When I felt that he was erect, eager to have me, the air in my lungs became tight and I pushed off his lap, landing in the water with a splash. “I can’t,” I gasped. “I can’t.”
Stunned with his hands in the air between us, Drake’s face twisted through a series of tortuous expressions, and eventually landed on something like sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Jesus, Riley. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have…I shouldn’t have done that.”
Shaking, I tried to catch my breath, but coughed instead. He still had his hands in the air when I stood and grabbed for a dry towel and wrapped it around me. “You can’t fix me, Drake,” I said. “You can’t fix what I’ve become. I don’t think anyone can.”
I left him in the tub, and quickly gathered up the clothes Kris had left out and rushed into the bedroom. It was empty, the bed made neatly, the door closed for privacy. Breathing required only two conscious movements, inhaling and exhaling. But for me, I was struggling with both. Counting down from ten, I stared out the window at the view over the valley and the glint bouncing off the snow. The day was quickly slipping away, and I wished it would slow down so the shadows would stay in the trees for a little while longer.
After Drake came out of the bathroom, I glanced down at the floor, and listened to the soft sound of his zipper going up. When the air changed behind me, I knew he was at my back, waiting for me to turn around, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at him.
“Riley…” he started.
I cut him off, shrugging. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He touched my shoulder and I stepped away from him. “Please talk to me,” he begged.
“I just need to be alone. Give me time.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” he said, stepping closer. “I’m afraid to take my eyes off you for more than a second.”
With a small laugh, though forced and empty, I looked over my shoulder at him. “I’m not going anywhere. At least not today.”
He licked his lips, considering my words carefully, and perhaps the hidden meaning behind them. “I’ll be right across the hall,” he said, pointing at the door. “If you need anything, want anything, food, Jin’s voodoo tea or a fucking snow cone, I’ll be two seconds away.”
I nodded at him. “Okay.”
“I mean it, Riley. Anything.”
“Thank you.”
He backed away, and didn’t take his eyes off me till he got to the door. After he left, and I was alone in the closed room again, I pulled on a pair of Kris’ sweats and a long sleeve shirt, forgoing the bra and underwear, and climbed under the bedcovers.
The only thing I wanted more than a proper lungful of air was sleep. But with sleep, came the dreams, and they were always dark and deadly. It was night before my eyes closed. As I lay curled on my side, wishing I had Drake’s arms around me, even though I was unable to stand the feel of them, I fell into the dark hole of my mind, where Jay and Lee waited. Where nightmares were born.
CONNOR
When Drake came back to his room, in damp clothes and smelling of soap, Connor didn’t have to ask any questions. Drake had been in Kris’ room with Riley for hours. He didn’t notice Connor sitting on his bed until he’d closed the door and dropped a wet towel to the floor.
“Shit!” he hissed, stumbling backwards into the wall. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
Connor was propped on his elbows, having been in that position for nearly half an hour, wondering about what, exactly, he was going to say or do, once Drake returned to his room. He sat upright and shook his head.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” he stated, dropping his hands between his open legs. “Not now.”
“Again, motherfucker, what are you doing in here?” Drake demanded, pushing off the wall and squaring his shoulders.
Connor sized him up, and stood to face him. “I need to know,” he said.
“Know what?” Drake snapped.
“Is she okay? I need to know if she’s okay.”
Drake stared hard at him. “No. She’s not.” When Connor narrowed his eyes, Drake narrowed his as well, then cleared his throat. “She’s better now.”
Connor nodded. “Her cough?”
Drake gestured for Connor to move so he could sit down on his bed, but he did so cautiously. “No, man, it’s not her fucking cough. It’s…shit.” He stopped talking and glanced at the ceiling, holding something back.
“Then what?”
“I can’t talk to you about this,” Drake grumbled, punching his pillows and then leaning back into them. “I have a headache. Plus, I don’t think she’d want me to.”
