“No.” His cock was in his fist. “Not angry.”
Seeking leverage in soft cushions, I tried to get up to a sitting position. “There’s a name for this. For you.”
“I’ve been called an asshole already.”
“Not asshole. Something clinical.”
“Really, baby?” He lined his cock along my entrance.
“Sadist.”
“No, no. That’s—”
“Your father. And you.”
He thrust his cock into me, and I was torn between rage and the edge of climax. “I wasn’t like this until you.” He pushed so deep it hurt. So deep his body rubbed my raw, sensitive clit.
“You were too weak to see it.” I looked deeply into the firmament behind his eyes. “Sadist.”
He twisted me, pinning my right arm under my own weight and my left behind my back, fucking me as though he wanted to push through me. “You made this monster. How do you like it?”
Did I create this? Did he become what I wanted?
Did it matter?
“Sadist.” I squeaked it one last time before his hands found my throat.
He bent me harder, pushing on my windpipe to growl in my ear. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yes.” I was choking.
“You like the monster I’ve become?”
“I love it.” Barely a breath.
“I knew it.” His fingers tightened.
I was handing him my life and my sex and my orgasm with both hands. I’d fantasized about this since I was a girl and finally… I had only a single breath to use to stop him.
“I love you,” I croaked before he cut my air off completely.
In my last gasps, the orgasm detonated. Hot shrapnel pinged off the shell of my skin, stinging my armor from the inside, fighting for life, stiffening with pleasure as I looked into two holes punched through a rigid, red face, open to the blue Iraqi sky.
And black.
Chapter Twenty-Two
greyson
His face, briefly.
His lips on mine, briefly.
Then a breath like sucking hot coals.
Burn.
Breath again.
Cough.
Burn.
Darkness.
Cold.
Heave.
I got on my hands and knees, gulping air. Rolled to sitting. Shook out my bad wrist. No pain.
The lamp was still on, but the light in the sky was completely out. His clothes were all over the room—shirt on the coffee table, jacket over the fireplace grate—as if he’d stripped on fire.
If anything between Caden and I had ever been bad or dangerous, it didn’t come close to what had just happened on the couch.
Was it the Blackthorne treatments? Were they stretching the time between episodes but making them more severe?
I got my coat on and clutched it closed against a coldness it couldn’t protect me from. A chill from inside me. My feet were frigid against the wood. The front door was still locked. Between my legs, soreness and overuse hung like a weight. That had been the most intense sex I’d ever had. I didn’t know if I’d live through it again.
“Caden?”
I flicked on the kitchen light. Empty.
Up the stairs. Lights still out. No sound.
“Caden!”
Office empty. Spare bedroom empty. Our room. Nothing.
I went back downstairs, continuing to the hall between my office and the back door.
Locked from the inside.
My eye caught the basement door. It wasn’t closed all the way. I opened it, and a waft of cold air hit me. I thought of running for shoes but decided to bear the cold, creaky steps.
Halfway down, shrouded in blackness, feeling the stone walls for the conduit to the light switch, I knew he was there. I couldn’t see or hear him, but I knew.
“Caden?”
No answer, but I found the switch and clacked on the light. It flickered and steadied to a flat blue with a constant buzz.
Down to the dirt floor I crept, moving the false wall to the speakeasy and turning on the lights to illuminate the crumbling boxes and mosaic floor. I didn’t waste time calling his name or looking in the corners. I knew where he was. The wall with the false vase was already half open. I made my way to the safe and opened it, turning on lights as I went.
The light right outside the safe was off. I flipped it on and opened the false wall in the back, crouching to get into the concrete room.
Caden was in the bottle room, huddled in the corner, naked and shivering. His beautiful body was rendered sexless in distress.
I rushed to him, dropping to my knees.
He didn’t look at me.
Putting my hand on his cold skin, I squeezed his arm. “Hey.”
His eyes were open and he was breathing evenly, but he didn’t reply.
“Captain,” I whispered, “it’s cold.”
He turned to face me. His eyes were the clear blue sky, his lips were full and soft, and his jaw was strong and square.
I knew that face, but I didn’t.
But I did.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I knew that face in the moments before his release, in the sorrow of the man who’d wept in my arms after holding death and pain in his hands for eight straight days. This was the face I’d loved on my wedding day and in the broken hours of night.
I put my hands on that face and said his name.
“Damon.”
