Free Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella by Ghiselle St. James

touch is already driving me crazy, adding words will only add to my madness.
    We kiss and I feel like weeping. We’re making love, not fucking, and it causes the walls around my heart to crack further. Marshall picks up his pace and I feel the slow tendrils of an orgasm curl their way into my belly. He pounds, unrelenting, breaking our kiss to accommodate breathing. He moans and groans, calling my name after erotic expletives. The climax slams into me at full force when he pinches my nipples and twists them hard.
    I see stars when I splinter apart, screaming until my voice is raw. Pieces of me are flung into the Earth’s atmosphere as pleasure radiates through me. As he stares down at me, getting lost on my peak of ecstasy, Marshall keeps up his unrelenting thrusts until he finds his own cathartic release.
    “Beautiful,” he whispers, just before he groans and his body jerks, a warm stream of semen spurting inside me.
    He grinds into my core for about a minute, rubbing out the remnants of his orgasm, never taking his eyes off mine. I feel incredibly stripped and laid bare, but I can’t seem to turn away from his intense orbs; eyes that seem to see into my soul and perceive every single truth I hide. My body is racked with spasms as I come down from the sexual oblivion that Marshall has just shot me to.
    He’s right, no man has ever made me feel like this. No one.
     

     
    As we lie on Delilah’s messy bed wrapped around each other like entwined vines of lust, our breathing becomes steadier, sleep no doubt creeping in to claim us like a burglar. I drift off from the soft, lulling breathing of Marshall, only to be awakened by his quiet but rumbling voice.
    “What happened all those years ago?” Marshall asks me. I stiffen, but I don’t respond, trying to pretend as if I’m still asleep so he lets it go.
    No such luck. He untangles himself from me and I close my eyes, hoping he thinks I’m deep in slumber; but I hear him chuckle instead.
    “I just felt your body go rigid, Rae, I know you’re not sleeping.” I open my squeezed-tightly-shut eyes to see Marshall staring at me expectantly.
    The small smile he had been sporting fades, as a look of melancholy replaces it. “What happened to us, Rachel? What made you change? What had I done? What didn’t I do?”
    The pain in his voice brings the memory of my real life pain back in seamless waves. Had it just been seven years since the procedure, the thing that unequivocally changed things between Marshall and I? He deserves to know. He deserves to know my wicked deed so he can take me off of the pedestal he put me on in his heart, so he can stop loving me.
    But the thought cripples me and lies spew out instead, “I wanted to live. I didn’t want to be tied down, not yet. I was seventeen and already living like a married woman with two point five kids and no social life. I wanted more.”
    My lies are like a slap to his face. I see it the moment the words connect to his cheek, to his heart. The shock of what I’ve said causes his features to slacken and become devoid of color. The truth, however, would have been worse. It doesn’t stop me from wishing it were the truth that came out of my mouth, though. I hurt him, the one thing I hated doing.
    He nods infinitesimally, a look of understanding painting his handsome face. “I get it,” he says. “I knew I was holding you back, especially with us having to hide our relationship. I guess it was too soon to want a commitment out of you.” He lies back on the bed and gathers me to his side.
    Wait…what?
    “Marshall, what do you mean by that?” I ask tentatively, my voice shaking nervously.
    “Go to sleep, Rachel,” he bids me softly, closing his eyes. What does he mean by sleep? After a comment like that ?
    “Marshall…”
    “Rachel,” he commands, causing excitement to furl deep in my belly. “Go to sleep.” And fuck if I don’t do as he says…like a comatose patient.
     

Chapter Nine

    Marshall
     
    I