“Ooh, what are you gonna do? Huh? Fucking cripple.” He laughs like he’s so fucking funny. But no one else is laughing. I hear some of the other guys lambasting him, calling him a tweaker, calling him a piece of shit. Others tell him to get lost. He doesn’t listen. “You can’t do nothing, you fucking cripple. Got your ass kicked and now you’re nothing but a pussy. See what you get when you intrude, huh? See? See?”
Bryant or Bryson’s words rankle. He keeps referring to Stretch’s injuries, and how he received them. They make the hair stand up all over my body. I may not know Stretch very well, and he may keep what happened completely to himself, but he’s not a user. Not even weed. Says it gives him tunnel vision so he doesn’t do more than drink a beer on occasion. So I doubt he was trying to hit anyone up for drugs. So what the fuck does this jackass mean about being involved with someone he shouldn’t have? I can’t place it and it’s pissing me off. Just like the asshole spewing the words is doing.
But a part of me wonders. Wonders if Bryant or Bryson or whatever, or at least the people he knows are the ones who hurt Stretch. It’d be too coincidental if true, but I never believed in coincidences before anyhow.
“I want a match next week. I know you can set it up.” He tells Stretch but as he says it, he looks my and Cecelia’s way. “I want a match, a challenge set for next week.”
“Whatever, asshole.”
With a wink in our direction, the fucker finally leaves.
“God, he is disgusting.” Celia shivers and I know it’s not from the cold. I agree with her and then finally get around to asking if she wants to leave. She nods and we meet up with Stretch to tell him we’re going.
“Can you believe that guy?” he asks and I shake my head. “What the hell was he talking about, you know? Fucking druggies.”
I don’t let his words get to me. He doesn’t know and honestly, this guy is a different breed than us. So I shake off the comment and our shame. “We’re heading out. Done with the drama for the night.”
“Gotcha. See you guys next week.”
“Yeah, we’ll catch you later.”
With that we leave.
Hightail it home to be with each other. To forget this night and all the ridiculousness it brought. We barely make it through the front door before we’re all over each other, giving in to our need.
The rustle of sheets, the sound of sweat slick skin against sweat slick skin. The scent of sex and desire combine, ready for explosion.
“You feel so good. Too good. I want to come inside you so badly.”
Heavy pants break against the night. Breathy moans, and chest-deep grunts and groans create a symphony in the streetlight lit dark. Truths and vows made of reinforced steel are set.
“Chace,” she gasps against my lips, her body quaking in completion.
“Celia,” I exhale as I join her in bliss.
We lay, our bodies still tethered, me atop her trembling form, my head resting in the crook of her neck. The slight flutters of her internal walls have me shivering from sensitivity. I don’t want to move from this spot and I know with the way her hands still clutch at my back, she wants me to stay put. Lifting my head to brush lips against lips, I instinctively thrust forward, my hips rocking of their own volition.
I may have just come. I may have just come for the third time tonight, but I’ve no doubt I’ll be hard again, hard and wanting in no time. My body craves Cecelia like she’s water or air. My heart loves her heart. My soul knows her soul. My mind thirsts for her mind. And my body, as it begins to stir for her once again, my body aches for her body.
I want my mouth, my tongue, my fingers, my cock buried inside of her every moment of every day, making her cry out in ecstasy. I want to feel her mouth, her pussy tugging my piercing, giving me that pleasurable pain only she’s capable of. She’s my addiction. It’s thrilling and terrifying all at once.
Slowly rocking my hips, letting my erection build, letting her work through her own sensitivity, I kiss her again. “I love you, Cecelia. I love you so fucking much.”
“Oh God,” she gasps, breaking our kiss and throwing her head back. I take advantage of her exposed neck, letting my lips trail kisses against her soft skin, and my teeth nibble against her flesh. “Fuck! I love you too.”
