RIP ME: A Dark Romance

by Naomi West

  There was no couch in the little room, so I guided her to the bed and sat her down beside me as she continued to cling to me and cry. The initial outpouring had been more fear than anything else, but now that had subsided, and she cried softly and silently. Whichever way you looked at it, the girl had lost something tonight—a father, a family, the security she had taken for granted from the day she was born. Perhaps she had lost it knowingly, perhaps she had lost it for a reason, but that made it no less of a blow, and the reality of it was only now sinking in for her. What she was left with was me. Which, in my opinion, was a very sad state of affairs indeed, but it was one that she had consciously chosen. I was her choice. And to rob her of that choice, on a night when she had already lost so much, would be a very cruel thing to do, indeed.

  I sighed. I wanted so much to do what was best for Cassidy, but, for one reason or another, I kept on failing. I could have left her alone after Dupont let me out of jail, but instead I sought her out. I could have laid down the law to her at our picnic, but ended up laying something else instead. I could pretend that I was always motivated by her best interests, but when you looked back through our recent history, it started to look a lot more like I was obsessed with her and kept coming up with excuses to spend time in her company (she had accused me of something along those lines earlier). And now, when she needed me most, when I was all she had in the world, I was trying to get rid of her. How could I do such a thing?

  But, then again, was I just using her obvious fragility and insecurity as another excuse to be with her? The feel of her small body nestled up to mine was suddenly foremost in my consciousness, and I became all too aware of her hands hugging me to her.

  What was my rationale for keeping her here? Why wasn't I sending her back to her father?

  The answers to those questions failed to appear, but I ignored that fact and decided to just believe that I was doing the best thing for Cassidy. She could hardly be sent out alone in her current state. She needed to be with someone. Someone who loved her.

  Perhaps I was just using the situation as an excuse to keep her with me. But it was clearly what we both wanted. How could that be wrong?

  That question, I could answer. It was wrong because it could never be real. It could never last. It could be a night, a day, or even a week. But men like me and women like her ... No. I might have stronger feelings for her than any I had entertained for any woman I had ever known before, but those feelings could only go so far. I belonged to Battle Pride, to the road, to the life I had chosen.

  But it was amazing how little such things seemed to matter now. It was amazing how easy it was to forget them when Cassidy stretched up to me, and her sweet lips brushed against mine.

  We dissolved into the kiss, holding each other as if we were, as she had said, all that we had in the world. I felt her small hands caressing my body, and was almost surprised to realize that mine were doing the same. As I touched her firm, feminine form, memories from earlier that night rose up hotly in my mind. Each part of her body seemed to recall a specific moment, which flared into brief clarity like a kindled flame, before being extinguished by the next. The smell of her mingled in my mind with recollections of her scent when we had lain together beside the lake. The taut curve of her backside brought back the sight of it as we had walked down from the cliff top. The flat expanse of her belly reminded me of lowering my head to kiss her bellybutton and dip my tongue into it. The sensations of the night before assuaged and overwhelmed me, making the squalid little room vanish, replaced by the wide vistas of the cliff top with the waterfall below it.

  Despite the strenuous activity of that night, the memories caused a more physical reaction in me as well. Cassidy's hand stole up along my thigh, and I did nothing to stop it. She moaned softly into my mouth as her hand reached its ultimate goal and squeezed hard, firing me up still further with potent desire for this woman. One by one she popped open the buttons of my pants, then reached within and drew me out, more than ready for her. Her hand wandered idly up and down my straining length, fingers playing me like an instrument, stroking and tugging without warning and without a plan, simply touching for its own sake.

  Between kisses, she murmured, half-drunk with desire. "I want to make you happy. Please let me make you happy."

  When she lowered her head, I was in no mood to stop her. I gasped as she took me into her hot little mouth, drawing on me hard, her hands still wrapped tightly about the base. As she started her work in earnest, I pulled off my jacket and T-shirt. There then began a strange and awkward back-and-forth tussle, as I tried to undress us both while she refused to release me from her lips. I wriggled back on the bed, and she followed me, sucking all the while. From here, I was able to reach her shoes, which I removed before tossing them across the room. Then I groped beneath her to undo her pants, before scooting them down her legs and taking her underwear with them, leaving her bottom half adorably bare. I stroked the cheeks of her bottom, and she gave me a playful bite, which I answered with a playful smack.

  Reaching over her bobbing head, I was able to get my own shoes off and, with bit more struggling and shifting of positions, my own pants and underwear finally joined our other clothes on the floor by the bed. Cassidy's top proved the most problematic, as it had to come off over her head and, currently, that head was fully occupied, welded to me. Finally, with much coaxing, I got her to relinquish her insatiable grip for just long enough for me to tug the offending garment off. She immediately descended once more, taking me back into her ravenous mouth.

  I settled back on the bed, reveling in the sensations boiling up from below. There was an intensity in Cassidy's actions now. The light-hearted fun and experimentation of the night before was gone, to be replaced with a laser-like focus on the task in hand, the task of pleasuring me. I realized that she was trying to win me, to possess me, as if she thought that, if she sucked hard enough and well enough, then she could bring me into her life.

