As I ran after her, cold raindrops slapped across my hands and face. But I didn’t slow down. I was starting to have a really bad feeling about this.
The forest was a nearly impenetrable black. Several times I realized I was about to run into a tree only moments before actually doing so. Everything seemed to want to stop me. The branches all extended out at me, the shrubs snagged on my pants and jacket, the tree roots angled out when I least expected them, and the rain dashed against my face with increasing intensity.
But there was a black hole inside of me, blacker than this night, colder than this rain, worse than anything Mother Nature could throw at me. It was the possibility of losing her, of never again seeing that crinkled, laughing face, those dancing, vibrant blue eyes, that sprinkle of freckles on her nose.
No, I would run as long as it took, venture on as far as I needed. Anything to get to Alice, to bring her back to me. My legs plodded on, becoming increasingly numb and as foreign to me as sticks, but there would be no stopping. I had to find her.
Finally, when my legs had just about given out, when my breath had started coming out in gasps, I came upon her. Pip. She was whining, pawing at something in the grass. Something so black it almost merged with the ground. A curled-up ball of a person. One series of shivers. Alice.
Immediately, I picked her up and pressed her to me. I took off my coat and shirt and threw them over her body.
Her eyes were closed.
“Alice? Alice?”
Her eyelashes fluttered, but her eyes stayed closed.
I picked her up and started to run, carrying her limp body. Pip galloped on ahead, the light at the end of my dark forest tunnel. She knew the way; she’d show me the way home. I’d make it—I had to. Somehow, carrying Alice, as freezing as I was, I felt light, airy. Everything was numb, so maybe that was why it was easier. I wanted to kiss her, but it could wait.
She had to be all right.
My legs flew on, and my only thoughts were to go faster, to throw my legs ahead farther, to not stop for a second. I had Alice in my arms, and she was still shivering, but she was there. I couldn’t lose her, not now. As I ran, I knew only this: If I lost her, everything would be lost.
Pip was always just out of sight, waiting for me around the latest mass of trees, the single flash of light in this forest of black. Ever running, ever chasing, I followed without expecting to stop, without needing to. As long as I had to run to keep Alice alive, I would. Then, finally, the white was joined by less black. The cabin. I was there.
Inside, Alice and I were one shiver, but I couldn’t stop walking now. I carried her upstairs, put her in my bed, and wrapped her in every blanket I had. After a minute, her shivers stopped and she fell into a restless sort of breathing. She was okay. I lay down beside her, closed my eyes, and thanked my lucky stars.
I awoke to her soft breath. Tickling my lips, it smelled like vanilla. When I opened my eyes, hers were closed. She was smiling slightly.
“Alice?” I said.
She didn’t stir. Light was slanting in through the window. My limbs were still numb and achy.
So I lay there, watching that soft breath slip in and out of those parted lips. I didn’t know how long I lay there, only that, at some point, with one eye squinting open, she asked, “What are you doing?”
Sitting up and glancing away, I said, “Nothing.”
Alice only gave a sleepy nod and pushed herself upright beside me. Her lids still half-lowered with sleepiness, she brushed her fingers across mine.
“Your hand…”
To her inquisitive glance, I gave a flippant nod. When her drowsy smile fell, with a sigh, I told her the story.
“One day when I was a kid, I acted up. My dad got really angry at me and smashed my hand into the wall. I had to go to the ER afterward. He told them I fell.”
Now her drowsy smile was a full-on expression of horror. Her eyes filled with tears, Alice took my scarred hand and ran her fingers across it once more.
“Jake, I…I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
I withdrew my fingers and got out of bed.
“Yeah. I guess this fits your hard life expectations better, doesn’t it?”
Alice winced as if she had been struck, and I made for the door. In the doorway, I paused.
“Want to play Guess Who?”
“What?”
I turned to see Alice’s face as puzzled as her voice had sounded.
I addressed my answer to the slant of light falling on the floor.
“You know, the board game thing. Tom—one of my weird-ass friends—left it here. We like to get really drunk and play it.”
To her still-confused look, I continued. “You can play it sober, too, though. We can—if you want. I’ll make some breakfast. Might have some instant coffee left too if you’re okay with it black.”
She nodded slowly.
“All right. Why not? And yeah, I’m starving.”
I escaped to get the supplies. I had enough coffee left for exactly two mugs, and there was some old but still good peanut butter to put on the last two pieces of bread I toasted. I found the game stashed away in my kitchen cupboard among strange bowls and stranger books I didn’t remember buying.
I carried everything upstairs, and when I got to my room, Alice was standing. She looked at me in surprise.
“Oh, so…you wanted to play here then?”
I shrugged.
“I just thought you might be tired since…you know…”
She blushed, and more words spilled out of my mouth.
“Alice, last night, I…”
She shook her head, refusing to look me in the eye.
“I was an idiot, running out there like that into the storm. I’m lucky I didn’t die of hypothermia or something. Thank you.”
She still wasn’t looking at me as she said it. I put the plate, mugs, and game on the bedside table, then stepped forward and put my hand on hers.
