Break So Soft (Break So Soft Duet Book 2) Page 30

  She lurches after me. “I wasn’t kidding, you know.”

  I laugh darkly. “I know.”

  She frowns, her eyes narrowing. Then she reaches and undoes her towel where she secured it in a knot. With a satisfyingly dramatic sweep, it drops to the floor, leaving her moist-skinned and fully bared.

  My cock goes stiff but I don’t let anything show on my face. I try not to anyway but fuck. She’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. Afterwards when I try to picture her I always think that no, she couldn’t really have been that perfect but the next time I’m with her it’s like, holy shit, she actually is.

  She smiles like she sees exactly how much she affects me and takes a few steps backwards to the bed, crawling up and then lounging sideways on it, facing me.

  She sucks on my middle finger, watching me the whole while. She releases the finger with a loud pop and then lazily trails it down her neck to outline her nipple, then she stretches and tugs at the taut peak.

  My cock is straining in my pants but I stand still, enjoying the brief look of frustration that passes over her face at my lack of motion. I’m enjoying this little game too much.

  Her eyes narrow in challenge. After circling her nipple several more times, she sends her hand further south to the smooth apex of her sex.

  Aw damn. Even from here I can see how slick she is already. My cock pulses and I know precum is wetting my boxers.

  And suddenly I don’t know what I think either of us is getting out of this game. Screw delayed gratification. I stomp toward the bed, grasping my buckle and ripping it open as I go.

  I have to have her. My vixen. Now. Fucking now. More than food or water or air.

  She grins in triumph, watching me fumble with my belt.

  With several more strong jerks, though, I get the belt free from my pants. She frowns when I don’t immediately shove my pants and boxers down and instead advance toward the bed with the belt in my hand.

  Her eyebrows shoot up, eyes on the belt, even as I see her bite her lip in interest.

  “Don’t get too excited,” I laugh quietly as I approach. I fold the belt several times and then run the leather from her throat down between her breasts and further to her throbbing pussy. Then I lean in and trace the same path with my nose, inhaling as I go.

  I can’t help the low growl of approval that comes from my throat. “I can smell how much you want me.”

  But then she snatches the belt from my grasp.

  “Don’t forget who’s in charge in these little games,” she warns. “Last weekend was a one-off.”

  Not so fast. She’s holding the top of the folded belt but I grab the bottom with a grip that challenges hers.

  “Was it?” I use my commanding voice and see lust and anger warring in her eyes. I put a knee on the bed to crawl up between her legs. “I think you like to lose control and submit sometimes.”

  She opens her mouth like she’s about to tell me off but I just smile wider and cut her off at the pass. “Only sometimes,” I amend. “Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten my place, Mistress. Unfortunately, since we’re in your parents’ house and we don’t want them to find out how debauched the supposedly upstanding entrepreneur Jackson Vale is by finding him tied, gagged, and being spanked like a little bitch by their dominatrix daughter, I suggest you bite down on this so you don’t make any noise while I eat the fuck out of your sweet pussy. Sound like a plan?”

  I don’t give her time to consider and she must decide there’s not much to consider when presented with such an offer because she opens her jaw wide like a good little subbie. I shove the folded leather belt in her mouth and she bites down hard like she hopes to leave teeth marks. I grin darkly, hoping she does.

  Then I shove her thighs open wide and dive in, eating and sucking and fingering and licking and massaging until she comes so many times we both lose count and she drifts into a satisfied, drowsy sleep.

  And then I pull her close to my chest where she curls like a satisfied kitten. I breathe in her hair and memorize the feel of her skin against mine.

  I meant what I said earlier. Save me. It came off flippant and I know she thought I just meant from her parents and this awkward weekend. But I meant so much more.

  She’s my salvation. One I never saw coming. One I don’t deserve.

  I blink and look up at the ceiling as I hold her tight to me. The fact that it was Bryce Gentry who brought her to me? The fact that I know he hurt her and that I think he did it because of me?

