The Way She Burns by Jessa Kane
4
Sebastian
Watching Chloe vanish out of my sight, I feel as though the world is crumbling beneath my feet. She’s the girl. She’s…the girl I caught at the last possible second all those years ago? That’s where my sense of recognition came from. There was something about her glowing optimism and soulful hazel eyes that prodded my memory, but she’s grown up and turned into a woman. My attraction to the woman blotted out recollections of the girl. Blotted out everything—especially my humanity. My decency. My conscience.
My God.
I just fucked that teenage virgin like a wild animal in heat.
Goaded her into calling me Daddy.
Came inside of her without protection.
The worst part is, if I had the chance to do it all over again, I don’t even think she would make it two steps inside my front door before I was pumping my cock between her thighs. Not now. Now when I’ve discovered how unbelievably tight her pussy is. The kind of tight that rules a man’s fucking life, makes him change his ways. Addicts him.
And it’s not just what she’s got between her thighs.
It’s the light shining inside of her. It illuminates the darkness inside of me and scares away the demons lurking there when I’m looking into her eyes. When I’m touching her smooth skin and breathing in her feminine scent. All those years ago, when I held the girl version of her in my arms, I remember marveling over her innate goodness, the purity of her gaze. That gentleness paired with a daring streak was so goddamn endearing, I continued to think of the girl long after she ran off to go find her mother.
Now I’ve defiled her.
I’ve made her first time about my raw lust. Getting the edge off.
No care went into the act. I’ve traumatized her. Of course she’s leaving.
Of course she’s running as far and as fast as she can from me.
I’m a monster.
My God, I only meant to call her bluff. I never expected her to follow through on our deal. Sex in exchange for my generosity. This poor girl had no choice but to open her thighs for me. I didn’t give her a choice. And it was so unbearable, she can’t stand the idea of doing it again, so she’s leaving. Jesus Christ, what have I done?
I rake a hand downward over my open mouth and begin to pace, debating whether or not to go speak with her. To apologize. An hour ago, if someone told me I’d be deciding whether or not to say sorry to anyone, I would have laughed. But here I am. My chest feels as though it has been jackhammered into broken up pieces and I cringe every time I catch my reflection in one of the kitchen’s reflective surfaces.
Who have I become?
A bitter, hateful ogre who pillages young girls without a fucking thought to their comfort? To their future?
What I’ve done here tonight is inexcusable.
The Sebastian I used to be would be appalled.
I should let her go. I should give her a load of cash and wish her on a peaceful journey. That way, I couldn’t inflict any more damage on Chloe.
But I find I can’t do that.
I can’t just let her leave—and that’s how I answer my own question about what I’ve become. I’ve turned into a selfish bastard, that’s what. Because now that I’ve tasted redemption on her lips and been baptized in her grace, now that her sweet voice has touched the rafters of his lonely house, I can’t bear to remain here without her.
Chloe stays.
She stays.
That decision fills me with such relief that I cease pacing and slump sideways against the kitchen counter, my chest rising and falling as if we only stopped making love mere seconds ago. However, when I glance at the clock on the stove, I see hours have passed during my flight into madness and self-disgust. Fingers of light are beginning to reach into the horizon, waking up the birds in the trees that surround the house. Birds whose songs have always annoyed me, but now, I find myself hoping she enjoys them.
I refuse to catch even an hour of sleep, worried she might leave while I’m unconscious. Instead, I shower and change. And I go stand in front of her door, hands braced on either side of the frame, just waiting for her to come out. My heart raps violently in my chest every time I hear her sigh in sleep on the other side of the door. Every time the springs groan gently to signal the fact that she’s turned over. My cock is erect. Pulsing. If she was alone in the room, I’d go inside, cut through the darkness and cover her in my weight.
So it’s a damn good thing the child is there, acting as a deterrent.
Because she’d probably beg me to stop. Not again, she would most likely scream, still disturbed by the frenzied way I fucked her in the kitchen, making her want to flee as soon as the sun comes up. The fact that she’s probably scared of me now fills me with shame. I remember the trusting way she looked up at me on the cliffside five years ago. I think of how she came here last night, believing I would help her again—only to be forced to barter her virginity—and I want to tear my hair out.
