by Skye Warren
I would have lost.
“What happened last night?” I’m near tears, but I fight them. I can’t look weak now. Power is the language he speaks, and the waver in my voice is already a disadvantage. A single tear would be surrender.
He sighs like I’m overreacting. I want to kick him in the balls.
“What did you do to me?” I demand again, louder. Almost hysterical, really, and I hate how much I sound like my mother in her crazy moments.
“I didn’t hurt you,” he says.
A chill runs down my spine. Did he touch me when he undressed me? Then a steel door slams down on my thoughts. Of course he touched me. I don’t want to know what happened after that.
Except I can guess, especially when my thighs brush together, a little sticky. A little wet. More wet than I’ve ever been when having sex. It doesn’t make sense that I’d have been turned on. It also doesn’t make sense that I would still be turned on, after sleeping for hours.
But I know that’s what happened.
Humiliation runs through me like a river, filling every empty space inside me, reflecting light on places better left dark. How could I have been turned on by him? Embarrassment swells to fury, and I twist my head violently. My hair would pull right out of my scalp if he didn’t let go—but he does. He releases me, and I snap at him with my teeth. I wish I had fangs to sink into his neck, right where the scruff fades to nothing.
He laughs. “You’re a little wild. I’m not letting you near my dick with that mouth.”
I go crazy, hitting and punching like a maniac. I think I’m hurting myself more than him. Everything hurts, but I can’t stop. Stopping means I’m okay with what happened, that I enjoyed it. “You’re a fucking caveman. You’re barely even human!”
He picks me up and suddenly I’m spinning, then sailing through the air. I land on the bed with a bounce. I roll away and push up but the sheets tangle around my ankle, and I fall back onto the bed, limbs uncoordinated. I could hear the horses on the way into the house yesterday, and this is how it must feel, being born and expected to stand right away.
Grayson’s on top of me, yanking my wrists up over my head and pinning them beneath his hand.
He straddles my chest. I’m helpless, and he’s looming over me. A kind of pleasure roils deep in my belly—my body betraying me. “I hate you,” I say, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. Surrender. Now he knows how scared I am, and I hate myself a little for giving it away.
The bed creaks as he leans down. Is he going to do it again? Have sex with me? Of course he’s going to do it again. But he just places a kiss on my forehead, chaste and almost sweet.
“Calm down,” he murmurs.
I’m the opposite of calm. I’m naked and crying, and with Grayson that’s almost the same thing—both vulnerable and broken.
He caresses my arms, my sides. “Shh, no one’s going to hurt you. Not as long as I’m with you.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I snap. I’d rather he threaten to kill me again. I want him to be a monster.
“Am I lying?” He sounds amused. “Are you hurt right now?”
“Yes!” I say because now that I’m still, I can feel the twinge deep inside me, the slight ache that means he had sex with me.
He trails two fingers from the base of my neck, between my breasts, down toward my belly. “All right, I touched you. I fucked you. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
No, I knew he would, even before he escaped from prison. Everything in me pointed toward him.
“It’s how this works, baby,” he adds wearily. “It’s just how this works.”
I stiffen. This? It’s just how this works?
I go silent for a second because of how much he admitted in one simple sentence. That what’s happening is a thing he understands all too well. A thing he learned when other kids were learning baseball.
The final piece of the puzzle falls in. The basement. The other boys. All those years.
It wasn’t some custody dispute that got him on that milk carton. I know what happened to him sure as I feel his hand pressing my wrists together. I’m filled with a sense of grim triumph.
“What would you have done,” I whisper, “if I hadn’t picked your story for The Kingman Journal?”
He smirks. “I knew you would.”
“Why?” I demand.
His eyebrows shoot up. He’s surprised I’m not freaking out still. But I have a long history of coping with insanely violent situations. “Because you’re easy,” he says.
My indignant huff only makes him smile, a little smug.
“I knew that if I gave you a sob story, you’d fall for it. And you did.”
“It was pretty genius,” I say. “By focusing on the most peripheral details, you could leave the horror at the center to the reader’s imagination.”
“Thank you for your kind assessment, Ms. Winslow,” he says mockingly.
“You only had to get those details just right, and the reader fills it in for you. It’s the best kind of lie to tell. One that’s true. Nothing’s quite as effective as truth, is it?”
Grayson freezes. Wondering what I know.
“It’s what Hemingway did. Stayed on the edge of it. One raw line of truth and then another.”
His hands tighten on my wrists. “And now I’m free.”
But I’m not through with him. “How does it feel?” I ask. “To be on the other side?”
“Don’t.”
A shiver runs through me at the fury in his voice. But when you’re stuck in a ring with a crazed animal, you’ll use the weapons you have. I need him emotional. Not seeing straight.
“Six years. That’s a long time. Are you strong enough and bad enough yet that they can’t touch you ever again?”
His expression tells me I made a direct hit. And I know I can hit him as much as I want and he won’t hurt me—not physically. In a perverse way I know that I can trust him because of his thing about protecting me. His code. It’s a fucked-up code, but it’s a code all the same.
I frown. “No? Not quite?”
He sneers. “You think you know me?”
