by K. L. Savage
I was sixteen.
And two weeks later, Ross was the guy who took my virginity. He didn’t go slow, he didn’t ease me into it; he fucked me like the whore Tom was breeding me to be.
“Hey, where did you go? We don’t have to do this. I’m happy just kissing you and your body all night until we fall asleep.”
How is this badass biker so sweet? I bet his friends will think he is a wuss if they ever catch him talking to me like this.
I want to be close to him, even if it hurts. It means he is breaking down the fears in my head and the expectations I have of men.
“No,” I say and wiggle free of my sweatpants until they are pooled around my ankles. “I miss you. I never thought I’d miss sex.” I laugh, but it’s filled with sadness and self-pity. “But I miss it with you.” I reach down and tug the sweats off.
His weighted cock slaps against my inner thigh when he wiggles out of his. His chest presses against mine while his hands caress my sides, and the difficulties over the last few days slip away. His fingers stroke my skin, watching as he maps the lines of my body.
Over the next few minutes of laying here wearing nothing but his touch, my skin becomes overly sensitive. Thousands of goose bumps are set alight, and the masculine hands are contradiction with how they look. Rough, scarred, calloused, touching me with a fragile intimacy. It’s as if Patrick is scared of breaking me.
“I love how you react to me.” His deep voice booms in the silence. “I love to see you react like this.”
I close my eyes and let my other senses take over. Fireflies ignite along the surface of my skin, glowing under Patrick’s tentative attention. At least, that’s how it feels. I’m hot to the touch, like a light bulb that’s been on all day, and the slightest bump will cause me to burst, submerging me into darkness.
His breaths are a breeze against me as he blows cool air along my stomach, continuing his exploration. His hand drifts down my left thigh and his mouth is on mine, catching me off guard. Patrick’s flavor has a hint of mint, reminding me of toothpaste.
The moan that slips from me is uncontrollable when the scent of that damn soap enters my nostrils. I lift my hands and grip the metal rods of the simple bed frame. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in this fucking world that is sexier than a man who smells good.
My senses are overwhelmed.
He groans into my mouth when he slides his finger across my clit. It’s swollen, needy, and when he presses against the button of nerves, my mouth falls open on a silent scream.
“Keep your eyes shut, and make sure to stay quiet, babe.”
“Patrick,” I whine his name, but there’s a sound of uncertainty. I’ve never had someone take the time to get to know my body. There’s a vulnerability to it that has a self-preserved alarm going off in my head. That’s the fear talking. I know Patrick will take care of me; he always does. Even when we first met and he didn’t want to have anything to do with me, he saved me. Patrick was barely able to stand on his feet, and he scared away the villain.
He’s a protector. A guard. More than a knight, more than a fighter, he’s a warrior.
He inserts another finger, then another, preparing me to take him, and he pulls out, then in. While he finger fucks me, the wet slops sound extra loud since I can’t see what’s going on, but I can feel it, that’s for damn sure. His lips drag along my folds, tasting me. His tongue flicks out and rolls around where his fingers are buried before dragging the skilled appendage up and wrapping his mouth around my clit.
For fuck’s sake, I want to come.
“Patrick!” I cry his name when he throws me over the bed. My hands are on the floor, but my stomach is on the bed. He’s bent me over, and I have no idea what he’s doing. The swipe of his tongue along my forbidden hole has me clenching my cheeks together.
“Relax. Let me make you feel good.”
“I don’t think that’s going to feel go … oh!” his tongue bathes the rim, the pleasure blinding white behind my eyelids. “Patrick, don’t stop. Don’t ever fucking stop.”
He slaps my ass and groans between my cheeks, eating me from behind. This is one thing I haven’t done, and sharing with Patrick makes me realize I’m not as experienced as I thought. Maybe I’m not as dirty as I made myself believe.
Another slap sounds, soft, not too hard, but enough to leave a slight burn behind. My head is pounding, either from the rush of blood from this position or the rise of my libido. Whatever the reason, the only way I want it to stop is if I’m coming on his cock.
“You like that, don’t you? You like my tongue in your ass. I bet you’d like my cock in your ass too, filling you up and stretching you out.” He gives the puckering hole another swipe. “Maybe while I’m fucking this tight asshole, I’ll shove my fingers deep in your cunt, fuck you for hours and hours until you come.”
“Please.” The word is accompanied with spit dripping from my mouth. He gives my hole one last kiss before the bed dips and his weight on me is absent. “Patrick?” Wow, I sound so needy. It’s a truth that doesn’t hurt, though.
“I got you, babe.”
Then, I’m jerked cross the bed by my ankle, and his hand is pressed against my skull. My cheek is shoved into the mattress so hard I can feel the springs beneath cheap foam digging into my face as he inches his cock in my weeping channel. Slow and steady, rock hard and long, Patrick takes his time, savoring every slippery drop of me.
He’s a sharp knife slicing through the epic depths of me. I’m ruined if any man comes after him.
Patrick grabs onto my hips, his sack slapping against my clit with every stroke. He spanks my ass again, letting his hand fly over the same spot he hit before. My ass is burning. I swear there is a low simmering flame prancing across my skin in an evil tango.
