Bound Beneath His Pain: A Dirty Little Secrets Novel (21 page)

Neither the carnival nor the crowd can distract me from the beauty standing before me. I rise from the bench, moving to Allie, pulled by something I’ve never been able to control. I
need
her. I
need
to be closer to her. I
need
to have her in my arms. It’s more than a yearning; it’s a necessity, like that air I need to breathe.

There’s no noise around me. There are no people holding my attention. She’s all I see. That smile of hers is all I can pay attention to when I reach her. The same smile I saw the first day I met her, as well as the smile that changed me as a man and altered my priorities.

I reach up, cupping her face, embracing the way my muscles tighten to protect her. “You still want me, even after everything I’ve done.” I ask her the one question I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. “Why?”

“Because you fought to have me, Micah. You fought for me to see
you.
Then when I did, you were all I wanted, too.” She leans sweetly into my hand, her voice softening, easing the chill within my chest. “You’re all I see. All I feel. All I crave. All I need.”

I am lost in her those soulful eyes of hers, the thundering of my heart banging in my ears. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand
why
you care for me like you do, or how you can look past all the broken pieces to find something to love.”

“There’s nothing to understand.” She reaches up, placing her hands on top of mine. “I care for you in the way I do only because you care for me in the way
you
do. Passionately. Intensely. Wildly. It’s all that I need, Micah.”

Emotion swells deep inside me, and I do nothing to stop it. “I’m glad it is.”

She begins laughing softly, lowering her hands to grip my forearms. “Would you stop looking at me like I’m this angel who saved you?”

“You
are
an angel who saved me.” I hold her face tight in my hands, feeling the power of the energy between us. “You find goodness in others and when it’s not there you create it.” Even now, she somehow can’t accept that all of
this, us,
is because of her. But Darius is right, I can’t fear that about her. What I can do is cherish her. Protect her. Give her everything I can to show her what a rare gift she is to this world. “Come. There are things I need to say.” I drop my hand from her face, wrap my fingers around the warmth of hers, and lead her toward the bench.

I wait until she sits down and then I sit next to her, taking her hand in both of mine. “There’s secrets, Allie, that I’ve never told anyone.”

“Well, I know some of them already,” she says softly.

I glance sideways at her and nod. “Somehow I can’t keep much from you, and even when I try to, you find out anyway.” I glance at our held hands and push back the emotion rising in my throat. “And I’m realizing now that’s because I shouldn’t keep secrets from you, no matter how dark they are.”

“I can handle the dark, Micah.”

I squeeze her hands, loving how my two fit so perfectly around hers. “For some reason, you can.” I know I have to let her in. I can’t have this between us. She deserves to understand me in a way no one does. She deserves for me to tell her what I’ve never told anyone, and what only Gabe knows because he was there. Allie deserves to see my demons for what they are, because
she
is the one woman willing to fight them. I squeeze her fingers in mine, shutting my eyes, parting my lips, and returning to the darkest place in my past.

“Clara.” I storm into my bedroom, unable to process what I’m seeing. There’s no sound. There’s no time. It’s like the world has decided to stop for this very second, and all I see is
her.

Clara.

Blood.

So much blood that the scent of copper is slicing through the air.

She’s lying on her back on my bed, dark crimson liquid soaking the sheets beneath her. I’m moving to her, a second feeling like a minute, as I take in the open prescription bottle next to her on the mattress, along with the knife and the piece of paper that reads
Forgive me
. Those things I can process. What I can’t are the slits from her wrists to elbow and her ghostly pale skin.

I lurch onto the bed, grabbing up her lifeless body, feeling the warm, sticky wetness beneath me, soaking my bedsheets. “What have you done?” I scream at her. She’s cold. So damn cold. “No. No. No.” I shake her, but she falls limp in my arms. “No. You can’t do this.” The bleeding isn’t stopping.

I jump from the bed, grabbing my T-shirt off the floor, tying it around her forearm. My hands are shaking, with shiny crimson stickiness soaking my skin, when I grab the pants on the floor and hurry to stop the bleeding on her other wrist. “No. Dammit. No.” Once I finish the knot, I grasp her face with my blood-soaked hands, placing my fingers against her pulse, searching…praying to a God I’ve never prayed to before.

There’s no pulse beneath my fingers, not even a dull one.

“Gabe,” I scream. “Help me.” I place her head back down on the pillow and begin compressions, counting each time my hands press down into her chest.

I vaguely hear Gabe rushing into the room, trying to get me off Clara, but I can’t let her go. I won’t. I refuse to give up on her. Straddling her waist, I press harder, trying desperately to fight for the life she gave up on way too easily. She had texted me only a half hour ago, telling me to come home to talk to her. I want to talk to her. Christ, I’ve been trying to find whatever hospital her piss-poor excuse of a father admitted her to, to help her with her depression. She gave up on herself. I won’t give up on her.

