Monster Among the Roses
: Chapter 21

Oh, holy shit. Holy shit. Did that mean what I thought it meant?

I had no idea, but my libido certainly started assuming plenty. Instantly hard, I shifted in my seat to make more room in my pants before clearing my throat and tipping my head toward the flower shop. “Didn’t you want to go inside?”

Isobel glanced over her shoulder toward the store she’d purchased. Gaze disinterested, she turned back to me. “No.”

Air puffed from my lungs. “So, you…just…anywhere?” I asked.

When she nodded, I had to concentrate on exhaling again. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

I put the truck in drive and pulled back into traffic. We drove for about five more minutes as the day slid into dusk and my headlights came on. At first, it was aimless. I wasn’t sure where to take her that would be private. Mom was at my house, and well…that’s as far as my brain could travel. Until I remembered the closed and abandoned shoe factory I’d worked at for nearly ten years. The loading dock back in the shipping department had been pretty secluded, and with the place closed down, it’d be absolutely deserted now.

A chain-link fence surrounded the lot, but vandals and looters had long since broken the padlocked cable keeping the rickety entrance closed. The gate hung open limply by one hinge. As we drove through, Isobel sat forward with interest. It’d only been eight months since the factory had closed, but grass and weeds had already grown up between the cracks in the asphalt parking lot, making the place look as neglected as it was. I rolled the truck slowly over broken beer bottles and around the main building to the back. It seemed creepier now that no life or light shone from within. Cracked and shattered glass in the windows only helped along the desolate sensation.

“Damn,” I murmured, shaking my head. “I didn’t realize it’d feel so dead around here.”

Empathetic to my mood, Isobel quietly asked, “Where did you work?”

“Back here,” I answered, pulling into a tight squeeze between buildings to arrive at a courtyard where the loading dock still stood.

When I saw the work of Black Crimson on one wall, I sucked in a surprised breath. “Well, that’s new.”

The painting portrayed a woman pointing a flashlight into a dark corner only to illuminate a man who was holding up his hand to shield himself from her. The poor dude looked as if he had an abundance of hair, long mane, shaggy beard and all. Or maybe it was a bear, not a man. I wasn’t sure. But he definitely didn’t want her looking at him.

The quote next to the painting read:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

“Oh! I know who said that.” Isobel brightened. “It was Martin Luther King, Jr.” She smiled over at me. “I wrote a paper about him in high school.”

I nodded, putting the truck into park and killing the engine. Silence and then darkness greeted us as I turned off the headlights. In the fading daylight, you could barely make out the graffiti on the wall.

“I wonder which fairy tale that couple’s supposed to be,” I mused aloud, still studying the artwork.

Isobel turned to me, blinking. “You can’t tell?”

“What? You can?”

Her smile was a pure tease and absolutely stunning. Instead of answering me, she said, “I have a present for you.”

I blinked. “You do?” Then I laughed and shook my head. “Why?”

She shrugged, looking embarrassed and abashed as she tugged a small box from her purse. “It’s nothing fancy. Just a…a thank-you gift, if you will?”

“Thank you?” I murmured, growing intrigued. “What am I being thanked for?”

“For being you. For being kind to me when I didn’t deserve it. For showing me not everyone cares so much about appearances. For showing me the world isn’t such an awful place after all. For making me want to live again.”

My lips parted. “Isobel,” I whispered, speechless and dazed. “I…” I started to shake my head, unable to take credit for so much. It didn’t seem possible I could make that big of an impact on anyone’s life. But from the way she was looking at me, I couldn’t deny the possibility either.

Overwhelmed to learn I’d influenced her that much, I blew out a hard, bracing breath, trying to keep myself together.

Isobel misconstrued my reaction completely, though. She probably thought I didn’t feel the same about her or something, but she muttered, “You’re right,” and started to shove the box back into her purse. “I don’t know what I was thinking. This was stupid and silly. I shouldn’t—”

“No!” I covered her hand with mine to stop her from withdrawing. When she fell quiet and peeked up from frightened blue eyes, I slowly opened her hand and took the box from her palm.

“Thank you,” I said meaningfully before I dropped my gaze and slipped off the lid. The case looked as if it would hold a piece of jewelry, but when I peered inside the only thing that peered back was myself, in the reflection of a small pocket mirror.

It looked old and well used. Knowing there had to be a story behind it, I drew it out carefully and shifted my thumb over the clouded glass before lifting my face.

“Who did it belong to?”

