Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  He held her foot, stroking himself with his other hand, a pleasure-filled haze in his ice-blue eyes, like a window into his private world.

  She wanted him inside her so badly it hurt. She pushed on him with her foot. “Please, Thorne,” she begged. “I just want you.”

  He pushed back on her foot, opening her to him. It was a mistake, saying it like that. He didn’t trust when she was kind to him. He was a totally impossible individual. “What do you say?”

  “Be with me,” she whispered.

  His cock lay in his open palm like a log.

  “Be with me, Thorne.”

  He looked at her hard.

  She knew what he wanted her to say. But dammit, he was the father of her baby, and maybe it was too dangerous for him to know that, but she didn’t want to call him a loser, a brute, or any of the names that worked on him like evil aphrodisiacs.

  He lifted her foot and took her second toe between his lips, enveloping it in soft, wet warmth…until he began scraping his teeth up the underside of it. She gasped, head tipped back, trembling on the knife-edge of pain and pleasure.

  So of course, he did it again—harder—and when she tried to pull her foot away, he wouldn’t let it go.

  “Oh, God, Thorne,” she whispered, wondering if she could come again, just off of toe business. “Don’t make me say things I don’t want to,” she begged. “Don’t you want to be inside me?”

  He lowered her foot back to his chest, pressing it there. “Take off your shirt.”

  Her fingers went to her buttons, shakily undoing them until her shirt fell open. She had a front-clasp bra. She undid it, but she held it together, pulling the sides tighter, and then she let them go so that the cups popped apart, as though her boobs were so big that they popped out. He looked down, practically drooling.

  He would come to her now. She could feel his arousal spike just by the way he held onto her foot. He tightened and untightened his grip almost rhythmically, like the rhythm of fucking. It’s how he’d sometimes fuck her, taken over by something.

  “Shirt all the way off,” he grated.

  She shimmied her shirt off her shoulders, panting. He would fuck her now, and there was nothing she wanted more. Her shirt snagged on the tape on her arm. She pulled it over the tape, not caring.

  His grip on her foot loosened and he stopped moving. Something was wrong.

  “What?” she asked. And then she knew. She looked over at the tape framing a bloody bandage. The gunshot wound.

  “You’re hurt, baby. What happened?”

  Shit.

  “That wasn’t there last night. What happened?”

  Thorne. Seeing everything, remembering everything.

  “That looks serious,” he said. “I need to look at it.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  He dropped her foot and went to the bathroom. His muscular ass was as pale as the moon.

  Alarm shot through her. She didn’t know if you could tell a gunshot graze by just looking at it, but if anybody could, Thorne could.

  “It’s fine.” She pulled her back shirt on. “We’re done here.”

  “The fuck we are.” He came out with bandages and gauze and tape. Victor always had a lot of first aid supplies stowed around the place.

  “I’ve got it under control.”

  “Let me do this, baby,” he said, voice husky.

  “No.” She sat up on the couch. “It was bleeding, but it’s not now.”

  “Actually, it is now.” He straddled her, tugging her shirt from her grip. The fabric tore.

  “Dammit, Thorne!”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, cock still hard against her belly. “What the hell happened to you? Is this from escaping in that tunnel? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t need your fucking medical help.” She pushed away his arms. “I’m telling you no.”

  “That only works in sex.”

  “Fuck you! You can’t just re-bandage me against my will.”

  “Just let me look at it.” He trapped her wrists against her belly with his bad hand and traced the edges of the bandage with his free fingers. But he was panting, energized. She got the feeling his desire to fuck was in a battle with his need to see that she was okay.

  She couldn’t let him see her arm, dammit. “Where were we?” she whispered.

  His breath sounded ragged; oh, he remembered exactly where they’d been, but he drew his brows together in stubborn concentration, fingers playing at the edge of the tape. She’d seen that look a hundred times—on Benny. When Benny got that look, there was no dragging him away.

  “No, Thorne.”

  “You’re bleeding, and this is shittily done.” He worked at the tape. “I know a lot about this stuff.”

  She closed her eyes. There was nothing she wanted more than to soak up his tenderness right now, but she couldn’t let him see that she had a bullet wound.

  So she went for it. “You think I want your loser hands on my bandage?”

  He stilled. “It won’t work.”

  Actually, it would. The game always made him go hot and rough, especially toward the end. Almost like it turned him into something else.

  “I don’t need a lowlife putting his hands on me.”

  He leaned his forehead to hers. “Let me look at it,” he rasped.

  “You think this is going to convince me to let you put your loser cock inside me?” She freed her hands and took hold of him, hard as iron in her hand, hating herself, but she couldn’t let him see her bullet wound. “You think I want your huge, brutish cock filling me up?”

  She could feel his control slipping. She squeezed him right at the root and a curse ripped from his lips.

  “You think I would let a thug like you touch me?”

  In a flash, he had her on her back on the couch, whiskers rough on her neck. “Get the condom off the floor and open it for me,” he grated, half lost in lust.

