“Fuck yes,” King moaned, now fully seated inside me.
I groaned loudly, not caring who heard me. King thrust up inside me, and my insides clenched around him. Every time he pulled out, he rubbed against that spot inside that made me see stars before thrusting angrily back in.
Again and again.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you you’re mine. This pussy. This pussy is mine. Don’t fucking forget that shit again.”
He thrust hard and angry. I took him. All of him. His cock. His anger. His possession. I let him claim me with his kiss, his cock, his words.
We were fighting with our sex.
A back and forth.
A give and take.
With our sex, we told each other I hate you and I want you and I don’t want you to leave.
“Fuck, Pup. Fuck. I knew it. I knew it would be like this,” King said breathlessly.
A pressure was building inside of me that was ten times more powerful then when King had made me come on his fingers. Growing with each stroke. Faster and faster he plunged into my depths until he didn’t just give me an orgasm; he ripped it from my body.
I shouted out my release as I came and held onto King for dear life, tightening my thighs around him, digging the heels of my feet into his ass as he furiously pumped into me. I saw stars, bright and vivid, dancing in front of my eyes until I thought that I might pass out and die right there in his arms. Maybe, I did choose King being inside of me over breathing, because I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
“Look at me,” King ordered, his voice deep and raspy like he was trying to hold onto his control. I was too lost in coming down from my orgasm high to pay any attention to what he was saying. “Look at me!”
This time he emphasized his words with a thrust of his hips. I moaned and opened my eyes.
“Don’t look away,” he ordered, holding my gaze as his cock hardened and twitched. He groaned as he came inside of me, spilling his wet warmth into my depths.
We’d said all the things with our bodies that our mouths had failed to communicate over and over again. He’d told me that I was his before, that I belonged to him. But before that night, I hadn’t believed him.
It was what his body told me that took me by surprise and shook me to my very core.
He was mine.
Chapter Twenty-One
Doe
“Come with me,” King said. Righting my clothes, he took my hand and led me back to the pier. When we passed the bonfire, we were greeted with a lot of whistling and applause.
They’d obviously heard us.
I didn’t care.
We sat on the dock with our legs dangling over the side. The fog had lifted off the water. The full moon cast our shadows over the glass-like bay, making it appear like black ice.
King held my hand in his, and when I tried to pry it away, he tightened his grip.
“King,” I started.
“Brantley,” he corrected. “Call me by my first name.”
“Brantley,” I said, testing his name out.
“I hated it growing up, but for good or for worse, it’s the only thing my mama ever gave me. Grace is the only other person who uses it.” He paused, then added, “I like the way it sounds when you say it.” His serious tone and soft eyes made me question where he was going with this, but then, it hit me.
He was letting me in.
“Okay, Brantley, what else you got?” I nudged his shoulder. He took a deep breath.
“You know about Max?”
I nodded. The girl we went to see, the one from the picture. “Your sister.”
“Pup, Max isn’t my sister,” King admitted.
“Then, who is she to you?” I asked. If she wasn’t family, then why did he have so much interest in her?
“She’s my daughter.”
Holy. Shit.
“Your daughter?” I asked, my throat tightening.
“Yeah, Max is my daughter. She’s the real reason why I went to prison, and only Preppy and Bear know the truth about her.” He squeezed my hand tighter. Looking out over the water, he seemed pained to be recalling memories associated with Max. “Do you want to know the story? Because you asked me if I wanted to let you go or keep you, and I want to let you in. I want to keep you, but it’s a hard story for me to tell. I’ve never told it to anyone. The only people who know where there in some way.”
“I want to know.”
“Do you know why I was in prison?”
“Because of your mom.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t make apologies for the things I’ve needed to do for the sake of business. Preppy and I had shit lives growing up. We did everything we could to turn it around for ourselves, most of those things were far outside the law, but we did it. Shit was amazing for a while. But my anger would get the best of me, and I would almost always be the one who ended up in jail here and there, usually just overnight. Sometimes, for thirty or sixty day stretches, depending on the charges. The other players in the game we play know the rules. They also know that when you step out of line, things happen. Things that make you dead. But this wasn’t one of those times. I didn’t pull a trigger, or use a knife, or send someone after her.”
