Tracy Wolff - Shredded

“You don’t get it.” This time, when her eyes meet mine, they’re big and mossy green and shimmering with tears. “I want to feel. Something, anything. I’ve spent so long trying to be numb that I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be anything but. Please.” She pulls at the blanket, drops kisses on my shoulders, my neck, my chest. Runs her tongue along the unstructured lines of my tattoo. “Please, Z. Make me feel something. Make me feel anything.”

The words crash into me with the force of a tsunami, and they drag me under her spell. Because I know what she means. Fuck, I live with it every day and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Especially not this smart, funny, gorgeous girl who is finding a way to shake my world off its very axis.

Still, as she licks her way down my stomach, I manage to muster the strength to pull away—even as every cell in my body urges me to just take her. To just plunge inside her and let the consequences sort themselves out in the morning.

But that’s how I handle everything. Act first, think later. Because nothing’s ever mattered enough for me to worry about what comes after. About what comes next. And though I’ve only known Ophelia a few days, and even though they were strange and rocky days, there’s a part of me that thinks—that knows—that she might be important enough. This might be important enough, for me to take my time and think things through.

Which is why I ignore my throbbing cock and the need coursing through me like a runaway train and focus on her. Just her.

“If we do this, you have to be with me,” I tell her. “Every step of the way. You can’t check out on me like you did last time. I don’t think I can handle that again.”

Z’s words seem to echo in the room even as they echo inside me, filling up all the empty space I’ve been rattling around in for so long. I look into his eyes and there’s that vulnerability again, the same as I witnessed the other night. I don’t think he lets anyone else close enough to see it.

I should let him go, let him walk out of here right now before this thing turns as ugly as I know it can. But I’m not that strong. Not tonight, when the emptiness is yawning inside me.

I’ve worked so hard not to miss Remi, not to feel the pain of losing him. But it’s there, whether I feel it or not, shredding me from the inside out. So why shouldn’t I say to hell with it? Why shouldn’t I let Z make me feel good, just for one night?

Just for one night.

“Why does this have to be so complicated?” I demand. “I want you. I think you want me. Why can’t we just make each other feel good?”

“Is that it?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Is this just about sex? Just about feeling good?”

I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone, like everything is topsy-turvy, upside down and inside out. This is Z Michaels—the fastest zipper in the West—asking these questions. Z Michaels who’s been with more girls than either of us could probably count if we had a year to do it in.

“I don’t understand,” I tell him. My voice is shaking now. I’m shaking, and I don’t know how to fix it, how to hide it. I don’t know how to fix anything anymore. “I just want … I just want to feel good for once. I just want—”

“Shh, baby. It’s okay. I get it.” Z shifts, turning us until we’re stretched out on the bed. Then he trails soft kisses along my jawline, down my neck. “I’ll make you feel good. I promise.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my head, then one to each of my cheeks. As he does, he mutters something about having sympathy for Hamlet under his breath. I don’t quite catch it, but heat crawls up my cheeks anyway.

I hate my name and all the implications that come with it.

Hamlet’s fragile girlfriend who’s driven insane by design and circumstance.

Who loses herself in the demands and machinations of the men in her life.

Who dies a terrible death because she can’t face the reality of what they’ve done to her—of what they’ve made her become.

When I first read Hamlet in school, I flat out asked my mom if she’d been drunk when she named me. Or if she just hated me. She hadn’t understood, but it turned out she’d never read Hamlet. She’d just liked the sound of Ophelia, and the idea of naming me after one of Shakespeare’s characters.

Go, Mom.

Too bad she hadn’t chosen Katharina from The Taming of the Shrew. My whole life might have turned out differently.

But she didn’t, and here I am with a guy who is guaranteed to mess with my head if I let him. Which I won’t. This is about pleasure, I remind myself. About losing myself for a little while. About feeling something after going so long without feeling anything.

Z continues pressing soft kisses across my cheeks, down my jaw, over my collarbone. At the same time, his hands skate around the waistband of my jeans, his fingers delving beneath denim to caress my abdomen and hips and ass.

