“Wow.”
Evan turned around to face her. “You should feel lucky. I don’t bring just anyone in here.” He gave her a small wink before he continued to the stove.
“What are we having?”
“New York Strip Steak with Mushroom and Tequila Sauce.”
Megan gawked at him. “You do understand that I ate nothing but cafeteria food for almost ten years, right? You could’ve make hamburgers and I would have been impressed.”
He placed his hand on her cheek. “You deserve so much more than hamburgers.”
She closed her eyes and pushed her cheek into his hand, allowing her body to fill with his warmth. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her.
“What’s wrong?” She blinked.
“Nothing.”
She knew he was lying. She knew he was hiding something from her. She knew something was wrong. Or maybe, it was that she knew there was something wrong with her. Be it that they were on a date or not, there was an attraction between them that neither of them could fight. Had the oven timer not screamed at that precise moment, they could have very well ended up in bed together. Megan was quite sure that the evening might still culminate with just that.
But how?
She needed him to understand that she was not the same girl she was when they had met. Sure, she was still quiet, she was still shy, but in no way was she innocent. Above all, the past eleven years had been emotionally scarring during a time, a developmental period, when it made it impossible to bounce back. Although she tried, she couldn’t be healed.
Megan was pulled back to her first few weeks in prison. She was seventeen and still hopeful that someone would figure out that a mistake was made. She believed beyond a reasonable doubt that someone would come through for her. The other women laughed at her, told her to keep dreaming, but she paid them no mind. She was innocent. Her life was meant for something greater than a ten by ten prison cell.
It wasn’t easy. She was small and vulnerable. She was teased and picked on incessantly. Megan spent every single night curled up on her bed, crying, until a few of the correctional officers took notice of her suffering. They separately offered to help her, to protect her.
“I can keep them away from you.”
“I can make sure they don’t hurt you.”
“I can see to you that no one dares to mess with you.”
She refused their offers; still certain that the bullying would one day cease.
But it didn’t. The teasing soon turned physical, and Megan quickly found herself spending half of each week in the infirmary. It didn’t stop. It didn’t get better.
After awhile, she realized if she wanted to live through her sentence, she couldn’t do it alone any longer. She finally agreed to the protection of the correctional officers.
But their protection came at a price.
“Brussel sprouts?”
“Yes, please.” Megan looked up at Evan, who was filling her plate up with food.
“Where’d you go?” He questioned her.
“What?”
“Just now. Your eyes sort of glazed over.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t realized her flashback was visible. “I was just thinking about something.”
“About me?” Evan began to laugh at his own joke.
“Not…exactly.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m not little disappointed.” He lifted both plates up. “Care to follow me into the dining room?”
“Can we eat in here?” Megan stopped him.
Evan spun around and dropped the plates on the butcher block. “We can absolutely eat in here.”
They both slowly picked on their food while they made small talk. They spoke about Evan running his father’s company, and Darren’s failed marriage, and Megan’s mother being thrilled that she’s back living with her despite the fact that they have nothing to talk about. They reminisced about school and what their classmates were up to. Evan told her of the two most popular girls and how they were both knocked up before graduation. He told her about two of their teachers that he had caught making out in a supply closet. Neither could hold in their laughter when he proudly announced that the captain of the soccer team was now an actor living in Los Angeles. He had done nothing of note, except for a fast food commercial where he had to eat twenty cheeseburgers, and then pretend to throw up on screen.
“Or maybe he really did throw up and they just decided to keep it?” Megan joked and she took another bite of her steak.
“Why would that make you want to eat at that restaurant?” Evan popped a brussel sprout into his mouth.
“Good point. Maybe it was an anti-fast food commercial.”
They laughed, and then laughed some more. They were both happy.
But they were still both hiding something.
Evan grabbed Megan’s empty plate. “Ready for dessert?”
“Dessert? I’m stuffed. I ate all that food.”
“Then we can save dessert for later.” He smiled as he placed his hand on top of hers.
They both leaned across the butcher block until their faces were inches from one another.
“What are you hiding from me, Evan?” Megan whispered.
Evan immediately flew back; afraid he had given himself away. “What…what are you talking about?”
She chuckled. “Calm down. I’m just asking.”
“Why would you ask?”
She took a breath and slowly blinked. “Because in my experience, there is such a thing as too good to be true.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m not too good.” He half-smiled, desperately trying to keep himself guarded.
“We’ll see.” She teased.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?” She stood up tall.
“You…you’re amazing.” He rounded the table, wanting to be closer to her. “After all you’ve been through, you’re still this.” He gestured to her. “You’re strong and beautiful, and everything I remember you being.”
