The Token (#10): Shepard

by Marata Eros

  “You know how to touch me.”

  I incline my head. I trained the women to be gentle lovers, needy—compliant. But for my own needs, taking was the method that comes easily.

  “I take. Touching you as I am is a new experience.”

  Her delicate brows meet. “You can't fake this.” She reaches out, touching the wrist of my right hand, and I pause in my caress, waiting.

  She places my hand on the mound of her sex, and I tip my hand to the side and bury the lower palm of my hand between her slit, splitting her pussy lips.

  “Ah,” she breathes. “Are we in danger?”

  My eyes meet hers as I flex my fingers, opening her flesh like a flower. “Yes.”

  “Why is that a turn-on?” Marissa falls backward, widening her legs with an abandon she didn't have a few moments ago.

  I do not reply. Instead, I dip my head to her pussy again and take a long, wet lick—the entrance to the bud of her clit—and her hips rise in time with the motion of my tongue.

  “God!” she says.

  I smirk. No heavenly deity has anything to do with my actions. I suck one side of her pussy, sweeping my lips across her entrance, grazing the wetness there and lifting it to the other side.

  I nibble.

  Marissa moans.

  “Stop,” she says in a hoarse cry, fisting the sheets on either side of her torso.

  “Non.” I change my rhythm, plunging my tongue inside her wet hole, and she cries out.

  I withdraw, stabbing forward again. Her wetness grabs at my wet organ, and I breathe against her.

  Marissa shudders her pleasure in a choked gasp.

  I use the flat of my palms to spread her legs so wide I know it is at the point of pain.

  She lifts her head. “I should say no.”

  “But you will not.”

  She shakes her head. “No. I want you to sex me, Shepard. I don't want to be a virgin if the fucking French family gets to me. I want to know what it will be like to want sex—here—now. With you.” She places her hand on her entrance, and I close my eyes against the images of what she told me she suffered.

  We suffered.

  Not together. Apart. But the same things occurred to us in different countries. A lack of humanity does not recognize borders of geography, gender, or age.

  The void of compassion survives regardless. Like the rats, cockroaches. Evil.

  I fist my cock, and her eyes widen. Not in pleasure.

  The expression is familiar to me. Once I could have ignored it and plunged myself home, ridding the cherry of her innocence in one fell swoop—if she had not been auctioned to another.

  With Marissa, it is different. I soften under her fear.

  Then she nods. Lifting herself up on an elbow, she wraps me with her hand, and I go hard again. “Do it. Save me, Shepard.”

  Those are words I never thought I would hear uttered. They are used now in this stolen time.

  “It will hurt,” I breathe through my desire.

  Marissa nods again. “I'm meant to have a man here.”

  She guides me toward her.

  I fill the front of her, the head of me plugging her beautifully. She's so tight it is almost painful. A sweet pain.

  But for once I can feel every slick inch, enjoy the untried velvet of a woman I have potential with.

  To be a companion of.

  If the powers that be see fit to give me a second chance in this life. A way to see past the current ordeal and into the next chapter.

  I rock deeper and hit the barrier of her innocence.

  Marissa blinks up at me. Once. Pewter desire washes over me.

  I thrust hard, tearing through what she managed to preserve.

  Marissa yells, tears sliding out from between her clenched lids. “Ow!” she says through gritted teeth.

  I throb inside her, my cock begging to be set free of release.

  My hand pats down the side of the bed. I find what I'm looking for and ease out of her.

  I sit back on my heels and crack open the lid of the lube, pour a liberal amount on my hand, and work my cock over until it's slick.

  “What?” she asks. She sees what I've done and sighs.

  Blood smears the sheets, and I get hard at the sight of it. I am what the Americans might call a nutcase. I'm untroubled by the self-realization.

  I slide back inside her.

  “Better,” she moans against my neck. “But it still burns.”

  I nod. “Yes.” I grab her ass cheeks and hold her body as I ram my length deep inside, fucking everything away.