“Mmm. You feel so fucking good baby.” I’ve marked her and I know she’ll be pissed because of her job, but I want to be all over her. Just like she wants me to be. I was never possessive or domineering before. It took losing Cecelia to bring the caveman out of me. I won’t lose her again. She will have to send me away before I ever go a moment without her.
“Oh God, Chace.” She writhes under me, her breasts pushed against my chest. I move to take a nipple into my mouth, tugging the hard, pierced bud until she starts gulping for air. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna come, baby.”
“Oh yeah. Come for me. I love it when you come all over my cock,” I command though I know I can’t just demand it to happen, my ego isn’t that big. Still, Cecelia has always loved it when I talk dirty to her and now is no exception. With a strangled cry, I feel her whole frame begin to quake. It’s enough to send me over the edge again too, though my orgasm is not nearly as explosive this time around after having just come only moments earlier. It doesn’t matter though. As long as she’s satisfied, I am too.
It really is amazing to me the stamina I have with her. I wonder idly if it has something to do with fighting, keeping up my strength, because it certainly would help. But then I wonder if it’s just Cecelia. Because no other woman makes me feel this way.
Porn turns me on. It turns Cecelia on too. But I get hard for Cecelia. I honestly feel like there might be something wrong with me, the way my brain, my desire is so devoted to this woman. Because shouldn’t a man have the compulsion, at least once in his life, to look elsewhere, even if he never actually travels elsewhere?
I don’t know. And in so many ways, I don’t care to because I don’t want it to take away from this, from here.
Lust, love, the insatiable need to be with her, inside her. Every second of every moment.
It’s unnerving and overwhelming and I am terrified to lose it. Terrified to lose her.
And right now, there is a threat against us. A threat we need to find a way to defeat before it can defeat us.
Flopping onto my side to keep from crushing her, I watch the staccato rise and fall of her chest. The way her nipple rings glint from the streetlight and our sweat. She’s so fucking beautiful I want to cry. There is nothing in this world or the next that I wouldn’t do for her.
I hope she knows this. I hope she understands this. Because she is my whole world and I’ve already experienced a life without her. I can’t go back to that. I refuse to. And she needs to know exactly how important she is to me. Because I will never ever allow her to feel inferior again. I will never allow her to feel as though I see her that way. I will never allow her heart to be broken, not by me or anyone.
And I will never allow anyone to bring harm or humiliation to her because they are a sick and twisted fuck looking to manipulate two people who once upon a time were almost beyond broken and the situation presented itself to have advantage taken of it.
No. It won’t happen.
Trailing my thumb across her bottom lip, I speak softly but firmly to her, “I would kill for you, Cecelia. I would walk through the very fires of Hell for you. Just say the word.”
Her eyes land on my face. She’s studying me, working through my words, my sincerity and what it can do for her. Though she’s still catching her breath, I see a determination set there that had been lost amidst her fear on the street as she exposed a truth we were too fucked up to remember. And then her words, though quiet, soft, reiterate it. “I want him dead, Chace.”
“As you wish.”
We stare at each other for a long time. Searching. Seeing. Understanding. Accepting.
Bryson or Bryant or whatever the fuck his name is, he’s going to die. This is not a joke. This is not a game. These are not words
spoken in the heat of the moment but mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. This asshole wants to use us. He wants to take advantage of a moment from years ago for his own personal gain. He wants to destroy us. It won’t happen.
We’re going to need a plan. We’re also going to need to find out how he came to be back in our lives and why he said the things he did. What everything means.
He doesn’t know it, but he picked the wrong people to fuck with.
TWENTY-TWO
It’s like the calm before the storm. A storm we never thought we would have to endure. Normal people don’t deal with these things. Because these things aren’t normal.
But here we are.
It’s so ridiculous.
Two weeks have passed since it was decided.
Two weeks have passed since Cecelia and I chose to fight back. Stand our ground. Not be bullied by a worthless loser. A loser who for all his bravado does not return the following week to the fights, despite his demand for a challenge.
