by Cole McCade
Her lips parted on a question she never voiced. Not when those fingers probed and stroked, rubbing against her panties, exploring and caressing and so very insistent. Pleasure rolled through her in drugging waves, such stark contrast to the pain still radiating into her flesh like a disease, and she choked on a cry, digging her nails against the desk and thrusting back toward that touch, spreading her thighs and crushing herself against the sister’s hot, work-worn palm. Merciless, those fingers stroked up and down until she soaked herself, twisting her hips, wanting that touch inside her. Sister Mary Anne refused to give her any relief. Refused to give her anything but those wordless rasping breaths, and her fingertips toying and playing, stroking along her slit, gently pinching and rolling her clit, slicking her panties against her until the texture and friction made her want to scream.
Faster. Faster, movements clumsier but so good, so good, and Leigh rocked back toward those teasing fingers as they parted her folds to either side of her panties and traced bare flesh, then pressed the dripping wet, heated fabric deep, almost pushing it inside her before pulling out to flick and tease at her clit once more. Nearly assaulting it, unending little pulls and strokes and a circling thumb that rolled it just the right way to make her back arch and her breaths stop and everything inside her wind up in knots as she pulled tight…then lost herself in the sobbing, rough, hard-pulling pulse that crashed over her and left her throbbing inside as deep as if she’d been fucked raw over the desk.
She slumped against the wood, struggling to catch her breath. Over the roaring of her blood in her ears, she barely heard Sister Mary Anne’s low, despairing moan, her frantic hissed prayers, or the hard scrape of her chair as she collapsed into it hard enough to send it shoving back. Leigh pushed herself up on shaking arms, sliding carefully down to stand on legs that would barely hold her, knees trying to buckle as she fought the pain twisting through her. Sister Mary Anne sat woodenly with her hands clasped over her mouth, the fingertips of the right glistening, her eyes blank and empty with fear. That fear Leigh had wanted, had nearly fed on.
And had gotten in the end, no matter what Sister Mary Anne had done to her.
She felt that smile creeping over her lips again, unbidden, and deep down it felt like triumph. “Do you still want to talk to my parents, Sister Mary Anne?” she purred.
The sister’s eyes closed. Wetness beaded on her lashes, glimmering under the harsh florescent lights.
“Get out,” she whispered. “Just…just get out.”
Leigh smoothed her skirt down, gathered her books, and limped out without looking back.
The next day they had a substitute teacher. And the next, and the next, and many days after until Leigh could finally sit without wincing and didn’t have to make excuses to her mother about why she refused to eat dinner in the hard-backed chairs at the dining room table.
And when she heard Sister Mary Anne had transferred to another school district amid whispers that she’d done something wrong, something bad enough for her to be replaced by the wizened and cataract-eyed Sister Mary Francis, Leigh just smiled.
No matter what she felt inside, she always smiled—until the guilt went away and she could try to forget that she’d used a woman’s personal pain, her deepest struggle, for her own gratification…and ruined Sister Mary Anne’s life.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE WOKE TO THE SOFT pale light of morning, with Gary’s snores whistling from the couch and Hart’s rough sweating grip digging painfully into her hips.
His chest thrust against her back with every heaving breath, reminding her of where she was. She’d fallen asleep curled up with Hart, with her scalp still stinging from his heavy clutch and his arm draped over her waist like he had some right. That arm was locked around her like a vise now, and gleaming with a layer of perspiration. The tendons in his hand jumped and leaped as his fingers gouged into her side. His entire body trembled against her back.
Carefully, she twisted to face him, moving delicately and avoiding touching anywhere near his leg; she slid her own gingerly along the sheets so she wouldn’t kick or knee him. He didn’t move. He didn’t move, but she knew he was awake from the steel-hard line of his shoulders and the way his breaths rushed through bared, gritted teeth, and from the portrait of agony that had been carved into his face as if he was clay shaped by pain into dark and heavy ridges.