  Her tightness robs me of my control, and breathing becomes labor. I feel my release coming and slow it by sitting back on my knees.

  Marissa's drooping lids partly cover eyes gone soft with desire, her pain finally evaporating.

  My thumb moves to her slick clit, and I begin to move again, matching my thrusts to the swirl of my finger.

  Her eyes round, her lids rising as pleasure mingles with her first time.

  I think of anything to keep from coming. Trees.

  Wars.

  Murder.

  In the end, her soft sigh brings me, her hips lifting to meet my thrust as a soft yell sounds in the room. “Yes!” Marissa's eyelids flutter shut, and I collapse on top of her, catching my weight with my elbows. Buried to the hilt, I let myself go deep inside, instinctively swirling my hips to bury the last bit of myself and my seed as deeply as possible.

  “Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, keeping me inside her and holding my shoulders. “Shepard—” she begins.

  I kiss her. Wetly. Deeply. “Shhh, Marissa.” I slowly extract myself and tuck her in against me.

  Talking will come. Right now, we need sleep.

  To plan.

  And to stop fucking long enough to escape la famille.

  *

  Marissa

  At first I'm not sure what wakes me. Turning, I feel the soreness between my legs, like raw skin and a deep ache.

  My eyes snap open, and I note weak sunlight penetrates the borders of the curtain.

  I'm in a Motel 6. In Montana.

  I go to sit up, and my crotch shrieks at the sudden movement. That hurts. Tears well.

  I search for Shepard and find him cleaning a weapon across the small room. In that damned pink underwear. The color should make him look effeminate, but it doesn't. If anything, it makes him look more masculine.

  His dark eyes meet mine. “Sleep well?” he asks then looks down the snub barrel of his gun.

  I nod slowly.

  “Have I hurt you too much?” he asks, as though he's talking to the gun.

  “No.”

  Shepard's face turns toward me. Hopeful relief is a stark new expression. “Do you lie?”

  I shake my head. It's not a lie, exactly. But how do I explain that a pain asked for is less of a pain than if I hadn't invited it? After all those men took me in the orphanage. Sodomized me. It'd hurt. Bad.

  This pain had been worse in some ways. But the pain was acceptable because it was consensual. I open my mouth to explain all that.

  “I understand.”

  I blink then frown. “You do?”

  He nods, rising. He carefully sets the gun down and walks toward me. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I flinch from the soreness. I feel as though someone stabbed me with a blunt instrument to my stomach.

  My hand covers my belly.

  His hand covers mine.

  Our eyes meet. “Why do you care, Shepard? Why, really?”

  He laughs, but not as though he thinks my question is funny. It’s as if he's sad that I had to ask.

  Shepard walks to the bathroom and turns the water on.

  I don't think he'll answer. When he returns, he holds a hot washcloth.

  “Spread your legs.”

  I shake my head, barking a short laugh. “Not feeling it, Shepard.”

  His grin is large, his face tender. Real. “I merely wish to clean you.”

  “Oh,” I reply in
a small voice.

  I lie back, and he edges between my knees as they dangle off the edge of the bed.

  I wince as the first bit of cloth touches the first bit of me.

  He squeezes the water over me, and it dribbles between my folds, and I sigh, spreading my legs.

  “How does it look?”

  “Your pussy?” Shepard says with an edge of humor.

  I raise an eyebrow, frowning at him with pursed lips. “Yeah.”

  “Sore.” His eyes meet mine. “I was gentle.”

  I know he was. It still hurt. “You made me cum.”

  He nods. “No small feat for a virgin. But I—” He glances down, his washing of my tenderness halting. “Your pleasure is important to me. Especially now.”

  “Why?”

  Shepard resumes the onslaught of washing and squeezing. I have to admit it feels way better. I wasn't dirty—I was hurting.

  Now I feel clean.

  Cared for.

  “Because I feel.” He laughs, taking the rag away. His laughter is uncertain.

  I rise up on my elbows.

  “I feel as though I've met my other half.”

