Audrey’s Inn

by Aycart, Elle

  It didn’t seem that Red believed her, but Audrey couldn’t protest, however, because Greta arrived and went straight to them. “My dear,” Greta said, hugging Audrey. “Thanks for allowing me to host my party here.”

  Audrey should have been the one thanking Greta. The old lady could have had a party at her own place, but she was doing what all the OGs had done since the inn opened, helping keep it afloat.

  Audrey was about to introduce her chef, but Greta beat her to it. “Red? Is that you?” Greta asked. “How have you been, dear?”

  Red kissed the old lady and, at Audrey’s puzzled look, explained, “We met a year ago, when the self-defense class for the Bottoms Up girls started. I work here,” Red said to the old lady. “I’m the chef, so I’m usually back in the kitchen. What are you celebrating, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  Audrey was curious too. Greta hadn’t ordered a birthday cake or candles. She’d asked for music and snacks.

  “This is a coming-out party.”

  Red and Audrey looked at each other, frowning. “You coming out?” Red asked cautiously.

  Greta nodded effusively. “Finally I can say my family had me tested and I’m not crazy.”

  Oh, so that was what she was referring to. The competency hearing Connor had talked about must have been over. “Congratulations.”

  Red scoffed. “I knew you weren’t nuts.”

  Greta winked a blurry eye. “It’s good to have a paper from a shrink that proves it.”

  “True,” Red said with a smile. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m going back to my cave to get more snacks. The party is getting very lively and we don’t want to run out of food.”

  As Red left toward the kitchen, Audrey saw Connor walking into the pool area, looking grim and somewhat pissed. “How—”

  Greta followed Audrey’s gaze. “How did I get him to come? I threatened to try the Jet Ski, so he had no choice. Please make sure to change his sour disposition. And, I beg you, feed him.”

  “I’ll try.” Audrey wasn’t sure she could deliver. Not even an act of nature could make him talk to her beyond a few grunts and curses.

  “Let me give you a hand,” the old lady said. Grabbing Audrey by an elbow, Greta pushed her toward a not-pleasantly-surprised Con. “You took your sweet time arriving,” Greta said to her grandson.

  Then, as if on cue, a ballad came out of the speakers that had been installed by the pool. “Oh, perfect,” Greta said innocently. “Be a dear and dance with Audrey. She’s been working too hard preparing for the party. She needs to relax.”

  He looked like he was going to object, profusely, but Greta hummed, “Remember, Con, Jet Ski,” and pushed them together toward the area roped off for dancing.

  Con was as tense as a bowstring, but he went along, not even glancing at her, but dancing nevertheless.

  Audrey laughed. “So she’s your Achilles heel.” Good to know.

  If his stern expression was anything to go by, he didn’t find the situation amusing in the least. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sure you’re too busy to be wasting your time dancing with me.”

  He loosened his already rather loose hold on her waist. He was ready to run. Audrey tightened her grip on his forearms. “Should I call your grandma? No one’s tried the Jet Ski yet.”

  For the first time that evening, their eyes met. His gaze was hard. Cold. Uncompromising. “Are you threatening me now?”

  She went on tiptoe and spoke into the crook of his neck. “Threatening to tell your grandma on you? Abso-fucking-lutely.” And she wasn’t lying.

  What a rotten state of affairs, forcing a guy to keep dancing with her by threatening to sic his grandma on him. This was going to fuck up her self-esteem. The threat worked, though, because he danced the whole song with her. As soon as it ended, he disappeared from sight.

  After a while, she spotted him in the back yard, near the shore. Alone. Probably trying to sneak out. Ha! Think again. She grabbed a tray of hors d’oeuvres and walked toward him.

  “Are you stalking me now?” he almost spat when he saw her.

  “I’ve been ordered to feed you. You haven’t eaten anything since you got here.” Or before, according to Greta. It had only been a week since they saw each other last, but his face looked gaunter.

  “I can feed myself,” he growled. “I don’t need supervision.”

  “I don’t want to supervise you,” Audrey said tartly. “Is this your plan? To avoid me?”

  He sighed. “I’m not avoiding you. I’m just not interested, sweetheart. Move along to the next guy.”

  She prayed for patience. What he wanted was for her to get offended and leave in a huff. She wasn’t going to make things easier for him. “Look me straight in the eye and tell me you don’t want me. That you don’t feel anything for me.”

  He trained his eyes on her and slapped the tray away. “I don’t want you. I don’t feel anything for you.” His voice was hard, as was his gaze—but both wavered slightly at the end.

  “Your poker face is faltering, Connor,” she taunted.

  He breathed out loud, looking irritated. “Whether I want you or not is irrelevant.” He turned around and began to walk away.

  She knew she should let him go, but her gut was screaming at her to go after him.

  “Wait,” she said, stopping him near the cottage. “Hear me out.”

  It didn’t seem that he wanted to, but she blocked his way, and he didn’t seem ready to manhandle her. Too much of a gentleman. She’d take advantage of that. “I loved what happened in the pool, Con. What you did to me. And you were enjoying it too. I like you. A lot.”

