I Dream of Spiders

by Keating, Elle

  “Please,” he says. I have never heard a man beg before. The strain in his voice is my undoing and I suck him to the back of my throat. His hips thrust up, forcing his cock deeper. The sudden movement almost triggers my gag reflex but I fight through it. “Clare, I’m going to come,” he pants.

  I swallow against the crown, causing him to curse and bow off the bed. I can feel his agony, his need to come and come hard. As much as I want him to release down my throat, to taste him completely, my body aches for him. I kiss the tip and straddle him once more. “I need you, Griffin, inside me.” I move my panties aside and impale myself on his cock until he is balls deep. His hands fly to my ass and squeeze. I will have marks there tomorrow, bruises that will prove this night happened.

  “Fuck, Clare!” he hisses through gritted teeth.

  I rise to my knees and slam back down. His cock stretches me, fills me, causing pain to mingle with pleasure. I can feel my orgasm mount, the pressure building. I am so close and then he rolls us over. He pulls out just long enough to rip away my panties and slams back in. My vision blurs as he buries himself inside me, as he drags his cock along my sensitive front wall. My nails dig into his shoulders and I cry out. “Harder, Griffin. More!”

  “So fucking perfect,” he growls before his lips mash against mine. I open for him and swallow every toe-curling groan. Our tongues duel. Our teeth clash. He continues to slam into me as we chase our climax.

  He bites down on my lower lip and then pulls away. Frantic, he grips the curve of my ass and lifts me to the angle he wants and thrusts into me in one fierce drive, causing my mouth to open on a silent scream. My body jerks with every pulse of pleasure and I watch him throw his head back and roar my name, the name he gave me. I somehow know to clench my inner muscles to goad on his climax, to make him spill every drop deep inside me. He seals his mouth over mine and kisses me slowly, like he did last night, like this isn’t a mistake.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Griffin

  I can’t stop staring at her. I’ve memorized every curve, every freckle, every beautiful inch. I can still see faint marks from where I squeezed her ass, when she rode me so fucking hard. My cock stirs at the thought of what we did, how she initiated it, showed me that she wanted me. Me. The second she told me that Dylan wasn’t her boyfriend but her father, I wanted to strip away her clothes and get lost in her. But last night hasn’t changed anything. She could still leave at any time. When all this is over, when her head is clear, Clare will most likely return to her life.

  I have to think with my head and not my heart. Emotions are running high right now. Clare was kidnapped, had witnessed horrific abuse, and stripped of her memories, only to have them come back in random bits and pieces. It was only natural that she turned to me as she clawed for solid ground, for some semblance of control. I can’t blame her for that.

  She clings to me because I can keep her safe, not because she has feelings for me.

  And I can’t have feelings for her. Having feelings for a woman, trusting and caring for one, is what almost got me killed. I shouldn’t give Miranda power over me. The logical side of me, the one that is able to remain detached and not influenced by unwanted emotions, knows that Miranda is my past. But I can’t shake it. I remember what those months were like, what my sister had to deal with after the shooting. Physically, I was in bad shape. Recuperating from the bullet wound in my chest was a pain in the ass, but that paled in comparison to the dark thoughts I had. And they were relentless. I couldn’t stop thinking about why Miranda did what she did. Why she cheated. With my brother, of all people. I knew money had a lot to do with it. My brother’s illegal activities earned him the money she craved, and she was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But when did Miranda completely shed her soul? Had she always been so heartless, so manipulative, and I just didn’t see it? Had any of it, any part of our marriage, been real? I gave everything I had to her. I loved her.

  I wanted to have children with her.