I’m…going to fix this.
Somehow.
I can’t stand the idea of her hating or resenting or fearing me.
Which is funny, because that’s usually the reaction I aim for in another person.
Not this girl, though. Not Chloe.
I need to make her feel…safe. I need her to trust me, the way she did when I caught her hand and pulled her back up onto the grass. Until now, I didn’t realize I’ve carried her trust all these years. It might be the one thing that kept my humanity from flickering out completely. The memory of her hand in mine. Her relief when she collapsed into my arms.
My throat is tight beyond belief when I hear soft feet hitting the floor on the other side of the bedroom door. Chest rising and falling, I drop my hands from the frame and step back, almost pouncing when Chloe emerges, her eyes soft from sleep, her shoddy dress still twisted slightly from my hands during sex.
When she sees me, she skids to a halt. “Sebastian,” she exhales roughly, pausing for long moments to recover from the surprise while all I can do is devour the sight of her. “I-I was only going to get a glass of water. Curtis is always thirsty when he wakes up and I was planning on getting on the road early.”
“No.” I fairly growl the world and immediately curse myself, searching for a softer tone. “I mean to say, please don’t leave, Chloe. I would like you to stay.”
Please don’t make me resort to imprisonment.
“Oh,” she murmurs, wringing her hands. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You’re worried I’ll accost you again.”
“Well…” Only a slight hesitation, a wrinkle appearing between her brows. “Yes.”
Shame wraps around my windpipe. What else can I expect when I’ve banged an innocent girl against a kitchen island without any foreplay ahead of time? What can I expect when I’ve coerced her into the act? “Understandable.” I clear my throat hard, but it does nothing to remedy the terrible, crowded feeling. “What if I promise to keep my hands off you?” My hard dick mocks me from below. “Unless, of course, you want them on you.”
Do I imagine the way her pupils dilate, the pulse leaping at the base of her neck?
Are those signs of arousal a trick of light being played by the moonlit hallway?
Her voice is huskier when she speaks. “Why do you suddenly want us to stay?”
I’m starting to think I never would have allowed her to leave, deal or no deal. Allow this beauty to disappear back into the night carrying a child more than half her size? That would have cracked me down the middle. In the way only Chloe can. But I’m trying to earn her trust and after what I’ve done, that will be a slow, brick by brick process. “Maybe the selfless way you care for your brother makes me realize how far I’ve strayed from basic decency.” I look her in the eye. “I can’t be sorry about taking you, Chloe. You were…you are too fucking sweet. But I am sorry for making it an obligation. I’m sorry for being so goddamn rough about it. Are you…” Christ, is there a harpoon sinking into my chest? “Are you hurt at all?”
“No.” She starts to reach out, to touch my arm, but slowly draws it back as if I’ll burn her fingertips. “No…I told you earlier, I’m fine.”
My heart labors to work. “Fine isn’t the same as good.”
“Sebastian.” She flushes, looking down at the floor. “You gave me pleasure.”
“No, I forced it out of you,” I say through my teeth. “You deserved better.”
“No. You’re wrong about that,” she blurts, immediately looking exasperated with herself. Like she wants to melt back into the hallway wall.
I stare down at the middle part of her dark hair, stunned speechless. Spurring myself into motion, I reach past her and close the bedroom door to prevent us from waking up the sleeping child. “You don’t deserve better?” My voice is low, furious, a lot like my pulse. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Can we just pretend I didn’t say that?”
“No.”
I cross my arms and wait, suppressing the urge to pick her up, carry her back to my bedroom and find a more creative way to get the truth out of her. “It’s just that…” She covers her face with her hands. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this. I’ve never told anyone and it’s going to sound ridiculous when I say it out loud.”
“Say it anyway, Chloe.”
She straightens her shoulders, takes a deep breath. “I’ve had this rebellious streak, ever since…well. Around the age we met. Thirteen.” Her eyes flit to mine, then away quickly. “Sort of a restlessness inside of me. It builds and builds and when it gets to be too much, I have to expend my energy somehow. Running through the fields on the outside of town. Twirling like a lunatic in the rain. Swimming in the ocean. I have to exhaust myself or it feels like I’m going to…explode. It’s not normal.”
