Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye

Chapter 43

“Andie, everything OK?”Hero hisses as Gunnar leads me off the dancefloor, and then away from the main room.

“Everything’s great,” Gunnar answers for me, and gives Hero such an out of place bright smile that she actually takes a step backward. “Never better.” I rush out of the room to find a bathroom, and I hear him half-jog out of the gala behind me.

The quartet starts to play another song and the gala resumes like nothing happened. People are going to be talking about that slap for a while. When I come out of the bathroom, wishing I was wearing underwear, he’s waiting impatiently for me in the hallway. “What the hell was that?” I ask him as he yanks me through the nearest doorway. The country club the gala is being held at is a large complex made up of a few big Victorian-style buildings and rolling manicured hills.

We’re in the kitchen now, and the staff, listening to death metal and laughing as they prepare our food, look over at us like rabbits in headlights.

“Carry on,” Gunnar says, holding up his hand. Someone flicks off the music, nervous, but as we pass, Gunnar flicks it back on again. “Cradle of Filth, very cool choice,” he says, and leads me through a second doorway.

Now we’re in the dining area, the second reception room. At some point tonight, maybe twenty or thirty minutes, people will filter through to sit at their set tables and start to eat. Then there’s the auction, a little light entertainment — probably something awful like a local comedian who has had all their good material vetoed — and then coffee. Excruciating.

“Gunnar,” I say, and he spins me around and presses me against his chest again, wrapping his arm around my waist. I struggle out of his grip. “What was that all for?”

“Tell me you’ve been telling me the truth,” he says. A lump forms in my throat.

“I have.”

“I know the whole truth?”

I go to nod, and then I shake my head. “No. But I don’t think I do either.”

“You’ve told me everything you can tell me?”

“Yes.”

He steps to me and takes me again, this time his grip looser. He dips his head and lightly presses his forehead against mine. The next words are soft. “Tell me you love me.”

I run my palm up the soft, expensive material of his shirt. “No,” I whisper, and kiss his lips. He reacts instantly, coming alive under my touch, and kisses me back. “Tell me you used to love me.”

“I loved you,” he says, sorrow scraping his voice. He kisses me again, soft. “I loved you so fucking much, it hurt.” His eyes are dark, his hands holding my face. Tears prick at the backs of my eyes. He kisses me deeper, desperate, hungry. “I loved you, Andie.”

I’m crying now, pulling in shuddering breaths as I lock my lips to his. I never want to let go, pull back, but I do. “Past tense,” I say, feeling his hot breath, something in him barely contained as he holds me in place.

He looks wrecked, watching me cry. Sob. He’s holding my face. “Oh, god,” he says. “Stop.” He shakes his head, sucking his lips inside his mouth. “No, not past tense.” His chest is rising and falling fast, and he picks me up at the waist, clamping his lips against me again with the same fiery intensity I see in his eyes. “I wish. I wish.”

He pushes me against the wall and I wrap my legs around his waist. Neither of us seems to care about the wet spot I’m making on the crotch of pants. Clumsy, desperate, I let myself go, and we pull each other to the rough blue carpet. His fingers are inside me, and he makes a low noise against my throat. “Fucking wet.” I threw the pink rubber toy in the bathroom trash.

“I can’t believe you did that to me,” I say.

“I can’t believe I made a girl come with my incredible waltzing skills.” He gives me an arrogant smile and I pull him down to me again. Whatever’s going on, I don’t need to understand it right now. I just need him. I’m fumbling with his belt, and we’re breathing heavy, lips brushing against each other and rolling across the carpet.

“Wait,” I say, when his belt clinks and his zipper comes down. His cock strains against his boxers.

“Wait?” he repeats.

“What if someone walks in?”

He looks over his shoulder, and when he looks back at me I see the feral darkness in his eyes. “Shit,” he says. “I’m trying to care.” He leans over me, covering my body with his. I feel the stilted jerks of his right hand, freeing himself from layers of stiff clothing, while he licks up my neck and my hands roam over his suit jacket. He looks up and around, his teeth grazing my earlobe. “Come here.”

