Unbound (the TORQUED trilogy Book 3)

by Shey Stahl

  I still don’t say anything because I didn’t. I still don’t.

  Pulling myself closer, I stroke her cheek with my thumb but don’t say anymore. I want to place my hand on her chest, feel her pulse beneath my fingertips. I want to lay next to her and listen to her heartbeat. I want that sound to end the noise in my head and the anguish pulsing inside me like an angry drumbeat that’s forever taken over.

  I’ve backed her into her bedroom and she knows it. This is the last place she wants to be, with me, right now.

  She gasps, searching for me inside my hollow eyes. She won’t find me, not the boy she once loved, or could still love. He’s long gone.

  My hands shake when I bring them to cover her cheeks, unstable eyes lost in hers. “Tell me that you don’t love me anymore.” My glare burns through the façade I’d put up that I don’t care. I do care. “Fucking say it,” I growl.

  “After everything you’ve put me through… I don’t love you,” she spits back, and my stomach drops, burning acid churning.

  She doesn’t believe it yet.

  “You’re lying.” Reaching between our hips, I take a hold of the edge of her panties with my right hand and yank hard. The fabric rips instantly and I toss it aside carelessly like she did with my heart years ago.

  She shakes her head. “Not like this.”

  My voice splits the silence, cogent and conclusive. “This is exactly how it should be. You wanted to be a fuckin’ whore. I’ll treat you like one.”

  It’s wrong, and I know by doing this I’m destroying anything we might have in the future. That’s why I’m here. This is what I need. I want her to hate me before I leave so I don’t come back. I’ll have no reason to. It’s the only way.

  Gripping her waist, the curve, the place on her body meant for my hands, I pull her in.

  She’s meant for me.

  Only me.

  Like it or not, this girl, this broken, depressed girl I’ve created belongs to me. Her heart knows it and my touch won’t let her forget.

  “You should leave.” She’s begging, staring at me with pleading eyes, but her hands never fall away. She can’t quite convince her heart to believe anything she’s saying to me. Her hands are on my chest, ready and able to push, but they don’t. She can’t make them act on it. My body towers over hers. I want more. I want to fuck her, to use her, and she knows it.

  Shaking hands guide her to the bed, my rapidly beating heart steady against hers, the mattress dipping with our weight. “I’m not leaving until you truly hate me.”

  What she doesn’t see is I can’t leave until that happens. I’m physically incapable of it and I know the only way to make it happen is to fuck her.

  Kicking off my shoes, I kiss her chest, her neck, shoulders. Her demands that I let her go fall away with the willing parting of her legs.

  Maybe she’s giving in, once more, again, always, even when she knows I’m a sinking ship, destined to never let her up for air.

  Sophie tries to shove my hands away when I go for her shirt, but she’s not strong enough or isn’t insistent enough. Instead, I place my hand between her breasts and shove her back down onto the bed, not hard, but enough to let her know I’m serious.

  Gripping her hips, my weight presses, guiding her thighs apart by pushing myself against her. Through my jeans, she can feel what I want most—her. I roll my hips into hers, once, twice. I need more. She feels so fucking good I groan into the heated skin of her neck.

  Sophie’s lips part, her face turning away from mine, back arching, curling fingers into white sheets. By the soft moan falling from her lips, she wants it. No more fighting, now she’s holding onto me, bending her knees to squeeze me, begging me closer.

  I let go for a moment to pull my shirt off. Peering down at her, my movements to remove my clothes are agitated. Her eyes travel to my belt where I’m working on getting my jeans undone. She wants to stop me. I see it, but she still doesn’t.

  Her hands move to my chest, pushing back. “We shouldn’t do this right now. You fucked my best friend and you’re upset.”

  Upset?

  That’s an understatement of a lifetime and I blow off the comment about fucking her best friend. It’s like I don’t even hear that part.

  “Shut up. You know you want it.” I hate myself for talking to her like this. If anyone ever talked to her like this, I’d lay the motherfucker out. But here I am, treating her like this when she’s the last person who may have an ounce of love for me. It’s what I do. Destroy everything that was once pure.