“Hart. Hart, look at me.” She cupped his face in her hands; he was clammy-hot, filmed damp over fever-bright skin. Sweat matted his hair to his cheeks, sticking to her fingers. “What happened? Did you hit your leg?”
He ground out a low sound through his teeth. His eyes forced open, dilated slits sheened too bright; his words came out in a gritty, strained growl. “Not…my leg. I…I…”
“Then what is it?”
He shook his head, stubble scraping raw against her palms. “I need…I n-need…”
His Vicodin, she realized. He was going through withdrawals, just as bad as any dope fiend. His entire body was a web of pain, mapped out in hard lines of tendons flexing and flaring against his skin. She’d never been through this before, but she’d seen it enough times on the streets, in dark back rooms at late-night parties, sometimes even in the corners of Gary’s bar. But seeing it didn’t mean she knew what to do, how to walk him through this so he wouldn’t backslide, wouldn’t tip right back over that cliff, wouldn’t lose his mind craving something his body was convinced he needed to live.
“I can only let you have one,” she whispered, searching his eyes, starting to pull back. “Gary said—”
“No.” His hold tightened fiercely around her, refusing to let her go, an iron vise clamping down on her ribs and crushing her against his body. “D-don’t. Don’t…give me any. Not even one.”
She stared at him, her heart constricting. She couldn’t just lay here and watch him suffer, trying to quit cold turkey and shaking his way through the lows. She hadn’t been sure how bad his addiction was before, but the pallor in his skin and the shudder of his breaths and the jerky hardness of his body told her it was pretty damned bad. Part of her wanted to hate him for this. Hate Gary for putting her in this situation. He’d turned to Gary for help, and Gary was just snoring in a heap of scarecrow bones, leaving Leigh to carry a weight she didn’t know how to handle. She hated the quiet, aching need to do something, anything, to ease his pain.
“I don’t know what to do.” She shook her head, her hair bunching between her cheek and the pillow. “I…Hart, I don’t know how to help you.”
“D-distract me.” Those silver eyes dug their hooks into her, pulling on her heart. “Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Any…anything. You. Talk to me and…and don’t let go.”
“O-okay.” Leigh closed her eyes and breathed in deep. She could do this. She could do this. “I’m going to tell you a story, okay?” She counted backward from ten and willed her racing pulse to slow to the rhythm of her count, then shifted gingerly in his hold, pulling herself up without breaking his embrace; his grip tightened fiercely, but she shushed him and pried free until she could sit up against the headboard with his arms wrapped around her waist. She coaxed him to rest his head in her lap. “Here. Just relax.”
He made a growling sound, but settled with his cheek against her thigh. His hair spilled across her lap, and she couldn’t help tucking it back like she used to do when Elijah was a baby and sick, and she’d be up all night worrying over the tiniest cough. Her fingertips traced the curve of his ear, and he closed his eyes, shoulders shuddering.
“I suppose now I have to actually think of a story,” she murmured, and he let out a soft, amused snort.
“Should…should I have asked for a lullaby instead?”
She couldn’t help chuckling. “You’re already pushing my good graces. Can the sarcasm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She could only smile, as she threaded her fingers into his hair and watched how the hard line of his brows softened and smoot
hed with every stroke. It was strange, to watch someone take comfort from her touch. From her presence. She wasn’t sure what the tight sensation curling behind her ribs was, right now…but she didn’t think she liked it, simply because it felt so sweet.
“Once upon a time…” She paused, then laughed quietly. “I guess every story starts with ‘once upon a time,’ doesn’t it?” She tilted her head back against the headboard, looking up at the ceiling, still stroking through his hair. She didn’t know what to tell him.
So she told him the only story she knew by heart.
“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was born with wings,” she began. “No one could see them but her, but they were beautiful and translucent and shimmering iridescent, soft feathers thin and pale as parchment paper. Every day she would spread her wings and tell herself today was the day she would fly—but every day a quiet, hateful old witch told her if she tried even once, she would fall. Told her little girls weren’t meant to fly. Little girls were meant to stay at home and be pretty, and as long as she did that all the good things in the world would come to her.” The words tasted foul. “And the little girl, who used to be fearless, learned fear. Just a little more each day, until her wings grew too heavy to lift her and her fear weighed her down to earth.”
