by Paula Cox
“Do you think you should be doing that?” Hope asks uncertainly.
“I’m not sure.” I drop the tarpaulin in a pile at my feet. “You tell me.” I point to the writing on the side of the boat. It reads: Numb.
“It’s yours!” she laughs.
“It’s mine.” I turn to her, take her hands in mine, and gaze at her so hard, and with such lust, that she begins to fidget with her legs, squeezing her thighs around her perfect cunt.
“You shouldn’t look at me like that, Mr. Biker,” she breathes. “It gives me ideas.”
“Good,” I say.
I release her hands and leap onto the boat. Then I hold my hand out. “Come on, let’s go for a cruise.”
“In the dark?”
I point up at the stars. “I can read the sky, remember? Anyway, we won’t go far.”
She takes my hand and steps into the boat. As soon as she’s on the boat, I reach up between her legs and grab her, press my hand forcefully down on her. She moans loudly in surprised pleasure, and then begins writhing on my hand. I snatch it away and go to the wheel and the controls.
“You’re a mean man!” she calls after me.
I find the key hidden underneath the driver’s seat cushion, slot it in, and turn it. The boat coughs into life.
Chapter Nineteen
Hope
The boat is small, but not as small as it looks from the outside. There’s room enough on the deck to walk around, and cushioned seats line the decked area. The cockpit is covered with a sort of balcony, which you can climb up to, if you want to sunbathe or admire the view. There’s also a decked area at the front of the boat, in front of the cockpit.
Killian cruises for about five minutes until the streetlamps which line the boardwalk are small dots in the distance, and then he kills the engine. I know we’re still in the harbor, because the waves are soft, lulling, but we seem very far away. We’re the only people alive right now, I think. Or, we might as well be.
Killian emerges from the cockpit. He’s taken off his biker leathers so all he wears is a plain black t-shirt, tight around his muscles, scuffed jeans and his brown boots. His tattoos are dark and difficult to determine out here under the stars. Killian himself looks like a silhouette, an intimidating, commanding silhouette.
Then he walks right up to me, and I see that his face is serious, intense, full of lust and passion.
“You want it,” he says.
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway.
“Yes,” I say. The hint of a moan creeps into my voice.
“You want it,” he repeats.
“Yes,” I moan again.
“You want it, hard, dirty. You want to be used. You want me to take charge of you.”
“Yes!” I cry.
“Good.”
He takes me by the shoulders, gripping me hard, with all his strength. It makes me realize that he’s never truly handled me before. Before, it was tough but not impossible. Now, I couldn’t even try and break free. His grip is like steel. He turns me around, walks me to the railing at the edge of the boat, and bends me over. I prop my knees on the cushions and grip the railing, bending over the side of the boat.
My panties are wet, soaked, dripping. No other man has made me this horny before. Hell, even Killian hasn’t made me this horny before. My clit tingles, sure, but more than that my hole tingles, vibrates, begs to be filled. It’s like there’s something missing in my cunt. I want it. I need it. Despite the cool autumn air, sweat drips down me. Sweat sticks my hand to the metal railing. My legs shake, but not from the cold. My knees click together from lust.
Then he pulls down my panties around my ankles. I step out of them and arch my back, displaying my pussy for him, wanting him to fill it, just fill it, fill it all up until it hurts.
He unzips his jeans and pulls then down, and then his cock touches me. But it doesn’t slide into me. The tip of his cock presses into my clit, just below my hole. He doesn’t rub it, doesn’t move it, just keeps it there, hard, pressing.
“What are you doing?” I moan, unable to hide my frustration. I’m panting with lust.
“You want it, don’t you, you dirty little girl?” he breathes.
“I want it,” I moan. “I need it! I need it!”
“Then tell me how badly.”
I feel dominated. I feel controlled. He has complete power over me right now. One-hundred percent control. There’s nothing I can do to fight him, nothing I can do to fight the lust he provokes in me.
“Please,” I moan, moving my pussy up and down against his cock. “Please, please, I’m so wet, please, I beg you.” Damn, I want to be submissive. I want to be used. It’s never been like this, with anyone. I never knew I wanted this. But I do. Right now, I want it more than anything. “Please, please, fuck me, fuck me hard. Make me scream. Please, I’m begging you.” Moving my pussy up and down. Rubbing my wet pussy against his hard cock. “Please, do it. Please, please, please.”
He brings his hands to my ass cheeks, pushes them together. “You’ve got a perfect fucking ass,” he breathes. “And you beg like a good whore. Do you want your reward?”
“Yes, yes, please, yes!” I cry. “I want it! I need it!”
“Good.”
Gripping my ass cheeks, he slides his cock into my hole.
