Toxic

by Nicole Blanchard

  “I brought you here because you can’t be with a man like me and expect to live happily ever after. There isn’t a part of my life that isn’t as dark and brutal as what went on in this room. But the truth is, I didn’t make you do anything. The truth is, you and I aren’t as different as you think.” I start to protest, but he kisses me quiet. “That isn’t a bad thing, no matter what you think. That man? He was a piece of shit. Lower than the worst man you’ve ever met. Lower than Vic. He deserved everything he got.”

  “I just want to forget about all of it. I want to finish everything with Sal and start over, pretend none of it ever happened.” I wrap my arms so tightly around Gracin that my bicep screams in pain, but I don’t care. “But first, I think I need to sleep. I’m not drawing judgments about anything, but I’m exhausted. Can we go to bed?” I pause for a second. “Together? I just don’t want to sleep alone. Not tonight.”

  After a short conversation with one of his bodyguards instructing them to get rid of the body, Gracin takes me back up to my room. It says a lot that dead bodies no longer faze me. He leads me right to the shower. Neither of us speak. I’m not sure I can find the words to articulate what happened, so I don’t try.

  I lean against the counter as Gracin turns the shower on and disrobes in front of me. He turns and helps me out of my clothes, but it doesn’t feel sexual. It seems like he almost cares about me, in his twisted way. I don’t try to muddle it out because there’s no use trying to understand him.

  He helps me into the shower and pulls me against his chest. I don’t fight it. I can’t. I’m not sure I’d be able to even if I had the presence of mind or the energy. As I relax against his chest, he carefully washes my hair, and lathers up my body before dropping to his knees to inspect the scars on my legs. The puckered flesh doesn’t have much sensation, but I shiver anyway when he presses his lips to each one.

  “No one will ever hurt you like this again.” He looks up from his crouched position with a devilish smile. “Except maybe me.”

  I shiver despite the hot spray. “You won’t hurt me,” I say.

  “No?” he asks as he gets back to his feet to rinse my hair.

  “No.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You could have hurt me when you found me in LA.” I yawn and snuggle closer against him as his hands rub up and down my back. “I wondered why you didn’t come after me when you found me.”

  “I had things to take care of before I came for you. I needed a house and to settle-up with my employers. I didn’t think they’d find you so fast or I would have come and gotten you sooner.”

  “And the video?” I ask sleepily. “How did you get it?”

  Once I’m clean, he shuts off the water and guides me out onto a towel. He follows closely behind and wraps me up in one to dry me off. As he’s helping me dress, he says, “When I got back to the house and you weren’t there, I took it to have something of yours. Something that reminded me of you. There wasn’t much, so I had to settle with that. I wasn’t sure if I was going to come for you, but I also couldn’t let it be the last time I ever saw you.”

  “And A-Andrew?”

  “Desmond and I had a talk. He informed me where I could find Sal and Danny as well as Andrew.” He tips my face up for a kiss. “There’s no way in hell I’d ever let a man do what they did to you and let them get away with it.”

  “But why the video? Why have me do it?”

  “So you know you’re capable of fighting back,” he says.

  “I think you proved that,” I say dryly.

  He kisses me again, and then we fall into bed without another word and sleep until just before dawn. When I wake, I find him already dressed, brushing the hair back from my face. I know without even saying a word that having him is inescapable. With a murmured apology, I slide from underneath the covers and make quick work of the bathroom and brushing my teeth. I return to find him on his feet prowling around the room.

  He hadn’t been back here since I first arrived, and he looks at it now, examining the things I’ve accumulated with blatant curiosity. The books I’ve taken from the library but never read, flowers from the garden, and a set of weights I liberated from the gym.

  “I always wondered what you were doing here when I wasn’t home.”

  I study him as he picks up a dried flower and twirls it by the stem. “Why?”

  He looks back at me. “You fascinate me. Ever since that first day, you’ve been under my skin, and I can’t seem to be rid of you.”