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About the Author
CD Reiss is a New York Times bestselling author. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn't pick up she's at the well hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master's degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere but it did give her a big enough ego to write novels.
She's frequently referred to as the Shakespeare of Smut which is flattering but hasn't ever gotten her out of chopping that cord of wood.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
Better When It Hurts
by Skye Warren
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or use of this work in any part is forbidden without the express written permission of the author.
Better When It Hurts © 2015 by Skye Warren
Cover design by Book Beautiful
Cover photograph by Sara Eirew
Formatting by BB Ebooks
Better When It Hurts
A forbidden romance about pain that binds us together…
Five years ago we lived in the same h
ouse. He was the ultimate bad boy.
And my foster brother.
Now he's back. Tougher, harder, meaner. All of it aimed at me, because I was the one who sent him away. It's payback time. He wants his pound of flesh, and I am helpless to say no.
Thank you for reading the first book in the Stripped series! You can join my Facebook group for fans to discuss the series here: Skye Warren’s Dark Room. And you can sign up for my newsletter to find out about new releases at skyewarren.com/newsletter.
Enjoy the story…
There are all kinds of love in this world
but never the same love twice.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter One
I try not to scan the floor when I enter. There’s already a buzz in the air, the hunger and desperation of a strip club on Saturday night. I’m ready to earn money, ready to move my body.
Ready to pretend Blue doesn’t bother me.
He’s nowhere in sight, and I breathe a sigh of relief. A group of men are still gathered near the railing. They’d tipped me pretty well while I was up there, so I figure I have a good shot at a lap dance. I saunter over, my breasts barely contained in the red bikini top, my skin coated in sweat and glitter and the thick smoke of this place.
“Nice set,” says a low voice from behind me.
I turn to see Blue standing there, arms crossed so his muscles bulge, lids lowered in that intense way of his. Shit. “Thanks,” I say, but the only thing I’m really thankful for is that my voice doesn’t shake.
He’s the head of security at the Grand, which should make me feel safe. Except we have a history. And he hates my guts. So there’s no affection in his eyes when they scan me up and down. No kindness in his voice when he adds, “You look great.”
The way he says it, it sounds like a threat. He makes me feel like the scared little girl I used to be when I knew him before. And him? He’s like the big bad wolf, sizing me up before he swallows me whole.
I force myself to shrug at him, to toss my hair. “Thanks, sweetie.”
He circles me, surrounding me. “But then, you always look great. That’s what you like, isn’t it? Having men panting after you? Leading us along by our dicks?”
My throat gets tight. I know that’s what people think of me. They take one look at my lipstick and my short skirt and assume the worst. God, they’re right. But it’s worse to hear it from him. Worse because he once believed in me. “Do you expect me to apologize for earning a living?”
His lids lower. “Not for that.”
I can’t meet his eyes. I know exactly what he wants me to apologize for. And he’ll never believe me. Even showing weakness in this game is enough to get me killed. “I don’t apologize to anyone.”
“Of course you don’t,” he says, his voice full of loathing. “But I don’t want your words.”
I can’t help but whisper, “What do you want?”
That makes him smile. It’s not a nice smile. “I think you know the answer to that.”
He wants to hurt me, to use me. He wants to fuck me. I swallow hard. “That isn’t for sale.”
“I wasn’t planning to pay you.”
This should be easy. Tell him no. Make him believe it. I’ve done this for a thousand men before. Somehow he’s different. Maybe because I don’t really believe it myself.
I know he’s watching me. I know he’s hatching his plans. My heart speeds up every time I turn away from him, wondering if this is the time he’ll pounce. One of these times, he’s going to dig into me with his teeth and his claws. He’s going to hurt me, and I’m not sure I’ll survive it.
Not tonight, though. Not now.
I take a step away from him. “If you aren’t going to pay for my time, I think I’ll find someone who will.”
His eyes darken. “Your call, gorgeous.”
I hear the unspoken message beneath his words, steel under velvet. For now.
* * *
From the stage, the men seem small. It’s a form of power, dancing above them, light where they are dark, being thrown money just to show myself. I know that what I do is sordid and degrading. I feel sordid most of the time. I feel degraded. It’s just a natural state for me, as easy as breathing.
But there are a few seconds when the entire room is looking at me, panting over me, desiring me—and I feel like a goddess. Those seconds make what’s about to happen bearable.
Then I’m on the ground again, mortal and low.
