Vengeful Soul by Emma Creed
I’m leaning against the truck, squaring things out with Squealer, when Gracie comes out of the cabin carrying a bag with the small amount of stuff she accumulated while being here. She’s said her goodbyes to the girls and thanked Prez for his hospitality, so there’s just one thing left to do.
Yeah, I shouldn’t have thrown one at Squealer, but he shouldn’t have said what he said. I can’t have made it any clearer that she was off limits, I may never have said it out loud but everyone else around here’s gotten the fucking hint.
When he notices her come out, he slaps my shoulder, letting me know things are good, before he gives us some space. The fucker still checks out her ass when she passes him though.
“I’m ready,” she offers up an awkward smile as I open the door to the truck. Duke is laid out on the porch, and the look on his face makes me wonder if he understands that she’s leaving. “What will you do with him?” Gracie looks at him fondly as she gets inside.
“He’ll stay with me,” I tell her, shutting the door and rounding the hood. I sit in the driver’s seat, and look at her for a while, silently willing for her to say something. But all I get is that same sweet smile, one that fades, just like my fucking hope.
So I start up the engine and pull off before I give any more of myself away.
The journey to her place takes a little less than an hour and when I pull up outside her huge house, Gracie Scott suddenly looks different. She belongs in these surroundings, even wearing the pair of ripped jeans she got from Maddy and one of my T-shirts knotted around her midriff.
This girl was never mine, only borrowed, and now it’s time for me to give her up. I wish I didn’t know how it had felt to have her for the little time I did.
Rage burns inside of me when I think about her boyfriend touching her where I have. The jealousy of knowing that he’s gonna wake up every morning, with her soft breaths against his chest, and her hair tickling under his nose.
“I guess this is it.” Gracie interrupts my thoughts, and I watch the tear slowly streak over her cheek. I want to catch that tear and keep it for fucking ever. Evidence that, once, a girl like her felt something for a wretch like me.
In the short time I’ve known her, she slowly started to take away the burden of my hatred. She got me considering a future rather than being plagued by a past. And as she leans forward, her hand touching against my cheek, and her lips moving to settle on mine, I remain still.
“Please Brax, let's not leave it like this,” she whispers against my lips. “I really wish we could have said goodbye properly last night.”
The thought was tempting but I wasn't gonna do it to myself. We’re better off leaving things like this. I need to get back to being the person I was before she invaded my life. Go back to hating everyone and everything.
“It's better this way, Gracie,” I tell her firmly, and she nods like she understands before pulling away from me. I watch as she opens the door and steps out onto the path that leads to her house, looking over her shoulder at me as she walks the path to the front door.
Then she reaches into her back pocket and takes out the key we took the night we came back here looking for her mom’s stuff. I wait until she’s inside before I slam the palm of my hand into the steering wheel. Hitting the damn thing so hard that pain shoots up through my elbow.
I shouldn’t have wanted more. I shouldn’t have let her in in the first place. These past few weeks I’ve felt myself morphing into someone I don’t recognize. The same someone, who has no control over what he does when he gets out of the truck, slams the door and storms toward the front door.
I hammer my fist against the wood, and when she flings open the door, I push her inside, pressing my lips hard into hers before she has the chance to speak. I let myself taste them one last time, and my hands slip into her silky blonde hair with a desperation I seem to have no control over.
“Brax,” she whispers against my mouth.
“I want us to say goodbye properly too.” I kiss her until she pulls away from me, and just when I think she’s gonna reject me, she takes my hand in hers and silently leads me up the stairs.
She pulls me into the room I took her from, and it seems impossible to believe how far we’ve come since then. Her bed is still made out perfectly with pure white cotton sheets. And the dress she wore to her parents’ funeral is still in a heap on the floor.
Standing in front of me, she takes some time to look me over, and I wonder if she still sees the monster who took her that day. A man who took her without even knowing what she’d done to deserve it.
I feel like I’m a different person now, she’s responsible for that.
I reach for the waistband of her jeans and tug her back against me, letting my lips explore her neck and shoulders while I unbutton her jeans. She slowly wriggles out of them, kicking them away as my fingers trace over the curve of her hip, moving over her ribs, and gathering her top to slide it over her body. Her arms raise so I can lift it off her head, and I scrunch the fabric in my fist before I toss it at the floor.