  My eyes instinctively drift to Clare’s belly, though it is completely covered by a white sheet. A few minutes ago, my cock twitched at just the sight of her sleeping, but now I am hard as a rock. I took her without a condom last night, which means my seed is still inside her. An image of Clare pregnant with my child, her belly swollen, flashes in my mind and I smile. It shouldn’t make me happy to think that we may have made a baby. It was reckless, and I don’t know how Clare is going to feel about this when she wakes up. I stand up from the bed and walk into the bathroom. I brush my teeth and give my face a good scrub. I’m in the middle of drying off my forehead with a scratchy motel towel when I look down and see the scar just above my heart. Even after a year it still looks angry. I can’t stand the sight of it. Every time I look at it, I see Miranda and the hatred she had in her eyes when she pulled the trigger.

  This has to end. I can’t risk my heart again. I know Clare isn’t Miranda. They couldn’t be more different. But I remember how I almost lost not only my life but my mind, all because I trusted a woman. I will keep Clare safe, find whoever is hunting her, and help her get her life back. She deserves that. She deserves to be happy.

  I leave the bathroom and find some paper and a pen in the desk drawer next to the bed. I scribble a note telling her that I have gone to the store and will be right back. Placing the note on my pillow, I take one last look at her and slip out the door.

  • • •

  Clare

  I wake to the smell of bacon and chocolate chip pancakes, which doesn’t make any sense since we are living in a motel room at the moment. I sit up in bed and rub my eyes, only to realize that I’m completely naked. The details of last night come rushing back. And if they aren’t enough to solidify what Griffin and I did last night, the ache between my thighs surely confirms it. He took me three more times after I attacked him last night. I lost count how many orgasms I had, how many times he told me through gritted teeth that I was his.

  You’re mine.

  This is mine.

  Take all of me, Clare.

  You feel so…right.

  My heart nearly exploded when he uttered those words.

  “Good morning.” I look over and see Griffin holding a large white bag in one hand and two coffees and a plastic CVS bag in the other. He smiles at me but it doesn’t reach his eyes, which unnerves me.

  “Hey,” I say, wrapping the sheet around me. His gaze drifts to my now covered breasts.

  “I brought you breakfast from the diner down the street,” he says, placing the white bag on the bed next to me. I withdraw two Styrofoam containers and see that he did bring me bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. My stomach growls at the sight. I’m just about to dig around the bag for a fork when he sets the CVS bag down in front of me. “And this.”

  I watch him shift restlessly from one foot to the other as he holds our coffees. He suddenly looks uncomfortable, almost fearful. “What’s this?” I ask, eyeing the CVS bag.

  “I…um,” he stumbles. He swallows hard and takes a deep breath. “Last night, we didn’t use protection, so I thought you may…need this.” My hunger pains turn to nausea and I look in the bag.

  I know that we weren’t careful last night. Even as he slid into me, as I felt him release inside me, I knew. I probably should be thankful that he is being so responsible right now. Give him a sheepish smile, take the bag into the bathroom, and down the Morning After pill. That’s what my head is telling me. But my heart is taking the lead and all I want to do is tell him to fuck off and go cry in the corner somewhere. Because regret radiates off him. “How thoughtful of you,” I say.

  “I just thought that you would…”

  Anger bubbles inside me. “Do you regret being with me, Griffin? Is this what this is about?” I ask, holding up the CVS bag.

  He pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. “I regret that I lost myself last night. That I wasn’t thinking clearly when we…”

  “When we what, Griffin? Fucked? Screwed? Made love?
Which one was it?”

  Our gazes lock. “I didn’t fuck you,” he says, his tone dark.

  “No?” I chuckle. “You just hadn’t been thinking clearly.” Still holding the CVS bag I stand from the bed, dragging the sheet with me. I shuffle over to my duffel bag and start fishing through the clothes. Fuck it! I grab the entire bag and disappear into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I turn on the shower to drown out my cries. It was a mistake. I was a mistake. How the hell did I let this happen? How could I let myself be used again?

