“John, please. I don’t want them here.”
Something much more intense was suddenly happening in this busy back yard. Dana had stilled and turned narrow eyes on her daughter. Katrynn hadn’t let go of John’s arm. Even A.J. had seemed to catch the dark vibe; he’d slumped off and sat down on a lawn swing.
“Are you
ashamed
, Katrynn? Is that what this is?” Dana came to her daughter’s side.
Something shifted in Katrynn’s eyes. John had seen that look before—at Carmen and Theo’s house, just outside their pantry. And in the Reading Room at the bookshop, on the night of Calhoun’s release party.
He nearly took a step backward.
Katrynn spun hard on her heel, so hard that her ponytail flew. “Of
course
I’m ashamed! Mom, God! I just introduced you to him, and before he made it all the way into the house, you have him building you a fucking garage? And who is that kid?! Why are you fucking that kid?! Did you case the fucking high school to find him? Why do you let Dad run off and just take it?! I know you hate it, but you just shut up and take it! And then you move strangers in to fuck so you’re not alone! How is any of this okay?! How is anybody ever going to love me when this is where I came from?!”
She stopped, breathless and distraught, and gaped at John and her mother. Then, as if realizing what she’d said, she threw her hands to her mouth and ran—around the house and to the front.
Dana stood there and watched her go. John wanted to go after Katrynn, and he knew that was where he belonged, but her mother looked very pale and fragile, and he was worried about stepping away from her.
A.J. was still sitting on the swing, staring at the remnants of the scene. “Dude!” John called out. “Get over here.”
The kid came over, and as soon as he did, Dana turned and leaned on him. At least then he figured out what he was supposed to do, and he put his arms around her and bent his head to hers. That actually looked genuinely comforting. Maybe there was something there after all.
“Go, please,” Dana muttered.
“Yeah,” John said. It was all he said, because nothing else seemed appropriate in that moment. At the last second, as he turned to follow Katrynn, he added, “I’ll see you.”
Nobody responded.
Katrynn was already sitting in his truck, in the passenger seat next to the door. When he opened his door, he saw that she was even buckled in.
“Baby…”
“Can we please go?” Her normally sultry voice was flat and dry.
“Of course. But Katrynn, look at me right now.”
She turned. Her beautiful brown eyes sat on the sharp edge of tears.
He stared into those brimming depths. “I love you. I don’t know why you won’t believe it, and I don’t know what else I can do to make you believe it, but it’s true.”
She turned back to stare out the windshield, and John, feeling like they’d been forced back some spaces on the board, got behind the wheel and pulled out onto the road home.
~oOo~
As soon as he pulled into the lot at her apartment, she released the seat belt, and John knew she would have jumped out of the truck the second it came to a stop, except that he grabbed her and held her.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer—or look at him.
He was angry. She’d been sullen and silent the entire ride back, like she was punishing him, and he had not done anything wrong. He would pay for his own sins, but he was not about to carry the debt on anybody else’s.
“I know what you’re
not
doing. You’re not throwing away what we’ve got going here like it doesn’t fucking matter. I
guarantee
that you won’t be doing that.”
Still no answer. But she twisted her arm from his grasp and got out of the truck.
He jumped out, too. She was not getting away with this. At the foot of the front steps, with him right on her heels, she turned. “Are you
chasing
me?”
“If I have to. You run, I follow. You don’t get to just bail when things get a little uncomfortable. Isn’t that what your father does? And your mom lets him?”
She hauled off and slapped him. Hard. Stunned, his face stinging, John faltered and stumbled down a step, and Katrynn used that opportunity to run up the rest of the stairs.
He’d only lost a step, though, so he ran right up after her, catching the front door before it closed again, and taking the steps to her door two at a time, so that he was on her just as she got her key into the deadbolt.
She opened the door and tried to slide in and get it closed before he could stop her, but she was not as strong as she seemed to think. For a few seconds, they both pushed on the door—she trying to keep him out, and he trying to get in without hurting her—and then something slid off track in John’s head. He knew the feeling, knew it could get him into trouble, but he was too caught up in the torrent of emotion—his and hers both—to pull back.
He put his goddamn shoulder to the door, and it flew open, knocking her back hard enough that she had to run backward a few steps to keep her feet.
Furious and upset—and afraid, too—John stalked after her. He took hold of her shoulders and shoved her against the wall, jostling a framed poster of some fucking writer. He got right in her frightened face and shouted, “This is bullshit! I do not deserve this shit, and I will not take this shit, and you will FUCKING TALK TO ME!”
She opened her mouth and simply yelled. No word, just noise. It wasn’t a scream, but rather a throaty sound, from her diaphragm, that rang of nothing so much as desperate frustration.
Her reaction reined him in a bit, enough to bring a dash of reason into his head—just a dash, but it at least stopped him from simply roaring right back at her.
If she couldn’t even yell with words, she wasn’t yet ready to talk. But he wasn’t going anywhere until they’d had this out. So he let go of her shoulders, took hold of her face, and covered her open mouth with his own.