I ache for this woman, even when I got her in my arms, and I can’t imagine how I’m gonna be when I can’t have her. As desperate as I am to be inside her, I really want to take my time to savor every inch of her skin. Because soon, memories will be all I have to torture myself with.
I brush the hair off her shoulders and kiss her from her ear to her collar bone, hoping it will embed the taste of her onto my lips. I’m past pretending to myself that I’m okay with giving her up. Doing this is gonna break us both, but I’d rather be broken then never show her what she meant to me.
Sliding her bra straps off her shoulder, I kiss the top of her arm, then move my hand across her chest. Trailing the tip of my nose back up to her ear.
“I wish I could keep you,” I confess, my palm resting flat over her heart so I can feel it beating, and the sharp breath she sucks in when I bite down on her lobe has my cock aching for her even more.
I guide her backward until she lies on her bed, and I drop to my knees in front of her, lifting my T-shirt over my head before I lean forward. When I press my lips against her lace panties, she lets out a long moan and I lick a path right through the center of them. Moving her legs over my shoulders, I pull the lace up over her thighs and toss them away, before touching my tongue between her legs. Tasting her from her soaked hole, to her pulsing little clit.
She fists at my hair and bites down on her lip, and I can’t take my eyes off hers as she falls apart for me. And as her hips dance to the rhythm of my tongue, I store the vision inside my sick twisted mind, knowing it doesn’t belong there. Eventually, I move up her body, kissing over her stomach and ribs until my body is fully covering hers.
How can something be so damn beautiful that it physically hurts to look at? How can something so perfect cause such suffering?
I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want her, not even vengeance, and it fucking pains me that I can’t think of a way to make it work.
“Please, Brax,” she begs, her fingers touching my lips as her hips wriggle needily into mine. I rest all my weight on one arm while I unbuckle my belt, and Gracie pushes the jeans off my hips before I kick them off. My heavy cock falls free and she takes me in her hand, pressing me tight against her body, stroking me slowly between her stomach and her palm and causing me to leak on to her skin. Then reaching her head up so her lips touch mine, she slowly guides me to her entrance.
My arms slide under her body and grip at her shoulders, slowly pushing her on to me and filling every tight inch inside her that should belong to me. We both make the same relieved sigh that we always do when she's taken all of me, and I hold myself steady and let myself take in the beautiful look of contentment on her face.
I convinced myself that being inside her would take away the pain inside me, but it only makes it worse. I don’t want this vision kept in my head where all my other memories lie. Gracie doesn’t have a place there, she should have a place of her own. Somewhere untainted.
I push past that thought and rotate my hips into hers, giving everything I have to her. I take her in a way I’ve never taken a woman before. Slow, unselfish, and gentle. It allows me to appreciate every tremble her body makes for me. And as my rough thumbs stroke the soft skin on her shoulders and her pussy clenches around my shaft, I realize that I had no real sense of pain before I met her. Being without her, is gonna be like trying to breathe without oxygen.
“Brax… I—”
“Don’t,” I shake my head at her in warning. I know what she’s gonna say. I know, because I fucking feel it too. It’s un-fucking-deniable. The way our bodies move in sync, the way I feel like I’m drowning inside.
I’m feeling it.
But I can’t hear her say the words. If I do, I’ll never be able to leave her.
“I know, Gracie,” I whisper back at her. Pressing my lips over the tear that slips on to her cheek, and closing my eyes. I keep my thrusts slow and steady, wanting this to last for as long as possible. And as Gracie comes, making sweet, soft pants in my ear, I know these are the sounds that will haunt me in my sleep. The sounds I’ll never stop wanting to hear, even if they cause me agony.
Her body sags beneath mine, relieved from all its tension and I hold on to her so tight, I worry I might break her. I kiss her lips, letting my tongue slip between them as her arms cling around my neck. And when I pull back to look at her, those bright green orbs of light that I fought so hard to shut out are staring right back at me.
This woman has ripped me open, shown me I can be vulnerable, and that’s why we can never be together.
Gracie Scott is a blessing and a curse all at once. And a man like me can’t have a weakness like her.
Her nails claw at my skin as her pussy clasps around me and, for the last time, triggers me to release. My breath catches in my throat and I swear I feel my heart stop as I fill her pussy.
