Thirteen
Mind over matter is what they say
Make the hurt go away
Time heals
I make appeals
And still I suffer anyway.
--Ataxia
Rex
What have I done? So consumed by the lure of Mac’s body and the gentle sounds falling from her lips, I was out of my mind with need. Even now, my arms wrapped tight around her and my thigh firmly snuggled between her legs, her body calls to mine.
Nausea savagely slices through my gut. I swallow to push down the sour burn in the back of my throat. I lost control. The evidence of that is standing proudly and pressed against her lower back. It throbs with awareness. We’re alone. My bed is just yards away from where we’re standing. I bite my lip to keep from rocking my hips and giving in to be consumed by the aftermath of my sickness.
The stabbing pain in my gut twists. No. I can’t do that to her. The best thing I can do is get her away from me before I do something stupid.
“You’re scaring me.” Her soft-spoken words spear through me, adding to the shame.
God, she must think I’m a freak. Slamming her against the wall face first, holding her body captive. I f*cked this up. My one chance, the opportunity to feel normal with a girl who doesn’t shy away from my quirks, and I messed it up, dirtied what we had by losing my shit.
“I’m sorry.” I can’t pull back from the heat of her body, afraid of the fear and disappointment I’ll see in her eyes.
She lightly runs her hand against my forearm. Cautious. “Nothing to be sorry about.” Her other hand reaches back, curling around the back of my head. “It’s okay. I’m here. We’re okay.”
Her words wash over me, and I exhale a shaky breath. She continues to comfort me in firm and stable strokes of her hands. My muscles respond, relaxing a fraction with every pass of her tiny hands.
“I want to hold you. Can I turn around?”
Tension returns to my shoulders. Hold me?
“Let me help you.”
Help me what?
Knowing I can’t keep her pressed against the door all night, I drop my hands from her belly and step back. I can’t bear to look at her, so I study my socked feet. I feel a tiny shift in the air and know she’s turned around and looking at me. I’ve never felt a stronger urge to crumble beneath the weight of a person’s eyes.
“Rex, you didn’t do anything wrong, you hear me?” The anger that laces her words seems misplaced.
Confusion, I’d understand. Disappointment, maybe. But anger?
“I . . .” F*ck! What can I say? I don’t want her to be mad.
“Look at me,” she says, the thickness in her demand is unmistakable.
As much as her body responded to my touch and she begged for more, she couldn’t possibly want me, not like that. I hook my finger into the elastic band at my wrist and snap it hard. I pull my chin up and give her my eyes. It’s what she deserves after what I did. Her narrowed eyes study my wrist. I snap the elastic again and she jerks.
“What are you . . .?” She gives me her eyes, and I force myself to hold her stare. She looks scared, but not of me, more like for me. “Please tell me you don’t regret what happened between us.”
Regret? No. I’d suffer the internal war that wages every time I touch Mac just so I could feel her, but the battlefield is a bloody mess in the wake of all that happened. The shame and guilt that rises up from nowhere reminds me how sick I am. It screams that I’m not good enough for anyone, especially her.
“I’d never regret you.”
The flush of her cheeks darkens. “Thank you.”
I shake my head. “For what?”
“For trusting me enough to show me where you get your adrenaline fix.” She dips her chin, peering up at me with a shy smile. “Never thought jumping off a building would be fun.”
I nod and shrug. The change of subject seems to help me relax.
“Then you brought me here, let me into your home. You fed me.” She steps forward. “But the best part was that you trusted me enough to show me what you need.” Her eyes are soft. Accepting. Proud? “I want you to know that . . .” A slow and sexy-as-f*ck smile pulls at her lips. She lifts one eyebrow.
My breath catches in my throat.
“I liked seeing that side of you.” She cups my jaw and runs her thumb along my lower lip, lingering at my lip ring. Her eyes follow the path of her thumb and flare. “A lot.”
F*ckin’ A. She liked it. I mean her body seemed to like it, but the body is twisted as shit. It has desires that the brain won’t get on board with. I should know.
“You don’t think I’m a freak?”
She lifts her other hand to my face and holds me there. “Never say that around me again.”
“I’m only—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is you think about yourself is not how I think about you.”
“Mac, you don’t know—”
“I do know!” She cringes and drops her chin. “What I mean is I don’t claim to have all the answers. What I know is . . .” Her head tilts back and she looks at me. “I like you and everything we do together. I like you exactly how you are, and nothing you do or say can change that.”
I give her words a second to sink in and only then realize that the shit I felt earlier, the feeling of inadequacy and loathing, is gone. How does she do that? Make me go from semi-suicidal to downright . . . happy?
“Nod if you understand,” she says, using my own words from earlier to playfully remind me she’s thinking about our hookup.
