by Skye Warren
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you. You keep everyone at a distance. Do you know how hard I had to work to get close to you? It’s a struggle to get any information from you, even the goddamn time of day.”
“What is there to know? You want me to spell it out for you? Home life wasn’t so great. Daddy didn’t like me too much, except when he did, if you know what I mean. But I showed him. I got out of there, and here’s some good news. The only skill I had was worth a hell of a lot of money per hour. All I had to sell was my fucking soul, so I guess everything is just peachy. But you already knew that, didn’t you? I’m a walking cliché. So tell me what secrets I’ve been keeping.”
“Shelly.” His voice cracked, and I hoped it was over. I prayed that he’d gotten whatever anger he had out of his system, that he realized I wouldn’t judge him. I would, a little, but only as much as I judged myself, as anyone. How could you do that, just let them touch and use and hurt you like that? I had to; he had to. A million other jobs in the world, and somehow it had seemed like the only one.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” I whispered. I put my hand on his, and he jerked away.
“Don’t touch me.” It was a snarl, an animal sound carved into words.
I pulled back, frightened. Not of Luke but of the hurt inside him.
“I don’t…I don’t think of you any differently.” It was a lie, and we both knew it.
Dirt scuffed into the air as he pushed off the wall. “Of course. I’m still the noble one, the guy with the best intentions. That’s why you let me close, isn’t it?” His voice lowered. “That’s why you fell in love with me, isn’t that right? Because I was just the opposite of you, so much better than you.”
His words rang with truth. I shook my head. “It was you. Only you.”
“Stop telling me what you think I want to hear. Just for once, say something that’s you. Not a trick, just the honest-to-God truth.”
I whirled on him. “Fine. You want to know the truth? I hate it. I hate that I had to hear it from him instead of you. I hate that you had to go through that. I hate that the worst part of me, the worst things I ever felt or thought or had happen to me…they happened to you. I hate that because I love you. Don’t you get that, you big idiot? It kills me that you went through that. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, but you? It’s heartbreaking. You’re breaking my heart.”
He stilled. “What did you say?”
“I said you’re a big idiot.”
He grabbed my arms and backed me up against the wall. My toes pointed to the ground, barely touching. I felt like a doll. Like a child, though it didn’t feel as bad as it should—just bad enough.
“Don’t push me right now,” he muttered. “I can’t… It’s not… I’m not myself.”
No, this was finally him, unfettered and cracked open. Ironic that it had taken a brutal beating and imprisonment to release him. He was dark and angry, this man. Tortured and terrified that he wouldn’t be able to control that darkness, that anger. But he didn’t have to, not with me. That was the gift I could give him. That was how I’d be worthy.
I pushed at him, but he didn’t release me. I didn’t expect him too; we were too far in. He was too far gone. This was going to happen rough and hard and with pain so sweet we’d neither of us forget it, with a pleasure so cruel it would teach us both a lesson; it would leave marks so deep that I wouldn’t regret it when it was over.
“Just let it out,” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “It’s too much. I know how that feels. I know what it means and everything about it. You’ve been hurt so much. Abused and afraid and angry—so much. How could I hurt you more? How could I cause you any more pain?”
“Don’t you see? I want it all. Your pleasure, your pain. Anything you can give me, I crave it.”
The last words shattered in my mouth, pressed there by the force of his body and his rage. He unleashed it on me. His anger, carefully boxed and hidden, sprang open. The fear, so neatly caged, splintered all around us. He lashed at me with hands that forced my wrists against the wall, his mouth that pried mine open and stole my breath, the painful ridge against my stomach as he pushed and threatened and warned me away, but with nowhere to go and no desire to leave him, I yielded. It hadn’t been a lie; the pain he delivered was sweeter than the gentlest caress of a hundred-dollar bill. It was honest, and it was him.
I hadn’t lied about that either: I loved him. I had dressed it up with excuses, with reasons that made it okay to break the cardinal rule. He was unattainable, like Allie had said. He was unlike me in every way, but when those drapes were pulled away, they revealed a blinding white-hot wound. There wasn’t any reason to compel it, any logic to explain it, and that’s how I knew it was love.