  Placing my hand on her chest once again, I push her back. She isn’t running this fucking shit tonight. I am. I’m fucking her until she knows no one will ever compare to me. “Stop fighting me.”

  I’m too consumed. I just get my jeans to my knees and plunge inside her in my next movement. She doesn’t try to stop me when I get my jeans down and the remainder of what’s between us is now gone.

  I fuck her without consideration.

  I fuck her with greed.

  I fuck her with a desperate intention of making her hate me.

  Grasping her wrists, I bite into her neck. “Go ahead, tell me you don’t love me.” I’m begging her, fucking pleading for her to put me out of my misery. “Feed me your lies if that’s what makes you feel better. I know you’re lying because your pussy tells me everything I need to know.” I breathe out against her wet skin, colored with the marks my mouth has forcibly left behind.

  My teeth sink into the tender skin of her shoulder as I’m held up by one hand and with an intensity I only have with her, a burn only she knows because she’s the reason it ignites.

  “I don’t love you,” she tells me. The words are whispered yet they hit my chest with force, a bullet straight to my heart. She’s lying, I think. Somehow, someway, she’s always going to love me.

  Hastily my lips move, my mouth never landing in one spot until it does. “Shh,” I whisper, lips to lips. I’m breathing so loudly my words are muffled because I can’t catch my fucking breath anymore. And then I swallow my hurt, my fear. I need to be the strong one.

  “I mean it,” she tells me quietly, as I’m reaching around her left thigh to bring it up around my waist.

  “You don’t.” I take all of her until we’re fastened together. I take, and take, and take everything and then some because that’s what I’m good at, heaving and hating until I’m holding onto nothing. Nothing because that’s what’s left of this love. With haste and anger swimming through my heart, I grip her hair so hard she winces, and twist her head until she’s looking at me. I search her eyes and see nothing but hate. “You need to fucking hate me.”

  She winces again, trying to move. “You’re hurting me.”

  I growl against her lips, “You’re killing me.”

  When she cries out, I cover her mouth with mine, smothering her attempts to stop me, drowning out what I don’t want to hear. I bottle it up, bend it, control what I can for now.

  Dragging my kiss, my tongue, my body against hers, I don’t ease up. No, I push harder than before, each thrust into her is more than I’ve ever given before. Possessiveness soaring through my veins, not wanting to let go. This girl is mine, and I don’t want to let go. Not right now at least. For now… I have this second with her.

  These screams are mine.

  The way her body curves into mine… that’s mine, too. No one can take that from me.

  I don’t fuck around. I don’t tease her or myself. Knees apart, I give her what we want, need, desire, and beg for. Digging my fingers into her hips, I fucking groan at the contact of being wrapped around her, spread out before me, loving me the way only she knows how to.

  She cries throughout the entire time and I hate it. Every fucking minute of it like my body on hers is the end of everything she’s ever wanted. Something in her stare, her grip on my shoulders, it tells me she knows I’m leaving after this. She senses it.

  Those cries, they’re my fault too. Every tear shed from this girl is
because of me. The words I’ve said and the bitter fucking pain I’ve created. Until me, she didn’t know what it was like to love selflessly and get nothing in return. Now… she knows pain. She knows heartache. All because of me. But this is of her own creation. She’s made me this way. I didn’t create this fucked-up mess alone. It’s her, us, the destruction we can’t stop ourselves from inflicting on each other.

  I fuck her harder than ever before. I know she’ll have bruises—and for a moment—I don’t care. I just want her to feel what I’m feeling as a reminder when I’m gone forever.

  “Fuck,” falls from my parted lips, rocking my hips and watching her body give everything I’m taking from her and every miserable ounce of frustration I’ve shouldered because of her. I fuck her as hard as I wish I could fight for her, for us.

  My jaw clenches and my heart cracks a little more. I look down at her face, her body tenses around me, her eyes on mine. She can feel the cold radiating from mine, the will to make her hate me. It gives her chills that freeze these blue eyes I want to sink into every day.