I’m soaked and it slides in without any resistance. My hole opens for him. His tip touches my sweet spot, and that’s all I need. My pussy seizes up, three of my fingernails break on the railing, my legs become wobbly. I come all over his cock. Right then, after one quick thrust, I squirt all over him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I cry. “Please, keep going, please, please, please!”
He fucks me harder than he ever has before. His cock pounds and pounds and pounds my cunt. He’s dominating me. He doesn’t care if he hurts me. He just wants to use my hole. Fuck, who knew how exciting that could be?
“Beg!” he roars.
I come and come and come, my pussy going tight around his cock, squirting all over it.
“Please, keep fucking me. Please, please, please! I want more, please! Fuck, please! Oh, fuck, fu—”
He’s using me, I think as I come. He’s using me and I’m his whore and he’s a bad biker and he’s fucking using me. Yes, yes, he’s using me. Oh, yes, he’s using me!
I come for the tenth, eleventh, twelfth time, and then he leans over and bites me shoulder, groaning into skin.
“Bite me! Use me! Come in me! Yes, yes, yes!”
He empties himself inside of me. When he pulls away, my pussy and my shoulder ache. But I don’t care.
I collapse into the cushions and pant out the pleasure.
“Fuck,” I moan, turning over.
“Fuck,” he agrees, staring at me in shock. “You like being dominated, pretty lady.”
“I do. I never knew I did. But I do.”
The deck is cool, but we lie on it anyway.
I nuzzle into Killian and he keeps me warm. Together, we gaze up at the stars.
“This has been quite the adventure, me and you,” I say.
“It has,” he agrees, stroking my hair. “I never knew that sexy waitress would turn out to be such a little sicko in bed. I really didn’t.”
“You make me sick,” I laugh, slapping his hand.
“Of course I do, Hope, of course I do.”
We stay like that for a long time, just hugging, talking about nothing in particular.
And then Killian says, “Imagine if we could just stay at the cabin, forever. No worries, no stress, nothing to concern us apart from each other. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Wouldn’t that be heaven?”
“Be careful, Killian, you’re sober now.”
“I mean it,” he says, weaving his fingers through the strands of my hair. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Just me and you. Nothing else. No club to worry about. No stress. Just sex and love—”
“Love?” I interrupt, squeezing his free hand so hard I’m surprised he doesn’
t wince. “Did you just say love, Killian?”
“I did.” He looks down at me, smiling, starlight caught in his bright blue eyes. “I said love. What about it?”
I lay my head on his chest. “I feel the same,” I murmur.
And just like that, we admit it.
Then sleep takes us.
I’m shaken awake by Killian. He’s moving his lips, opening and closing his mouth, and I’m aware there are sounds—but I can’t make out the words. He shakes me and screams at me, screams right in my face, his face full of rage.
At first, I’m sure it’s a dream. That’s the only reasonable conclusion. You don’t fall asleep and then wake up to this. Plus, my body feels numb, detached, and my thoughts come slow and drawn-out. It’s the only conclusion I can reasonably come to. This is a mad dream and soon I’ll wake up.
But the more he shakes me, the realer it becomes. I just wish I could feel what was happening. Everything is fuzzy, like I’ve hit my head. Has he gone mad?
I open my mouth to speak, but my tongue is lead and no words will come. I know what I want to say: What is going on? But no noise comes from me apart from faint moaning.
Then, absurdly, I laugh.
I don’t know where the laugh comes from. It just emerges out of nowhere, a pointless laugh, and the laugh becomes a guffaw, until I’m sweating with laughter.
Killian stands up and stares down at me with a face of disgust, his lips twisted, his eyebrows low, judgmental. I’m sorry! I want to yell, but all I can do is laugh.
Chapter Twenty
Killian
I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. I’m not the type of guy who is easily stunned. When you’re in my line of work, you can’t afford to be. Get stunned, you get killed. But as I look down at her, I can’t move. My mouth hangs open in disbelief, in shock. I feel like jumping into the water just to wake myself up.
The scenario plays itself out in my mind.
She woke up when I was asleep, found her needle, and shot up. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t wake up until morning and she could ride it out for the night. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t notice. Maybe she thought it was no big deal. Maybe she thought she could somehow get away with it. I don’t know. I can’t pretend to follow her logic. All I know is that she’s high right now. Her pupils are dilated and she can’t speak and there’s a goddamn track mark in her arm, the faint outline of a belt higher up. She’s taken something and now she’s high.
She’s stopped laughing and now she just stares up at the sky, her face expressionless, a zombie’s face. Seeing Hope’s face like that—laughing, cocky, sarcastic Hope—makes me want to punch something, to break my fist on it. I go over my time with Hope in my mind, searching for some sign that she was an addict all along, searching for something which will tell me she’s been using this entire time.
I can’t find a thing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything. Addicts are skilled at hiding their addiction, at least functioning addicts are.