  Perhaps it was heartless of me to let her continue when I knew that there was no hope of such an outcome. Perhaps it would have been heartless of me to stop her doing something that was making her so happy, or to snatch away the fantasy to which she was currently clinging. Perhaps part of me needed to believe in that fantasy too, if only for a while. Or, perhaps, I was just too selfish to urge her to stop the wonderful things she was doing to me.

  I tried to put all such concerns to one side and live in the moment, relaxing back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, and feeling nothing but Cassidy's mouth. She was taking me closer and closer to the point of no return, a dangerous position to be in when I still had to make love to her. With another woman, I might have given up and gone off in her mouth, or pulled out then. But with Cassidy, it was different. No matter how close she took me, I knew I would have the strength to make her happy. For her, I would always find it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cassidy

  The trouble was, he was right. About it all. About me, about Dad, about him. I thoughtI did the right thing back in town when I let Dad see me. It was the only thing I could think of to save Archer, and I was never going to regret that. But now, the best thing to do would be for me to go home and for him to vanish. Dad would forgive me with time, and forget about Archer as soon as the next group of hoodlums came to town.

  And Archer? Well, whatever he said about not being able to leave Battle Pride, or about his enemies tracking him down, he could probably start fresh somewhere. Maybe he'd even have a shot at a normal life.

  But probably not. A man like Archer could only be what he was, even if he didn’t like it.

  Still, staying here with me, or going anywhere else with me, wasn't going to change that. Perhaps Dad would be a bit more cautious about picking Archer up while I was around, but he sure as hell wouldn't give up as long as I was with Archer. While his daughter was with an outlaw biker, he would stop at nothing to track that biker down. I was only making things worse for the man I loved by sticking
around.

  And, yet, I couldn't let him go.

  It was selfish and also self-destructive. But right now, just the idea of not touching him was more than I could stand, let alone actually letting him out of my life. I couldn't have borne it.

  So, I kept him with me the only way I knew how. I knew that sex was a stop-gap solution. It wouldn't work forever, but every moment I kept Archer with me was a good one. Every extra second of his company I gleaned was worthwhile. Besides, my desire for him was as powerful now as it had been on the cliff over the waterfall. I needed him, I wanted him, and I had to have him. I had to have him hold me, love me, and make the cruel, unfair world vanish into hot ecstasy, where nothing mattered but each other.

  Perhaps if I was good enough, I could make it last forever, and we could be here together until the end of time, locked in perpetual, unending orgasm. It was a long shot, but it had to be worth a try.

  The taste of him in my mouth suffused my senses. He pulsed against my tongue, and a ripple of pleasure seared through me. I let my hands run across his naked body, wanting to know every square inch of him, to touch the curve of every muscle, explore each crease, and to tantalize his skin until he could barely stand it. I wanted to do this forever, but, at the same time, my need for more was growing and bubbling within me. The point was fast approaching when I had to have him inside me or die.

  From the top of the bed, I heard him grunt slightly as my active tongue teased a particularly sensitive area. His perfect body stirred, caught between desire and discomfort, and I knew that the time had come. He couldn't take much more, and I couldn't wait any longer.

  Finally, and still a little reluctantly, I let the tremendous barrel of his organ slip from my mouth, and he gasped in relief. I crawled up him, kissing here and there at his firm, hard body, nipping the skin with my teeth. Reaching his face, I kissed him, and his hand locked at the back my head, drawing me deeper into a long, hard kiss.

  His hands, surprisingly inactive to this point, now stroked across my skin, lighting fresh fires wherever they landed, so exciting was his touch to me. I stretched out on top of him, feeling his heated member squeezed between our bellies, still wet with my saliva, writhing like a living thing. It was a pleasant sensation, but there were more pleasant places for that beautiful thing to be.

  Archer began to turn me over onto my back, but I stopped him.

  "No. Let me."

  He complied, allowing me to take the lead, perhaps aware that I was eager to master him, to keep him as my pet.

  As we continued to kiss, I scooted my knees forward to straddle him. I reached back, lifting my hips slightly so I could grasp his throbbing weapon and pull it roughly back, making him moan into my mouth. I raised my hips further, positioning myself, and then ...

  "Oh ..." In one, long, unctuous slide, I descended, taking his full length into me in one gulp and grinding my hips against him at the base, savoring the sensation and making sure I had every last inch. I began to move against him, remembering all he had taught me the night before, but also letting my instincts guide me, allowing myself to go where the needs of my body beckoned.

  Archer's hands slid up my thighs, and I caught them halfway, pushing them off of me and meshing my fingers with his, clasping his hands tightly till my knuckles were white. Strangely, I didn't want him to touch me. His touch steered me, controlled me, and this time I wanted to be the one running things. For now, he was mine, to do with as I pleased. It was in my power to give him pleasure, or make him wait. Things would move at my pace. I was in charge.

