Flawed (Ethan Frost 4)

He groans deep in his throat as he lets loose, his hands tangling in my hair to hold me in place as his hips hammer forward again and again and again. He’s powerful and overwhelming and nearly brutal in his intensity as he fucks into my mouth, into my throat, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not when one look at his face through my tear-filled eyes tells me how much he’s enjoying this, how much he needed it. And not when for the first time in my life, I feel like the emptiness that’s haunted me—that’s taunted me—for so long is finally gone.

And when he finally comes—so deep down my throat that I don’t even have to swallow—he fills me up in a way no one and nothing ever has. It’s finally enough. He’s finally enough—and so am I.

Together, we’re finally enough.

Chapter 22

Miles

It’s one A.M. and I can’t sleep.

There’s a storm outside, churning up the ocean and sending the wind howling through the trees, and if I didn’t know better I’d think it was the end of the world.

It feels a little bit like it, if I’m being honest.

Tori is cuddled up in bed beside me, her soft, silky body wound around mine like a clinging vine. She’s beautiful, so fucking beautiful. And fragile. So, so fragile.

Oh, she’d jump down my throat—maybe even take a swing at me—if she heard me describe her as such, but just because she won’t acknowledge it doesn’t make it any less the truth.

She may have a big attitude, may seem larger than life when she’s awake and on her game, but right now as she lies next to me in bed, all I can see—all I can think—is how tiny she is. How defenseless. How much in need of my protection.

As if she senses my thoughts, she moves restlessly. Moans a little. Then curls herself into a ball like she’s trying to protect herself from yet another blow.

It makes me crazy, has rage boiling in my veins all over again as I think of what brought her to this state. Or more like who. Alexander fucking Parsons.

She stirs again, kicks out—cries out—and I wrap an arm around her. Stroke a hand down the too-prominent bumps of her spine. It’s only been a couple of days and already she’s lost weight she can’t afford to lose, the stress and pain of all this weighing on her more heavily than she will acknowledge.

My touch doesn’t soothe her the way I hoped it would, so I sweep her hair out of the way and press soft kisses to her forehead even as I murmur a bunch of nonsense, words without any purpose but to let her hear my voice. To let her know that I’m here, that I’m the one touching her, kissing her, stroking her hair.

It does the trick. She settles down almost instantly, with a barely there smile and a soft sigh that reaches inside me and stokes the fury already burning there. I force myself to stay relaxed, to keep the anger locked inside, as I hold her just a little bit tighter. Comfort her just a little bit longer.

My brain is racing, trying to figure out how to spare her what she wants to do tomorrow—no, what she has to do tomorrow whether she wants to or not. I get the reasoning behind her going on NBC and telling her side of the story, get that even with the statement Ethan’s PR guy issued, the public is writing the story instead of Tori. If she gets up and tells the truth about what’s going on, she’ll at least be part of the conversation. But the problem is, she has a past. There are pictures of her with different guys all over the world. The media has already dug a lot of them up, the less reputable sites plastering them all over their front pages with all kinds of suggestive headlines.

Even if she’d slept with every guy she’s pictured with—a veritable impossibility, considering the sheer numbers we’re talking about—it still doesn’t give Parsons the right to do what he did. It sure as hell doesn’t give the Internet trolls the right to tear her apart, to call her a whore who probably loves every second of her sex tape being out there, and a bunch of other things that are too vile for me to even let myself think.

Tori whimpers again, her head thrashing back and forth against the pillow, and I stroke a soothing hand over her shoulder. My attention is drawn to her dandelion, and I find myself absently tracing the runaway seeds before skimming my fingers along the river tattoo that tumbles down her spine. I palm the elaborate phoenix tattoo on her right hip before sliding my hand down to the intricate dreamcatcher on her inner thigh.

So much ink. So many stories she has written on her skin. I want to know them all.

But how can I get her to tell them to me when so much of her life is a battlefield? How can I get her to trust me—to love me—when so many of the men in her life are so completely untrustworthy? How can I get her to want to be with me when she’s about to go on TV and get torn apart because of the actions of some other man she once trusted?

Especially when he’s probably going to come out of this in even better shape than he went into it.

The double standard in this country is bullshit. Even after all this time, after all these years of recognizing the ridiculousness of it all, Parsons is going to get away with what he did. Because he’s a guy—and a famous guy, at that. More, he’s the next big thing, a famous guy capable of generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for the studios he chooses to work for. They’ll protect him, rally the media behind him, and no matter how eloquent, how right she is, she’s still going to come off as bitter or slutty or attention seeking or (worse case) downright crazy. In fact, the better she is, the more convincing she is, the harder they’ll come at her.

It’s the nature of the beast. And I am not okay with it.

My sister suffered for years at the hands of her rapist and his friends. He tormented her, made fun of her, had everyone convinced she was a liar and a whore when the only mistake she’d made was to accept a ride with a guy she thought she could trust. And when the truth all came out years later, it was only the fact that she was with Ethan, the fact that she had all his wealth and connections behind her, that kept Brandon from vilifying her in the press. That kept him from putting the blame for what happened squarely on her shoulders.

That’s not going to happen to Tori. I’m not going to let it happen to her.

I lower my head to press kisses along her jaw. When she doesn’t wake, doesn’t so much as stir, I take it as a sign that the bad dreams have passed. And while I should probably try to get a little more sleep myself, I’m too wired to even try. Not when my brain is racing through scenario after scenario, trying to find one where Tori won’t be hurt even worse. Trying to find one that Tori won’t find it necessary to ink into her skin in a few weeks or a few months because it’s the only way she can deal with the pain.

Just the idea wounds me more than it should, has a mixture of rage and pain slicing through my veins as I roll out of bed. I grab a pair of boxers from my dresser but don’t bother with any other clothes. It’s a surprisingly warm night, and there’s no one but Tori around to see me anyway.

I pad down the stairs to the kitchen, make a pot of too-strong coffee. While I wait for it to drip through, I open up my laptop from where it’s sitting on the kitchen table and get to work.

The first thing I do is check the bots I’ve got combing the Internet looking for dirt on Parsons, anything I can find that I can somehow use against him. They haven’t turned up much of anything—and it only grows more obvious to me that his online profile has been professionally scrubbed.