His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (15 page)

Colin lets go of my arms. Slips his arm underneath me to grab my breast, hard. He kneads it and my pussy, his two fingers still inside of me as he does.

“Do you feel how wet you are?” he asks, both above and behind me. “Even wetter than I imagined when I was jacking myself off every night, thinking about shutting that smart mouth of yours, imagining what it would feel like to fuck you into submission. Tell me something, Purple. When you ran, did you really think I was going to let you leave?”

I hadn’t been thinking at all. Just panicking. And even more so now, because I don’t understand what’s happening. Why is he doing this? Why is my body responding to him doing this?

“That’s what I’m going to have to punish you for. That and making me wait. Do you know how many times I nearly broke down and called you today? To tell you to get your ass up here so I could fuck you like this? I sat in this house, hard as a fucking steel beam all day, waiting for you to get here.
I’m going to make you pay for that
.”

My mind is all turned around with conflicting emotions now. Shame and pride and fear and confusion. But most of all, lust. Raw and obscene. Because my body has never been handled like this. I wouldn’t have thought even ten minutes ago that I would want anyone to touch me this way.

But my response is undeniable. I can feel the heat of my lust leaking out of me, making his hand slick as he works it inside of me. Squeezing my pussy as he does.

I’ve never felt so helpless in my life and that makes me panic, which in turn gives me enough strength to try to break free again.

I grab his wrist below our bodies with both of mine, and pin his relentless hand so it can’t follow when I roll beneath him.

I kick at him and run again. And this time I do almost make it to the door—but he grabs me from behind and slings me onto the couch. I land on my back and he’s on top of me in an instant, pushing his own pants and underwear down. I hear the rip of a foil package, and I know what he’s doing with his hands, while his body is holding me down.

I go for his face. Catching him with my nails.

“Oh, you are going to fucking pay for that, Purple,” he says, slamming, then pinning my arms above my head.

He sounds angry, but he’s grinning down at me, like I just made his entire day. I can feel his cock now, pushing against my slit. My cotton undies are the only things keeping him out at this point. And that makes me fight harder. I buck and bring my leg up, almost catching him where it counts.

It becomes a real fight then. Me holding nothing back as I bite, scratch, buck, and kick. He handles me like an inmate at an insane asylum, applying more weight to whatever body part I’m trying to move, until I can barely wiggle, much less fight him off.

We lie there then. Both panting. His sheathed cock so heavy and hard on top of me, it almost feels like it’s the only weight holding me down.

“This how we going to do it?” he asks me then, still grinning. “Or did you get that birth control prescription like I told you to?”

I raise my head and spit straight in his face.

That wipes his smile clean off, and his whole face goes as hard as a stone sculpture.

“Fuck you,” I say into his hard, violent silence.

One of his hands lets go of one of my wrists, and he wipes the spit away. “Don’t use the safe word,” he says, his voice a dead monotone.

It’s a threat. It’s also a reminder, and I remember just as suddenly as I’d forgotten when my adrenaline was running the show, that there is a possible way out of this situation.

Property taxes
. That’s all I have to say, and this will be over.

“Don’t use the safe word,” he growls again, as if he’s reading my mind.

He lifts up and I feel his hand rough below my waistline, grabbing at my underwear, yanking it to the side, so my pussy is fully exposed.

Use the safe word
, I think, my head filling with panic. I have to use it. Use it now, or he’s going to…

He splits my lower lips open with the tip of his cock. “Don’t use the safe word.”

I don’t use the safe word. Then I gasp out when he pushes into me with a rough shove, filling me up in a way that feels both overwhelming and insane.

How could there possibly be so much of him?

I push against his chest, even as my legs open to accommodate him. Even as my mind screams at me to use the safe word because this is some crazy shit. This whole situation is beyond insane.

But I can’t say it. Can’t stop thrashing underneath him. It feels like the most fucked up experiment. Him shoving into me. Me trying to buck him off and getting more and more turned on, despite the fact that I shouldn’t be

“You want this,” he tells me. “You’re going to come on my dick so hard, because you want this, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“No!” I cry out. Then I break off with a curse, because I can already feel it building. The friction of having him so tight on top of me as he rolls into me.

