Bounty

by Aubrey St. Clair

  Before I know it I’m cradling his head in my hands.

  “Let me see,” and I try to part his hair to take a look at the gash where one of them must have caught him along the scalp.

  A flash of massive hands startles me for a second, fresh memories of the attack, causing my heart to spin wildly in my chest.

  Okay, don’t think about that.

  I refocus on my thumb against Liam’s forehead.

  “Just a cut,” he barks.

  “You lost a lot of blood,” I counter. I fill up a glass of water for him. “Start by drinking this.”

  As he drinks, I wave a finger across his vision, watching for his pupils to evenly track as I wave it across his field of view. “You could have a bad concussion, too.”

  “I’m fine,” he says, “we need to get you in bed.” But his voice sounds half-strangled. He casts his eyes desperately around.

  “Sit down,” I snap, and guide him firmly onto the toilet seat. “Let me check you. It’s only fair.”

  “No, you —“

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m fine, too,” he growls.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  But he’s right. His eyes indicate that he isn’t too badly concussed, just dizzy from adrenaline and blood loss, and the injury on his scalp looks superficial. There’s just a lot of blood. He looks pale.

  I place a finger next to the deepest cut. “You might need stitches on that. Gotta clean it out.”

  Dripping blood-water all over his bathroom, I dig through his drawers, looking for towels, bandages, rubbing alcohol.

  “Bottom left,” he huffs. It’s a treasure trove of stet-strip skin closure bandages, butterfly closures, and giant tape-rimmed bandages, perfect for covering over the nasty scrape he has along his shoulder where he scraped against the brick wall during the scuffle. My mind flashes with memories again.

  “April?”

  My hand is stopped midair. I take a breath and lock eyes with him — I have to stop being a baby and help Liam right now. He saved my life. I marshal myself, taking control and ownership over my feelings.

  I have to still my hands to help him. I have to get a grip.

  Steadied by his need, I pat down each of his cuts with the alcohol. He’s so beat he barely has the energy to wince against the sting. I apply pressure to each one, assessing whether they’ll close of their own accord, or whether he needs stitches.

  The one on his eyebrow, though, won’t stop bleeding. I press in the rubbing alcohol, and he finally does hiss and flinch.

  “Enough,” he waves a heavy hand. “It’s fine, but I —“ and he gestures uselessly along his side, breath hitching with the effort of lifting his arm. He struggles to take his shirt off.

  “Stop that,” smacking his hand aside gently. “Let me.” It’s obviously painful.

  “Scissors,” he says again, recoiling from my touch. Out of pain, or anger, I can’t tell. This is my fault, after all.

  I fumble through the bathroom drawers again, hunting for scissors. I find some clippers and swing them open, taking them to the side of his shirt, starting a gash, and then just ripping it in half with my hands. He looks away as I tear off his shirt.

  The side of his ribs are already starting to look dark blue and purple.

  “Fuck. That’s bad, Liam.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he says, lifting his arm a bit more to examine himself in the mirror. His breath is labored, but slowly getting better. Very slowly.

  “You could be bleeding in there,” I say, ghosting my hands across his chest.

  “I’m not,” he murmurs. “Stop that.”

  “How do you know? You’re not a doctor either. Maybe we should take you to the hospital.” I’m not willing to let him die just for my secrets.

  “No.” He takes another tired breath. “Just trust me. I’ve had much worse.”

  He looks away from me, as if avoiding my gaze. Or is it my body?

  I realize I’m still in my underwear. Suddenly, instead of examining him piecemeal, injury by injury, I take a step back and look at him in his entirety. A large, well-muscled man, shirt torn open, covered in blood and bruises, dripping wet.

  We lock eyes.

  I should tell him the truth — that we were probably attacked because of my father. That I know he has dealings with some unsavory people. That it’s happened before, although never this bad. I should warn him. I should apologize.

  He saved my life.

