He tugged gently on each nipple, sending a flood of fire and wetness straight to my core. I urged my breasts into his hands, wanting more. All of our toys are gone, I thought with disappointment, moaning into his mouth when he gave my hardened nipples a rough twist. Amidst the love, lust began to take form, sparking around us. I tore his shirt off. He urged me up and pulled my pants down my legs. As I stepped out of them, he pulled his hard cock out of jeans. He slid his hand up my thigh. My legs quivered, but I held on, watching as his fingers came to disappear between them. He prodded my wet slit, making it even harder to stand.
But I held on. I didn’t have it in me to stand for him to warm me up. I wanted him inside of me, connected—I wanted to be wrapped in him.
I bit down into my bottom lip when he found my clitoris. With his free hand, he pulled me down by my hip. With my clitoris still in his touch, I fisted his cock and slid my hand up and down his thick length. I guided him close to my pussy, and he sank inside slowly, letting me acclimate to his girth. His kiss never stopped. His fast insistent massage on my clitoris either. I breathed in his breath and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, ready for him to have my body.
Our hips rocked together. Sweat smeared on our bodies. The emotion in his eyes chased away my panic. That was the first time we had ever made love and knew the other was there because that was where we wanted to be.
I felt my orgasm build as I delved into his eyes. “I need you.” I rocked my hips faster, wanting more of him—that was where he belonged.
The hot pleasure in his gaze was like being dunked in caramel. It was gold and sticky and perfect all at once. “I need you too.” He found my breasts, and worked my nipples into rock hard stones. “Don’t ever risk yourself again.” His head ducked, and soon his tongue lapped at my flesh.
The sensations grew, grabbing at my limbs and demanding I fall. I found his mouth and gave in, shattering in his arms as his cock grew inside of me. He enveloped me in his arms and ground out my name, filling me with his end. To know that hours ago this could be gone—my pleasure turned to pain. I held him to me as tightly as I could, relishing in the sweat on his skin, the pounding of his heart, and the scent of his pleasure mixing with mine. His life.
And though I promised him that mine would come first, I was learning that not all lies were ugly. Some of them protected the people you loved. He would come first. Without this, there would be no Kinley. There would be no reason to breathe, if I hadn’t given him his breath first.
“How did they find us?” he asked quietly, trailing his nose over my shoulder back and forth.
“Me.”
“Yes, but why wait this long?”
I blushed guiltily. Not that it mattered anymore. I had a fleeting thought that he was right. “Does it matter why at this point?” That Denny and his men had tried to get rid of me so permanently made me fearful that this was only about surviving now. We had to survive. To survive, you had to think like those behind you, sniffing out scents, predicting our movements. It meant that everything around us was unsafe.
Including us.
His grip on my body slackened as his brain worked. “What else did they figure out, Kinley?”
I didn’t want to know. I hid my face in his neck and squeezed my eyes shut. They burned from exhaustion, but my brain wouldn’t let them close.
“Sleep,” he whispered. “I’ll stay awake.” Without waiting for my response, he rose with me in his arms. I caught the small hallway, an askew painting of a woman drinking coffee, and then the pale green walls of an outdated bedroom. He set me down on a bed, and then situated us so that my body was tucked within his. “I know,” he murmured, chuckling when I cringed at the dirty sheets. “But this was always a second option. It was never my first.” He placed a soft kiss to my tired lips. “Sleep, my queen. I will keep you safe.”
Sleep found me eventually. While I waited, I traced his abs. From the trail of pubic hair to his chest, over each pale ridge in his abdomen, and back up. I gave in part way to his hair, and curled up in his embrace, knowing what awaited me in dreamland wouldn’t differ from reality. Fire. Glass. This time we didn’t escape the tower.
“Shh,” Dash soothed, cradling my head to his chest. “We got out.”
We were both still naked, in unfamiliar sheets, and darkness I could see through. I clung to him, trying to block out the memories of his empty gold eyes. First. Dash always came first.
