After Forever (17 page)

Finally, I could take it no longer.

between sin and suicide

Can you come over?
I sent the text.
 

It was two in the morning and I’d had a nightmare, spent the last hour working myself into exhaustion, sweating and trembling and unable to do one more pushup. Yet still I was pacing the living room, near tears from exhaustion, nightmare images flashing through my head. I ached from the need to find release. As many nightmares as I had, I suffered equally from wet dreams of Eden, of Ever. Once, horribly, of both of them at once.
 

I’d vomited after that dream and drunk myself into a stupor, missing an entire day of classes and work.
 

But the wet dreams continued, just like the nightmares, and I could never ejaculate in the dreams, and I’d wake up hard, on the verge of coming, but unable to finish it, unable to bring myself to touch myself. So I ached, exhausted, weak, seeing Ever in every face, Eden in others.
 

Sure. B right there
, she texted back after ten minutes.
 

She rapped softly on my door twenty minutes later, and I let her in. Wearing a torn gray Champion sweatshirt and red knee-length spandex, hair in a sloppy braid, dirty white cross-trainers, she looked like she wasn’t in any better shape than I was. She stank of sweat, and her eyes were heavy-lidded, exhausted. I shut the door behind her, went to the fridge, and got her a Gatorade. She took it, uncapped it, drank greedily.

 
Lowering the bottle, she eyed me as she wiped a wrist across her mouth. “You look like shit.”

“Feel worse.”

“So you call me?” She sounded resentful.

I drank from my own bottle, wiped sweat off my forehead. “I tried not to. For as long as I could.”

“And now?”

“I’m not sleeping. I have nightmares.”

She laughed bitterly. “Me, too.” Her eyes roved over my shirtless torso. “Looks like you’re coping the same way I am. You’ve put on muscle.”

“So have you.” She had, too. Her legs, encased in skin-tight red, were pillars of defined muscle, and even under the baggy sweatshirt I could see that she’d been working out as hard as I had been.

She just snorted. “Yeah, right. I’ve been pigging out as often as I go the gym. I ate half a pizza by myself yesterday. Then ice cream. Pie today. Lots and lots of booze. It’s a miracle I don’t need a forklift for my ass.” She sidled past me to throw away her bottle, and my eyes were drawn to the ass that she claimed required a forklift.

“Your ass looks pretty tight to me.” Might as well admit it.

She’d been in the act of drinking the last drop of Gatorade when I spoke, and she froze, then slowly and deliberately dropped the bottle into the trash can. “Now we come to it.” She turned around. “You think my ass is tight?”
 

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

“And that’s why you texted me, right?” She glared at me, her hair coming loose from the braid.
 

I frowned. “I thought we weren’t going to pretend?”

She took an angry step toward me. “But that doesn’t mean you can avoid me for a month and then text me at two in the morning like I’m a cheap piece-of-ass booty call!”

“Jesus, Eden. That’s not why I asked you to come over. I just needed—”

“Yeah, you needed. I
know
what you needed. That
is
why you texted me.”

I turned away from her, tempted to put my fist through a wall. Instead, I whirled back, pointing at her with an accusatory finger. “Yeah, well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Yeah. I am. I’m here. I knew what you wanted, and I still came running. So you might as well get on with it.” She ripped her sweatshirt off, revealing a sports bra that matched her pants, red and tight.
 

She curled her fingers under the bottom edge of the bra and started to peel it off. I lunged across the space between us, grabbed her wrists, and forced her hands away, pulled her to me. Or, I tried. She exerted all her strength, pushing me away. Holy fucking hell, the girl was a goddamned powerhouse. I bared my teeth and felt a feral energy ripple through me. I curled her inward, to me, drawing her inexorably to my chest, and she didn’t give an inch, her entire body an unbending iron bar.
 

Her eyes were furious, snapping with electricity. “
Let…me…go
.” She began to push back, and was very nearly able to do so.

“No. You’re not cheap. That’s not how this is.” I held her in place, but it took all my strength to do so. “Goddamn it, Eden. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m sorry.”

That broke her anger off at the knees. “Wh-what?” She didn’t give, though, refusing to close in.