  But instead I just stare at him, and he stares back at me, and I watch in fascination as his gaze draws from my eyes to my lips, down my throat, dragging across the skin of my collar, caressing across my lacy bra, past my belly button, to the light space where my wet panties cling to my mound. He stares, for a moment, and I see his jeans tightening upwards.

  With obvious effort, he brings his eyes back up to mine. He’s flushed.

  “Liam —“

  And then he crosses the tiny space to me in an instant, grasping my face to draw my lips to his. His hands are warm, hot even, but surprisingly soft. He lets his lower lip rest, just for a moment, between mine, as if asking something. The gentlest touch, and the warm spread of his breath across my face and down my neck.

  And I can’t help it, the fear and adrenaline coursing through my body, the warmth of him even through rain-soaked clothes, his steady hands. I lose my breath entirely and surge against him, teeth nearly clacking against his. I’m as eager as he is.

  Liam bites my bottom lip to part my mouth so he can sweep in with his tongue, like he’s claiming me. I’m overwhelmed by the taste of him, a soft moan escaping my lips just as a shot of heat jolts right through me from my lips to my gut.

  “April,” he growls, humming my name into my lips.

  Immediately I feel heat in my panties, excruciatingly aware of the lace brushing against my skin.

  “Oh,” I whisper into his demanding lips. “Oh.”

  He knows.

  He knows how turned on I am for him, how wet, how much I’ve lost myself. He pulls me to him, pressing me against the clear bulge in his pants, and I can’t help it, I grind in harder. He gasps, maybe in pain, but doesn’t stop, instead grabbing my ass and lifting me clear off the ground. Instantly he’s buried his bleeding head into the crook of my neck, inhaling the scent of my hair. My legs wrap around him, pulling him closer as his palms guide my ass and hips along his hardened length, over and over, the friction building in us both.

  His strong hands lift me, and then we’re careening back into the bathroom wall. He’s all over me, pressing me down but also holding me up. My hands go to his hair, uncaring of the injuries he’s sustained, or that I’ve sustained. We’re both wet and covered in blood and water, the remnants of his shirt circled around his waist. My panties lie on the floor in a small bunch, I don’t even remember which one of us pulled them off.

  “I’m yours,” I whisper without thinking.

  Liam absolutely loses control. He sweeps me up and we slam into the bathroom door until he gets it open, before he carries me easily to his studio bed and throws me across it. Then he’s on me, tearing my blouse open, buttons flying, hitching my skirt up over my waist while my fingers are on his belt buckle, clinking the steel, pulling his hips towards me by the leather strap.

  With the front of his pants dangling open, he grasps my wrists and presses them up above my head, into the bed, to breathe against my neck, make me writhe.

  “You’re mine,” he confirms, and his voice is animal, growling, I can feel it in his chest.

  Goosebumps lift from my collar down past my nipples and across my thighs. My pussy tightens in anticipation, aching for him to fill me. I press my hips forward to grind against him again, but he stays out of reach.

  “Mmm,” he says, and I think he’s getting off on denying me. Torturing me.

  I feel an incredible emptiness, the muscles of my womanhood clutching at air, aching to be filled. Just like the day in the clock shop, begging him on hands a
nd knees to fill me up with his hot, hard cock. I’m soaking wet, my arousal arcing from my center to the tips of my toes.

  “Oh god please,” I beg. “Take me. Liam, please.”

  “Not yet,” he whispers into my neck, and then uses his belt to tie my hands up against the headboard of my bed. How he does it so quickly, I have no idea. And it’s tight.

  I’m trapped.

  I should be terrified, pissed off — I’ve just had a trauma. My wrists still hurt from it.

  But instead the half-pain and the want between my legs flush through me, driving me to higher and higher arousal. I love it. I’m tied up and panting for it.

  “Please,” I moan again, arching my hips up high, beckoning to him with my wet pussy, my chest heaving.

  He sits ups, admiring the view, while I can do nothing but watch him unbuckle his pants, all the way, letting his hard cock spring forward, huge and leaking, just the hint of a vein running along it. It looks soft, and yet hard.