“Keep fucking fighting it,” he whispers meanly. “It’s going to make it even better when you come all over my dick because you can’t help yourself.”

“No!” I struggle underneath him, struggle against the building orgasm.

“You got me so fucking hard right now, Purple. I’m going to give you what you want this time, cum inside you. But next time, I’m going tie you up, make you beg. That’s a promise, baby.”

Beg for what? I wonder. Beg him to stop? Beg him to keep going?

As if reading my mind, he says, “Later on, you’re going to be begging me to fuck you like this. But right now, I’m going to make this tight pussy
mine
.”

His answer to my unspoken question pushes me right over the edge. For the first time since we’ve begun, my body goes slack, losing all its fight as the orgasm pushes to the surface so sharply, it’s verging on pain.

“Colin!” I cry out.

“Yeah, say my name. Let me know who fucked you into submission.”

Again, my body has no business responding to this, but I come so hard. So hard, my entire body bucks underneath his, and the sensations rip me through me, bright and hot, stealing my voice so I can’t deny my submission. Can’t tell him this isn’t a surrender.

Above me, Colin’s thrusts become sloppy. He’s still pounding into me, but with less purpose and more desperation. “Pussy… so tight and hot.”

“I’m on birth control,” I suddenly find myself telling him on a gasp. “I’ve been on it for years. I just didn’t want to tell you—”

Colin’s response is immediate. He pulls out of me. Rips off the condom and rams back into me. “Purple, girl…”

It’s a warning, a threat, and a curse at the same time. Right before I feel his shaft expand and then release into me a few moments later.

I have never in my life experienced anything like this. Had never been talked to that way. I’d never even been held down.

Which is why I can’t understand why my whole body is tingling with happiness now. Why I can still feel my core contracting around him, pulling at him, like I’m still thirsty and desperate for him.

“Christ…” he says, moving away from me. And it feels like he’s speaking for both of us.

He stands up and I see his jeans are mostly still on, the front of them open. He must have barely pushed them down before entering me. I stare at the long, spent cock hanging out over the band of his briefs, but it’s soon hidden when he tucks it away behind his jeans.

And that’s when I realize, with another truck load of shame, just how I must look, lying with my legs spread open on the couch, my full bottom totally exposed.

I roll off the couch and head toward the leggings he pulled off of me. I can see them lying in a heap on the far side of the living room.

“You ain’t going to like what happens if I so much as see you touch those pants without my permission.”

His blue eyes burn cold fire into my back and my breath catches. I think about doing it anyway, to prove I’m not afraid. Even if I am. But he starts toward me before I can, pulling an afghan off the back of the couch as he does.

“If you’re cold, use this,” he says, wrapping it around me. “Or me.”

Then he takes me by the hand and says, “Come on back to the couch, Purple.”

I follow him back to the couch, and sit down with him, my hand still in his, feeling somewhat mollified, but…

The thought of what we just did makes my face go hot again. And I can feel him watching me, waiting to hear what I’m going to say next.

So, of course, I give all my attention to the couch. Notice all it’s small details like I didn’t notice them before. Apparently the afghan was serving multiple purposes, lying over it. Not just decoration but a way to cover up all the cigarette burns on its back cushions.

“So your dad was a smoker?” I ask Colin.

“Three packs a day, and sometimes he got too drunk to put them out in the ashtray. So he’d used the couch. Or me.” Colin adds the last bit like it’s just an afterthought. Then he says, “If the liver failure hadn’t taken him early, cancer probably would have.”

I have to ask him, “How did you get it to smell so nice in here? My grandma’s house still smells like my Paw Paw’s pipe, and he passed a few years ago.”

Colin’s thumb strokes the back of my hand as he answers, “Had to have two cleaning crews come through and keep the house open for a month to get the smell out.”

An image of Colin opening all of the doors and windows after he inherited the house floats through my mind, and I wish I had my journal, but it’s back in Alabama. One of the many things I stupidly left behind.