Dammit, I think, stepping over Hope and going to the boat controls. Dammit!
I told her that was my one rule, that was my one condition. No drugs. I told her! That was it! No drugs! I couldn’t have made it any clearer, could I? I couldn’t have told her any more specifically. Goddamn it! No drugs! How hard is that! No goddamn drugs!
I drive the boat back to the dock as quickly as I can, and then stop it and tether it. Then I go to Hope and kneel down beside her. She lies on her side, knees pulled up to her chest, staring at the deck of the boat.
“Hope,” I say. “Where did you get the drugs? Can you tell me that? Where did you get them?”
She smiles—and then the smile bursts into a laugh.
“It’s not funny!” I roar at her. “You know that was it! That was my one rule—”
I stop myself. It’s no use shouting at her. She doesn’t even know where she is. And anyway, she took the drugs. That’s a solid fact. The track mark is right there, pricked in her arm, right there. I have to keep saying it because I can’t believe it. Hope, my Hope, my woman, a drug addict? It sounds like a sick joke.
I scoop my hands underneath her armpits and pull her up to my chest, so that I can carry her from the boat. Just touching her makes me angry. She’s deadweight, flopping in my arms, not supporting herself in the slightest. I wonder if perhaps Dawn left some gear lying around and that was how Hope got her hands on it. Or if Hope found a number for Dawn’s dealer and that was how she got it. All these thoughts go over and over in my head. I want to find who sold it to her. I want to know.
But most of all I want to be rid of her.
I can’t take being near her right now, not when she’s like this. I heave her over my shoulder, fireman’s lift, and carry her off the boat and lay her down on the dock, as gently as I can.
Then I take out my cell and call Patrick.
“Are you sure?” Patrick says. “Seriously?”
“I’m not in the mood for questions,” I tell him. “Just get here, now, and get her back to her apartment. Is Dawn at the apartment?”
“Yeah, she went home today.”
“Good,” I grunt, crushing the phone in my hand, the corners digging into my palm. “Her sister can take care of her. I’m not going to be the fool who does it. Let me tell you that. I won’t. I told her, Patrick. No drugs. I told her, more than once. And not only does she do drugs, she does them while I’m next to her, sleeping, after we—”
I cut short, breathing heavily. I feel like I need to be sick, but I won’t with Patrick on the phone.
“Just get to the dock, you know the one.”
“Where Dad’s old boat is.”
“Yeah. Hurry.”
Patrick sighs down the phone. “Okay,” he says. “But I just can’t believe it.”
“I’m telling you it’s true!” I roar, holding the phone in front of me and shouting down at it like it’s a person, like Patrick’s standing right there. “Just fucking get here and get rid of her! I don’t want to see her when she’s like this!”
Then I hang up the phone and sit on the dock, next to where Hope lies.
She rocks back and forth, unaware of what she is doing, one second staring up at the stars, the next second staring down at the dock. One moment she’s giggling, the next she’s looking pensive. But always, no matter what she’s doing, her eyes are empty of life. She’s there, but she’s not there. She’s somewhere else, floating.
And this was the start of it, I think, rubbing at my eyes. No tears—I won’t cry. Not for her. Not for someone who breaks my one rule. Not for someone with a fucking track mark in their arm.
This was the start of everything.
Before I went to sleep, I remember thinking that this was a perfect night, a perfect moment, and that Hope was perfect for me. I’ve never felt closer to anyone, I’ve never felt like I can open up, and on and on and on . . . but it was all useless, all fool’s nonsense. Because the whole time she was waiting for me to close my eyes just so she could shoot up. She was waiting for me to close my eyes just so she could get her fix.
I look down at her.
“Why, Hope? Why, when you knew it would hurt me so much?”
She smiles, a pointless smile, completely unrelated to reality. Just smiling because she’s high as a kite.
I pick up Hope and carry her down the dock and to a bench. Then I take my leather and drape it over her. I hate her—or what she did, at least—but I don’t want her to freeze to death. I just wish she was awake so I could talk to her about it. I wish she was awake so I could make her see how she’s hurt me.
Every time I begin to try and understand where she’s coming from, every time I try and guess why she might’ve done it, I see the track marks and my teeth clench so hard a bolt of pain shoots through my head. I can’t understand. I can’t begin to understand because I told her. It was my one rule and I told her. No drugs—no drugs—no drugs!
Finally, a car pulls up behind us.
I turn and
see Patrick step out, wearing his leathers, his face as concerned as mine probably looks.
“Killian,” he says when he reaches us. “Don’t you at least want to wait until—”
“Don’t,” I say. “Just don’t. I don’t want to wait for anything. I don’t want to wait until any goddamn thing. Look at her arm, Patrick, and then tell me I should wait. How many of the men wanted to get into drugs, eh? Don’t bother with an answer. I’ll tell you. Most of them.”