“I need an ambulance to come to…”

Gabe’s voice fades against the popping and cracking sound echoing around me. I don’t care if I break Clara’s ribs. I need her alive. Her cloudy eyes are wide open, staring up at the ceiling. But they’re as lifeless as they were when she left my house with her father, the last time I’d seen her.

I press my mouth on hers, breathing air into her lungs. Her lips are so cold beneath mine. Again and again. I don’t stop trying to resuscitate her. She cannot die. She’s too young, too precious, too innocent…too pure. I did this to her. I made her soul go to a dark place where she couldn’t survive.

Firm hands suddenly grip me, yanking me backwards off the bed. Gabe’s arms are holding me tight, not allowing me back on the bed with her, no matter how hard I fight. And soon, I’m watching the paramedics rushing in with equipment to save her life.

But I know, as I stare into her eyes, that it’s far too late.

She’s gone.

“I killed Clara,” I hear myself saying, still fighting to find my way back from the one memory I can never forget. “Regardless that I’m not the one who dragged the knife down her arms, I did that to her.” I can’t remember all the words I said, to tell Allie about my past, of my first love, blackmail and suicide, but I become more present when I add, “At the time, Clara thought I craved to beat and rape women. You have to understand times were different then. Kinky sex had a stigma. It’s not accepted like it is today.” I draw in a long breath, running my thumbs across Allie’s hands, before continuing. “Had I been more sure of myself back then, I could have explained that I liked kinky, sometimes rough sex, but I was a different man then. I didn’t understand myself what I wanted, let alone help someone else try to understand me.”

The sky at some point darkened around us, but I’m not sure exactly when. I glance sideways at Allie, and the lights from the carnival are glowing into the night, illuminating her. Tears rush down her face, instantly crippling me. I can’t handle seeing her hurting. I shut my eyes, knowing I can’t get lost now. I have to push on. “Clara was a very sweet, innocent, sheltered girl. She wasn’t equipped to handle me. Nor was she the type of girl who could blackmail someone and not let the guilt of that overwhelm her, which it so clearly did in the end.” My voice cracks and I allow it to. I can’t hide anymore. I won’t. Not with Allie. “After I learned that Clara hadn’t returned to school, I tried to find her. I searched for weeks and hired a private investigator to locate her, but what I learned later is that when Clara became depressed, her father let her rot in a mental hospital. She shouldn’t have been there…” I shut my mouth, unable to finish, feeling my eyes growing sticky.

“Micah…” Allie says softly.

I can’t raise my head. I can’t even move.

She cups my face, forcing my head up. Her eyes are firm, as is her voice. “You need to forgive yourself for all of this.”

I blow out the breath stuck in my throat. Somehow she’s saying exactly what I need to hear, and that doesn’t surprise me. That’s what she does; she
gets
me in a way no one else does. She is everything I need and more. She
can
handle me.

I don’t want to hear that Clara’s death isn’t my fault. I don’t want to hear that we were young and foolish. I don’t want to hear that there’s nothing I could’ve done or that Clara made her own choices. Because all I think of when I think of Clara is that my selfish sexual desires are what led to her death and that I wish I could’ve saved her.

The breeze brushes by, and I run my hand over the silky strands of Allie’s hair, tucking them behind her ear, not allowing those eyes to be hidden from me. “I kept trying to protect you,” I continue. “But I realize now that it’s something I shouldn’t fight. You’ve never once punished me for the darkness, and I’ll always adore the lightness in you; therefore, together, somehow this just works.” I inhale deeply before continuing. “The moment you walked into my life, you showed me another way to live. Now I can’t look back. No more hiding, Allie. No more running.”

“We’re in this together.” She smiles.

A smile that hastily ends the conversation.

There’s nothing else but my lips on hers and my arms tightly wrapped around her.
I have her. She has me.
And the darkness slithering inside is no longer restless. It’s still there, and I know that pain won’t ever leave me completely, only now I don’t have shields up against Allie, she holds the sword to fight my demons.

I enter my bedroom a couple hours later after telling Micah to stay put in my living room. I grab the plastic bag next to my bed on the hardwood floor, and begin emptying the contents onto the mattress. While I take the time to lay out each item perfectly, I’m thinking about how Micah had his chance to make things right between us. Now it’s my turn.

I finish up with the items in front of me and smooth out the bedsheet, drawing in a big deep breath for bravery. Then I call out, “Okay, come in.”

“I’m expecting you to be naked.”

I chuckle at his hard voice, but I stop laughing when he enters the room. His expression, as always, is completely unreadable. He slowly examines each item on the bed before he looks at me. “You’re not naked.” Hardness fills those gorgeous smoky eyes. “We’re also
not
doing this.”

I raise my brows at him. “No?”

“No.”