  She grabbed the condom, ripped the package open with her teeth, and slipped it out. He took it from her and rolled it on, jerkily, arm hair tickling her belly.

  “Baby.” He positioned himself at her entrance, and then he entered her, filling her, head a thick swell of iron.

  She let out an anguished gasp, feeling as though she’d been waiting forever to feel him inside her again. He sucked in a breath when she made the sound and shoved his cock all the way into her, a fat, thick invasion.

  She felt drugged, handled. She was his, now.

  “Tell me, princess,” he whispered.

  “You’re so giant and huge,” she whispered. Then, because a compliment always made him so fucking wary, and the horse was out of the barn anyway, she added, “you and your lowlife cock.”

  He moved in and out, breathing into her ear like a senseless whisper. He was gone now, whispering things that sounded like half words, half capitulation.

  She gripped his ass, urging him on.

  He kissed, her, consuming her lips as he fucked her.

  God, she’d missed him, and yeah, this game. It turned her on, too. “You are a brute, and you don’t even know how to act right,” she said. “Or even fuck right.”

  “Open. Wider.” He nudged her leg and she hooked it over the couch back, understanding exactly what he wanted. It had always been like this, like fucking connected their brains.

  “You always have to take everything,” she whispered.

  “That’s right.” He hooked an arm under her knee and pulled her legs even wider. She angled up her pelvis, letting him in deeper. He bit her shoulder and it felt perfectly sharp and hard. He remembered all the things she liked.

  “You can have everything,” she said.

  He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, looking into her eyes as he moved over her, watching with such tenderness, even sadness.

  “You feel so good,” she panted.

  His eyes darkened. She should say something abusive. Could their game be more fucked up? He slid his callused hands over her br
easts, her nipples. She was so going to come.

  Again.

  “The Party Princess always has to get her way…” he mumbled something else, she couldn’t tell because he’d closed his lips over her breast. Maybe it was fucking Party Princess, maybe that’s what he said. Fucking Party Princess. He settled his teeth around her nipple, just lightly. She never knew what he would do, that was the dangerous fun of him.

  “Thorne.”

  He moved a hand over her hip, sliding up and down her, getting reoriented, positioning her like he wanted. She would never know anybody like him ever again. She would never love anybody like she loved him. She couldn’t imagine what he’d do if she told him so. It would probably destroy the game forever.

  So she just squeezed his ass cheeks, nails digging in; in her mind’s eye she could see his pale ass muscles clenching as he fucked all the sense out of her, relentless and inevitable.

  She said nothing now—nothing mean to spur him on, and nothing kind to make him pull away from her; she just absorbed him. That was the deepest level of them, where everything fell away and they were together. She knew he felt it, too, that they’d hit that now. Two years, and they hit it like clockwork.

  He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and kissed her as he fucked her. He knew she was on the verge.

  “Come on, Party Princess. You are going down with me,” he whispered, and she shattered into pieces of pleasure—tiny, sharp pieces to roll and hurt in.

  He didn’t stop, of course; he just kept on, taking what he wanted. She almost liked this part better, secretly, because it was more for him than for her, keeping on with the fucking after she came.

  He pressed his forehead to her chest, more animal than human. She pulled him to her, his pelvis to hers. It was a rebellion, doing that. Yeah, she’d call him a loser and play this game and let him lead her to this thing that turned her on against her will, but she could hold him to her, and it only meant one thing—that she wanted him in her.

  And then he cried out. The vibration of his orgasm radiated through him, and through them both.

  She panted, feeling him, lost in her love for him.

  Their lives were all “fuck off” to each other, their speech was all “fuck off” to each other, but their bodies had different ideas.

  “Fuck.” He pulled out and rolled onto his side, staring at the ceiling.

  “There are so many layers to our fucked-up layer cake, I don’t know how to untangle them,” she said.

  “You don’t untangle a cake, baby,” he said. “You eat it.” He wound a finger in her hair. “I’m going to take a look at that arm now.”

  “You think I want your brutish hand on my bandage?”

  “That doesn’t work twice in a row.”

  “I mean it.” She got up and yanked her shirt around her. “Look what you did to my shirt!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He rolled off the condom. “I’m still going to look.”

  “My medical needs are private, got it? And Richard will be here any second.” She grabbed her phone, hoping it was true. “Richard’s on his way, and we’re handling it.” She called Richard. He was on his way, thankfully. “We’re in the study,” she said, eyeing Thorne.

  You never knew what Thorne would do. If he thought she was in some sort of danger, he’d just rip off the bandage and look at it and clean it or something. He had a warped idea of boundaries, but if Richard was coming, he might not feel so free to be his crazy self. Thorne knew they weren’t together romantically, but he got now that they were almost like family.

  Thorne had such a fascination with families. He’d seemed struck when she talked about how badly she wanted her family back home together. Maybe he was imagining Richard as part of it.

  What would he do if he knew he was part of it?

  Or could’ve been—in another universe, anyway.

