Fear of Falling(47)

And I could have him. Right here. Right now.

Not able to do much more than whimper as his fingers explored my chest, I shivered as Blaine kissed my collarbone, my chin, my trembling bottom lip, nibbling and licking like I was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. He was ravenous, like he just couldn’t get enough, no matter how much of my skin he sampled.

“God, I want you, Kami,” he murmured against the base of my throat. “I want you so bad.”

That metal studded tongue slid up my neck to my earlobe, and I reflexively rotated my hips, feeling every inch of his arousal.

“Fuck,” Blaine hissed, pinching my nipples so deliciously hard that I felt a tremor throughout my entire body. “Do you want me, baby? Tell me you want me. Tell me you feel this too.”

An almost animalistic whine escaped me when he raised his hips into me, the friction of his jeans nearly undoing me through the thin lace of my thong. “Yes,” was all I could find the strength to say.

“Yeah?” he rasped, finding my mouth again to suck my bottom lip. “Does that feel good to you?”

“Yesss.” I felt the truck spinning.

His tongue flicked out to taste mine. “Do you want me to make love to you, Kami?”

Fuck.

My eyes popped open, trained on his hooded smolder, as I pushed back into the steering wheel. I was no longer lost in him. I was no longer swimming in a sea of sensation. I had capsized and was hurled onto shore, completely dumbfounded and terrified.

“No,” I said shaking my head, my face stoic.

“What?”

“I said no. I don’t want you to make… I don’t want you to do that to me.”

Confusion painted his gorgeously flushed face. “But you said…”

“I do want you, Blaine,” I quickly blurted out, not wanting to hurt his feelings or seem like a cock-tease. “I do. But I don’t make love.”

“I don’t get it.”

I grimaced, as I slid off his lap and sat beside him, suddenly freezing at the loss of his warm body against mine. Blaine must’ve felt the same chill because he switched on the heat.

“I don’t make love, Blaine. I never have. In order to do that, you have to be capable of feeling a semblance of love. You have to be able to return it. I’m not. I can’t.”

“Kami, I didn’t mean… Wait, what do you mean, you can’t?”

I kept my glassy eyes trained on the darkness on the other side of the windshield. “I’m saying I’m unlovable.”

His large hand was cupping my cheek and turning my head to face him just as the first tears welled in my eyes. I wanted to be able to love one day. I wanted to be able to feel pure bliss when someone uttered those three little words to me while gazing into my eyes. I wanted to surrender my broken heart to him so he could mend it, and make it new again.

But I couldn’t. My past, my pains, had ripped that away from me. Fear had claimed me before love ever got the chance to.

“Kami, I find it hard to believe that you’re unlovable. I know for a fact that isn’t true.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to absorb the tears before they had a chance to fall. “That’s because you don’t know me. And if you did, I guarantee you’d agree with me.”

His hand dropped from my face as his brows knitted together. It was all coming together for him. He was slowly getting it. I was broken. And no one wanted to play with the broken toy.

“It’s getting late,” I said turning my face away from him, so he couldn’t see my trembling lip. I slid on my side of the car and reached for my seatbelt. “I better get home.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

I know I am, Blaine. No matter how bad I wish I could be wrong.

I heard him open his door and jog out to the back of the truck to secure it. The rain had let up, but inside I was battling a tsunami. When Blaine returned, he cranked up the truck without another word. A stubborn tear slid down my cheek, which I quickly batted away. It was an angry tear. I hated myself more in that moment than I ever had. I would have given anything to be someone else, someone normal, for Blaine.

We pulled up to The Madison without any more words exchanged. Blaine unbuckled his seatbelt, but I stopped him before he could open his car door.

“Don’t get out,” I said, grasping his forearm, thinking it would still his movements. Instead, Blaine slid his arm up so his fingers could tangle with mine. He looked at me expectedly, flipping the barbell in his mouth – the same one that I had sucked into mine and longed to feel again.

“Blaine,” I began, worrying my lip with my teeth. “What I said… it has nothing to do with you. And because I actually like you, I had to tell you before we ruined everything. Before it all turned to shit before it began.”