First time his, p.1
First Time His, page 1
First Time His
Kai Lesy
Copyright © 2019 by Kai Lesy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Prologue
1. Dom
2. Emma
3. Dom
4. Emma
5. Emma
6. Emma
7. Dom
8. Dom
9. Emma
10. Dom
11. Emma
12. Dom
13. Emma
14. Emma
15. Emma
16. Dom
17. Emma
18. Dom
19. Emma
20. Emma
21. Dom
22. Emma
23. Emma
24. Dom
25. Emma
26. Dom
27. Emma
28. Emma
29. Dom
30. Dom
31. Emma
32. Dom
33. Emma
34. Dom
35. Emma
36. Dom
37. Dom
38. Emma
Epilogue
Savage Protector Preview
Prologue
Dear God, this is finally happening.
I sank into the kiss, leaning against him and moaning between our lips. When he broke the kiss a second time his face was still that twisted mask, the same face that had roared at me for digging too deep. My heart thudded at how he’d spoken to me—yet the kiss interrupted our argument again.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and leapt. He caught me, grabbing my ass, massaging the cheeks as he dropped me onto the couch. I let out a yelp and bounced. His hands pawed at my legs roughly, moving up my thigh toward my shorts. He grabbed, yanked, and pulled them right off me, past my ankles. My panties twisted, caught up in the shorts, and snagged on my knees.
“Fuck,” he whispered, staring wide-eyed at my pussy. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
How many nights did I dream this? How many nights did I pray to be naked with him?
“And you,” I whispered. He cocked a grin, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
We tore at each other. He yanked my panties from my knees, ripping them completely and tossing the ruined fabric to the floor. I grabbed his suit jacket and pulled it down over his arms as we kissed deeper, harder. I fumbled with his buttons, letting out a jagged sigh, and pulled the shirt over his head. He lifted his arms to help.
I leaned back. His bare torso was sculpted from tanned marble, his ab muscles lined clearly, a six-pack pressing through the skin. A few scars crisscrossed over his chest and his belly. His pec muscles were heaving and his arm muscles bulging like they could burst from the skin. His cock pitched his pants, making a triangle of the fabric.
“Fuck,” I whispered, going for his belt.
I unbuckled it as quickly as my fidgeting hands would let me and dropped it to the floor. He grabbed my tank top at the same time, pulled it off, and unclipped my bra in one fluid motion. My breasts and his cock spilled free at the same time. His cock sprung right up, ten inches of rock-hard steel, a vein running down the side and the circumcised head engorged like a weapon. For a brief second, I was terrified of its size and was afraid it would hurt like hell. But one look at his face and all my fears disappeared. He would take care of me.
My pussy aflame, my heartbeat hammering in my chest, my head spinning—the argument fled. All that mattered was finally feeling him deep inside me.
“Oh, fuck,” he growled when I grabbed onto his cock. “Fuck, I need your pussy. I need it now.”
One
Dom
“No,” I growled.
I clawed at the sheets.
Some impossible force was compelling me to walk down a long dark hallway. I made myself stand strong. I wouldn’t let it move me, couldn’t move closer to it.
It always felt the same. Like the whole damn world was ending.
My world.
On repeat, over and over.
I spit and clenched my fist, whether in the dream or in my sweat-soaked sheets, I didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I never—”
“No, you never mean anything, do you? You just do. Dominic De Luca, the most selfish fucking bastard who ever lived.”
The world closed around me and then opened again. I stood in the middle of a wide-open field, bright green grass swaying to the horizon in all directions. An empty expanse except for the tiny black dot directly in front of me, perhaps a couple hundred meters away, perhaps more. Everything warbled, shifted, never settling.
I tried to force myself to walk.
This semi-conscious state was hell made real.
No control.
I fucking hated not having control.
Just like when it all went down. Out of my fucking control.
“You had control, Dom. You always had control. You just chose not to exert it. You did this. That’s the truth. You’re a fuck-up and you let this happen to me.”
The sky was clear and blue, and the sun burned down without pause, scorching me, searing my skin. “You think I wanted this? I’d give anything to go back.”
I almost managed to pry my eyes open, but it was like some invisible power forced them closed to keep them open in this place, where the tiny black dot wasn’t so tiny anymore.
Let me drown in a bottle of whiskey to burn my insides instead. Let me leave everything and wage bloody war with the vilest scum on Earth to distract me from the war inside me. Anything but this agony spiking into my belly like a poison.
Then her face appeared in the sky, outlined in hazy air with warm sunbeams touching my skin.
“Don’t do it, Dom,” she moaned, her voice that breathy song that had haunted me for years.
It trickled over my body, pricked my sweat, cooled it to ice.