  I shake my head. “All of this, Shepard”—I wag my finger between the two of us—“this coincidence of meeting, it's all bullshit.”

  “Life happens, non?” His face tightens, and he withdraws his hand, hurling the washcloth in the direction of the sink in the bathroom. It strikes the mirror, tumbling to the basin and leaving a pink smear of my blood on the glass.

  My exhale is rough. “Hey.” I grab his wrist, and I can tell how much he wants to jerk away from me. “I don't mean we're bullshit. I mean, we're running. It's a volatile situation and... I'm not sure anything's going to come of it.”

  I try to imagine making a life with a former French mob guy who trained girls to run drugs and fuck political bigwigs.

  No can do.

  However, I have to admit to myself, I just handed Shepard my virginity. After somehow surviving what I had without giving it before.

  “You said you'd own me if we—had sex.”

  Shepard nods. Unmoving.

  “I don't know if I'm ready for that. For what being with someone of your background would mean.”

  “I only thought that we could try. That after this is all over with”—he gestures to the world at large with a muscular swinging arm—“that there might be something between us that is more than adrenaline and danger.”

  I draw his hand to my mouth and open his stiff fingers. I kiss the center of his palm. A hand I watched kill. “Wanting it to be and it happening are two different things.”

  “I am nearly thirty-two years old.” His eyes narrow, searching my face. “I know when something is real and when it is false. Instincts have saved me more times than I can tally. I have learned to listen to, as you Americans so aptly put it, my gut.”

  I grasp at his hands, and he flings them away.

  My hands break apart like broken birds, and I level a livid stare at him. “What does your gut tell you, Shepard?”

  He faces away from me. His hands on his hips. His feet wide.

  My eyes trace him from his dark head to his feet. He is a beautiful man, I think for the second time. But beauty and being great in the sack are not enough. I had dreams for my future.

  And I've already had nightmares.

  If he can't be a dream come true, then I don't want what Shepard seems to be offering.

  “That I am here for you. Put here for you. In this time—in this moment.”

  “And if you're wrong?” I ask softly, my eyes glued to his back, the scars that litter the surface.

  He turns, facing me, and my breath catches at the sight of him. Tall, gorgeous—erect.

  Shepard smiles. “Then we can be splendid together for a time.”

  “How much time?” I ask as the first tear falls.

  His face goes tender, and he strides back to my side. “For as long a time as you would give me. Have me.”

  I don't say no when he kisses my tears away. Or when he kneels between my legs and kisses me there too.

  I give in.

  Because I want to. But also because, deep down, we feel right.

  As if we always were meant to be. And will always be.

  FOURTEEN

  Thorn

  “I'm sorry, baby. Damn, you know I don't want to drag you into this.”

  Juliette cradles her head in her hands, glaring at him.

  “He's taken another girl. Early twenties, part African-American, French speaker.”

  Her brows come together, her expression clearly struggling to decide what emotion to own and finally morphing to bewildered. “I do not know why la famille would acquire an American. And one so”—her throat convulses with a hard swallow—“old.”

  Thorn laughs. Can't help it. “Old? Fuck, babe—she's an infant.”

  Juliette shows him her back, her hand coming to rest on the molding that surrounds the large window facing the backyard. He takes in the same view that she does. Coneflowers suffer under the early autumn heat still lingering from summer, their strange, china-dome heads a hard center in the fiery hot pink of the petals. Every one planted by Juliette.

  She loves flowers. Because she can tend them, and they're hers.

  Thorn knows the flower beds are another tangible reminder that Juliette has the choice to surround herself with living beauty. Beauty she cultivates.

  It's different for him, simpler. Thorn just wants to make her happy. That's his reminder that he's lucky. That he found happiness.

  Juliette turns, her gorgeous skin a darker café au lait at the end of summer. “La famille does not acquire women—they acquire girls.”

  Her tone is one of disgust, and Thorn's exhale is harsh, his head low. “Well, they're changing their MO, babe. Now it's whatever's easy, I guess. And Shepard's in the game.”

