Breaking Down, page 8
A little whimper escaped her lips and Sawyer’s pupils swelled. Lowering his head, he brushed his lips across the skin of one thigh, the other nipping gently, then healing the tiny flares of exquisite pain with more kisses. Up he went, nip, suck, bite, kiss.
When he reached the juncture of her thighs, he pressed his lips to the heat of her core. The muscles in her legs jerked. Her back arched up off the seat at the slight contact. He kissed her again, right where she ached the most, then with torturous slowness he pushed his tongue between her folds. Blood rushed through Carmen’s ears. Every nerve attuned to him. Her world narrowed to every tiny movement of his tongue as it moved against her body, every sensation he coaxed forth with those soft lips. Carmen reached down and threaded her fingers deep into his thick hair, an anchor against the sweeping tide swelling within her. It rose with a ferocious rush, shocking her.
“Oh God, Sawyer.” Her back arched off the truck seat, needing more. With a growl, Sawyer pressed her down with one hand low on her abdomen and gave her what she sought.
Chapter 10
THE TRUCK RUMBLED TO a stop outside the hotel’s peeling exterior and Sawyer killed the ignition. Neither of them moved. Their hands lay curled side by side on the seat. Not touching but close enough to absorb the heat from each other’s skin.
“Sawyer—”
“Carmen—”
They spoke overtop one another in a flustered rush. Sawyer laughed, and Carmen snorted in a way that made him want to kiss her again. Some tension dissipated, and then, to his relief, she was against him, tucked tight under his arm. He pressed a kiss against her temple, drinking in the scent of her.” That was . . .”
“Exceptional?”
He nodded. “That word sufficiently sums it up.”
She leaned into him, and Sawyer tightened his grip, reluctant to let her leave the bubble of comfort they had created. “That’s the first time I’ve skinny-dipped,” she said.
Sawyer chuckled. “I won’t sit here and tell you that was my first time.” He picked up a tendril of her hair, sliding the strands through his finger. “But today was my favourite time.”
“Would you say, maybe . . .” Carmen tipped her head up to him. “You had the time of your life?”
Laughter flooded out of him in a burst at her cheekiness. “Yes, and I owe it all to you. Though I should tell you, it doesn’t count as skinny dipping if you leave your undies on.”
“Well, shoot.” Carmen wrinkled her nose at him. “I guess I’ll try to go again one day.”
“That is the only option, and I must be there to make sure you do it right this time. Sooner is better than later.”
“You’re terrible.” She slipped a hand behind his neck and pulled his head down to hers. Sawyer’s stomach dropped out of him and growled against her mouth. He feared he might combust with the want of her. The taste of her sweetness was still on his lips, and the sweet musky scent of her filled his truck. He was rock hard and had been since they had left the parking lot, but despite Carmen’s efforts, Sawyer had refused to let her touch him. Something deep inside told him the only way to make this right was to give her a chance to take from him. To fulfil what she needed without expectation. A way to apologize to her for whatever the man who hurt her had done. Show her they were not all the same.
“Check out of this dump and stay with me,” Sawyer murmured between kisses. “There is a couch at my place, and the price is much more reasonable.” He’d go crazy, seeing her there every day, waking up to her scent in his apartment, but it would be worth every sweet second of torture.
Carmen swallowed. “I’m not sure. This is happening fast, Sawyer.”
A flicker of disappointment lit in his gut, but he squeezed her against his side, kissing her temple. “I understand, and I will admit—this time only, mind you—that you’re probably right.”
“Thank you, Sawyer. For everything.” Colour bloomed on her cheeks, and she drew her eyes away.
Sawyer hitched a shoulder with mock indifference. “I haven’t done anything.”
Her laugh rumbled out, throaty and foreign. “Oh, you’ve done plenty.” Sawyer shifted in his seat at the stab of discomfort the sound caused him.
“I suppose I should go inside.” Carmen huffed a reluctant sigh and straightened. “Don’t you have a job or something?”