“Right. Of course not.” He remembered how she’d looked at him downstairs. Before he lost his nerve and every part of his male being convinced him to quietly walk out of Drake’s room and go to Riley, he rubbed at his mouth and sighed. “I need you to do something for me.”
Drake scoffed. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Don’t make this harder on me, asshole,” Connor growled, and the sneer on Drake’s face fell. “I told you to be careful with Ashlyn. I don’t trust her.”
“What does she have to do with you still standing in my room?”
“Shut the fuck up and let me talk, and I’ll be gone sooner,” Connor said bluntly.
Drake flung his hands out in the air. “Fine, Connor, my man. What can I do for you today, buddy? Lay it on me.”
Connor felt a stinging heat in his eyes and stared at the wall above Drake’s bed. “Keep her close to you.” When the room stayed quiet, he swallowed. “You don’t understand what it’s like, seeing the way she looks at you. Imagining the two of you…together.”
“I think I do.”
He kept looking at the wall, unblinking, telling himself he was doing the right thing to protect her, to keep her alive. “If Ashlyn doesn’t get what she wants here, she’s going to do something stupid. I don’t want that to happen. And you…Riley needs you right now. I want you to keep her safe until Ashlyn’s gone.”
He finally looked back at Drake, who had pushed up from the pillows. They stared at each other, and Drake slowly rose from the bed and approached him. “I already planned on doing that, but not for you, for Riley. And not for now, forever.”
“Would you do anything for her, Drake?”
“Yes.”
“Would you kill for her?”
“Fuck yes.”
Connor closed his eyes and felt a piece of his heart break free and fall into his stomach. “I love her too much to lose her.”
“I’m not sharing her,” Drake said, almost growling. “She’s not a fucking toy. She’s a person.”
When Connor opened his eyes, the other man was visibly shaking. “Then I know you’ll take good care of her,” he said.
He stepped backwards, and then stumbled out into the hall. He couldn’t breathe again until he was in his own room with the door closed. Heaving, he pressed his forehead against the wood and gritted his teeth together, staring down at his fists, wondering why he hadn’t used them on Drake’s cocky face again.
“Hi, baby. I missed you.”
The room spun as he did, and he turned to find Ashlyn stretched out on his bed, her shoulders bare, a blanket draped across the rest of her. She smiled at him with the mouth he once found sexy, but all he could think about was punching it until her lips split into a bloody mess. He strode across the room and hit the end of the bed with his knees, slamming his hands down on the mattress only a foot away from where her head was propped up on her elbow. The move startled her, but she didn’t stop smiling. Connor had never hit a woman in his life, not even the stunt women in his movies. He couldn’t. But fuck, did he want to.
“What are you doing, Ash,” he asked her, crawling onto the bed and reaching for her throat. “What do you want from me?”
She smiled and leaned forward, letting his hand settle into a grip just above the center of her collarbone. Then she kicked the blanket free, exposing her na
ked body to him. “I just want you, baby. And I don’t like sharing.”
It was the second time in only a matter of minutes that someone had said this to him. His eyes flared with anger, and her smile drooped. He squeezed on her throat a second longer than necessary to get his point across, then pushed her away, and clamored off the bed.
“I won’t get on the crazy train with you. Get out,” he ordered her, kicking the bed when she didn’t move. “Get the fuck out of my room!”
“You don’t want me to leave, sweetie,” she purred, rotating into a sitting position and opening her knees. He looked away, uninterested. “Because if you make me leave, you know I’ll do something bad.”
“I don’t give a shit,” he lied.
She laughed at him. “Yes, I’m sure you do. Jacks and I got quite close while you were gone. Lily’s taken an adorable liking to me. She’s such a cute little baby, isn’t she? So trusting.”
When his eyes darted back to her, her hand was moving between her legs. “Stop,” he warned.
“I don’t want to.”
“Get out.”
“I don’t want to do that, either.”