Understanding dawns. Along with a fresh wave of arousal. “Ah, baby.” I conform my hand to the side of her face. “I’m a man. I don’t have any experience with growing girls, except for the one who almost went headfirst over my cliff. But I know that’s around the age young people start to…change. Hormones act up. You don’t even want to know what that meant for me as a thirteen-year-old boy.” God, I shouldn’t be asking her this next question. It’s inappropriate, but she seems genuinely upset and I don’t like her having the belief that she doesn’t deserve pleasure. I want to solve the problem, which means understanding the whole picture. “Did no one teach you how to touch yourself, Chloe?”
The skin of her cheek turned hotter against my palm. “I asked my mother to show me when the ache became too fierce, but it embarrassed her. She only prayed for me, urging me to read the Bible for hours on end, hoping it would inspire my body to be at peace. But it never helped. I ached and ached and she still wouldn’t talk to me about sex. I wasn’t even sure how…how a woman fits a man until you…fit into me tonight.” Jesus, my seed almost paints the front of my pants at that quiet uttering. Until you fit into me tonight. For the rest of my life, every time I think of her saying those words, I’m going to jack myself raw. “But I tried, over and over again, to touch myself when I was alone and nothing felt as good as…”
“As good as what, Chloe?”
Several seconds tick by, before she whispers. “As when you held me on the cliff.” When her eyes finally meet mine, there is lust banked in their hazel depths, tightening my stomach muscles. “Every time I put my fingers there, I was worried. About being caught. That what I was doing was wrong. Being overwhelmed by the threat of punishment. I needed to feel…safe. And the only time I ever felt safe, maybe in my whole life, was with you.”
“Until tonight, you mean,” I growl unevenly, hating myself with a searing passion. Her faith in me ran so deep and I squandered it. I broke her precious trust. Inexcusable. The only way I can make it up to her is to erase this notion of hers that she’s bad in some way. That she’s undeserving of better behavior in a man. The very thought is preposterous. She’s more deserving of pleasure and relief and happiness and respect than anyone I’ve ever met. “Chloe, listen to me. That restlessness inside of you? There is nothing wrong with it, baby. It’s healthy. It means your body needs attention.” I step closer to her, unable to do anything else, but I stop when she sucks in a breath. Out of fear? Nervousness? I can’t bear the thought. “If you ask me, I’ll show you how to touch your pussy in the right way. To calm the agitation.”
“No.” She shakes her head vigorously. “No…the night my mother died I was out. I was out trying to swim and run off the ache. I was out worshipping the moon like a heathen. Lying in the ocean surf naked, moaning over the way it lapped between my legs. Don’t tell me every young girl beyond the age of fifteen does that. It’s not normal.” In her upset, she stumbles over her words. “And my mother…because of this wickedness inside of me, I wasn’t there when she had a seizure in the middle of the night. She’d had them before and…I wasn’t there to help her or call an ambulance. Her death was my punishment—”
I stop her flow of words with my mouth.
Not kissing her, just sealing whatever she was going to say next inside of her lips, breathing along with her. When she doesn’t protest, my body gives in to the need for closeness with Chloe and crowds her up against the wall, my mouth eventually skating down to her neck, my fingers sliding up into her wealth of thick hair.
I’ve been so wrapped up in redeeming myself, I didn’t realize that she’d referred to her mother in the past tense before. But of course. Of course there are no parents in the picture if she’s been left to care for her brother alone. And now my beastlike use of her body, this girl in desperate need of help, makes me an even bigger asshole. Perhaps an unredeemable one.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I breathe into her ear, kissing the curve of it. Hold yourself back. Mauling her right now, when she’s vulnerable, would only add to my growing list of sins against this girl. But keeping my cock in my pants is no small feat when she’s just told me she lies in the ocean naked, letting the surf masturbate her pussy. Without relief. God, I’d die to give it to her. “There is nothing unnatural about you, Chloe. It’s a beautiful thing that your body feels so much. That makes you sensitive, not wicked.”
She shakes her head, clearly not believing me. “No. It makes me destructive and selfish. That’s why I have to go, Sebastian. I have to leave here.”
Over my cold, dead body.“I don’t understand.”