She closed her eyes, idly twining a few locks of Hart’s hair around her fingers. “But still the little girl dreamed of flying, even when she wasn’t so little anymore. But suddenly…suddenly something changed. Suddenly a man she’d known her whole life, a man who was handsome as a prince, began to see her. He touched her like she was full of beautiful things, and then she became light again. She felt like she could fly away, lifted up on the way he made her feel. Even if her wings were heavy, her heart was light, and carried her high and far. She loved him.” As if she could make it distant from herself by saying it that way. She loved him. Someone else’s story. Someone else’s bitter contempt for the girl she used to be. “She loved him even though she wasn’t supposed to, at least not the way she did. The man was married to the old witch, though he swore he didn’t love the cruel old woman—but it was still forbidden for him to have the girl. Wrong, for so many reasons.
“The girl loved him so much that it made her cruel. Cruel enough not to care when she hurt people. Not to even notice, until it was too late and she couldn’t do anything about it.” Her eyes slipped open, drifting toward Gary and the ramshackle heap he made on the couch, under a thin and ratty blanket. “But it didn’t matter when, in the end, the man didn’t love her. Her prince wasn’t a prince at all. He only made her think he loved her, as long as she had something he wanted. He took from her, but when she tried to reach for him, to fly with him, he always pulled out of her reach, as men so often do.”
“Is that what we all do, then?” Hart’s voice jerked her back to reality with a start so sharp it made her heart turn sideways. She looked down at him, resting quiet and still in her lap.
“Do you think you’re going to prove me wrong?”
“Mm.” His hold tightened around her, and she wondered who was soothing whom, here. “Finish your story. I want to know if the little girl flies.”
“She doesn’t,” she said, and looked away from Hart once more. The ceiling was safer. The ceiling wasn’t warm and heavy against her, anchoring her against the sinking undertow of bitter memories. “He broke her heart, that man. She went to him and begged him to love her. Begged him to be with her. And he laughed as if she was a silly little girl, patted her head, and sent her away without even listening. He’d never listened to her, not even once—and she suddenly realized what a wicked, wicked man he was. When he crushed her heart, he crushed her wings, and she knew the old witch had been right. She’d never have been able to fly, because she’d been surrounded by the bars of a cage her entire life. Just as invisible as her wings, but even stronger. She’d thought herself a woman before, in the fullness of her love and passion, but that moment…that moment was when she truly became a woman, and understood the weight that was hers to bear. That moment was when she realized that every woman is a broken goddess. Every last one.”
“Why broken?” Hart asked softly.
“Because we’re all born in that cage, and we’ve been breaking our wings against the bars ever since.” She swallowed against the thickness in her throat. “He locked her in that cage. And when he was done with her, he passed her to another man as if he had that right, handing her over on a leash. Another handsome prince just like the rest. Someone she tried to love, but who didn’t really see her. She was just a possession, one he held on to because it was his, but he didn’t really value her. And that was how he lost her.” Her smile felt like poison, triumphant as it was. “She bent the bars of her cage, and sacrificed the most beautiful thing she’d ever made so she could run away. Maybe she doesn’t fly…but she won’t stay tied to earth, either.”
Hart said nothing for some time, but his shivers had quieted to a subtle tremor, his hold on her no longer a death-grip but simply settled in a way that was too warm, too comfortable, too familiar for her liking. But finally he rumbled, “That’s not a very happy story.”
“I’m still writing it.”
“Do you think there’ll be a happy ending?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like when stories end.”
“Why?”
“Because it means that nothing that comes after seems to matter.” Leigh licked dry lips. She couldn’t believe she’d just…spilled all that out to him. Told him so much about herself in not-so-veiled terms. She didn’t know why she’d done that. She’d panicked, she told herself. She’d panicked trying to find a way to help him and…and not even she was buying that excuse. She forced herself to stop thinking about it and focus, looking down at him once more, her fingers curling deeper into his hair. “How are you feeling?”
