Sarah Mine (6 page)

“Well, can I use your washing machine before you do? I have a serious lack of clothes.”

She nodded as she climbed off her bed. “It’s off the kitchen.”

This time I did grab my camera as she drew her top off. I caught the image of her, arms up, fabric at her head and all that smooth back revealed to me. I ignored her demand to put down the camera and she flung the scrap of peach at me. Cami in flight, one breast bared, lashes lowered, and lips smiling. I had it all in one frame. Hips in mid-shimmy as she pushed the shorts down, her cute little ass flashing me while her hair fell forward. Lowering the camera, I watched her draw on a pair of bright pink panties that didn’t seem to cover much. Setting the camera down on the bed, I walked around intent on getting to her. I plucked the matching bra from her hands and let it fall to the floor as I took her mouth in a kiss, walking her toward the bed.

“Feeling perkier?”

“Feeling something,” I said, sliding the panties down.

“I knew you didn’t mean no.”

I caressed one leg and leaned over her. She was so damn sensual. It was a part of her like her sad eyes, and her artistic talent. “I’m so easy,” I said before lowering my head and kissing her. I swallowed her little, gaspy moan when my fingers reached her warm, slick sex. Her foot slowly ran up my leg, granting me more access.

I knew there had been other men. Hell I’d had other women so who was I to judge. But I wondered if they got this from her, because I couldn’t recall her being like this. The booze and the pills had put a barrier between Sarah and the world, and so those rare sober moments in her bed had been exquisite. Raising my head, I watched her arch beneath me while her hands caressed my arms up to my shoulders. “Hill,” she moaned as her foot pressed on my ass to get me to move where she wanted me, between her legs and deep inside her.

Damn, I didn’t want pancakes. I wanted her. I wanted her writhing beneath me, her body wet and welcoming. She always felt so good. She was the only woman I had been naked in because of that. It didn’t matter that I’d gotten a vasectomy at nineteen, a raised middle finger at Big Jack. I never went without condoms except with Sarah.

Her artistic fingers caressed down my arm and over the fingers sliding over her. Ah hell, I thought as I grabbed onto my control with both hands. This was not going to last if she joined in. Her cry made my belly tighten as we both teased her, her entrance weeping for me to fill it. God, she was so pretty. Lashes down, cheeks flushed, mouth parted. I took mental pictures of all of her. Her lush, round breasts with their swollen tips, the way her stomach tightened with each roll of her hips. My brain captured the images to be savored later.

Leaning down, I captured one of her nipples in my mouth and my hand caressed down her leg, leaving her to caress herself as she cried out my name. Little nails from her free hand dug into my ass making me grunt at the sensation. Both her hand and foot urged me forward and it was hard to deny those soft, husky cries, or her hand moving between our bodies.
Sarah.

I kissed up her arched neck then gazed down at her face. “Come, baby. You’re so beautiful when you come.” I caressed her cheek. Beneath me, she surged and I felt her body strain against mine as her orgasm sent her over. “So beautiful,” I said as I took another mental picture, then slid between her legs and thrust into her. She was tight and wet from the orgasm and I was unable to resist kissing her.

There was nothing like being inside Sarah. Nothing. I could get lost inside her because she made all my shit disappear. Her damp fingers, warm from her body, curled over the back of my neck as she met my thrusts, her mouth just as hungry as mine. We were a couple of fuck-ups, our lives chaotic and messy, but here…here we were perfect. Did she realize that? That when she was like this and I was deep inside her, we were simply Sarah and Hill instead of the two most notorious screw ups in Pierce Point.

“Hill,” she whispered against my mouth.

“Sarah,” I replied, shifting above her, thrusting harder and faster into her. A tiny smile of approval flicked over her mouth. “Hm, someone wants to be fucked, doesn’t she?”

“Stop talking,” she said as she lifted her head to kiss me. “And yes.”

Reaching down, I grabbed her sweet ass with one hand, adjusted my body, and gave her what she wanted. Ah hell, what I needed too. No thinking, no feeling beyond this. Me taking her and her taking me. She met the hard thrusts of my body as I sought oblivion. Maybe with this orgasm, I thought stupidly, I’d forget all the shit that waited for me beyond her bed.