Two weeks have passed and we finally have an answer. It’s a wholly unexpected one, but it’s an answer nonetheless.
“I can’t believe they’re one in the same.”
I watch Melody take a big swig of her fourth beer. It’s a Corona, which I’m not a fan of, but it’s still booze and that’s really all that matters in most cases. I’ve been so good for so long though, and I’m not falling off the fucking wagon for shitty beer.
To be honest, I don’t know how Melody hasn’t keeled over already. Perhaps she does imbibe when someone buys her a drink and has worked up a pretty impressive tolerance. Or perhaps her adrenaline is rushing and the alcohol hasn’t hit yet. I imagine that crash won’t look very pretty.
“How is this even possible?”
Cecelia is sitting beside me, a can of Sprite in her hand that she’s sharing with me. She’s trying to be sympathetic to her friend, but I can tell sympathy is the last thing she’s feeling. Fear is definitely the overriding emotion. Well, fear and anger. “I don’t know. It feels really staged, to be honest.”
“I thought I’d gotten away from him, you know? I moved here, didn’t let anyone know and now this?” Her voice screeches and I cringe at the volume. “A drug dealer? Seriously?”
It is by chance we figure out that Bryson or Bryant or something is actually Bryson Hagen of Milwaukee. It is by chance we find out the man we can barely remember though the name Hagen sounds vaguely familiar, the man who sold me the coke, and then fucked…it is by chance we find out he also happens to be Melody’s ex-boyfriend. The very one she’d left Wisconsin to escape. The same one she’d disappeared for a month from because he’d tracked her down and found out where she lived.
The very one I now firmly believe fucked over Stretch.
Bryson Hagen had started small in the drug world. Sold some weed here and there while in high school but it got the attention of some bigger dealers the older he got. He’d been trying to push into bigger territory, hoping to find new clients so he didn’t have to do anything more with his life. The bigger dealers didn’t appreciate his tenacity. Instead of giving it up though, Bryson chose to join their ranks and started selling the harder stuff.
He kept all of this from Melody. Pretended to be someone he wasn’t so she trusted him in her naiveté.
They’d met when she graduated from high school. Melody MacIntosh had been a fresh-faced eighteen year old looking for a little bit of rebellious but not dangerous freedom from her strict Irish Catholic parents and met Bryson one night after sneaking out of the house to go to a twenty-one and older club.
She was obviously underage for the club, he was twenty-three.
It’s the classic cliché. A young woman seduced by the attention an older man was willing to give. In the end, she gave up her virginity and logic to this douche.
She would take off for days at a time, staying with Hagen in random motels until he would need to “leave for business” and then she’d go home until he was calling her up again. Her parents didn’t know what to do. Melody had always been relatively good. Until she met Hagen. Then it was like she changed completely.
Long red hair was cut short. Streaks of color smeared through it. Make-up, something she’d never cared for before was suddenly a morning routine. And late-night parties were the norm.
But she’d been eighteen. An adult. Allowed to roam free if she wanted with whom she wanted, according to the law.
The way she tells it, Hagen made her feel special and in that feeling, she didn’t think about anything or anyone else. She didn’t see why her parents were worried. She didn’t see that Hagen was older or that it was odd he lived out of motels. She didn’t see how strange it was that he would disappear like he did.
“I was so young and so fucking naïve,” she says with her head hanging. “I can’t believe I ever fell for his bullshit.”
In the end, it all boiled down to obsession.
While the summer passed on, school was close to starting. Melody had plans to attend college at the University of Wisconsin. It had been her goal her entire educational career. Be a Badger, study sociology. Even in meeting Hagen, she never wavered about the goal. Her parents were relieved but Hagen was furious. He hadn’t known she had goals. He hadn’t realized she expected more from life other than just waiting around for him in dingy motels.
In his delusions, he hadn’t expected anything from sheltered Melody other than worship of him.
So he got mad. Crazy and like a completely different person.
