Craving Trix (The Aces' Sons 1)

But that wasn’t surprise.

She was like a fucking statue. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing, she was so still.

“Sweetbea?” I said, pulling out of her gently.

She didn’t acknowledge me or move from the position I’d put her in. I kept a hand on her back as I stepped around the bed to see her face, and my stomach dropped as I took in her expression.

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

“Baby?”

Her eyes were squeezed tight and her jaw was clenched as if she was waiting for another blow.

“Hey, hey,” I crooned, “Come here to me, Bea.” I crouched by the side of the bed so I could put my face next to hers.

Her eyes opened and almost immediately filled with tears.

“I didn’t like that,” she whispered, the words shaming me in a way that I would never forget.

“I won’t ever do it again,” I promised, my voice strangled from the fucking knot in my throat. I slid my hand gently up her back so I could sweep her sweaty hair from her face.

She jerked toward me then, wrapping her arms around my shoulders as she pressed her face into my neck. Her fingers dug into my skin as she shuddered, and I swallowed hard as I picked her up and carried her into our room, shutting the spare room door tightly behind me.

All the anger and frustration I’d carried with me that night had vanished the moment I’d noticed something wrong. There wasn’t any room for it alongside the panic that coursed through me as she trembled.

“Did I hurt you?” I asked as I climbed into the sheets, still holding her against my chest.

“No.”

“What was that, Bea?”

“I don’t know,” she answered shakily.

Chapter 10

Trix

I didn’t move as Cam crawled out of bed early in the morning. I needed to get up soon, but as he left the bedroom without kissing me, I realized we both needed a little space.

Cam didn’t understand what had happened to us the night before, but I couldn’t ease his mind because I didn’t understand it, either.

One minute I’d been close to orgasm, begging wordlessly for Cam to give me that last push into oblivion, and the next it had been like my entire body shut down. I was there, I could hear him talking to me and felt him pull away, but I couldn’t move.

It was that sound. That godawful sound of flesh meeting flesh.

Our bodies slapped together on a regular basis, making noises that turned me on and strangely comforted me, but that fast, sharp sound? It had been disgusting. Horrifying. Nauseating. I’d barely felt it when his palm hit my ass, it got lost in the way the rest of my body had been practically singing, but I hadn’t been able to escape that noise.

Hearing it, everything inside me, every single part of me, had instinctively curled into itself. Quiet. Still. Small.

I rolled to my back and pulled my quilt up to my chin as I stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t had that reaction when Will and Cam had been fighting in the forecourt at the club. I’d hated it, but I’d stood there with my pop just fine.

I couldn’t understand why I’d reacted that way with Cam. There was something I wasn’t seeing, right in my periphery, but it was as if the moment I tried to look at it full-on, it vanished.

“Hey,” Cam said tentatively as he came in, soaking wet from his shower.

“Morning,” I mumbled back, watching him as he dried off a little and started getting dressed.

“Was gonna wake you after I started coffee.”

“It’s okay, I was up.”

Our conversation was so stilted that it made a lump form in my throat. We’d never had a hard time talking before. Even when I’d avoided him, even when I’d had to see him at the club with other women, we’d still been able to bitch and bicker back and forth.

“You got—”

“I’m—”

We both stopped speaking and Cam sighed, walking over in bare feet to sit at the edge of the bed.

“Last test today, huh?” he asked, leaning over to brace his hand on the opposite side of me.

“Yep. Then I’m officially done.”

An awkward silence fell and I looked back up at the ceiling.

“Sweetbea,” he said softly, his voice pulling my eyes back to his face. “I’m sorry, baby.”

My eyes filled with tears and I sat up in bed, reaching out to take his face between my palms.

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I scared you—”

His eyes had dark circles underneath and for once, he hadn’t shaved before he showered. He looked like hell.

“We just won’t do it again.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?” he asked raggedly, his bristly jaw moving against my hands.

“I didn’t know. No one’s ever—”

“Oh,” he said, cutting me off before I could give any type of detail. “Was it because I was pissed? Because, swear to God Trix, I wouldn’t fuckin’—”