Still thinking. Not doing this right, William.
I took her mouth and her legs wrapped around my hips. There, I thought as her tongue met mine, there. I drank her needy cries and felt her tighten around me.
Sarah.
I braced my arm above her head and watched her as she came. The way her mouth parted as she whispered my name, the way she hid her eyes from me, the way she spilled around my dick. Perfection.
Sarah
. Then my own orgasm grabbed me by the balls and threw me into the fire of her body.

There, I thought. There I was again.

Sarah

“I’m naked; put that thing away.” I held up my hand to block the shot Hill was preparing to make. I couldn’t remember him ever taking this many photos. Well, there had been that one time at my old place.

“Love the camera, babe.” He straddled my hips, holding himself above me. A sight to behold was a very naked Hill with only a camera in his hands.

Why all the photos? Was he never coming back when he left this time? If gossip was right and Big Jack died soon, there was no reason for Hill to return. Who was he going to piss off? His mother? “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why all the pictures?”

He lowered the camera so I lowered my arm. A faraway look came over his face as he stared at the wall. His grey eyes were dark like storm clouds. What the hell had happened to him on his last job? Something had. I wasn’t an idiot. When he went some place particularly bad and saw horrible things through his camera then shared those pictures with the world, he always came back to Pierce Point.

He traced my mouth with a finger, then caressed down my throat, stopping over my heart. “You’re so wondrously, beautifully alive,” he answered in a low voice.

“Hill,” I whispered.

“I need,” a slow exhale made his shoulders rise and fall, “to see something vibrant and alive in my camera, Sarah, or I’ll never touch it again.”

I sat up and eased the camera from his hand. Gently, I set it aside. God help me if I damaged his precious toy. No, not a toy. It was his pen and paper. “What happened, Hill?”

“Hell. Hell happened and I was the asshole taking pictures of people suffering, of people mourning their loved ones, of people dying. There was this boy, he was maybe four, and he was all alone amongst all this death. And what did I do? I took his picture. What a hero. He was someone’s baby and I was an asshole.”

I flattened a hand over his heart. “Show me.”

“What? Why do you want to see that shit?”

Because he had. And it was haunting him. I knew about ghosts. I had my own. “Show me, William.”

He stared at me, then climbed off the bed. He crouched down beside his backpack, staring at it before he pulled out a small laptop. I retrieved his shirt, pulling it on as his computer made a bong powering up. After a few clicks on the trackpad, he handed me the laptop and walked away.

Sitting on the bed, I looked at the faces that were haunting him. I didn’t know where he had been. Somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. Volcano? Mudslide? I didn’t know. It was horrific. The defeated faces, the destroyed homes, the death. So much death.
Oh, Hill.
Then I found someone’s baby. It made my heart thump hard to see that tiny body empty of life. He should be playing, laughing, throwing his arms around his mother in an enthusiastic hug. Instead he lay there with a few flecks of mud on his cheek, as if something had sent him flying above the disaster. An arm positioned wrong, a bare foot also splattered with mud. No blood, just…nothing but a shell.

I closed the computer and gasped for breath. Something hard twisted through me. Fear. Guilt. I grabbed the phone beside my bed and dialed. As the other end of the line rang, I knew this was a mistake. A horrible, horrible mistake. What was I going to say?

“Sarah?”

My breath caught in my chest at being caught. I hadn’t talked to Donovan Riley in years. I had stopped taking his calls, the emails he sent were automatically deleted, and I returned any letters I received.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I shook my head as I thought of that small body. “No. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You sound weird.”

“I saw something. And it wasn’t pretty.” I ran my hand over Hill’s computer. “I’m sorry I called.”

Donovan was quiet. “Why did you? I’m glad you did. You’ve been avoiding me for years. It’s pissing me off.”

“Is…” No, this was so wrong. I had made promises. Promises to not ruin anyone else’s life like I had trashed mine. And yet that picture. Somebody’s baby.

“He’s fine, Sarah,” Donovan said in a quiet voice. “Napping. I can wake him up. Do you want to talk to him? You should, you know. He wants to talk to you.”

“No.” Shit. God damn, what would I do then? “No.”