“Your mom?” I asked.
He nodded, then told me his story.
By the time I was fifteen, Me, Prep, and Bear were our own little crew. Just three young shitheads who just wanted to have a good time, get laid, and make some fucking money. Surprisingly, we did make money. Enough for me to buy the house.
The three of us were on top of the world for a while. I’m not gonna lie. It was the best fucking time of my entire life.
But then, I got pinched. It wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t for anything I should’ve actually gotten pinched for. A stupid bar fight in an upscale place Preppy wanted to check out across the river in Coral Pines. Some shitty tourist spot.
I was talking to a girl when some pink sweater-tied-around-his-shoulders douche-bag stepped to me for talking to her. We got into it, broke some shit in the bar, chairs, glasses, tables.
I’m covered in tattoos, and I have a record. He’s got a pink fucking sweater tied around his shoulders. It was easy to figure out which one of us was going to jail when the sheriff showed up.
I got ninety days because of my priors. When I was in county, this girl I used to screw around with showed up for visitation. She was as big as a fucking house. I thought that she was going to give birth right there in the visitors’ room. She told me the baby was mine, said that she wanted to raise it with me when I got out.
I didn’t think much of the girl, but she was nice enough, and after I got over the initial shock of it all, I was really excited to be a dad. I made a plan, made promises to myself that I was going to be a good dad, especially since I could only narrow down who my father was to every man in town except Mr. Wong who ran the corner store, for obvious reasons.
I wrote the baby letters from prison, though Tricia didn’t know then if it was a boy or a girl. She’d said they tried to find out on the ultrasound but he or she was moving around too much. It was exactly what I needed. And then it was what I wanted.
Sure I had money, but the baby gave me a reason to want more out of life.
Purpose.
The morning I got out of county, Tricia was supposed to pick me up but never showed. I walked to a payphone to call her, and when she answered, she told me she’d had the baby the week before.
A girl.
She’d named her Max, the girl name we picked out when she was still pregnant.
I asked her where the baby was, and she mumbled something about it being too hard and that she couldn’t handle it. That the whole motherhood thing wasn’t for her. She said she wasn’t coming back. There was a lot of noise in the background, glasses clinking, music. It sounded like she was at a bar. She was shouting into the phone.
Where the fuck is she? I kept asking her over and over again. For a second, I thought she was going to say she gave her up or something, and I was already thinking about who the fuck I was going to have to kill to get her back when Tricia said something that surprised me and turned my stomach.
I LEFT HER WITH YOUR MOTHER
Before that day, I hadn’t seen my mom but a handful of times in years, and none of those times were on purpose. Most of the time, when I ran into her, she didn’t know who I was. The very last time I’d seen her, she called me Travis and asked me how Bermuda was.
As soon as Tricia told her where the baby was, I hung up and called my mom, but the phone line was dead, and I didn’t know if she had a cell.
I took a cab to Mom’s and called Preppy to meet me there.
I got there before he did.
I knew walking up to the door that something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut.
I banged on the door of her apartment until my knuckles bled, but there wasn’t any answer. I could hear the static from a TV inside. I screamed out for my mom, but there was no response. I was about to turn around and walk away, check with some of the neighbors to see if she even still lived there, but then I heard it.
I heard her.
My Baby.
Crying.
My baby was crying.
Not just a little cry or a cranky cry, but a strangled cry straight from the gut, the kind that says that shit ain’t right.
It’s like she knew I was there, and she was calling out to me.
I kicked in the front door. The living room was dark except for the TV. When I took a step, trash got stuck on my shoes, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts. The counter was littered with garbage. The trash can was overflowing. Flies circled the kitchen sink which was piled high with dirty dishes.