“I said I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like…like it was a booty call. Like I only care when I need…that.”

“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
 

“No!” I let go of her wrists and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She was still hard and tensed, and she tilted her head up to meet my eyes from within the circle of my arms. “I swear it’s not. It’s…you. I can’t get away from the fact that I need…you. You’re all there is, and I…need you. It’s fucked up.
I’m
fucked up. I can’t sleep, and I—I sleep when I’m with you. Whatever it is between us, as fucked up as it is, it’s all I have that’s not…the craziness.”

She finally went soft. “The craziness?”

I swallowed hard. “I’m losing it, Eden,” I whispered. “I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours at a time in—in a fucking month. I’m seeing shit. If you could see the pieces I’m drawing, the dreams I’m having…it’s fucked up. Crazy shit. I’m—
fuck
. I’m scared.” Those two words were an admission torn from the shredded core of my soul.

“Me, too.” I felt the words whispered against my bare chest rather than heard them.

“What are you scared of?”

“You. This. This…ending.” She leaned against me now, rested her cheek against my breastbone. “I’m afraid I need it too much. I’m afraid because I know, whatever happens with you, with Ever, this will end for me. And I don’t know what I’ll do. You’ve never pretended that what we do is making love, but I’ll still never be able to go back to cheap sex and quick fucks. I’m afraid because all this has changed me, and I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s over.”

“Listen to me, Eden.” I let her go and touched my finger to her chin, lifted her face so she looked me in the eyes. “Part of me…some part of me wishes I was…free. So I could show you how much you’re worth.” It was so,
so
hard to say that.

She ripped her face away, tucked her chin down and wept. “Goddamn you, Cade. You can’t say shit like that to me. It’s not fair.”

I had nothing to say in comfort, nothing that would change the truth. So I did the only thing I
could
do. I took her damp cheeks in my palms and lifted her face to mine, kissed her. That kiss, it was a dangerous kiss.
 

It rode some fine, nearly invisible line between sin and suicide.
 

But I, lost in the foolish tidal swell of her pain, drowning in the mad oceanic power of my desperation, kissed her anyway. It was a long, slow kiss, bordering on sweet. I kissed her because I wanted to push away her agony, even if just for a moment; I couldn’t take her pain on top of my own. I couldn’t handle what was inside me, much less take anything else from her, so I sought instead to kiss away the hurt that plagued both of us.
 

When she was breathless and needed oxygen, she shivered away from my kiss and sobbed into my mouth, touched my face with her fingertips as if blind and seeking to know my features by touch. Her hands trembled, and she was panting for breath, gasping for control of tears I didn’t quite understand. And then her gentle fingers turned into demanding claws, pulling my face to hers and scouring my mouth with hers. My hands drew down her face, brushed away the tears from her cheeks and smoothed down the back of her neck, beneath the braid. Her shoulder were bare, and I touched them. Her waist was bare, and I touched it. Up her spine, to the strap of her sports bra. She kissed me, and I kissed her, and I peeled away the crimson barrier between our flesh. She lifted her arms, and her heavy tits fell free from the pinioning fabric. Her palms skated over my deltoids and down my spine, and then found the elastic waistband of my shorts.
 

Our kiss reached a plateau, and we pulled away, both of us topless. Her eyes searched me, and then I watched as renewed emotion ravaged her expression, soul-searing vulnerability and some fierce hunger I knew I’d never be able to sate. She slammed into me, her teeth crushing my lips and her hands roving my body. I met her, slid my palms down her ribs to her hips and began rolling down the second skin of her workout pants. She kicked off her shoes as I broke away from her mouth and kissed down her body, between her breasts, and then she was naked but for ankle socks, which she toed off clumsily, holding my head as I kissed the hollow where hip met thigh and over to her soft mound.
 

Before I could taste her, she was sinking down and bowling me backward to the carpet. She landed on top of me and kissed me, missed, her lips landing on the corner of my mouth, and then she was jerking down my shorts, pulling the elastic away from my erection, and then before I could react she had me in her mouth, deep, hot and wet and tight and sucking.
 