“So your father was a monster, and your mama was a saint,” I say. “Explains a lot.”

He kind of half sighs. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Saint when I’m out in public. Monster when I’m here at my old man’s place.”

“How many girls have you brought here?” I fold my leg up on the couch, so I can turn to face him more fully. “Is this like… your Back to Tennessee M.O.?”

He studies me for a moment or two as if trying to decide whether I’m asking the question out of curiosity or jealousy. It’s both. The curiosity is only natural, but the jealously makes me feel real stupid, because he’s a country star and of course he has access to a bunch of women who probably wouldn’t have batted an eye over what we just did.

But then he shakes his head, the corner of his lips tugging up into an almost smile. “No, Purple, you’re the only one I’ve ever done this with.”

I look from side to side again. “Because I’m the only one who’s ever agreed to meet you out in the boonies so you could have your way with me?”

“No,” he answers with a sad smile. “Truth is, my fame attracts a certain kind of woman, and fame whores don’t really have a whole lot of boundaries. If I wanted them to do something, act a certain way, they’d just do it.”

“So why didn’t you ask one of them to meet you out here?”

Colin shrugs. “Groupies aren’t exactly known for their discretion. That’s why I’ve never messed with them. I’m not a very trusting man, and I can’t be with somebody I don’t trust at least a little bit.”

“But you trust me,” I say. Then thinking about how absolutely untrustworthy I really am, I add, “…to be discreet.”

He gives me a measuring look. “If you were going to sell me out to a tabloid, you would’ve done it already. That fight Beau and me had was a pretty juicy story—one the confidentiality agreement you signed didn’t necessarily cover.”

Yes, it was. But it never even occurred to me to tell anyone else what happened, much less sell it for money. And I can’t imagine telling anyone
this
story. Not even Bernice. That’s just not how I work. Sometimes… sometimes it feels like I was born keeping secrets, like that’s how I’m hard-wired.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice wry, “I guess I just know how to keep a secret.”

I look around the tiny house again. “So that’s why you told me to come to this address? So you could be a monster without anyone finding out?”

I can see from the way his eyes suddenly cut away from mine that I’ve hit the nail exactly on the head, which is why I’m so surprised when he caresses his thumb over the ball of my hand and quietly asks, “You okay after all that?”

I answer with a shaky laugh. “I’m something. Okay would maybe be a kind of strong word to use, but I don’t think I need a therapist to come talk me through what just happened or anything. Maybe that’s because I’m still in shock. I really wasn’t expecting that.”

“What were you expecting?” he asks with another smile tugging at his lips.

I look down at our joined hands for a long time before answering, “Not this.”

“But you liked it. You like what we just did.”

The way he dips his chin to make my eyes meet his leaves me wondering if he’s telling me or asking me. Either way, it’s not the sort of question/statement I’m able to answer with words. So I settle for clamping my lips together and nodding.

Then I immediately look away from him again, my face now the opposite of hot. In fact, my entire body has iced over with the kind of cold shame that the afghan just can’t reach.

“But I’m still not sure why I didn’t use the safe word,” I admit, my voice quiet as a whisper.

“I’m glad you didn’t.” I can feel his blue gaze on me again. Watching me refuse to meet his eyes.

I’m glad, too. I’ve never come like that before. I never even knew it was possible to come that hard. Colin, for all his strangeness and confidentiality contracts, is hands down the best I’ve ever had.

But it feels too weird to admit this to him. So instead I say, “Property taxes.”

Colin’s entire body goes stiff. He lets go of my hand and stands, moving all the way to other side of the room, coming to stop next to where my leggings are lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.

For what feels like a century and a half, the only sound in the cabin is the wood crackling in the fireplace. Even the rain has stopped now, I realize, as I wait for Colin to say something. Anything.

But he doesn’t. Just stands there like a soldier awaiting orders. Shadow and light playing across his now harsh expression.

This is not how I expected using the safe word to go. I don’t feel powerful, or even like I’ve regained the upper hand. Instead a weird, desperate itch pops off inside my chest area, like I’ve lost something.