  He looked pained now. He lifted his hands and placed them at the back of his neck. “Do you want to fuck me that badly? I’m not for you, little girl.”

  “What? Are you out of my league?”

  He snorted under his breath. “You’re out of my league. You would have been even without… even before I got fucked up.”

  “Nonsense. Why did you leave the other day? I want to be with you.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I’m dangerous. I—”

  She ran out of patience. They always came back to the same point. “You keep saying that. What does it mean? You wouldn’t be the first man with PTSD who learned to overcome it and live a normal life. Why do you think you’re so dangerous that you need to keep me away?”

  He wasn’t answering, but he was getting agitated, angry. “Stop, Audrey. Stop while you’re ahead.”

  “No way. I’m not stopping. What the fuck made you such a beast that no one can be around you, huh? What happened? What turned you into a coward?”

  She saw it the moment he snapped. His eyes went really cold. He invaded her personal space, menacingly, and she had to take a step backward. “You want to know? Really? You’re going to regret it,” he said. “Don’t fucking say I didn’t warn you.”

  They were very close to the cottage now, and the light by the doorway was on, so when he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his shoulders, baring his chest, she could see the horrible scars all over it.

  She gasped and he grimaced. “Don’t forget to take a peek at the back,” he said, turning around slowly. “You need to absorb the full magnitude of it. After all, what’s a little torture if there’s no audience to enjoy the final result, huh?”

  She covered her mouth, fighting the urge to cry. His back had been… carved. Angrily so. Whatever happened to him had healed, but had left huge scars all over his back, which was mangled, as if big chunks of muscle were missing.

  “Is that what you wanted to see?” he asked impatiently. “Is it? Are you satisfied now, little girl? Enough to make you run away? Or do you need more?”

  “Who did this to you? What happened?” she managed to get out, her voice breaking.

  “I was captured by hostiles on my last mission. We were inside enemy lines. My unit got me out, but it took a while before they fo
und me. The hospitality of the locals was sorely lacking,” he said with a dry laugh. “I was flayed alive. Again and again. Not the whole body, mind you. God forbid I should die and deprive them of their entertainment. They would peel the skin off my back and then move to my chest, letting the back heal. Once some skin came back, they flayed it again to ensure not only maximum pain but maximum scarring.”

  Now that he’d gotten into his stride, it seemed he was enjoying shocking her.

  “The sharper the knife used, the less painful the experience. Or so I’ve been told. Those assholes didn’t do regular maintenance on their blades. Or maybe they did but reserved the blunt ones for me. They would flay me for hours, feeding my flesh to the dogs barking nearby, always threatening to let the ravenous beasts loose on me. They never did, though. The dogs just got little pieces of me at a time.”

  Audrey tried to blink back tears, not really succeeding. “Why?” she all but whispered, horrified at the incomprehensible thought of how much pain he had endured. “Why were they torturing you? Did they want information?” No information could be worth that much pain.

  His chuckle was dry. “They didn’t want information. Believe me, I would have given them anything to make it stop. Or to get them to kill me. But they were just doing it for kicks. I guess I should feel lucky they didn’t rape me. Then again, who would have wanted to fuck a shivering, bloody lump of raw meat? Too unappealing. The smell alone was nauseating, even for me. The flies liked it, though. I was popular with flies and maggots.”

  She reached for him. “I’m so sorry, Con. I’m so sorry this happened to you. Does it hurt?”

  She caressed his pec, but he stopped her hand, covering it with his. “I feel nothing. It’s all scar tissue. The torture destroyed most of my nerve endings. If someone wasn’t too disgusted to have sex with me, I would need much more than caresses. I’d need it rough. And God fucking knows what that would do to my hyper-fight response and my off-the-charts aggression levels. I’m not who I used to be. I’m broken. They broke me.

  “My PTSD is going nowhere, Audrey. My scars are going nowhere. I’m what they reduced me to—a dangerous beast that reacts on instinct. A fucking monster.”

  Audrey fought to speak around the baseball-size lump closing her throat. “You are not broken. And you’re not a monster or a beast. The ones who hurt you are the monsters. But you survived, and you will get through this.” She moved her other hand to his chest.

  “You don’t have to touch it. Me. I know it’s gross.”

  He sounded so sad, his voice so full of self-loathing, it broke her heart. There would be time to cry for what had happened to him—and she was surely going to cry a river—but now wasn’t that time.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Con.” She stroked his chest, pressing with her fingers. “Do you feel this?”

  “No.” He looked disheartened; his gaze resigned.

  No way was she giving up on him. “This?” she asked, raking her nails over his scars. When she dug a bit deeper, he nodded. “Good to know.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to know the level of pressure I have to apply for you to feel my touch. Don’t worry, I like it rough. I like clawing and biting and digging my nails in when I’m being fucked hard, which is the way I like it. Just letting you know. In case you decide to do something about it.”

  His body jerked under her hands. “Jesus fucking Christ, Audrey. You’re killing me here. Are you into suffocation too? What if I freak out in the middle of fucking you? You saw what happened the last time you startled me. With my senses heightened during sex, what’s to stop me from going over the line and hurting you?”

  “You won’t hurt me.”