  I planted my hands firmly on his sculpted abs and leaned forward, rubbing myself against his hard rod. I still moved slowly, but with an intensity that seemed perfectly suited to the situation. I bore down on him, my whole being focused on the junction between us, the hot little notch where two became one. The sensations were sharper than ever before, lancing up through me with a diamond edge, searing my nerves like the flame of a blowtorch. All that impossible pressure, heat, sensation, and pleasure was focused in such a concentrated area. I was ready to burst into tears with the tightness of it. Looking at Archer's face, I could see he was feeling it too, his face contorted in an exquisite combination of pain and pleasure, a tortured ecstasy. He struggled to keep control and stay with me as I rode on, slowly but fiercely, driving his body to places no other woman could take it, because no other woman had this connection with him. It was a place reserved for lovers.

  I felt his hands settle on my ass, but I slapped them away again. He was trying to take control once more, trying to reassert his dominance and ease our love-making back to a gentler place. But I would not allow it. He was mine, he would be mine, and he would do as I wanted. Grabbing his wrists, I forced his hands back above his head, leaning forward so I was face to face with him, our eyes locked in a heated stare. We kissed hard, biting at each other like animals. To both of us, the rest of the world ceased to exist. There was only him and me, only this bed, only this sensation, this heat. I rode my hips backward and forward along his strong length, the friction thrilling me to new heights.

  But while I had been concentrating on keeping control of Archer, my own body had been plotting against me. While I might be able to master him, I could not restrain my own needs, and the orgasm that had, for a long while, been building in me, suddenly rushed in. I cried out loudly, my whole body bucking. Involuntarily, I released Archer's trapped hands, and, in an instant, he had flipped me over onto my back, growling like a caged lion as he did so.

  As my orgasm continued to wrack my body, Archer drove himself into me to the hilt. His ferocious masculinity, which I had kept chained up, now expressed itself. He dominated me utterly, pinning me to the bed, thrusting into me like a bull, and taking me straight from one orgasm into the next. The pleasure was almost more than I felt I could stand, and yet, I grabbed at Archer's hips, yanking him harder towards me.

  "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

  I must have blacked out, for how long I couldn't say, but when the world came back, Archer was still on top of me, still hard inside of me, gently kissing my face. I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled hard, biting his chin and neck.

  "You bastard," I murmured.

  Archer just grinned in reply.

  But I wasn't done yet. Without warning, I looped a leg around his hips and nimbly turned him over onto his back. I might not have had Archer's strength, but I was fit enough to take him by surprise and hold him there. I reached back to hold his thighs and began twisting on top of him, grinding myself into him in tight little circles, using him.

  Archer was having none of that. Grabbing me, he easily pulled me over again, onto my back, beneath him. But I was ready for him this time and wound one of my legs tight around his, allowing me to turn him again, putting him back where I wanted him, under me. This battle to be on top continued a while, Archer using muscle, me using guile. Over and over, we twisted and rolled, the bedsprings complaining beneath us, the act of sex turning into a war for supremacy. But such a war was only ever going to end one way. Perhaps Archer had been toying with me all along, letting me think I could win, that I might be able to control him. Now, as we both approached the point of no return, he made his move, pinning me to the bed so I could not move. I was his to control.

  I had expected him to pound me into the mattress, to aggressively fuck me to orgasm after orgasm. That would have been fine with me. Instead, he stared down at me a long time, and I stared back at him, our bodies frozen in an explicit tableau. What passed between our eyes went beyond lust or heat. There was an understanding of what this little battle for supremacy had meant, of why I had needed to control him, and of why I never could. Our eyes remained fixed to each other as he began to move within me again, slowly but firmly, as regular and unstoppable as the tide. The end was coming, and there was nothing that I could do to stop it.

  My last orgasm was the most overwhelming of all, perhaps because it occurred simultaneously with Archer’s. But I think it was more because, u
nlike every other time we had had sex, this time our eyes never left each other's. We were locked as one, from groin to eyes—one body, one soul. We came together in more ways than one.

  There was little to say afterwards. We both knew that it was the end of something. A battle had been fought, and neither of us had won.

  Exhausted from the long night, we snuggled up together beneath the sheets to sleep through the day. Archer spooned up behind me, draping a protective arm across me, and I thought that, although I might never possess him, it was rather wonderful to be possessed by him. As we lay there, pressed to each other, I felt his impossible organ stir back into life, hardening against my backside. Without a word, I raised my leg, then reached back to guide him back inside me. Quietly and gently, we made love, almost too tired to move, slipping in and out of dazed consciousness. When we both finally came, together again, we were asleep before the shock waves of orgasm had passed, his wonderful penis slowly softening inside me as we slept.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Archer

  When I woke up, the afternoon sun was already peeping through the blinds on the motel windows. I looked down at the figure curled up in the bed beside me. Cassidy looked so tiny, so vulnerable, and fragile. It was hard to believe that this little creature was the same one who had utterly exhausted me and repeatedly drained me over the last twenty-four hours.