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  This month, my name is Mary.

  Every month, Joe tells me a different story, and every month, I listen. He doesn’t know that I imagine myself the star of his every one-night stand, and how could I tell him? I’m a married woman, after all. All Joe and I will ever have is imagination. All we will ever be is fiction.

  I know this is wrong. I know I should stop before it goes too far. What I have learned from love is that you can’t always fix what is broken, but sometimes, you can survive it.

  I’m just not sure I can possibly survive knowing Joe.

  Broken

  Megan Hart

  BROKEN

  Chaos Publishing

  * * *

  Copyright 2010, 2019 ©Megan Hart

  Chaos Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  photo credit: stokkete

  cover: Chaos

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  Read the Companion Story

  Also by Megan Hart

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  This book couldn’t have been written without the knowledge and help of the following:

  Stevie Falk, whose house I loved and who answered all my questions about her profession

  Jake Fischer, who offered insight into living with SCI

  Elaine McMichael and Karen Heffleger, who answered my questions and helped me get the details right

  And Michael F. Lupinacci, M.D., who helped me put all the pieces into place and in the right order.

  One

  January

  This month my name is Mary, and apparently, I’m as contrary as the nursery rhyme. First I said I wanted to fuck, but now I’m refusing to come out of the bathroom. What I don’t know is that Joe doesn’t like cock teases, nor does he suffer wasting time. He’s already done the wooing, bought the drinks, made the compliments. If I don’t put out in the next five minutes, he’ll put his coat back on and go.

  I don’t know this, because I only met him three hours ago in a bar downtown. Out of all the men I met tonight, Joe’s the only one who bothered trying to actually have a conversation with me, I mean to speak with me, not just at me. That’s why I picked him. That, and the fact he’s hot and well-dressed, with a charming quirk of a smile that tries to look sincere but mostly doesn’t.

  “Mary, Mary quite contrary. How does your garden grow?”

  His voice presses against me through the bathroom door. I’ve heard that rhyme a thousand times. Proud Mary. Bloody Mary. Mary Poppins. Mary Sue, Mary Lou, even Mary Christmas, sometimes. My parents gave me the name thinking it had no diminutive, but people will always find a way to tease, if they want.

  The doorknob is cool under my fingers and turns easily. I open the door to show Joe I’m ready for him. That the wait was worth it. I’ve stripped down to a set of lacy white panties and a matching bra, and I fight to keep from crossing my arms to shield myself from his scrutiny.

  His eyes widen a bit. His tongue snakes out to slide along a mouth I haven’t even yet kissed. I want to kiss it. He looks like he’ll taste good.

  “Damn.” The word’s a compliment, not a curse, and I manage a slightly more confident smile.

  I turn, slowly, so he can see me from all sides. When I come around again to face him, Joe reaches for my hand and tugs me one step, two, until, like magnets, our bodies attach to one another.

  He’s unbuttoned his shirt and the hair on his chest scratches my softer flesh. I shiver. My nipples peak against lace, and heat coils in my belly. Joe’s fingers splay on my hips. I’m all at once too shy to look into his eyes.

  He pulls me to the bed -- the nice, big king-size he requested from the clerk at the front desk with that same quirking smile that first attracted me. “I’m a bad boy,” that smile says. “But I’m so good you won’t care.” It had worked on me and the clerk, too, who’d taken the extra time to find us a room with a bed big enough for an orgy.

  There’s no orgy, though, just Mary and Joe and the sound of the heating unit blowing the curtains. The hot air coming out of it smells stale, but what did I expect? Frankincense and myrrh?

  “C’mon.” Joe’s getting impatient, tugging me onto the bed.

  He kisses me, finally, my throat and the curves of my breasts. A shoulder. I arch a little under the feeling of his mouth on my skin, and though my lips part, he doesn’t kiss them.

  His hands smooth up my sides and down, over my belly. When one goes between my legs, I startle. He doesn’t notice, or maybe doesn’t care. He strokes me there a few times, and I melt into his experienced touch like sugar in a hot pan, all crumbling, scattered grains melting and smoothing into one liquid ooze.

  This is all happening faster than I’d imagined it would, but I can’t seem to find the words to tell him to slow down. His fingers find the small, lace-covered bump at the front of my panties and begin a pattern of slow circles. I decide maybe fast isn’t such a bad thing.

  “You like that?”

  I nod. He smiles and reaches to flick open the front clasp of my bra. My breasts surge out, and I moan in the back of my throat. I want his mouth on me there, his tongue swiping across my tight pink nipples. I want him to suck on them, one and then the other, while his hand keeps moving the way it is between my legs. I’m already wet from his caress. I can feel it when I shift.