  My eyes squeeze shut and my jaw clenches.

  I’ll protect her now. Slay every dragon. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll bury that motherfucker Gentry in a hole so deep, he’ll never see the light of day again.

  And she’ll never ever have to know my secret and shame.

  Chapter Twenty

  CALLIE

  “Time to wake up for dinner.” Jackson shakes my shoulder gently.

  I turn over into my pillow. “Sleep,” I grumble back, attempting to pull the comforter up and around me so I can hide from the light.

  “I don’t think so, sleepyhead,” Jackson says.

  All right. That gets me up. “Did the words sleepyhead really just come out of your mouth?” I look up at him. He smacks me with a plush pillow. Oh my God. “Are you, Jackson Vale, starting what I think you’re starting?” I raise my own pillow.

  He looks confused for a second. I don’t miss the opportunity. I attack, pillow raised high as I smack him over and over.

  I can’t stop laughing. The ever dignified Jackson, getting smacked with a pillow.

  “What? Callie, this is—” A hit right in the face shuts up whatever comment he’s about to make. Another laugh bellows out of me, complete with a snort at the end.

  “That was a low blow,” he says, red-faced. “Now stop it. Pillow fighting is completely indecorous—” I take another swing at him, but almost expertly, he ducks out of the way. Then he comes up swinging with two pillows that he must have grabbed when I wasn’t looking. They come at me one after another.

  “Take that!” he says, sounding about twelve years old.

  “No fair,” I laugh as I jerk out of the way when he takes another swing. “You have two and I only have one.” I go low and try to sweep his legs but that just gets me clobbered on the back.

  “That just proves I’m smarter and can make better usage of available resources than you,” he says, going for a low-to-high swing that I block with my pillow. No problem for him because he’s got the second pillow to smack me on the head with. I shriek in outrage and bounce off the bed, dancing out of the way before he can get me again.

  I glance back at the head of the bed. Wait, shouldn’t there be a fourth pillow? I don’t try to be sneaky about it, I just make a break back for the bed. Jackson chases after me. He’s a smart guy. Seeing my move, he must realize the same thing about the pillows. I don’t see any on the side of the bed closest to us so I launch myself over the bed to look on the other side.

  Aha! I’ve hit pay dirt.

  The fourth pillow is on the ground tucked in the corner. I grab for it even as Jackson wallops me with pillows. Shocker that he seems to concentrate his blows on my ass. I roll my eyes and giggle. I never did manage to get dressed after the shower.

  I grab the pillow from the floor. Now equally armed, I swing both pillows around and tackle Jackson to the bed until I’ve got him pinned underneath me, legs on either side of his chest. I rain down blow after blow on him with my pillows.

  “Say uncle,” I cry.

  “Never!” He wriggles underneath me.

  “Say it!”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Fine, then say I’m the Queen of Awesome and you’re my lowly slave.”

  I feel his laughter since I’m sitting on his chest, jostling me up and down on my perch. He reaches up and slides my pillows off his face. “I bow down, oh Queen of Awesome,” he says with a wide grin. “I am but a lowly slave, always in service to her worshipfulness.�
�

  It’s a light moment and his eyes are full of merriment, but I see something else there too as he holds my gaze. That zing that always seems to pass between us. Intensity. Rightness. The thing that turns a light moment deep and made me feel connected to him early on even when we hadn’t spent much time together. I’m not freaked out or scared by it anymore like I was in the beginning, though.

  This is Jackson. This is my Jackson. He’s seen deep inside me to my needs and desires and wasn’t frightened by what he saw there. We can meet each other in the dark. We’re compatible there, just like we are in the other parts of our lives.

  Neither of us are laughing or even smiling any more. Jackson’s caught up in the moment with me. He reaches up and slides a loose piece of hair behind my ear.

  “Calliope, I—”

  A knock sounds at the door, interrupting whatever Jackson was about to say. I want to shout at whoever it is to go away. What is Jackson about to say?

