Skin (44 Chapters #1)

by B. B. Easton

  Still did.

  Knight dropped my hand once we reached our destination and turned to face me. I think he could smell my fear, because he cocked his head to one side, the way he did when he was analyzing something, and asked, “Do you trust me?”

  I straightened my posture and nodded, trying to seem confident, but looking into Knight’s eyes was about as easy as staring down both barrels of a shot gun. When he finally lowered those cobalt crosshairs from my face I breathed a sigh of relief. His hands began to roam over my trembling body, taking with them my jacket, my Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt, and the safety pins from my plaid wraparound skirt. I made sure to remove my five-pound water bra myself, but Knight left my panties on.

  I was freezing and afraid, but I was still there. Trying to be brave. Part of me wanted to reward Knight for being so sweet to me. Part of me was scared to tell him no. And part of me—the pathologically curious part that got itself into situations like this—just really, really wanted to know what this whole sex thing was all about.

  Knight ran his hands up and down the length of my arms to keep me warm as he gazed down at my almost-nakedness. His hands drifted to my breasts, where he grasped both winged barbells and slid them back and forth, gently, while we both watched. The sensation had my panties soaked immediately. Would I ever get used to that? I hoped not.

  Sliding one hand between my legs, Knight rubbed me over my panties, making me crazy with need. I wanted them off. I wanted something to fill me, and I wanted it now.

  I moaned involuntarily, drawing Knight’s attention up to my mouth. He split my lips with his tongue and kissed me deep, still teasing my nipples, teasing my clit. He kissed the cold and the fear and the self-consciousness away. Kissed me until I wanted him to fuck me, right there, on my ex-boyfriend’s bed.

  Reading my mind, Knight grasped both sides of my purple panties and stretched them to their breaking point. I released a tiny gasp of surprise, which—was immediately followed by a much louder one—when Knight brought the shredded fabric to his mouth and slowly ran his tongue over an embarrassingly large wet spot.

  A large, red wet spot.

  Ohhhhh shit.

  Knight’s eyes rolled back the second the taste hit his tongue, and I have to admit, that shit turned me on. When his eyes reopened, they looked like they had the first time he tasted my blood. Wild.

  Pushing me backwards against the wall, Knight grabbed the back of my head with one hand and plunged a finger into me as deep as it would go. He assaulted my mouth, practically snarled into it, as he slid another finger in. His pace was frenetic. His need palpable. The room heated up at least ten degrees, then Knight withdrew his fingers.

  And painted my skin red.

  He swiped scarlet swirls around my nipples and twin stripes down the length of my sternum. Knight, the blood fiend, and Knight, the artist, had converged, and I needed for one or both of them to make me come before my head exploded.

  As his fingers filled me again, Knight traced the lines of his painting with this tongue, erasing it lick by lick.

  It was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. My legs began to shake and I sank down onto Knight’s fingers.

  “Knight…please…” I whispered, clawing at his hoodie and T-shirt.

  Heeding my plea, Knight stood up and pulled both garments off over his head, revealing the entire head of his extremely hard cock bursting out of the top of his jeans.

  Knight tossed his T-shirt onto the center of the bed, tossed me on top of it, then began removing items from his pockets and setting them on the nightstand in rapid succession. In two seconds flat he’d managed to extract a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, his keys, his knife, his wallet, a condom from inside his wallet, not one but two pairs of handcuffs, and a clear plastic bear filled with honey from his jeans.

  What in the mother fuck?

  While I was busy trying to figure out the logistics and reasoning behind the assorted items of sin arranged on Colton’s dusty nightstand, Knight had stepped out of his jeans and Union Jack print boxer shorts. He was naked and beautiful. He was thrilling and frightening. He was sensitive yet blood thirsty, and I wanted all of him.

  Knight smiled my favorite smile as he gazed down at me, lying on my back—all skin and bones and combat boots—and I opened my arms to let him in. Before I could blink, Knight grabbed the wrist closest to him, slapped a handcuff on it, and secured it to Colton’s bedpost. I laughed in surprise and watched Knight’s smile morph into a mischievous grin. He picked the other set of bracelets up and climbed on top of me.

