If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (29 page)

“Can you stay?” I blurt out and immediately regret it.

He stops in his tracks, his back toward me—there’s silence, and I remember I’m supposed to be asleep. But here I am, punishing him for his last act of decency toward me.

“Just—just until I fall asleep,” I manage to squeak out without my voice breaking, my old self content that the words have been spoken. The jaded, vindictive woman I’ve become these last few months cringes at the sound of them.

He doesn’t answer, but he walks back toward the bed. I slowly release the sheets trapped between my fingers. He sits on the edge of the bed, still not facing me, and rests his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped together. I feel the burning sensation in my chest followed by the stinging coming up in my throat. In the next few minutes, I’m not going to be able to stop crying.

I immediately regret asking him to stay. I tell myself he has to be here out of pity, or some fucked-up sense of duty, granting his desperate wife a last request. A wife who doesn’t even know where the fuck he’s going and what’s making him sit so far away from me on our bed as if I’m disgusting. I change my mind. I want him out, but I can’t tell him without unleashing what will be an uncontrollable, hideous wail. So I quickly force myself back onto the bed, pull the sheets over my face, and try my best to whimper as quietly as I can.

His weight shifts, and I know he’s risen. I knew this would be too much for him. Why should he have to sit here and deal with this? He’s leaving anyway, and being here now isn’t going to make the resolution of this any better. He shouldn’t have come back in. He should have left me in my grief, lying on the floor alone. After all, that’s what he’s ultimately going to do.

When the sheet lifts off me, it’s like a splash of water on my face. When he climbs in beside me and pulls me toward him, it’s a comfort so conflicting, it almost gives me a headache. My mind tells me to push him away, overriding every other thought. I attempt to do it, placing my hands on his chest, but he pulls me toward him, wrapping his strong arms around me, and I don’t put up much more of a fight. He holds me tightly. I feel his heart beating rapidly, but when I look at him, his expression is calm. He stares past me, and I wonder if he’s in this moment with me. I don’t know if I want him to be, but I do know what I want.

I shift in his arms, and he looks down at me. I bring my lips to his, pressing against them, holding my breath as I do. When he pulls away, my heart drops, and I can’t face him. I quickly make a break from the bed, but he grabs my arm. He looks confused and conflicted, and it’s just making things worse. One thing that Cal has never denied me is his kiss, his touch, his body—they were all mine, and it’s breaking my spirit that he’s doing this now.

“I—I’m still going to have to leave.”

His voice is unyielding but soft, and it makes me melt. His grip on my wrist is gentle but firm enough to not allow me to run away, which was my absolute intention. I wish I could stop 
him
 from running away so easily. I replay his words in my head, trying to decipher the meaning, and in my clouded, emotional state I realize he’s trying to give me a choice. For once, he’s not trying to use sex as a bandage or as a means of control or manipulation. But I have to say his timing sucks.

I take a deep breath and command my voice to be steady. “I want to go to sleep.”

My voice is raspy and somewhat harsh. I clear my throat and wipe away any vulnerability and sincerity. I want him to know that him giving me his body wouldn’t be a knife stabbing through me, that this isn’t about trying to keep him here—but that I need this now. His guilt about it is not a priority to me now.

“Put me to sleep,” I say, sternly commanding my normal voice to return.

He raises his eyebrow, apparently skeptical. I can tell he’s surprised. Before he can say anything, I attack his lips, this time without hesitancy, with a swiftness I think catches him off guard and with a force I’m shocked I can muster, considering the state I’m in.

I climb on top of him, ensnaring his body between my legs, and wrap my arms tightly around his neck, kissing him with an urgency I’ve never felt before. He pulls away this time, trying to catch his breath. He takes my face in his hands, searching my expression, his eyes finding mine—the tables have turned, and he’s trying to figure out what it is I want. But I don’t have time for that. He’s trying to give me my last out, and I don’t want out. I want the one thing from him that makes me forget about everything else.

“What are you waiting on?” I ask, breaking the solemnness of this moment.