“I’m not.” She looked away.
“Megan, you are so gorgeous. You always have been.”
“I’m not strong.”
“Do you not see yourself?” He argued with her. “You are whole. You are not at all broken. You’re not even cracked.”
“I am broken.”
“Not from what I see.”
“You can’t see all of me.”
“I want to see all of you.” While it could’ve sounded sexual, he didn’t intend for it to be so. He was being honest. From what he could see, the years she had spent trapped in a prison for a crime she didn’t commit only emphasized what she was before: beautiful, both inside and out.
“You want to see all of me?” Megan felt a knot tighten in her chest.
“I do.” Evan hummed as he leaned closer to her.
Normally she would be more guarded, more insecure. She would hide herself from those around her. But that was never the way with Evan. She wanted him to know who she was, who she had become. And she couldn’t have him thinking that she was whole. He deserved the truth. Megan pushed up the sleeves of her dress.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you.”
With delicate precision, Megan unlatched the silver bracelet cuffs on her wrists. She placed them on the butcher block and took a deep breath before she flipped over her hands.
Across her wrists was a decade worth of evidence that she was not the person he thought she was.
“I’m not strong.” She whispered, with a hint of fear and regret in her voice.
But instead of seeing what Megan was trying to show him, the unattractive slashes across her wrists caused by some sort of blade, Evan saw what he had done to her. Because of him and his cowardice, the beautiful, strong, brilliant girl who he had once known had given up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Megan, what is this?”
She nervously laughed as she stared at her scars. “I like to think of it as an attempt to f
eel something.”
“And you thought you could do that by trying to kill yourself?” He wasn’t accusing her. He wasn’t judging her. He was just trying to understand her.
Megan pulled a stool under her and sucked in a quick breath before continuing.
“I can’t even tell you that I was trying to kill myself. I don’t really think I was. But being on the edge like that, not knowing if I might die,” she looked up at him and for a long second, their eyes met, “it was all I had. It was the only thing that proved that I still cared about my life at all.”
Evan didn’t need to try to understand that: it made complete sense to him. He had never been daring or careless with his life, but he empathized with the feeling of not caring. For so long after his uncle died, he was numb, detached from the world. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to socialize or connect with other people; it was that he had lost the need for human interaction. He wasn’t lonely, and yet he was always alone. He wasn’t fulfilled, and yet he wanted for nothing. He wasn’t sad, and yet he wasn’t happy.
That was exactly it: he had lost the ability to care about life.
That was how he stayed until the day he saw Megan on the television. He went about his day, did his job, did nothing out of the ordinary, but was a shell of a person. He was so incomplete that he didn’t even know he was supposed to be looking for something to fill that shell.
But seeing her was a start. The emptiness hadn’t gone away, but his body had begun to feel again. The numbness…it began to disappear. Even if he couldn’t care about his own life, he cared about hers. He realized he always did.
Knowing that it was his duty to save Megan was the one thing that kept the knife away from his wrists.
“You…you make me care.” He looked down when he said it.
“I make you care about what?” Her voice was different, sweet.
“Anything.”
He didn’t say any more, but she didn’t need him to. She cupped his cheek in her hand and found his eyes with a knowing smile. Their lips were together, and their arms wrapped around each other. They pushed their bodies closer to one another, trying to eliminate any space between them.
Evan lifted Megan by her hips, bringing her up on the butcher block. She undid the buttons on his shirt as he slipped off his belt.
Megan let her fingertips dance over his bare chest as he kicked off his shoes and slid his pants down his legs. His tight boxer briefs left little to the imagination, and Megan felt a quick pang of regret that she hadn’t taken advantage of his body eleven years earlier. Really, what was she waiting for?
Still in his boxers, Evan glided his fingers up the sides of her legs, bringing the hem of her dress with him as he pushed up further and further. He continued over her hips, revealing her black lace thong, rounded her waist, and ever so gently cupped her breasts before he threw her dress to the ground.
“My God, Megan.” He sighed as he took in the body sitting in front of him. Her contours, her colors, her curves…they were too much for him. Evan climbed up onto the butcher block and straddled Megan’s lap. His cock throbbed in her face.
Megan knew what she wanted to do, what he wanted her to do, but she didn’t have the confidence to back it up. She lifted her hands to his hips, but hesitated. She needed his demand. Without looking at him, she whispered. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
Evan was no stranger to role-playing, and if she wanted him to dominate her, he wasn’t about to argue. “Take it out.” He growled at her.
She softly moaned as she did what she was told. She held him in her hands and opened her mouth, ready to receive him. She waited for his next order.
