by May Bridges
He untucked his T-shirt from his slacks and looked much more himself than he had in the suit. Just like Robert could go from the compassionate boy I’d loved to the crime boss, Cade made a smooth transition from the church boy my mama would have me marry, to the muscle in a crime ring she’d have me pray for.
It seemed we were all chameleons.
I kicked my cream-colored heels off under the counter and pulled out a rocks glass for some time with Jack. My nerves needed it.
“Don’t drink,” Cade said. I knew that tone. It’s the one that did things to the insides of my legs, made butterflies take flight in my stomach, and made my eyes do that ridiculous flutter thing.
I felt Cade step in behind me. “Why? It’s just a drink,” I said softly.
He reached around me and removed the glass from my hand. “Because I don’t want you to. It’s all the reason you need.” He pulled my soda from the bag, handed it to me, and directed me to sit on one of the bar stools. He took the stool next to me.
“So did you really have something else to talk to me about, or were you just trying to get me back here?” I smiled up at him, trying to release some of the tension, though it was entirely possible that I was the only one that felt it. The nervous electricity pulling at my fingers made my chest heavy and my heart louder.
“Rob,” Cade said. “After you left he talked to me about you. About his plans for you.”
“Plans?”
“He has new clients. People who moved their business from local biker gangs to him. They heard he could supply goods the bikers don’t.”
I knew enough about that life to know it wasn’t entirely uncommon for buyers to switch suppliers. They didn’t all have immense loyalty, especially the low-end buyers.
“Why do I need to know this?” I put my soda back on the counter and laced my fingers in my lap.
“You’re the goods. Rob is one of the few bigtime guys around here that deal in the skin game.”
“I’m not a good,” I scoffed.
“I know that.” Cade held up his hands. “Rob seems to think differently.”
“Robert knows I’m not taking any more clients for him. He can find someone else to do it if he is so big time.” The idea that I was up for sale sent up a rush of disgust that fanned the flames of anger in me.
“Rob does have other girls, plenty. Finding a woman willing to sell pussy in this city isn’t hard. But some of these new clients have particular tastes and they expect Rob to supply. There are at least two new buyers on his roster that have moved a large bulk of their drug and weapons business to Rob, in part because of you.”
“Me? Like they know who I am?”
“They know of you. They know your brand of BDSM and they’re primed to get hooked. I know you say Rob cares about you, and after listening to him talk about you I don’t doubt it, but you’re talking about a man and his money. I also get the feeling he thinks he is doing you some kind of fucked up favor.” Cade shrugged and shook his head, looking confused.
The cool loft air was thick as I tried to pull it into my lungs. Hearing that Robert was still actively trying to sell me off to men was a blow to the gut. It left me feeling winded. “He can’t force me. I know him well enough to know that he’ll be upset if I refuse, but he won’t put me in harm’s way and—”
“Are we talking about the same man? Won’t put you in harm’s way?” Cade’s brow was knitted together and he looked at me like I was stupid. “You don’t think you were in harm’s way when you were up here alone with those men? The men he sent to you? Or how about when he sent me and Sean to pick up Christian? You don’t think either of us was capable of hurting you? Rob knows very well what I am, and protecting you wasn’t what he was thinking when he gave me this address. He was thinking about money. Money Christian needed to pay up on.”
“Stop. I hear you. I know what you think. You don’t know Robert like I do. He knows I’m strong. He didn’t send me men I couldn’t handle. And you didn’t hurt me. Robert knew you wouldn’t.”
“What about Twitch? He put you near Twitch. How’s your head, by the way?” His tone was laced with sarcasm.
“Enough.” The word came out in a sob and I closed my mouth abruptly. I was not going to cry, not in front of someone else. I was overwhelmed. I needed a drink, to settle down and think.
I stood so fast the stool tottered, threatening to fall. I had one finger poured when Cade reached over my shoulder, grabbed the glass, and sent it careening into the kitchen wall. It smashed, and each shard that hit the floor echoed in the silent space. He took the bottle and turned it upside down in the sink. I watched motionless as it drained, feeling loss as air replaced liquid.