  I rock back and forth, pressing my ass into the bed to get a little sensation as the inner walls of my pussy press together.

  “Please, please, fuck me. I need you.”

  Instead, he lowers his lips to hover just over my bare pussy. He holds me down by the hips, so no matter how hard I buck up into him, I cannot close the gap between his lips and my lower ones. Can’t get him to give me any sweet relief.

  All I want is to grip his impressive length, I want to feel his huge cock in my hands but I can’t, he’s tied me up and pinned me down. Straining against the belt, rocking my hips up into his hands, feeling so constrained, so turned on, so helpless, I should be horrified. This should be terrifying.

  And it is. Amazingly terrifying. I feel like I’ve jumped off a cliff and I’m not sure if I’m going to fall, or take flight.

  I almost want to cry with arousal.

  “Please, Liam,”

  “You want me,” he says, confident, but still waiting for me to admit it again.

  “Yes,” I say, “God, yes.”

  His eyes close for a moment and his head falls back, and for just a split second I remember how injured he is, how much pain he must be in. But then he grasps himself along his shaft, slowly, letting his precum dribble out onto his hands.

  “Fuck me,” I say, and I think I’m saying it over and over but I’ve lost all sense of words and time. “Please, fuck me. Please.” Please.

  “I can’t wait to be in your tight little cunt,” he says, and finally looks down at my pink, flushed pussy.

  He presses his tongue, soft and hot, against me.

  “Oh, FUCK.” I almost come instantly from just the first point of contact. I’ve never wanted to be fucked so badly in my life.

  He starts to move his tongue, swirling it wet and messy across my bead of pleasure, holding me down by the hips while I rock with ecstasy. He laps me up, delighting in my juices, stroking and kneading at my clit until I’m soaring with pleasure.

  “In me,” I say, begging for his fingers, his tongue, his cock, anything.

  He grabs me by the hips and tilts them up to hit the right angle, and instead of teasing me like before by placing his tip at my entrance until I’m sobbing with need, he instead pulls me onto himself fluidly, all in one motion. The sudden intrusion of his massive cock is such a shock I nearly come on the spot. Somehow he’s keeping me on the edge and we’ve barely begun.

  I can feel every single inch of him filling me up, stretching me wider to accommodate him. He’s so thick and long I can barely take him, but my pussy pulses and relaxes, pulses and relaxes, and he slides deeper and deeper into my center. I almost don’t want him to move yet, his presence is so perfect, a hot, sweet thickness spreading through every inch of my body.

  As if reading my mind, he freezes. Lets me writhe at the end of him, tightening around his girth and dragging my pussy along his length, working myself into a grinding dance as I impale myself over and over on his sword.

  I’m still riding the precipice of an orgasm that has threatened to consume me since his first touch. My clit feels swollen beyond belief, his cock so huge that it presses my button from the inside.

  I start riding him in earnest, moaning, anxious to finally have my sweet release.

  “Stop,“ he gasps.

  I freeze. Is this going to end?

  “Let me,” Liam says. He doesn’t reject me, but he wants to set the pace. He’s gentle but rough, utterly in control, almost animalistic, directing me with his hands and grunts and hums, without words. He knows exactly what he wants with me, and I want to give it to him. I love it.

  He holds me down by the hips and pumps, and I nearly scream from the pleasure. And again. And again. He pumps, slow and steady at first, then picking up rhythm, each one rolling over me like a wave.

  “Fuck,” he grunts into me. “Fuck your pussy is so tight. You’re so tight, April.”

  I lose myself in sensation, gasping for breath as if I just dived under a wave and am coming up for air and I don’t know when the next one will hit.

  Only his hands, holding down my hips, keep me anchored.