I exhale and the ghost of a grin ticks my lips. “Yeah, I understand.” Taking her hand from my face, I kiss her knuckles and repeat it with the other.
“Guess you have to take me home now, huh?”
As much as I’d love to say no and drag her into my bed, my nerves are shot to shit. I’ve overcome more in one day than I have in years.
My mind cranks back to my session with Darren. Decoding the past so that I can make a better future. Maybe I don’t need the missing memories of a lost childhood to find a cure. Maybe all I need is someone who understands and likes me for who I am, and that includes the ugly and the depraved.
Could it be that my cure lies not in my past but in Mac?
~*~
It’s late by the time I get home after dropping Mac off. I walked her to the door and thought a good night kiss would be harmless enough.
I was wrong.
She seems so damn hungry every time we kiss, as if everything I have to offer would never fill her up. I groan and roll my sore lips between my teeth. She sucks at them so f*cking hard I have to wonder what that suction would feel like in other places.
The roll in my gut combined with the painful pulse in my shorts injects me with a dose of adrenaline. I head into my condo and slide my shoes off at the door. The lingering scent of tropical fruit and suntan lotion hits me with a burst of arousal. F*ck.
A cold shower should work to clear my head. I need to get my schedule and go over my interviews for the week, but at this rate, I’ll be reliving the curves of Mac’s body all night.
Back in my room, I move to the bathroom, pulling off my shirt as I go and tossing it in the hamper. My mind is a cyclone of all things Mac. Holding her hand, wrapping my arms around her after the Skyjump, the simplest things have my chest warming.
I strip down and turn on the water. Looking down between my legs, I groan at the disgusting display that taunts me.
“F*ck.” I step in and cold water hits my heated skin. All day my dick has been a constant presence, half swollen and painfully aware of the gorgeous woman at my side. As much as I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t help but notice the way it rubbed against every fiber of my boxer briefs as if they were made of the softest silk. And then at the door, pressing it against her, giving in to what it begged for all day.
I drop my head beneath the stream. My eyes slide closed and she’s there, her full cherry lips that beg to be kissed, the memory of how they felt against my fingers today, silken pliable flesh, so damn soft. I pull my lip ring into my mouth, sucking the metal and moaning against the sting. Her tits, weighed heavy in my hand as I toyed with the nipples, and I imagine what they look like naked. I bet her nipples are the same dark cherry of her lips.
“Dammit, f*ck.” My hand slides down the wet slope of my abdomen and I grip my dick. Humiliation and disgust do nothing to hold me back.
She doesn’t deserve this, to be the fantasy of a sick f*cker who’s whacking off to her image. My mind takes off without permission to imagine all the things I’d do to her, increasing my shame. I pound myself hard, punishing my depravity with pain.
Dirty. Wrong. Bad.
The words run through my head on repeat, but it doesn’t stop me. I’m too far gone, wound too tight, lost in the sickness. The pain combines with the humiliation, and my thoughts of Mac turn into violent flashes of sexual domination.
I rock into the tile wall, my forehead pressed against it so hard it hurts. “Sick.” My fist tightens and the helplessness washes over me. My toes curl on the slick tile floor as my body readies. I don’t want it and try to force back the inevitable. “No.” Stop!
Two voices rage in my head. Body over mind. I’m helpless. Helpless.
A guttural whimper, which I recognize as my own, echoes around the shower stall. I bite down on my lip as my release reminds me I have no control. That’s what it is: a filthy cancer that eats away at my head, turning me into a monster of sexual depravity.
And this is all I have to offer a girl like Mac.
That’s where I was going today. Today, I was thinking about having another date with her. I considered what it would be like to have her on the back of my bike or, hell, have her riding her bike next to me. My head allowed me to have even the scariest of thoughts and considered something exclusive. A relationship. And it didn’t scare the piss out of me.
I grab the soap and go to work on my arms first, digging the bar into my skin and scrubbing until it burns. “Filthy f*ck.” I drag my nails along my arm. Not good enough.
Reaching over for the scrub brush I keep in the shower for this purpose, I bury the stiff bristles into the tender underside of my arm. “F*ck yeah.” Harder, faster, deeper. I scrub every inch of my body until it’s bright red and aching.
Sick of looking at my own naked body and tired of the losing battle to get it clean, I shut the water off and grab a towel. Even the soft cotton feels like sandpaper as I dry off, but f*ck if the pain isn’t what I deserve.
I move into my room and pull on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. I drop to the edge of my bed, elbows on my knees, and hold my head into my hands. When will this stop? What the f*ck is wrong with me that I can’t even jack-off to the thoughts of a pretty girl like every other red-blooded male alive?
My head’s a mess of bullshit I can’t control. I grab my iPad and pull up my schedule for the week, sent over by my publicist. I concentrate on that and hope the monotony of it all will kill my self-hatred, even if only for the night.