Sawyer bounced his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug and yanked her back into another bone-melting kiss. When he released her at last, her eyes were heavy-lidded. God, his dick hurt, literally hurt with the need to be inside her.
“Give the idea some thought. My couch is pretty comfortable.”
“It is. I sat on it.” Her smile was full-blown.
Sawyer chewed his lip, then flashed her a grin. They both knew that if Carmen came to his place, she would not be sleeping on the couch.
“Call me in the morning?” she asked.
“Of course,” she said, and peeled herself away from him, then hopped out of the truck. “I have to check on that car, don’t I?”
SAWYER DEFLATED INTO a slump as she closed the door. She looked back at him through the glass and met his gaze for a moment. Her forest eyes sparkled, and her cheeks glowed with colour. Giving him a wink, she turned and jogged across the parking lot, her pert ass bouncing. He longed to chase her, sink his hands into her luscious cheeks and push her up against the nearest vehicle. Sawyer pressed a hand against his straining cock, dropped his head against the steering wheel and released a pained breath. “I’m in so much fucking trouble.”
With a bewildered laugh, Sawyer straightened and scrubbed a hand over his face. He had to stop picturing such scenarios; it was too painful. His body’s irritation was a small price to pay. The enjoyment of Carmen’s pleasure, of hearing the sounds she uttered in response to him, had been enough. For today, at least. Her surprise and shyness betrayed the fact she was unaccustomed to such treatment. She would get used to such things if he had any say.
More than ever, Sawyer longed to hear the rest of Carmen’s story. She skirted around the source of the bruise every time he tried to get an answer and gave him little to no details about anything else in her life besides her family. She had run from someone, that was clear, but he wanted to know who. Why? What started as curiosity was becoming an obsession. He needed to understand her.
Sawyer turned over the truck’s engine and went to push it into gear when a man stepped out of a car a few rows over. Medium height, dressed in unassuming dark jeans and a grey shirt. He looked at the hotel, watching Carmen as she went through the doors, then turned and caught Sawyer’s gaze through the windshield. Sawyer thought he would approach for a moment, but the man took the aviator sunglasses hanging from his V-neck shirt and put them on.
Sawyer watched as he crossed the parking lot and ducked into the hotel. The hairs on his arms rose despite the heat in the truck’s cab.
“Weirdo,” he muttered, and reversed, glancing back once toward the hotel, wondering if he should go back and check on Carmen. Deciding that would come across as clingy, Sawyer pulled out onto the road and headed for the garage. The sun was tickling the tops of the hills now. It was late. He needed to get some work done today before his dad had his head on a pike. Plus, he still needed to take a very long, very cold shower.
Chapter 11
GIDDY, CARMEN FLOATED through the stale smoke-scented lobby of the hotel to the stairs. She had never done anything so wild or so satisfying. Not her, the girl who forever tried to please—please her parents, please her siblings, please her boyfriend.
She grinned to herself and took a deep breath to stop the bubble of laughter that rose in her throat. Her preoccupation ran so deep she failed to critique the cheap art liberally sprinkling the walls as she had every other time she’d walked down the hall.
Carmen’s room was still a few doors away when a long creak echoed behind her. The hair at her nape prickled, and a cold wash of fear drowned her euphoria. The urge to turn and look behind her was nearly overwhelming. It’s only someone going to their room, she told herself, seeking rationality. Her step quickened. By the time she reached the door adorned with its tarnished brass #28, her hands were trembling. Carmen fumbled the key out of her pocket and jammed it into the lock.
The door opened with a muted whoosh against the musty shag carpet. She used the motion of closing it to glance down the hallway. He barrelled into Carmen before she had time to register his presence. Pushing her the rest of the way into the room, pinning her against the wall with his weight.
Carmen’s throat worked to force out the scream lodged there. The door slammed with a thud, vibrating the thin walls and a soft palm, ripe with the scent of tobacco, clamped over her mouth. Carmen lashed out and tried to catch his shin with her foot, but he held her knee against her thigh.
“Carmen, calm down for fuck’s sake.” He kept his hand tight over her mouth. Her spine ground into the floral wallpaper. “Can I move my hand, or are you going to freak out?”