Before a second passes, he takes my lips, countering my hectic kisses and frantic need with a passionate patience that my fake bravado isn’t ready for, an unhurried desire that makes my stiffness melt away. His lips hold on to mine as though he’s trying to pull me into him. His hands slowly remove my clothes, but his pacing makes me feel vulnerable, almost innocent. The hard façade I’m trying to create is going to break, but I have to hold on to it. I break our embrace, snatch my shirt over my head, and reach to undo his pants, somehow successful even with my rapid, clumsy movements.

“Lauren!”

I ravish his lips to silence him, throwing all of my body weight on him, which causes us to momentarily fall back on the bed. I realize my pants are still on, and I swiftly shimmy out of them. When I try to climb on top of him again, he grabs my waist, stopping me. His eyes are downcast and his lips pressed tightly together—he’s upset, but right now, I don’t care. The confusion on his face is unexpected, but I don’t want to know what it’s about.

I need to be distracted. My lips find his once more, but again he pulls me into that slow, sensual kiss that almost broke me before. I pull away. I rest my eyes on his chest—I can’t look at him. I work up my nerve to try again, and I kiss him hard, biting his bottom lip. This time he breaks our kiss, and my eyes can’t leave his face fast enough. There’s a glimpse in his eyes of something I’ve never seen before, and I think I see hurt, possibly disappointment. It stabs through me, but the expression is brief. Soon, his familiar wicked grin covers what was just there. His fingers slide under the lacy material on my hip. He pulls it down, and I step out of it. Within a second, I’m on the bed, my arms above my head, trapped beneath his wrist. This is what I want. Lust—not love. Physicality—not intimacy.

He’s fucking me figuratively, and I want it literally. I don’t want to be made love to—that’s over. I can’t let him in that place. I won’t. I go to suck his neck, and he moves. His finger glides down my arm, and I try to ignore the tingling that jolts down my back at his touch. It’s something I’ll have to forget. He grips my hands, holds them together, then he takes my flimsy thong and ties it around my wrists. It’s tight, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want tenderness anyway. I want him inside me. I want to be exhausted, but mostly I want to forget. I want to forget this moment, that this could be or is good-bye.

When his lips find my neck, they stay there briefly before his tongue glides down to the crook of it, and he sucks on the skin midway. His path is slow and tortuous, and I shift to stop his trail. His fingers grasp my hair, forcing me to look at him, and I close my eyes. I won’t. I don’t want to see into him.

His lips are at my ear. “Open your eyes.”

His voice is deep and stern, but I ignore him. I can’t look at him. I bite my lips and squeeze my eyes shut tighter, and soon his tongue finds its way inside my ear. My body involuntarily arches toward him; it’s the place he knows makes me give him complete control. My eyes open. I pray that the tears welling up don’t escape them. I try to focus on the waves of lust going through my body and not on the fact that after all this, he’s going to be gone. That’s what I want to forget. I want to forget that I don’t want him to go. I feel his hardness pressing against me. It’s torture, and I’m growing inpatient. I want him inside.

“Now,” I demand, but it comes out more as begging, and I realize I’m helpless. I start to try to free my hands.

His lips leave my ear, travel down my neck, past my breasts, and when they reach my belly button, I freeze as his tongue swirls around it. This isn’t what I want. I know now where he’s going with this, and it isn’t what I wanted.

I try to move my body away from him, but he holds me in place as his lips trail lower and lower. I try to lock my legs together, but he easily holds them open and in place. His tongue traces the one part of my body I have absolutely no control over. I can’t help but cry out.

“Cal. Cal, stop,” I pant.

My mind is demanding that I do something to stop this, but my body is giving in to each stroke of his tongue. My thoughts and emotions crash against one another, my moans of pleasure battling against my pleas for him to stop. This isn’t what I wanted. I cover my face as best I can with my arms as his tongue delves deeper inside me. I try to inch away from him, and he grips my thighs tightly and pulls me to him. He goes more slowly, his pressure increasing, and my protests become shorter and inaudible. As my stomach tightens, he goes faster, and I can barely catch my breath. I give in completely, and as I feel myself building to a climax, my legs trembling, I think of when we first met—our first kiss. I try to block these things out and focus on the absolute pleasure my body is feeling—no emotion.

