“No, I…”
“Don’t lie to me. Admitting attraction doesn’t mean you’re moving in together tomorrow, Brie. Come on. The entire family is stupidly hot. It’s okay to acknowledge that fact.”
“They’re…beautiful.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard. I can totally see your sweetness and light with someone like Elijah. He takes stoic to a whole new level.”
“Men like that, they want someone like you.”
Izzy coughed wine on herself and pressed her palms into her eyes.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Stripping her t-shirt over her head, she used it to clean up. Inhaling carefully, she said, “Men don’t want a woman like me for long.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say, Izzy! You make yourself sound like a whore.” Her sister gulped the rest of her wine as her shoulders shook with silent tears. “Isabella…you don’t think that way about yourself, do you?”
“Of course not. Hey, we were talking about you.” She poured another glass and laid back against the cushions. “One day, you’re going to crash into passion, Brie. Not like your fling with Hudson and Natalia.”
“It’s weird to talk to you about this.”
“Deal with it, little sister. Where was I? Ah. One day you’re going to crash into something that blows you away, that feels like a tidal wave.”
“That sounds terrible, Izzy.”
“Yeah, sometimes.” There was a long silence as she wiped her cheeks and drank more wine. “It can be the worst thing and the best thing all at once. Pain and pleasure wrapped up so tight you don’t know how to define one or the other.”
“Everything can be fixed, Izzy.”
“No. That’s where you’re wrong. Not everything can be fixed. Sometimes, you make a mistake so massive, so final, it defines everything about you for the rest of your life. You allow one petty action to go too far and…”
Her voice trailed off she downed the rest of the wine in the glass.
“Izzy. What happened?”
“I fucked up. I believed lies because they fed my ego. I lashed out like a child because I was hurt and I wanted to cause some hurt of my own.”
Brie whispered, “It’s eating you alive.”
“Wine helps. Listen, little sister, I’m going to let you go before I become that lushy relative who spills my secrets and begs for absolution. Neither of us want that.”
“Izzy…”
“Love you, Brie. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Izzy…”
She disconnected the call and it rang again seconds later but she didn’t pick it up. Hollow watched her cry brokenly for several minutes.
It slowed to a stop and she poured another glass of wine while she pulled herself together. She put on angry female rock and danced around the apartment, singing the lyrics while she drank.
When the phone rang an hour later, she picked it up with a hint of annoyance after turning off the stereo. “Why are you calling? I made myself clear.”
“Bella…”
“It’s Isabella. Don’t do that,” she snapped.
“Dinner, a little dancing, a pretty hotel room. A client just cancelled. What do you say?”
“I’m tired and uninterested, Peter.”
“You sound lonely.”
“You don’t know me…”
“No but I know women. A bit of romance, conversation, and being held is just the ticket.”
She rubbed her temple and stared at the floor. “I agreed to try the service once because Belinda said you fit the bill. I was in a bad place and you helped at the time but I felt even worse the next day. I’m sorry. Call the next name on your list.”
Disconnecting, she threw herself on the couch and sobbed with her hands over her face.
Taking out his cell, he scanned for her number and dialed. She didn’t answer and he dialed again. The third time, she rolled to her knees on the floor and picked up her phone.
“What do you want?”
“Isabella.”
“Look. I’m drunk and tired. I appreciate the role-play but it’s not worth the cost to my self-respect. Leave me alone, Peter.”
“Who’s Peter?”
She didn’t respond but her entire body stiffened. Crawling up on the couch, she looked at her screen again. In a whisper, she asked, “Who is this?”
“Hollow.”
“What a fucking moniker. To what do I owe the honor of your call, Hollow?”
Suddenly, he knew calling her was a mistake. “My apologies. Goodnight.”
“Wait!” She sat forward on the couch. “Tell me why you called. There had to be a reason.” The silence drew out between them and she shook her head. “Never mind.”
“I want you to work for me.”
“Bullshit.”
“Infiltration.”
Her laugh was bitter. “Is that what they’re calling it these days? You want me to fuck your enemy? No big deal since I’ve been down that road. Why not? Shall I call him myself?”
“Stop.”
She hung up on him and threw her empty wine glass against the wall. She got up to stand in the middle of the room and he could see her fury, her hurt.
He dialed her again.
“You hate me so much you’d send me to him. Leave me alone. Just…leave me alone.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Liar.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“All you did was lie to me. Ah, but then I learned to do it, too.”
“Isabella…”
“My name rolls off your tongue.” She laid on the couch. “There was a time it was the only thing I wanted to hear. You saying my name.” His heart slammed against his sternum. “I’ll infiltrate for you. Whatever you want.” She covered her eyes with her arm. “I owe penance.”
“Don’t say that.”
“As if it isn’t true.”
He swallowed hard. “You owe me nothing.”
