by West, Dahlia
She gasped as he cupped her.
“It’s ancient,” he whispered. “It’s mentioned in the Kama Sutra.” His fingers dipped into her little green panties and threaded through her damp curls. “It’s a vertical barbell, right through the head, and there’s a little…”
His fingers found her hood.
“Tiny…”
He pulled it back
“Ball…”
“Oh!” Sienna cried and grabbed at his arms.
Jonah rubbed her gently, in slow, lazy circles. “It stimulates your G-spot. You know, that little button, the other one, the one deep inside you that makes you come, over and over.”
She did come then, with a sharp cry and her fingers digging into his arms. He held her firmly though and let her ride it out, not wanting to ruin it for her.
When she regained her senses, he lowered her gently to the pillow and hovered over her.
She looked up at him under heavily lidded eyes. “Would…would you really do that?” she panted.
He nodded. He didn’t tell her it was the most painful of all the piercings to have put in and took a long time to heal.
If she wanted it, he’d have it done.
“I exist for your pleasure, madam,” he said, making a joke out of it, but it was true enough just the same.
She frowned, though, and shook her head. “Jonah, you shouldn’t do things just because—”
“I found what I want,” he said, cutting her off. “And I intend to do everything I can to keep it—to keep you. Everything I do is for you, Sienna. Everything. Absolutely everything.”
She gripped his arms again, lighter this time, and tried to pull him down on top of her.
Jonah resisted, having finally come fully to his senses. He shook his head and leaned away from her. “We have to stop,” he told her.
Sienna stared up at him. “What? Why?”
“This is a mistake.”
Her lower lip started to quiver and she blinked rapidly. “You… you said this was it,” she argued. “You said—”
Jonah shook his head again and moved off the bed. “Not like this,” he told her. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. I shouldn’t have let it go this far. I shouldn’t have gone this far off script.”
She sat up quickly, snatching at the sheet to cover herself. “What are you talking about? What script, Jonah? What’s going on?”
“It’s tempting to just keep going now that I have you here, but that can’t happen, Sienna. There are things you don’t know, things I haven’t told you. And as much as I’d love to just skip over them and pretend they don’t exist, I’m not going to do that.”
He picked up his shirt and pulled it back over his head, adding an extra layer between them to harden his resolve. “I’ve been weak tonight,” he admitted. “I can’t stop thinking about you in my bed that day, but that’s not how this goes. I’m not going to be selfish and take your choices away. I’m stronger than that.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jonah lay on the bed, eyes stinging from exhaustion, but he couldn’t seem to sleep. It was over. Mom was gone. Yet he felt no sense of relief in that. Why should he, though? Her death had been brutal, the least he could have done—and did—was witness it. It felt selfish to want to rest when she’d had none at the end.
So, he couldn’t sleep, but be couldn’t leave the room. Not because they’d see him cry, but because they wouldn’t. His chest felt hollow, his stomach sour, but he couldn’t seem to shed a single tear for the woman who’d taken him into her home and into her family. Out there, down the hall, they were mourning her loss. In here, there was nothing.
He was a bastard. He didn’t deserve to be here.
The knob turned suddenly, no knock at the door. Jonah was surprised that Adam would want him out there. He sat up and rubbed his unshaven face. It wasn’t Adam, though, who came through the door. To his shock, it was Sienna.
She darted in and closed the door silently behind her. She blinked at him, eyes a bit glassy, cheeks a bit flushed. Jonah knew she’d been crying and she wasn’t even a Stark.
“Sienna,” he breathed. She should go. She shouldn’t be here in this room. “You—”
“You want to know a secret?” she whispered as she staggered to his bed. Her hip landed hard on the mattress. Her hand was on his thigh. Her touch felt like it was burning his skin through his jeans. “I feel like my mom died.”
Though there was some distance between them, Jonah could smell the alcohol on her breath. The pink of her cheeks and the shine in her eyes twisted into a darker, grimmer context.