“Stay with me.”
“I—I can’t,” I muttered. I ripped off blankets from my body.
Then, I saw it.
A limp body grinned up at me, cuts and bruises and bullet holes and seeping welts covering it from forehead to feet. Even so, I would recognize that smile until the day I died.
“He’s gone. You have to let him go,” she warned from the sky.
He should be in the ground. He should be safely buried. Not in this . . . hell.
I ripped off another blanket, and it crumbled to ash as I tossed it aside.
“You did this Dom,” the dead man in front of me said through gritted teeth.
“Fuck!” I roared, sitting bolt upright in bed.
Another fucking nightmare.
It was the same dreadful scene that replayed like a broken record. Like a fucking curse.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked at the clock on the bedside table. Three in the damn morning.
I got up and walked to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes made me look much older than my twenty-nine years. I rose to my full height of six three and studied my reflection. My dark brown hair was tousled from sleep, and my deep brown eyes were haunted.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, I climbed in the shower to wash the sweat and the haunted memories from my body and thoughts. The soap and water cascaded down my broad chest and thick thighs, and I scrubbed myself as if I could physically remove the memories.
It never worked.
Nothing fucking worked.
But I didn’t want it to.
I coveted the agony. The torment. Pain was my own retribution. I went over everything that led up to that day in my head. Questions about how I could have saved my brother. The endless unknowns were enough to keep me up most nights.
Those questions would continue to keep me up until I found the bastards who took my twin brother from me. God as my witness, I wasn’t going to rest until I found justice for Anthony.
Two
Emma
“Aren’t big brothers supposed to support their little sisters?”
Sebastian’s laugh came through the phone. “Is that right?” His smile lingered in his voice, and he laughed again. The same laugh from my childhood, that ha-ha that was either a joke or making me the joke. “I wish someone would have told me that, sis. I would’ve flown down there immediately. Pronto. Yes, ma’am!”
“You’re a jerk.” I dropped more folded clothes into the suitcase, which was pink with purple fringe. Perhaps it would’ve been better if I had my old suitcase, the one I used when I first fled New York to Maine. But ten years was a long time to keep a suitcase. “I mean, seriously. What sort of man are you? Letting me help Mom move while you hang around in Cali visiting strip clubs and shooting pool.”
“There’s more to my job than that.”
“Is there?” I tossed some socks in. If he was here, he’d tear all the clothes out, fold them properly, and repack them. But he wasn’t so I could be as messy as I wanted. “Like what? Sitting in penthouses drinking beer?”
“Jesus, Em. I’m working up here. You know I can’t leave.”
“Jesus, Sebastian.” I giggled, deepening my voice to near-Sebastian levels. “You don’t have to throw a temper tantrum.”
“Little sister, you ought to know I have nev er—in all my long years—thrown a temper tantrum. It just isn’t in my DNA.”
“What about the time you wanted new roller skates and Mom wouldn’t buy them for you?”
“Oh! So we’re allowed to use things from almost twenty years ago? I didn’t know that. Let me think then. I’ve got a whole catalogue of things I could throw at you. Remember the time you wanted an ice cream cone at the zoo and Mom wouldn’t get you one, so you threatened to jump into the gorilla enclosure?”
I twirled a lock of hair around my forefinger. “You’re making that up.” I rooted around in my memory, but there was no zoo. “You always were a sore loser.”
“Making it up? No, sis, I’m afraid not. In the end you climbed onto the roof and started pounding your chest, making gorilla noises. It was pretty fucking embarrassing.”
I headed into the kitchen where clothes lay on the floor like landmines. I tiptoed around them and grabbed the coffee pot. Black elixir threw steam into the air. I poured, saliva filling my mouth. Writers needed coffee. It was the holy rule. Yet lately writing was going horribly slowly.
I was trying too hard. But it was difficult not to try too hard when I knew what was at stake. Writing—especially romance—was more than just words. It was more than just a dream. Writing was my chance to make the world a better place in whatever minor way I could. Somewhere there was a reader just waiting to disappear into the world I created, the same way I disappeared after Dad left and Mom fell into the bottle.
But that was the contradiction, it seemed. The harder I tried not to fail in my mission, the harder it was to fill another page.
“Em, you know everything’s going to be good in New York, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, setting the pot down. “Whatever you say. I really do wish you could come, though.”
He let out a sigh. “Yeah, so do I. It’d be good to see Mom—and you, of course. But mostly Mom.”
“Asshole.”
“I’ve got work. Believe it or not, running the west coast ain’t no small thing. Especially with this new client—”
“Which you won’t tell me anything about!”
“And with Dom breathing down my neck.”