“It was my fault; I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry. I have a knack for pushing people away, especially when…”
Her eyes met mine. “Especially when what?”
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I sat on the floor and slapped the box down in front of me. She joined me on the floor, and I handed her a mug of coffee and a piece of peanut butter toast. Then we both ate and drank in silence.
After our sad little breakfast, she asked, “So, are we gonna play or what?”
It didn’t take long to set up the game; I handed out the two playing boards, and we picked out our cards. I got ‘Arnold’—a card showing a red-haired man with purple glasses and a peculiar, unsettling smile, and she got some other person I had to guess. And so we did, narrowing each other’s person down by gender, skin color, hair, and eyes until she guessed “Arnold” and whooped with glee at her right answer.
But as she sat there laughing at my furious loser’s scowl, something happened. Her voice cracked, as if she had remembered something. As if something was lurking inside her, preventing her from being happy.
“I don’t know why I didn’t run. Back there in the bank,” she said.
I said nothing, because that was the right answer this time.
“Another game?” I asked after a minute. She nodded and then proceeded to beat me a second, third and fourth time.
“Be careful,” I warned as she proceeded to taunt me with her card.
“Or what?” she asked, her victorious grin still wide.
“Or this,” I said, standing up.
Chapter Eleven
Alice
He picked me up and, as I squealed protests, tossed me onto the bed. Back and forth we shoved each other, laughing, swearing, tossing, and turning. Until, finally, I flopped back, curled myself into a ball, and faced the corner of his small bedroom.
I felt him do the same beside me, our legs touching just the slightest.
Once again, I was in the same position as before, wondering if he was going to touch me, what he was goin
g to do to me, what I wanted him to do to me.
“I think I know why you didn’t run,” he said after a minute.
I said nothing.
“I think it’s the same reason I had to save you,” he said softly.
His fingers laced with mine, and with his other hand, he turned my face to him.
“You’ve really messed things up, princess,” he said even more softly, his lips lowering to meet mine.
And then we were back where we had been before: his impatient fingers running over my willing body, unzipping his sweatshirt, sliding it over my exposed skin.
His breath was hot in my ear as he murmured, “I’ve wanted you—”
“Since the moment I saw you,” I finished for him, reaching for his crotch to see just how much he meant it.
His dick was hard. But his touch was soft, stroking up and down my sides, the pressure building gradually until he grabbed me and, both of his hands on my ass, lifted me to his erection.
I wrapped both legs around him as our lips enmeshed and his cock rubbed against my pussy.
“Why can’t you just…”
He paused and, pulling his lips away from mine, asked, “What was that?”
I only shook my head, so he pressed his dick against me harder.
“What was that?” he asked again.
I moved my lips to his ear and, licking and sucking, moaned, “Let me go.”
Grabbing me and tossing me onto my back, he lunged forward and shoved his hand down my sweatpants. His fingers toyed with my clit.
“Is that what you really want?” he asked with a cruel smile.
I could only moan as a response as his fingers slid up and pulled off the sweats.
“Nice panties, princess.”
It was a joke; I hadn’t worn any for the past day since I didn’t have any clean clothes to change into.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you wanted to fuck me.”
He slipped his hand back and gave my ass a loud “whack!”
He took off my bra in one swift motion, leaving my lying completely naked before him. His gaze slid over me, down and up, down and up again.
“Jesus, Alice,” he murmured.
He grabbed my ass and I grabbed his shirt, the white cotton soft as I pulled it over his head, revealing his muscles. As he stroked me, my hands ran over the tattoos. Every time I saw them, I noticed more details, like how this green-bodied, red-fanged snake strangely somehow looked kind with its wide-open yellow eyes and a pink smile that was almost gentle.
My hands followed the long trail of the snake, from its head in the center of his chest, to its body snaking down and disappearing under the band of his sweatpants. But now Jake’s tongue was probing my lips, parting them and slipping in farther, almost down my throat, acting out what his fingers wanted to do as they probed my other lips.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” he said, inserting two of his fingers easily.
I could only let out a low moan as he pushed his fingers inside me and, with his other hand, grabbed my breast, moving in the same slow, torturous rhythm. Now his mouth was locked on my neck, sucking in the same slow-building rhythm that was turning my entire body into one throb of want. My hands moved frantically and yanked down his sweatpants until he was as naked as I was.
His cock rising to meet me, he slipped out his fingers, flipped me around, and slapped my ass again, harder this time.
“Who said you could do that?” he hissed in my ear, and I shoved my ass up in response.
“Please,” I moaned, but he only pressed my face to the bed with his hand.
Then, pressing his dick between my ass cheeks from behind, he growled into my neck. “I’ll fuck you when I want to, and not a second before.”
I tried to twist around, but he held both my arms down. Then, running a finger from the top of my head, down the length of my back, and in between my ass cheeks, he probed my pussy from behind, sticking in just the tip of his finger.
“So wet. So very wet, princess.”
He stuck his finger in farther and, as I quivered, asked, “What would you do right now to get fucked?”
