“You’re already in, little dove.” My own fucking words come out unrehearsed and without thought. They bleed out of me with less than honourable intentions, sin and devilment forging forward into her self-indulgently, and yet they’re filled with a substance I can’t comprehend, nor am I trying to. We’re both becoming lost in my sea, her demise as worrisome as my own. “You’re just in a wonderland you can’t understand yet.”
The heavy, dull, quickening of sound in the air behind us breaks her from me, her body spinning her frown away from me in surprise as the sound gets louder. I can do nothing but stare at her as she walks away from me and looks up into the sky, her lips still lingering regardless of the fucking distance. It’s all so true. I’m falling deeper into the fucking rabbit hole myself, barely comprehending the way she makes me feel and more afraid of the drop with every kiss.
“A helicopter?” she calls, her voice hardly audible beneath the drone of the blades that keep rotating. I’m still staring, not caring for inane questions or the futility of this date. It’s her I want, with or without clothes, with or without her smart mouth, and with or without torture. I’m as ready to sit on my beach with her as I’ve ever been, and happy to dwell in the sea’s calm lap on my skin. I don’t know why. I wish I did. It’s something inside of me I’ve not felt before her, a fucking epiphany that has no base reason for existence. I can’t categorise it with any sense of clarification or psychological evaluation. It just is. Fucked as that might be.
I chuckle at the thought, watching as she giggles a little and wraps her coat further around herself, her body naturally backing into my hold again with little resistance. “You’re taking me up in a helicopter?”
“No, I’m taking you dancing. We need to get there.”
“How exciting. Real relationship dates.” Hardly, but as long as my cock’s rubbing against her cunt before the end of the night, I don’t care. If this is what it takes to keep her with me, to make her comfortable with what we’ll become, then I’ll do it, hardly caring for the pointlessness of it. “Aren’t you the charmer when you want to be, Mr. Jacobs?” I smirk and drag her back as the chopper lands, giving it room and shielding her from the worst of the wind and dust.
“I’m only charming when I want something, Alana. Just like you with your begging. You’d do well to remember that,” I say, chuckling at the thought of what the evening holds in store for her, and then moving us forward as the chopper settles. “You’ll work hard for your treats tonight.”
She frowns again, her mouth opening, ready to fly into a tirade, no doubt, but she seems to take stock of herself before releasing it, and shrugs from my hold to walk away. The move leaves me amused by her internal battle, the war between love and sanity clearly playing with her as much as it does me. But for now she needs this strength from me, not my emotional response. She needs me to be unaffected by her, bored even, because until she’s ready to trust the very floor I walk on, or until she no longer needs me at all, my other responses are of no use here. I’m not in control while they haunt me, and not wanting to try either.
“Still making it bloody difficult then?” she says sulkily, her arms folding to put the barrier between us again. Difficult? I could slap her for childishness. I grasp hold of the door to open it and hold out a hand to her, unable to articulate how accommodating I’m actually being given other toys I’ve played with lately.
“You have no comprehension of difficult, Alana,” I snarl back, my ears near deafened by the continued whirr of the blades spinning above us. She sneers, that look of disdain raising her brow and riling up any blood I’m keeping at bay. “You’re being a fucking brat again. Perhaps you’d like to see my difficult, try your chance at scrutinising it under pressure?” The blades keep blaring above, the dull thud of them continuously whisking her hair about as the sun hovers behind her. It’s as irritating as her sneer, and as fucking beautiful as my damn horizons. “Well?” I snap, my hand still offered as if begging her to take the damn thing. It’s annoying; she’s fucking annoying. “Take the damn hand and get your ass on the chopper, or I’ll take you home and teach you some more manners instead.” She smiles slightly, the corner of her lip lifting rather than any fear shining through her features. And then she chews the fucking thing, raking over the cut I’ve put there, her eyes focused on mine and not backing down one inch from any ounce of Dominance I might be providing.