  Knight secured my other hand to the opposite bedpost, then hovered over me in triumph. He looked so…happy. Wicked, brutally fucking masculine, and quite possibly insane, but happy.

  “You didn’t tell me you were on your period,” he said, dragging his thick cock through my slippery folds.

  “I didn’t know,” I whispered, trying not to blush.

  Lowering himself so that we were skin-to-skin, Knight growled into my ear, “I fucking love it.”

  “I can tell,” I giggled, pulling on my restraints for leverage as I lifted my hips into his slip-sliding shaft.

  “Can I lick you…there?”

  I nodded, desperate for it.

  Knight kissed his way down my body, which had already been licked clean, and I let my knees fall open for him. I wanted to run my hands over his fuzzy blond head while he fucked me with his mouth, but I couldn’t. All I could do was tug on my shackles and take it.

  The helplessness excited me, as did the low groan Knight let out as he strained to fill me with his tongue. My hips jerked in response to the sound, and my insides fluttered. Sensing that I was close, Knight reached around my thigh and rubbed my clit in small, quick circles until an earthquake of pleasure shook my core and swallowed me whole. My arms involuntarily yanked at my restraints as I fell into an oblivion of moans and curse words and spasms and darkness.

  While I concentrated on trying to survive my orgasm, Knight wiped his face clean with the T-shirt he’d laid under me, tore open the condom wrapper, and stretched the latex sheath almost to its breaking point over his swollen, neglected cock.

  Positioning himself at the opening of my throbbing orifice, Knight hesitated. His face looked severe, worried even. The trepidation in his eyes told me all I needed to know. My fearless Knight was scared—scared for me, and of himself. He was about to hurt me worse than I’d ever been hurt by another person.

  But I was ready.

  Or so I thought.

  No sooner had I confidently nodded my consent than I could feel my insides being sliced to ribbons. I grasped the handcuffs firmly with both fists and sucked in a pained breath through my clenched teeth as I fought back the tears welling up behind my tightly shut eyelids.

  Don’t cry out. Don’t cry out. Just go to your happy place and wait it out. You can do this, BB. You’re a badass.

  But I couldn’t go to my happy place. Because I was already there. I was skin-to-skin with the man I loved, being worshipped by the devil himself.

  I don’t remember how long it lasted. I don’t remember what Knight did when he came. I don’t remember him withdrawing that foot-long chainsaw from my mutilated vagina. But I do remember the way he wrapped himself around my body when it was over. The way he buried his face between the pillow and my cheek.

  I didn’t know if he was seeking comfort for what he’d done or offering it, but his arms felt like giant bandages putting me back together. I wanted to return his embrace, but my arms were met with immediate resistance and the sound of metal scraping wood.

  Knight’s head shot up at the sound, and his face immediately contorted into a crumpled mixture of remorse and concern when he registered where it was coming from. “Fuck! The handcuffs!”

  He leapt up and grabbed his key ring off the nightstand, pausing only to discard the murder weapon into the trashcan. After freeing my hands, Knight pulled me into his lap sideways and wrapped his arms around me, where he alternated
between kissing, rubbing, and apologizing to my abraded red wrists.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing a particularly nonexistent scratch. “I’m so fucking sorry.” Knight’s worried eyes scanned me head to toe. Finding another invisible wound, he kissed that one too. “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay. I tried so hard not to hurt you. You’re the only thing I’ve ever loved, Punk. If I hurt you, it would fucking destroy me.”

  Although my body had just suffered excruciating pain at the hands of that man, my soul felt brand spanking new. Shinier. More powerful. The pain had scorched away the last, lingering traces of my childlike innocence, weakness, and naiveté—qualities that no longer served me—and allowed a stronger, braver, wiser version of me to rise from the ashes.

  I rubbed Knight’s fuzzy head, and kissed his downturned mouth at least a dozen times. “Oh, I’m better than okay,” I beamed. “I want to do it again.”