  She needs to see this, the way she’s fucking wrecking me. She’s destroyed everything about me.

  Fucking take it. See what you’ve done.

  I’m having a hard time controlling myself and if I wanted to, I could come with each thrust, but I don’t. It’s always easy with her. I’ve been with too many girls to count recently, but no one satisfies me the way she does.

  I refuse to let go, not yet. Someone has to hold on.

  In so many ways, she’s trying to let go. But not now. No, this time I’m in control and when I finally do let go, when I’m finally done, she’s going to fucking know it and then I’m gone.

  Part of me wants to try to be gentle, but I can’t. I’m incapable of it. For so long, she wanted to understand why I’ve become this person, someone she says she doesn’t even recognize anymore. Well, this is me, what I’ve become, what I’m feeling. Anger, resentment, frustration, it swims through my veins and it’s the only fucking thing I can give her.

  Covering her body with mine, my belt digs into her knees. With a gasp, she spreads them wider allowing me to fuck her harder.

  Maybe she sees it now. Maybe she wants it.

  Raising up on my hands again, I watch because as much as it hurts to do so, I want to look at her. There’s a captivating beauty only she holds. A power only she has over me.

  Fuck her for having this ability to destroy me.

  The white pillow below her captures the tears falling, her eyes closed off but forced open when I grunt and move my hand. I take a handful of her hair and pull, but she doesn’t wince, only watches me. She knows why I’m doing this.

  Her hands move from her sides, to my back where she claws at my skin, breaking me, ripping me open with her force. It’s the same thing she does to my heart. Her presence, her love, it’s everywhere and it’s overwhelming and consuming in moments like this. She’s like a forbidden fruit. A death sentence. Once I took a bite, I was granted the purgatory of loving only her.

  How can she do this? Why? Why me?

  I blink and then focus on her, my glare so dark she shivers.

  I don’t hold back. I can’t. Not anymore. She needs to see this is the end. She needs to believe I’m never coming back after this.

  I don’t stop yet though. Even when she tells me it’s too much. I don’t stop because deep down, she fucking wants it and knows this is the last time.

  I move my mouth to hers. I’m taking her breath and betraying her soul. Her body wrenches with sobs and mine shakes, my body begging to release when she finally kisses me on her own will. I don’t know why she kisses me, but I take it all.

  It’s everything I can do to hold on and not slow down the moment our mouths meet in that way, lovingly, like they used to because there’s familiarity there. It’s a warmth only she provides for me. Eyes squeezing shut, I fall hopelessly until I’m found, dragged ashore only to be pulled down by her current.

  My body breaks out in sweat, my hips slide against hers, rocking, shaking, consumed. Reaching down, I take her right leg higher and angle myself inside her, our hips grinding against each other, deeper, letting her feel what I’m taking.

  “Rawley….” She moans my name this time and I know, right then, it’s the very last time I’ll make her do that. She closes her eyes, more tears squeeze out. It’s so fucking hard seeing her in pain. It’s even hard knowing I’m the cause of it.

  Emotion swells up, years of regret gnawing at me and I break the contact our mouths have. When I finally allow myself to come, I fall against her chest, my body shaking with sobs that aren’t just from pleasure. Sure, it’s there, a little, but this is from the devastation of knowing what this means for us.

  The end.

  Tears soak her neck, bathe her skin in acid as she cries too. My hands curl around the back of her shoulders, slamming her into my last thrust. It’s the last light of day crumbling, a promise to love me forever, destroyed, freedom and innocence ruined by choices she made and my mind’s refusal to forgive.

  What the fuck did I just do?

  I’m panting as I pull out. I don’t look at her. I can’t. I won’t. Not yet. Leaning to the side, I get my jeans up around my waist. My chest heaves with labored breaths when I reach for my T-shirt beside me. Sitting back on my knees, I look down at her. Her shirt’s pushed up around her breasts, her legs spread open, her forearm over her face. She’s crying. She’s sobbing so badly her body is curled up, the muscles in her stomach clenching.

