Page 56 of Pistol Whipped

Actually, it’s too much. I rear back because my own release is an unstoppable freight train. Tucking my hand inside my boxers, I pull my cock out, and it’s barely one, two, three strokes before I’m sending jets of cum across Rain’s thighs. Like the perfect girl she is, she spreads her thighs again, letting my release coat the top of her pussy too. It’s as if I’ve marked her. Claimed her. And everything about it is beautiful. And right.

I collapse beside her, struggling to catch my breath as I look at her with admiration and wonder.

How can one woman be so beautiful? So resilient? So much of everything I ever dreamed of? Even in her freshly-fucked state?

She, too, is only just catching her breath when I roll off the bed and reach for her hand.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, Rainy-o.”

I pull her upright before slipping my hands back where they belong, around her thighs, and carry her like a baby koala to the bathroom. For once, I find myself grateful that my brother isn’t here. I deposit her on the counter only so I can fill the bathtub.

She watches, but we don’t speak much. I can’t, or won’t, speak for her, but I know I’m keeping my mouth shut so I don’t overwhelm her with all the shit I’m feeling about what’s happened between us in the last twenty-four hours.

When I’m confident that the tub is full enough that she won’t get cold, I pull her T-shirt off and help her step into the bath. Before she can sit, though, I slip in behind her.

It’s not like Dax, and I have some kind of Jacuzzi or luxury suite or whatever. The bathtub is just your basic built-into-the-wall one that does double duty as the shower too, so it’s definitely not big enough for us both.

As if I give a fuck.

I sit down and tug her down after me. It takes her a couple of minutes to settle between my legs. Eventually, she does. Though it’s with a sigh.

“Dutch,” she mumbles, all while burying her face in her hands, “I’m so embarrassed you saw me like that last night.”

After having her so open, exposed, and present with me this morning, I refuse to go back to the version of her that hides and keeps secrets from me.

“Why?”

I do my best to ask the question gently. My arms wrap tighter around her small waist so she knows that no matter the answer, I’m not going anywhere. She sighs a second time. So deep her ribcage pushes against my forearms.

“You wouldn’t understand, Dutch. You’ve always kept it so…together. Despite everything. All the foster homes, the cops, the fame, Dax…but I couldn’t.”

Whether she realizes it or not, her body instinctively pulls away from me. Or it tries. But I refuse to let that happen. Now that I know what it feels like to hold her, to really hold her, I have no plans to ever let her go again.

“After…everything…that last show…” She pauses, though there’s no need to remind me what a disaster that was. “I fell the fuck apart.”

I wait for her to explain.

“You know as well as anyone, I was already kind of a mess.”

We all were, but that’s a truth I can tell later.

“That night, when I ran out of Flamingos, I went completely off the rails.”

It’s easy to know which night she’s talking about. Flamingos was the last show we ever played, and that night forms the deepest and darkest of my regrets.

She pauses again before admitting, “You won’t like this part.”

Rainy might keep secrets from most people, but not from me. There are no lies in her body language or her words. If she says I won’t like it, she’s probably right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear what she has to say.

“Even if it’s bad, Rainy, horrible even, I promise I’ll still love you after.”

I will. I’ve loved her this long. Through Cohen, through years of absence, through all of it. She glances at me over her shoulder, and her expression is sadder than I want it to be.

“I hope that’s true, Dutch, though I’m not sure I deserve it. That night, after everything, I went out and got so wasted. Like falling down wasted. Like woke up in a stranger’s bed wasted.”

She braces herself for my reaction. On that last one, I can’t help it; I wince a bit. Even though I have no right to, because not only am I partially to blame for driving her away, but I’ve spent the better part of a decade finding solace in women who weren’t her. What right do I have to judge her for doing the same?

“I did the same the next night. And the night after that.”