by Gemma James
Rafe’s silence was too disturbing, and when I opened my eyes to face his reaction, utter betrayal blanketed his expression.
“You went along with the lie.” No question, no inflection in his words. Just cold, hard truth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a sob constricting my throat. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“How about tell the fucking truth?”
I jerked back as his rage thundered over me. “I c-couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?” He leaned over the mattress, arms supporting his weight as he dripped water all over the bed and me.
“Couldn’t.” Our gazes collided. “He said he’d kill you if I didn’t keep quiet.”
Closing his eyes, he dropped his head and let out a breath. The admission seemed to burrow beneath his rage. His body pressed into mine, and we stayed that way for a few seconds until he suddenly bolted and let out a roar I was sure reached every crevice of the cabin. He whirled around and all but flew into the wall, his fist slamming into it, again and again, until his knuckles dripped with blood.
She cried for me to stop, but I continued to beat my fist against solid log as memories flickered behind my eyes in red-hazed horror. Instead of me taking the abuse, it was her. Zach holding her down, violating her, smothering her cries as he rammed into her.
The images shifted, and I was back in prison, full of rage yet unable to do anything about it as they took turns fucking me while the guards let it happen. All this time, I thought she’d callously tossed me aside, but I hadn’t known why. Knowing didn't resolve anything, didn’t bring me closure, and it sure as fuck didn't absolve us of our sins. Knowing only made me feel worse, because she’d suffered in silence out of fear for me.
I risked a glance at her, searching her expression for signs of duplicity. I’d rather find she was lying than accept what she'd told me as truth, but the same harrowing pain I’d seen in the mirror, day after day for the past eight years, haunted her face. I had trouble reconciling the Zach I remembered with the picture she painted. We’d been close, fiercely competitive but like brothers, and to find out such vile poison ran through his veins, that he’d hurt his own sister and threaten me…I couldn’t comprehend it.
I dropped my bloodied fist, and it was a miracle my hand wasn’t broken. Her whimpers tore through me as I staggered into the bathroom, heart pounding so fucking hard, I thought it would rip from my chest and tumble to the floor. Flinging the door to the medicine cabinet open, I pulled out gauze and wound it around my hand, but my head was still back in the bedroom with her, still wrapped up in the waves of shame that emanated from her being.
I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, especially when I laid eyes on the bathtub. Water still pooled around it, evidence of my torture methods. What I’d done to her in order to get the truth…now I wanted nothing more than to undo it, to go on believing she’d been a spoiled teenager, pride bruised over rejection. Just a selfish kid who’d flung out a single lie without giving thought to the destruction she'd cause.
Swallowing hard, I brought my injured hand to my throat, as if that would alleviate the need for air. I had to get out of there for a while, had to get my head on straight before I tried to straighten out hers. I almost laughed. How did one straighten out so many years of pain and betrayal?
She was huddling under the bedding when I returned to the room. I pulled on a pair of jeans, and the weight of her stare pressed on me, burned to my bones.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Outside.” I shrugged on a T-shirt, then escaped the room and the desolation seeping from her gaze. Her soft cries followed me down the ladder, but I was in no shape to comfort her, especially since I was no better than her brother, no better than the men who’d raped me in prison. If only I’d stopped long enough to think of all the angles, past my fury, maybe I would have considered she was a victim in this.
I’d kidnapped a girl who at age fifteen had been helpless in a situation forced upon her. I’d punished her without knowing the whole fucking picture. It wasn’t even the sex that bothered me, as she’d wanted it. It was everything else—like being a cold and heartless ass who’d used her fear against her, debased her, and made her feel like she meant nothing to me.
I stormed outside but didn't go far, as if an invisible line anchored me to the house, to her. I clenched my jaw with the need to find Zach and dismember his dick from his body, but I couldn't leave her alone, and it dawned on me that I couldn't confront him either. He thought she was dead.
Fuck.
The whole world thought she was dead. I balled my fists. I'd taken her, and it was too late to go back. I didn't want to go back. I wanted her, all of her—her pain and sorrow, her joy and triumphs, her orgasms and her agony when I held them at bay. But letting her go would be the right thing to do.
I glanced toward the cabin and stilled. She stood in the doorway, eyes red-rimmed and haunted, her body wrapped in my sheet. She'd just admitted to being raped by her own brother, yet I wanted to tear that sheet from her and throw her to the ground. The memory of her mouth around my dick in the bathtub hit me, as did the fact I hadn't reached orgasm. I was royally fucked up.
I crossed the distance, climbed the steps to the porch, and shoved past her. Her footsteps pattered on my heels as I entered the living room. She walked timidly, as if scared to make a sound. Slumping to the couch, I held my head in my good hand while my injured one dangled between my knees. She sank to the floor and took my bad hand in hers. It didn't seem to matter what I’d done to her, or what I would do to her—I was starting to believe she was incapable of flushing me from her system.
She unwound the gauze and brushed her fingers over my swollen knuckles. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s not bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
I angled my head and looked at her. “You didn't force my fist into the wall.”
