Brutal Game (11 page)

She moaned like a crazy woman when he stroked her there, suddenly breathing so fast she could be hyperventilating. “God. Please.”

“Say my name.”

“Flynn. Fuck,
please,
Flynn.”

He gave her exactly what she needed—tight, rough circles falling into sync with his punishing cock, his plundering thumb.

She was long gone, half-aware of the mantra of her voice, a pitiful chant of “Please, please, please.” Mere seconds and she was moaning, trembling, begging with every cell in her body.

“Good girl. Come on that cock.”

It was that familiar praise that did her in, plummeting her headlong into oblivion.

Through the quaking of her release she felt him succumb to his own. His cock drove as deep as it went, fingers digging into her hips and promising bruises. Any pain she endured was worth the price to feel the familiar rhythm of his hips as he emptied inside her, to hear the pained groans as pleasure turned him helpless.

Their bodies fell still, rocked in tiny frissons by their pumping hearts and gulping lungs. When he pulled out, Laurel felt the dirty-sweet heat of their mingled sex wetting her savaged panties.

He stretched out on his back, eyes shut, one arm cocked above his head. Laurel got up to use the bathroom and abandon the last of her clothes. When she joined him on the bed, she was spent enough to not overthink things and to take what she wanted—contact. Skin to skin, so quiet after the force of the storm.

She laid her arm across his chest, feeling his heart beating under her palm, under his warm, slick skin. So close, and yet he still felt miles away.

“I miss you,” she whispered.

“What’s that mean?”

“You feel so far away… I understand why. I’m not asking you to be any different. But I miss you all the same.”

“I need time.”

“You can have all you want. Do you need space?”

“I dunno yet.”

“You can have that too. Just say.”

“I don’t know what I need. I’m not used to being this fucking…” He struggled for the right word.

“Vulnerable?” Laurel hazarded, just as he settled on, “Torn up.”

She held him tighter.

“I’m gonna tell you something right now,” he said, “and I want you to remember it every time I’m angry with you, for as long as we’re together.”

“All right.”

“I wouldn’t be this ripped up if I didn’t love you. I don’t waste my time feeling pissed or hurt or let down unless the person who managed to make me feel it actually matters to me.”

“Okay.” She wished it were more of a consolation.

“I’m not looking to change anything we’ve got. I just need to figure out what the fuck’s up with me. Or to sit and stew in it for however long it takes me to get over it.”

She nodded.

“You’re stuck with me,” he said, “same as always. Even if I decide I need some space. You prepared to believe that?”

Again she nodded, hoping it was true. No matter what he told her, if they took some time apart she’d never quit worrying if he might decide to end things. Not for a minute. She trusted him with her life, but this felt like another matter entirely.

Still, she’d suck it up and play it cool, if that was what he needed.

Even if inside she’d be dying anew every hour of the day.

F
lynn lay awake
for ages after Laurel dropped off, mind buzzing despite the release, flitting from resentment to guilt and back, endlessly, the latter steadily eclipsing the former.

He wasn’t proud of what had happened tonight.

Though he didn’t doubt Laurel had been up for it, even enjoyed it… He shouldn’t have gone there. His kink was barbaric, the sex he liked best cruel and crass, but he’d never done that before—let his true emotions feed his fantasies. It felt unmistakably disturbing in the wake of the orgasm. Shame settled around him like a bad odor, one he’d not caught a whiff of in ages.

It was tempting to blame the alcohol, but too easy. Too cowardly. It was all on him. No matter how badly he’d needed the relief of sex, he shouldn’t have taken things there, not while he’d been upset with her. It didn’t matter that she’d welcomed it, or that she’d not used their safe word, or that she’d come. What mattered was how different it had felt, and if he’d picked up on that, there was no doubt she had as well. Normally when they got rough he wouldn’t hesitate to slap her ass or her thighs, call her a bitch or a cunt or any other mean thing, but something had held him back. He’d known it would’ve been wrong, feeling the way he had. That should’ve been warning enough. Even with consent, even with a history as intimate as theirs, there were limits within the limits. He’d stopped short of the harshest ones, but it didn’t make him feel any more justified now that his sweat and come had cooled.

He’d brought actual anger into bed with them. He
felt
actual anger toward her still, and laying here stewing in it with her body so close felt as toxic as the guilt.

He slipped from the covers and found his jeans and sweater in the dark, got his boots laced in the strips of light slipping in between the window blinds. He scrawled a note by the glow of the microwave clock.
On the roof. Need to think.
He set it atop his pillow, hoping she wouldn’t find occasion to read it, or to discover he’d left her.

