If I Were You(Inside Out 01)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Description: butterfly

The sun is setting by the time we pull up to my apartment building and Chris parks his 911 in the midst of much humbler vehicles I imagine he can’t help but notice.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” I say, and quickly exit the 911. Chris is already rounding the trunk when I stand up. So much for my escape strategy. “You don’t have to come in.”
“But I want to.” There is no give to his voice and he slides his fingers between mine and motions me forward. “Lead the way.”
Resigned to a battle I can’t win, I head toward my red brick building with Chris by my side and quickly find my door. I tug the keys from my purse, and hesitate. The journals are laying out on the coffee table. I can’t hide them from Chris. There’s no possible way.
Chris reaches around me, his big body framing mine, and takes the keys. He turns the key and shoves open the door.
Adrenaline pours through me and I rush inside, darting for the coffee table. I start to stack the journals, and the only bright side to their location, and my present state of panic, is I have something to worry about other than my simple brown couch and my $500 dining room set.
The door shuts behind me and the jolt somehow rakes my raw nerves to the point that two of the journals tumble to the ground. Chris is there, as he always is when I drop things, picking them up.
I sink to the couch and set the three in my hands on the coffee table before accepting the ones in his hands. He sits beside me, studying me, ignoring the journals that are all I can think about. “What’s wrong, baby? Why is bringing me in making you this frazzled. I don’t care about your apartment. I care about you.”
My eyes go wide. He cares about me. It’s the closest thing to truly admitting this ‘thing’, for lack of a better term, between us is more than sex. “It’s a lot of things but no, I didn’t want you to see my little bitty apartment.”
He continues to study me with far too much scrutiny. “What else? And don’t say nothing. You already said it was more than the apartment.”
My gaze falls to the journals on the table, and suddenly I desperately want to tell Chris about them. “If I tell you, I’m not sure how you’ll react.” I glance up at him. “Call this reveal my dark secret that might send you running.”
“I won’t run, Sara.” He pulls my legs over his, holding me captive, and I wonder if he knows this. I suspect he does. Chris has a way of controlling things, controlling me. “Talk to me.”
“The journals on the table are Rebecca’s.” The words tumble out of me, and it is a relief to say them. “Her personal journals, with her most intimate thoughts inside.”
“Rebecca’s journals,” he repeats flatly, his expression as unreadable as his tone. “Did you get them from the gallery?”
“My neighbor bought a storage unit at an auction—people buy the ones that aren’t paid for and then sell the items for profit. She planned to do that but her rich doctor fiancé, who she barely knew, whisked her off to Paris. She left the storage unit for me to take care of.”
“You have a storage unit filled with Rebecca’s things?”
“Right. I couldn’t bear getting rid of her things. I wanted to find her and return the items to her. That’s how I started reading her journals and there were so many similarities in our lives that I knew I had to find her.”
“So you went to the gallery.”
His tone isn’t flat anymore. It’s sharp as steel, and his expression stony, his jaw tight, and nerves explode in my stomach in response. He doesn’t like what I’m telling him. I’ve made a mistake sharing this. “I was worried about her,” I say defensively. “I still am and...and my good intentions have snowballed out of control.”
He sets my legs down and straightens, staring at the journals. Seconds tick by, the tension in the room is volatile, stretching tighter, and I have a sense of a rubber band about to pop.
My gut clenches when he picks up one of the journals and I can’t breathe when he flips to a random page. I watch as he begins to read and his body is stiff, the muscle in his jaw flexing and re-flexing. I can’t move, can’t think of what to do to stop the explosion about to erupt.
Seconds tick by so slowly until he looks up at me. “This is what you’ve been reading?”
“I’m not sure which passage you’re referring to, but I’ve read most of the entries. I was worried about her, and I’ve been looking for clues to find her.”
He shoves the journal at me. “Read it out loud.”
“What?”
“Read the f*cking entry, Sara, because I want to know you understand what’s on these pages.”
“I do,” I whisper. My hands are shaking.
His voice is low, lethal. “Read.”
I open my mouth to argue but his look, the glint in his eyes, freezes the words on my tongue. I don’t understand his reaction or why I’m compelled to follow his order, but I do. Slowly, I lower my attention to the entry, and begin to read.

Tonight he punished me. It was inevitable. I knew this. Looking back, I wonder if I didn’t taunt him intentionally by flirting with another man. I just…I don’t understand how he shares me, and yet he possesses me. When I was on my knees, my hands tied to the posts of the podium, waiting for the first smack of leather on my bare skin, I knew right then, if no other time, I was his world. There was nothing outside the room, nothing but what he wanted to do to me. What I wanted him to do to me. I craved the pain I knew he would inflict, as I never believed I could. Pain. It is an escape. When I feel the leather on my skin, I feel nothing else. There is none of the hurt of the past. There is--
Chris takes the journal from me and tosses it on the table, yanking me to him, his fingers curling around my neck in the way they do when he is in control. “Is this what you’re fantasizing about, Sara?”
“No, I--”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s…I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
But he does. I know it instinctively. “I’m not--”
His mouth closes down on mine, brutal and punishing, hot and seductive, long strokes of his tongue caressing mine, until I can barely breathe. When he finally relents, his hand moves roughly over my breast, and his lips linger above mine, his breath hot, and his voice a near growl.
“You have no idea how tempting it is to give you a lesson you’ll never forget.”