  “Callie?” It’s Shannon’s voice, none too quiet. She knocks again.

  “I do believe she thinks she’s committing coitus interruptus,” Jackson whispers in my ear.

  Jackson using that term sends me into a fresh wave of giggles. Obviously whatever we were in the middle of has been interrupted, and even though it wasn’t coitus, I feel so frustrated it might as well have been. What had Jackson been about to say?

  Maybe nothing. But maybe something.

  I roll off of Jackson and grab my robe, a silky little nothing that doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. Shannon’s still banging on the door with the fervor of an under-quota salesman.

  I yank open the door, lean against the doorframe and run a hand through my hair to fluff it in a way that hopefully makes it look like I was just fucked.

  “What?” I don’t bother hiding my frustration.

  Shan’s eyes widen when she sees me. “How could you do that here? While we’re all in the house? I had to tell Mom all the shrieking was because we saw a mouse up here. Which of course sent her into a tizzy about how we had to be wrong because her house would never have rodents and blah blah blah,” Shannon stops and narrows her eyes at me, “Why are you grinning at me like that?”

  “No reason, big sis.” I throw my arms around her and hug her hard. Here she is, always trying to make peace, even when there’s no real reason.

  “Ugh, I don’t want your sex sweat all over me.” She tries to squirm out of my grasp but I hug her even harder.

  “We were just having a pillow fight after I woke up from a nap, dork,” I say, intentionally mussing her hair. No need to mention the numerous and mind-blowing orgasms before the nap. I didn’t make a sound during those thanks to the belt, after all.

  “Deity give me patience,” she looks up at the ceiling, then back at me, “Will you ever grow up?” She finally manages to pull away from me and her hands immediately go to smoothing down her flat ironed hair.

  “Not on your life,” I pinch her in the belly.

  She twists away and shakes her head at me. “Mom says dinner will be ready in fifteen and you know heads will roll if you aren’t right on time.” She glares at me but I can see some softness beneath it.

  “You know you love me,” I call as she walks away.

  She sends me the one-fingered salute over her shoulder. We Cruise sisters are nothing if not a pair of dignified ladies.

  Ten minutes later Jackson and I head downstairs, me in a modest but cute blue A-line dress and Jackson going all out by busting out a suit and tie. And day-um, does the man look fine in a suit. No doubt I’d have sticker shock if I knew how much the thing cost, but looking at how it fits his muscular body and that ass. Damn, that ass. I can’t help but to reach down and discreetly give a squeeze as we descend the central stairwell.

  “I want to get you alone and cuffed face down on a bed,” I whisper in his ear as I take his arm. “I have plans for that ass.”

  Holding his arm like I am, I feel the slight shudder that goes through his body. He’s as turned on by the thought as I am. At his request, I’m going commando and a draft slips up under the full skirt of my dress, hitting the moisture that’s just spurted at the image conjured of Jackson spread out before me. My nails bite into the forearm of his jacket and Jackson looks my way, shooting me a knowing smile. Then he looks past me to the wall as we descend the stairs.

  “So this is you, the Queen when she was but a pageant princess,” he comments with a smile as we pass by a long row of pictures lining the stairway that I once heard Shannon refer to as The Callie Shrine Wall.

  I can’t say she’s wrong. Some moms make scrapbooks. My mom created the Shrine Wall. You know how in TV and movies, serial killers sometimes have those creepy shrines to their victims with all kinds of photos of them all over the wall? Yeah. This wall is a little like that. Except the pictures are framed and they’re all from my pageant days. Starting at seven years old all the way until I stopped at fifteen, it’s a year-by-year chronicle of every pageant I entered. There are pictures, ribbons, sashes, hanging tiaras, all leading to the pièce de résistance—the giant shadow box of my glittering crown for Little Miss Siskiyou County that I won the year I quit. It’s placed in a small inlet that Mom had some workmen cut into the wall, crafted specially to fit the crown.

  “You’re lovely,” Jackson says.