I can’t let him stop me. Those demons are still there. I see them, quiet for now, but still pulsating beneath the surface. There’s not room in this relationship for all of us. And those demons need to be gone. For good.

“I’m sorry to tell you this…” I unhook each button of my blouse, watching him studying me with all his intensity being expertly controlled. Once I ditch my shirt, I unbutton my pants, pushing them down. “But this choice is mine to make.” I toss my pants aside, remaining in delicate black lingerie.

He
needs this.

We
need this.

I
am
strong enough to fight his demons. But I want to rid him of those fuckers forever. Deep within me, I don’t doubt myself now. No matter the butterflies in my stomach and the tremble of my hands making me feel very inexperienced, I push on, because I see the flare in his eyes, telling me these items on the bed make him
hot.

Clara, and her tragic death, made him ashamed of his desires.

I want
him to embrace them. I
need
him to embrace them. Because by doing so, I’m getting the Micah that no one ever has and is all
mine.
I’m getting Micah in his powerful entirety, and it’s what my heart craves and my body desires.

Those smoky eyes narrow, his jaw clenching. “Allison,” he warns.

It’s a weak warning. I hear the waver in his voice. “Oooh, calling me by my full name. I must be a very bad girl. You better punish me.” I smile sassily at him, sensing the air shifting in the room, becoming thicker as he remains unnaturally still.

Meeting his intoxicating stare straight on, I reach back, unhooking my bra, and his glare is there, burning fiercely, as it flutters to the ground. The air brushes against the pucker of my nipples, and my tummy fills with heat when I slide out of my panties and then toss them at him.

He catches the thin fabric in one hand, raises them to his nose, and inhales my scent.

God, I melt right there. The intensity and power oozing from him, those eyes…there’s no hope in hell I’m going to control
him.
But I can’t give up and succumb to him yet. Tonight I’m having all of Micah. The
real
Micah, not the man he created in the shadows of pain. And I haven’t reached that Micah yet. “So…” I move to the bed and pick up the bundle of black rope. “Tell me, what would you do with this?”

He pinches his mouth shut.

Stubborn man!

But I’m ready to battle tonight. Hell, I’ll fight with everything I have, because Micah wakes me up and makes me feel alive. I want to do the same for him. For always. Watching the way his shoulders tense up, I set to make it impossible to ignore me, and playfully drag the rope across my breasts, spotting his glare vanish, and his lips part. “Would you rub me like this?” I practically purr.

He gives me a slow nod, those deep eyes following my every move.

I unwind the bundle of rope and then wrap the binding around my wrist. “Is this how you would tie me up?”

“Yes.”

I note the slight tremble of his hands, when I gather the rope and circle the bundle around my taut nipple, giving him a moan to tempt him. “Why do you want to bind me?”

“To force you under my command so that your mind goes quiet.” He scrapes his teeth against his plump bottom lip, and I notice his visible deep swallow. One look a little lower and I see the bulge of his erection through his pants. “To make you not think of pleasing me, only of what you
feel.
” All that power is flowing out of him, nearly in my reach and freed from years of being hidden by shame. Warm wetness spreads out between my thighs as his murmur slides across me. “To own your pleasure.”

My insides are quivering in anticipation. I release the rope and pick up the nipple clamps. “What about these little things…” I hang the ball chain off my finger, feeling the cooler air brush across my puckered nipples. “What would these do to me?”

“Those give me four hands, instead of two.”

“Really?” I raise my brows, intent on making this moment more playful, and to cut through the tension filling the air. “Now, that sounds interesting.” I turn to the mattress again, leaning down, giving Micah a good look at my naturally hanging breasts. His low, throaty groan encourages me. “And this?” I pick up the black leather flogger and slap the tails across my palm. “What will this do to me?”

“Heat your skin, sensitize it.”

I slap my thigh with the leather tails. “And this?” I slap again, harder this time, leaving red marks, showing the force I can handle, demanding he see that he can’t break me. “What would this do?”

“Draw heat to where
I
want it.”

The deepness in his voice, the power there, and the way he’s visibly trembling for
me
sends the flogger falling out of my hand, onto the bed. My agreement seeps into the air between us, a thick heavy wave of reassurance he needs from me. “I’m yours, Micah. Let me give you
everything.
”

I see the exact second he accepts a small amount of his desires. He’s standing a little taller, chest puffed out, chin high, eyes directly on his target…
me.

He takes one step…then two…closing the distance. Then my naked skin is against his hard, clothed body and his finger is tucked under my chin. “Why do you want this?” he asks firmly.

“I don’t want half of you,” I reply, breathless. “I
need
all of you.”

One brow arches while he keeps my chin in his grip, but uses the other hand to glide up my inner thigh. When his finger slides against wet flesh, a slow, dangerous smile arches his mouth, telling me he’s realized I’m not lying and that I want this. Badly. “All of me, hmm?” He takes my hand, tugging me away from the bed to the center of the room and begins to circle me. Slowly. Like a hunter sizing up his prey.