“I know how it feels when your stomach hurts like it’s trying to eat itself. I know what it’s like to fight with a grown-up and lose.”
His draws his lips close to my ear, so close it tickles. “Like you’re doing now? Fighting with a grown-up and losing?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, knowing that this is a dark and powerful line that connects us. “I know what it’s like to hate what’s happening. And to hate that you like it.”
I feel him soften. He keeps hold of my wrists but he’s loosening. My words are potent. Powerful. I can use the truth as a weapon, just like he did.
I say, “I know what it’s like when you want something so wrong. When you crave it.”
“It’s okay,” he says softly, as if to comfort me, gaze tender. “It’s okay to feel like that. It’s not your fault.” Everything’s shifting, and I know he’s going to kiss me.
I watch his eyes close, see the dusky curve of his lashes against his skin. He doesn’t have any right to look both sexy and sweet. Doesn’t have any right to sink on top of me—but God, he does.
His lips are soft and warm, so incongruous it makes me sigh against him. And even though he’s broad and heavy, especially because of that, it feels like a caress. His whole body embraces me, his mouth on mine, his hands on mine, his legs straddling my thighs. I’m wrapped in a cocoon made only of Grayson, where it smells like musk and tastes like man and wipes away every thought I should have.
Like getting away. Like fighting him. I had a plan here—to lull him with a sense of comfort and connection. That connection he so badly needs.
But the truth is a double-edged sword. Because I do crave him when he’s heavy on me, kissing me. I don’t want him to stop.
And his words made me feel better somehow. Or at least less alone.
His tongue nudges my mouth open, and I let him in. This is what he did to me in
my memoir class, paying close attention, turning in every assignment. He thinks I want this kiss, because I do. It’s the best kind of lie to tell—one that’s true.
“What happened last night?” I whisper. It’s the same question I asked before, only different now. Different because I already know.
His voice is rough when he answers. “It didn’t hurt. I didn’t hurt you.”
He drugged me…and he fucked me…and he knew it wouldn’t hurt. There’s a sick kind of tenderness in that. A twisted sort of care. My heart breaks a little, because I think this is the only way he knows how to be kind. And that’s what makes me reach for him.
He doesn’t ask why I changed my mind. Maybe he doesn’t care. He just pulls a condom from the drawer and slips it on. He flips me over, drags my hips up, and pushes a pillow underneath.
That’s the only warning I have before the hot, blunt head of his cock breaches me from behind.
My body opens to him, wet and soft and willing. My mind understands him, why he is the way he is. But it’s my heart that aches for him, wanting whatever shards of love he can give me, jagged, even knowing I’ll get cut in the process.
“You want this,” he says, breathless.
It’s not a question, but I answer him anyway. “More.”
His fist twists in my hair—like earlier, only hotter now, because he’s pressing my face into the cool sheets. The wet sheets, made damp with my tears.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I manage to say. I can’t stop crying, but I need him to know he’s not hurting me. It’s important to him, not to hurt me. I don’t even know why I’m crying, but it’s not because of his cock or his fist or his warm weight covering my back.
“Why?” His voice grates, a rough burst of air against my cheek. He’s holding me down completely, every part of him covering every part of me.
Why am I crying? Why do I want this? I don’t know what the question is exactly, but I reach up and hold his wrist. I use it like an anchor as the storm of him batters me about. His cock drives into me, relentless, bordering on pain but never there.
He’s careful even in his fury, almost tender as he shudders over me and groans his release.
Then my body clenches around his, sudden and wild, and I can’t breathe at all. It doesn’t matter; I could die this way, warm and wet, protected like never before, the salt of my tears on his lips as he leans down and kisses my cheek.
And now I know why I’m crying: because I’m losing, just like he said I would, because I want to be in this prison of his, enclosed by him, the object of his intense focus, and I know it’s wrong—it’s a wrong thing to like. Maybe it’s myself I’m losing. Maybe it’s my sanity.
I just know I have to get away.
Twenty-Eight
~Grayson~
A phone rings, startling me. I realize we fell asleep after I fucked her this morning.
That was careless. I can’t believe I made that kind of mistake. I detach myself from her warm body, hating every inch I put between us. I reach over to the bedside table, fumbling around, trusting she’ll lie there, waiting. Wanting. Docile. Everything between us feels new. And right.
So I’m sure it will end wrong.
Nate is all business on the other end. “Guys in nice SUVs crawling around town,” he says. “A few guys at the diner asking questions.”
“How long ago?”
His tone is urgent. “Now.”
“We’re gone.”
“Take the Suburban that’s in the back garage. It’s not mine. Red key chain on the hook. Money in the safe.”
He gives me the combination, and the line goes dead. I scrub my face with my hand. I needed to move out way earlier. I should have already secured supplies and fake identification. And I spent what cash I had at the motel. There’s no time for that anymore.
I turn to face her. Maybe a normal guy would be moved by the sight of her red-rimmed eyes. I’m not normal, though. The sight of her broken doesn’t make me want to help her. It makes me want to fuck her all over again.