  He pauses to shrug out of his shirt, and I admire his chest. He has a body clothes are made to hang on, but naked, his shoulders are broader than they seemed before, his belly flat and tight with muscle but not rippled with it. His arms look strong, the cords in his forearms standing out as he tugs his belt buckle, unbuttons and unzips. The hair on his chest and arms and belly is a little darker than that on his head, where the hair is color of a lion’s mane, and I wonder if he colors himself blond or if all men’s bodies show such disparity.

  He pushes his trousers over his thighs and takes off his boxer briefs. I can’t look. I turn my head away, my breath lodging in my throat and my heart beating pitter-pat under my left breast. The bed dips as he kneels beside me. His hand returns to its shelter between my thighs and strokes me again. I lift my hips, an uncertain cry leaking from my unkissed lips.

  “Take these off.” He whispers the command but gives me no time to comply before he hooks his fingers into the strings at the sides and pulls them off.

  I’m bared to him. My carefully waxed and trimmed bush of candy-floss pubic hair. The hard button of my clitoris. My tender flesh, soft with arousal, wet from his touch.

  He parts my thighs, spreading me, and I moan. Joe seems to like this, because his breathing gets heavier. Faster, the way mine is. He runs an inquisitive finger along my folds and then up to my clit again, and oh, the sensation is indescribable. He rolls my own moisture over the tight bump and my hips jerk.

  I feel an unaccustomed weight between my leg
s, an emptiness, an ache. More heat blooms in my belly and breasts, in that secret cavern now so open and waiting to be filled. He rubs my clit some more and liquid trickles down the curve of my ass, tickling.

  He takes one of my nipples in his mouth, and it feels so good I whimper. I put a hand to the back of his head, feeling the soft blond hair on the backs of my knuckles. He suckles, and my fingers tighten. He mutters something but doesn’t stop sucking my nipple or rubbing my clit, and my breath comes faster and faster until I’m light-headed.

  I’ve been with boys before. Making out. Petting. I’ve given furtive hand-jobs in the backseat of a car, stroking and jerking and wondering what all the fuss is about. I’ve been with boys before, but not yet a man, someone who doesn’t plead or fumble. Joe doesn’t even ask, he just does. There’s something so perfect about that, just what I was looking for, and I have no more time to be shy.

  Not even when his mouth slides down my body and centers between my legs. I go stiff at once in my surprise, but my small protest becomes a moan when Joe’s tongue flicks along my clitoris.

  Oh, holy mother of God.

  I’ve imagined this, using my hands or the pulsing jet of a hand-held shower to make myself come. Nothing has prepared me for the reality. His tongue is soft and warm, gentler than fingers. It’s like water against me, softly lapping like waves against the shore. I arch into the sensation. He licks me. I shudder. He licks me again, and I’m helpless to do anything but spread my legs for him and give him my body.

  Tension coils in my belly, and my nipples have grown as hard and tight as pebbles. Tiny moans leak from my throat. Joe pauses to blow against me, his hot breath making me writhe.

  I’ve never had an orgasm with another person. I’m not sure I can. I’ve been close a couple times, with boys I never wanted to call again the next day, but I’ve never managed to make it. It always slipped away from me at the last minute.

  He stops again, and I’m sure I’m going to lose it. My thighs vibrate. The muscles in my belly tense and release. It will take only the barest pressure to make me go over, just the right touch, but he’s not giving it to me.

  He’s doing something I can’t see. Something crumples. The bed moves as he shifts. His body covers me, chest hairs tantalizing my nipples wet from his saliva. His thighs and belly press mine.

  I have time to think of one more name I’ve been called, one that is appropriate but nevertheless tiresome, before Joe grunts and moves.

  “Holy hell!” He cries, astonished when I shriek. “You’re a virgin?”

  I’m embarrassed by the entirely involuntary scream, and I stutter. “Y-yes.”

  “Well…shit.”

  He’s not climbing off me, though I wouldn’t blame him if he did. The pain has faded, replaced by a sensation of fullness, of being stretched. It’s not unpleasant. It’s not exactly like the stories of bliss my girlfriends have been telling, but it’s not as awful as the tales the nuns told of unbearable agony, either. I’ve always wondered how a nun would know.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

  A smile tilts one corner of his mouth as he pushes up on his hands to look into my face. “The scream gave it away.”

  “I was surprised.”

  Something tender creeps into his eyes, and he leans in to kiss my cheek. “You should’ve told me. I’d have been gentler.”

  Now comes the truth of why I’m here. “I really just wanted to get it over with.”

  He looks perplexed. “Why?”

  “I’m twenty-three. It’s time. All my friends have done it. I’m tired of being a virgin. I just wanted to…do it.”

  He’s still inside of me, and it doesn’t hurt, but I’m becoming uncomfortable. This isn’t going the way I’d planned. None of it has except for the part where I find a guy in a bar to take me someplace and get him to divest me of my maidenhood.

  He gives a gentle, exploratory thrust. I tense, waiting for pain that doesn’t come. Joe bends to trace the curve of my ear with his tongue.