  My boyfriend—my sweet, worried, lovesick psycho—treated me to my favorite smile, and his cock immediately twitched against my hip.

  “Knight?” I asked, catching a glimpse of the collection of stuff he left on the nightstand, “What’s the honey for?”

  Knight captured my bottom lip between his grinning teeth and snarled, “That’s for round two.”

  Winter break was amazing. With no school and us only working nights and weekends, Knight and I had all day to hang out at Peg’s house and find new rooms to christen. And pieces of furniture to christen. Hell, by the end of those two weeks we were having trouble finding a patch of carpet that we hadn’t done it on.

  And when we weren’t fucking, we were cuddling. Oh my God, the cuddling. It was official. I was madly, truly, deeply, stupidly in love.

  And I was sore. As hell.

  But one day during the break—the day before Christmas—there was a car parked in Peg’s driveway when we got there.

  “Shit. I guess Peg got Christmas Eve off,” I said. “Where should we go?”

  I didn’t volunteer my house because…skinhead. I mean, it’s one thing to get picked up and dropped off by a guy with a shaved head. It’s another thing entirely to bring him inside to meet your parents dressed like a Neo-Nazi.

  “The shop is closing early today, but it won’t be cleared out until about three,” Knight said.

  “Can we go to your house?” I asked.

  “I don’t have a house,” Knight responded in a clipped tone.

  “You know what I mean. Your stepdad’s house. Is he there?”

  Knight sighed and put the truck in reverse. “He won’t be home until this afternoon.”

  “So, I finally get to see where you live?” I chirped.

  “No. You get to see where I stay four nights a week. I don’t fucking live there.”

  Knight drove past our high school and turned into a massive, gated community about a half a mile up the street. I knew the neighborhood, but I’d never been inside. Those kids didn’t go to our school. They all went to private schools.

  Knight had to open his door to type his code into the keypad because his truck was jacked up so high. It was all so ridiculous.

  “You live here?” I asked as Knight’s truck snarled through the opening gate.

  “No,” Knight corrected me, again. “I don’t fucking live here. I keep my shit here. I’m not some little rich boy.”

  “Okay, okay. Jeez.”

  I practically licked the glass as we drove past mini-mansion after mini-mansion. The streets were lined with perfectly spaced Bradford pear trees. There were ponds. There were fountains. Every home was a completely different custom style, yet they were all similarly decorated for the holidays.

  When Knight finally pulled into a circular driveway and shut off his engine I had to suppress a giggle. The house…was pink.

  The place was gorgeous, don’t get me wrong. It looked like a European chateau—three-stories tall, Spanish tile roof, an elaborate wrought iron staircase leading up to a set of massive wooden double doors—but the stucco had been painted an unapologetic shade of salmon.

  I could see why Knight felt more at home at Peg’s place. His stepdad’s joint looked like the Barbie Fucking Dream Home.

  I followed Knight down a paved path to the right side of the house. Evidently, that entire wing of the home was dedicated to storing aircraft carriers. There were four garage doors, but one of them was easily double or triple the height of the other two.

  With one of the forty-seven keys on his keychain, Knight unlocked a nondescript door attached to the garage and held it open for me. Inside I saw why Knight’s stepdad needed such a big garage. The man owned a motherfucking sailboat.

  “Holy shit!” I blurted out.

  Knight just ignored me and walked through the garage, past some little sports car under a tarp, and up a set of stairs. The door at the top made a beeping sound when he opened it, just before we entered into the Barbie Dream Chateau kitchen.

  I felt like Alice in Wonderland after she drank the potion that made her shrink. Everything was so big. The ceilings went on forever. The moldings were a foot wide. Even the tiles on the floor were gigantic, and you could have roasted an entire pig in the oven.

  A high-pitched voice echo through the house, “Ronnie?”

  Knight rolled his eyes at me and called back, “Yeah,” as he opened one of the massive fridge doors and peeked inside.

