this time not slapping it. Just put it there. His other hand moved from my back to my hair. He swept it all over the opposite shoulder. I turned my head, which had been facing away to face him.
“Of course I fuckin’ want you.”
His eyes were on me with anger, with conflict.
And the time for me to crack jokes was over.
“What are we doing here?” I asked with all seriousness, despite my position over his lap with my pants and underwear around my knees.
“If I let myself go there with you and it failed, I’d lose your family, the MC brothers that they gave me, but even worse, I’d have had a taste of you and lost it.”
I gulped.
He blinked and his mouth contorted painfully. “I’ve already had a taste and it feels like my fuckin’ guts’ve been ripped out. What happens if I let you get close, if I fuckin’ have it for a couple months and it starts to go sour? I’ll have fucked everything sideways.”
His face was filled with such pain, my heart hurt. I got off his lap, yanking my underwear and pants up and then got on the bed beside him, on my knees tucking my feet under myself.
“You’re already thinking of us ending before we’ve even started? That’s just sad to me. If I thought the world might end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree, Christian Forker. Love is worth taking a chance. I’d plant an apple tree and a pot plant and yes, I’d still fall in love and daydream about a future with somebody all while I tried to find a way to stop the world from burning. You want something, you take a chance, you fight for it. That’s what I’ve done with you here. I’ve fought dirty, I admit, but I’ve fought for you because you’re who I want.”
“Fuck,” he breathed, eyes still squeezed tight.
I put my hand on his thigh and squeezed. “What if you didn’t lose any of it? What if you gained me, got to keep the brothers, and it was the start of our forever, a forever that didn’t ever end? Oh no… what if you finally accepted that Fork deserves good things? What a crime! What are you afraid of, Fork? Being blissfully happy with awesome sex on demand from a woman who adores the ground you walk on?”
He covered his eyes with his hand and massaged his forehead. “You know I got a father who’s a fuckin’ pedophile?”
“Not exactly, but the things I did hear, it doesn’t surprise me. I’m sorry you’re stuck with him for a dad. I have an awesome dad, so I don’t know exactly what it’s like, but I got a horrible mother so I kind of get where you’re comin’ from.”
“Never charged or convicted of it but I don’t believe for a fuckin’ minute there aren’t any victims out there. I got a mother that had to leave me with that pedo because she had to escape him and his sick mind, his abusiveness. She came across his porn stash in the garage. Kicked him out but then he got mad and went back ‘n kicked her out instead. Physically. Bruises all fuckin’ over her.”
I squeezed his thigh and bit my lip.
“Did your father ever… with you?”
“No. Fuck no. He’s not into boys. Not that it makes it any fucking better. But he did take his fists, his belt, his boots to me as much as he could until I got bigger than him.”
I bit my lip.
He kept talking, staring off into space. “Fuckin’ prayed and prayed I’d get bigger than him. Lie in bed at night and just beg for it. It worked. Got fuckin’ ten inches taller. No one knows where I got my height from. To me, I got it from sheer fuckin’ will. Problem was, there was still no escape, don’t matter how fuckin’ big I am if they’ve got guns, if I can’t find a way out.”
I blew out a breath. The pain on his face was slaying me.
“You did though. You got out, baby.”
He kept going. “He let my brother go with her but kept me as a fuckin’ slave to him and a bunch of fucked outlaw bikers. Grew up in a dog eat dog world where if I didn’t go hard, if I showed any fuckin’ weakness, I’d have wound up six feet under after having my asshole bloodied.”
I reached for his face. He twisted to face me and