  I sit on the edge of the tub and withdraw the Plan B box from the bag. I stare at it, curse at it, and then I silently let myself have it for being so careless. I set the box on the vanity and take a shower. As much as I want out of this motel room and to get away from Griffin, I need his scent gone and the evidence of what we did washed away. When I am satisfied, I dry off and throw on some clothes. I dig a toothbrush out of the bag and brush my teeth. When I step out of the bathroom, any residual hope I may have had that last night meant something to him is completely snuffed out. Griffin is sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. His duffel bag is lying next to the front door along with the white bag that contains our breakfast. I want to hurl at the sight. We weren’t supposed to leave until later, but he wants out of here as much as I do.

  Before I can say a word he looks up and says, “I don’t do relationships. I should have told you that before…”

  “Before you fucked me the second time…or the third time…or the…”

  “We need to leave,” he says. He rakes his hand through his hair and retrieves the bags by the front door.

  “You’re an asshole…and there’s no we. I’m not going anywhere with you. Do us both a favor and leave…without me. I’ll be just fine.”

  His nostrils flare and his fists clench at his sides. “Trust me, I would love to cut ties right here, right now, but that’s not possible.” I fight back a wince. I don’t want him to see how his words gut me. “Trent stopped by the cabin after dropping me off at the train station and discovered that someone had been there. Nothing was missing, but Trent saw the footprints in the snow surrounding the cabin. I’m involved now…whether I want to be or not.” I may be incredibly pissed off at Griffin at the moment, but the last thing I want to do is bring danger to someone else’s doorstep. “And since I can’t go to the police for some reason, we will need to see this through.” The edge in his voice pisses me off. “Let’s go, Trent is expecting us.”

  “Wait…what?”

  “I have no idea who was at the cabin. It could be anyone, a drifter, someone who may have been stranded due to the storm. But it could also be the person who is looking for you, which means we can’t risk going back there.”

  I don’t like the fact that Trent is being brought into this even more than he already is. I also don’t like knowing that I’m going to miss being at the cabin with Griffin. I hate myself for being so pathetic. It is obvious that I don’t mean anything to him. When I told him that Dylan was my dad and not an ex-lover, I thought that he would have been relieved. That we could be together, knowing there was no one else, no one to stand in the way. But I was wrong.

  I don’t do relationships…

  His words echo in my brain as I grit out a fine. I grab my coat from the chair. I hear a frustrated sigh behind me and then heavy footsteps. I sling my bag over my shoulder and I’m out the door. Blinding light from the freshly fallen snow has me squinting and it takes me a second for my eyes to adjust.

  “The truck’s over here,” Griffin says in a huff. I turn to my right and see his silver pickup. But what I can’t take my eyes off of is the white van parked next to it.

  It doesn’t matter that there is a green shamrock painted on the side, or that the words Fitzpatrick and Son’s Plumbing are printed beneath it, or that two men clearly dressed in work clothes just stepped out of it, looking not the least bit threatening. My heart starts to race and my breathing becomes erratic.

  “Clare, what is it?” Griffin’s hand covers mine, but it isn’t enough to distract me or save me from the vision…

  Those hairs on the back of my neck didn’t have time to stand on end. That’s how fast they were. One minute I was leaving my kickboxing class at the fitness center, walking to my car in a parking lot that was brightly lit, and the next a hand had come over my mouth and I was thrown into a white utility van with no windows. I was immediately gagged, my hands bound behind me. I felt a sting in my arm causing everything in my body to go warm. The toxin flooding my veins worked quickly. My limbs already felt heavy, my head swirled, the voices in the van sounded distorted, as if we were in a tunnel. I tried to move, to fight, but I couldn’t. Whatever they had injected me with caused some type of paralysis.

  “We’re on our way, boss. Should arrive in a little under three hours.” The voice didn’t sound familiar, but normal, casual. I used up what I believed was probably the last of my reserves and somehow rolled my neck and searched for the voice. “She was exactly where I said she’d be.” I locked eyes with my captor. “The sedative was definitely necessary. I have no doubt that she would have put up a fight.”