He groaned and sat up straighter. “Listen to me,” he said quietly. “You need to go home.”
She shook her head and gripped his leg with her hand. “I don’t want to go home. I want to be here. With you. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Well, you can’t,” he argued, pushing her hand away. “You just… can’t.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I need you, Jonah.”
“You don’t,” he said firmly. No one needed him. “You need something to eat and a nap. When was the last time you ate? Huh? Today? Yesterday? You need—”
“You,” she insisted. “I need you.” Unbelievably, her hands grabbed the hem of her shirt and she lifted it over her head. “Touch me, Jonah,” she urged. “I need to feel something… else. Something different.”
Jonah looked away, not trusting himself to even look at her.
She snatched his hand, though, and—God help him—he didn’t pull away. “You know the last time I saw her, she asked me how I was. Can you believe it? She was dying and she was asking me if I was okay. “My mom doesn’t love me but yours did.”
Jonah’s heart broke for her. He squeezed her hand as she laughed. The sound was brittle and her throat seemed raw.
“Come on, Sienna.” Jonah reached for her—to push her away or draw her closer, he didn’t know. If he did pull her close, he might never let her go this time. Before he could gather the strength to ask her to put her shirt back on, the door burst open.
“Son of a bitch!” Adam yelled. His voice reverberated off the walls.
Jonah stiffened, body instinctively spoiling for a fight. He lifted his arm, blocking Sienna with it as she scrambled for her shirt. Part of him knew that Adam was no threat to the girl, but another part of him had been protecting her for so long that he couldn’t seem to turn it off.
“This is not happening!” Adam shouted.
Sienna whimpered as she yanked her rumpled shirt over her head.
Jonah wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know how.
She stumbled as she raced to the bedroom door.
Ava appeared behind Adam, just visible over his shoulder. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Sienna? What— what? Oh, my God!”
Sienna scrambled past both of them and out the bedroom door.
“You need to go home!” Adam bellowed after her.
Jonah fisted his hands, wanting to tear his brother’s head off for talking to her that way.
“Jonah, goddammit! We need to talk.”
Finally regaining control of all his senses, Jonah surged off the bed. Instead of taking a swing at Adam, he steered himself toward the closet. “The hell we do,” he snapped.
Talking was out of the question. Jonah wouldn’t do a thing to embarrass Sienna any more than she already had been. And he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, anyway. His cock was rock hard and images of her perfect body continued to flash in his mind like tiny explosions. As he faced away from his siblings, he yanked his shirt out of his waistband and let it hang over his crotch. He snatched up the backpack, full of his gym gear, off the floor.
From behind him, Adam continued his tirade. “This is unacceptable, Jonah. She’s seventeen!”
Yeah, no shit, Jonah thought angrily. He shouldered the bag, turned, and headed toward the door. Thankfully, Adam had enough sense to step out of the way. Jonah thought the older man would give up the fight for tonight
, but apparently that was too much to hope for.
“Hey!” Adam barked. “Don’t walk away from me. This—”
A hand clamped down on Jonah’s arm. All his carefully maintained control snapped in a surge of rage and violence. He broke Adam’s hold, grabbed him by the shirt, and shoved him up against the wall. “Don’t ever fucking touch me!” he screamed.
They both froze, both breathing hard. Adam presumably because he was afraid. Jonah because he was also afraid … of hurting Adam. He forced himself to let go of the man’s shirt and stepped back. “I… I’m sorry. I gotta go.”
Jonah had nowhere to go, but anywhere was better than here right now. He bolted for the front door and ran across the lawn. He ran as fast as he could, for as long as he could, with no real idea where he was going—not until he stood across the street from the gym.
It was closed for the night, but Jonah ducked into the alley next to the building and circled around back. He climbed on top of the dumpster and placed his hands on the window of the locker room. He’d noticed before that the lock was flimsy, nearly rusted through. A few pushes was all it took to tear it from the warped wood of the frame.