My heart stopped hammering once I made the promise to myself.
Things seemed simple suddenly.
Keep Dash alive.
Keep the life, the hunger, burning.
“Are there clothes here?” I unwound from his arms and sat up. There was a window right over our heads. The dark of the sky bled into the dark in our room, making it look like we were on the edge of an endless night.
“No.” He rose from the bed. “I’ll go and get your clothes. Are you hungry?”
I shook my head and followed. I didn’t want to be alone. In the living room our clothes lay where they had landed. I put mine back on as he did his own, glad I’d chosen sweats. I folded my body onto the couch beside him where he plopped. His head was in his hands again.
“We have to get to Seattle.”
I hugged myself, in a state of confusion and fear. “The house next door, or the train?”
“We need another way. I can’t understand how they found us. The tapes showed no one around the exit or my father’s office.”
“Kenna,” I guessed, my breathing slightly more difficult. “She could have seen me.”
“So they came into our place? They saw us sleeping on the couch?” He looked at me. “Why didn’t they off us as we slept?”
I glared at his example. “They looked up. That was all they needed to do.”
He pushed to his feet and paced. The living room had an older television and a fireplace with an inch of soot and ash. The entire place looked like a hallucination.
“They let us leave. They couldn’t have known the exit. Or,” he said, his tone rising. “They thought we’d leave the obvious way. Through the lower level exit.”
“They never found the second door.” Our eyes locked. “Or,” I continued. “Blowing us up was the first option.”
“Letting us leave was the second.” He looked around the room suspiciously now, taking it in the way I had since we got here. “They tracked our car. Get down,” he whispered. “Now!”
I slid to my knees. He dropped to his beside me, putting his mouth close. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“Where—”
But he took off. I watched his ass in his jeans as he crawled away from me. I didn’t like him being gone from me. An inch felt like 110 floors. So I followed. Because he hadn’t thought to put himself down first.
When I got to the hall, I saw his bare feet turn into an open doorway. I found him in the kitchen. I crawled on the dirty linoleum. But my knee snagged something and I hissed, letting my head fall in pain. When I looked up, Dash was glaring at me.
“I told you to stay put. Should I expect this behavior from you every single time?”
In response, I crawled to him, and pressed a kiss to the wrinkle in his brow. “You know the answer to that already.”
He rolled his eyes and pointed behind me. “Go get the tunnel ready.”
“They’re out there?”
“They might be.”
“Why are they playing with us?”
He shrugged, appearing to wonder that as well. “This time it isn’t my father after us. It’s Denny. Raynard doesn’t play. He executes. Denny does. He seems to get off on playing.” It was his turn to press a kiss to my furrowed brow. “Go.” To strengthen his chances, he placed a soft warm kiss to my lips.
His lips lingered, they tempted. They made me want to do what he asked. “No fair.” So I could keep it later.
I crawled back to the living room and pushed the table aside. It might have been Denny all along. Dash had played his pi
eces on the wrong game board. I lifted the trap door and peered down into the darkness. It smelled damp and rotten. After a minute, I sat with my back to the couch, counting in my head, trying not to talk myself down. I tapped my fingers on the worn carpet, trying to work through right now and later. This had to work.
“Go!” Dash hissed suddenly.
I looked over to find him running at me just as the windows in the kitchen exploded. Something imploded in the wall, leaving a gaping hole. A bullet. A gun. He gave me a hard shove, sending me falling into the tunnel. I landed on my side on the concrete floor and cried out. Pain jammed into my shoulder.
His hands were suddenly grasping my face. “Don’t say a word.” His gold eyes were the only light left in the tunnel. “Not a word. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
I nodded, biting back my sob.
He rested on his hunches and pulled the table over. He let the trap door fall into place, and then gave it a hard pull, closing the seams. Silence settled inside and out. And then there was a bang from above us.
