by Ashley Black
Thorn gave my stool a gentle twirl, facing me away from him. “Of course it is. I want to use your mouth to help me get numb. I am absolutely certain this is what I want to be doing tonight… in fact, any night with you.”
I felt a smile quirk my lips at that.
“Help me feel broken again.” His fragrant breath brushed my neck. “I am too put together right now. Break my mind with that mouth of yours. Do it now.”
“Ok, well, that just makes me think we should not drink at all,” I laughed nervously. “Am I safe here, Thorn?” I asked quietly. “With your little freak army hating on my witch ass?”
“Don’t call them that,” he whispered, and then spun me back around to face him so fast I had to grip the seat to prevent myself from falling off it. He simply stared at me, silent for the longest time.
“Why are you so judgmental of people, Elena? This is an unfortunate, malignant quality in you. Because practically everyone are my people. I don’t shut people out of my life because they don’t make a million dollars, they’re not an artist or creative, or they lack imagination or ambition, or they have a normal job. I don’t shut out someone because they are struggling with life, or who by society’s standards are freaks of nature, people who don’t want more, or want less. I don’t shut out entrepreneurs, rich people, poor people, uneducated people, educated people, people who want sex with no one, people who want sex with every one, people who want sex with both sexes, I don’t give a fuck, they are my people.”
“Nice rant,” I congratulated him, trying to lighten the mood.
“Oh, I can go on,” he smirked. “I assume you’re also one of those people who say your money situation is determined by the five or so folk you surround yourself with. Well, look at me, Elena, I am worth almost close to a fucking billion dollars by now, because of this-” He jabbed the side of his head with a trembling white finger. “And this-” His hand moved to his chest over his heart. “The five people I surround myself with are not making millions, yet I am. Please don’t shut out people who need your shine the most.”
I was struck senseless by his words. He clearly thought I was some spoiled little bitch who felt nothing for her fellow human. Who helped no fucking no. Hell to no. He wasn’t getting away with this.
“First up,” I began quietly, my heart pounding. “You are clearly fucking awesome. But secondly, I am also awesome, and you have underestimated me. If it seems like I am being an asshole to folk like Jimmy who are by the way, clearly insane, it is because for most of my life I was emotionally abused by my little brother. He would call me up threatening suicide. I would leave in the dead of night to rescue him, only to find him in a drunken stupor gaming, he was so far gone sometimes, he had forgotten he even called me. He would leave me a delightful message about ending it, and then my Mother would call me freaking out because he wasn’t picking up his phone, and couldn’t be found, it fell to me again to find him, and whenever I did, he was at his usual drunk ass haunts, and drunk.”
“Elena,” Thorn’s hand found mine and squeezed. “How is your brother?”
“Dead,” I said flatly. “He drank himself to death.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Thorn breathed. “I really am.”
I nodded, wanting to cry, not wanting to cry at his memory, at the irretrievable pointlessness of it. “If I seem like I’m a hard ass,” I continued. “It is because I am. I did everything I could to help him, Thorn, but he didn’t want to be helped in the end. I nearly destroyed my entire fucking life to help him, and yet he took himself out anyway. I don’t want…”
I paused, because tears were threatening, and I really didn’t want this to be about me. I wanted it to be a warning to him.
“I don’t want to see you go through what I did. You are much more talented and brilliant. Please, I get it, almost everyone are ‘your people, but that doesn’t mean you have to serve them champagne.”
When it seemed he was doing his best impression of stupefied, I added quickly, “in terms of your attention and focus I mean.”
“Ah!” Thorn nodded in understanding. “I like it.” He turned the stool around again, a lot more gently than he had spun it back around to face him, I noted.
“Only a fool would underestimate you,” he sighed. “And you are right, those troubled souls are taking up a lot of space in my mind and heart. I would never cast them out of course, but perhaps I need to look at that.”
“Yes,” I agreed, frowning as an image of Jimmy flared into my mind with the tip of the blowtorch in his mouth. “You should look at that.”