He tossed in his pack and slipped inside. The sunlight shone gray through dirty windows and the place smelled oddly comforting. Jonah slowly opened the door to the locker room and peeked out onto the main floor. Satisfied that no one was there, he turned back into the locker room and strode to the stock room.
Inside was stuffy and warm and lined with shelves, but Jonah didn’t mind. He tucked himself into a corner, on an old mat, and laid his pack down as a pillow. He hadn’t realized just how tired he was until he shut his eyes. All those nights of lying awake while Mom was dying in the next room had finally caught up to him.
Without opening his eyes, he reached into his bag and drew out Treasure Island with her final note tucked inside. Too tired to read either the book or the letter, he simply held both to his chest and cried for the first time since she’d died, for the first time he could actually remember—maybe for the first time ever.
In the morning, he slipped out of the stock room when he heard the first group of guys finish changing and head out to the gym. Jonah quickly pulled on a pair of shorts and joined them. Before he could snag a heavy bag for himself, though, Walter Chapman, the gym’s grizzled owner, appeared beside Jonah, eyeing him closely.
“Morning,” the older man said.
Jonah simply nodded.
Chappie grabbed the bag for Jonah and held it with his gnarled fighter’s hands. “Didn’t see you come in this morning,” he said off-handedly.
Jonah hesitated while swinging at the bag. His punch bounced off ineffectively. “I wanted to try an early workout,” he lied. “You’re just not used to seeing me in the mornings.”
Chappie was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “I read about your mom in the paper, Jonah. I’m sorry.”
Jonah frowned at him. “The paper?”
“Obits.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Chappie grunted. In some ways he reminded Jonah of Pop. “When you get to be my age, you start checking the paper every day, to see who you’ve lost.”
Jonah pressed his lips together, not knowing how to answer. It must be difficult to get old. Even so, he wished Mom were here.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Chappie offered. “The paper said it was cancer. That’s rough.”
Jonah froze. He and the old man were friendly, but they weren’t that close. Jonah wasn’t close to anyone. He was getting kind of tired of that. Yes, he thought. “No,” he replied. Suddenly, another memory involving Miriam Stark and all she’d done for him came into Jonah’s mind. As he looked at the older man standing in front of him, he realized that he really did want to talk—just not to him.
Jonah stepped back from the bag and tugged off his gloves. “I have to go,” he told Chappie. “I…have somewhere I have to be.”
He didn’t wait to see if Chappie believed him or not. He spun and headed for the locker room door. He dumped his gear, grabbed his bag, and headed out of the gym. He checked his watch; it was early still. Few people would be at work yet, which was good, because Jonah needed time to find the place again.
He searched the central downtown blocks—thankfully Rapid City wasn’t very large. Within forty-five minutes he had located the building he was looking for. He scanned the list of offices on the directory and found the one he was looking for. The door to the building was locked, though, unfortunately, because none of the businesses housed in the building were open yet.
Jonah took off his heavy pack and lowered it gently to the sidewalk just outside the front doors and sat next to it on the warming concrete. He could wait. He could wait all day, but luckily he didn’t have to. Twenty minutes later, a wiry man in equally wiry glasses made his way ever closer.
He’d aged quite a lot since Jonah had last seen him, but something about his air and the way he carried himself made him still recognizable. His stride slowed somewhat as he came upon Jonah and Jonah reached for his bag. Before he could bring himself to his feet, the man had pulled out his wallet and opened it. “Here,” he said, holding out a bill. “Go ahead.”
Jonah pushed himself up and frowned at the man’s hand. He shook his head, feeling awkward. “Um, no,” he told him. “I…I don’t want your money. I want your help.”
The man’s face crumpled to a puzzled expression. “My help?”
Jonah nodded, hoisting his backpack farther up on his shoulder. He pulled his hood down so the man could better see his face. No recognition flickered in his eyes, though. Jonah thought that was understandable. After all, he hadn’t seen this man in over twenty years.