  A tiny, tired-looking woman appeared in the kitchen with waist-length white-blonde hair. She was holding some kind of little frou-frou dog under her arm like a handbag and was wearing a shit ton of makeup—probably to hide the fact that her eyelids didn’t appear to want to stay open.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she squealed as she set the yappy little critter down on the floor and made her way over to me. “You must be BB!” Our two boney bodies would have clanked against one another when she squeezed me if it weren’t for her comedically large breast implants.

  “Oh, my gosh, you are just as pretty as a picture!” It was like she was doing a bad impersonation of a Southern pageant mom. Nobody’s voice actually sounded like that.

  “Candi, this is BB. BB, this is my mom, Candi,” Knight said as he slammed the fridge shut and began walking out of the room.

  I guess that’s my cue.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, turning to follow Knight, lest I be lost in that labyrinth forever.

  “Wait,” Candi reached out and touched my arm with her cold little hand.

  When I turned back around to face her she kind of glanced left and right to make sure no one was listening, then leaned forward and whispered, “Do you have a cigarette I can borrow, honey?”

  I bit back a laugh and whispered, “Sure.”

  As I dug in my purse, Candi looked around like some kind of paranoid woodland creature who’d just heard a twig snap.

  I handed her a Camel Light and asked if she needed a lighter.

  “Oh, no, honey. I’ve got one. Thanks,” she whispered. “My old man hates it when I smoke, but what he don’t know won’t kill ‘em, right?”

  She forgot to use her pageant mom voice on that last sentence. Her pitch was still high, but she sounded a lot more like a woman who would use the term, “my old man,” than the vacant trophy wife she was pretending to be. I bet if I’d looked in her closet—past the Burberry trench coats and matching Louis Vuitton luggage—there’d be a vintage motorcycle jacket, size XS, tucked away in the back that I’d just love to “borrow.”

  I said my goodbyes and rounded the corner that Knight had taken. It led into a foyer that put Peg’s four-by-four patch of parquet to shame. The space was two stories tall, contained a grand circular staircase leading up to the second floor, and was practically filled top to bottom with an ornate Better Homes and Gardens-looking Christmas tree. When I got upstairs, I found myself in a hallway lined with at least ten closed doors and one open one way down at the end of the hall.

  I tiptoed over to it and peeked inside. The room was spacious, had a large window with a view of o
ne of the neighborhood’s many fountained ponds, and looked like an army-navy surplus store swallowed a pet shop. The walls were painted a dark hunter green and were covered in gun racks and knife racks and glass cases containing vintage-looking grenades and land mines and shit. There was a collection of glass aquariums and cages by the window. A tattered POW-MIA flag hung over a wooden twin-size bed. And on the bed sat a skinhead, who was angrily unlacing his boots.

  “She bummed a cigarette off you, didn’t she?”

  “Hell yeah, she did,” I laughed as I walked around, inspecting all the weaponry.

  Knight chunked a boot into the open walk-in closet next to his bed and started unlacing the other one. “She won’t fucking buy ‘em herself because she’s afraid Chuck will find out, so her rich ass tries to steal ‘em from me.”

  Knight sounded pissed, but I thought it was kind of funny. “Why don’t you just have her give you cash and you can buy her some?”

  “Because fuck her.”

  Damn. Okay. New subject.

  “Knight,” I said, taking a mental inventory.

  “What?” Jesus, he was pissy. He really did hate being there.

  “Why do you have thirteen rifles, eighteen knives, three swords, and four, no, five hand grenades in your bedroom?”

  “My grandfather.”

  Oh, right. The war hero.

  Knight pointed at a glass case standing upright on a desk by the door. “Those are all of his medals. Fucker was hardcore.”

  I noted, as I pretended to give a shit about his grandfather’s medals, that there wasn’t a stitch of skinhead propaganda or paraphernalia to be seen. Everybody I knew decorated their bedrooms with the things they loved, things they identified with. Lance’s room had been full of punk rock shit. My room was full of punk rock shit, magazine cut-outs of eight-pound supermodels, paintings I’d done of eight-pound anime characters, Knight’s drawings, and photos of my friends. Knight’s room was full of weapons. And animals. And proof that once upon a time, there was a man in his family that he could look up to.