“Put it in your mouth, and suck it, bitch.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing; I’ve never really done this before.” A scared, seventeen year old Megan stared up at the night security officer.
“Don’t toy with me. I know your story. You were screwing your teacher and then you killed him.”
Megan was startled by his accusation. “That’s not what happened.”
“Like anyone would get kicked out of school for stealing a test. I wasn’t born yesterday, kid.”
“You’re wrong!”
She tried to stand up to face him, but he slapped her across the face, throwing her back to the ground. “Don’t you dare talk back to me, or this arrangement is over.”
Megan picked herself off the ground, softly rubbed her reddening cheek, and weighed her options. Obviously, the position she had gotten herself into wasn’t ideal, but if it kept her from ending up with more broken fingers, cracked ribs, concussions, and black eyes, it was certainly the better of the two routes.
It’s not forever.
Daily, she reminded herself of that, and daily, she needed to, but “not forever” surely still did feel like a very long time.
But, she did it…and she kept doing it. She did what she was told, she didn’t argue, and she didn’t fight. She also didn’t wind up with concussions, and her fingers stayed unbroken. It was certainly the better of the two routes.
And it stayed that way for nine years…with sixteen different guards.
Megan had to become numb to it all. She had to let it not affect her. She was simply a puppet. She was a slave. To her, sex was a role she was forced to play, and if it kept her alive for those brief moments when she felt something other than numbness, she was willing to do it.
She had no idea that sex and love were supposed to go hand in hand.
“Now put me in your mouth.” Evan groaned as he anticipated the feeling of her lips on his manliness.
Again, Megan did what she was told. She surrounded his girth with her lips. She sucked as she licked, and she hummed as she pushed and pulled.
“Megan…Megan…” His breathing was labored and the pitch of his voice rose. “God, woman, stop, or I’m going to be no good to you.”
He lifted her chin and smiled down at her. It was the type of smile that made her want to smile back. And for a brief breath, she did. Megan was confused by the peace she sensed, confused by the odd feeling she got that he wanted more from her than just her sex.
“What do you want me to do now?” She softly spoke.
He narrowed his eyes, puzzled by her query. “What do you want me to do to you?”
“Whatever you want to do to me.”
Evan figured it was part of the “role-playing” kick he had assumed she was still on. He wasn’t in any position to stop their act to question it further, so he didn’t. Instead, he pushed her down on the butcher block, until her back was flat against the wood. He then un-straddled her, and with careful delicacy, he lifted her legs one at a time, bending her knees so her high-heels were also flat against the top of the butcher block. He tickled his fingers up and down her soft, pale legs before he looked down at her.
“Now I want you to stay very still.” He smiled, sure that he was playing along with her game.
His mouth found her thigh, and slowly nibbled at her flesh in a path up her leg. He delighted at her generous moans with each new bite. His mouth traveled up, exciting over his next stop. When he reached the highest point of her laced thong, he pulled just the top down, and kissed the very bottom of her stomach. Her skin was soft and sweet, and smelled like the air right before the rain. Her body was making him dizzy from waking up every single one of his senses.
Evan sat up and found her eyes with his, as his fingers found her hips. He pulled on the lace, bringing her thong down over her hips, and leaving it to hug her ankles. He then dropped his eye contact and lowered out of her view as he pushed her knees to the sides, giving his tongue a direct target. He licked her warmth from top to bottom, and flicked her clit with the tip of his tongue. He pulled her knees in and pushed them back out, offering up the different sensations at the different angles. As she arched into him, he stuck his tongue deep inside of her, causing her to scream out.
The screaming sent his body into a frenzy and his dick began to pulse with wanting.
He had waited too long for Megan, and he wasn’t about to wait any longer. He lifted her heels from the butcher block table and placed them on his shoulders as he tugged her hips closer to his. He left her thong around her ankles so he could enjoy her scent as he finally took her as his own.
“Are you ready to scream for me, Megan.”
“I am.” She moaned, almost on cue.
Evan leaned his body over hers, pushing her hips to angle up as her knees came into her chest, and he slammed into her. He felt her fully surround him as she screamed in pleasure. He pulled out slowly, wanting to feel every bit of her on his way out, and then just as he was about to pull out completely, he slammed back in. Megan’s scream met Evan’s cry. He repeated his slow pull as he leaned further over her.
“Tell me you want me.”
“I want you.”
“Tell me this is torture.”
“This is torture.”
“Tell me you need me inside of you.”
“I need you inside…”
But he didn’t let her finish her last sentence. Instead, he let her scream. And then he let her scream again…and again.
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