“My name is Jonah Stark. Well, it was Knowles when I last saw you. I was just a kid. My foster parents brought me to you. I…” Jonah scraped the sidewalk with his heel, embarrassed. “I was kind of a shit.”
Jonah waited for the aging man to search his memory. He’d almost given up hope that he’d be remembered until the man pursed his lips and nodded. “I think I remember some very colorful language,” he said.
Jonah ducked his head. “Now I kind of wish you didn’t remember at all. Sorry, Dr. Lawson.”
Dr. Lawson frowned at the stuffed pack. “Are you living on the street, Jonah?”
Jonah’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No! No, I’m not. I was living with the Starks. Until yesterday, I guess. Things got… complicated. I have a place to sleep,” he said, omitting the trespassing part. “I just need a few days to figure things out.”
“Well, come inside. We can talk.”
Jonah started forward but paused. “I don’t have a lot of money.”
Dr. Lawson beckoned him anyway. “Don’t worry about that. I’m interested to hear how you’ve been all these years.”
Jonah didn’t recall much about his office from all those years ago. These days the walls were beige with matching carpet and it seemed nice enough.
Dr. Lawson gestured to a chair sitting opposite a large desk and Jonah lowered himself into it.
“How’s your family?” the doctor asked.
Jonah winced. “Not good lately.”
“Oh? Sorry to hear that.”
“My mom died a few days ago. I mean my foster mom. I mean my adoptive mom. The woman who brought me here the first time.” He cleared his throat nervously and forced himself to slow down his speech. Painfully, Jonah gave voice to something that had been bothering him for the last several days.
He didn’t want to say it out loud, especially not to someone else, but why else was he here, if not to get better? “They adopted me a few years ago. In all that time, I never told her I loved her. But I did. I really, really did. And my Pop, he’s… well, he has Alzheimer’s, apparently. I might… I might tell him I love him. But I don’t know if he’d even remember.”
Dr. Lawson looked sympathetic, concerned even. “That’s terrible, Jonah. I’m so sorry.”
“Anyway,” replied Jonah, “th
at’s not even why I’m here.”
Instead of pressing him, Dr. Lawson simply waited.
“There’s this girl… There’s always been this girl. I’ve been watching her for her whole life.” Suddenly he looked up at Dr. Lawson. “I mean, I don’t watch her.” He frowned. It might not be helpful to lie to the man if Jonah held out any hope at all of being something approaching normal. “Okay, I do… watch her. But I protect her. I’ve always protected her.”
“From whom?” Dr. Lawson asked calmly.
He hadn’t reached for the telephone. Jonah thought that was a good sign.
“From her life, I guess? Her mother is an alcoholic. She used to bring home…boyfriends, scumbags. One of them…” Jonah stopped and rubbed his unshaven face. Some things still didn’t feel like his words to tell. “I couldn’t protect myself, so I protected her, instead. If that makes sense.”
To his relief, Dr. Lawson nodded. “It makes a lot of sense, Jonah. I remember what happened to you. If you could spare someone else, I can see why you’d want to do that.”
“She’s older now—seventeen—but she’s not old enough. Not for me. But she came into my room. She…she wanted me to touch her.”
“And did you?”
“What? Hell no! I’m not a fucking rapist!” Jonah shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Sorry for yelling.” He sighed heavily. “She’s not ready. Or I’m not ready. Both, I guess.”
Dr. Lawson nodded and leaned back in his chair. He looked at Jonah over the rim of his glasses. “What do you want to do about this, Jonah?”
Jonah rubbed his face again and glanced at the painting that hung on the wall to his right. It was the ocean. And the sun was setting on the horizon. Or maybe it was rising. As he looked at it, he decided it was rising. He turned back to Dr. Lawson. “I want to get ready.”
He spent the rest of the hour with Dr. Lawson, who promised to get Jonah’s insurance in order and to see him again the following week. As Jonah stepped outside into the bright afternoon light, he felt lighter. He didn’t tell the good doctor about his housing situation. The man had done enough for Jonah already.