  “You shouldn’t have to just get it over with,” he whispers, voice deep. “Not the first time. Not any time.”

  He slides a hand under my hair, which has spread out all around me on the pillow. He kisses my earlobe, then my neck. His teeth press into the sensitive skin of my shoulder.

  Joe pushes inside me and slides out, inch by inch. He does it again. The next time he moves inside me, I gasp and curve to meet him.

  He smiles. “Good?”

  It is good, but he doesn’t seem to care when I don’t say so. He moves a little faster and pushes himself back up on his hands. The tendons in his arms stand out. I can look down between us, to the point where our bodies have joined. His dark curls tangle with my lighter hair. He pulls out, and I see the base of his erection, the ring of latex sheathing him, glistening. He pushes in and I watch, fascinated, as he disappears inside my body.

  Sex isn’t like I’d imagined, but I can’t say whether it’s better or worse. It brings a flush of red out on my chest, and it must spread to my throat because I feel the same heat there. I watch him move in and out of me, and I think, connected. We are connected.

  His face has gone solemn in concentration, eyes squinting, mouth creased. Sweat forms along his hairline. I smell him, the crisp bite of soap mixed with something musky and rich, like earth turned over in the garden after a heavy rain. Something like blood. I think it’s lust. I slide my hands up along his chest, feeling his muscles bunch and move, touching the twin tight nipples so different than mine. I pinch one, experimentally, and he groans, so I do it again.

  His thrusts are a little less smooth and a tremor runs through his body. He stops and looks down at me. I look back.

  Without a word, he rolls us both until I end up on top, legs straddling his waist. I’ve put a hand on his chest for balance, and his fingers grip my hips. He shifts us both with practiced ease, and a moment later I gasp aloud as this new position allows him to sink deeper inside me.

  “Lean forward and put your hands on my shoulders.”

  I do what he says. When he begins to move again, I’m glad I did. Oh, shit, this is good. Oh, fuck. He fills me all the way, in and out. My clit bumps his stomach with every thrust and the weight, the heat, the ache is back, although the emptiness has been replaced by the delicious fullness of him stretching me.

  He slides a hand between us, his thumb cocked to press against me, and this extra pressure sends exquisite bolts of pleasure shooting through me like lightning.

  “Come on,” he whispers. “I want you to come.”

  This time, I really think I might.

  He fucks me faster. Every thrust rocks my clit against his thumb. I’m being stroked inside and out. My thighs shake. My breath comes in hitches and gasps. I’m burning and frozen at the same time.

  He grunts and thrust harder. Our bodies smack together, my ass against his thighs, belly to belly. My fingers have dug into his shoulders, the heels of my hands pressed hard to his collarbones. The pulse in his neck beats fast and hard.

  I can’t stop myself from crying out. It feels too good. I no longer feel my arms, legs, back. I’ve become coiled tension, everything growing tighter, like a key winding a spring, and I know it won’t be long before it happens, before I uncoil, free.

  But not yet. Right now he pushes me to sit up straight. My breasts bounce as his thrusts lift me up and down. There’s no more push-push pressure on my clit, but he replaces it with direct stimulation by his finger, which circles in time to his thrusts. This is even better, almost unbearably better, so good I don’t think I can stand it, so good it almost hurts.

  I cry out, “Joe! Oh, God, Joe!” And understand now that the dialogue in romance novels isn’t so unrealistic, after all. I want to shout out more, words of love and gratitude. It would be easy enough to fall in love right now, with pleasure coursing through my veins headier than any wine has ever made me. I shout his name again, then stop trying to make words and just make
sounds.

  My clit is wet from my juices and his finger slips and slides against me. He’s thrusting, I’m rocking, we’re jerking and pumping but somehow managing to keep the pace together.

  I’m not quite sure how, but I feel him getting thicker inside me. He’s closed his eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration, and I wish he’d open them to look at me when I come. I want that sense of connection again, but he doesn’t give it to me. I have to be satisfied with looking down between us, to the place his body joins with mine.

  Electric sparks tingle in my thighs and down to my curling toes. I quiver. My center burns with spreading outward warmth while the pleasure goes up, up, up, and I’m stretched thin with it. So thin, until at last, I break.

  I can’t make a sound this time, knocked so breathless with ecstasy I can’t even cry out. My head tips back so far my hair tickles my back. I explode outward and become scattered pieces connected by nothing more than breath. When I inhale, I merge back together. A second time, I burst apart and reform, more quickly and without as much drama.

  I breathe in, slow and deep. I look down at Joe, who’s opened his eyes finally, but if I hoped to see something in his gaze I’m disappointed. He’s gone far away inside his own climax. He gasps, thrusting once more so hard he pushes my whole body upward. His cock pulses, and he makes a series of small, stuttering groans that trail away as he falls back onto the pillow, spent.