He locked up and headed for the stairwell, hiked all the way up until the steps went from carpeted concrete to clanging metal, ending at the heavy door that led out onto the roof. It was never locked, though tonight it was ajar to boot. He pushed it out, welcomed a cool breeze on his face.

It smelled like spring. Like spring and…menthols. He glanced upwind, to the frayed folding lawn chair propped at the building’s far corner. A tumble of wavy auburn hair moved with the wind, seeming to snatch at the blue smoke drifting in Flynn’s direction. He crossed the roof.

“Heather.”

She whipped around, peering at him over the back of the chair. “Mike, Jesus. You fuckin’ scared me. What’re you doin’ up here so late?”

He sat on the ledge opposite her, planting his elbows on his knees. “Could ask you the same thing.”

“New Year’s resolution—no more smoking indoors. I figure I’ll smoke less if I have to come all the way up here.” She had a glass of wine in one hand, ashed her butt with the other. “Plus the landlord’s been on my ass.”

“You know it’s March, right?”

“It was too cold to start in January.”

He rolled his eyes but couldn’t hold back a smile. “Good for you.”

“Now you. What’re you up here for?”

“I dunno. Just needed some space.”

“Laurel sleeping over?”

He nodded.

“Get your ass off that ledge. Makes me fucking itchy.”

He moved to sit on the roof itself, back against the short wall.

Heather took a drag, eyes narrowed at him. “You two all right?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“You think?”

“She’s fine. She’s just about over it. You know, the pregnancy and all that.”

“The miscarriage.”

He winced. “Yeah. That.”

“And what about you?”

Flynn shrugged. “I’m glad she’s feeling better.”

“You’re such a lousy fuckin’ liar.”

“It’s true.” He was glad Laurel felt better. He just still felt like shit himself, was all.

She sipped her wine. “For real—why’re you up here, Mike?”

“I dunno. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Is one of you pissed at the other?”

He shrugged again, as good as nodding to someone who knew him as well as his sister did.

“Who?”

“Me. At her. Not pissed, though. Just… Fuck if I know. Annoyed, maybe.”

“About what?”

“Just… I dunno. That she’s over it, and it feels like I’m stuck back where we were two weeks ago. And annoyed because she still has no goddamn idea what she would’ve done about it, if the pregnancy hadn’t ended.”

“Why’s that annoying?”

“Because how the fuck do you
not
know?
How do you lose a baby that way and not realize afterward what you felt about it?”

“Because miscarriage is fuckin’ confusing as shit,” Heather said, and took another long pull off her cigarette. “Take it from me. I had three—two babies I wasn’t ready for and another I really goddamn wanted. You feel everything, no matter what you think you should be feeling. You feel guilty and sad and responsible, every fuckin’ thing.”

“Laurel said she felt relieved.”

“Of course she did. It made the decision for her. I don’t blame her—it’s bound to be a shitty-ass choice to make. So what did you feel?”

“Sad.”

“And relieved?”

“No, not really. Just sad. And a little angry.”

“At Laurel?”

“No, of course not.” And was he actually angry at her now? Not really. What he felt was
betrayed,
only it wasn’t. He felt left behind. He still felt lost, and she was busy finding normal again. Better than normal, even.

“So what’re you really angry at, then?” Heather demanded.

He huffed a big, noisy breath, annoyed all over again at this interrogation. “Like I even know… Just mad she had to go through that. Mad that she got her decision taken away from her.”

“Mad she didn’t get to decide.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Mad that fate made the call, and she was helpless to do anything about it.”

“Sure.”

Heather smiled in the dimness and a car honked down in the street.
“You
feel helpless.”

“Maybe,” he allowed, rankled.

“Of course you do. And of course that fuckin’ hurts. Every other thing in your life, you get some say in it. Even in the pregnancy—Laurel would’ve let you speak your piece if you’d been willing to. But then losing it?
That,
you had zero control of.”

He made a face, thinking she was on to something but not happy to admit it.

“You couldn’t
protect it,”
Heather said, marking the thought with a stabbing motion of her glowing butt in his direction, squinting with triumph or maybe just from the smoke. “That’s your currency in this life, Mike. You’re the strong one. The one who takes no shit, and takes care of the people you love. That tiny little speck in her belly—you couldn’t protect that.”

“I don’t even know if I wanted her to keep it, necessarily.” That was true, despite what he’d told Laurel in the heat of the moment.

“No, but that doesn’t matter, see? Even if Laurel had decided to get an abortion, that was still in your control, because you gave her your blessing, whatever she decided, right?”

“Yeah. I suppose.”