A mass of tumbling confusion, Carmen nodded as best she could, desperate to get away from his touch. Bile sank acidic claws into the back of her throat, and she tried to swallow.
Billy pulled his hand away and stepped back a couple of inches. Still too close. He blocked her escape to the door.
“What the hell are you doing?” Carmen scrubbed at her lips with a shaking hand. She had never feared Billy before—he had disgusted her, yes, but never made her afraid. The foreign wild cast to his eyes made her heart thump. Sweat broke out across her brow. “How did you find me?”
“You wouldn’t answer my calls. How could you not tell me where you went?”
“Because I don’t belong to you, Billy!” A shade of hysteria heightened her voice. She took a few long breaths through her nose. “I told you to get out of my life,” she hissed.
Carmen wondered if she should have played nice, strung him along until she could come up with a plan, but rationality burned up in the heat of her rising temper. The tips of her fingers alternated between pins and needles to numbness. She clenched them shut to keep from lashing out and scratching at his face like a trapped beast. She wanted to hiss and spit and fight, but she felt paralyzed by shock and fear.
Had his grey eyes always looked like that? How had she never noticed the glitter in them before? The sheen of malice.
“You know how much I worry about you, Carm.” Billy ran a knuckle over her cheek and down to the base of her throat, his voice plaintive. “I said, I’m sorry.”
Meeting his eyes made her stomach churn, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of letting him see her fear. “Let me go, Billy. We can talk, okay, but you need to let me go.” Yeah, right. She was done talking to him. How much time over the years had she spent talking? None of it had meant anything, none of her words or her feelings.
“Who is the guy?” he barked. “I saw you.” The change in his tone so abrupt caused Carmen to flinch. Goosebumps erupted over her arms. Had he seen Sawyer kissing her? How long had he been following her?
“You were at the restaurant.” Oh God, she had seen him. A new level of horror seized her. “I really saw you. You freak.”
Billy pushed his knee harder into her thigh, making her whimper at the shock of pain. “Who was that jackass in the truck?”
“A friend of Jake’s,” Carmen gasped out, tears pooling in her eyes. She blinked furiously, refusing to let him see her weakness. “He gave me a ride is all.”
Billy’s eyes narrowed. “Is that right?”
“You should go. He’s coming back to drive me up to Jake’s place.” Carmen forced herself to stare into his face. To set her jaw and look assured. To push the words past the squeeze of fear in her throat and banish the tremor in her words.
“Maybe I should stick around and meet this guy,” Billy said. “What if he’s planning something?”
Carmen released a wry, humourless bark of a laugh. “Let him. It’s not your problem. I am not your problem. We aren’t together anymore.”
“You’ll always be my problem,” he purred, reaching for her cheek again.
Carmen sank her teeth into the tip of her tongue to keep from spitting out a caustic remark. She flexed her leg muscles and tried to recall the self-defence class she took ten years ago. She could slam the heel of her hand into his nose. She considered it, but memories stopped her. She had loved this man once. Loved him enough to meld her life with his, to share an apartment and friends, dreams of a future. Every fight, every hurt feeling added a frisson to a cracked foundation. Then the last moment brought everything down, and life changed. Carmen changed. She recognized that now.
“Billy. You need to go. You’re scaring me. Go home. Back to Van, please.”
His brow furrowed and some of the heat left his face. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, baby.”
“Don’t I?” Carmen turned her head. Displayed the yellow remnants of the bruise that still coloured her cheek. “Look what you did to me. Do you know how many people have asked me what happened? How people have been staring at me?”
“It was an accident. I told you I didn’t mean to.”
“I want to believe you, but I can’t. I think you enjoyed hitting me.”
Billy sighed and lifted his free hand to run his fingers over her face again. Something flashed in his eyes, a shadow of what may have been genuine hurt. It was hard to say; he was a better actor than she had ever given him credit for. “What a terrible thing to say,” he said.
She made herself stand still against the repeated, unwanted touch of his fingers. “I’ll never hurt you again,” he whispered. “I promise, I won’t. Come home with me.”