The cool soft material of the blindfold settled over my eyes, and I realized I wanted very much to continue to look at his face. After what we had just shared with each other, it was so hard not to see it right now. I groaned and tugged at the material. “Is this necessary?” I complained.
“Yes,” he murmured and turned me around to face him. “It isn’t hurting you, is it?”
“No.”
I wriggled beneath his gaze. I couldn’t see him staring at me, but holy shit balls, I could feel it. He pulled me closer, and I felt his large muscular thighs close around my legs as he held them secure like a vise. I wasn’t going anywhere. “To hold you steady,” he said, as if that explained everything.
I hadn’t even tasted one drink yet, and I was already woozy at the thought of that mouth of his on mine.
I was trembling.
He noticed.
“Are you cold?” he asked and sounded faintly concerned. “You are…” He trailed off. “Wearing only lingerie after all,” he finished appreciatively.
I shook my head, and felt a blush flare across my cheeks. Fuck me. The man was a much better tease than I.
Before I had time to steady myself, Thorn’s mouth was gently rubbing against mine. He ran his tongue gently along my bottom lip, and then sucked it urgently into his hot silky mouth. Wow. I tasted only him. All too soon, the kiss was over, and he released me. When I said nothing, he sighed. “Well?”
“That was… all kinds of fucking wonderful,” I breathed happily as I ran a tongue over my lips. “I like the taste of you, Thorn. I want more.”
“Not me,” he reproached, but I heard the amusement in his voice. “The drink, what did you taste?”
Did it even fucking matter? I had just been kissed by Thornton Darko from Cellrager. I was buzzing between the legs and my clitoris was twitching in the magnificent wake of that kiss.
I tried to get past the memory of his lips, the unique taste of him, to what I thought he had kissed onto my lips with that blistering hot mouth of his. His tongue. I moaned softly.
“You flatter me, Elena,” he muttered, sounding a little embarrassed.
“You knocked me fucking senseless,” I smiled.
His mouth closed over my smile, and I felt his thighs grip my legs reflexively harder as he kissed me again. I concentrated this time, feeling my brow scrunch up beneath the soft material of the blindfold, and answered when his lips left mine.
“Vodka. But it’s unlike any I have ever tasted. This shit be high end. Perhaps because it’s been on your lips, Thorn, but that shit is good.”
He laughed. “You want to make my head explode, keep teasing me like that. You’re right, it is vodka, and it is one of my finest. A really lovely Russian guy I ran into with Dad once when we were out fishing, he gave us a taste of his home brew. I was so impressed, I helped him set up his own operation. This is a luxe brand for sure. I would never ever want it wasted on pieces of shit who wouldn’t appreciate it.”
I swallowed, and hoped that Thorn would never, ever think of me as a piece of shit.
“You will like this next one,” he said. “But please, I get a bit carried away with these games, so let me know when you have had enough, all right?”
“I will never get enough of your mouth, Thorn,” I breathed.
“Is that so?” He sounded amused and delighted.
I nodded.
“Well, that is good news,
because I plan to let you use a lot more of my mouth.”
Again, not really giving three fucks about the game, the drinks, just the chance to have his lips on mine again. And so it went for how many spirits, I lost count; my mind was destroyed, my pussy roaring to be touched. I was that worked up over this man. I wondered if he thought something was seriously wrong with me with all the twitching and wriggling I felt I was doing. So embarrassing, how my body betrayed me so decisively like this.
“I give great kisses, yeah?” I joked. I was trying to reclaim some ground here. I had never ever felt more undone or powerless. I decided I liked it.
“I give great kisses everywhere,” Thorn answered.
“Oh,” I felt my thighs jump a little between his legs as he left me to linger for a moment over that thought. He fetched what was to be our final tasting spirit. I found myself pouting. I liked this game. I didn’t want it to end.
“You will enjoy this, I think,” he mused, his lips brushed lightly against mine as he spoke.
“I like all of it,” I answered thickly.
Shit. I sounded drunk.
