Page 39 of Fractured

Ravenmaster: Not telling you is more fun than telling you.

Cole slows the vehicle to a stop and I tuck my phone away in my purse. “Ready?” he asks while studying me. Shit. It didn’t occur to me that I should be acting more shaken up by what happened. Cole is one of those who it felt natural to lower my walls with.

“I’m okay, I promise,” I reassure him. He only studies me for a moment longer before helping me out of the car. This time, we clasp hands and walk to the ice cream parlor. It’s one of those mom-and-pop shops where you know everything is made from fresh ingredients. You can smell the freshly made cones before we even open the door, and as soon as we walk in, the smell is mingled with the sweetness of ice cream.

The teenager behind the register eyes us, but doesn’t say anything. She clearly has an attitude about working. Cole and I peruse the flavors, but I already know what I’m getting. Chocolate chip cookie dough. I’m not sure if I even like it or not, but it’s what I’ve ordered every time I’ve had ice cream since my parents adopted me. My mother would ask me what I wanted and I never knew, so she would order for me.

With an ice-cream-filled waffle cone in each hand, Cole opens my door and helps me slide into the car. After a short drive, we arrive at a park with a man-made pond. As I get out of the car, I let out a deep sigh and relax into the normalcy of what we’re doing. At least I try to, I’m not sure if I even really know how.

The moment I hand Cole’s cone over, he picks up my hand again, leading me in a lazy stroll along the path. I lick at my cone slowly and catch Cole watching me with a keen eye. Men… they can’t help but have dirty thoughts when seeing a woman lick the creamy dessert. I play it up and hold his eye contact while licking up the side and swirling my tongue over the top.

Cole’s eyes sparkle while watching me, and I can’t help but laugh at the response my teasing gets. He releases my hand and adjusts himself, not even trying to hide it. “Bloody hell, Luv. Have some mercy. I already told you I wouldn’t act on all of my teasing tonight.”

“I don’t know. It seems fair I tease you back,” I say right before sticking my tongue out at him.

He turns to me and licks the ice cream from his bottom lip. An expression of mischief tugs at the corner of his eyes. “Careful where you stick that, or I’ll have to put it to better use,” he threatens calmly, sending my poorly deprived cunt into a frenzy. Clenching on nothing and begging to be filled by the thick cock making an impressive bulge in his pants. Fucking stalker depriving me of an orgasm and making me extra thirsty.

“Promise?” The single word is breathy and all too suggestive.

The carefree joy melts from his features, heat blazing in his eyes. His free hand slips around my neck and fists the hair at my nape, pulling my hair, so my head tilts back as his face hovers over mine. His lips brush against mine with every word. “If you keep teasing me, I’ll tie your hands behind your back, put you on your knees, and shove my cock down your throat. You better hope you can handle it, because I won’t pull out until I’m coming down your throat. I won’t even stop if you pass out.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Who saw the flirty nerd being so kinky? Okay, I did, and so did every well-versed book slut. My panties are destroyed, and I want to test him so freaking bad. A whimper escapes unbidden, and the intensity vanishes from his eyes. The smirk reappearing. “Now be a good girl and stop teasing,” he says before licking some ice cream from the corner of my mouth. But it honestly could have been drool. I’m not entirely sure.

He releases me and we resume walking. “Thanks for the puddle in my panties,” I murmur under my breath. A sharp slap lands on my ass, and I can’t say it wasn’t deserved. I smile and flutter my eyes at him in my best innocent look. “So how did you get involved in learning cyber security?”

His eyes focus on me and he gives his cone a long lick. Fuck, that would feel good on my… goddamn it. A knowing gleam lights his eyes. This time I’m the one who reaches out for his hand. I’ve started to get used to holding it. I’m silent as I wait for him to answer my question. Sometimes that’s all someone needs to encourage them to open up. The silence and knowing someone is listening on the other side of it. It doesn’t work every time, but more often than not, it’s worked for me.

“My sister and I went into foster care when we were ten. The first home we were in was warm and loving. But after a few years, the couple started having marriage problems and in an attempt to repair things, they decided to stop being foster parents.” He bites into his ice cream. It’s almost to the point of getting down to his cone, but now that I’ve noticed, I recall he’s done that all along. Took bites of his ice cream. It’s an oddity I haven’t encountered before and don’t know what to make of it. The silence stretches for so long, we both finish our cones.