He slid his finger out and stepped back. I got up, turned around, and took him in: his glittering eyes, parted lips, every inch of him concentrated on the unbearably wet, throbbing slit between my legs. As I kneeled down before him, he put his hand on my shoulder.
His cock was thick, riddled with veins that seemed to match his tattoos. When I put my tongue to it, his hand moved to my head. I ran my tongue all over it, up and down and around again, as if it was a Popsicle I had to get every taste of. I slid the tip of his dick over my lips and, as his hand tightened in my hair, shoved it between them. Jake let out a low groan of pleasure as I took him into my mouth, down all the way to the base, when the tip of his dick rammed the back of my throat.
Jake’s hand was clasping and unclasping my hair, urging me on, though I needed no urging. I wanted him, this; I wanted the length of him in me. And so, as I slid up and down, my tongue twirling along to my own impatient rhythm, I cupped his balls, opening my mouth farther to take him deeper.
He groaned, and I did it again. I gave it to him in long, torturous, tongue-flicking sucks. Over and over and over again, as his hand gripped my hair, urging me on—faster, harder, deeper. Soon his breathing was shallow. I was so wet it could have been me who was getting sucked off. I was cupping his balls and he was groaning, pulling on my hair with pleasure. Suddenly, his half-lidded eyes opened wide.
“You ready?”
Mid-suck, I nodded.
“You want it?”
Throwing my head up and down, my tongue mashed its answer against his shaft and then, finally, his base: Y-E-S.
In response, with a great shuddering, he groaned and poured into me, a hot surge down my throat as I pounded up and down. When I’d had my fill, I slipped off, and, incredibly, he still had more for me. I savored it, let his warmth rain upon me, upon my face. My eyes were closed, my lips parted, my tongue out—and time stopped and there was only this flickering, warm rain. After the last drop, his hand stroked my head, smoothing my hair back.
His eyes closed while his hands played over my body. It wasn’t for anything but for the movement itself, for the enjoyment of this perfect moment between us. He ran his hands over me like mine was the only body he’d ever touched, like it was the only one he’d ever really felt. And, in a way, maybe it was.
I lay there while he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me like it was the first time, running his hands through my hair like it was silk. I sank into him, lost myself in him.
When I opened my eyes, we were under the covers. His head was enveloped by a halo of light. His eyes were intent on me.
“You’re really something you know.”
“Hold me,” I whispered, and he did.
I stared into those eyes, those eyes that were full of want but something else too. Those eyes that—but surely I was wrong—looked like they belonged to a man who would do anything for me.
It didn’t matter anyway; his hands were stroking me, and all that mattered now was how my body felt. There was no choice anymore, only a giving in. It was a must.
His finger strokes were slow, light, leaving trembles in their wake. Slowly, he built my pleasure more and more, until his fingers were curling inside me and my whole body was thrashing to their rhythm and my lips were begging him, “Please, give it to me now. Please.”
And he did. With one easy slide, he was in, and it was perfect.
God, I was so filled.
My pussy was screaming in ecstasy already, and it only grew as he pumped himself in and out of me. It was a slow, deep rhythm that was perfect, that was better than perfect, that was gasping out of me with moans and groans that I could hardly take, and yet there he was, fucking me harder, faster, deeper. When he slipped his dick out, I groaned, but when he flipped me around, propped up my ass up with a pillow, and began fucking me from behind, my moans were even more despe
rate for him to keep going and give me what I needed. It was a deliverance only he could give me.
Already, I was on the brink, my whole body trembling with pleasure like never before.
Grasping my chin in his hand as he pumped me slower and rougher, Jake asked, “Are you ready?”
I nodded.
Sliding himself all the way in and leaning down so his face was an inch from mine, he growled, “Do you want it?”
Panting, I nodded.
So, he gave it to me. Grabbing my hips, he fucked me full throttle, his cock crashing into me, the pleasure surging through me, my moans a foreign wailing, my orgasm coursing through me while I felt his cum inside me.
We let out one final collective gasp of glorious victory before we collapsed onto the bed, him on top of me, still inside of me, our breaths one sated gasp. We lay there until we fell asleep in the soft morning sunshine.
Chapter Twelve
Jake
Oh God, what had I done?
The blissful, sleeping creature before me was too perfect, her soft smile too serene. Her short, thick lashes ruffled slightly as she slept, totally oblivious to the warring sensations going on inside me. Instead of the usual superior self-satisfaction I felt at looking upon another one of my conquests, this time I felt fear.
Alice was a good girl, a kind, generous, one-of-a-kind woman, and now I had inextricably involved her in my life. As I watched her sleep, as my fingers felt at her in the way I couldn’t get enough of, the realization was terrifying, ridiculous, and yet inevitable. I’d known Alice Pryce all of a few days, yet as I watched her sleep now, I knew I would never be happy watching another do the same.
I got up and went downstairs. At the bottom of the steps, I already missed her, but I was hungry and needed to get away anyway. I couldn’t stand this helpless feeling.
The refrigerator was as empty as the possibilities left to me. Alice was to be married; she had her life waiting for her. And me? I was a felon on the run, a criminal too irredeemable to be saved.
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