He growled and jumped on the bed, yanking her by the arms and flipping her off the side. “Get out, you slag,” he hissed.
“God, do I love that sexy voice of yours when you get angry. It’s hot.”
“Piss off.”
When she laughed, Connor’s skin went clammy. She rose slowly, and flipped her hair behind her shoulders, smoothing it down. “See, Jacks won’t make me leave. In fact, he’s expecting me in his room tonight. Do you want Riley to know about that? That most of the men she cares so…deeply for…are screwing me? Baby, if you make me leave, I’ll just come back, and I won’t be alone. I’ll let them take her first, of course. Then the girl. And all of you men will have to watch. Is that what you want, baby? No? Well, if you won’t fuck me like a man, then I guess you’ll have to kill me, Connor.” After a long pause, she whispered, “It’s the only choice you have left.”
He was on her in seconds, pinning her to the wall, his hands squeezing her throat till the veins popped out of his skin, staring into the dark abyss of her soulless eyes, but she wouldn’t stop smiling at him. Like the Joker, her wide mouth was spread out, laughing silently at him. Panting, his hands slowly opened and he stumbled away from her until the backs of his legs hit the bed.
“I…can’t,” he said to himself. “I can’t do that.”
Ashlyn rubbed at her red neck and sauntered across the room. She used a knee to nudge his legs open, and then stood between them. “I know you can’t hurt me, sweetie. Because you’re one of the good ones.” She sighed, then began to unbutton his jeans, and ease down the zipper, one painfully slow click at a time. “All I want is for you to love me, Connor. Like you did before. Your Riley will be fine. I’ll let Drake have her, and you can have me, any way you want,” she whispered. With one hand, she pushed on Connor’s chest till he fell back on the bed, and tugged his pants off his hips.
He was crying, he realized, when he touched his temple and brought his fingers back wet. It could be meaningless, the sex. It could be empty and brief and devoid of emotion, strictly a mechanical type of thing. Sort of like his first few years at University. It was sex she said she wanted, but Connor knew it was a power play. He sat up and brought her mouth to his, though it had already started doing other things to him, and kissed her deeply. Then he pulled her to the bed and flipped her over. If she wanted sex, he’d give it to her. He would give her sex until she begged him to stop and was afraid to return to his bed.
Connor didn’t prepare her body for what he planned on doing, because he wanted it to hurt. For the first time in his life as a man, he intended on harming a woman. What he least expected, was for Ashlyn to enjoy everything that he did, and to revel in the harshness of how he did it. By the time he realized she had won yet again, he was too close to the finish to stop.
Sweating and angry, he pushed himself off her heaving back and crawled away from her. He thought he would find solace in the bathroom, but once he closed the door, a sultry and humorous laugh came from his bed. Connor flung open the bathroom window and stuck his head out in time to aim the vomit away from the building.
Ashlyn came into the bathroom a few minutes later but he refused to turn around and look at her. He listened as she cleaned up, and recoiled when her small hands scratched up his back. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the space between his shoulder blades, pressing her bare breasts against his skin, and his stomach lurched, ready for another purge.
“Well, I didn’t know you had that in you,” she laughed, nipping at his arm.
He jerked away from her mouth. “You’re an evil cunt.”
She set her pointy chin down on his back and nodded. “Maybe. But I got what I wanted, didn’t I?”
Then, she was gone. Gone from the bathroom, and gone from the bedroom. But not gone from his life. When Connor asked Drake if the man was willing to kill for Riley, he wondered if his answer had been a truly honest one. He thought it had been. But like Ashlyn, Drake had won something that day, too. As Connor felt another round of puke hurling up his throat, he doubted that Drake would give two shits about Connor’s current bedroom predicament, because Drake would tell Riley what had happened between Connor and Ashlyn. And Riley could never know what he had just done. He’d kill himself before letting that secret out.