I curled forward, wrapped my arms beneath her armpits and jerked her bodily up my torso, on top of me, to me. Rolled with her, hovering over her, pinning her arms above her head. I lowered my face to hers, kissed her far, far too gently, feeling her soft, pliable flesh beneath me, her lush curves that sheathed iron muscle. I let go of one of her hands, and that hand found the back of my neck, tangled through my hair in that uniquely Eden gesture, and I found the tail of her braid, tugged the hair tie free and carefully worked the braid undone as our kiss reached a fevered pitch. She lifted her head off the carpet as I combed through her hair with my fingers and spread it out beneath her.
 

My palm cupped her cheek, her fingers in the hair at my nape, and then we slid our hips together in unison and I entered her, and we were moving together, sinking slowly together there on the carpet, kiss unbroken, bodies moving in near-perfect sync. And then she arched her spine and tipped her head back, and I kissed her throat, burying deep with a slow hard stroke. She pushed my head down, and I sucked her turgid nipple into my mouth, and she held me there, heels digging into the carpet to find purchase, seeking to push harder against me, to sink me deeper.

“Oh, god, Cade…yes…” she whispered—

—and then gasped, a sound of horror, and I lifted my face to look at her. She was moving with me still but staring at the ceiling, brows furrowed, fright her only expression.
 

“No. No…” She shook her head. “Off, get off! Not like this.” She pushed at me, shoving frantically.

I slid out of her and backed away, confused. “Eden, what—?”

She rolled to her stomach, drew her knees beneath her belly, a position of supplication, and then lifted up on all fours and turned to look at me over her shoulder. “Like this.”
 

I was sitting on my shins behind her, aching, throbbing. “Eden…” I rose to my knees, touched her ass. “I don’t understand what’s wrong.”

She hung her head in frustration, then lifted it again to look at me. “Don’t you understand what was happening? What we were doing? Are you really that oblivious?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Come on. I need it. I need to come.”

I shuffled forward, flush against her. She pushed back against me, then reached back between her legs and found my erection, guided me, slipped the tip inside her, then rocked back to sink me deep. I groaned, rocking forward. She went down to her elbows, raising her hips so I was even deeper, and rolled back to meet my thrusts.

And then, like a bolt of lightning, I realized. I faltered in my rhythm. “Shit, Eden.”

She pushed into me. “Now you get it. You see what was happening?” I started to pull away, but she rocked her body. “Don’t stop. Not now. Just…finish. Like this.”

I hesitated. “Eden, I—”

“God
damn
it, Cade! Shut up and fuck me!”
 

I pulled out, abrupt, and stood up, backed away from her. “Just wait a second! Not like this, Eden.”

She stood up, following me. She stood face to face me, both of us panting. She was angry and I was, too, only it was mixed with hurt and confusion.
 

“This is where we are, Cade.” She swept a hand at the floor. “That…it can’t happen.
I
can’t let it happen.
You
can’t let it happen.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t—” I took another step back, away from her, toward the kitchen.
 

She followed me, not letting me get away. “You think we can just…stop? We’ve tried. You’ve tried.” She pointed at the floor where we’d been, her finger stabbing angrily. “
That
was fucking dangerous. But I know you, and I know me, and I know that, right now, we can’t get away from each other. Nothing has changed.”

“But it has changed.” She pushed me, hard, and I stumbled backward. My knees hit a kitchen chair, and I sat down. “We can’t keep doing this.”

She stood over me. “So you want me to leave?”

I thought of watching her dress, watching her leave, knowing she wouldn’t come back. Knowing, if she went out that door right now, it would be a knife severing the tenuous thread binding us. And I couldn’t bear that. “No.” I was a coward, a goddamned coward and a fool. “Don’t go.”

She took a step forward, her eyes on mine, and then straddled my knees. Put her hands on my shoulders and her feet on either side of the chair. Pushed me down, and I knew her game. I took her waist in my hands, and she lifted up on her toes. We both paused, hesitated, and then I was driving up into her, sinking in, and she was settling down onto me. She put her feet on the rungs of the chair that ran sideways between the front and back chair legs, hands on my shoulders for balance, and lifted up. Sank down. Head tipped back, eyes on me, she arched her spine, shoving her tits toward me. I cupped them, let her move.