I flipped her back onto her back and slowed my pace, taking it from rough fucking to sweetly making love. I was touching her face, raining kisses on her face.
I whispered,
“I love you. You’re mine. No one is gonna take you from me. You’re not gonna take you from me, you hear me?”
“I won’t.”
“You sure? Feels like you’re trying.”
She shook her head, sniffled, and tried to hide her face in my shoulder. I tipped her chin up so she had no choice but to pay attention.
“I’ll try to give you whatever the fuck you need but baby, this shit tonight? That’s what it sounds like, you pulling back from me? Then the shit you’re saying? We’re forever, Tia. And don’t you fucking dare pull away from me like that.”
“I w-won’t. I’m s-sorry.” She was bawling.
My eyes were a little wet, too.
“I love you so fucking much. Please baby, know that, know that I want to be what you need. When I’m inside you, I know I don’t deserve you, you’re a gift I didn’t have the karma to earn. I should never have earned your love and I know I started taking you against your will but when you started to give, you healed so much in me. I’m not all fixed. But I’m trying and I can’t do it if you’re broken. I need your strength, baby. Don’t
take it away.”
She nodded and buried her face into my neck, “Hurry. Harder. Fuck me harder so we can just sleep and please forget all the stupidity, all that word vomit that came out of my mouth tonight.”
I stopped, looking at her, feeling so much pain at what I’d done to her.
“Tommy. Hurry baby. Harder.”
I went harder. Her head rolled back. I re-positioned her, hauling her ankles up over my shoulders, and pounded hard, again working her clit, until she whimpered,
“I can’t. I can’t come again. Just you.”
But, I didn’t stop until she did. It took a long time and she tried to fake it but I knew it wasn’t real so I kept at her until I got her there.
I pulled her to me. We were sweaty, exhausted, and both of our heads were fucked right up.
We were both broken, worse than broken. What a fucking pair.
I pulled her hand to my lips and kissed her palm.
“Tommy? I’m sorry for what I said---”
“Shh, sleep baby.” I couldn’t talk it over any more tonight. I cradled her head to my chest.
She cried herself to sleep on my chest while I stroked her hair. Just like the first night she came to me.
Why the fuck did I bring her back to Vegas? She warned me, she was completely open about how she felt about coming here, and I didn’t fucking listen.
***
When she was finally asleep, I got out of bed pulling my underwear up. I went to the john and then out to the mini bar and poured a drink. Dex was there, watching TV. He was on-guard from inside the suite, taking three hour shifts with Nino and Will, a recent hire who was the brother of one of our former bookies.
Dex gave me a chin jerk and it had just a slight bit of “you the man” to it. He’d heard us. He couldn’t not. But I didn’t feel like “the man”. I gave him a nod and downed my drink and then went back to bed.
I had nightmares of that bloody fucking wedding dress again. Tia was wearing it, limp and lying on the bed. Her eyes open and dead. Her belly huge, the dress cut out around it, the letters
TF jr
carved on her pregnant stomach.