“Can I think about it?” She was grasping at straws, seizing at the opportunity to buy herself some time, but the words left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“For how long?” Billy demanded.
Carmen’s stomach squeezed. “Just for tonight. I’ll come talk to you in the morning, somewhere public though.” She studied him from the corner of her eyes. He had the puffy look and offensive odour of a man who spent too much time drinking and smoking and not enough time sleeping. “Do not come here and get me. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
Blue bags shadowed his dark-rimmed eyes and his black hair hung lank across his prominent forehead. What had happened to the smiling man who had shyly presented her with a glass of wine that first night in the bar all those years ago? She had fallen in love with that man. A wave of grief washed over her.
“All right. I’ll get a room for the night and pick you up in the morning,” he said. The idea she may not go with him did not seem to cross his mind.
“Okay. Thank you.” Carmen’s teeth ached with the effort to stem the tremors threatening to take hold of her body. At last, his hand went loose. His fingers left a sweaty ring around her wrist. Without closing his eyes, he pressed a kiss to Carmen’s lips, then turned and walked out.
Her legs quit the second the door clicked shut. She slid down the wall like a strand of overcooked spaghetti and hit the floor. He had left his scent in the room—booze, cigarettes, and sweat. The body spray he was so fond of topped off the noxious cocktail of smells. Carmen gagged and clamped both hands over her mouth, blinking against the rush of reflexive tears, struggling to stop the rush of bile climbing her throat.
Minutes crawled past on the old digital alarm clock on the night table as she lay against the wall. Ten. Twenty.
At last, the shaking stopped, and Carmen pushed herself up. Her brain felt empty—the stretching blank space of the emotional exhaustion. The door to the room locked automatically on closing, but she stood and slid the chain into place before going into the bleach-scented bathroom.
The choleric scent burned away the lingering traces of Billy. Carmen pulled off her clothes and cranked the taps to full blast, growling in frustration when the water left the showerhead in a flaccid dribble. She wanted the sting of scalding water, needed it to cleanse her as deep as it could reach. She stood back to wait for it to warm and caught her reflection in the mirror.
Red hair tangled around her blazing cheeks in a ferocious cloud. Her eyes were overly bright, wild. She raised her arms to push the strands back; they stuck to her brow, glued by a sheen of cold sweat. Five perfect finger marks glowed on the pale skin on her wrist, reflected in the mirror. Her vision narrowed, tunnelling until all she could see was the new way Billy had marred her. As though she belonged to him.
Anger flared in her chest with the force of a gasoline-fuelled spark. Her chest heaved. Her ragged breathing fogged the mirror, making her reflection waver and fade. She slammed her hand against the sink. Again and again. The tendons in her arms sang with pain, but she did it twice more.
“Fuck you, Billy! Fuck you!” She growled the words, longing to throw her head back and scream them out. Tears burned fresh, hot paths over her face, but she ignored them. Grabbing her hairbrush, she smashed the plastic backing against the dull green porcelain until the handle snapped and ricocheted across the tiny room with a bang.
Naked, Carmen stalked out of the bathroom and found her purse, upending the whole thing onto the bed to locate her cell. A message from Marcy blinked on the screen along with a three percent battery warning. She ignored both and punched out a text to Sawyer.
I changed my mind about the couch. Pick me up in an hour?
His answer set the phone buzzing in her hand seconds later.
See you soon.
Carmen plugged the cell into the wall socket behind the bed and went back into the steam-filled bathroom.
WITH A TOWEL WRAPPED around her dripping hair, Carmen darted around the room attempting to shove her random belongings back into the bag. There was no rhyme or reason to what she brought when she had left her home. Desperate to leave, she had stuffed whatever she touched into the bag and piled it into the car.
The mess reminded Carmen of the puzzles her grandma used to bribe her to do when she was young. Who could say no to fresh shortbread cookies, even if it meant hours of eye-numbing tediousness? Carmen would have said yes to anything when her grandma placed the stacked plate of treats on the table in front of her.