  “Do you want to be?” I ask.

  “No,” he says without hesitation, moving to stand right in front of me, his green eyes as stormy as a summer morning and just as vibrant.

  “Tessa,” he says softly and then groans before taking my head in his hands to press a savage kiss on my lips.

  He practically vibrates around me as my fingers wrap around his wrists. He’s barely restrained as his mouth works mine over. There’s nothing seductive or sweet about the moment. It’s an over-taking, a siege, and I surrender, allowing him to lay me back on the bed with a sigh.

  I don’t care that it’s wrong or that he’s a bad man or that he’s all the things I know I should run from. All I care about is he makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life. With him, I feel like I truly live, like I can breathe.

  I don’t know when I forgave him for what happened to me, for what he made me do, but I have. And now the hunger to have him, to take him, has returned with a viciousness that consumes me.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks.

  I nod beneath him, silent and expectant, aching for his touch. At my answer, his eyes flutter closed. Careful of my arm, he helps me out of my shirt, and his eyes feast on my bared flesh. He meets my gaze as he drops to pepper my skin with soft, slow kisses. I grip his hair with one of my hands and arch into his touch.

  “You want me to stop?” he says against my throat. “You want to leave?”

  I open my mouth, and he fills it with his tongue instead of allowing me to answer. I forget what I was going to say and suck him deeper inside.

  His hands find my pants, and he jerkily undoes the button and rips the zipper down. Fingers dip beneath my waistband and tease me, pulling a cry from my lips and my head back into the pillows.

  Deprived of my mouth, he goes to my ear and suckles the sensitive spot there. I can no more help my response to him than I can stop the sun from rising. My gasp of pleasure fills the room as my pussy pulses with heat and my breasts grow heavy and my nipples tighten into hard points. Gracin growls his approval as I grow wet between my thighs. He lingers there, his fingers maddeningly efficient as they toy circles around my clit. I give a little whimper as he flirts around the part of me aching to be filled the most.

  “Don’t stop,” I say when I remember how to speak. “Please, Gracin. Please stay.”

  At his name, he withdraws his hand, and I squeak out a protest and shoot into a sitting position. When I realize he’s only getting to his feet to undress, I quiet and lie back for the show.

  God, he has an amazing body. It’s unreal. And for now, it’s all mine. As he unbuttons his shirt, I drink my fill, my eyes feasting on each bared inch of skin until there’s a gap in the center of the material. He stops then to untie his boots and kick them off. They land somewhere under the bed with heavy thuds.

  Unwilling to be a casual observer any longer, I get to my knees and scoot toward him, lifting my hands and resting them on his shoulders. He stills underneath my touch, like a lion allowing a human to pet it. My eyes glued to the action, I slip the shirt off his shoulders and bare his chest to my view.

  “I can’t believe you got piercings,” I say incredulously. Unable to keep my hands away from him, I lift them to touch the twin metal hoops and then rethink it, splaying them on his abs instead. “Do they still hurt?”

  “I had them before,” he replies jerkily. “I got them put back in after Blackthorne, and yes, they do still hurt. It’ll be anoth
er couple of months before they heal completely.”

  “Oh,” I say, my response breathy.

  “If that intimidates you, you’re going to be in for a real surprise in a few minutes.”

  I don’t comprehend his meaning since he isn’t pierced anywhere else . . .

  I swallow thickly, my imagination running wild as my eyes drop to his growing erection.

  “Oh,” I repeat and choke down my anticipation and excitement.

  He draws my hands down to his pants, which he’d unbuttoned at some point. My mouth waters as I move until my legs are dangling off the bed and drag his jeans over his hips and down his thighs. He helps me get them off the rest of the way, and then I focus on the thick length of his cock underneath the black boxer briefs. There’s a patch near the tip that’s darker than the rest, and I bring my mouth to it, needing to taste him, even if it’s through a barrier of cotton. As I trace the line of his dick, I glance up to find those hungry eyes burning with intensity.