~ 14 ~
Katrynn would have been less shocked if John had hit her. He was clearly enraged—his eyes were wild with it—and he’d slammed her into the wall and yelled right in her face. Plus, she’d hit him. She’d never hit anybody before. Not even her brother when they were kids.
Her palm still stung from the impact, and she had seen the red blooming on his cheek, above the line of his beard.
But he hadn’t hit her back. He’d kissed her. Was still kissing her, his hands firm around the sides of her head, his fingers curling into her hair, pulling it loose from her ponytail. His mouth and tongue were fierce on hers, and his beard scraped at her skin. She burned with the force and friction of it all.
Lost in the shock, and with her head and heart churning and sick with more emotions than she could name, she didn’t kiss him back. After a few seconds, she pushed at his chest. Slowly, she got his attention, and he gave her some space. Just a couple of inches, and then she could see his eyes again, which were so incredibly angry that it hurt her to look.
“We fuck or we talk, Katrynn. But those are your choices. I am not leaving here with my fucking tail between my legs. I deserve better.”
He was right, he deserved much better, but she couldn’t get her feet under her. She was so humiliated. She felt naked and hopeless—and guilty. God, she felt guilty. She loved her mother. Never before had she felt about her home the way she’d felt today, and never had she said such things. But today, she’d seen her family through John’s eyes, and she’d felt…
disgusted
. She’d felt sick with it.
That wasn’t fair to John or her mom. She hadn’t been looking through John’s eyes. She’d been looking through her own, the eyes of her own fear and, yes, her shame. That fucking A.J. He was such a cliché. Seeing him standing there in his stupid shorts, seeing the curious tilt of John’s head as he considered her mom and the boy, Katrynn had known it all for what it was: her mother’s pathetic attempt to fill the bottomless void of her father’s decades-long refusal to think of anybody but himself. Ever.
They weren’t an unconventional family that worked. They were a dysfunctional family that coped. The whole damn house, all the way to its cratered garage, was a symbol for how much was unfinished or just completely broken in her family. In them all. Her brother had known it all his life, and she’d judged him for his intolerance. But she’d seen it clearly on this day, for the first time in her life, while she’d stood next to John and watched him see it, too.
Reliving all of that spiked her anger again, and she shoved at John’s chest with a feral grunt. He responded by grabbing her hands and slamming them to the wall at the sides of her head.
“Use your fucking words, Katrynn.”
“Fuck!” was the only word that came to her. She didn’t know what she wanted. No—she did. She
did
know. But she didn’t know how to say it, and she sure as hell didn’t know if she could have it.
The side of his mouth turned up in an angry snarl of a smile. “Is that you making your choice, or are you just adding some more ugly into the world?”
She didn’t like him taking a swipe at her mom like that. She herself had taken too many swipes at her mom today. Fighting fruitlessly against his hold, she spat, “Fuck you!”
His hands tightened around her wrists, and he leaned more of his weight into her body. She could feel that he was hard, and she gasped as her body responded to that pressure with heat and wet. How was this scene turning them both on? How was that normal?
Seeing her reaction, or hearing it, or both, John’s expression gentled slightly, and he brought his mouth close to hers again. “Fight me all you want, Katrynn.” He spoke the words against her lips, a kiss and a challenge together. “I will not walk away. I am here, and I am staying.”
Katrynn knew what she wanted. It terrified her, and she couldn’t find the way to trust it, or to say it, but she knew.
She leaned into his almost-kiss and made it real. “Fuck me,” she said in the midst of it, and thrust her tongue into his mouth.
He grunted and let go of her hands. His grip had been so punishing that her fingers prickled as blood returned to them. She dropped her arms over his shoulders while his hands came down and grabbed wildly at her, moving over her hips, her back, her ass.
Impatient, feeling desperate, Katrynn grabbed at the buttons of his shirt, trying to work them loose. When that proved too challenging, she went for his belt instead.
But John knocked her hands away and pulled her sharply against him, still without interrupting their fiery, grunting kiss. He brought them both down to the floor, and Katrynn caught a flurry of movement at the corner of her eye and heard a feline complaint—they had disturbed the boys somehow.
John’s fingers went to her jeans and worked her fly much more skillfully than she’d managed his buttons. He meant to fuck her on the rug right in front of her door—and she had no desire to stop him. Instead, she went again for his belt and managed to get it undone before he sat back on his heels and yanked her jeans and underwear down to mid-thigh, then curled himself over her and kissed her belly, then her mound, then lower. He licked her clit, and her body jerked as her nerves blasted with sensation. While he sucked and bit voraciously, and she bounced around like she was lying on a hot plate, John pushed her jeans past her knees, then hooked his hand around one knee and tried to pull it clear of the obstructing clothes.
Her shoes were still on, and everything got caught in a jam at her ankles, so she grunted and squirmed away from his mouth so she could toe that shoe off. When she was finally free, John swung the loose leg of her jeans out of his way and spread her wide.
Then he stopped—all that ferocity, all that uncontrolled, animal intensity, just stopped. He knelt between her legs, his face flushed and his breath labored, and was still. As the seconds ticked past, Katrynn felt more and more exposed and uncomfortable—so much that her ardor began to cool.
