Page 27 of Lonesome Man
Tucker gripped my hips and lifted his, slamming up inside me.
I groaned and fell forward on his chest, lost instantly to the sharp pleasure, lost to him. Tuck held me there, grinding up inside me over and over.
“See?” he said roughly. “This is exactly what you want. That’s why you came out here.”
“N-no, that’s not why I…”
He slammed back inside me.
I shuddered. “Tucker,” I called his name desperately.
“I’m right here, Libby, where I’ve always fucking been,” he said and flipped me to my back.
Then he had me pinned down, my wrists held in his hands above my head, while he drove into me. How could this feel so earth-shatteringly good, when every thrust felt as if he were trying to punish me. When he was fucking me like he hated me, like he wanted to wipe the tenderness of the night before from his mind.
“Tucker,” I said again. “L-look at me.”
His wild gaze locked with mine and he flinched. “Fuck you, Libby,” he choked out. “Why did you come here? Why did you do this to me? You’ve fucking broken me. Is that what you wanted?”
I shook my head, wrapping my legs around him and lifting my hips to meet his angry thrusts. “I came here because I needed the money. I stayed because it was you. Because I got off that plane and saw my Tucker. Mine.”
“You’re lying.”
I shook my head against the pillow. “I’m not. I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t even look at that part of the brief until I got to the house with you. I was scared that if I looked, I’d chicken out, and I couldn’t chicken out. But then my phone died on the plane before I could read it…then I saw you, and you kissed me, and called me Libs, and I was lost. I was too scared to tell you the truth, and the thought of never knowing what it was like to be with you…when it felt so right to be here…close to you.”
His glittering gaze bored into me through the darkness. “You left me alone,” he gasped out. “You cut me out of your life.”
He slammed into me, once, twice, and I arched against the bed, coming hard around his relentless thrusts. He groaned and pulsed deep inside me, coming as well, then he collapsed on top of me.
We lay there in the dark, the only sounds our panted breaths.
I ran my hand up his back, and he shivered. “I left you alone because I was a fucking coward,” I whispered. “Because I loved…I love you, and I was so scared of what my life would be if I gave in to what I felt, that I ran from it, I ran from you.”
He lifted his head. “Was the idea of living here with me so fucking awful?”
I cupped the side of his face. “I never told you what my life was really like growing up. You were my escape, Tuck. Your calls every week, your emails when I finally got away and went to college…you were my refuge, you always have been.”
He searched my eyes. “I don’t understand.” He jerked back. “What you said, about your father, you were telling the truth?”
“Yes,” I choked out. “My father, he…he hurt us. My mom and me. He hurt us, and there was no escape, no help, nowhere to go.”
He made a wounded sound. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I didn’t tell you.” I ran my hand down his chest, resting it over his heart. “I’ve never escorted before. Jess, she’s my roommate, she was trying to decide who to send to this guy, this guy who sounded so great, who liked women who looked like me, and I…I was desperate for money. My mom, she’s still with my father. He’s really sick, and she’s stuck by him, determined to look after him until the end, but she can’t afford his medication and his medical bills, so I do it—for her, not him.”
“Jesus, Libs?—”
“They were the only example of love I knew, and it was toxic and violent and cruel, and I…I didn’t trust myself to get it right. I was so scared I’d end up like her, like my mother, a shell of herself.”
“You thought I’d hurt you?” There was an ache in his voice.
“No. I know you’d never hurt me, but every instinct told me to protect myself, to run, that living up here, living this way, so far from everything…” I shook my head. “I thought if I gave in to how I felt about you, that eventually I’d turn into her, into my mom, that I’d give everything up and I’d become a shell, that I’d lose myself completely and it…it scared the hell out of me. The closer we got, the more afraid I became, because what I saw growing up was rooted in me so deep that the prospect of love terrified me, so I stopped emailing you because I knew I wanted to be with you, but I couldn’t see a way forward.”
“And I pushed you, even though I knew how you felt about living so remote. I pushed you for more until you ran. I’m sorry, darlin’. Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“You did nothing wrong, Tuck. Nothing. It was my fears that broke us. I was too scared to tell you the truth because if I did, I knew you’d be able to talk me around, and I’d be trapped again, with no escape.”
He cupped my face with both hands. “And now? How do you feel now?” He swiped his thumb over my cheek. “Because I’d give it all up for you, Libs. I’d leave here and follow you anywhere you want me to. I would’ve done it back then, and I’d do it now. You just have to give this a chance. I love you. Fuck, I love you so fucking much. There is nothing I want more than you, and that includes this place.”