As if transfixed by the looking glass, Isobel blinked, her gaze reflecting beauty and yet pain. Then her eyes lifted to mine. “My mother. It was one of the few things we saved from the fire that belonged to her. She’d had it tucked away in the family safe along with some pictures my father later framed and hung on the wall in his office. But this…this was the only real thing that was left of hers.”

I sucked in a breath. “Oh, Isobel, no.” I pressed the mirror back into her hand. “This is important to you. It’s priceless. I don’t deserve something so special.”

She just stared at me, her lips beginning to tremble. “It is special,” she agreed, “and important, and priceless.” Her voice then went so low I had to strain to hear her confession as she added, “Which is exactly why I want you to have it.”

With my heart expanding two sizes too big for my chest, I folded my hand over hers, trapping the miniature mirror between our fingers. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to have it. And I thought…” She drew in a deep breath before continuing. “I thought that whenever you were sad, or in pain, or it felt as if everything was wrong and ugly in the world, you could just look in here, see yourself, and know there’s still beauty left, something worth living for. Because that’s what you’ve done for me, just by being you. You’ve made me want to live again.”

I floundered.

Nothing I could say in return would ever measure up to that. And I didn’t even want to. I just wanted to live in that moment where someone thought I was something.

Eyes growing damp, I blinked repeatedly before spilling out a rusty laugh. “Whoa,” I said before leaning toward her and pressing my brow to hers. Then I interlaced our fingers around the mirror.

“No one’s ever made me feel the way you do,” I admitted.

Her gaze lifted. “Same here.”

With a groan, I disconnected our foreheads so I could slant my mouth across hers. She opened up to me, slipping her tongue around mine and clutching the front of my shirt in her fist as I circled the back of her neck with my free hand and sank my fingers into her hair.

Without looking at what I was doing, I placed the mirror into the cup holder in the center console as smoothly as I could. Then I hauled Isobel across her seat and into my lap.

She laughed against my mouth before moaning and pressing her ass down on my erection. I sucked in a breath and arched up my hips to help her out. Our bodies ground against each other, sparking out an electrical current that arced between us.

“Holy shit,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath.

Heat collected under my skin and seemed to explode from me when she grappled with my shirt before wrenching it up over my head, pulling off my hat with it. Then her hands were on me, exploring and gripping muscles, digging into flesh, sliding lower toward my navel.

Feeling the need to reciprocate, I tugged at her shirt until I managed to pull it off. The black bra underneath cupped proud, plump breasts, and for a moment they were all I saw, until I leaned in to kiss the tops of them. That’s when I finally noticed the scars. They trailed over her shoulder and halfway down her torso.

“Damn,” I murmured, sucking in a breath. “That must’ve hurt.”

Skimming my fingers over them, I looked up into Isobel’s face to get a better sense of how much pain she must’ve endured, and yet I was still unable to imagine the severity.

Hooking my hand around the back of her neck, I drew her forward and pressed my mouth to hers. “I wish I could give you twice the amount of pleasure for every second of pain you’ve ever suffered.”

Isobel sifted some hair across my forehead with her fingers. “You’re making a pretty good dent so far,” she assured me with a soft smile.

I kissed her again. And then again. And again. Our mouths clung until I grasped her shoulder, only for my fingers to come into contact with warm bare skin. Needing to investigate this further, I began to kiss my way down along her throat, then over her collarbone, and finally down to the uppermost swells of her breasts.

Glancing up at her to make sure she approved, I slipped the straps of her bra off her shoulders and pulled the cups down. Her nipples were hard and tight, a dusty rose color. I groaned before pulling one into my mouth and sucking.

Isobel whimpered and clutched my head. I glanced up at her, without letting go of her breast, to make sure it was a good whimper. Her eyes were as blue as a stormy sea and full of wanton need.

I moved to the second breast, only to glance up again, needing to know she wanted this as much as I did.

She smiled and cupped my cheek. “Why do you keep looking at me as if you think I’m suddenly going to pull away and stop you?”

Because I kept worrying she was suddenly going to pull away and stop me.

“Just making sure you’re real, that this is really happening,” I said.

Blue eyes lightened with mischief. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and started to skim her hand down my chest. “You need confirmation of reality, huh? What about this? Does this feel real enough?”

She cupped me through my jeans, and my dick jumped to attention, straining and throbbing to reach her fingers through the material.

“Holy hell.” All the blood in my head rushed south, racing toward my lap. When Isobel slid the zipper down, I went lightheaded and clutched her hair before pressing my face to her temple. “Careful. It’s been a while since—fuck.”

Her fingers wrapped around me, and I almost lost it. I had no clue what the hell she’d done to her hand, but I swear to God, no palm had ever felt that good clutching my cock before. She glided her fingers up and down like any other hand would, and yet rockets blasted behind my eyes.