“I believe my innards have been replaced by a rabid wolverine, but in comparison the pain in my leg is practically negligible.”
His embrace fell away so he could grip the headboard and drag himself upright, sitting next to her, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. The massive bulk of him drowned her—imposing, reminding her he was so much more than a wounded man lying weak and helpless against the bedsheets. Something in his eyes sharpened as his gaze flicked over her face. She held perfectly still and didn’t breathe, far too aware that this predator still very much had teeth.
“Thank you,” he said, and tucked her hair back with one too-hot hand, fingers grazing along her cheek before his palm cupped against her skin, heavy and coarse. She flinched, shrinking away from him, her heart a heavy weight.
“Don’t.”
“Leigh.” Low and husky, her name sending ripples through her like a stone dropped into a still dark pool. He leaned closer; heated breaths fanned over her skin, tingling against her lips like the touch of stroking fingers. He was too close. Too close, his warmth and sharp edges wrapping around her, cutting into her with an intimacy she couldn’t stand.
“Don’t,” she repeated, and loathed herself for the trembling whisper of her voice. “Hart…”
His mouth pressed to hers, as if trying to capture the taste of his name on her tongue, and every thought she’d ever had that he could be made of ice combusted into a storm of fire. He kissed her: fierce, savage, a thing wild and untamable, his lips a crushing pressure that tore at her mind and will and pride until they were nothing but shreds that refused to hold her up. The gunmetal scent of him drugged her, a primal maleness that she inhaled on every breath. The sweetfire tingle of his kiss caressed and stroked, demanding that she open for him, commanding her senses until the full-body throb of her pulse and the scraping burn of stubble, raw on her skin, dominated every moment. He delved past her aching, pulsing lips to taste her with an intimacy deeper than any penetration.
She didn’t kiss like this, melting and dark, leaving her vulnerable and exposing her to every touch. She didn’t get this close. But he kissed her like she meant something to him, when she nev
er wanted to mean anything to anyone ever again.
She wanted to push him away, but when his tongue slid against hers and rough-slick friction shot through her and her toes curled into the sheets, she could only arch into him with a gasping sound. This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t be shivering for him, clutching at the front of his shirt, going limp with that boneless low ache that touched deeper than just her flesh, her blood. She wasn’t Daddy’s little girl anymore, and she’d never let anyone kiss her this way again.
Yet she remained trapped and trembling and sighing against him until he pulled back with a sharp graze of his teeth against her lower lip. Her entire mouth was bruised, tender and so thoroughly assaulted. He’d kissed like a hurricane, and she could only be swept away.
Pale eyes met hers, crackling with lightning over a storm-gray sea. “Was that truly so terrible, little mouse?” he whispered.
Leigh stared at him, every inch of her trembling like fine moth-feelers attuned to the entirety of him.
Then she shoved away, kicking back until she nearly fell off the bed, tumbling to her feet and running down the stairs with his growl of “Leigh!” chasing hot on her heels.
* * *
The empty silence of the bar should have been comforting.
It wasn’t.
Leigh sat on one of the cracked leather barstools with her shirt barely tucked under her bare ass and jagged edges scraping the undersides of her thighs. From behind the bar, peering past rows and rows of liquor bottles, her reflection watched her with the wide, frightened eyes of a spooked animal. That wasn’t her in the mirror. It wasn’t. That was a little mouse who scurried and hid in corners, and she didn’t want to see that face staring back at her like it knew her at all.
She leaned across the bar and felt around underneath until she found where Gary stashed his crumpled pack of unfiltered Camels and a lighter. Dropping heavily back onto the stool, she dug out a cigarette and lit up, taking a deep drag and ignoring the harsh, bitter flavor that bit so much harder than her Djarum Blacks. Smoking regulations forbade indoor smoking in bars now, but Gary did it all the time when the doors were locked and there was no one in the crowd who might be a fire marshal. He didn’t care, so neither did she.