  In some ways, I’m too fucked up to care. This doesn’t change anything. She started this years ago but I need to be the one to finish it.

  Fuck me.

  Fuck us.

  I swallow over my tears, wiping my forearm over my eyes and move to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the picture on her nightstand. It’s one of me holding a football in the air when the coach announced me as starting quarterback my freshman year of high school. She’s right beside me. It makes me sick that she has still has it beside her bed after everything we’ve been through.

  With a quick flick of my wrist, I knock the picture to the ground. The glass inside the frame shatters when it hits the corner of the molding on the wall.

  I twist my head to her and scratch the back of my head. “You let this happen too.”

  In my chest, it feels like I forced her. Her actions told me no, between her pulling me closer and silently asking for more, and I ignored her.

  Her eyes open and she stares at me, words filling the emptiness between us. “Yes, I did.” She’s making excuses. “But I didn’t want it, not like this. And you took it, again. It’s what you always do. You take.” She sobs, her body shaking so badly I struggle to hear the words.

  The smug set of my lips means nothing with the tears I have falling. “You wanted it.” Her eyes don’t leave mine. She’s staring at me and I sense her anger like she knows what I’m doing and resents me for it. “What now? You gonna tell me you hate me?” I hate the way my voice breaks at the end. Why can’t I have strength now?

  “I don’t just hate… you.” Her words waver and break with the shattering of my soul. “I never want to ever see you again.”

  We’re finally here. All love gone completely.

  I remind myself, again, it had to be this way or I’d keep coming back.

  Sophie curls into herself facing the wall, her T-shirt riding up and bare ass visible to me. My eyes travel the length of her body and then crash.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this to her.

  My temples throb and my eyes ache, my stomach rolling. The words seem inadequate but I say them anyway. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, not for what I just did, or for keeping her at bay all these years, or the fact that she hates me, and not for holding on for so long. I’m not sure what I’m sorry for.

  Lay down your head and I’ll sing you to sleep with a lullaby of a monster

  It’s the lyrics to one of my songs, but it filters through my head. />
  And that’s what I can’t keep doing. The things that I don’t even know why I’m doing them. Wordless phrases. I won’t do it. Hanging my head, my body wants to collapse right next to her, beg her to take away this pain she caused all those years ago. I sit there for a second, breathing deep, trying to calm the fierce beating in my chest and force myself to leave. When I hear her sobs again, the ones that shake the bed as if she’s starting to hyperventilate, I know I need to go.

  Without a word, without a breath, I stand, wiping my hands over my eyes once more and make my way outside her room.

  I look back when I’m at the door. She’s not watching me leave. She can’t. Maybe this time it’s finally breaking her too. I don’t tell her this is the last she’ll ever see of me. She knows it.

  I stand at the door zipping, buttoning and righting my belt. There’s a rolling in my stomach and my throat tightens. I struggle to get just outside her apartment before I throw up. Not only from the drugs earlier, but the wrenching pain in my gut that’s consuming me.

  What. Have. I. Done?

  My mind flashes with memories of what I just did to her, to us, as I stare at the window seeing where I just fucked her.

  Blinking, tears stream down my cheeks uncontrollably. My breathing is shallow and uneven at best. Straightening up, I fall back against the side of the apartment complex, my hands resting on my knees, and I wipe my mouth with my sleeve.

  Pulling my knees closer to my chest, I see images of minutes ago. Ones I don’t want to see. Ones where I’m a monster and I don’t even know myself anymore.

  It’s then, staring up at the sky, I remember innocent kisses, flag football, and grape Jolly Ranchers shared outside school waiting for the bus when we were ten. I remember the check yes-or-no note I gave her and praying for yes.

  But with all I do remember, I hope and pray I don’t remember tonight. The night I destroyed her.

  Unfortunately, though, I know I will, just like I remember the night she destroyed me.

  Hurting makes you do stupid shit. Makes you love people you shouldn’t. Makes you lie to your heart.