Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

I heard a noise, and my eyes opened. I didn’t know where I was at first, but the scent that enveloped me was calming. I was home. I was with Nick.

But that didn’t make any sense, I soon realized…not anymore. I sat up in that unfamiliar bed, and the faint light coming through the cracked door was enough for me to get a sense of my surroundings. Stomach quaking, I got out of bed and walked down to the living room. The lights were off apart from the dim glow on the stairs, to keep you from falling if you got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. I kept walking till I found him. He was sitting on the sofa in front of a glass table with a half-empty bottle, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. It must have been hard to find me in his bed, as if it were my apartment and I had a right to sleep there while I was waiting for him to come home. I felt like an intruder.

I guess I made a sound, or maybe he just sensed me, because he turned his head slowly toward me. His eyes were glassy, his jaw tense, and I wanted to take off in the opposite direction. I knew him; I knew him well enough to recognize beneath all that hatred that was consuming him was the love he felt for me or had felt before. It was still there in his heart, just as it was in mine, waiting for the right moment for us to love each other again.

“What are you doing here, Noah?” he asked, and I almost collapsed when I heard the pain in his voice.

“I’m here for you,” I responded, shrugging slightly. My voice was like an echo of his. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and sighed.

“You need to go… You need to get out of my life.” He still hadn’t looked at me.

He bent over to serve himself another glass, but I didn’t want him like that, drunk; I needed him lucid, lucid for me. I needed him to understand what I had to say to him.

I closed the space between us, grabbed the bottle, grazing his fingers slightly, and put it back down on the table, but too far for him to reach.

He looked up and saw me standing between his legs. His eyes were red, but it wasn’t just the liquor.

I reached out to stroke his hair. God! I needed to wipe that pained expression off his face, that pain that was my fault. But his hand caught my wrist before I could. I didn’t care because at least I was touching him, and for me, that was enough. The spark, that spark that always flared up between us, that feeling of fire, of pure, carnal desire, the same desire we had felt from the first moment I set foot into the kitchen of his old home and saw him looking through the refrigerator…it was back. Right from that moment, I knew there was a part of myself that was no longer mine.

He hesitated for a few eternal seconds, then pulled me close. I struck his chest, and he reached around me and sat me down until I was straddling his lap, both my knees on the sofa, hugging his thighs. I wrapped my hands around his neck; he gripped me around the waist. Our eyes met in the shadows. I was scared to keep going. I stopped; so did he. It was as if we were both about to plunge over a precipice. Maybe we’d get lucky and land in the water, or maybe we’d hit the rocky shore. And we’d only know if we jumped.

He looked at me and kissed me. It was rough. I didn’t know how to take it. My lips opened to let in his tongue, which filled my mouth and made me tremble. We were kissing as if our lives depended on it. While I desperately held on to the back of his head, he caressed my thighs, my knees, my butt, then squeezed, and our bodies ground against each other, bringing us pleasure. It had been too long…too long feeling nothing, nothing at all. I had started to think my body was dead, my libido gone after our breakup. How wrong I was! One touch, light as a feather, from his hands was enough to make me lose all composure.

I pulled away to breathe, but he kept kissing my face. His chest was exposed; my hands attacked it. The touch of my fingernails made his abdominals flex.

He grunted and pushed me away so he could look at me. “What do you want from me, Noah?”

Sweat pearled on his torso. We were tense, thinking of how our worlds were about to change, again, because of what we were doing…

“Just…make me forget…” I asked him, on the verge of tears. “For a few minutes…just pretend you’ve forgiven me.”

His chest was rising and falling, his breathing accelerated. But the tension in his hands vanished. I ran my fingers through his hair, forcing him to look at me and not past me. I came in to kiss him. The taste of him…it was like nothing else. Kissing him was what I had missed most; I was addicted to his kisses, I needed more, I needed to feel those lips all over, I needed him so badly, it hurt.

“I will…” he said, sitting up into me. Our noses touched. “For a few minutes, I’ll forget what you did… But tomorrow, you’re leaving; you’ll get out of my life and leave me in peace.”

My heart stopped, but I ignored the end of his sentence. He was going to forget, right…? He’d said that. That was enough. The rest I’d deal with tomorrow.

I nodded, knowing I wasn’t being honest, but I couldn’t turn down the chance to be with him; after just half an hour, he’d made me feel alive again, and there was no way I would give that up.

He grabbed me around the thighs, picked me up off the sofa, and started carrying me. I hugged him and kissed him again. He smelled and tasted so good. Like himself, like my Nick, the person I loved madly, desperately.

He took me to his room and dropped me almost reverently on the mattress, as if he were afraid I would disappear. Then he stood there, observing me. I propped myself on my elbows to look back at him. How could he be so perfect? His hair was disordered, his lips swollen from kissing me, his stubble sexy. It had scratched me; I didn’t care; I wanted to feel it all over my body. I was trembling, trembling from desire, pure, carnal, for him.

“We’re not fucking,” he said, taking off his belt and dropping it on the floor. The surprise on my face must have been obvious, the disappointment, too, because he smiled, not warmly, the way he usually did with me, not with lust or love, but as though teaching a lesson to a little girl whose naivety he found amusing. “We can do other stuff, though.”

He took his place between my legs, pushing my stomach until I lay flat. He bent over me, pulled my skirt down, and tossed it aside. His knee separated my legs while he pulled my shirt over my head.

He stopped to look at me, to contemplate my breasts in their pink lace bra, nothing fancy, but it was comfortable, or at least that was what I’d thought when I threw it on to go out and see the city. He reached around my ribs, pulling me up softly and kissing my belly button.