He rolls me on top of him, and I straddle him, feeling the hot ridge of the underside of his cock between my lips. Instinctively, still sensitive and soaked, I slide up and down, feeling every part of his length skim against me. He bucks his hips, pushing me higher in the air and I arch my back. “Fuck me,” I say, scratching helplessly at his chest with one hand and gripping his dick with the other. “Now.”

He rolls us one more time. We’re underneath one of the buffet tables, partially concealed by the hanging white tablecloth. He is on top of me again, clamping his lips against mine before I can speak. Our groans are muffled and he scrambles to get the hem of his dress shirt out of the way, hitching my dress up past my hips.

“I can’t just fuck you once,” he breathes, and I look down as he brushes his glistening tip against my pussy, pulling in a sharp breath.

“How much are you going to need to fuck me?” I whisper, letting my lips curl upwards. The fact that we’re hurtling past every established boundary we’ve ever had is sending shockwaves of need through my chest. I lap at his lower lip. “I need you to tell me more. I need to hear more.” I swallow, squeezing at his back muscles. “No more lying.”

His thick cock is pushing hard between my pussy lips now and he exhales hard, dipping his head, but his fist wrapped around his cock stops him from entering me. Yet. “I need to fuck you once for every time I thought about fucking you,” he says. “And that’s going to take us a while.” I grind up against his cock, his knuckles. Every sensation is intensified tenfold after what he did to me out there. “No more lying,” he agrees.

And I pull on his elbow until he lets go of himself. Then, slowly, he thrusts his hips and I buck in return until his head slips inside me. Then, inch by thick inch, the rest of my best friend’s cock disappears inside me. When he’s buried fully inside me, he bites at my neck and I feel his muscles tense and contract. He nuzzles the wet, stinging spot he made by my collarbone, and then starts to move inside me. “You’re so tight,” he says, his voice catching. “God.” I meet his tentative rhythm with the rolling of my hips, leaning my head back and feeling him stretch me. Feeling my body adjust to him like he was always meant for me, and I was always meant for him.

“Gunnar,” I say into his hair. His body is shaking with the effort to control himself. He lifts his head and brushes kisses over my lips. “Fuck me.” I slide my hands down and squeeze his ass.

“You want it rough?” he pants, and then winces at his own words. At the weight of the history behind them. I tighten my grip on him and grind hard against him, hipbones driving into each other’s flesh.

“Only with you,” I say, and he searches my eyes for the truth. He rears back and pumps back into me, slamming his hips against me, and then again. And again. Faster, and faster, his thumb stroking at my clit. He takes my knees and pushes them up to my shoulders. Then he uses me to balance himself, leaning back and thrusting in and out of me hard and fast, wet and slippery, the cold metal of his zipper brushing my thigh.

No one has ever been inside me this deep before. He is so big, pushing me to my limits. No one else has ever done anything like this to my body before, either, elicited this kind of reaction. I turn and bury my face in the crook of my elbow, wailing wordlessly for mercy and hoping he knows I don’t mean it.

His body tenses, his thrusts more erratic, and he lowers himself over my body again, trapping his hand between our bodies as it roughly circles me, drawing out screaming, leg-shaking crest after crest from deep inside me.

“I’m gonna come,” he grinds out, and I wrap my legs around him. “You want me to come inside you?”

He likes my helpless nod, because he grunts, grips my hips, and fucks me harder and faster. He finishes with three slow, irregular thrusts deep into me, and I feel his hot, jerking climax fill me up and spill out, sliding down his shaft and down my inner thighs.

He pulls at the neckline of my dress, revealing my bra and running his tongue up and down my cleavage. His hair is messed up, his eyes bright and wide, when he looks up at me. He’s no longer transformed into something wild by lust, but something else is in his expression.

Something I almost don’t recognize, it’s been so long.

A tear tracks down my cheek as I pull him close and kiss him. Whatever happened, whatever changed, I know I can’t lose this. Him. Never again.