“Temper, temper,” she says, her hand stretching out to mine. I’ve snatched the fucking thing back before I’ve thought, hardly giving her time to move a leg before I yank her into the step. Bitch. Infuriating, rude, churlish, and apparently now amused at my temper rather than scared of it. Christ, I need a drink. “There’s no point in it, you know?” What? That’s fucking annoying too, my inability to understand her next move succinctly. She confuses me, going off kilter with her questioning. It makes me push her into place, hardly able to stop the need to fuck her ass as she leans over the seat. “You can’t hide it, Blaine, not from me.” More expletives want to come from my mouth. They want to raise hell into the air as I calmly fuck about with straps and latches, ratcheting the buckles into place and thinking of anything but dancing. I’m part admonishing her for being as self-satisfied as Delaney, and part blaming her for the pain she’s pushing for. “You can’t run from what you instigated, Blaine. It was you on those steps at the church, not me. You asked.” I keep looking at anything but her, my stare unfocused as I turn back to my seat and begin my own process of buckling in. Bitch. She might be correct; she might even be rash enough to try this full tilt, allowing me my fucking freedom as she does, but she’s the one who asked for my help, not the other way around. “And, if nothing else, I won’t let you lie. You told me you wouldn’t lie to me.”
I stop and close my eyes to the torment as I knock the security screen between us and Mac signalling that we’re ready, all the time listening to her chuckling as the chopper lifts and we start the journey. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to have stopped her mocking laughter by the time I glance back and see her smiling out of the window, her eyes crinkling under her amusement as we travel on. It makes me stare at her, part infuriated and part bewitched by her casual behaviour. She’s nothing like Eloise was. She’s stronger, less inclined to capitulate to my moods, but perhaps that’s because we’re adults, not adolescents who don’t give a fuck about consequences.
“You never have been in love, have you?” she says out of nowhere, infuriating me further as she continues to gaze at the fields below. “You don’t know what to do with me, do you?” And still she smiles, her body slowly turning back towards me, crossing her legs and reaching her fucking exquisite heels towards my shin. “Are you terribly perplexed?” Yes. The question makes me smirk before I contain the reaction. “Daddy’s confused about baby girl, isn’t he?” That just widens my smile rather than containing it. “What does Daddy need to make him admit his love?” Daddy needs her to shut the fuck up before she gets dangled out the window for amusement. “Big bad Daddy’s got his cock in a knot, hasn’t he?” Bitch. Cock in a knot?
I stifle the laugh that wants to come out, too irritated with her inexplicable ability to get inside my head with little fucking effort. It’s refreshing in some ways, entertaining, and my magician is more than ready to fuck all over her condescending attitude, but I don’t want that. For now, and for her, I’m enjoying this lilt she has over me. It causes reactions in me, ones I don’t know how to handle. They need investigation and research.
“Why do you ask so many questions of me, Alana? What do you hope to achieve with them?”
“Honesty. You’re lying to me.” She says it with a fierce determination, flippantly raising her brow as if I’m stupid for not understanding her. “You said you wouldn’t lie.” I won’t.
“Would you like me to say I love you because you need it, or because you think I do?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. Answer it.” She frowns at me and crosses her arms again
, flummoxed by the question.
“I... Well, you need to say it for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re lying to yourself.”
“I’m not lying to anyone. Certainly not myself.”
“You are if you can’t say the words out loud.” I smirk in response to her statement, proving my own point even though she hasn’t got the guts of the problem yet.
“That would mean you need me to say them for you, little dove, not for me.” She opens her mouth instantly, ready to launch something back at me, but stops before letting rip with any intelligent thought she might have had.
“No, it’s because you…” I raise a brow, waiting for more and wondering where she’s going to go next. “You’re not acknowledging this between us.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re denying it. Making it something difficult to feel.”
“I would assume you can still feel me all over your cunt.” She frowns and tuts, admonishing me for my crude reasoning. Fuck her. She won’t win this in any way. And the main reason for that is because I’m right and she isn’t. She’s the insecure one here for now, not me.