“Hard-er.” The word is broken up between each jerk of my body.
His mouth tickles my ear as he curls over me. “Whatever you want.” Patrick bites the shell of my ear and shackles one of his hands around my right wrist, then his other hand does the same with the left. With a rough tug, my back arches, bending to the point that I think I might break.
The light above us shines into my eyes for a split second, and I wonder if he’s taking me on a ride to heaven. The edge is here, teetering me closer and closer.
“I think I’m going to come. Oh, fuck. Come on, come on.” I didn’t think it was possible, but he picks up the pace.
I think I might too. “Don’t stop. Keep going.”
“I’m right fucking there.”
But no matter how fast he thrusts, we stay on the edge.
Two broken halves make a whole, but in our case, there is a tiny piece missing. Pleasure is what we seek without each other, and unfortunately, we reveled in it for far too long in selfish desire.
This is the consequence.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PIRATE
“I hear you don’t want to continue group therapy sessions.”
It sounds like a question, but it isn’t.
I have a note burning a hole in my pocket from Sunnie, and all I want to do is find a private place to read it. I can’t since I’m here with Ms. Havensworth. I snatched it from under the fern and hurried to my therapist’s office, and I didn’t have time to read it. What I should’ve done is bailed.
I’m sick of this place.
I’m tired of feeling like a case study or some research project. I’m done listening to the fake stories in my group sessions. And for the love of all that’s holy, I’m sick of feeling inadequate when it comes to sex. I know it has nothing to do with our performance because it’s the hottest sex I’ve ever had in my life, but after awhile, it gets discouraging.
What am I not doing right?
Ms. Havensworth puts on her red glasses and reads my file. “What do you like to be called? Pirate or Patrick?”
“Either.”
“Pirate, what does that mean exactly?” she asks, taking off her glasses as quick as she put them on.
&n
bsp; I scoff and widen my legs to get more comfortable in this leather chair that’s too small for my body. “Nothing. It just means I stayed drunk all the time. You know,” I gesture a drink and take a fake swig. “Cause I always had a bottle in my hand.”
Her eyes harden, not happy with that answer. “That seems very cruel. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. It’s who I was.”
“And now?”
I flick my gaze to her and frown. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you said that was who you were. If you aren’t that man now, who are you?”
“I−I—” I sound like Rob from group therapy, stuttering because I can’t figure out what to say. I open and close my mouth and then rub my thumb across my brows stressfully. “I’m still that guy. I’ll always be the alcoholic. I’ll always have a Pirate in my soul, begging to drink.”
“Maybe so, but that isn’t your entire soul. It isn’t what is on the outside anymore. You don’t want to be that man.”
“I’ve seen you once before. Do you have the other therapist’s notes or something?” I try to peek at my file, but she shuts it, her elbows hitting the desk with a hard thud while she folds her hand under her chin.
“How I get my information isn’t important. I also know you and Sunnie are friends.”
“I don’t want to talk about Sunnie with you or anyone.”
“What you say here stays here, Pirate. I’m not going to tell a soul.”
I don’t say anything. A stupid part of me wants to believe her, but I’m too jaded to believe anything that comes from anyone’s mouth. The tick of the clock hanging on the wall has my teeth grinding against one another since neither of us is speaking.
“That’s fine. We can come back to that. Right now, I want to know why you don’t want to go to your therapy sessions.”
“Because they don’t have real issues. I know it sounds heartless, but someone is crying because their cat died, and they have been hitting the bottle for a few months. They don’t know shit. I’m younger than most of them, and I’ve been drinking a lot longer. It’s insulting to me to be in a group like that.”
She nods as she scribbles down a few notes. “And what makes your pain so different than say … someone whose cat died?”
“Are you serious?” I stand, using the armrest of the chair to push myself up. “I don’t need this shit. I have two weeks left before I’m out of here, and I’m not going to waste it talking about something that doesn’t matter in this process. Talking about it changes nothing.”
“Talking about it changes everything, Pirate. You won’t heal all the way if you don’t. Tell me, have you and Sunnie had any problems?”
I start to walk away, giving her my back.
“Have you been able to perform sexually, Pirate?
My arm freezes while turning the doorknob. There is no way she knows about the relationship between me and Sunnie.
“I know Sunnie can’t. Can you?”
“We are just friends.” I hate the word on my tongue. I only wanted her to be a friend, and the crazy girl went and buried herself in my heart; a heart that was long dead and stopped beating for anyone or anything besides booze.
“Right, and I really don’t have my doctorate. I’m just another patient, filling a role of therapist with my multiple personalities.”
That’s … specific. I wonder if there is any truth to that. I turn my head over my shoulder and cast a glance in her direction. She has gotten up and moved around her desk, arms folded in triumph. Her red lips smirk at me, knowing she has me. “I knew that would make you turn around. No worries, I’m a certified doctor.” She points to the degree on the wall. “Sit down, Pirate. Put your pride aside. Heal. And have a good sex life with the woman you’re not allowed to be with.”