  I wince but when I glance over, he’s not looking at the glossy pictures. Just at me, here, now, in the real world. I know I don’t look my best.

  I look from picture to picture and watch the way my pageant smile grows more brittle over the years. And how the external package becomes more, well… packaged. Spray tans. Glitter bronzer to highlight the cheeks—and, starting at eleven since I developed early—above and in between the breasts. And always, glossy hair. Glossy red lips. Eventually glossy eyes.

  I turn away and jog down the rest of the stairs in spite of the fact that I’m wearing heels. These are only three inches high and I can easily maneuver in up to four-and-a-half—another skill I picked up from my pageant days, actually. Along with learning to invest all of my self-worth in my looks.

  For fuck’s sake, by the time I was ten I was accustomed to strange men leering at my body. I don’t know who thought up the idea of having a swimsuit portion of a beauty pageant for twelve year olds, but they should be murdered. Slowly.

  “Callie, you okay?”

  Jackson’s waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, eyes concerned.

  I smile but we can both feel the falseness in it. It’s too reminiscent of the grinning girl on the wall behind us. I take Jackson’s arm again and try to let him ground me.

  I just need to shake off all the feelings the walk down memory lane brought on. That girl is long gone. I take a deep breath. I look up into Jackson’s eyes and drop the grin. “I’m all right. Let’s get this over with.”

  He lifts his right hand and squeezes mine where it drapes over his arm. All right. Let’s get this done. One evening, then I just have to make nice tomorrow morning till lunch and we can leave. I can do this. We can do this.

  I feel absolutely confident.

  Until I turn the corner and see who’s standing by my father.

  Mr. McIntyre.

  The man who sexually abused me for years.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  CALLIE

  “Callie. Jackson,” Mom says brightly, though I see censure in her eyes for being late to come down. “We’ve been waiting for you. Look who took time out of his busy schedule to come by and dine with us.”

  I grip Jackson’s arm, swallow hard, and do my damnedest not to let the dizziness suddenly assaulting me take me down.

  Unlike Dad, Mr. McIntyre looks like he’s aged a decade in the few years since I last saw him. And he was old when he first started fucking with me.

  He’s tall and rail-thin in a way that always reminded me of a skeleton. One with skin loosely stretched over it. Even just glancing at his face and the sagging skin at his jowls and ears makes my stomach
sour.

  I turn away so he’s not in my line of sight anymore. Seriously, how much is a girl supposed to take? I already had to stand face-to-face with my blackmailing rapist last week and now here’s my first abuser, standing and holding a bourbon with my father like nothing at all is wrong in the world.

  I stopped doing pageants when a judge cornered me and told me the only way I’d retain my title as Little Miss Siskiyou County was to give him a quick blowjob in a closet.

  I thought that by getting out of the pageant circle I’d be safe from all that—creepy men looking at me, the touches I didn’t want when no one was looking, the comments when they thought no one else was in earshot.

  But then there was Mr. McIntyre. Dad’s business partner. At least that’s how Dad talked about him. In reality, he was Dad’s boss.

  I learned that one night when Dad and Mom retired early after an especially long night of drinking Mr. McIntyre’s special Kentucky bourbon. He so kindly offered to clean up since Mom had cooked.

  Mom ordered me to help him before stumbling off to bed. I didn’t think anything of it. Mr. McIntyre had been coming over for several months by then and had never been inappropriate before. Not even any lingering looks.

  He started off by asking me about school. What grade I was in. What my favorite subject was. If I was thinking about colleges. The same sort of thing adults always asked.

  Until he asked if I had a boyfriend. Even that was a question I’d been asked before, so it didn’t seem weird. At first. It only started feeling off when I told him I didn’t have one.

  “I don’t believe that,” he scoffed, nudging me on the shoulder where I stood beside him drying dishes after he washed them. “Not with that body. I bet all the boys’ pants get tight when you’re around.”

  Yeah, my comfort level went from acceptable straight to zero at that point. Not that that was going to dissuade Creepy McCreepster.