“It’s you,” she whispers, writhing her hips between me and the wall, her eyelids dropping. “You bring it out of me. You take that streak of wickedness and make it a mile wide.”
Time stops moving, along with my pulse. The flow of blood in my veins. Everything just stops. “You’re not leaving because I hurt you? Because I made you trade sex for a place to sleep, something to eat—”
“No, I’m leaving because I want to do it again.” She fairly sobs the words, her palms twisting in the front of my shirt, her voice young, halting. A little like baby talk. And it stretches my cock behind my fly, makes me pant her name. “Over and over and over again.”
Halfway through her mind-blowing confession, I’ve already picked up Chloe and boosted her higher against the wall, my shaft demanding I sink it back into her narrow little fuck hole and bottom out, repeatedly, until I fill her with come. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, goddammit. Is there any other option after she’s just absolved me of my sins, unlocked my chains of guilt and admitted she wants to be fucked again?
No. There is no other option.
My hands ride quickly, desperately up the backs of her thighs to clutch the juicy globes of her ass, my hips ramming up between her legs, my mouth catching her gasp. I’m going to spend weeks pounding her. I’m going to keep her on her back so long, she’s going to forget how to walk. She’s going to know one single word. Daddy. I’ll be the sun she revolves around.
“You want my big cock again, little girl?” I growl against her ear, already grappling with my zipper. “The ocean couldn’t get you off, but Daddy knows just how, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” she whimpers, as if confessing a grave sin.
“Did I accidentally put you through puberty too soon, Chloe? Did you run back to your mommy that day five years ago with a confused pussy?”
“Uh-huh.”
So hot to fuck, I can barely draw breath, I hike up her dress, preparing to enter her in one smooth move. Before I can slide back into that tight heaven, though, a voice drifts through the door. “Chloe?” And then more distressed. “Chloe? Where are you? Where am I?”
Her body tightens with a different, non-sexual kind of tension. “I have to go to him. I can’t…” She drops her legs from around my waist, pushing trembling fingers through her hair. “I can’t do this. I can’t get l-lost in you. I can’t let the wild inside of me win.”
Oh yes you can. And you will.
That’s what I want to say. But I can see her body scares her. I scare her, in a way—the attraction between us goes beyond intense. It’s an inferno. If this belief she holds about herself being wicked runs deep, she’s not going to let go of it so easily. Can I be patient and help her realize that?
Yes. I’d do anything for her. Anything.
Looking down at her in the moonlight, the obsession that has developed since she arrived on my doorstep elevates itself. Worms its way into my brain and my heart and my gut, never to be eradicated. Mine. Chloe is mine and that’s the final fucking say on the matter.
If I can just rein my reaction to her in a little, maybe I won’t terrify her.
Maybe she’ll stay voluntarily, instead of being roped to my bed.
“Stay here,” I rasp. “Give me a chance to prove I’m not just something to get lost in, but a place to be found and protected.”
She chews her lip in indecision. “I-I don’t think so—”
“Today we’ll collect your things from town,” I press on, scared to be denied. To lose her when I’ve only just discovered her again. “I’ll bring you to whatever restaurant you choose. Buy you and Curtis whatever you need. This will be your home.”
A beat passes. “While I look for a new one,” she murmurs.
“Yes,” I lie.
Again, the child calls for his sister from inside the bedroom.
Before Chloe enters, she pauses with her hand on the knob. “Okay, Sebastian. We’ll stay.”
When the door closes behind her, I slump forward, catching myself on the doorframe, mouthing grateful prayers to a God I haven’t spoken to in a long time. And when I’m done, I make a vow to myself. I vow to do everything in my power to make Chloe happy.
I vow to keep her. Forever.
Obviously there are hurdles that need to be jumped first, in the form of Chloe’s misconceptions about herself. In order to do that, I’ll need to reach down into myself and pull out the man I used to be. A man without hate in his heart. An unjaded man.
A man capable of love.
Glancing back toward the bedroom door and hearing Chloe’s voice in the form of a lullaby, I realize that, Jesus, I’m already there. I love the girl.
She inspires worship in my blood.
Obsession in the roots of my stomach.
But can I change enough to make her love me back?