“Get dressed,” I say, and for some reason, maybe because she’s soft and well fucked, she obeys. She asks to go the bathroom, and I drag her to the one in Nate’s room. I hear her open a drawer. Taking a razor. Scissors, maybe. Sad little weapons. I’ll allow it. I shove the clothes in his closet to the side to reveal his safe. I twist the knob to the combo he gave me, but it doesn’t open. Did I get the numbers right? I try again. Nothing. Fuck. A third time isn’t the charm. Fuck it. I grab a shirt from a hanger and nick the change off his dresser just as she’s coming out.
I should blindfold her, but there’s no time if guys are already asking around in town. Someone might have seen us drive through; eventually they’ll expand their radius to search here.
The last thing I want is a fucking standoff, dragging Nate into the mix. And her.
I take her hand and drag her down to the kitchen where I grab the red key chain from the hook; then I stuff a box of cereal and the half empty OJ carton into a bag.
“Let’s go,” I tell her.
“What’s happening?” she asks.
“Trouble.”
I lead her to the back. The sun is high, telling me it’s near lunchtime. I pull up the old wooden shed door—one of those old-fashioned jobbies where it tips out and up.
The beater I stole from the motel is in there next to a Suburban. I’m not surprised. Nate probably came back between vet gigs to move it. He’s thorough like that. Part of what makes him an awesome healer.
I wait until she climbs into the truck and buckles herself in before I press the gun into her neck, letting her feel the cold, hard tip of it.
She stiffens and leans away.
I follow her with it, keeping metal on skin. She needs to know that fucking hasn’t changed anything. The thing isn’t even cocked, but we’re about to head onto the road. I need to know she’s with me. This isn’t a fucking fairy tale. I’m not going to turn into a good guy because her cunt is made of velvet and rainbows.
“We good?” I ask.
Her lips move without sound. She’s getting the message, and even if it feels like knives inside me, that’s the important thing.
She gets out a whisper. “Yeah.”
“Okay.” Sometimes you have to make a gun real to a person, and it’s for her own good, because I don’t want her to run. She’d finger Stone and maybe even Nate, and the governor would be their problem too. They’d be lucky to get twenty-five to life.
So I just have to make sure she doesn’t run, simple as that.
I go around to the driver’s side and fire up the engine. I pull out, put it in park, jump out to close the garage door, and we’re off. I breathe easier once we’ve cleared Nate’s driveway, and even more when we’re on a two-lane highway without anything to link us up. I’m guessing the vehicle is stolen, maybe by another patient of Nate’s, but I’ll take my chances on the interstate all the same.
“You should’ve just killed me,” she says when we’re ten minutes out from Nate’s. Her voice sounds hollow. “It would’ve been better.”
My insides twist up because of how well I recognize that tone. Fuck. “Don’t be stupid. You never want to be dead instead of living.”
She’s sitting as far away from me as she can. Beyond crying. “It would be better.”
“Stop it,” I say through gritted teeth. I want clever Ms. Winslow back. The fighter, the woman who tricked me into telling more than I ever meant to. The woman who understands things other people can’t.
I want her not to feel like this. And not to be the one who made her cry. All because she got fucked? “You need to reach the hell down inside yourself and find that little corner in there where you know things are okay. That part of you nobody can take away.”
“Not even you?” Her voice is quiet.
Not even me, I want to say. But my attention is snagged by the four-way stop in the distance. There’s a car sitting up there, right at the stop sign, and no other cars are in sig
ht. It could be somebody texting or looking at a map. Somebody harmless.
Or somebody watching. Waiting.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she mumbles.
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re okay.” If nothing else, she’s talking with me. Communicating. It’s the quiet ones you had to worry about. They were liable to swallow a razor blade when you weren’t looking.
God, the bleeding. The bleeding never stopped. I push the memories back where they belong.
She glares at me. “Is this you giving me advice on how to survive a guy like you? Because that’s a little fucked up, even for you.”
I’m glad to see the bite. Even directed at me, I’m glad to see it.
The car’s still there. I’m too far away to see how many people are inside, or even if the windows are shaded. I could do a U-turn and get going the other way, see if they follow. But that’s like waving a red flag if it’s the governor’s guys. I grab the ball cap and stuff it over my head. “Get down.”
She looks around, sees only the sunny blue skies and fields and the blue sedan in the distance.
I grab her neck and push her down. They don’t know this vehicle. A lot of guys ride around in ball caps. I slow at the stop. Shaded windows. Shit. I wait, then go.
The shiny blue car follows. It still could be nothing. Or it could be that they suspect, and they’re calling their friends.
I knew the FBI could track me, and I trusted my evasion skills enough to get away. Hell, they had always worked before. Only once had I ever been caught, and that was because of the governor.
The governor, whose guys are following me now. It’s got to be them. This is bad.
My hands tighten on the wheel. “If the shit hits the fan, baby, you run like hell, okay?”
“What?” She sounds incredulous.
It makes me smile, just a little. She thinks I’m the biggest and the baddest guy here, which is kind of sweet. But she’s wrong. “If something goes down, you run. And don’t trust anybody in a big shiny car or SUV. Don’t trust these small-town badges either. Get back to the city. Call the FBI. Tell them you were taken hostage, that you got free. They’ll come get you.”