We stay wordless, just the sounds of our breathing and the beats of our hearts. Until I find the courage to smash down the wall of comfort we’ve built around us.
“I have to go, Gracie,” I whisper. I don’t need to tell her that what just happened was special, or that I’ve never given myself to anyone like that before. She knows, I see that from the way she’s looking back at me.
“What would you say if I asked you to stay?” Her delicate hand curls around my bicep.
“I’d tell you I don’t belong here.”
“And where do you belong, Brax?” she asks, that bratty bitch coming back to me so soon, and making me smirk despite the pain in my chest.
“Not here and not with you.” The words taste bitter as they leave my lips but the truth is rarely easy to admit.
“You told me once that making other people hurt stops you from hurting… Well I hope you’re feeling better right now, cause I’m hurting a whole lot,” she says back coldly.
I could tell her that I hurt worse now than ever, that no amount of another person’s suffering will cure the emptiness I’m gonna feel walking out of this room and leaving her behind, but I stay silent.
“You should go, Brax.” She turns her head away from me, and that gentle touch I recently acquired, up and fucks off as I clasp at her jaw and force her to look back at me.
“Don’t convince yourself you need me, Gracie, and don’t break your heart over me leaving you, because this is the nicest thing I’ve ever done for anyone in my life. Don’t take that away from me.” Tears roll from her eyes, on to my fingers. And I can’t look at her another second. I close my eyes, press my forehead into hers and breathe her in one last time.
“Goodbye, Gracie,” I whisper. My lips almost touch hers but I can’t kiss them again. It's only gonna make things harder. Pulling myself out of her takes all my strength, and I silently pull my jeans back on and leave the room, hoping with every step I take away from her that she doesn’t call me back. Her scent still lingers on my shirt as I pull it over my head, and each step I take feels like a lead weight.
“I was fine before you came here and took me.” She charges after me. “And you're right, Brax, things will be much better going back to how they were. We would never have worked.” There’s cruelty in her tone, and it gets the fucking better of me.
“Because you’re better than me, right?” I turn around and bite back at her, I should be walking away, not starting something.
“I never said that.” Gracie looks back at me, stunned.
“You never said it, but it’s what you meant.” We might as well be honest. I have my reasons for letting her go and this right here is her reason for releasing me.
“This is where I belong,” she whispers, all that confidence she chased me out here with suddenly lost.
“I ain’t gonna argue with that, princess.”
I pull on my cut and head for the stairs, but she chases after me.
“Don’t leave like this,” she begs, tugging at my arm, and I spin around so sharply I hear her gasp.
“Will you go back to him like we never happened?” I hate myself for asking her the question that’s been pounding my head for the past few weeks. “Be with him the way you just were with me?” I don’t know why I’m asking her this. I don’t wanna know the answer. The thought makes me murderous.
“You’re making it sound like it’s gonna be easy.” She looks back at me sadly.
“You said it yourself, this is where you belong.”
“And you’re telling me that if I were to come with you right now, I wouldn’t always come second to all that hate you carry inside your heart.” Her words come out harsh through the tears she’s crying, and don’t they just make me feel like a cunt.
“I guess I can’t give you what you want.” I feel my shoulders sag as I turn around and take a few more steps away from her. But I’m not satisfied. She needs to hear me out, and the selfish asshole I am wants to leave her with a wound in her soul like the one she’s carved in mine.
“Just know this,” I march back at her, grabbing under her chin and forcing her to look at me. “You can go back to him, you can pretend like we never happened. But every time he touches you…” The thought of him doing that makes my whole body tense and I smash my free hand into the wall to relieve some of that tension.
“Every time he kisses you…” I close my eyes because the thought disgusts me. I can’t even finish what I was gonna say because it makes me wanna wreak havoc.
“You’re mine, Gracie. Ain’t shit gonna change that.” Releasing her from my grip, I move fast and get the hell out of her house before I prove that fact to her all over again.
I put all my focus into making it back to the truck, and when I finally get to the driver’s door, I slam my head against it. I crave some physical pain, because the hurt I’m feeling inside of me is so crippling I wanna tear it out. And I fist at my hair like it might pull the thoughts from my head before I get back in the truck and I drive away from her.