One night, that madness turned into a violent shout that she was his and was not allowed to leave him.
And then that shout turned into a slap across her face when she showed defiance.
Melody, face burning from the slap, grabbed her stuff, ran from his motel room and back home, calling him crazing and swearing to never see him again.
She tried going off to college. And for a few months, things seemed okay. She still felt foolish for being led like she was. She felt foolish for not listening to her parent’s concerns. Yes, her folks might have been strict, but they really only wanted what was best for her.
A month before the end of her freshman year though, things changed. Preparing for finals, she’d started to get the feeling she was being watched. Then she started to feel like she was being followed. She thought she was going crazy until her college roommate mentioned some tall blond guy was hanging around asking about her. Feeling unnerved by this, Melody contacted campus security, requested an escort everywhere she went for the rest of the school year.
Finals came and went without any more weirdness and she thought Hagen had moved on. She’d been wrong.
Instead, he simply waited for her to return home from school where he ambushed her in the driveway of her parent’s house as she exited her car.
His body gaunt, his hair a mess and his skin sickly, he cried and begged for her to take him back. She didn’t understand what was wrong with him, why he was acting so insane. When she rejected him, he changed tactics and threatened her safety, her parents. Of course the police were called, but Bryson Hagen had seemingly disappeared.
Just as her sophomore year was to start, Melody walked into the dorms to find a stuffed Teddy Bear with its stuffing tore apart and her name and the words, “you’re mine” attached to the card on its neck.
“I left the state after that. Didn’t tell anyone but my parents where I was going. I was too freaked out. It really tore them up me leaving like I did. Tore them up but they understand.” Melody sniffs. “I use burner phones to call them so he can’t find me. All the good that did, huh.”
“Holy shit,” Celia says her body trembling. I feel my heart rate speed up and my veins run cold at the implication.
“I don’t really know how he got in to the dorms. I mean you had to have a key to enter. So unless he followed someone, I don’t know.” She opens another beer and downs half of it. “I just can’t believe he’s back. Again.”
I nod and struggle for what
to say. What do you say, really? I can’t think of anything that isn’t contrite or stupid. Cecelia does not appear to have my problem though.
“It feels like a movie. Our fuckup, your ex-boyfriend.”
“What are the odds he’d show up right as we were changing shifts? I mean, I don’t believe it was a coincidence so he had to have known that we knew one another right?” Melody looks lost. I can’t help her.
In some ways, I don’t believe the coincidence either. But his target has been Cecelia in recent weeks, not Melody. And from what we could tell, he only knew where Melody lived, not where she works.
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Who knows who he was looking for last night, though.”
I’m uneasy knowing Hagen had returned to the restaurant. I’m uneasy knowing he was there when Cecelia was most vulnerable because shift changes mean she isn’t front and center for the security to see. I’m uneasy knowing I don’t know if he was there to rattle her again, torment her with more threats, or if he really was there to bother Melody. She’s moved from where she was living when he found her. It’s possible he tracked her down at work. But again, he purposely used Cecelia’s job to get to her before.
I hate this man. I hate that he has this mistake hanging over us with nothing for us to do about it. All I want is to protect Cecelia and I am impotent.
“I should have known,” Melody says after a bit. “I should have known he was a dealer. Or at least using. It’s so blatantly obvious. I am so fucking dumb.”
“You’re not dumb. You just didn’t want to see it. It happens to the best of us.”
Cecelia’s words cut me. She isn’t talking about me. Not really, anyhow. But for all intents and purposes, she could be. I mean hell, I wouldn’t see the lies, the jealousy or manipulations until it was almost too late. I wouldn’t see the truth right in front of my face with the woman I love falling apart in front of me because I was too stupid to see reality. I let foolishness steal my sanity. I let stress and struggle take control until all that was left were ashes of a life that could have been good. Ashes of a life forced to be rebuilt when it should have never burned to begin with.
And the Sweet (Addiction Series Book 2) Page 19