There aren’t a lot of women I’ve ever been afraid of, but Ms. Havensworth and Gale keep me on my toes. I ease my way back to the chair, but I grab onto the back of it and pull it away from her desk. I don’t want to be too close to her.
“Good. Now that we are in agreement, what happened to you for you to become an alcoholic?”
“Going down this road again is only going to make me want to drink.”
Bubba.
Her voice is back and it robs my breath. I try to hide the despair, but Havensworth sees right through me. “What is it?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I don’t hear Macy’s voice when I don’t talk about her. It took too long to get to that point, and I don’t want to take a hundred steps back.
“What happened to you?” she presses.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then you won’t be leaving here in two weeks,” she threatens with a click of her pen. “The longer you decide to keep the trauma in, the longer the block will remain in your head.”
Bubba, you let the bad man get me.
No, I didn’t. I tried. “I tried,” I whisper in a broken return.
“You tried what?” Havensworth asks. “What are you thinking about right now?”
Sunnie. Think of Sunnie. Think of her smile, her voice, the way she laughs. Think about how she drives you crazy. Think about how you miss the crazy when she cries. Think about how much you love her. Think of how she gave you a reason to live when you didn’t have one.
“Pirate?”
I ignore the nosey doctor and think of Sunnie, but she morphs into Macy. A torn pink dress and messy braids. She’s crying. She has dirt on her cheeks.
Her neck snaps.
“No!”
“Pirate? Pirate. Look at me.” Havensworth’s cold, withered hands lift my head, and I can see her, but flashes of Macy take her spot.
“Something’s wrong with me,” I say, gripping the sides of my hair. I pull on the strands, stretching to the point where my scalp is screaming at me to stop before I rip chunks out.
“No.” Havensworth smiles fondly at me, her wrinkled face comforting. “Something awful happened, Pirate. Something that changed the way your mind works and sees the world.”
Bubba.
“Macy,” I say her name, and I feel like I’m hallucinating all over again because her distorted image appears next to Havensworth. She’s a broken TV, white-noise, static crackling in the back of my mind. Macy leaves me fuzzy, broken, and I’m barely able to breathe. This can’t be right. I don’t have alcohol in my system anymore. She shouldn’t be here.
“Who is Macy, Pirate? Is she someone you cared about?”
Tell her how you let the bad man get me, bubba. Tell her how you did nothing.
I shake my head. It isn’t true. I know it isn’t. I did my best. I did what I could. “I was just a boy. I was just a boy,” I repeat. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Pirate, who are you talking to?”
I blink and Macy is gone, but her voice remains. Bubba is forever on repeat in my mind, driving me insane.
I yawn, suddenly feeling tired. I don’t want to give into this, but the more I hold onto the past, the more exhausted I become. I sit back and stare over Havensworth’s shoulder. There’s a window on the back wall, lined with potted plants. Daisies, a cactus, and some purple flower that I don’t know the name of. A few bees are buzzing around the daisies, and the sun is baring down, proving the world keeps spinning and life goes fucking on with or without the pain you’re going through.
“Macy.”
“Are you having hallucinations, Pirate?”
“No. Well, I did when I first arrived. I was in detox. For years, I’d play what happened in my head every day. Her screams, the way she cried, the grunts of the man…” I shake my head when I hear Macy calling out for me again. “Anyway, when I think about the situation now, without alcohol, I hear her, mocking me.”
“What does she say?”
“The thing I’ve told myself over the years. I let him take her. I didn’t help. I should’ve been better. I saw her standing next to you; it was like a distorted image, but then she was gone.”
“That hasn’t happened since you finished detoxing?”
“No, but when I talk or think about what happened now, especially since I don’t have alcohol, it’s … my guilt, maybe?”
“Guilt for what?”
“For not saving her.”
“Could you have? How old were you?”
“If I tried harder maybe.” I don’t know. Fuck talking about this. I’ll be fucked up all day now because the phantom of my dead sister will haunt me, and I’ll feel her ghost everywhere I go. “I was thirteen. Can we be done now?”
“No,” she says. “I’m finally peeling back those layers everyone thought were made of steel. I want you to tell me everything that happened.”
Bubba.
“Please, don’t make me do this. I’ll do whatever else. I’ll stare at ink blotches. I’ll write in the journal I was given; just don’t have me say it out loud. Sunnie is the only person—” I stop myself from finishing the sentence, but it’s too late; Havensworth’s eyes twinkle. She’s going to run with this.
“Sunnie knows. Have you ever told anyone else?”
I start to itch.
Everywhere.
I’ve never felt so uncomfortable, but no more running. I have to do this. I have to get better. “No. I never told anyone else in the eighteen years that have gone by.”
“Wow, you must really trust Sunnie to let her in like that.”
I nod. “I…” I let out a large exhale and stretch my arms over my head.
Bubba.
My sister’s voice interrupts me, and I know the only way to silence her is to power through it.
“You what?” Havensworth pushes, wanting to wring every drop of information she can from me.
I squirm, not wanting to admit it out loud yet because when I do say those words for the first time, it will be to Sunnie; not a therapist who wants to pick apart my brain.
“We will come back to that. Tell me, what happened to cause you to start drinking? We need to get to the issue at hand.”