*A/N: Sorry for no update for so long but this is a new chapter for a new year... Please enjoy and don't forget to commen, vote and share! Have a great new year guys and I hope you spend it with the ones you love x
27: Devil's Food Cake
There was a pregnant pause between us as I tried to take his arm, he shrugged it off with a huff and I rolled my eyes. Something darkened within me, hanging over my head like a black rain cloud was the fate that maybe this would end us, he seemed so mad at me.
"Aurora, I'm going upstairs, I'm not feeling so well. Please feel free to close early." I tell Aurora, shy but very beautiful with a wise face, I guess I wasn't the only one who had to be a grown up before we were ready.
"Thank you. I hope you feel better." Her eyes flicker from me to Grayson then back with concern in her eyes. I give her a half-hearted smile and turn back to Gray who stands there staring straight at the wall, big breaths puffing his chest, grabbing my bag he follows me outside and up the stairs to my apartment.
As soon as the door closes behind him I see the green leaflet fly past my head. "Now fucking explain!"
The hairs prickle on my skin, my neck and back stiffens and my hands fall to my side almost soldier like as I feel his presence behind me.
"Talk! Scarlet, you wanted to explain so explain!" he growls, low but loud; the voice vibrating the air making me flinch.
"I was abused as a child." It comes out so easily. It's on a sigh, and my shoulders relax just for a moment before I tense up again. "Back then it wasn't classed as abuse. I got no help. After the accident I was getting nightmares, things I had to bite pillows to stop myself from screaming. I didn't want to be in my head anymore." My jaw trembles and my lips wobble as I try to hold back the tears, my mind taunting me as I look down my arms covering myself in shame. He wasn't going to want me now, he wasn't going to love what I once did to my body, what had once happened to me and what it left behind- he wouldn't want me. How pathetic.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Gray's voice is low but softer in tone, as I feel him move, I look down until I see him sit on the couch almost right on the edge.
"Because it's an ugly part of me." I admit it, it's more than ugly, it's a black mass in my chest that burns a destructive fire from within; it builds and build up taking over my thoughts.
"Nothing about you is ugly to me. Don't you understand that?" he growls.
"No I don't. Because no one has ever seen me that way, no one has ever cared for me, I was constantly used for something. When my dad died all I had was Riley, her dad agreed to keep my financially stable, to wipe the records clean and he holds it over my head. He thinks that I owe him something because he gave me a roof over my head. But the whole time I had to look after myself, I did it all and it was hard. So god damn hard. He was the one... he was the one who found me." The tears slip free, even when I swore I'd never cry over it ever again.
"Baby, don't think like that please, he has nothing on you. You own Cherry Swirl, he has nothing, if he even threatened to hurt a hair on your head I will... I don't know what I'll do." He holds my shoulders, I feel the grip tighten but he's not hurting me in fact it's oddly comforting.
"You don't need to do anything. Just let me talk." I sigh not meeting his eyes. "He found me all cut up, everything, it was once. A call for help he called it. I didn't get any help but his silence... I haven't been able to look at myself since, I see the scars even if they aren't there, I still feel the beatings and I feel the pain." It's then that I looked up.
His face scrunched in pain but his eyes hold tears too. "I never want to let them hurt you. Ever. I never want to hurt you. I can't do it to you."
"Never. You could never hurt me." I whisper softly, my hand coming up to cup and stroke his cheek.
"Please... show me your pain... let me love you." His eyes search my face, almost like a lightbulb moment in his eyes, as he sweeps his lips forward and kisses my face causing me so chuckle.
"Okay okay." I sigh and let him drag me to the bedroom, but he stops just before the door.
"No I want you to strip for me. And come in here when you are ready okay?" he smirks but I give him a puzzled look but a soft nod.
He lay in bed looking directly at me. I stood at the bottom, wrapped in the blanket I had grabbed from the couch to cover myself, smiling shyly covering my mouth.
"Now, I want you to go stand in front of that mirror." He gestures to the tall mirror on the wall by the closet. I had never really looked at myself before, but one thing hit me the most were my eyes. My deep blue eyes turn cold, dull and murky, hollow and empty. They look too big for my thin skeletal face, my lips a shocking red from constantly biting them, my hair a dull brown with no life left in its limp wet state tangled across my forehead. I looked like a corpse and for some reason I liked it. I didn't like seeing myself so broken but at the same time I felt like I deserved it. I deserved to be as broken on the outside as I felt on the inside. My eyes bore into the ones in the glass, staring into the deep black soulless orbs, it was like looking into an everlasting cycle of a black hole- an abyss.
I turn my head away but his voice prickles my ears. "I just want you to look. I want you to see what I see." He speaks and I sigh with a soft nod looking back at the mirror waiting for his next command.
I hesitate before my eyes flicker back to the mirror, why was he doing this to me? I could easily turn the light off, the strong of fairy lights could keep a soft glow, he'd still be able to see but it'd make it easier for me not to see anything. Seeing my body, the scars faint but to me I could see every one like they were fresh, I could feel every bruises and with every breath I felt the twinge from the punctured lung as well as the memory of broken ribs.
My arm moves to the light switch, eyes glossing over.
"No you don't miss, keep it on, and play by the rules." Gray chuckles as I jump from his voice, my arms instantly wrapping around myself.