“Another lie.” She scrubbed away her tears. “Unlike most of your people, I can’t fight so attending the Games isn’t an option. I know nothing about weapons and I’m no good on the computer. I have few skills useful to a man like you.”
He watched her stand and shuffle to her kitchen for a bottle of water.
“I can look pretty. I can repeat what I hear.” She slammed her hand down on the counter. “I can let him fuck me violently while the boys and girls you employ handle the real work. Are any of those skills what you need?”
“Why did you go to him?”
“Now you want to know?” He didn’t respond. “I didn’t go to him. He approached me. Talked to me for hours. He was charming, a wonderful listener. Suggested I switch my attentions for payback. He laced my drink but saw me home safely without anything weird. I seduced Harper to salve my pride but I didn’t know about the skin tag until Elijah found it.”
She drank half the bottle of water and he processed the information.
“He picked me up the next day after my lunch with Brie at the winery. Explained that I belonged to him. I didn’t even try to fight it.” Collapsing on the couch, she whispered, “Does it make you feel better to know I got what I deserved?”
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to understand what she would have endured during her time with him. It was a fact she was one of the only women to survive such a relationship.
“He let you live.”
“A benefit of being the girl next door.” She released a heavy sigh. “What do you want, Hollow?”
He relaxed against the chair. “Something I’ll never allow myself to have.” She pressed her hand against her heart and closed her eyes. “When I left the first time, I called you to say goodbye.”
“I remember.”
“I was high, drunk. You pretended not to know even though it was really late.”
“Burying my head in the sand was a bad habit.”
Hollow raked his fingers through his hair. “I was standing bes
ide a rail yard in Phoenix on a payphone. Bombed out of my mind, filthy. I asked what you were doing like none of those things were true.”
The tears in her voice made his heart hurt. “I was reading a book for a report.”
“Laying on your bed in shorts and a tank top. You’d just gotten out of the shower.”
Izzy was quiet for a long time. She wiped her face. “You…asked if I missed you. When I said I did, you wanted to know how much.”
“You offered to send me money or even drive down to pick me up yourself. You said you’d do anything to see me home safe.”
“You didn’t want me to do any of those things because you never planned to come back.” She clenched her hand over her heart. “I didn’t realize it then. I thought I could change your mind.”
“Nothing would have changed my mind.”
“I was young, foolish.”
“You loved me,” he said quietly.
Nodding, she murmured, “I loved you.”
Tightening his hand on the phone, he couldn’t look away from the image of her stretched out on the sofa in the apartment across the street.
“I asked you to lay down and turn off the lights. I wanted you to talk to me.” He smiled remembering. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
“Any chance, I took it.”
“I kept you on the phone for half an hour, feeding it quarters. In the middle of nowhere, out in the open, I jerked off to the sound of your voice.” He watched her press her palm against her low belly.
“It wasn’t the sound of my voice. It was the power you had over me when you usually felt powerless.” Her hand smoothed back and forth over her abs. “Do you still feel powerless?”
“Not often.”
“I’ve never had control over anything. Not even myself.”
“Do you want it?”
“I’d have no clue what to do with it.”
His eyes scanned the numerous screens showing every possible entrance to both buildings. “You’ve always had more than you realize. Take it now.”
Soft pants made their way through the phone. Her palm cupped her mound through the stretchy material of her leggings. “Even offering it to me shows you still have it and I don’t.”
“What do you want, Izzy?”
“Too much.”
“Give me something.”
“Trust. For you to trust me the way I trusted you.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“I know. You never could.”
“Something else.”
“Enough forgiveness to keep from hiding if there’s a chance I’ll run into you.”
“I never wanted that for you, Izzy.”
“My choices…”
“Our choices. I’m sorry for mine.”
“I apologized a hundred times. I begged you to forgive me.”
“I know.”
In a voice barely audible, she confessed, “I want you to beg me…the way you made me beg. Not beg me to love you the way I did, not beg me to stay with you the way I did, but beg me to let you come. One day, if I could bring you to that place, I’d have a fraction of the power over you that you’ve had over me since I was fourteen years old.”
“Isabella…”
“Goodnight, H-Hollow.”
She disconnected the phone and turned it off. Her hands cupped her breasts and she whimpered into the quiet apartment.
Pressing her thighs together, she made a sound of frustration that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
He watched as she worked to remove her bra. His mouth watered seeing her nipples for the first time in too many years. She shoved her leggings and panties away before collapsing against the couch with her hair wild.
Rolling to her feet, she got another glass from the kitchen and filled it up. Hollow watched her move naked through the room.
She held up the glass and stared at it. “There are worse roads to travel than booze.” Taking another sip, she reclined in the corner of the couch.
Placing her palms on her face, she stroked them over her neck and down to cup her breasts. Tweaking her nipples made her gasp softly and Hollow’s entire body went rigid.
“Let me watch you, Isabella,” he whispered into the abandoned safe house. “Touch yourself for me.”