My grip tightened on the coffee mug, tattooing heat into my palm. The warmth travelled up my arm and into my chest, making my heart hot. Dom, Dom . . . and then the heat shot into my belly and further down, twisting everything else. I bit my lip. Just the mention of his name could do this to me? But it had been ten years. Ten years! I wasn’t a teenager anymore.
Yet still that pull was there, that drive to find closure after all that went down between us. I tried to beat it down—to show myself the same face I showed Sebastian—but it was difficult. I couldn’t travel that road again; I had to stay strong. But sometimes seeming to stay strong was easier than actually staying strong.
It’s over Em. You broke us.
Flashbacks of the worst text of my life returned to me and I felt a stab in my gut.
“Em, are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I set the mug down on the table and dropped onto the couch. My laptop sat open next to the coffee mug, the Word document symbol flashing into infinity. Almost like it was calling to me: Write, woman, write!
“Okay, good. It’s just that when I mentioned Dom’s name you went all quiet like you were daydreaming.”
Maybe I was daydreaming, but about what? Things had ended badly. No, that was a lie. It was damn horror film come to life.
Dom was hurting. The tragedy surrounding his brother’s murder had hurt all of us. But Dom’s pain was different. He blamed himself for Anthony’s death. When it came to his brother, Dom was always protective. He had to be.
After Anthony’s death, Dom was blinded with grief and shut out the rest of the world, including me. He spilled his deepest and darkest thoughts into his journal, the one I read just before I confronted him.
About his plan.
About taking matters into his own hands.
How could I not have confronted him?
And his response? That text? The damn military.
What was done was done. For fuck’s sake, it was ten years. But my mind was a traitor - it kept whispering that I needed to confront Dom and let him know how he broke us. How I wanted so badly to be there for him, but he shut me out like the rest of the world.
Memories flashed through my mind of the days leading to our collapse. Like a senseless schoolgirl, I was lovesick over the boy next door.
My brother’s best friend.
Adonis in the flesh.
And he was my rock.
After my mother went spiraling, Dom was there through thick and thin. He reminded me there was life after despair and carried me through all the sadness of watching my mom drown herself in Jack Daniels night after night.
He did all that only to end what we had over a text.
No matter how hard I tried, I could still feel the rippling effects. If I had a psychiatrist, he’d feed me some bullshit about how I became a romance writer simply to create my own happily-ever-after.
Maybe it was true?
Dom was supposed to be my first everything. Before him, the closest I got to first base was an innocent kiss on the cheek by a crush in school. I was always socially awkward around boys, but Dom helped me embrace my sexuality in ways that still brought a blush to my cheeks years later. My first kiss. My first time being caressed between the legs. Dom took everything so slow and went at my pace. Perhaps he wanted our first time to be perfect.
I remembered how he’d kiss me with such vigor, every night, after sneaking through my bedroom window. Laying in my bed. Muscles harder than steel, his hands gripping, sliding up my legs, into my hair, grasping my face as though he’d never let go. Pressing his sheet-rock body against me, crushing my breasts.
I closed my eyes tight.
“Earth to Em,” Sebastian called, pulling me out of my trance. I had to change the subject.
“You’re just trying to distract me from this mysterious client. Why can’t you just give me some small detail to sate my curiosity?”
“That would sort of ruin the whole secretive aspect, wouldn’t it? That’s just the writer in you, anyway. Always looking for a story.”
“Let me guess. You’re guarding another strip club so you can spend even more time there?”
A trembling laugh. “When did I ever say I like spending time in strip clubs?”
“Never.” I moved my hand over the coffee steam, letting it drift between my fingers. “Maybe I just like rattling your cage.”
“Anyway, you’re changing the subject. What about Dom?”
My belly tightened. I needed the caffeine rushing around my head, filling it, pressing against my forehead so I didn’t have to face the reality about Dom, the past, or goddamn Chapter Three glaring at me like a rejected lover.
“Hello? I’m not gonna go away if you keep ignoring me.”
“I’m not ignoring you. I’m just busy,” I said.
“Right,” my brother teased, elongating the word ridiculously. “It’ll be okay, Em,” he murmured after a moment.
“What will be okay?” I forced out a giggle, if that strangled-puppy noise could be called anything close. “I’m just helping Mom. I think I can manage a few boxes.”
“Ok fine. I’ll humor you here. Been lifting a lot of weights in Maine, have you?”
I let my eyes open and grabbed for the coffee. It scorched my throat, but caffeine infused me. “Oh yeah. I’m Miss Strong Twenty-Nineteen. How did you miss the news?” I switched the phone to speaker and set it on the laptop near the track pad. I trailed my fingers along the keys. “Down here they call me She-Hulk, She-Bear, and Wonder Woman.”