"No!" I wine, caught in my throat with a small tear rolling from the corner of my eye and disappearing in a fine trail.
"I swear if you don't drop your arms and look in the mirror right now, your ass will be bruised for days. Either you want to play or you don't. What will it be?" the voice is like a jungle cat, the alpha is hiding for now but whilst he's away the panther is out. The voice like the rolls of the cats hips, sly and sleek with this intense flow to it like silk rippling over a surface. It sends the hairs on my arms up and raises goose bumps to the surface of my skin like a prickling wave.
"Fine." It comes out as a whisper, soft and shy like a child. I knew he cared for me, loved me in his own way, he saw me as beautiful but if he saw me as I truly was, this mess, everything could be over. Surely he had seen the scars, but not in their entirety, the way they go deep under the surface, embedded into my memory.
"Scarlet, baby, don't be afraid. I'm right here." My lips twitch at the softness, the darkness I'm used to slipping from his face, and I take a breath. "Scarlet, in order to love someone, you have to love yourself. Neither one of us is perfect. I don't expect you to be, you would be boring."
That caused a small smile to raise my lips, a flush of heat across my cheeks, my legs cross at the knees a little and my head dips down. Maybe I was being too hard on myself, he had seen me as beautiful regardless, but I had never believed it.
As I look back up to the mirror I see my darkened eyes meet shimmering silver ones, in the hue they look almost lavender, and they are burning with something different to passion and lust.
"I know you better than you know yourself, sweetheart." He smirks as he places a kiss to my shoulder and then follows up with another and another until he reaches my ear, a shiver running through my body. "I have seen you, the darkness inside, I have seen it through your eyes. But I see the real you when you cum, when you sleep, when you're driving or baking. You're free."
I stood still while he stared down at me. Our eyes were locked and his were begging me to trust him, this was different from every other time with him. I was fighting away my insecurities, my rawness, and the brokenness of my self-assurance.
And with lightly calloused fingers he turns me and raises my chin to kiss me on the cheek. A kiss along my jawline and down my neck where I stroke the top of his head, my fingers brushing softly through his dark hair. Feeling his hands grazing across my back and down my spine, he raises back up and turns me back around to face my reflection in the mirror.
I look straight ahead as his hands started to sweep from my hips to my sides, kissing along my neck as his hands trace lines up my stomach p to my breasts where he stills for a second to look at me. Just to look at me, deeply, intensely, admiring me.
"You are beautiful to me no matter what. Trust me, trust yourself." The words were comforting. They looped in my head as he pressed the coldness of his skin against my back, so we are skin to skin, hugging me from behind. Standing there I could feel his heart hammer in his chest, I could feel each breath he took and I stood smiling at the feel of his heart sync with mine as it starts to slow. Just like my anxiety raising like a cloud and floating away.
I stood with my eyes closed, as his kissed every inch of my body, starting from the top of my head all the way down my body and leaving not a patch of skin untouched. My breath was beginning to pick up again, small but heavy breaths gasping from my throat as his lips press against my centre, hands parting my knees as I feel the tip of his tongue snake out to tease along my lower. My hand moves to his hair and I grip it pushing him closer but he stops. Moving so his face is level with my belly, his eyes looking up at me from beneath thick lashes. "Take my hand, show me how and where you want me to touch you." He purrs, the vibration deep within my lower belly.
I take it from where it rests on my waist, and glide it across my breast, my hand over his, pressing tightly as he follows it with a kiss. Soft beneath my hands, and my nipples tight hardening buds, I feel the coil in my core. We work them together gently taking care and attention to each of them. We continued our map of touches and kisses, connected together, I felt exposed to be naked whilst he wore his slacks and the more we touched the more I needed to feel him.
I went to unbuckle his pants but he pulled back. "No, baby, tonight is all about you."
"Well I want..."
"This is not about what you want, baby girl, it's about what you need. This tonight, is intimacy, from a simple touch or eve n a whisper I want you to feel it. I want to show you. This is us baby, this is our connection and I want you to totally be mine and never have to worry that I'm not attracted to you. Let me prove that to you. Let me love you."
I nod and let him lay me back on the bed, his hands caressing the sensitive skin, his lips tingling where they touched and leaving a small mark behind. This dominant creature prowling over my skin, taking control of me and my body. Whilst it arched and squirmed with the risings of pleasure, the gasp of breath as his tongue teased my folds and my hips begin to rock with the feeling of rising tension. My soft sighs and pants became moans and small grunts, as my fingers scrunch at the sheets on the bed. My head curling forward with my body, I let out a strangled breathy moan as my legs wrap around his neck, my body spiking with the heat and my lower belly rippling.
And then on the edge, I feel his fingers collecting wetness and moving inside me as my body seized. Again and again, responsive to his touch the shock of orgasm ripped through me.
Breathing hard, my eyes felt heavy. I felt I had won the jackpot, he was my reward the whole time, and I had no idea he was in front of me. I was so scared of him running, of him leaving, and not wanting me. But the feel of him next to me, connected with me, here... made me forget.
"Sleep, baby girl." He whispers kissing my forehead and sweeping my hair back; and flicks off the light.
His arms wrapped around me, made me feel loved, and with hope to have dreams of him. And I did.