She lifted her head so she could face him straight on, trying not to think about her half-nude and fully vulnerable body spanning the distance between their faces.
He was completely dressed, except for a few random undone buttons on his shirt and his loose belt.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, his voice low and silky with sex.
“What?” She honestly had no idea what he was asking.
“I want you to tell me how you want me to fuck you right now.”
“John…” She shook her head.
He nodded. “Katrynn.” When she didn’t respond to that, he added, “Tell me what you want me to do.”
When she tried to pull her legs up, he laid his hands on her knees and held them where they were.
“I can’t…you don’t….” He couldn’t know that he’d landed on her worst, most inexplicable neurosis, her weird sex-muteness, but what he was asking her was far beyond her capability. Only when she felt completely secure could she even make an attempt at what he was asking, and she didn’t feel the least bit secure now.
“I know. You can. Look me in the eyes and tell me what you want. Baby, nothing bad is going to happen if you do.”
He was wrong.
This
was bad. This. She shook her head again—and then swallowed hard when she felt her throat swell and harden with insipient tears. Fuck!
With a sad, heavy huff of breath, but not moving his eyes from hers, he undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt and pulled it off. Then he stood, unfolding his body easily, and shed his boots and the rest of his clothes. Now he was fully nude, and he folded down to kneel between her legs again. His cock had softened somewhat, but still stood out from his beautiful body. Katrynn thought he looked equal parts impressive and vulnerable—no mean feat, that.
She’d lain and watched him, confused, and it hadn’t again occurred to her to close her legs or move at all. Neither did she resist when he pulled her remaining sneaker off, or her sock, or freed her completely from her jeans. He sat back then, leaving her still wearing her t-shirt and bra.
With his eyes on her, holding her pinned with only the weight of that gaze, he took himself in hand. Katrynn closed her eyes—she’d always felt shy about seeing someone touch themselves, or touching herself where someone else could see.
“Open your eyes, Katrynn.”
When she didn’t, he repeated the words, and she did. He was completely hard again now, and his hand, gripping loosely, moved almost lazily from base to tip and back.
“I’ll tell you what
I
want. What I want is to slide this cock inside you. I want to fill you up and watch your eyes while I do it. They cross a little, every time, just before your lids flutter shut. Then, when I get real deep, you tip your head back, and it makes your throat stretch out so that I can see your pulse. I love that.”
He made a feral sound and swallowed hard enough that Katrynn could hear that, too. That signal of his need made her own body clench involuntarily, and she felt her wet come down.
“I watch you so closely. I try to understand what you don’t say. I want to know how to make you
feel
me—what I feel for you. I want you to believe it. I want to know everything about you. Who you are. How you tick. What you like. What you love. What you fear. I know I broke your trust before we even got started, but I am trying like crazy to bring us back from that. I think I’ve gotten us as far as I can on my own. I’m trying not to push, but I need you to let go a little. You don’t have to feel the way I feel, not yet, but just believe in what I feel. Believe me. Just a little. Just believe right now that you can tell me what you want, and nothing bad is going to happen.”
As he’d spoken, he’d continued stroking himself; by the time he’d made the end of his beautiful little speech, the words were coming on huffs of breath.
She did feel the way he felt. She loved him. She’d loved him since the storm, and since then she’d come to love him more than she’d loved anybody else in her life. He made her happy. She believed him when he told her how he felt, believed that he meant it. She felt the way he watched her, the way she had his complete attention whenever he was with her. He was perfect. What she wanted was him.
And that was the problem. She couldn’t believe such a fantasy. Love wasn’t this easy. Her whole life was an object lesson in the pains and pitfalls of love. She wasn’t seeing the problems, and that meant that they would rise up and blindside her. As hard and far as she’d fallen for John, she couldn’t see how she’d find her way back when it ended.
But it was probably already too late to protect herself from that. It really was too late.
Right now, lying on the rug just inside her front door, with John naked between her legs, stroking his cock and pleading with her to give him some small bit of trust, all she wanted was to make him happy.
Determined to give him something he wanted, she swallowed and found her voice. “I…I just want you inside me.” She hesitated, then added, “I like it when you put my legs over your shoulders.”
He grinned, and the tension between them broke apart. “Yeah? I like that, too. Your legs are so damn long. I like the way I can feel them grip me when you come.”
Rising off his heels, he came forward and leaned over her. He swept his fingers through her folds and groaned. “You’re slick and ready, baby.”
As she whimpered, he scooped her legs up and set them against his chest. He pushed into her, pressing her legs between them. The exquisite feel of him filling her, of his need joining hers, overwhelmed her, and her eyes fluttered closed.
“Yeah,” he grunted as he thrust into her. “Just like that. Sweet Christ, like that.”
He started slowly, as he always did, but soon he was pounding into her, and she had her hands clawed into his forearms, as every deep strike fed an explosion swelling inside her. He was grunting and sweating, his thrusts so forceful that the rug had bunched up under her back.
When a deep impact finally sent her over, her whole body seemed to curl into itself, and she began to make a strangled keening noise she’d never heard herself make before.