“That’s not the point. You’re rejecting this, killing its forward momentum.”
“You’re saying I’m going backwards?”
“Well, you won’t say it… And that makes it difficult to go forward, doesn’t it?” And now she’s fucking pouting beautifully, drawing up any sense of adoration I might have for her and tripling its clarity. Still, she’s not winning a battle with me any time soon.
“For whom?”
“You. Me. Us, as a couple.”
“A couple? I thought I was helping your junkie cunt.”
“That’s… I don’t like that.”
“Don’t you? It’s what you are. Say it.”
“No, you’re avoiding the topic.”
“And that is?”
“That you’re a liar, Blaine. You’re lying. Trying to deny me my feelings.”
“Listen carefully, Alana. Your feelings are yours to assimilate. I said I would give you the world if you asked, as long as you gave me your body to play with. I also told you I would help remove the toxins you’ve shoved into your system through your inability to manage yourself. At no point did I give you any indication of a coupling going forward. That would offer a life I can’t give you. I’m a sadist, Alana, not a self-serving masochist.”
“But…” I wait again, becoming amused by her continued aggravation and brattish behaviour. “Well, what the fuck is this then?” I raise a brow again as she fucks around with her skirt, more irritation creasing her face. “You know, your mouth, the dreamy haze on your face when we kiss?” She flicks her gaze to my lips and licks her own. “You hold my hands, Blaine. You smother me, make us closer than we need to be if it’s all just help.” Sadly, the fucking directness of the statement as it rushes from her mouth confuses me, my mind struggling to find sensible thought as I imagine that haze she talks of. And why do I hold her fucking hands? Why? I’ve never held anyone’s hands but hers. Cole’s maybe when I was younger and he needed me.
“It’s a chemical reaction to my come spilling into you. It’s edifying to me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Watch that dirty mouth of yours, young lady. You’re unknotting my cock.” She’s eternally unknotting the damn thing. Irritating it. Winding it up. Making it think of something other than the damn battering it normally intends.
“No. I’m not having this anymore. In fact, go screw yourself, because you won’t be doing it with me anymore. I don’t fuck liars.” I chuckle at her and turn to gaze out of the window, watching the ground go by and wondering how she’ll feel by the end of the night.
“Mmm. Let’s see if you keep that vow by the end of tonight.”
“Why? What’s happening tonight?” she snaps.
“A date. It’s what you asked for.”
Chapter 7
Alana
D ays seem to have passed, weeks even. I don’t know where I am or even what time it is as we fly onwards. He has me in an unknown routine every day. Sleeping at odd hours, getting up when it’s dark, going to sleep when it’s light. Some part of it is disconcerting. Strange. Like I’m being tossed from pillar to post, unable to make my own decisions about even the most basic of things. Other parts are clarifying, somehow teaching me that my quiet is in there, him guiding me through without me having to think at all. It’s become a blur of kneel, learn, write, eat, sleep, repeat. After that first night when he dragged me by the hair and put clamps on me, the first time I knelt of my own volition, it’s been a trail of new and unencumbered sensations. Day after day. Hour after hour. Until I get a reprieve and am allowed to sleep and eat.
I ache, everywhere, regardless of this perfect outfit and my hair looking like I’ve just been preened by a salon. Underneath all this I’m a mass of bruises and marks, ones I stare at daily with a smile on my face. He makes me do that, too, makes me linger after the acts and stare into a mirror as he stands behind me, apparently so I can appreciate the sensation and learn to trust it, trust him. And I do, with everything but my heart. He just won’t let me into his enough to know this is real. It feels like an obligation on his part, occasionally fluttered with an act of kindness, or a nice word to lift us from the distance he still keeps me at. But when he comes inside me, when he uses his lips on mine and breathes the moment through us, he’s as close as I’ve ever felt anything. He can’t hide that behind façades and walls. Not from me.
