I faced back toward the TV and thought of what to say. My mother was a million different things, and it was hard to describe her in conversation. “She was incredible.” I gripped the edge of my shorts and dug my fingernails into the fabric. “She was fun and always smiling, and she always had a way to make me feel better.”
“You miss her.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded my head anyway.
“Like crazy.” I bit down on my lip and told myself I wouldn’t cry. “But I miss who she was before she got sick. That’s fucked up. Isn’t it?”
“That’s not fucked up.”
He was wrong though. I didn’t regret a single moment I had with my mother, but the last few years with her had been hard. I had to watch her die a little bit every day, right before my eyes, and it ate away at me like nothing else ever would.
If I could go back, I would go back to the mom whose smile wasn’t clouded with pain. I wanted her back. I desperately wanted to see her again. To feel her.
“I can’t imagine what you had to go through.”
We were both quiet for a moment. I didn’t trust myself to say more about her. Not without crying and ruining our entire night. I wished my mom could have met Beck. She would have liked him, but she would have warned me that he was trouble.
That was what she had always said about my dad. He was handsome, but he was trouble. She knew it from the moment she met him, but it hadn’t mattered. According to her, she hadn’t even had time to look up before she fell. It was instant and unstoppable, and I couldn’t imagine how someone like her could have ever loved someone like him.
“My dad’s sick.”
I turned to look at him again, but this time he tightened his arms and held me still.
“It’s why I’m at the club so much. He’s trying to train me to take over while he still can.”
“I’m sorry, Beck. I didn’t know.”
His arms tightened, then loosened again as if he couldn’t control it. “No one does, really. Only Olly and Carson and a few others.”
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked him the question I used to hate when others asked me. As if a teenager had any idea whether or not their parent would be okay. As if we could possibly know if anything would ever be okay again.
“He thinks so. He’s just getting weaker and weaker, and he hates relying on others for anything. He’s a workaholic, and he’s never known anything but that.”
I nodded my head because I understood. My mother hated when I had to start taking things over for her. When the simplest daily task became too hard. “But he has you.”
He was quiet for a long moment, then his head hit my shoulder. “I don’t know that I’m enough.”
I turned in his arms, forcing his arms to loosen around me. Beck Clermont was more than anyone else I had ever met.
“You are.” I pressed my hand to his jaw and forced him to look up at me. He looked so lost and so broken, and I wanted to fix him. I wanted to fix every fucked-up part of him and save him from whatever destruction I knew he would cause to himself.
Because that was the only way a man like Beck could fall. Only if he cut himself off at the knees.
My lips met his, and he let me lead the kiss for the first time. I was still between his legs, our bodies pressed together, but I felt like I was miles away from him. I desperately wanted to get closer. I wanted to crush that look in his eyes and replace it with something better.
I wanted him to feel what I felt. I wanted him to see what I saw when I looked at him.
Not everyone else. Not these damn people who worshipped him but didn’t see an ounce of who he really was.
I licked his bottom lip, and he opened his mouth on a groan. I deepened our kiss as I wrapped my fingers in his hair. Everything smelled like him. The room, his bed, being so close to him. He was all I could smell. He was all I could see.
I turned to get better access, and I pushed onto my knees as I kissed him harder. He was still holding back. His kiss, his hands, everything about him was being held back, and I hated it.
“Beck,” I growled against his lips and felt his smile.
“This isn’t why I asked you to come here.” He gently pushed against my arms, but I didn’t care. I turned to face him fully, and I moved my knees onto either side of his. I was fully straddling him, and our lips were only a breath apart.
“I don’t care.” I kissed him again, and this time he didn’t hold back. One of his hands fisted in my hair as he devoured my mouth, and every part of my body came alive as he took over.
He pulled my head back by my hair, opening my neck up to him, and he kissed his way down my jaw and to the sensitive skin waiting there. My hips moved against his, and I moaned as I felt his erection beneath me.
“We should stop.” He moved the strap of my tank top off my shoulder and followed the trail with his mouth.
“We shouldn’t.” I shook my head and focused on chasing the feeling of his body beneath mine.
“You’re going to hate me tomorrow.” He sounded so sure of himself. So sure of my feelings for him, but he was wrong. There was nothing he could do to make me hate him. Even if he decided that tonight was all he wanted, I still wouldn’t.
I knew the score when I walked through his bedroom door. I wasn’t Beck’s girlfriend. I wasn’t anything other than the girl who was currently on top of him, but I didn’t care.
I still wanted him more than I wanted anything else.
It was irrational and crazy, and it was the only thing in my life that felt right.
“I won’t.”
He kissed the top of my breast before he jerked my tank top and bra down to expose me.
He stared at my breast, his mouth hovering over my sensitive skin, before looking up at me. “You fucking will.”
He looked so haunted, and I wanted to stop him. But his tongue flicked against my nipple, and I couldn’t think of anything but the way he sucked it into his mouth.
My back arched, pushing my breasts closer to him, and I held on to his head. My fingers pushed through his dark brown locks, and I couldn’t stop watching him as he devoured me. He moved from one breast to the next, taking his time with each, and I knew that I was already dripping wet for him.
I could feel my pulse in my sex, and I felt like I was going to die if he didn’t touch me. The friction of me moving against his lap wasn’t enough.
I reached between us, and I tried to touch him with clumsy fingers. I wanted him out of his shorts. I wanted to see him like he had seen me last night. Nothing between us.
He pushed my hand away and laid me back on the bed. I pulled my shirt and bra over my head before he could say a word, and I continued to ride his hips in an attempt for more.
He dipped his tongue into my belly button before he flipped me over onto my stomach. I didn’t know what he was doing until he ripped my shorts and panties down my legs. I looked over my shoulder and saw his shirt come off next. He was staring at my ass as he pushed his shorts down his hips. I bit my lip as he ran his hand up and down his length.
He forced me up onto my knees, and panic rushed through me. He didn’t give me any time though. His tongue ran along the length of my pussy from behind, and I cried out into his comforter.
My shoulders were pressed into the bed, and I was thankful for their stability. I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to hold myself up in that moment. Not with what he was doing with his mouth.