Unable to properly process so much ecstasy, I could only stare into her eyes and feel. Experience. Enjoy.

Appearing confident and pleased with herself, she licked her lips. “I want to feel all this”—and she made me catch my breath as she gave another long stroke from tip to base— “inside me.” Then she held up a condom between two fingers. “Think you can do that?”

Hell yes.

I plucked the package from her hand and had it opened, then wrapped around myself in about five seconds flat. When I looked up to grasp her hips and pull her down on me, I finally realized we were both still clothed from the waist down.

“Fuck, this isn’t very romantic, is it?”

She didn’t seem to care. Eyes alive with excitement and anticipation, she answered, “It’s better than romantic. It’s exhilarating.”

Catching the waistband of her pants, she began to peel them down her hips. I watched, enthralled. “God, you are so beautiful.”

She merely beamed, a goddess in her prime. “If you want any more clothes off, now’s the time to take care of that.”

The woman made a good point.

Rushing to join her in her nakedness, I bumped my elbow on the door handle. She cracked her knee against the steering wheel. We laughed and leaned into each other, absorbing the amusement of our awkwardness from one another.

“First time I climbed inside this truck, I thought it was the biggest damn vehicle I’d ever been in,” I said. “Why does it suddenly seem way too small?”

Isobel grinned into my eyes and smoothed her fingers through my hair. “Let’s get into the back.”

“Yes. God, yes,” I said, only to groan and press my face into her shoulder and mumble, “No. Fuck, no. Our first time shouldn’t be in the back seat of a truck your dad owns.”

“So…you think we should go back to my place…that my dad owns?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Or go to yours…that your mom owns?”

I started to correct her, telling her it was my apartment, not my mother’s—a fact she already knew—when her words struck a funny bone. “Hell, we both still live with our parents. How lame is that?”

“Totally,” she agreed, only half paying attention because she seemed more focused on the path of her hand as she drew her fingers across my chest. “We should climb into the back seat and console each other for being such losers.”

After snorting out a laugh, I nipped at her chin with my teeth. “You know I’m not going to tell you no if this is what you really want.” Because it was what I really wanted too, ideal location or not.

I started to add a but, except Isobel beat me to the punch.

“Oh, thank God.” She hopped off me and started to wiggle herself over the seats and into the back, flashing me her million-dollar ass in the process. “I thought I was going to have to get violent and force you.”

I shuddered as a vision of her brand of violence entered my head. It consisted of teeth biting into my shoulder, fingernails clawing my back, thighs of steel suffocating my hips, and her scream of release bursting my eardrums as I pumped into her. Holy damn, now I actually wanted her to get forceful.

Setting my hand on her backside—because, how could I resist?—I helped her along, making her tumble into the back with a surprised oomph. “Violate me any way you like, my little beast,” I told her before joining her, tackling her onto her spine and pinning her beneath me. When I grinned at her, she gaped up at me with wide, surprised blue eyes.

“In fact,” I leaned in to nip at her jaw with my teeth, “do your absolute worst. I dare you.”

Her gaze warmed, it flooded with challenge, and the next thing I knew, she was clutching fistfuls of my hair and yanking my face down to hers. The kiss that followed was hard, brutal and one of the hottest kisses of my life. I swear she bit me. I even tasted blood.

Growling out my pleasure, I found her knee and opened her for me before fitting my hips between her spread thighs. My cock found its way to her opening, and it rested there a moment, anticipating that first thrust. My mouth began to water and my balls drew up taut.

As she sucked on my tongue, Isobel tightened her thighs around me, gripped my ass and arched up, impaling herself.

I threw back my head and roared, surging forward, deep into the tight wet heaven she provided.

God, it felt so good. I ground against her, relishing the sensation and making her whimper before I pulled out and spiked back in, repeating the move over and over and over again. She arched up to meet me, and our bodies slapped together, losing all semblance of sanity as we surged toward each other, our needs primal and urgent.

Staring into my eyes, she sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth and tightened against me. It was my breaking point. Sweat popped out of my brow. I lost control. I was going to come.

Gritting my teeth to hold it off as long as possible, I pressed my forehead to hers, looked back into her dazed blue eyes and rasped, “Come with me, Isobel. Come…”

When she shook her head and bit her lip, letting me know she was close but still not ready, I touched her clit and flicked my thumb across it, teasing her toward her release.

She gasped, dug her fingernails into my ass and began to spasm as the walls of her sex constricted around my cock. I grinned at her and pushed deep into her, emptying myself of everything but her.