I stood quickly, not bothering to turn off the shower, not even bothering to dry our bodies. Instead, I carried her with her legs around my waist and half placed, half threw her on the bed. She didn’t try to cover herself like I thought she would. Instead, she lifted her knees and slowly spread them apart, inviting me.

I hesitated, just for a moment, because this isn’t at all what I wanted it to be like—her first time—I wanted to show her love, give her romance—and this sure as fuck wasn’t it. But then she said the words that tilted the entire world off its axis and set my whole body ablaze. “I want you, Nate. I want you inside me. Please. Make me yours.”

I should’ve been more careful, more understanding of the pain she was about to receive, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything other than my cock buried deep in her pussy. I kneeled between her spread legs with my dick in my hand and the tip at her entrance and glanced at her one more time. “Please, baby,” she said, covering my hand with hers before guiding me inside her to the point where I claimed her as mine.

The point where she gives up something that I’ll forever possess.

To the point of no return.

Her nails pierced into my back, her teeth digging into my shoulder as she used it to muffle her cry. Whispered apologies fell from my lips, landed on her skin, over and over as I moved inside her and after a while, she began to move with me. Names, prayers, promises, all of it shared between panted breaths and desperate declarations.

*

We showered again, only, this time, I washed her, washed the mess I’d made mixed with the blood of her purity off of the place that was now mine and mine alone. Then we replaced the wet sheets from the bed and climbed back in, a tangle of limbs as we held on to each other.

“So…” I started, stroking the wet strands of her hair as she laid half on top of me. “Tiny and I have some stuff we have to do tomorrow morning, but he thinks it’s a good idea for us to lay low for a few days.”

She looked up at me, her eyebrows raised. “So that means you’re home for a while?”

I nodded. “Tiny’s going to be staying here, just as an extra precaution, I guess, so I’ll probably spend a bit of time with him. I feel bad him being here and me locking myself away with you.”

“That’s cool,” she said, attempting to hide her smile. “I’m just happy I get to be with you a little more.”

“Me too.” I kissed the top of her head. “He says he wants to check out a gym to go to together. I’ve promised him since you moved in, and I keep putting it off.”

“That sounds like fun.” She settled back in the crook of my arm and traced my stomach muscles with her finger and this strange calm—a state of nirvana—washed over me. I realized that I’d give anything for this to be my life. For her to be my life. And for the first time since I was sixteen, since I made the choice to give The Family my life, since I stood in front of Uncle Benny and made a promise to him to honor my father’s death—at the same time I promised myself redemption for my mother’s—that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t want the job anymore.

Bailey’s giggle cut through my thoughts.

“What’s funny?” I asked, peering down at her.

“Tiny sure could use the gym time,” she said, the joke rolling off her tongue. She looked up at me, her smile so pure and so genuine and I wished more than anything in the world, that this wasn’t our life. That we were able to be out there, loving each other freely and honestly, because I’d give up the world if I could’ve met her as her and have her fall in love with me for me.

She winced when she draped her legs over mine. I lifted her chin, her eyes clear as she stared back into mine. “Was I too rough? How badly did I hurt you?” I asked.

She drew back a little, relaxed and lazy in our post sex, post blood, post murderous-rage bliss. Well, the last two were more mine than hers but I pushed back the thought at the same time she answered, “A little. I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t seen or felt how big you were. I guess I just didn’t expect it to feel so big inside me.”

I smiled—I couldn’t help it—and flipped us over until she was beneath me. My mouth finding the crook of her neck as I murmured into her skin, “That’s ’cause your pussy’s so fuckin’ tight, baby.”

She moaned, her head tilting back so I could kiss her neck. “Is that good or…?”

“So good,” I said, my lips trailing down her neck toward her breast. I was already hard—or still hard, I should say. “Your pussy’s perfect. You’re perfect, Bailey. So fuckin’ perfect.” I took her nipple into my mouth while her fingers found my hair, stroking gently.

“Do you like that?” she asked. “Talking dirty, I mean.”

I pulled away and gazed up at her. “I didn’t really know I was. I can stop if it bothers you,” I told her, a little deflated.

She shook her head. “No. Don’t stop. I think… it kind of turns me on.”

I smirked. “Oh yeah?”

She nodded, and I went back to business. Back to worshipping her perfect breasts that go with her perfect everything else. “Nate?”

“Mmm?”

“Will you teach me?”

I pulled back. “Teach you what?”

“What you like… sex wise, I mean. How you like things done and what turns you on.”

My cock throbbed against her leg, and all I could do was nod because I couldn’t speak. My voice was somewhere closer to my balls than my throat, or maybe that was my cum, because fuck, her words got to me.

“Good,” she said, returning my nod, her hands pressing on the back of my head until my mouth found her nipple again.

For a few minutes, the room filled with the sounds of her pleasure, of my mouth as it explored every inch of her tits. And then she said, “Nate?” so I stopped and looked up at her, eyebrow quirked, cock in my hand ready to go again.

“You’re not going to tell me what happened today, are you?”

I released my cock, as well as a frustrated breath. “No.”

“Why?”

I sighed. “Because it’s better this way. The less you know, the less you’ll be accountable for if anything happens.”

“Was it about me?” she asked, her hands slowing in my hair.

I looked down at her breasts, at the perfect shade of pink surrounding her tight, perky nipples and I drew in a breath. Released it. And then drew in another.

“Nate?” Bailey said, my eyes drifted shut, my jaw tense because I knew I had no right to be as angry as I was getting, especially with her.

She sat up, pushing me back onto my heels, my hard-on sticking up in front of me. “I think I’m ready,” she said, and I mumbled a “huh?” confusion clear in my tone.

She chuckled lightly as she got on her knees and elbows in front of me, her ass in the air as if waiting for me to take her from behind. Then she reached for my cock and lowered her head at the same time, and with the tip of my dick less than in inch from her mouth, she licked her lips, drew her eyes away from my cock and looked up at me. “Teach me. Show me how you like it.”

*

It’s strange how something like sex, or the euphoria of an orgasm, can pull you away from the things that lay at the forefront of your mind. It’s as if it has the power to erase all memories, all thought process, but only for a while. And when you come down from the high, from the pure physical bliss, all you’re left with is your forgotten thoughts. And as Bailey lay with her head on my chest, her soft slumbered breaths doing nothing to lull my demons, I reached for my discarded jeans on the floor next to the bed and pulled out the tiny bag of cocaine. Then I looked at Bailey, my fingers stroking her hair, and then back at the drugs.