  “What if?” he repeated, looming over her until he had her against the wall of the cottage.

  “You just have to look and touch and smell and taste me and you won’t lose it. I’ll keep you grounded. I trust you.”

  He punched the door, his curse loud, but she didn’t cower. He was trying to make her back away. She lifted her chin and looked him square in the eyes. “I. Trust. You.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers, sighing loudly. It was a long while before he opened his eyes and straightened up. “Fuck, you’re stubborn. Fine. Let’s do it your way. If you want to be with me, though, you have to be able to defend yourself. You need to be able to kick my ass. Literally.”

  “What do you suggest? That I take Mike’s self-defense classes?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll teach you myself. Until you can put me down if needed, and keep me down, we’ll keep our distance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He came close, so close that their noses were almost touching. “I mean no sex.”

  * * *

  Con watched as Audrey drank water after calling a time out. They’d been training at the gym for over an hour already. An hour he’d been in close proximity to Audrey, who was dressed in tight sportswear. Too damn tight. Thank fucking God his clothes were loose, or he would have been flaunting his painful, permanent hard-on to God and everyone. It seemed like he’d been hard for more than a week, ever since the pool incident. No amount of jacking off did squat at this stage. He needed to be inside her, but he was stubbornly resisting. They’d just gotten started; this was her first lesson—they had a long way to go before she could stand up to him and gain the upper hand.

  “Okay, ready for more,” Audrey said, walking to him, water still dripping from her chin.

  Fuck, she was gorgeous, sweaty and disheveled as she was, smiling at him and willing to be tossed on the mat every time he broke her chokeholds, which was too often. All the frolicking around was killing him. Too much rubbing against each other. Accidentally, but still. Totally killing him and his hard-earned self-control.

  “Sweetie?” she asked, in front of him now, snapping her fingers. “Where are you? Where’s your head?”

  Where? Deep between her legs, of course.

  He shook those thoughts away. “Sorry. Spaced out for a moment. I’ll show you how to break a chokehold while being attacked from the front.” That was what he’d done to her the very first day they met. “Pretend you’re choking me with both hands.”

  As she did, he moved slowly, so she could see what he was doing. With his left hand, he grabbed her thumb and yanked it backward. He twisted his body to his left and lifted his hooked right arm, jabbing it down on her left forearm, which broke the chokehold.

  “Did you see it?” he asked. At her nod, he continued, “After that, you should counterattack. A kick in the balls is your best friend. Your arm is already hooked and near your opponent’s face, so you hit him with an elbow to the throat. Now you.”

  They practiced the steps, moving gradually faster until the break came automatically. The counterattacking part was trickier.

  “For a small woman like you, a chokehold on the ground, using your arms and legs, is your only chance to best a much bigger opponent. Obviously, you need to get me down on the ground first. After a kick in the balls, your opponent will bend forward, and that’s your opportunity. Take a step forward, hook your leg behind one of his knees, and push.”

  Practicing those moves wasn’t too painful. The problem began once she had him on the ground and tried to do a lock on him. Having Audrey all over him was a torture in itself. Plus there had been no cup protection that could hold his dick in the current circumstances, so every time she rubbed against him, he felt it and she felt it too. She had the presence of mind to keep quiet, but her expression said it all.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough for today.” He called it when they were both sweating rivers and she’d managed to keep him somewhat immobilized on the ground.

  When he got up, he saw Mike, Cole, and Max. They’d been watching for a while now, knowing smiles on their faces. The third degree was coming, Con knew it.

  “Before I go, I need you to clarify something for me,” Audrey said, coming close.

  “What?”

&n
bsp; She went on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “The other day, when you said we would keep our distance and there would be no sex?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you please define ‘no sex’ for me? Because I think we just had almost two hours of foreplay. If I weren’t so sweaty all over, you could see the wet spot between my legs.”

  Fuck, she killed him. He slapped her ass. “Get your cute behind to the locker room.”

  He was watching said gorgeous behind make its swaying way to the locker room when he heard a snicker. He turned around to find Mike and the Bowens staring at him, dumbstruck. Their brows had shot to the ceiling.

  “Who the fuck are you and what have you done with our friend, Connor?” Max asked.

  “Exactly my question,” Mike said. “This motherfucker has a sappy smile from ear to ear, when mere days ago, he was grunting and moping in the foulest of moods.”

  “The power of pussy,” Max stated.

  Cole gave his younger brother a stern look and a jab, but one corner of his mouth was quirking up.

  “Totally,” Mike seconded. “The power of pussy is amazing.”

  Ha! If they only knew he wasn’t getting any. Still, they’d called it right. He was… happy. Hopeful. Neither of which he’d felt since for fucking ever.

  “Watch your mouths,” Con growled at them. He still didn’t know what exactly Audrey was to him, but she was much more than just pussy. Which scared him shitless, because with his track record, he was bound to fuck it up at any second. Even before this shit happened to him, he hadn’t managed to keep a lady satisfied beyond the bedroom. They’d always dumped him.

  “I was right about you and Audrey,” Mike said, giving him a clap on the back. “Greta is going to be ecstatic. Did you tell her? I haven’t heard anything.”