“I’m not just talking about your hand. I’m talking about all of it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. She inched away, gaze downcast. I grabbed her hand and pulled her near again. “If I’d known what he did to you—”
“It’s my fault you didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter, Alex. I took every fucking thing that happened to me in the last eight years and dumped it on you.” Holes riddled my soul, each one representing something I’d never get back. My father’s funeral, the first years of my son’s life, having my career snatched from me—all because of Zach’s jealousy. Even knowing she was a victim didn’t quench my thirst for her pain, and that made me the vilest form of a bastard. “I got off on hurting you.” I stared at her long and hard so she'd understand just how screwed up I was. “I still want to hurt you, so fucking much.”
Her breath escaped in a shaky sigh. She wiped underneath her eyes, though she tried to hide it.
I hauled her onto my lap, unable to contain myself, and settled her knees on either side of me. The sheet draped open, and her hot pussy smothered my lap through my jeans. My cock sat between us, hard and painful, a reminder we had unfinished business.
“It’s all my fault,” she said, clutching my shirt.
“You were just a kid. You need to know it wasn't your fault.” I swallowed hard as memories of my own assault broke free. I’d learned to contain them, to continue getting out of bed every morning and living life without freezing whenever something—a smell, a sound, or simple touch—triggered the flashbacks. “Zach knew better. Fuck, he was my age, and I sure as hell knew better.” I ran a hand through her hair, fingers catching in the tangles, and pulled. She winced, but I didn’t stop. “For fuck’s sake, he was your brother.”
“Step-brother.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” How it was possible for us to carry on this conversation with her naked and in my lap, my erection growing by the second, was beyond me. “He had no right to touch you.” Instantly, I dropped my hand from her hair as my own words came back to me like a boomerang. �
�I’m no better. I shouldn’t have taken you.” And I sure as fuck shouldn’t entertain the thought of bending her over the couch and pushing into her.
“I’m glad you did.”
Did she not realize what she was saying? I'd put her through hell, and my dick wasn't done with her yet, not even close. “I wanted to take you.” My gaze veered to her neck when she swallowed hard. I settled a hand around her throat, surprised when she didn't fight me. The compulsion to squeeze the breath from her beckoned. “I have a demon inside me. That’s what happens when a man has dark tendencies and no outlet for them. I used to fight them out of me in the cage.”
“Rafe.” My name fell from her lips with a breathy sigh. I pressed a thumb against her collarbone where her pulse fluttered as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
I didn’t want to think it, let alone say it, but fuck, somewhere inside me a conscience still pulsed. I had to set her free. Except I had no end game. I’d fantasized about taking her for years, had planned out every last detail, but I hadn’t foreseen the need to let her go. I didn’t think she’d run to the cops, as her guilt came off her in palpable waves, but where would letting her off this island leave me, besides my life in utter disarray? I cursed my fucking conscience and its bad timing. “This has to end, Alex.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m letting you go.” The words hung between us, and now that they were out there, I wanted to snatch them back. There were so many reasons not to keep her here, namely that she wasn’t as guilty as I initially thought in sending me to prison. She’d played a part, but how much choice had she really had? Fifteen was young, much too young to deal with rape, abortions, and blackmail.
“Why?” she whispered, as if the thought of getting her freedom back was unbearable.
I moved my hand to the back of her neck and drew her close, aching to take her mouth. “Because I still want to hurt you,” I said, my attention drifting to her parted lips, “still want you in ways that isn’t right. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll beg to be mine, and that’s a bad idea.”
“I want to be yours,” she said without hesitation, as if she wanted to be my everything, as if the idea of my being done with her tortured her. What we shared was pure obsession, nothing more and nothing less, and it was the sweetest madness in hell.
I shook my head, trying to convince myself as much as her. “I can’t keep doing this to you. I battled with myself enough before I knew Zach’s part in this, but now…”
She averted her gaze, but not before new tears formed. Watching her emotionally withdraw pissed me off.
“What is it? What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
I clutched her jaw and forced her to look at me. “What are you holding back?”
“Nothing,” she said again, though I saw the lie in her eyes.
“You need to be straight with me, on all of it, because I'm so fucking close to hunting his ass down and killing him.” The need to make him pay for what he'd done to her, for what he'd done to me, was strong and growing stronger with each second she tried to hide shit from me. And he would pay. Someway, somehow, I’d make him wish he’d never met me.
She shut her eyes to the tears slipping down her face, and I was a bastard because I wanted to taste them.
“Just tell me, sweetheart.” Before I lost control and gave in to the boiling need inside me, to the demon that gnashed his teeth and almost broke free at the sight of her pain.
“He made me come.”
“You got off when he raped you?” I wasn't surprised, not if the way she'd responded to me was any indication.
“Yes.” She blinked several times but the flood had started and wouldn't stop. Her chest heaved with rising sobs. She didn’t even try to pull away. She fucking sat in my lap, her chin trapped in my grip, and let me witness her shame. “He’s been fucking me for years. I’m not as innocent as you think.”
Her deviant nature pulled at me like a habit I couldn’t quit. I took her mouth with greed, forcing her lips apart and thrusting my tongue inside. No build up, no closed-mouthed kisses to ease us into it. We plummeted into a full-on mouth fuck. With a deep moan, she pushed her tongue against mine, and I sucked her deeper, tasting her flavor and her tears.