“Sarah…”

“Bye.” I hung up, then turned off the ringer, knowing Donovan would call back. Because that’s what nice guys did, even to women who had fucked up their lives, women who had put innocents in harm’s way because they were selfish. Grabbing Hill’s camera, I went looking for him and found him in the living room.

“I need alcohol.” He was slouched on the couch, his eyes closed. Reaching out, I brushed my fingers over his short hair. He heaved a weary sigh. I wanted to wrap him up in my arms and protect him from this.

“Sorry. I got nothing.” I sat down beside him and was surprised when he rested his head on my shoulder. This wasn’t something we did. The most vulnerable we had ever been with each other was getting naked. I ran my finger over the side of the lens and made myself ease away from him. “What did you do after? When their stories were captured, what did you do? Can I guess? You put your camera back in your knapsack, set it in place and joined whomever was helping them. You scooped up somebody’s baby and carried him out of the dirt. Maybe you found his mom, maybe you didn’t, but I bet you looked for her. You dug out bodies; you probably handed out water.”

“Huh.”

Lifting the camera up, I aimed at his face. The camera was heavy and cool, but was an extension of Hill. Once he had taken his first batch of pictures, his camera had always been with him. He revealed truths with it, some harsh, some beautiful. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong.” He glared at me but I knew I was right.

I took the picture and was sure it was out of focus. “Liar.”

He took the camera and set it away. “You think you’re so smart.” He grabbed my arm and tugged so I sprawled across his lap. “That didn’t keep me from being the asshole with a camera, Sarah.”

“You told their story. You’ve shown them to the world so they won’t be forgotten.”

“I didn’t send in the pictures. I couldn’t. So you’re wrong. I’ve done dick all.”

Scooting up so I sat on his lap, I studied his gorgeous face. “Look at me, William.” His lashes lifted as he met my gaze. “It’s okay.” A little whisper told me to lay my ghosts on the table too. Sharing with Hill scared me though. Too many disappointments fell into my lap because of him. This, whatever this that was happening right now, wasn’t going to last. Because he would leave me again. He always left. It didn’t matter that he came back because it was the leaving that killed little pieces inside me. And I had so few pieces left that I was clinging greedily to them.

As a teenager, I had been dazzled by Hill. It had taken a while for it to sink in that I was
not
in a relationship with handsome, bad boy Hill Deveraux. I was a stop. A port in the storm. One of many girls he’d fuck then leave. And I wasn’t strong so he’d come back, flinging scraps of attention at me. I had been starving for it, from him or anyone, so I had grabbed them until more and more of me had disappeared. Finally there had been nothing left. A bottle of flavored vodka and a packet of pills. One pill, one shot, one pill, one shot. Until there had been nothing left. No pills, no vodka, no Sarah. Just a crying baby who had deserved better.

There had been nothing accidental in my overdose. It hadn’t been spontaneous, but meticulously planned out for years. After every beating I survived, every hangover I woke up to and every time I woke up emotionally wrung out from being me. I’d lie in my bed and plan it. A way out. A way to stop it all. Nothing that would hurt because I was tired of pain. Something simple, pain-free; drugs and alcohol were my method. All that had been missing was my rock bottom.

As I looked at Hill, I saw shadows of that sad, desperate hurt inside him. He was strong, stronger than me. “William Hilton Deveraux,” I said quietly as I pressed my forehead against his. “You are not me.”

With an inch between our eyes, I could see the black striations that made his eyes look darker at times. “You will not wake up and wonder what day it is, whose bed you’re in, and reach for the open pill container on the nightstand.” He sucked in his breath and rested his hands on my hips. “You’re not going to drown in bottles. Because you’re not me. So it’s okay to shuck the armor and ghosts because they won’t eat you up. Rage, mourn. It’s okay to get lost in the storm. I know the way out,” I whispered in his ear as I wrapped my arms around him. Strong arms banded around me and he pressed his face into my neck. I held him as long as he needed me to and when that wasn’t enough for him, I gave him my body.

It was, I knew, the beginning of the end, because he would not let himself be vulnerable before anyone, especially me. He didn’t want my love. It was a chain that held him to a place he hated. It was a tether to someone he didn’t want. I called in sick. I gave him everything.

And in the morning he was gone.