Before I could think, Cade had me by the wrist and was dragging me toward the bed. I dug my heels in, to no avail. A flashback of Sean and Cade pulling Christian to my balcony in much the same fashion hit me. I didn’t help him and now there’s no one to help me. I kicked out and struggled against the solid grip. It did nothing to prevent Cade from cuffing me to my iron headboard with my own cuffs.
“What are you doing? I just wanted a drink, you psycho.” I pulled hard against the cuffs. The metal bit into my wrist, promising to tear my skin if I didn’t stop.
“You don’t think Rob put you in harm’s way? I’m not going to let you hide from the truth, or drink it away.” His anger was frightening. His eyes were dark and the muscles in his neck strained. He loomed over me at the side of the bed.
“I’m not hiding from the truth.” My shaking lip was giving me away. “Look, I won’t drink anything. Let me go. You seriously cannot be this bent out of shape about me wanting to have a drink.”
“This isn’t about you drinking. You need to know, to understand. Life can get so much worse for you if you don’t stop believing that Rob won’t hurt you. I’m doing this for you.”
The last sentence was an arrow through my chest. It knocked the air from my lungs. It’s what Robert told me. That he was doing it for me. He was sending men to me to help me. I didn’t know how much more of men doing things for me I could handle.
Cade walked back over to the bed with another set of cuffs from the cabinet. He secured my free hand above me, ignoring my protest. I didn’t understand. Not an hour before he was a fairly pleasant person, sitting in the park with me. I mean, I knew that was an illusion, but this was madness. How did we go from that to this?
Cade sat on the side of the bed, near my hip. I closed my eyes and prayed.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded.
I’d wanted to touch him for days. I’d seen images of him naked in my head and wanted that again. Now the thought of opening my eyes to see him angry at me, not a hint of desire for me in his eyes, seemed unfair.
“I can make things so much worse for you if you don’t listen to me,” Cade said. “Now open your eyes.”
I opened them, reluctantly. He wasn’t glaring at me, no sign of menace on his face. He looked as calm as he had in the park. It was even more irritating to me that I was the only one who seemed upset.
“Let’s talk about Christian,” he said calmly.
“Fine, talk.”
“Do you know where he is right now?” Cade asked.
I shook my head in response, not trusting my voice.
“My basement,” Cade answered. “Well, the warehouse basement really. Anyway, Christian is in a room wishing he was dead.”
I heard what Cade was saying, but the words were eclipsed by the motion of his hand. His fingers lingered just above the inside of my thigh. I felt them swaying gently, touching only the tiny, unseen hairs on my body. Cade looked to be making the motion absentmindedly, like he might casually touch any girl, but I wasn’t any girl and it was causing me to lose focus on his words. My eyes trained on his fingers, urging them to move away.
“When I saw him this morning, he begged me to slit his throat, to not send him to Robert.” I’m not looking at Cade’s face, but I can hear the smile.
He started
to move his fingers across my skin, tracing a small pattern on my thigh. My lungs burned trying to get air but I couldn’t breathe. I needed to tell him to stop. To just hold his hand still.
“Rob will keep him until he has the money back that Christian owes, plus my fees . . .”
He kept talking, unaware of the terror in my head. I knew that Cade’s words should matter more. The things he was telling me were vile, but I was working so hard at stopping the panic.
I hadn’t had a panic attack in months. I was doing so well, but I couldn’t do this. And that was the problem with the panic attacks, I couldn’t manage the words to tell him I wasn’t okay.
His fingers stopped moving and his hand rested against my leg. Relief moved through me and I pinched my eyes shut to refocus.
“Who is doing this to Christian?” he asked.
His question floated in the panic still swamping my brain, but it wasn’t gaining purchase.
“Answer me,” Cade barked out. His renewed anger focused my attention. “Who is doing all of this to Christian?”