“You’ve lost weight,” he whispered, but I could barely even hear him.

His lips were now on the seam of my panties while his hands were stroking my legs. He was burning with desire. He got out of bed, kneeled, and pulled off my underwear.

I was nervous. Not shy, exactly, but it had been so long since Nick had touched me. I turned, edgy, and he must have noticed because even if his breathing revealed that he was dying to go on, he gave me a gentle look, as though to ease my mind. For a second, he was Nick…the Nick from before, the one who was truly present when we looked at each other. I closed my eyes to keep from forgetting that, and I held on to that vision until I was more relaxed.

“Nick…”

“Shhh.”

His lips traveled up my thighs, first kissing, then biting, then licking. I twisted and turned, but his hand on my stomach immobilized me.

“Please…” I almost begged him, no longer ashamed.

He ignored me, kissing me all over, everywhere except for the place I needed him most. “What do you want, Noah? Tell me, I want to hear you say it.”

I shook my head. Why should I have to?

Now his mouth was hovering over my body, not even touching me. I was flustered.

“Say it, Noah. Say what you want, and you can have it.”

But I couldn’t. Not aloud, at least. And he knew that. Was this his way of punishing me? I opened my eyes and saw him there waiting.

“Kiss me,” I whispered.

He climbed on top of me. His lips touched mine. He kissed me briefly, and I moaned with frustration. Then I felt his hips pressing into mine, and for a few seconds, I was relieved. But just for a few seconds. Then he rose up on his hands.

“This isn’t like it was before, Noah.” He took hold of my chin. “You’re not the inexperienced, sweet little girl who needs to be carefully taught what to do.”

I could sense in him the contained rage begging to break out. I didn’t like it, and I sat up until I could bring our lips together again. I pulled him close. I wanted to feel him as a part of me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and heard him slowly expelling air. Then, suddenly, I wanted it fast. I didn’t want there to be time for reproaches.

When I slid my hand down to his pants, I knew he’d lost the battle. I’d forgotten what it meant to have him in my arms, what it was to feel him lose control. I wanted to feel that connection again, feel his halting breath, feel us moving together, giving each other pleasure—no games, just togetherness, letting everything flow.

We rolled over, and I got on top of him. I felt insecure that way, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. Hands trembling, I tried to pull down his jeans and finally accomplished it with his help. Seconds later, he was naked, and all I had on was my bra. He trapped me again in his arms.

“I told you, we’re not going to fuck,” he said, trapping my hands behind my head.

“Jesus, Nicholas…” I said, frustrated. I needed to be touched. I needed that contact more than anything in the world.

Without warning, one of his fingers slipped inside me. I grimaced. To my surprise, and his, he was hurting me.

“You haven’t…?”

I blushed with embarrassment… What was I going to say? That after what had happened, I hadn’t let anyone even look at me more than once? That my sexual appetite had vanished like water in the desert? That the last time we’d done it in his apartment, when I’d drawn on his skin, had been the last time I’d felt anything?

No way. I wasn’t that pathetic. But my body gave me away.

Something in his expression changed. Relief, maybe, I don’t know, but he stopped delaying, got on his knees, brought his face into my crotch, and started tracing out circles with his tongue. I moaned. That was all he needed to keep going.

He seemed as hungry as I was. His finger went inside me again, this time more carefully, and instead of pain, I felt relief. The pressure became stronger, his mouth went on working, and his other hand crept under my bra and squeezed my breast.

It was all too much, too much time without him, too many emotions repressed, too much stimulation. I arched my back and shouted. I couldn’t control myself. My orgasm was like an explosion that wiped away everything. I was in heaven, but I was burning with the fires of hell.

Nicholas didn’t stop until it hurt. Then he pulled away to let me recover. I did, but slowly. I needed more; he did, too; I could tell when I saw him start touching himself with his right hand, staring at me with a hard expression, as if he wanted to give in but couldn’t.

We weren’t going to do it that night, but that didn’t mean I was ready to stop. I sat up and pulled him down until he was sitting. He couldn’t control his breathing. That was fine. I would be taking the reins this time.

I came around and kneeled between his legs, pinning him with my stare.

“What are you doing?” he asked hoarsely. There was no going back. We were both playing the game of passion, love and hate at the same time, and we couldn’t just step away.

Instead of answering, I did the thing I had never done before.

I had no idea what I was doing, but he seemed to like it. And when I looked up at him without stopping, it drove him wild. Soon his hand was in my hair, and he was moving rhythmically.

“Fuck…”

He didn’t let me finish. He pushed me away, and I lay beside him in bed. He rubbed himself against me, then masturbated, and I did the same. His eyes were burning, and as a second orgasm came on strong, I started to see stars.

We came at the same time, staring into each other’s eyes. We’d barely touched each other. All we’d needed was to stare and ask each other, ask ourselves, how we’d gotten here.

I fell asleep in his bed, hugging a pillow instead of him. When we’d finished, he had gone into the bathroom, showered, and walked out.

I guessed my grace period was over. Either way, I didn’t have the energy to deal with it. My feelings were raw, and I just wanted to close my eyes and not think about what had happened, because if I did, I’d realize there was a kind of cold veil over everything we had done. It wasn’t love; it was relief, something carnal while our feelings and emotions were hidden in a corner our souls couldn’t reach. We had touched, but it had only been the most primitive parts of ourselves.

I wished Nicholas would hold me, squeeze me in his arms, and tell me everything would be okay. Instead, he left, and I didn’t have the strength to follow.

I let sleep and exhaustion take me away. I closed my eyes, and everything disappeared.