They’re simple touches, but they feel good. Really good. Relief shudders through me as I arch beneath him, as I wind my arms around his neck and pull his mouth to mine. His eyes, his beautiful, mysterious eyes, meet mine, and there’s something there. Something I don’t understand. Something that sets warning bells ringing in my head.

“Z, I—”

This time he’s the one who presses his fingers to my mouth. “It’s okay, Ophelia. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

And then he’s kissing me and kissing me and kissing me. Everything I’m thinking, everything I want to say, disappears in a maelstrom of desire as I give myself up to him. To this.

The second our bodies touch, sparks start flying all over the place. I take a deep breath, try to ground myself, but all that does is fill me with the spicy cinnamon and icy snow scent of Z. He smells good, really good, and I want nothing more than to burrow closer. To bury my face in the curve of his neck and just breathe him deep inside me.

He closes his eyes on a half laugh, half groan, then pulls me more tightly against him. I go willingly, even as a part of me wonders at how right this feels. His breath is hot against my cheek, his body hard against my own, and touching him feels good in a way nothing has for a very long time.

“What are you doing to me, Ophelia?” he murmurs after a few moments.

“I don’t know.” The words come out small, shaky.

“Yeah.” He presses a soft kiss into my hair. “Me neither.”

Then his hands are everywhere, everywhere, and I gasp as he flips us again, pulling me on top of him, helping me sit up with my knees on either side of his hips. I lean over, start to flip the light off, but he rests one big, scarred hand over mine.

“I want to see you,” he tells me.

“No.” I turn the light off.

He reaches over and turns it back on. “Okay, Ophelia. You’re going to need to tell me what’s going on, because I don’t understand this whole I-can-only-touch-you-in-the-dark thing. What are you so afraid of me seeing?”

For long seconds I don’t answer. I just stare at him, biting my lip as I figure out how much I want to tell him. Or, more specifically, how much I can get away with not telling him.

“Don’t hurt yourself.” He reaches up, presses on my lip until I let it slip out from between my teeth. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I was in a car accident. About a year ago. I’ve got some scars. They aren’t … they aren’t very pretty.”

“Are you all right?”

I close my eyes against the sudden burn of tears. Of course he would be the one to ask that, this man who acts so hard and callous but who has a secret, vulnerable center that he doesn’t let anyone see. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” Once again he brings my hand to his lips, presses kisses to it. “Do you really think your scars will make you less attractive to me?” He brings my hand to his stomach, runs it up and down those gorgeous washboard abs of his. “Feel those?” he asks, rubbing my hand on a particularly slick patch of flesh. “I have lots of scars. Yours don’t mean anything to me, except that I know you suffered for them and I’m sorry for that. Really sorry.”

God, is this guy for real? I thought this would be easy, thought we could just fuck and be done with it. But nothing about this situation, nothing about Z, is turning out quite as I expected it to. “What do you want from me?”

“What do I want? Just to see you, touch you. Make you feel good. I think the question is what do you want from me?”

I thought I knew what I wanted, but he’s so different from how I imagined him to be when I dumped that coffee on him the other day. And now that I’m here with him, everything seems upside down. I don’t know what I want from him anymore, only that I do want him.

Slowly tentatively, I pull my T-shirt over my head. It’s harder than I thought it would be, more nerve-racking, to sit here waiting for his judgment. The scarring isn’t terrible, but it’s not great, either. I had surgery on a collapsed lung and a ruptured spleen, numerous surgeries on my arm, which was shattered in the wreck, and a number of deep cuts from flying windshield glass. The doctors say it’s a miracle I have only a small scar on my face from the glass, but my torso is another story. All told, there’s something like fifteen scars, small and large.

Z looks me in the eye for long seconds, not even bothering to drop his gaze to my chest and stomach. I know what he’s doing, know he’s trying to show me that it really doesn’t matter to him. But it matters to me and I just want to get it over with.

Finally, finally, he looks. His expression doesn’t change at all, even when he runs his hand over the largest scar—a long, reddish purple one that runs from just under my breastbone to just below my navel. The doctors assure me that it will fade with time and turn the soft, opaque white of all scars. But for now it’s still vivid, still ugly, and I hate looking at it. Hate even more that I resent it when I at least have my life, which is more than Remi got.