  She turns, giving a stubborn shake of her head. “Shep wouldn't go back to that life. Not after he set me free. He has money, he has anonymity. He would not choose to go back.” She purses her lips. A mouth Thorn's kissed a thousand times. God willing, there will be a million more.

  Thorn strides to her position by the window, and she tenses. He stops in his tracks. “Fuck, I'd never hurt you, Juliette.” He leans forward, cupping her face, and she nestles against his palm.

  “I know, but as they say so often in this country, old habits die hard.”

  Thorn nods. No shit.

  “Shep”—Thorn feels his lips become a grim line—“is involved.”

  “Oui,” Juliette replies instantly, slipping into French.

  “I don't know how—but he's at the heart of this thing, I feel it.” Thorn fists his hand. “If he killed those two French mobsters, he's definitely got their full attention.”

  She nods rapidly, pressing her palms to her cheeks. “Yes. I agree with you. Shepard is involved. However”—her luminous green eyes look into his, her hands falling to her sides—“not in the way you expect.”

  Thorn grasps Juliette's hands, threading their fingers together. “Give me something—anything. If Shepard was running, where would he go?” He searches her eyes, hating to press her. “If Tag's team can get to him before something happens to Marissa Augustine, we could save her. Once she's in the game, she'll be missed. We can arrest Shepard, stop this pathway from him.”

  Her face sets into familiar, stubborn lines. “I do not desire Shepard's arrest. I've forgiven him. He has forgiven me. Let him go, Thorn. Like he let me go.”

  “Non,” Thorn replies in barking French, continuing in the same language, “you are not safe until that bastard is caught.”

  Juliette tears her hands from his. “Do you not think I would already be dead if he wanted it?”

  Thorn's jaw slides back and forth. He hates her words. But he's man enough to admit the truth. “Maybe. I can't be here twenty-four hours a day to protect you.”

  “Précisément,” Juliette says with quiet gravity. “Shepard would
have already been here and done away with me if that was his intent. But it is not.” Juliette takes his hands once more, squeezing them. “Please, Thorn, don't poke at this snake. Let us own our happiness.” Tears fill her eyes.

  Duty fills his soul. Justice.

  “Tell me, Juliette. Don't protect this fucker. I don't care if he gave you a pass. What about the next woman? What about Marissa?”

  Juliette's eyes flutter shut, and she covers her face with a hand.

  When they open, he sees the hurt he put there, and his hand moves to her swollen belly. “Please, baby. I need to have peace of mind—protect my family.”

  A minute of quiet drenches them. Thorn feels her heart pulsing.

  Her sudden answer in the stillness momentarily startles him. “Shepard is part Norwegian. I mean…” She smooths her curly hair behind her ears, and Thorn watches a stray tendril spring stubbornly forward. He tucks it behind one ear. The gesture earns him a small smile. “His mother's family was American. But many years ago, her ancestors came from Norway.”

  Thorn fights impatience. This is a history lesson he doesn't need. He waits.

  “Anyway, there was a death in the family—after la famille had”—she inhales sharply—“groomed him.”

  “How does this—” She puts two fingers against his mouth, and he kisses them.

  “Norwegian law demands that all ancestors, regardless of how far flung, proximity, or other considerations, reap the benefits of their deceased relative.” She looks at him then glances at their laced fingers. “In his case, he was one of only two descendants still living. Had his parents not died when he was eight years old, they would have been the beneficiaries.”

  Thorn sighs.

  Juliette's eyes narrow on him. “So Shepard signed off on the monies but kept one asset.”

  Thorn's breathing quickens. The answer is at his fingertips.

  “He inherited a cabin in South Dakota.”

  “What town, Juliette?” Thorn's palms sweat with excitement, and he drops her hands.

  She flexes her fingers, taking him in. “I do not know. It's why I never brought it up. Shepard has financial resources, and when he mentioned the cabin, it was only in passing. He made the place seem so run-down. Shepard must be worth millions now. I can't believe he'd voluntarily use it. I got the feeling he kept it out of sentiment.”