I bring my forehead against his, not looking away.
“Julian.” His name between my lips. His fingers strumming music, magic and misery between my legs. I could pass out.
Take it away. The shame of being in that warehouse… please, take it away…
“Yes, baby,” he whispers, watching me. “Just like that, let me have it.”
With his expert fingers, he strums me and plays me like a violin. Over and over again, he hits my G-spot, but each time I grip his fingers so tight, he chuckles and slows down.
“Julian, please,” I whisper, running my hands through his now short hair.
“You know what to do.”
And I do know what he wants. He wants me to kiss him… I lean in and kiss his forehead.
He watches me silently, the tension in me and in the room mounting, but I pretend not to notice.
“Mia.”
Just one word and my heart starts pounding all over again.
I’m pretty sure I’m starting to sweat because what he wants, what he’s telling me he wants, I… I can’t give it to him.
“Don’t play with me, Mia, I’ll fucking drop to my knees to fucking beg if you want that but don’t play with me, Little Minx,” he growls, each word low and clipped. “If you’re going to kiss me, kiss me like you want a fucking forever with me.”
That’s just the thing. I can’t kiss him on the lips. I can’t give myself to him like that… not after everything.
“Don’t beg,” I whisper brokenly. “I don’t want to be that cruel.” i.e., I don’t want to drag this rejection out and let you really see how fucked I am.
But Julian doesn’t need me to drag anything out or explain. He reads me perfectly well.
In that moment, everything flips.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Mia
This time when the tears well up in my eyes, Julian flips us again until this time, I’m the one on the bed, and he’s hovering over me. I’m stunned at his strength in this state and at the bed for being big enough for all this activity.
As I look up at him, it’s like a wall has slammed down over us, effectively separating us unto two camps. Or maybe, this is how it’s always been. Both of us, unreachable, not on the same page, suffering.
I was naïve before, but this time, I know better.
“So, you won’t kiss me?” he growls, staring down at me.
I don’t say a word.
My silence seems to enrage me into action because fuck, he rips my gown apart with both hands, as if one of his arms isn’t in a cast.
“You won’t give yourself to me, huh, Little Minx?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, no. Instead, he moves down the bed, until his face is… Oh my God.
He starts eating me out right there and then.
I’m too stunned and shocked to prepare myself for the assault of pleasure so when it comes crashing into me, all I can do is writhe on the bed as I cry out his name.
He does wicked things with his tongue over my clit and then in my pussy, I’m pretty sure he’s punishing me for not kissing him the way he wanted, the way he was hoping I would from the moment he realized I was awake.
I grip the sheets of the bed underneath me trying to hold on as I start seeing stars.
He fucks me with his fingers and makes love to me with his tongue. The build-up is fast and intense, fueled no doubt, by anger of my rejection, but when he finally lets me come, I come like a violent song.
Each crash, each wave and the way he keeps applying pressure steals my soul away. It’s as if he’s telling me what he’s told me over and over again.
That I’m his and no one else’s.
My legs are shaking, my body covered with a sheen on sweat. I think I’m disoriented, but I feel him kissing every inch of me.
From my toes to my thighs, between my legs again, my stomach, over the gunshot wound where he’s more particular and takes his time, to every single scar he sees, my perky breasts, my shoulders, he kisses everything. Until finally, he’s hovering above me, his face over mine, his body over mine and I just stare up at him, breathless.
I’m fighting to calm down, seeing the anger in his eyes as he looks down at me.
“You won’t kiss me, Mia?” he questions, this time, his words are low, laced with an unknown emotion that makes something in me snap in two, in a sad way.
“Julian, I…” I mutter. “I can’t.”
I expect him to demand why. I expect him to seethe and growl and be angry at me, but he does none of that. He just nods solemnly, still staring down at me like he’s seeing a part of me only accessible to him.
“I see.”
“I need to find myself, Julian,” I croak. He’s silent, jumping off the bed fluidly. I rush to explain myself. “Not too long ago, I wanted to end my own life.” I glance down at my wrists. Some scars are still visible while others are healing up. “Not too long ago, I lost someone I love dearly and couldn’t cope with her death and then there was fighting for you…”
“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, moving back from the bed as if I’m a ticking bomb that will take him out if he stands too close. That kind of stings. “You were never meant to be in danger because of me.”
Why is he so calm? Why is he talking like that?
“I couldn’t stand by and let you suffer.”
“And now you’re hurt and in pain because of me,” he whispers. “You won’t even kiss me.”
Is this what heartbreak feels like?
“Julian, I wish I could give you that right now,” I cry. “With all my soul, I wish I could, I really do, but I… I just can’t.”
“Why?”
Do I tell him?
“Why, Mia?”
“Because I learned my lesson.”
There it is.
“You learned your lesson?” he repeats, watching me like a tornado about to hit my little island of solitude.
“Yes,” I mumble, feeling like I’m fading at the edges as I scramble to cover myself with the scarps of my hospital gown. “I can’t open myself up to you like that anymore. Well, again.”
“Again?”
“You were the first, Julian and that sucks because there was so much I wanted that you never gave me.”
“Like fucking what?”
“I wanted a guy to romance me, woo me, a guy who buys me fucking flowers and makes me fall in love with him slowly… but you… you had me at fucking hello.”
“What’s so fucking wrong with that? We never said fucking hello anyway, you just swept into my life like a storm and it’s been a whirlwind from there on.”
“You not listening to me, Julian. You’re too much! No one has hurt me the way you have, Julian. No one has even come close to having my heart the way I naively thrust it into your hands only for you to throw it into the abyss and now… here I am.”
When I look up, I realize that he’s almost halfway across the room. He looks tense, angry but accepting each blow I’m giving with those eyes I fell so hard for watching me.
“Yeah, because you fell in a grave when you fell for me, yeah I got that part.”