“That remains to be seen,” he murmured, and I heard a note of sadness had crept into his voice.
“You are a dream,” I declared. In my drunken haze, I felt that this was a revelation. That this was the most poignant, amazing, undoubtedly intelligent fucking truth I had ever spoken as a writer of pretty things.
“No, I’m not a dream,” he disagreed. “Just a big deal.”
I laughed. Ah! It was so nice to fuck around with someone with a healthy ego like that. Brett and his clear weakness for blondes was always so unsure of himself, he fucked around too long with doubt, and it was seriously unsexy. Then again, I know that Thorn had self esteem issues, and whilst my drunken mind had chosen to ignore it, was a bit mentally unstable, he had spoken thus before, but his ego whether it was a flimsy bit of pretense for me and performance, seemed perfectly intact now. I loved the contradiction in him. The crazy contrast in his personality. I would never, ever be bored, I decided, with that man.
Ah, our final drink, his lips slid over mine, and I tasted a dark chocolate mint liquor, and it was a beautiful refreshing finish to our kisses. We lost each other in the last kiss. In fact, I toppled off the bar stool, and he caught me in his arms still blindfolded, and I wrapped my arms like a woman possessed around his neck, my shaking legs lifting and encircling his crazy hard body. His hands moved to my ass, and he groaned against my lips, lifting and slamming me up onto the bar.
“May I touch you?” he asked, his voice twisted and knotted up in yearning. I loved it. The carnality I heard in it. Craving.
How much I craved to be touched by someone.
Brett.
My heart snapped open like a locket inside my chest.
Nothing but pain inside.
I swallowed and pushed that unpleasantness aside. Fuck that asshole and the gallery owner. They could go fuck themselves. Well, at least, it was highly likely they had already fucked each other.
“Yes,” I heard myself answer quietly.
His hand fell into my hair first, and his fingers went straight to the back of my skull and rubbed there. I felt a flare of warmth and unease between the legs. Then his hand trailed down to my neck, and I tried to force my bunched-up shoulders to relax when he did that, after the dream Aaron described of Brett being strangled to death, I was getting triggered by necks.
“I like necks,” his whispered against my skin.
I swallowed hard.
“Yours is exquisite.”
“It would look even better with your mouth on it,” I invited.
“Patience, Elena.”
“Touch me with your mouth,” I insisted, hearing a note of desperation in my voice.
He said nothing, and his fingers danced across my collarbone, sliding down to my breasts, and I heard his breath catch a little. “Wonderful,” he breathed.
My eyes widened when his fingers flashed inside the bra and gently rubbed over my nipple. “You are beautiful, Elena.” His hand moved to my other breast, cupped and caressed it. I actually had never ever really been that turned on by someone touching my breasts before. But no one had ever touched the girls like Thornton Darko was right now. Holy shit. Amazing. It was a whiplash of pain and pleasure. I liked the sensation. I was instantly addicted, and disappointed when he removed his hand, but my disappointment did not last for long, when he walked his fingers almost playfully teasing down my stomach. I shivered a little as they continued to my thighs.
It was so incredibly hard to just sit there and not touch him. I reached for him; this was more than I could bear. I could not do without anymore.
“What are you doing?”
He sounded cold, annoyed even.
“I want to touch you.”
“Is my touch not enough for you?” he asked as his fingers dug into my thighs hard as he gripped them. “Am I boring you?”
I cried out in surprise and pain, and then moaned as his hand slipped down to the satin panties and cupped my mound, and squeezed, pulling it upwards, while two fingers skittered down to my shivering center and traced back, and forth over my lips. His other hand slid between my legs, and and hefted me up, grabbing my ass, and effecting a very hard squeeze of my cheeks. Wow. Oh. Fucking wow. He was a bit rough, but I loved the shock of it. The sensation of his hand on my ass, while the other did its thing between my legs. I was not so quietly, I noted from my unhinged breathing, losing my mind here.
