that in mind, a very large, very loud part of me wanted to tell her exactly what I thought of her choosing her dirtbag loser husband over her son.

I felt dizzy every time I thought of the boy I adored behind bars for the crime of protecting his mother.

So while my parents decided to move forward with comingup with bail money, I decided I was going to fix the whole damn mess. I was going to make it clear to everyone, including the blind-­as-­a-­bat Chief Ogden, that Lucian Rollins wasn’t the dangerous one in the family.