Muffled voices followed.
“Check the rooms,” a familiar voice demanded. “Don’t let her go again. It’s both our asses if she does. I’m going around back.”
Pounding sounded overhead, like muffled footsteps. I held my breath. I wanted air. I wanted to bust through the trap door and rip Denny’s heart out like he had done to me. As if Dash knew it, his hand closed around my mouth.
His lips whispered so quietly I barely heard him. “Did I hurt you?”
I nodded soundlessly, blinking my tears away. They were angry tears, somehow hotter than any other I’d shed.
“Where?”
I wiggled my shoulder.
He kissed where I had fallen. “Forgive me.”
Of course, I thought sadly. Of course I forgive you.
“Where did they go?” Denny growled, two sets of feet stomping above us. “Where the fuck did they do go?”
“I don’t know,” a deeper voice responded. “But they couldn’t have gone far. They had nothing when they ran. That building went up. Raynard thinks they’re taken care of. They’re ours now. We’ll find them. She’ll repay her debt, and the son will know he never should have fucked with something that was ours before we get rid of him.”
“No,” Denny said. “We kill him first. Right in front of her. I want to watch her heart break before I break it forever.”
Dash’s hand enclosed even tighter around my mouth, keeping the angry snarl from escaping.
“That’s a risk,” the man responded, clearly irritated. “She’s who we want. He’s just a kink in our plans. If we have to choose, we choose her. She owes us, son. Not him.”
“Shut up,” Denny growled. “You’re the one who wanted her. I saw the way you looked at her. You wanted between her legs long before she signed your contract.”
“Well,” the man said. “If I had, her debt would have probably been paid.”
“Bullshit,” he spat. “She’s useless. Not me. You bought her. If anything, she’s your responsibility.”
Tears rained down on Dash’s hand.
“I wasn’t aware of her … ailment.” Trent’s voice had changed. It was lower, heavier, the way I’d remembered it. “Her bitch of a mother didn’t tell me she was broken.”
“You should have known she was a liar. She gave us her daughter to repay her own debt. We’re better than taking out the trash.”
“Shh,” Dash hissed, pinching my nose so I couldn’t breathe.
“Whores,” Trent dismissed. “Think of the army we could have built, son. With blood like hers. She’s half McDonald. We could have taken Raynard’s blood out by the next decade. As it is we’re stuck with him. At least until McKenna gives birth, we’ve got their balls and blood. The MK’s will change like it never has before.”
The regret in Trent’s voice sickened my soul.
“We kill him first.”
“Son,” he argued. “It’s all right to admit you had feelings for her. You were invested in her. But you will get over it. So she loves the man. She’ll love her life more. Threaten that, son, and you’ll have her every time.”
“I had nothing for her,” Denny spewed. “Nothing! She’s a whore’s daughter. A job. I wanted her baby, not her.”
“Love,” Trent said. “Makes us monsters weak.”
A blast made me jump. Trent laughed, and there was a stomping sound, like boots pounding on floors until it faded.
“She can’t go far,” Trent called. “She’s marked.”
Denny responded, but he was too far from the trap door to hear his entire reply. “—her belly.” My eyes were blurry—my rage made me dizzy.
“Middle tunnel. Don’t do anything stupid.” Dash’s words quivered. He was enraged too. “Anger,” he said. “Makes our love vulnerable.”
I needed this love.
So I nodded, and when he’d let my mouth go, I crawled on my hands and knees in the cold wet tunnel. We didn’t speak. I could feel him behind me. His heat, his presence, his love. I thought of all of the time I’d spent blaming him. It turned my stomach. I thought of all of the time I’d missed Denny. It turned it even more. I thought of all the time that we wouldn’t have together. I swallowed down the mouthful of bile that came up.
