Page 1 of Unbound
It’s early. I shouldn’t be at her apartment, but I am. After last night’s show in Portland, I haven’t slept and neither has Beck, but here he is, driving my drunk ass around to the one place I can’t stop myself from going to. I tell myself a thousand times to leave her alone but I can’t, my head insistent I should be here.
“I don’t understand why you can’t just fuck that chick at the bar tonight,” Beck mumbles, throwing the car into park.
Lincoln’s asleep in the backseat, passed out with a hoodie over his face. I turn and look over my shoulder at him when the car comes to a stop and he mumbles something indecipherable.
Drawing in a deep breath, I want to tell Beck to leave. Drive away and never look back, but I can’t. As much as I wish this was about wanting her, it’s not. It’s need. Ineedto see her.
Opening the door, I drag my feet as I walk, loose gravel scraping over pavement.
I knock once, twice, three times, and she opens the door still wearing her nightgown, barely awake.
“Jesus.” She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. She’s used to this, the moments where I come knocking. My liquor-glossy eyes searching in the blue dawn glow for something. “Why are you here again?”
My breathing kicks up.
Drunk on ego, I step inside and she backs up two steps. I tower over Sophie’s small frame, staring down at her beauty. Her blonde curls are tied up in a messy knot on her head and I struggle to not reach out her.
I fall, not in a literal sense, but looking at her, I do, again and again. “I think you knowwhyI’m here.” Like I’m relaxed, I sit down on the couch to the left of the door. I’m not relaxed. I’m anything but relaxed.
She follows, standing before me, searching muddy water for answers she knows she’s not getting.
Her posture straightens, tensing. She’s tired—of this, of me, of everything. I’m tired of her too. I don’t want this. I want to let go.
I grab her hands and pull her down so she’s sitting on my lap. My right hand moves up her thigh, and she stops it just as quickly, white fingertips gripping a bloody knuckled embrace. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m high,” I whisper into the curve of her neck. “Fly with me….”
She says nothing and her body tenses.
There’s a subtle shake to her head when I raise my hips, my erection digging into her side. “Please, baby… nobody gets me off like you do.”
“What about Berkley?” Both hands move to my chest and she’s pushing back, trying to get away. “Or Jessie or whoever else you fuck? Were they busy?”
“C’mon.” I push forward, ignoring her. Sophie’s hands fall away, but she’s not giving in. “You know you want to. It’s what we’re good at. Fucking and fighting,” I tell her.
“No, we’re not.You’regood at using me when you want something.”
There’s truth to that for sure.
I shift my weight and flip her over so her back meets the soft leather cushions. “Are you going to or what? I ain’t got all day.” I press my hips into hers. I know she feels what she does to me. The hardness, the want, the desire to lose myself in her, even if it’s just for a few minutes. For me to ever truly escape from anything, it’s inside her.
I kiss her neck, shoulders, hands wandering up her side, my body shaking with the need to be with her in this way.
“Rawley….” I know by that long pause, it’s a no. She’s not going to let me in and she’s certainly not going to let me fuck her.
It pisses me off and she knows it, reaching for my hand, as if that will make the denial easier.
“I’m supposed to be at your mom’s house tonight. Why don’t we go. Together.”
Together? Why would she want to go anywhere together with me?
With a heavy sigh, I sit up and then I reach around the back of her and take a fist full of her hair in my hand and make her look at me. I blink heavily, fighting what I’m about to say to her. “Why would we do that? You fucked someone else.”
Anger swells in her eyes and she knocks my hand away. “I’m so tired of this shit, Rawley. Grow the fuck up. Who cares if I slept with someone else? It was three years ago and you’ve fucked half the goddamn town since then so stop acting like a piece of shit and grow up!” She slaps me across the face. Hard. She might as well have closed her goddamn fist because my ears ring.
Blood pools in my mouth and I stand, needing distance. “I’m not going to that stupid fucking party.”
“YOUR MOM IS gonna beat your ass if we go in there and you look like this.”