He pictured Ashlyn’s delicate features in his mind, and that creepy smile that he couldn’t forget. “You won this round, bitch,” he muttered at the cold air. “Next one’s on me.” He hurled more vomit out the window until the tears started again, and because he deserved every bit of the misery he felt, he left them on his cheeks to freeze in the cool air.
Chapter Twenty
RILEY
When I woke, Kris was huddled up in a tight ball beside me, and Zoey was stretched out across our feet. She stirred the moment I sat up to look out the window, disoriented by the dark. After shushing her, and inviting her to my warm spot under the covers, I got up to pee in the dirty bucket by the toilet. It was an awkward feat to do in the dead of night, and by the time I was done, I was fully alert, sleep gone for the time being.
I stood in the center of the bedroom, listening to Kris and the dog snoring softly. Nothing else made noise. No one was walking the halls, or playing music, or laughing. I had no clue where Cole and Jin had gone, if they had been set up in a room down the hall or were passed out on one of the sofas in the sitting room. It didn’t matter, I thought. They knew how to put themselves to sleep.
When I returned to the bed, I didn’t want to climb back in it. My body was anxious, my nerves frayed, and more than once I recalled how things had left off with Drake, and the way I recoiled from his touch in the bath. I wondered how long I would feel Jay’s hands on me, even though he was dead. I hated him for what he’d done, and how he still had control over me. It wasn’t fair.
The room began to swim, and I rubbed my eyes until they were dry. I’d promised myself weeks before, that I wouldn’t cry again over what had happened, and I was breaking that promise. So naturally, I began to hate myself. For being broken, for not being strong enough, for letting them hurt me, even after they were dead. How did I get that security back, that sense of self that was stolen? Could I?
I stormed across the room and yanked on the door, then winced when Zoey huffed at me from the bed. After hissing at her to lie back down, and ignoring her pouty eyes while she did as commanded, I closed the door behind me and stood in the dark hall, listening again for any sign of life. Drake’s room was quiet, but a soft light glowed from the bottom crack of his door. Before I let fear take over and compel me back to my room, I opened his door and slipped inside, closing it behind me with a soft click. He jerked upright in his bed, and lowered the book in his hand.
“Is everything okay?” he whispered.
I didn’t speak, I couldn’t, but I went to him. After taking the book and placing
it gently on the bedside table, I pulled his covers back and pushed on his side till he moved to the middle of the bed. He asked a second time if I was okay. With a nod, I slid in next to him, and let him cover me to my neck with the blankets. He rolled over to face me and fluffed a pillow under his head. His wonderfully mussed hair begged to be touched, but I kept my hands to myself.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he whispered.
“Me either.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” He smiled a boyish grin, and reached out to fix my hair, like I had just wanted to do to his. “You smell good,” he murmured.
“So do you,” I said with a smile. “But we should smell the same…we did bathe together.”
His grin fell and he rubbed at his eyes. “Riley, earlier…I shouldn’t have…it’s too soon…”
I stopped his stammering with a finger to his lips. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”
He was upright and hovering over me instantly. “It is not, and don’t say that. What you went through…what they did to you, Riley. It’s going to take time. That’s okay.”
“How much time,” I asked, finding it impossible to not touch him. I rested my hand on his bicep, though he didn’t seem to notice.
“However long it takes. I’ll wait. I’ll wait forever.”
“That’s a long time.”
“You’re worth it,” he said.
When he fell back onto his pillow and shoved his arm under it, I scooted an inch closer to him. Slowly, I reached out and put my palm on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart. “I miss that,” I whispered.
He put his hand on top of mine, then looked at me. “Is this okay?”
With a little nod, I scooted closer. My knees pressed into his thigh, and I tucked my feet under his leg. His jaw twitched, but he didn’t move. “Is this okay?” I asked.
He laughed. “Riley, I want to hold you, and kiss you, and make love to you, but I won’t do that until you’re ready.”
Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost Page 20