My mother had sold me to repay her own debt? Or had she’d never had a choice? I spent my life avoiding my childhood. I ran so hard it barely existed. Mom had taken off when I was ten. No warning. No reason. She’d left the trailer in shambles, but left my room untouched. All of the men in and out of the trailer. The broken wildness in her eyes. Had she sold herself for her addictions, or had her addictions protected what she’d sold? Denny hadn’t searched for my parents. He’d known where at least one was the entire time.
But when had she given her daughter to a gang?
Before I stepped into that coffee shop?
Or when she’d left me all alone?
28.
I Loved Stronger Than I Had Ever Lived
Train horns blew above us.
My eyes stayed peeled, waiting for the way out. We’d been in the middle tunnel long enough for the scrapes on my knees to reopen. My palms bit into the hard moldy concrete beneath me. Dash cursed periodically behind me, presumably nicking his own skin. Anger spurred me on, but the man behind me kept me going.
Soon, light began to filter in. It was too bright to be day. I turned a slight corner that only went right, and found a metal grate in the ceiling. A rumble began as we stood. The area around us heightened enough for us to stand. I covered my ears as it intensified, making my teeth chatter from the roaring of the train overhead. Dash cringed, giving me a tight look. He knew what I was feeling.
After all, his father had betrayed him countless times.
We were both children of whores. Forgotten. Unwanted. Tossed aside when debts were paid.
“You run,” he said when the train had gone. “Every time.” It wasn’t a question. It was an order.
It was already broken. I gave him a curt nod, despising my lies but knowing that without them Dash would only hurt himself to protect me.
“What kind of life is this?” I looked up at the grate. “Always running. Never loving. Being betrayed, bought. Sold. We never stood a chance, my king.”
“Not until we found each other.”
“We can’t spend the rest of our lives doing this.” I met his eyes, ignoring the sheen in mine. “I’ve done it my entire life. All I want is to have you. I want a second with you that isn’t already gone.”
He blinked his sadness away and clenched his jaw. “This drain opens up behind the bathrooms.” He reached up and grabbed the thin grates. With a grunt, he pushed it open. He grabbed the edge of the open space and used his upper body to lift himself out.
I waited a few seconds before I followed. The grate opened up at an odd angle directly to a drain. The first thing I touched was grass. Wet fresh grass. I marveled at it as Dash hunched by the exit. His eyes were trained in front
of us.
“Stay close to me.” He rose to his feet and gave me his hand. “After this there is nowhere else I’ve planned. I couldn’t know past this.” He sounded apologetic, guilty even.
I shook my head. “Dash. It’s because of you I’m still alive. I don’t expect you to have everything figured out. Plus, if you had, it would only give them an opportunity to figure it out too.” And for plans to go astray.
“We’ll have our second together, and many more.” He stepped closer and cradled my face between his hands. Hunger and love burned in his butterscotch eyes. “We will love, my queen.”
I let his words have me.
Because they were about to end for now.
“But we must run now. We must run until we can no longer do so.” He took my hand without saying anymore, and pulled me up the small embankment to the upper level. Beside us, the wall was covered in graffiti, and as we crossed it, I couldn’t help noticing the blood dripping down the turret of the crown. My pulse pounded, feeling my time running out.
I pulled on his hand to stop.
“We have to go.”
This crown looked eerily familiar to me.
“Kinley,” he hissed, pulling me after him. “Hurry up.”
Memories of the same crown on the brick wall across from my office building filtered into my thoughts. The dripping blood, the crass edges of the crown. Even the blood was the same color. This garnet red. And the letter’s MK were transcribed in black paint above the crown in sharp strokes. Either the MK’s had stencils, or the same one had tagged the same symbols across from my building and on this cement wall. Two tags I had to see. Dash stopped just where the wall ended as I gazed behind me suspiciously.
“Was that always there?”
“—at?” He poked his head out.
The distant sounds of people talking came from around the wall. Train horns interrupted half of his response, but I didn’t have to hear it to know he was confused. “The MK symbol on the wall.”
A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 27