In that second, I feel a shift come over him, as if the final unbreakable wall is crashing down. The change from a man who fears his dominance to one who allows it to overtake him, a wolf finally accepting his place as alpha in the pack. I sense the difference all over my skin and throughout my tingling body. The hairs on my arms rise up, and I’m taking notice of his every move, hearing my heartbeat bang in my chest, as he drags his finger slowly down my spine. “Tell me, when did you buy all this?”

“Last night.”

A low rumble hums from his chest and he moves to my front, running a finger from my chin all the way down my chest to the top of my pubic line. “How did you know about what to buy? Experience?”

“No, a friend helped me.”

“And who is this friend?” he asks, dragging his touch back up again to trace over my jawline.

I nip at his finger. “That’s not for you to know.” I really don’t want him to know that after Juliet and I talked, she took me to a sex store and explained everything there, showing me how things felt by using them on either my hand or arm. There are some things Micah doesn’t need to know, that will forever be
my
dirty little secret.

“Hmm…I see,” he murmurs, grasping my chin. His eyes zero in on me the way he does, making me feel like he is seeing me fully, completely. “I need to know you have no doubts about this. None at all.”

I shiver, understanding his hesitation. If I do this and hate it, I will only worsen his shame. I
need
to be sure. I see those demons staring me in the face, nearly smiling in hope that my strength falters. “I want this. No doubts. Not a single one.”

He drops his hand, steps back. “For tonight, ‘Stop’ is your safe word, because it’ll be a natural thing for you to say and remember. If anything is too much, I want to know, and I want you to be honest with me.” He grins. It’s a sexy thing to behold. “When we’re more comfortable together, and we play a little harder, you can pick a word that keeps you safe. Understand?”

I swallow against the sudden rise of nerves in my belly. The power exuding from him makes me feel
new,
inexperienced. “Yes,” I tell him.

Then he’s behind me, his fingers tangling in my hair while he’s kissing my neck, slowly dragging his tongue up along the side, until he’s nibbling my ear. The strength of his body presses tight against my back, and each kiss, each lick he offers comes with a firm squeeze of his hand on my shoulder, on my arm, on my breast, I feel him everywhere.

My breath deepens naturally as his fingers close in my hair, while he moves my head to exactly where he wants it, so he can get the perfect angle to kiss my skin, sometimes giving me openmouthed kisses, other times nipping at the flesh with his teeth.

I never want him to stop.

But then he does.

My eyes open to him when I feel his breath across my face, and then I’m staring into so much confidence and desire, my breath catches in my throat.

“You ready to play, love?” he asks.

“Yes,” I whisper, irrevocably owned by him now.

My lower body fills with heat and weight as he flicks open the button on his slacks and thrusts those, as well as his boxer briefs, down to his ankles. His big, beautiful cock springs free, standing straight up, with veins protruding along the sides, as he steps out of his pants, kicking them aside.

“You want all of me?” he murmurs, dragging his thumb across my bottom lip. “Then take all of me.”

I’m staring at him as I lower to my knees, gliding my hands down his thighs. He fists his cock, angling himself out to me, and I slowly lick my way up to the round tip. I trace around the curve of smooth skin, watching his head drop back and hearing masculine moans spilling from his mouth. Then I take him in deep, pressing my lips around him. I suck, long and hard, with strokes of my hand following. His low groans slide over me, making me wet, achy, and
hot,
when he removes his shirt. Ripped abs, the V at the waist, smooth tanned skin, his dark, smoky stare holding mine; I’m sucking harder now.

God, he tastes so good.

I relax my throat, stretching my mouth, taking him deeper. He smells of musk, of man, of
mine.
I memorize him. I listen to his moans, finding what he likes most and doing just that until he’s trembling. He begins thrusting into my mouth while I’m sucking my cheeks in around him and pumping my hand. I close my lips tight and then he’s moving his hips faster, more urgently.

Precum saltiness slides across my tongue, when he suddenly shouts, “Enough.” He steps back, panting, sweat slicking his squared chest and abs.

His commanding eyes hold mine. I watch the shame leave his face, the tension always lingering near the corner of his eyes slowly vanish. While the dark power in him once drew me to him, this
man
is who I want. I see a happy forever in his eyes.

The side of his mouth arches as he drags his thumb across my damp lips again. “What’s on that pretty little mind of yours?”

“You,” I whisper the same thing he once said to me. “Always you.”

His low chuckle brushes across me. “No, love, it’s always about
you.
” He reaches for my hand, and as I rise I see something
new
in his eyes. “It will never
not
be about you.” Something that’s truly unleashed and raw. Something I don’t know. Something that’s beyond power and intensity.

Now I’m the one who’s shaking.