The men turn as I approach, already catcalling the way they did when I was onstage.
“Hey, there’s our sexy girl, come to give us a kiss.”
“What a hot bitch. Look at those tits bounce.”
“How much for a night, baby?”
There’s no power left in me, no goddess in sight. The men loom over me now, crowding me as I stand between them. I cock my hip and thrust my breasts in front of me, the picture of female sexuality. I am a lamb in a pack of lions. I wear my confidence like a mask. It’s the only way I’ve survived. But their smiles, cocky and sure, say they can smell the real me underneath. They can smell their prey.
Two of them step aside for another man, one with a sloppy drunk smile and a cruel glint in his eyes. I hear one of them call him Travis.
My throat squeezes tight. No, no. My gut is too good at picking out the genuinely violent guys from the generic asshole. Except I’m not paid to say no.
“Let’s get a private room,” Travis says, the slur scraping down my spine. “Do I get a discount? It’s my party. I’m getting married tomorrow.”
It’ll be a miracle if he’s even conscious tomorrow, but that’s not my problem. My problem right now is with a mean drunk who wants to buy my time. I have a lot of experience with mean drunks. I know that no amount of pleading or negotiating or fighting back will work.
But all that knowledge, all that experience doesn’t stop me from trying.
“I’ll give you a dance right here,” I say, drawing myself up close to him. Even if I could turn away a customer, I can’t lose out on the money he can give me. I’m already a few hundred bucks in the hole when I start the night, after my house fee and tip outs. And I know exactly how much I need to make, especially on a Saturday night, to pay the bills. And there are a lot of bills.
He grabs my ass and squeezes hard, pulling me flush to a small, hard erection. “Your ears broken or something? I said let’s get a fucking VIP room.”
Panic beats in my chest, and it’s familiar, almost soothing. If I’m not half-terrified, I don’t even know what to feel. My gaze scan the room, searching—always searching. What am I looking for? And then I meet Blue’s eyes. His eyes narrow. He must have been watching me.
I could call him over. I could get him to help me, tell him this guy is being rough.
Except that would be a lie. Technically all he’s done is put his hands on me, and I haven’t even told him to stop yet. I’d give a courtesy warning—or two or three—before getting security involved. So I make myself smile, both for Blue’s benefit and the man right in front of me.
“Mmm, whatever you say. I’m going to show you a great time wherever you are.”
“That’s right,” he says. “You’re damn right about that for what this shit is gonna cost me.”
Not going to be a great tipper, obviously. But then I could have already guessed that. At least security will make sure he pays me the hourly rate. As long as I come out with my fake smile in place and not too many bruises, I’ll consider it a win.
His buddies clap him on the back with send-offs like “cop a feel for me” and “this is your last night of freedom, don’t waste it.”
Charming.
The Grand used to be a nice theater before the city’s economy tanked and they ripped out the seats. Now there’s just a stage for us to dance on and gilded balconies that are kept dark. The VIP rooms are the old ticket booths with the front walls ripped off, replaced only by musky velvet curtains that don’t cover the small space.
&n
bsp; We stumble our way across the floor toward the VIP rooms in the corner. He can’t walk straight, and apparently I’m his crutch. I pretend not to notice Blue’s gaze following us as we go.
Chapter Two
A lap dance may seem like a broad, blunt stroke—twisting my body right in his face, shaking my ass against his erection, almost dry humping when the rhythm is right. But really it’s a fine line. I want them worked up enough that they’ll pay for more time, but not so intense that they demand things I can’t give them.
I don’t fuck for money.
It’s not a question of right or wrong, of being a whore or a goddamn angel. I’ve known exactly what I was since I turned fourteen, and that’s not going to change because he puts the tip inside or not. I don’t fuck because it’s not safe, for a lot of reasons. I don’t fuck because I don’t have to. I make enough money through stripping to cover Mrs. Owens’s bills—even the medical ones.
I start the dance off slow with the soon-to-be groom. I sit him down in the creaky wooden chair and step back as far as the hollow gray walls will let me. He’s already more tripped out than I can handle, so I spend a lot of time against the wall, posing and touching myself and hoping that’ll be enough.
“Stop wasting time,” he says.
In the end I’ll have to grind up against him. That’s the promise our bodies make when we shake our asses on the stage. That’s all we are in this building, a warm body to rub against. But I just give him my practiced sultry smile and continue to dance.
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 45