  He wasn’t lying about the surprise. Even with a layer of cotton separating us, I can feel the hard knot at the top of his cock that must be another piercing. With the scent of him, hot and musky, filling my nose, I lift my hands to his hips and drag his briefs down, baring him to my eyes for the first time.

  The sight causes my mouth to water, and I take him in both hands to explore. I’ve never seen a more beautiful dick in my whole life. And there isn’t another way to describe it. He’s perfect, thick and long, flushed with color. The head glistens with a drop of pre-cum, and just behind it is the piercing. It’s situated vertically and canted slightly forward. There are two beads, one larger at the top and another, slightly smaller on the bottom. I imagine it inside me, and I have to squeeze my thighs together as I bring him to my lips to taste.

  Not expecting it, his hands fly to my hair. “Jesus Christ,” is all he can get out before my tongue licks away his arousal.

  I take him into my mouth and moan as his flavor bathes my tongue. Needing more, wanting to drive him as mindless as he’d driven me all these weeks, I take him as deep as I can. The barbell takes some getting used to, but soon, I catch my rhythm and focus more on how he reacts to everything than the feeling of the barbell against the roof of my mouth.

  His hands in my hair guide me until they fist and force me to stop. I release him, and he drags me to my feet to take my mouth with his. His cock sandwiched between us, I arch as high as I can get, but he’s too tall for me. I’m gasping by the time he relinquishes my mouth.

  “Lie back,” he says, sending shivers through me.

  I do as he says, and he helps me out of my jeans and panties as I unclasp my bra and throw it to the floor. His gaze roams over me, and his teeth run over his bottom lip until he says, “Spread your legs,” in a voice so commanding, I can’t help but obey.

  I hook them on the edge of the bed, and he places his hands on my knees as he gets to his own in front of me. When I feel his breath against my folds, I throw my head back in abandon. His huge hands grip my hips and he scoots me closer to the edge before tilting me up to meet his mouth.

  If I thought he was good at kissing, he’s infinitely more talented at licking pussy. I think I call out, I think I moan, I don’t even know because I experience everything through a white haze of sensation.

  Oh my God.

  I don’t know if I’m a bad person for enjoying this. I certainly can’t be a good one. Morality and right and wrong seem far less important when he torments me with long strokes from his tongue.

  The room fills with the wet, sloppy sounds of the thorough tongue-fucking he gives me, and I only want more, crave more, need more. His mouth comes back to my clit, and I rock my hips against each flick of his tongue. I’m unabashed, unashamed, and unfettered. I didn’t realize how much I needed this until the orgasm hovers just beneath the surface. As plaintive cries escape my throat, he increases the intensity until I’m either certain I’m going pass out from its potency or succumb to it.

  I reach a fever pitch and then he slides two fingers inside the source of my wetness, and it completely redefines what it means to feel pleasure. He wraps one hand around my thigh to reach the folds of my pussy. Without pausing, he spreads them apart and fastens his lips over my clit as he thrusts his fingers in and out. The combination of his mouth and his touch and the promise of his cock prove to be too much, and I clutch around him with a soundless scream.

  His assault gentles as he allows me to come down from the aftershocks. You’d think a violent orgasm would allow for a pause, but it only whets my appetite, and as he gets to his feet, I scoot back on the bed as he crouches over me on all fours.

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he says. His mouth takes mine roughly, and I taste myself on his lips, which swirls the memory of the first time we were together.

  “Inside me,” I say when I can catch my breath. “I need you inside me.”

  “That wasn’t enough for you?” he asks.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  “Greedy.” He leans his weight back on his knees between my legs and looks down at me. “Let me look at you,” he says. “I don’t want to rush this time.”

  My head thrashes against the pillow. “Later,” I say, but he shakes his head.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give you what you need.”