Yes. Yes please. Give me a lesson. Every part of me cries out for him, for what he threatens me with. There is no fear. Only a white hot burn and desperation. “Do it,” I challenge. “Do it, Chris.”
He pushes me down on the couch, framing my body with his. “You don’t know what you are getting into, Sara.”
“Show me,” I pant. “Make me understand.”
He shoves my hands over my head. “Damn it, Sara. I should. I should scare the shit out of you and throw those damn journals away.” He buries his head in my neck and then he is gone, leaving me panting and empty inside.
I sit up, my sex aching and wet, my body screaming for some unknown pleasure it’s been denied. Chris is standing with his back to me, raking a hand through his long hair. “F*ck,” he curses, turning to me. “What are you doing to me, woman?”
He’s at the edge and I’m hungry for what is on the other side of his control. Starving in a way I never believed possible. Pushing to my feet, I go to him and I don’t give him time to react. I drop to my knees and caress the thick ridge of his erection. He wants me. He is aroused by the idea of teaching me whatever lesson he spoke of. I am aroused by the idea as well.
“What are you doing, Sara?”
“Pleasing you like you do me.” I shove up his shirt and press my lips to his stomach, popping his button at the same time.
“Sara,” he whispers, and I love the rough timbre of his voice. I love knowing I am affecting him as he does me. I unzip his jeans and reach beneath his boxers, wrapping my hand around the hard, warm flesh of his shaft, carefully freeing him from his clothes.
He’s staring down at me, his gaze nothing short of carnal, and I like it. Oh yes, I do. He is hot and hard in my hand and liquid pools at the tip of his erection, further proof of how on edge he is. I blink up at him and hold his stare, before snaking my tongue out and licking it off.
His lashes lower, his body tenses, but his hands are by his sides. He is in control, I’m not. I swirl my tongue around him, and a soft, hard breath escapes his lips. Encouraged, I suckle him, taking only the head of his shaft into my mouth, knowing he will want more.
My tongue thrusts down the underside of him and success follows. His hand slides to my head. “Stop teasing me,” he orders roughly. “Take me deeper.”
My sex tightens. I like being ordered by this man. I am craving control myself but yet when he takes it, I am hot and ready for anything. I slide down his length, drawing him deeper into the wet recess of my mouth, craving the moment he will be buried inside me.
“That’s right, baby. Take it all.”
My mouth slides all the way down to where my hand grips him, and I begin to suckle and glide back and forth. The muscles in his legs are locked, and he’s arching into me, the grip on my hair tightening as he does.
I’ve given blow jobs, Lord only knows Michael wanted me on my knees, but I have never been aroused by doing it. I am dripping wet, my nipples are tight and aching, my breasts so heavy and sensitive that I caress one of them myself, trying to find relief.
“Harder,” he commands. “Deeper.”
I increase the pressure and he pumps into my mouth, the salty taste of his arousal pouring into my mouth moments before a low growl escapes his throat and his body jerks. It’s that growl that ripples through me, and unbelievably takes me so close to orgasm. Knowing that I affect him downright turns me on. I taste his release and for the first time ever I swallow willingly, drinking in his release, as I am his pleasure. I want…I want so badly it hurts.
His body stills, the tension in his legs easing, and before I completely process what is happening, I am being pulled to my feet and my shirt and bra are tugged up over my head. The next thing I know I’m against the couch, facing it and he’s pulling my jeans down, but my boots are still on.
He pulls me back against his chest, one hand molded to my breast, the other sliding into the wet heat between my legs. “You liked doing that to me.”
“Yes.” The word hisses from my lips.
“Were you thinking about me inside you, Sara?” His fingers are all over me, teasing my *, and Oh God, I’m embarrassed by how close I am to orgasm.
”Yes,” I mouth, unable to form words. I am…my body clenches and then spasms overtake me. My knees buckle and Chris’s hand on my breast holds me up. Everything goes black and spots dot the inky space. Lost in the sweet burn of my body, without concept of time, I relax against Chris, and slowly become excruciatingly aware of my pants at my ankles.
His hands caress a path down my arms and he leans me toward the couch, pulling my pants up. My cheeks burn as he steps away from me but he is right back, pulling my shirt down over my head.
He leads me to the couch, and sits down, pulling me onto his lap, and resting his head against mine. How long we sit there I don’t know, but I could sit there with him forever.
“You do know Rebecca was tormented and lost in that entry, don’t you?”
Like me, I think, but I don’t say that. I lean back to look at him. “Yes. That’s exactly what bothers me, Chris. The journals are more than sex. There is this eerie feeling to them. And they tell me at the gallery that she’s on vacation when her whole life is in a storage unit. That makes no sense. Something happened to her and no one seems to miss her.”
“You’re really worried about her.” It’s not a question.
“Yes. I am. If something happened to me, I’d like to know someone would care.”
He tightens his grip around my waist. “Then we’ll find out what happened to her.”
“We?”
“We, baby. I’ll hire a private detective.”
I’m blown away. “You will?”
“If you really think something happened to her, then we need to find out.”
I press my lips to his. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by letting me stay here tonight. We’ll order Chinese or whatever you like and watch a movie.”
“I thought we were going to your place.”
“I think it would do you good to remember this is your world tonight. And me, too.”
“My apartment doesn’t have the luxury you’re used to.”
“It has you, Sara, and that’s all that matters.”