Her needy fingers sifted through my hair and yanked, and I thought I'd die if I didn't taste more of her. Her perky tits with nipples partially obscured from the sheet, her belly button where I ached to dip my tongue. Her drenched pussy. I wanted to work her body until she begged, then push her further, making her scream and writhe with the need to come. I held her by the nape, placed my bloodied hand at the small of her back, and locked her in my kiss.
The issues between us didn't matter. Nothing mattered so long as she surrendered her soul to my demon and let him devour her. That single thought was powerful enough to make me pull away. I wouldn’t let him finish her off. She’d been used and abused by her own brother, no one around to protect her. I’d be damned if I destroyed her too.
I pushed her from my lap. “This isn’t happening.” I rose to my feet, silently cursing as she folded the sheet around herself in shame, and adjusted my pants.
“W-what are you doing?” she asked as I headed toward the loft. Her bare feet scampered after me.
“Getting you some clothes.” Until Jax and I figured out what to do with her, I wasn’t going to tempt myself with her naked body. I climbed the steps and marched to my dresser, where I’d stashed a couple of outfits in her size. I pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and tossed them at her.
“Rafe…please.” Her voice cracked on a sob. “Don’t push me away. I need you.”
“I’m the last person you need.” I stumbled toward the bathroom without looking at her, my heart in my throat, and prepared myself for a long, cold shower and sex with my own fucking hand.
“What’d you do to him?” Jax asked. He sat across the table from me, working on his second beer, his plate from dinner empty in front of him. Rafe had inhaled his food before returning outside to work in the yard some more. He’d found “things” to do all day, the type of mundane tasks that kept him away from me.
“Nothing,” I said, my shoulders slumping.
“So you siting here, fully clothed, I might add, while he’s out there attacking the shrubbery is a normal everyday occurrence? I won’t even go into how no one said a word over dinner. I know him, and I know when something’s off.”
My gaze fell to the sweatpants and T-shirt I’d slept in. Rafe had taken the couch, leaving his bed to me. I glanced through the window. The late afternoon sun beat down on him, and his naked torso glistened in the heat. I wiped sweat from my brow. Today had been a hot one. I followed the lines of his tattoos with my gaze, and he caught me staring. His mere glance made my panties damp. I’d brought myself to orgasm last night, surrounded by his sheets and smell, but the release had been empty and anti-climatic, only serving to make me want him more. I’d ached to have him next to me, inside me, his body indiscernible from mine. I wanted him to make me come, craved it, because as long as he withheld that gift, he withheld his forgiveness.
Jax rose with a sigh. He exited through the back door, leaving it open, and hopped down the stairs of the patio to where Rafe was indeed abusing the shrubbery. He dropped the clippers as Jax approached, and though I couldn’t hear what they said, it looked as if they were arguing. Jax gestured toward me, his lips tight, and Rafe shook his head. They exchanged words for a few minutes, then Jax stomped into the kitchen with Rafe on his heels.
“This is gonna blow up in our faces and you know it,” Jax said. “She’ll go straight to the cops, man. Never trust a woman, especially that one. I thought you’d figured that out by now, or did she castrate you?”
“You think I want him to go back to jail?” I interrupted, clenching my teeth and matching his glare.
“Why not? You sent him there once, didn’t you? What’s to stop you from doing it again?”
“Fuc
k,” Rafe said. “I’m just trying to do the right thing. She doesn’t belong here.”
I sat up straight, my mouth dropping open, and I was about to protest when Jax spoke.
“What changed? Is she a rotten lay?”
Rafe’s fist shot out and caught Jax in the nose. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“What the hell, man! We’re really doing this over a chick?” Jax grabbed a paper towel from the counter and staunched the blood.
“We’re doing this because you’re not listening! Things have changed. She’s gotta go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, and they both stopped and stared. I stood, gathered the dishes, and moved to the sink with as much calm as I could manage. “I’ve got nowhere to go, Rafe.” What I didn’t say was how I’d rather eat glass than leave him.
Jax sighed heavily, blowing his shaggy hair from his eyes. “I’m not sticking around to argue about it. If it’s gonna blow, it’s gonna blow. I’m not staying around for the explosion.” He pointed a finger at Rafe. “Just think about it. If you let her go, we can kiss our freedom goodbye. I don’t give a shit what she says otherwise.” He tossed the soiled towel into the trash, spit out a mouthful of blood, and grabbed another paper towel on his way to the door. “Besides, you’re never getting her outta your system. You took her, so deal with it. She’s yours.”
“Jax, wait—”
The door slammed on his exit, and the echo made the silence between Rafe and me that much louder. I was frozen, afraid to turn around and look at him. A chair scraped across the hardwood, and I heard him settle into it. Not knowing what else to do, I loaded the dishwasher as questions roared in my head, feuding with each other until one finally broke free.
“Did you tell him about Zach?”
“No, but I should have. He has a right to be pissed. His ass is on the line too. If I let you go—”
I spun around. “I don’t want you to let me go!”