  I feel the slightly colder metal of the barbell first and then the long, heavy weight of his cock as he thrusts it along my wet folds. My eyes roll into the back of my head, and I give up trying to plead with him. He wants to torture me. I don’t have the willpower inside me to resist. He punishes me with pleasure, which is akin to pain.

  All I can focus on is the cool glide of the bead as it gathers moisture from my center and slicks over the ultra-sensitive bud of my clit. My hips jerk each time it reaches the apex of its journey, and my hands twist the sheets into ribbons. He grips my thighs underneath my knees and spreads them, lifting my hips to attain just the right angle to torment me. His cock continues to glide against me, tempting us both when it presses against my opening for the barest of seconds.

  I’m frantic for him. My brain is incapable of rational thought. I’m powerless to change the angle, to cant my hips to take him inside me because his grip is resolute. This, like most things, is on his terms, at his pace, but it feels so good I can’t complain other than to beg for more, more, more.

  Then he releases my legs and covers me. Both of our gazes focus on what’s happening between us as his cock drags over me one last time. The head of him presses against my entrance, and he groans as I contract around the tip helplessly. The bead of the barbell catches, and he drops down to his forearms, his frame shaking with tension.

  “What is it?” I ask breathlessly.

  “Condom,” he says through gritted teeth. “But I don’t know if I can move right now.”

  He accentuates his statement with a flex of his hips as he pulls back slightly before pushing forward until my body accepts him just past the point of his piercing. I bare my throat to him on a soundless groan. I can feel the metal inside me, and I ache to have it move so much that it steals the words right from me.

  It’s a long while before I can catch my breath enough to say, “I’m on the pill. Doc gave it to me after I—after everything.”

  “Thank fucking God,” he says and drops his head to my shoulder. “I’m clean. As you know,” he adds with a chuckle.

  “Good because I don’t think I could let you go right now.”

  He gets back to his knees and brings my legs up to his shoulders. I open my mouth to ask him to come back down and then he flexes his hips and the bead of his piercing drags along a spot inside me that has me seeing stars. I grab for his hands on my legs, scrabbling for something to hold on to because I’m afraid when I break over the edge I’ll be in a free-fall. He clasps my hands with his where he holds onto my legs and then all I can do is hold on for dear life.

  His strokes start out slow and measured, and judging by the
look on his face, if he moved any faster, this wouldn’t last long for either of us. I honestly don’t give a damn either way because each one lights me up and sends me tumbling down into a mini-orgasm so intense I don’t know where one ends and the next begins. When he leans down to kiss me, I clutch at his shoulders, letting all the emotions I’ve been holding back for months roll through me. They are chased by an explosion of pleasure that tightens me like a vice around his cock, around his body.

  I rouse from a stupor as he flips me over like a rag-doll and positions me, ass-up in front of him. I only have time to clutch at the sheets before he slams into me, working me back into another orgasm . . . and then another before he finally explodes inside me.

  He rouses me several times during the night with one word. “Again.” And I open my arms, my legs, and my heart to him because what we have is dangerous and volatile, but it’s also inevitable.

  The bed is empty. There’s only a note on the nightstand that says, “Be back later. –G.” Then a hastily added scribble, as if he knew what I would be thinking and wanted to head me off. “Don’t come after me.”

  I’ve seen what he can do, but that doesn’t mean he can take care of everything on his own. Especially not after what happened last night. The son of a bitch should know better.

  Part of the blood to be spilled is mine for what they stole from me, so it infuriates me that he would leave without me, knowing how I feel about the whole matter. Not that he gives a damn.

  I throw off the sheets and dress quickly and quietly. The gun Gracin gave me for our outing at the bar is still in the nightstand drawer where I left it. I retrieve it and stow it in the waistband of my jeans. The remnants from the night we spent together twinge and ache, but I ignore them as I peer out the bedroom door. Now that I know my way to the control room, I plan to slip through to it and take one of the sets of keys I saw hanging on the wall. There’s no way in hell he’s going to do this without me. If I have to hog-tie everyone in this whole house, I’m going to find him.