I. Fought. Hard.
But it wasn’t me who stopped him.
It was my mom with a frying pan from the kitchen.
With an over-the-head whack, she knocked him out cold and he fell in a slump to the floor.
I went to her and threw my arms around her, looking for comfort, looking for reassurance. But she shook her head and pushed me away.
“Having a baby was a mistake,” she said. “It ruined everything.” And with that, she untangled my arms from her waist. “Come on, you can sleep at Mrs. Butler’s tonight.”
I sat up with a rush, thankfully in my own bed.
It took me a moment.
It was a dream.
A stupid, silly dream.
Except it wasn’t.
My mom’s boyfriend really had come into my room when I was twelve and tried forcing himself onto me. And just as I’d dreamed, my mom had knocked him out cold with a frying pan. She locked him in my bedroom and took me to Mrs. Butler’s apartment across the hallway and left me there for the night.
I ran a hand through my hair and waited for my breathing to even out.
Having a baby was a mistake.
Those words cut me to the bone.
And the worst thing was, it wasn’t the only time she had said them to me.
I exhaled in another attempt to calm my pounding heart, my head dropping to my hands as the pain of my childhood lingered around me. Sometimes in moments of heightened stress, the memories came back to haunt me.
The comforting stroke of tender fingers down my arm pulled me back to reality, and I looked up.
“Hey, are you okay?” Caleb’s husky voice was warm in the cold darkness.
Last night after the break-in, I’d been rattled and worked up, anxious about a stranger invading my home. Caleb had comforted me, and tried to put my mind at ease by suggesting the break-in was probably just kids. Then he’d held me until I’d fallen asleep on the bed, wrapped in the security of his big arms.
I looked down at him and ached to feel those strong arms around me again.
“Bad dream.” My voice was hoarse. Loaded with sleep and anxiety.
He rolled onto his back, and with a big, muscular arm, guided me down to the heat of his chest. Immediately, comfort wrapped itself around me.
“Want to tell me about it?” he asked.
I thought for a moment. Did I?
No.
What I wanted was him.
For him to chase away the demons lurking in the shadows.
For him to lead me further away from my past.
For him to hold me tight against his warm and powerful body, and to feverishly kiss the anxiety out of me.
I pressed my body against him.
For him to make love to me until the shadows were gone and I could breathe again.
CALEB
I only meant to comfort her. She was shaken. Disturbed by the break-in.
But when my lips brushed against hers, the tenderness of our kiss quickly ignited into a roaring flame and it became less about comfort and everything about the desire tearing through me.
I kissed her hard and she whimpered against my mouth, moaning as she shifted around me in the bed. I could feel her hunger. Feel the pounding of her heart and the desperation in how she held my face to hers as we kissed wildly. The urgency of our earlier touching and teasing was back. But there was something else. Something primal roaring out of her, something she was running from, because she was running to me like she was being chased out of the shadows by a monster. I could feel her desperation, feel her need, her fear.
It made me pause to make sure she was alright. With my hand cupping her face, I pulled back to look at her. “Hey. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Her hand slid down my belly and over the hard ridge of my cock.
“I need you,” she breathed desperately. Fingers curled around me, gently pumping me, coaxing me, making me want to rip the bed sheets from us and devour her.
But I fought the voracious need in me to take her. Something told me she needed more than that. She needed something to cling onto in the darkness. With a groan I rose up onto my knees and flipped her onto her back. I started from her neck, at that soft area between her jaw and ear, and slowly worked my way down her slender throat. I trailed my tongue along her warm flesh, sliding it between her breasts and licking the skin of her cleavage as I grabbed a full, milky breast in my hand. I captured a tight, pink nipple between my lips and tortured it with my tongue until Honey was writhing beneath me, begging me to fuck her.
I released my hold on her breast as I worked my way farther south, my tongue and lips moving over the slight swell of her belly where my baby was growing, and I paused for a moment to marvel in that thought. That inside this beautiful woman was my baby. A baby I had put in there during moments like this. My cock throbbed and began to drip with pre-cum. It tilted and flinched, begging me to stop fucking around and to plunge deep and hard into her pussy. But I wasn’t fucking around. I was savoring every inch of this goddess. I moved even lower, over her slim hips and along her firm thighs. When I reached the most sensitive part of her she gasped and tilted her hips toward my mouth so I could easily slide my tongue between the succulent, velvety skin. She gripped the headboard behind her, moaning my name and crying out with pleasure as the tension tightened and swirled within her. Within seconds, her body quivered against my lips as she started to come. I drove my tongue into her, teasing her pussy, torturing it as I lapped at her clit to draw out her orgasm so it was as sweet as it was long. Her legs shook and her toes curled into the bed as she cried out her climax into the bedroom.