Tracing her fingers over her torso, back and forth across her belly, she spread her legs. Using both hands, she separated her folds, holding them wide so she could circle one fingertip over her clit.
“Like the tip of my tongue.” Hollow glanced at the screens again and unbuttoned his jeans. “Let it build. Enjoy it.” Wrapping his hand around his cock, he stroked lightly. “I remember touching you, licking your little clit. How you rocked your hips against me.”
As if she heard him, her lower body started to move. Gyrating into the movement of her finger. “Yes, please…do it.”
The same words she said when he asked her if he could put his fingers inside her in the backseat of his car after she drove him home. He had her body revealed to him, his mouth on her slick folds, with very little hesitation on the lady’s part.
She asked him breathlessly, “Do you plan to fuck me?”
“Do you want me to?” For months, getting his cock inside the young woman who followed him around was all he thought about other than getting high. Barely eighteen, most males desired Isabella but she only wanted him.
It was another version of getting high.
“I want you to.” He recalled the words at the same moment Izzy whispered them in the dim apartment across the street. “I’ve never wanted anything as much.”
Hollow scanned the screens and dropped his head against the chair. His hand moved steadily over his cock.
“I’ll fuck you if you really want it. Have you ever had a cock inside you, Izzy?”
She shook her head. “No but I’ve dreamed about it.” Reaching out, she stroked her fingers through his hair. “After you…spend time with me like this, I dream about what’s next.”
Lifting his head, he rubbed over her clit with the flat of his fingers. “You dream about me fucking you?”
“Yes. I dreamed about this…”
“Me eating your pussy?” He loved the way his explicit speech made her blush hot. She never thought her blush was noticeable. He bent and rubbed his tongue just beneath her clit. “Do you touch yourself when you think about me?”
“Yes.”
“Does it feel good?”
“Not as good as when you touch me.” The words were an echo from the past and present.
Izzy worked herself toward climax and Hollow let himself follow her. To the dark, he murmured, “I want your mouth wrapped around my cock.”
“I want to do that for you. I-I want to taste you, to make you happy.”
He ran his hand over her breasts, exposed over her bra with her sweater pulled up. “You let anyone else touch you like this? Play with your tits, eat your pussy?”
“Only you. I’ve never even kissed anyone else.” Her confession filled him with pride and he devoted himself to making her come. “All I think about is having you with me, on me, in me. I want everything with you. Everything. I-I’m coming.”
Izzy gasped before moaning his name…his true name into the darkness of her apartment.
Hollow’s body tightened and he lifted his t-shirt a moment before he coated his low stomach in his release. He stroked himself through it, gritting his teeth in silence.
Across the street, Isabella sprawled limply on her couch.
Reaching up, she pulled a small blanket over her naked body. “If you were here with me, I’d make you fuck me until I passed out. Since you’re not, I guess the wine and masturbation must do.”
He cleaned up in the bathroom and grabbed a bottle of water before returning to the chair. He disconnected the audio but not the camera pointed at the woman who walked into his psyche when he was young, selfish, and stupid…and never left.
The plan he had in mind meant using her. Watching her
back at all times, but using her all the same.
He wouldn’t touch her. He wouldn’t talk to her. He wasn’t strong enough.
In the history he shared with Isabella Hernandez, there was plenty of blame to go around but the sins committed on both sides were too big to overlook.
Paying penance didn’t help you forget.
About Shayne McClendon
Shayne McClendon is an indie author most recognized for her premiere novel “The Barter System.”
Also set in “The Barter System” world (and absolute must reads) are “Hudson” (book two), “Pushing the Envelope” (book three), “Backstage” (book four), “Liberation” (book five), and “Radiance” (book six).
Other releases include “Yes to Everything,” “Completely Wrecked,” “Love of the Game,” and “The Hermit.”
Shayne listens to the voices in her head because their ideas are (almost) always awesome. Those around her don’t question the crazy.
Coffee consumption is too high, amount of sleep is too low, but the words always feel just right.
Stop by her Always the Good Girl website for free stories!
Full Book List
The Barter System Series
Choice of Subjects (Prequel)
The Barter System
Hudson
Pushing the Envelope
Backstage
Liberation
Radiance
The Barter System Companion – Volume One
The Barter System Companion – Volume Two
The Great Outdoors Series
Sunny’s Heart
Permission to Come Aboard
Permission to Land
Special Delivery
Embrace the Wild
Short Story Anthologies
Quickies – 2014 Edition
Quickies – 2015 Edition
Sports Romances
Love of the Game
Hart of the Matter
Leap of Faith
Country Romances
Yes to Everything
Somebody
Gravity
Break Down Here
Roadside Assistance
Dramatic Romances
Completely Wrecked
The Hermit
Follow Me Here
Always the Good Girl Website
The Barter System Companion: Volume One Page 27