  You bet your ass I would have fought you, bit you, ripped your balls off if given the opportunity. Instead, you chose the pussy way out and drugged me so I couldn’t move. My vision started to blur and I knew I was on the verge of passing out. I needed to take inventory. At least three people were involved in this abduction, the person driving the vehicle, the man with the cold icy stare, and the person on the other end of the phone. And no matter how helpless and vulnerable I felt right now, I knew the person I needed to fear most was the man on the other end of that phone. Because he was calling the shots.

  Goddammit!

  I forced my eyes to stay open and glared at that fucker who drugged me. His lips curled to form a smug smile. “Yes, your directions have been followed. She is unharmed and will remain that way unless you say otherwise.” Unharmed? I was just thrown in the back of a van, shot up with God knows what and now my body was numb. The man ended the phone call and then positioned himself over me. He gripped my ponytail and bent my head back roughly, though I didn’t feel pain. I couldn’t feel anything. The absence of pain scared me. I didn’t want to be numb. I wanted to fight him, the man driving this car, the man whose directives were being followed to a Goddamn T.

  “You must be something special,” he said, caressing my cheek with his fingers. Lying on my side, my body shutting down, I could still see the dirt under the man’s nails and the grime on his gray t-shirt. He looked to be about my age, maybe even a little younger, but it was hard to tell his exact age due to the layer of grit he wore like a second skin. A slew of expletives were launched from my throat, but they were silenced by the gag in my mouth. I couldn’t feel my eyelids flutter, but I knew they were. Through my lashes I saw that bastard’s smile grow and then I was swallowed up by the darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Griffin

  I expect Clare to shut down the second I get her into my truck. She went completely catatonic when she saw that white van. I’d seen that look she had in her glazed-over eyes enough times now to know she’d had a vision. But to my surprise, and unlike yesterday when we left the cemetery, she shares everything with me. Where she was kidnapped, how Dylan came into her life and that she graduated from Millersville University with a degree in education and planned on starting her first teaching job in Philly. She also tells me about Jessie and why she is glad her friend is halfway around the world. I don’t disagree with Clare when she says that it’s best that we don’t make the attempt to find Jessie because it could put her friend’s own safety at risk. Those sick fucks who took Clare could be watching Jessie, try to get to Clare through her.

  “I wanted you to know everything I can remember…because we need to end this,” she says, staring out the window.

  After what happened this morning, I thought Clare would never want to speak to me again. I still can’t believe what
I did. The moment I saw her face I knew I had made a mistake. The hurt in her eyes as she stared into the CVS bag made me sick to my stomach. I thought that I was being considerate, providing her the option to take the medication if that’s what she wanted. I then dug myself in deeper and told her that I didn’t do relationships. Which meant that she thought I’d used her last night.

  Again.

  I don’t know how to respond, so I play it safe and say, “Your breakfast is in the bag on the back seat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she says, not even glancing in my direction.

  She is hungry. I heard her stomach growl right before she looked in that goddamn CVS bag. “Fine,” I snap.

  My snippy response earns me a glare. At least she’s looking at me again. I return my gaze to the road and pray that the highway is in better shape. Because right now these smaller roads are slow-going. My truck hasn’t gone above forty and it is getting me frustrated…and feeling claustrophobic. I bet Clare would jump at the chance of riding in the bed of my truck as opposed to sitting in the passenger seat next to me if I offered it. That is how much she hates me right now. And I can’t blame her.

  Four hours of silence later and we pull into Trent’s garage.

  “It’s safe,” I say, staring at Clare. She is still huddled on the passenger side floor and looking uncomfortable. The second I saw the Welcome to Quarry Hill sign on the side of the road, I told Clare that she would need to remain out of sight. I didn’t want to take any chances. Clare may have regained a significant amount of her memories, but we still don’t know who is after her. Which means the only person we can trust in this town is my best friend.