Page 58 of The Caretaker
“Noon,” I called again, but his fingers kept going, kept pumping, passively winding me up. I didn’t want to be distracted. I wanted to live in this memory with him, wanted to suffer right alongside him. He wouldn’t let me. Even now he was intent on putting me first.
“Normally, I’d shut myself in my room whenever she got plastered. Not that night,” he continued, still stuck in the past. “She was too heavy for me to carry to bed, so I brought pillows and blankets in and slept next to her in the bathroom all night. She felt terrible about it the next day. Hated that I saw her like that, that I had to take care of her. She didn’t drink for days afterward. Her guilt wouldn’t let her. I never closed my bedroom door again.” Noon’s eyes went from distant to sorrowful as he dragged himself back from wherever the recollection had taken him. Probably to that cold, bathroom floor.
“Eventually the guilt wore off and she went back to drinking until she blacked out again. But now every time she woke up it was to a clean house, to breakfast on the table, to two pain tablets and a glass of water on her nightstand, to me sleeping next to her, holding her. Her guilt was the one thing I could use to keep her safe, if only for a little while. And then I met Leland. He’d help me with my mother whenever he spent the night. Sometimes his being there amplified her remorse.”
I didn’t know what I hated most or wanted more. Aiding in the cycle of him giving care to get love—if it meant that in this moment he’d be okay—or showing him that with the right kind of love, he could surrender to his needs, to his visceral pain. I chose the latter, because it was best for him and also true. He needed to know he could be selfish and trust that he would still be loved deeply.
“Please,” I begged, reaching back to grab hold of his wrist. “Let me be here with you, Noon.”
He kept going for a few seconds, then gave a deep sigh as he removed his fingers. The wet digits dampened my skin as he squeezed my hip, as I went from someone in need of his protection to his protector. His anchor.
“How old were you?” I asked, skirting my fingertips along his neck.
“Five,” he said around a swallow, “when the habit started.”
I knew he was referring to his habit and not his mother’s. This was what shaped him. This trauma, this pain, this thing that no child should have to endure was what molded the most incredible person I’d ever known.
“Where’s your mother now?”
“She died from alcohol-related liver disease.”
I didn’t have to ask to know that he’d taken care of her until the end. “Who takes care of the caretaker?” I needed to knowthat somewhere along the way someone had taken care of him. That he hadn’t always had to put others first.
“No one,” he said, bemused, as if he never expected anyone to. And that, most of all, made me sad.
“I promise to always take care of you when you need it, and even when you don’t,” I vowed. “And I’m hoping you’ll let me, because you don’t need to take care of me to be worthy of my love.”You have that already,I thought, too much of a coward to say it.
Noon pushed me onto my back before bullying his way between my legs, tossing one over the back of the couch and growling for me to hold the other one open. He jammed a pillow under my hips, tweaking my position until he had me situated how he wanted me, never once apologizing for how urgently he seemed to need me. He didn’t need to apologize. In this moment and all others, I would gladly be the vessel in which Noon needed to purge his pain.
He roughly lubed his obscene cock before launching three fingers into my hole with only a snarl as warning. I cried out, gripping the sheet-covered couch.
“Can you take me again?” he asked without inflection, as if it weren’t a question at all, as though the answer didn’t matter, like his barbarity was out of his control.
I peered down the length of his shaft to his heavy sack, already filled with cum after having released a load not too long ago.
“Yes,” I whimpered, remembering to breathe, stomach muscles aching from the tension they held.
Noon leaned over me, hunching to whisper a warning against my lips. “This won’t be gentle.” He rose above me like a behemoth god, his body casting a dark shadow over me as he directed his crown to my entrance. He pressed his hips forward,breaching me with just the tip, staring at me as if waiting for my final words.
“I don’t need gentle,” I panted, dragging my nails down his chest as I let go of my leg to wrap it around him. “All I need is you, Noon.” My heart exploded at the unguarded emotion in his eyes then, pieces of it rushing throughout my body before meeting back up again to form something new, something healthier and more whole. “I…” My mouth grew dry, my tongue absorbing my words.
“Say it,” Noon ordered, both arms caging me in, thumbs brushing the tips of my ears. “Say it.” The second time was a plea.
“I love you, Noon. God help me, I love you.”
“God help us both, then,” he whispered. “God help us both.” He sank into me slowly, bottoming out and then waiting. I couldn’t move. All I could do was suffocate on the air trapped in my lungs as his cock nailed me to the couch. Every ounce of his intimidating, muscular frame shook above me with the willpower it took for him to wait.
“I promise to always shower you with affection without making it feel like a reward, like something you need to earn,” he gritted between clenched teeth as he began to work me. “I promise that my touch will always feel like something I want and need just as much as you do, because loving you will never be work, it will never be a chore.Never.”
Not like the way it had felt with Patrick, he didn’t say. Didn’t have to.
For all the brutishness he’d displayed moments ago, and the warning of his savage intentions, his movements—although no less devastating—were now measured. The light breeze before the cyclone-wind. The calm before the storm.
Noon had something to say, so he held himself in check to prove that his love outweighed his arousal. That it outweighedhis need to be let off his leash, to prove that needing to let loose on me didn’t come at the expense of the bigger moment we were sharing.
“I promise to always overwhelm you,” he declared, “to keep you breathless with love and anticipation. I’m going to love you the way you deserve to be loved, Solace.” His hips began to snap with every downward thrust now, with every grunted word of affection that slipped past his lips to be absorbed by my heart.
“I love you, Solace. So damn much.” His hair fell onto his forehead, and at this point, at this velocity of speed, it should’ve been impossible for him to speak. Regardless of what it looked like, or what it felt like as he ruled my body with bared teeth and not an ounce of compassion, he was making it clear that even in this, even as he used his cock against me, it was done with love.