I gaze out at the clouds, watching the skyscrapers come into view and wondering what’s coming next. I don’t know, and part of me doesn’t care. There isn’t much left he can do to my body. He’s had his hands everywhere, in everything. Put me through hours of torture, something called edging, getting me so close I’m screaming into the wind, only for him to deny me anything and make me write again. And the story flows so well because of it. It pours from me as I gaze at his beach, the winter’s rain starting to change the landscape around me as the sea crashes constantly. All I see is him when I look at it. Sometimes calm and enriching. Sometimes furious and dark. And it’s best at night, in the near black, when all I can see is the last crash of a wave against the shore, or the moonlight showing me the tranquil waters farther out.
Why can’t I reach him out there?
I’ve mused all this shit the entire way here, having hardly spoken to him because of whatever that was a short while ago. I’ve mused it and become more and more exasperated with his lack of love, denying me the very emotion I need from him to make this truly happen.
“Where are we?” I ask sullenly, as the helicopter lowers to a rooftop. The whole thing makes me want to cry and scream and yell, both at him and at myself. I just can’t get a handle on my feelings. I can’t switch them off like he is doing, if he ever had any to begin with.
“Dates.” Screw him and his dates. I stare out the window again as the blades begin to slow, the view nothing but rooftops and skyscrapers. A date constitutes something worth dating for. Nothing here is worth dating for, irrespective of what my heart tells me. I should have adored this journey. Enjoyed my first flight in a helicopter and been content, perhaps held hands with him. Apparently that’s not what this is, though, regardless of the endless sessions we’ve had together. It’s just fucking. This is just a clinical procedure to him. A test case. I’m obviously something to be prodded and poked, played with. Love in his world, it appears, does not involve loving. “What you asked for.”
I turn to his unfortunately handsome face and begin taking the buckle of my belt apart, part wanting to slap him and part needing to kiss him. How does he do that? It’s a thing I need to write more of to find my way through, a problem that needs further expansion. And he looks so fucking smug with himself as he sits there in a three-piece suit, no doubt proving that no matter what he suggests, I’ll follow his lead. I’m not sure I will any more. He might be able to help me, might even be able to show me h
is path, but without more connection from him, it’s beginning to mean nothing. It’s solitary, irrespective of him always being there. It confines me in a veil I want him under with me. It makes me feel alone.
“Tell me something personal about you,” I snap, my hands batting the belt away as the door opens beside me. He smirks. It’s something I’m getting sick of. Bloody smirking. I’d rather the frown that descends every time I get close to pushing a button he doesn’t like. Or the thrill of his intoxication when he comes inside me. Or the benevolence that settles when he lets his hands roam my skin.
“No.”
“Wanker.”
That’s all I’ve got as I swivel away from him and try to avoid breaking my neck in these heels, lovely as they might be. Christ knows how Tabitha knows anything about my dress size or shoe size, but she does. It’s all perfect—lines skimming exactly where they should, the dress fitting my breasts to precision, all completed by a long purple fur coat. One I’m hoping is fake. Even the jewellery matches my skin, a dark purple stone on the choker matching my hair, too. It’s all as irritating to me as my mood, the one he’s provoked by being an arse.
I walk on, as I get down to the floor, not bothering to shield myself from the slowing blades as they keep spinning behind me, or to wait for Blaine. I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m assuming through those double doors is a good start. I’m greeted by another random man who holds the door open as I arrive, his eyes looking anywhere but at me. Perhaps he’s not allowed to look at me, or perhaps he’s eyeing up the good-looking arse following me. Who knows? Who fucking cares anymore? I don’t even know why we’re here. We might as well have stayed in his house and fucked ourselves stupid until I had no energy left at all. Then I could have slept through these slight tremors still riding my skin a little, eventually ridding myself of them completely. Job done, and with no need for this damned adventure that becomes more ludicrous with every passing day.
The End (Stained Duet Book 2) Page 10