But my mind isn’t giving in. I see the night he proposed and our wedding day. Then suddenly, our first fight, the 
first
 time he left for days without calling. I see him walking out the door and me alone on the floor, and I envision getting a phone call from Dexter telling me he’s dead. At that moment, my body gives in, experiencing a pleasure that momentarily overwhelms these terrible thoughts.

My body recovers, and my legs stop trembling as an overwhelming sadness washes over me. I catch my breath and recover from the eerie visions weighing on me. Now, more than anything, I want him to hold me. I want that slow, sensual kiss he gave me a taste of earlier, but he just undoes the thong on my wrists, goes into the bathroom, and slams the door. I don’t know what to think or how to feel. I rub my wrists, which are now free, and wonder what happens next. Is he just going to walk out? Is he going to say anything? He’s angry, and I don’t know why 
he 
has any right to be angry. I put my T-shirt back on and hug my knees to my chest.

When he comes out, he leans in the doorway, his lips held between his teeth, arms folded. “That’s what you wanted, right?” he asks in a sardonic tone. He’s fully dressed again.

“What are you talking about?” I say, rubbing my temples, not wanting to look at him.

“To get off. That’s what you wanted from me. A last good fuck, right?” he snarls, grabbing his keys from the nightstand. I can’t believe he would say that to me.

“What? That wasn’t what I wanted!”

Deep down, I know it’s a lie. I didn’t want to feel him. I wanted to feel his body, and he was trying to take me to a place I couldn’t go. I wanted him to give me something—to
not
 think about him, to get away from all this. I know it’s wrong, but he’s the one fucking leaving.

“Yeah. You wanted me to fuck you, but you couldn’t even look at me.” He laughs cuttingly, his hand resting on the back of his head.

I open my mouth to respond, but I have no valid comeback. “What do you want from me, Cal? What? You’re the one leaving. What do you want me to do? How do you want me to feel!” I demand, getting angrier by the minute.

“I wanted you to let me in.” He sounds so dejected, it makes my heart break.

Why is he doing this? Why is he trying to take me to a place I have to leave in order to move on? But I guess the reality is he didn’t need to take me to that place. I’m already there, living in it. Since the day I met him, I’ve been there, and he’s the only person I want to be there with me.

I swallow my pride and get off the bed. He’s hurt and can easily spurn me, but I still move toward him. When I reach him, he looks down at me, his hands now stuffed into his jeans. I place my hands on his chest and force myself to look at him. I know once I do, the flimsy wall I’ve tried to create around myself today is going to crumble. And when I look into his eyes, it does.

“You’re already in. You always have been, and you always will be,” I say, unable to imagine how he can’t know this already.

In the back of my mind, I wonder if this is a trick. Is this what he wanted to hear all along? Is this a card he can play, to know he can leave and waltz back into my life whenever he wants? Because he can’t 
not
 know how much I love him, how much I need him, and how much his leaving tears me apart. I feel as if my heart is being ripped out of my body.

“Promise me,” he says, and for only the 
second
 time in my life, I hear his voice sound unsteady and unsure.

I nod furiously and stand on tiptoe. I kiss him as he did me earlier—passionately, with controlled patience—and in return, he makes it so deep, it’s as if he’s pulling my soul from my body to take it with him. His hands slide beneath my shirt, and he removes it. I do the same, tugging at his, and soon our clothes are off and I’m back on the bed, this time with him fully inside me, connected. He doesn’t pin my arms over my head but allows me to dig my fingers deep into his skin as he takes me to places of ecstasy only he ever has. I take in his scent, his breath, his touch. I try to remember each of his kisses; I capture every single movement in my mind. I allow him to go as deep inside me as he wants, taking in the pain and the pleasure as one. I hold him tight. I say his name, and my body gives into him over and over again, as it always does, even knowing the danger in which I’m putting myself.