  She so craved to share Benny with him. She wished he could see how amazing his kid was. And Benny was so affectionate, what would Thorne do with that heady flow of love and acceptance? In spite of all that had happened between them, in spite of the hotel soap bit and everything else, she wanted that love for Thorne. Thorne didn’t trust when adults were kind to him, but Benny was pure and good, and never a lie. Thorne would know that.

  Except she couldn’t let a man involved with Hangman or the Slaters into Benny’s life. She shouldn’t have let him back into hers. She was a bad mother.

  She clicked off the connection tuned in to Thorne. “I’m grabbing some stuff from my room,” she said in a hard-driving don’t follow me tone. Without giving him a chance to object, she got the hell out of there, shutting the door behind her, body still electric from his touch.

  What was she thinking?

  She didn’t lie to herself a lot, not anymore, but she’d lied to herself with Thorne, telling herself that she had to fuck him, that it was the only way to unfix his attention from her bullet wound. Well, it had certainly been an effective way to unfix his attention, but it hadn’t been the only way.

  When she reached her bedroom, she went for comfort clothes—her old jeans and a big, soft, long-sleeved T-shirt. She looked at herself in the mirror, feeling like shit. Not because they’d had sex—that wasn’t it at all. It was because she’d called him a loser. A brute. A lowlife. Over and over.

  Playing that stupid game.

  “You’re not a loser,” she whispered into the darkness outside the window.

  Because Thorne had a compass deep down inside him that was unshakable, unwavering—she’d always felt it. He had fucked-up emotions, no doubt, but some core element of him had escaped being fucked up. Something inside him was as pure and durable as diamonds.

  A text from Richard. Side door?

  She thought about where the guys were—in the great room and the office wing, and two of them had been in the kitchen; she directed him to come in the side basement door. They could go up and down from there via the back stairwell, handily avoiding the Hangman goons.

  “What happened?” Richard asked as soon as she let him in.

  “What?” She turned and led him up the back staircase. It wasn’t carpeted—just painted wood steps in a skinny passageway, slippery in socks.

  Richard was right behind her. “You fucked him.”

  She stopped and turned to him, thinking briefly about lying. Then, “Yeah.”

  Richard’s gaze intensified.

  “It was stupid,” she whispered. “Okay? I know.” She turned and started to climb again.

  “A few hours in the house, and you’re fucking him…”

  “Shhh. His Hangman guys are here helping in the search. They’re spread out on every floor.”

  He whispered: “Did you think of a place to stow the CD? I have it,” he said. “It’s clean.”

  “We need to wait until tonight, until they’re all gone,” she said. “We’ll have to be sneaky, because Thorne means to stay. He means to stay the night.”

  “How the hell do we get out of here for Reedsville?”

  “We’re on?” she asked.

  “There’s probably nothing worth stealing, but on the upside, it won’t be under heavy guard.”

  “But the women—”

  “That’s pretty much it. Blue is willing to go, but he’s the only one.”

  “We can do this with a trio?”

  “If you can step up.”

  “I can step up.” She paused at the private alcove on the third floor landing. “So we just slip out.”

  “I don’t like that he’s here. Does he sleep heavily?”

  “Light,” she said. “He hears everything.”

  “We’ll drug him,” Richard said. “I have one of the dart guns.”

  Nadia widened her eyes. “We can’t do that!”

  “We don’t have to shoot him. We could break the tip into a drink.”

  “We’re not drugging him,” Nadia said. “It would make him vulnerable. He would hate it.”

  “What happens when he finds us
gone in the middle of the night? And there’s another co-op hit?”

  “What happens when he figures out we drugged him and there’s another co-op hit? That would look even more suspicious.”

  “I’ll just put in enough to get him drowsy. He’ll think he fell asleep. A big round of fucking will do that to a guy.”

  “Fuck off,” she said.

  “He still have a sweet tooth?”

  “We’re not drugging him,” she said.

  “You’re not objective—you’re fucking him.”

  “You say it like it’s an ongoing activity. I’m not fucking him, I fucked him. And my head is perfectly clear.”

  Richard gave her a level look. “I’m drugging Thorne, or we’re not going. I won’t risk him following us.”

  “We can get away from him without drugging him.” She stopped again, turning to face him. “We’re not drugging him, okay?”

  “Fine, we’re not drugging him.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “What?” he asked.

  She wasn’t convinced. “I mean it,” she said in a pointed tone. “Anyway, he’s been up more than twenty-four hours straight already, and it’s only morning.” She turned and continued on. “So, Blue’s coming? Even if the co-op’s light?”

  “He’s gambling maybe it won’t be light,” Richard said.

  “What’s our plan?”

  “We might have to make it up as we go along,” Richard said.

  “Mmm,” she said.

  “We can wait if the alternative is going in without you at 100 percent,” Richard said. “Be honest if you’re not ready. If it scares you not to have a plan.”

  “I’m in,” she said. She was there with everything. Her mother needed her, and so did Benny. And someday when she told Benny that his grandfather put his grandmother in that awful place, she’d be able to say that she, his mother, had done everything she could to make it right. Benny would see that he didn’t come from only darkness and evil.