“But neither of you got to decide. It just went
poof
. And that stole away your power.”

He nodded, grudgingly accepting that Heather might have him pegged. He didn’t like thinking that anybody had a better handle on his shit than he did, but her words had loosened something that’d been knotted up inside him.

It wasn’t the baby he was mourning, was it? Heather was right. It was the control he felt robbed of.

So what did you do? Fucked your girlfriend like a stranger you couldn’t give two shits about.
That wasn’t his way, not even with an actual one-night stand. Flynn might be a sick fucker, but he was a gentleman, in his way.

Not tonight, I wasn’t.
Tonight he’d been the sort of man he’d be more than happy to punch in the mouth.

He leaned forward, gesturing for Heather’s cigarette. “Gimme a taste of that.”

“No fuckin’ chance.” She sucked the final gasp of life out of the butt and crushed its corpse under her sneaker, tar paper grinding. She drained her glass and stood, stretching. “The thing is, Mike, all this shit you’re going through? That’s how kids work. From the second they’re conceived, you’re pretty much fucked.”

He laughed, just a little hum of a thing, but it felt good. Another couple tangles came loose in his chest.

“All bets are off with kids,” Heather said, “whether they’re Kim’s age or they’re a little blob of cells. Hell, you’re basically my kid and you’re fuckin’ thirty-three and I still can’t sleep on weekend nights, knowin’ you’re playing chicken with brain damage in that goddamned basement—”

“I got it.”

“Anyhow, the little cell-blob decided for you. You want kids someday, get used to havin’ fuck-all control. Second you start carin’ about somebody on that level is the second you hand all your ammo over to them, throw out your arms, invite ’em to take aim straight at your heart.”

She offered a hand to help Flynn up but he shook his head. “Gonna stay up here a little while longer.”

“Suit yourself. She know where you are?”

“I left a note.”

“She know you’re pissed?”

“Yeah. Probably.” Flynn was unpracticed at hiding his feelings; he said what he thought, never censored himself. That little speech he’d made after the sex couldn’t have been all that reassuring.

“She finds that note, she’s gonna start worrying,” his sister said. “Maybe start wonderin’ what she did wrong, as us fool-ass women are programmed to do. Don’t make her worry a minute longer than she has to.”

He nodded.

She tousled his hair in that way he hated, that way he’d miss like oxygen if she was somehow gone tomorrow. “Night, kid.”

“Night.”

He watched her go. He ought to move to the chair, but the roof felt right under his ass, cold and hard and awkward. All the things he’d been to Laurel, tonight.

She’s gonna start worrying.
Yeah, probably. Being a dick on occasion was one thing, but tonight had been something else entirely. It’d be selfish to stay up here, wallowing, knowing if she woke he’d only wind up hurting her more.

He got to his feet, feeling old and achy, feeling every hit he’d ever taken and every hour he’d ever labored in his muscles and bones and heart, and deserving every pang. He crossed the roof, scanning the city, feeling as determined as he did lost as he hauled the door open and stepped inside.

Two flights down, he unlocked the apartment as quietly as he could, toed off his boots and shed his jacket and sweater and jeans. As his eyes adjusted, he looked to the bed. The note sat where he’d left it atop his pillow. Laurel had moved though, turned over, her pale arm slung across the dark bedspread. He should have been here, should have felt the sweet weight of that arm as it sought him in the dark.

Too fucking bad.
He couldn’t fix that lost chance, not any more than he could’ve fixed things when she’d lost the pregnancy. If control really was what he valued, it was the present he ought to be focused on.

He crept around the bed, grabbed the note and crumpled it into a ball, small and hard as a marble, and tossed it in the trash under the sink. He used the bathroom and washed his hands, ran a wet washcloth over his face. The fan sounded so loud, his thoughts so quiet at long last.

The sheets were warm as he slid beneath the covers on Laurel’s side of the bed.

“Hey,” he whispered, seeking her body, his chest meeting her back.

“Mm.” A pause. “You’re freezing.”

“I needed the can.” Not a lie, thankfully.

“You smell like cigarettes.”

He didn’t reply, grateful she was half asleep.

“Want me to budge over?”

Though he was wedged on a narrow sliver of mattress, he said, “No. Stay right here.” He wrapped his arm tight around her, warmed through when her hand covered his at her heart.

She said nothing for a long time, but he could tell from the subtle tension in her body, she wasn’t asleep. Finally she whispered, “You back?”

She didn’t mean back in the apartment. He knew precisely what she meant.

“Yeah, I’m back.”

“Good.”

“Sorry I left.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t go away again.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “Now get some sleep, honey.”