“Of course,” I sighed happily, but this-” I gripped some of the material of his shirt, finding a button and pulling it so they popped open for me. “-is more than I can stand, to have you here in the flesh. My fingers want to feel you beneath them.”
He said nothing, but allowed my fingers to have their way with the buttons on his shirt; meanwhile those fingers kept up their light stroking upon my lips, and the rest of his hand that covered my mound began to caress it, as my ass was massaged and squeezed with the other.
Oh… fucking wow. The same phrase… it was on a hopeless loop in my mind.
The friction of his touch on the satin of my panties against my quivering pussy was slowly but surely breaking my damn mind. I was greedy for the real thing. My pussy and his naughty digits had to get better acquainted. Immediately.
“Your ass … is an impossible thing of beauty Elena, it is glorious. It is everything,” he groaned.
Thorn was not a gentle lover. I loved it. My dark, shining, resplendent, insane rock star, and what I was loving more right now was the sensation of him beneath my fingers– he was a wall of hard, uncompromising muscle. Frustrated that I couldn’t see him, I ripped the blindfold off, and drank in the sight of him leaning against me, shirt agape from my intrusive fingers, his magnificent huge inked chest heaving. I gasped, seeing that he had started bleeding from the cuts beneath his eyes again.
“You’re bleeding,” I observed with a slurred voice; shit, I sounded so drunk.
“Allow me.” I don’t know what possessed me, perhaps the alcohol, but I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck and pulled him down closer to my face, and gently began to kiss the cuts beneath his beautiful hungry gaze, kissing away the blood. He froze. His arms came to rest by his sides as his eyes fluttered closed against the caress of my lips as I licked his blood, taking its metallic sharp strange rusty but bizarrely rum flavored taste onto my tongue.
He shuddered against me. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Elena.”
As my tongue rolled languidly over his wounds, his hand drove into my hair again, and did that fierce rubbing, crazy massage on the back of my skull. My toes twitched. I pulled back from him, and we stared into each other’s eyes for the longest time.
“I think I am falling in love with you,” I admitted, hearing the shyness in my voice. “It makes no sense. It’s far too quick. It’s… perfectly insane. But it is what it is, an imperfect fucked up mess.”
His mouth twitched, but he said nothing for the longest ti
me.
“I understand,” he said finally. “Because I feel the same way about you, Elena.”
Then he seized me roughly against him, drawing me into a frenzied kiss, he kissed me so hard it hurt, he pushed the panties aside, his warm large hand covering my mound, and then pulling harder still as the same two fingers that had been doing a rather wonderful job at pleasuring and infuriating me at the same time with the shield of the satin between us, skittered down to rub gently up and down the outside of my lips.
“You are so wet,” he breathed in amusement, and then inserted those naughty digits of his into my pussy forcefully. I cried out, and rocked gently against him, as he worked me into a whimpering mess, with the stroke and flick of those fingers. The combination of the pulling sensation on the top of my pussy and the way he fingered me so expertly was truly outstanding. And then the sudden absence of him from down there, as he crushed me to his chest, and spun around, and lowered me gently, and reverently to the day bed by the spa, was truly shocking. So too was the maddening whiplash I was getting between gentle and forceful. He alternated both seamlessly, and judging from the truly hideous panting noises I could hear coming from myself, it was working out for me just fine.
I thought he intended to lay his beautiful body on top of mine, but he remained standing, his dark green eyes staring right through me, his hands raked through his hair in apparent distress, his lips were moving soundlessly over words. He was muttering in another language. I had not idea what the fuck he was actually saying. But it sounded pretty hot. Until I realized with a shiver, I did recognize this language. What the hell? It was an incantation. It was from old demonic lores. I knew it. I had heard it. My Grandmother had spoken it. It had been a spell I remembered. A spell of protection. He was shaking as these words rumbled out of him. Terror. I felt his terror as it hit me in waves. What the fuck? So much for not being a practicing Warlock I thought.
“Thorn?” I heard the concern in my voice, as I reached for him. “What is wrong?”