  The most exquisite, razor-edged pleasure blooms across my entire body, radiating from my core. I could come at any moment, and yet I stay on the edge, savoring it, feeling each inch of his cock as it slides in and out of me, smooth, rhythmic. Then faster, and harder, his breaths coming in gasping swoops, maybe he’s losing himself just as much as I am. A low moan fills the room and I’m not sure which of us is making it, all I can feel is him, rocking into me, over and over, the pleasure tingling across my nipples, every inch of me piqued for him, every muscle tight, tighter around him as he thrusts into me, again and again.

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  He looks at me and he says, “Mine.”

  And when his lips graze against me, the gentlest kiss while he fucks me mercilessly, I am destroyed. Unable to hold back, I feel myself clench around him and fall over the waterfall, my entire being swept up into the most intense orgasm of my life.

  Tingling blackness and heat overtakes me. Liam shakes and moans, losing himself in the same way.

  For a while, all I can see is darkness, all I feel are the warm pulses between my legs. Then the pulse in my chest.

  Then another one, against my ear.

  And breath, on my skin. Liam’s weight, draped over me, the slickness of our sweat between us. His lips, soft against the space just behind my ear.

  My eyes are watery and my entire being trembles. Best orgasm of my life, on his messy bed while he bleeds all over me, and my body aches, and I’m terrified and exhilarated.

  What the fuck.

  17

  Liam

  I come back to myself in the middle of the night. The morning. The clock next to my bed reads 5:32, the red numbers stark and harsh. There’s just a bit of dark blue lightness in the sky. A hint of dawn.

  Jesus. What the hell happened? Blood loss, maybe, or adrenaline comedown. Or the most intense arousal of my life.

  Some combination of those.

  Whatever it was, I lost control in a way that has never happened to me before. Sure, I’ve had to do my fair share of violence – it’s pretty much a requirement in this line of work. But I’ve never lost it like I did on those men in the alleyway, never literally seen red. And never in my life have I felt so physically possessive of a person. I wanted to make April mine.

  I remember the sex with crystal, pleasurable clarity, but also from a distance. Separate. Like looking at the horizon through a spyglass pointed the wrong way.

  I look down at the crown of April’s head, cradled against my chest. We’re in my bed. She’s mostly naked, just her bra left. Her panties torn off. She fell asleep with her hands still bound together with my belt.

  I fucked up. So badly.

  My first instinct is to bolt. I feel my body tense in preparation.

  But April let’s out a little hum of pleasure, and of course I can’t do that. Besides, we’re in my apartment.

 
I’m in so much deeper than I thought. I’m not just attracted to April, wanting to fuck her. I’m not just into her in a surprisingly genuine way.

  I’m falling in love with her.

  Fuck, even now, just watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the way her hair spills across my sheets, dark and liquid in the pre-dawn light. The way her lashes brush gently against her cheek.

  I just want to touch her, to press my lips to her little rounded shoulder, her collar-bone, her wrist. Right where an ugly, purple bruise is blossoming against the softly freckled skin of her arm. I want to protect her.

  And what did I do? I fucked her. Rough. Right after she’d been assaulted in the street. When she was at her most vulnerable, her most frightened…

  Liam Copperhead, you are a terrible person.

  The guilt makes me feel sick, and that makes me weak.

  I manage to slip out from under her, replacing my chest with a pillow. She stirs only a moment, mumbling ever so softly.

  I hurriedly clean up my apartment, stuffing away all the cameras, the recording equipment, hiding the briefcases, the guns…

  God, I hope she didn’t get a good look last night. Hopefully she didn’t notice that my place doesn’t exactly look… properly lived in.

  We were both pretty out of it, so she likely didn’t notice.

  But now what?

  I can’t go back to sleep. I feel electrified, struck. I should definitely text Vicente, tell him what happened. Why the fuck doesn’t April’s father, the ‘great’ Devlin Sullivan, get some goddamn protection for his daughter? How does he just let her traipse around the streets of Boston like there’s no other organized crime in the city? Like he himself hasn’t pissed off a bunch of gangsters who would love to get back at him through his daughter? How much stupider could he be? Does he think no one knows about her? Secrets can’t protect her forever. It didn’t protect her from me.