“The next home wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t horrible either. That is until my sister hit puberty and her”—he gestures to his chest area indicating her tits—“grew in. That’s when I started to catch the husband watching my sister as she slept. The night I found him sitting on the side of her bed, is the same night I packed our things and took my sister away from there.” His hand crushes mine at the anger flaring within him.

“We lived on the street after that, and I did everything I could to care for her. My twin was growing into a gorgeous woman, and I had to learn to fight to keep the other street kids away from her.” It doesn’t pass my notice that he used past tense. I can see this story doesn’t have a happy ending.

“I joined a gang as a low-level dealer. I had to make money somehow and nobody was hiring a fourteen year old. The thing I was forced into in order to protect her ended up being her demise. If I knew they were into trafficking, I never would have gotten involved with them…” He pauses to run a hand through his hair and to clear his throat. “She caught the notice of some higher-ups and before I knew it, she disappeared.”

I’m starting to become uncomfortable with his story. I know I should be overcome with sadness, but my broken insides leave me empty. I find myself truly wishing I could experience soul crushing sadness hearing about his tragic past.

“I did everything I could think to find her,” he continues. My hand has gone numb at this point with how tightly he’s clenching it in his hold. “The cops didn’t care about a couple of runaways. We had no friends to help us. So I turned to the internet. I taught myself how to hack so I could go through the gang’s phones and tap CCTV footage to try and find her. It took a long time to teach myself the skills, and I had to keep shoplifting the equipment I needed.

“By the time I found her, she was already dead. I never had the chance to save her. My twin died, but by that time, I was so fucked up inside from not being able to protect her, that I never felt the moment she left this world. She was the good twin, the white to my black. I’m convinced now that I never felt it because she took every bit of the light from this world when she left, along with any part of me that wasn’t evil.” His voice has dulled, unable to keep up with the expected emotions people look for in a story like his.

Cole is just like me. A fractured individual. Someone who could have been a normal human being, but tragedy shaped them into an empty vessel. No wonder I’ve been so drawn to him. It just took me a while to recognize why. At least he knows all the details of the tragedy leaving him this way. I’ve yet to piece mine together.

We’re silent for a while. The emotions we know we should be experiencing float in the air around us, acknowledged but out of reach. When we speak again, it’s as if he never shared his tragic past at all. We talk about our normal routines, favorite things, anything and everything to feign normalcy for a little while.

By the time he drops me off, it’s late. Vander stands at the bottom of the stairs, ready to take me under his watchful eye again. I’m not sure if I’ll ever find out why he decided he could trust Cole with my safety, but I’ll try to find out anyway.

When the car comes to a stop, Vander opens my door. Before I can step out, Cole grabs my arm. I turn to him with a question in my eyes. His free hand catches my chin and pulls me closer. I hadn’t noticed until this moment that this is the first date I’ve been on since my teens where I didn’t get laid.

He closes the distance between us, and his lips press against mine. It’s a chaste kiss, but I feel it all the way down to my toes. We might lack the ability to experience most emotions, but the ones we do possess, speak volumes. The lust this man inspires within me can’t be doused, and I’ll be damned if I don’t show him the things I wish I could experience through the one method I have.

I chase his retreating lips and wrap a hand around his head, stopping his progress. I pepper kisses along his lips before slowly sucking his bottom lip into my mouth. My tongue runs along its plumpness, before planting an open-mouthed kiss on him. He meets my advances on equal footing before gripping my hair and deepening the kiss.

Our tongues dance with smoothness. It’s erotic and slow. Something I’m not used to initiating, but it gets my point across perfectly. The warm breeze blows in from the open door and we pull apart. “Thank you for being someone I feel comfortable faking normalcy with. Maybe someday, along with all your other boyfriends, we won’t have to fake it anymore. Maybe we can teach each other how to live again.” His thumb brushes my cheek in a soft caress and understanding passes between us. I don’t need to respond; he already knows I don’t have the words to reply.

I climb from the car with Vander’s help. “Go to bed, Remi. I’ll see you in the morning,” Vander commands me. I make my way to the front door, but not because he told me to. It’s because exhaustion is wearing me down. It’s why I don’t even argue with him trying to tell me what to do.

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