“I don’t know.” My words were all sobs and I felt the moisture on my cheeks, tasted the salt in my mouth. I moved to wipe them, remove the evidence that I had cried, but my hands were still cuffed to the bed.
“You’ll answer if you want me to let you go.”
“You. You’re doing that to him.” I yelled.
Cade laughed, a loud booming sound. “No, Doll. You can think I’m a monster too, but I don’t get the blame for that part of it. Try again.”
“Robert,” I whispered.
“And who sent Twitch into your loft?”
“Robert! I get it. Let me go.”
“It’s not that easy,” he said.
But it was that easy. He could unlock the cuffs and let me go. Why wouldn’t he just go?
“I know who Robert is, what kind of things he does,” I said, through tears. “Do you want me to run away and hide? Even if you’re right and he has some idea to keep me working for him, I don’t see what I can do about it until it happens.”
“Running and hiding seems to be what you’re good at. That’s the problem. You don’t deal with things when they get tough. It will get you killed, or worse, one day. You can drink until you stop thinking about Rob turning you into a whore, or have someone put you in so much physical pain that you can’t feel the pain of anything else, but it doesn’t make those things go away. You’ll deny what Rob is until it’s too late. I’m trying to help you, but I can’t if you don’t see things for what they are.”
His hand started to move on my thigh again, slowly meandering. I didn’t think he understood what it was doing to me and if I was anyone else it might have been comforting. It didn’t matter that his action was benign. It was my own personalized brand of torture.
The last man who’d touched me that way was Becker. I closed my eyes, not meaning to. The dark sucked me in fast, before I could even ask him to stop, and I was lost in my nightmare.
I felt Becker’s weight pushing down on me, keeping me from moving too much. He is so much bigger than me. I felt the scratch of his rough fingers running slowly around my legs, inching higher and higher as I pressed my legs together hard, so hard they trembled, but I couldn’t move away. I’m too scared to scream.
This isn’t Becker, Alex. Fight it. I felt the heat from Becker’s face moving toward me. I turned my head away, pressing it into the pillow. I could always stop him from kissing my mouth. I couldn’t stop him from kissing everywhere else. His rough chapped lips pressed into my chest, quick and repeated, pecking at me like a vulture. I smell his dirty Hawkeye hat, the musty sweat smell covered with body spray.
His smell. His fingers. His lips. And I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t breathe. Hot tears stung the back of my eyes. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t let Becker see you cry.
Open your eyes, Alex. It’ll go away if you open your eyes. Open your eyes.
“Open them. Open your eyes, brave girl.” Cade’s voice crashed through my panic. “Look at me, brave girl.”
I heard sobbing. My sobbing. I closed my mouth to stifle it. My body was quaking, covered in a thin layer of sweat. Eyes open and moving my brain back into that room, away from that small guest room. Cade was still sitting next to me. His hand was on my leg, but pressed firm and unmoving.
“Please stop,” I pleaded, eyes trained on his hand. “Stop touching me.”
He held his hand up, palm out, showing me he wasn’t touching me. His face colored with concern and confusion. “Is Rob the reason this makes you freak out?”
“N-no.” Deep breaths in and out. “Becker.” I managed to mumble out. “Please stop.”
“I stopped. Look at me.” Cade’s deep voice was slow and soft.
When I didn’t comply, he reached over and pulled my chin toward him. My eyes flicked between his fingers and his face.
“You’re okay. I’m not him and I’m not going to hurt you.”
I nodded my head in understanding and then watched as he slowly and deliberately moved his hand back down, placing it on my thigh.
“What’s my name, brave girl?”
What? Is this some fucked-up way to turn him on?
“Cade.”
“Good girl. Am I Becker?”
“No.”
His fingers trailed higher and I broke eye contact. “At me,” he corrected quickly.
Cade, not Becker. They’re not the same. Not in any way. Cade was at least twenty years Becker’s junior. He didn’t look like him at all. Though the feeling of his fingers tickling over my skin was so eerily similar that it had been enough to tip me back into panic.
