No matter where she is.
No matter who she’s with.
I want them to know I’m the keeper of her fucking pleasure.
My hips thrust up, burying myself inside her over and over again.
I want to destroy her.
For denying me all those years ago.
When I was eighteen.
Again when I was nineteen.
When I was twenty-two.
I want her to feel pain like I have.
I want her to nurse the rejection like I’ve had to do.
I want to love her.
I want her to hate me.
I want her to love me.
Unable to look into her eyes any longer, I bury my face into her neck, sinking my teeth into her skin to stop myself from begging her to do just that.
Love me. I want to scream at her.
Love me. I’d give up my dreams for you.
Love me. Do it for me.
Love me hard enough to fucking fight.
I don’t do that.
I’m a coward.
I’m afraid.
Petrified she’d tell me no.
That she’d tell me she wasn’t ready.
That now wasn’t the time she could love me.
I fuck her instead.
I love her body the way I’m not allowed to do with her heart.
Bold.
Wild.
Free.
“Brooks. Baby.”
“Do it,” I grunt against the pulse in her neck. “Come for me, Squirrel.”
She shatters at the endearment. Her scream of pleasure echoing through the elevator like a prayer even she’s not ready to have answered.
24
HENLEY
I stretch awake, the soft touch of the hotel sheets caressing my naked skin. There’s an ache between my thighs that brings a smile to my face before my eyes even open. Every muscle in my body protests as my hands reach over my head and my toes point toward the end of the bed.
Brooks.
God. The things he did to my body last night.
I bite my bottom lip in reminiscence.
Fingers to my lips, I touch the swell his kisses made.
Dragging my hand down my neck, I rub the tender spots pierced by his teeth.
My nipples feel bruised, tender to the touch, but still, they ache for more.
He was rough. And attentive. And desperate.
His touch was insistent. His gaze constant. The way he worshipped my body felt cultish. Imposing without being forceful. Obsessive without being excessive. I would’ve devoted my life to our cause in those hours. Our pleasure was all that mattered. We overindulged—needing, wanting the relief only our connected bodies could bring.
Space didn’t exist between us. He sat on the bed with me settled on his lap and let me ride him slowly, our breaths mingled, hands exploring. Then again as I lay on my side, his body pressed against my back as his hips rolled to dip his cock in and out of my heat, and he whispered the filthy ways he needed me into my ear.
We fucked hard. Then we fucked lazily. Our slow and languid climax fired something inside us both, hurtling us back into a fiery and passionate tangle of limbs.
Feeling along the cotton of the sheet, I seek the touch of his skin, but only his warmth remains. My eyes flash open, and I sit, pulling the sheet up against my naked chest.
“Brooks?” I call out, searching around the room.
“Brooks?” I repeat, throwing my feet over the side of the bed when he doesn’t answer.
I listen carefully for any hint of his presence, but the room feels empty, and I feel cold.
I scan the space, but his suit— that had last night decorated my hotel room floor— was gone. No trace of him left behind.
I reach for my phone, but the smooth line of the hotel stationery meets my fingers first.
The bedsheet drops as I open the folded page.
Henley.
I love you.
I know that you know that.
I know you love me back.
We just can’t seem to do it hard enough.
Why is that?
I wasn’t lying when I told you last night wasn’t our time. I’m leaving, or more, by the time you’re reading this, I’ve left. Addy’s wedding was a fly in, fly out for me. I have a job that I was due at a few days ago. One I’d love to tell you about when I see you next.
It’s a little remote.
Like the Altai Mountains in Siberia type remote.
I imagine it’ll remind me a lot of you. But then, most things do.
Squirrel, you promised me you wouldn’t hate me. Fuck, I hope you keep that promise.
Be happy, my gypsy girl.
Tomorrow in the future?
For always.
B x
I don’t know how long I stare at the scratch of his writing. Long enough for a coat of ice to secure itself around my heart.
I’d spent the earlier years of my life as cold as fucking stone. Numb to all feeling. Good and bad. It was better that way. Removed, you didn’t get hurt. Keeping people at a distance, they couldn’t hurt you. They couldn’t disappoint you.
Then Brooks happened.
He thawed me.
He opened me up to the promise of more. He offered me love and support and friendship.
I introduced him to heartbreak in the same way he plunged me headfirst into it.
We’ve spent the past few years drowning. Last night, I thought we’d finally hit the surface. But he’d just been tying concrete blocks to our feet, making certain I’d hit rock bottom this time.
I stand on autopilot when a soft strum of knuckles taps against my door. I shove my arms into a hotel robe, my hand still clutching his letter as I move toward the noise. I’m still tying the terry cloth around my body as I open the door, coming face-to-face with the person I’d least expected to see.
“Alex?”
“I just need to grab my shit,” he murmurs evenly, refusing to make eye contact.
“Uh, sure.” I step back to let him move past me.
I don’t move away from the door as he moves around the space we shared not twenty-four hours ago.
“It hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?”
I look up at him blankly. “What?”
He looks how I feel. The bags under his eyes bulging with lack of sleep and clothes disheveled, he smells of booze.
“He left with his redhead,” he declares superciliously. “It hurts to be made the fool. I’m glad you got