“I can’t do this. Not like this. I need to touch you.” The confession was pumped past my lips without stopping in my head for filtering, but I knew it was true. I needed to touch him.
Cade stilled his hand, and eyed me with heavy consideration for a moment. He then reached for the key and undid one hand.
“Both, please. I just . . .” I wanted to explain this. I really did. But every time I tried to form words about what had happened, I felt embarrassed. It was like I was the one who had made those things happen.
“You just what?” Cade prompted.
“He used to pin me down. So I couldn’t move, you know?” I averted my eyes, looking at my lap. “And I never touched him. I need to know that this is different.”
I was caving, giving in to letting this happen, letting Cade try to touch me. Touch me like normal people touched each other. And the only rational reason I had was that I wanted it. That didn’t surprise me. I’d wanted to enjoy a man’s hands on me the way other girls did for a long time. What did shock me was how bad I wanted it to be Cade.
Chapter Ten
It was completely lost on me why he wanted to do it. Cade wanting to touch me like that, push me to panic and pull me back, didn’t feel like it was about anything but me. Not Robert, or Becker. Just Alex.
Cade reached over me and uncuffed my other hand. “Don’t move,” he warned, as he got up from the bed. He pulled his T-shirt over his head. His tattooed arms framed his beautifully tan body. He pulled his belt from his slacks but kept it in his hand. He sat on the bed next to me with his back against the metal headboard and his arms resting on his bent knees.
“Get up and take off your pantyhose.”
I moved around him and off the bed, standing to push the thin translucent fabric of my pantyhose down my legs. I liked the look in Cade’s eyes as I pushed them past my hips and down my thighs. It was a look of pure want, and that was territory I was comfortable in.
“Come here,” Cade said when they were off. He directed me to sit on the bed between his legs.
I was apprehensive, but moved to sit in front of him. He pulled my dress over my head and threw it on the floor. I was left with only my green lace bra and panties. The touch of the cool loft air sent goose bumps over my skin.
“Cade, what if I can’t do this? What if I freak out again?”
&nbs
p; “What’s your safe word?”
“Red. Will you stop if I say it?” It hadn’t occurred to me before to use my safe word. But there was nothing about that moment that made me think it was an option.
“Trust me, and don’t use it.” My eyes widened when he traced along my leg again. “But if you have to, yes I’ll stop, Doll.” He didn’t seem angry anymore. His voice was soft and deep, a sound that could envelop you and carry you away.
“June,” I told him. “You can still call me June.” I knew I needed to kill her, but she was the brave one. That, and I still hadn’t figured out what to tell him to call me. He seemed fond of Alexandria, but I couldn’t hear that name without thinking of my parents or Pastor Bill. And right then, those were the last people I wanted bouncing around in my brain.
Cade shook his head. He took my hand in his and pulled it up to his mouth. His full soft lips pressed into my palm and slid feather light up my hand to the tip of my middle finger. He opened and sucked my finger into his mouth, slowly, flicking his tongue against it as he worked it in and out. His mouth was warm and soft. It might have been the slowest, most sensual touch a man had ever given me without freaking me out.
When he removed my fingers, he placed my hand on his chest. His skin was like heated silk, pulled tight over hard muscle. I’d thought about touching him for two days. I trailed my hands down his torso, over the rise and fall of his abs and around the line of his black boxers. My head was feeling lighter with each inch of skin I traced. The panic from minutes before was being washed away by tides of lust.
“Can I put my mouth on you?” I asked. I couldn’t remember a time when I wanted my lips on someone’s body like that.
“Are you going to let me put my mouth on your body?” Cade asked.
“Is that what you want?” I didn’t think he did. I thought he liked the game, making me uncomfortable.
“Do I not make it obvious enough for you?” Cade’s whiskey brown eyes narrowed on me.
“I thought I was disgusting to you,” I admitted, my head falling, too ashamed to look at him.
“What the hell have I ever done to make you think that?”