Copper touched my tongue—my blood, his. An anguished sound disturbed the air around us—my pain, his pleasure. But no one would play the martyr tonight. Neither of us would pretend we didn’t want this, not anymore.
Chapter Thirteen
He shoved me to the floor, and I tumbled there, a flurry of dust and limbs, of bruises on my knees and a self-satisfied grunt in my throat. With fingers digging into my arm, he turned me over. I sank gratefully onto the concrete, my legs spread, body eager.
Harsh hands pushed the cloth of my panties aside. Two fingers shoved inside, dry until he added his spit to ease their way.
“Oh God,” I cried. He was more than I’d thought he could be—worse and so much better.
“Take it,” he muttered. “Just once, just now. Just like this.”
Did he think I would refuse him? It was bliss, this pain. Did he think it was too much? It would never be. I wanted him to beat me, to transfer each blow from his body to mine so that my scars matched his, inside and out.
“Let me see it,” I begged. The real him, the real me. “Let me feel it.”
He knew exactly what I meant, and he was far enough gone to give it to me. His palm landed on my cheek¸ a slap too light to be cruel, the force of it turning my face to the floor. I groaned at the sting, at the relief. “More,” I whispered.
“No. That’s enough.” But the words weren’t meant to protect me or to soothe me. They were a denial. He wanted me to beg.
“Luke, Luke.” I was helpless for anything more coherent.
“Shelly,” he answered me, mournful. “I never wanted this for you.”
“Me neither,” I whispered, not knowing whether we were talking about me or him, but it didn’t matter anyway. We couldn’t change the past, only live in the present. We couldn’t heal the hurts; only fill the hollows of memory with the jolt of my hips as he yanked me closer, with the softening of my body as I let him. His force and my acceptance, they were a bargain between us, a language we both understood.
The rasp of his zipper met my ears, and then he was pushing, pulsing, already inside me before I realized we didn’t have a condom. I clenched around a warm length, rippled against velvety skin, no barriers between us, but that didn’t matter now, couldn’t matter here in the aftermath of torture, at the fringes of death. I wanted to be taken over, to be ripped and torn to shreds by him, and I was. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t do anything but writhe and moan and coat his cock with the fluid I had denied him before.
Tilting my hips, I let him in deeper. It hurt that way. It pressed and pushed and stabbed that way, but it was the perfect counterpoint to the pleasure I felt spreading like a fever over my body. I was going to come; it had already started, like the first gentle curve on the horizon. It grew closer to the shore, gathering strength until it was a wave crashing over me and I gasped for breath at the surface. He never stopped, never slowed his thrusts.
I fought for air, for acknowledgment, pounding on his chest with my fists. He grunted in pain but didn’t relent. He trapped my arms, holding his weight on the soft inner flesh. It was agony, and my body wrenched in response, but none of it could compare to the pain he must have felt. With those bruises, those injuries, even holding himsel
f up would be torture; even moving inside me, against me would be pain. We rocked in it, reveled in it like hedonists who had just discovered that pain spilled over became pleasure.
My hips rode the air, reaching up for his. He slammed me back down on each thrust, an ache reverberating through my limbs.
I couldn’t find an end or a beginning. “Help me.”
“Stop?”
“More, more.”
He released my arms and reared back. He wrapped both his hands around my neck, not squeezing or pressing. Just holding me there by my most vulnerable place. It felt like worship.
With the slightest constriction, I felt the flesh of his palm as I breathed, as I swallowed. Like a dam torn apart, tears ran down my cheeks. Heartbroken. My heart was breaking for him.
He didn’t want my pity. I gave him something else, everything else. I sobbed out a release, his every entry brought a new surge of heat, relaxing as the last of the pleasure lapped at my heels. When I had finished, he covered me with his body, filling me until it was too much before letting me breathe once again. Each thrust was marked by a small expulsion of air. Ah, ah, ah. And it drew out, melting together into a masculine sound, the horizon between power and helplessness.
He collapsed on top of me, a slippery weight of sweat and sex and probably blood from one of us, maybe both. It was the cleanest I had ever felt, not marred by shame or misuse. The oils of his body were like a baptism, washing away my sins and leaving me reborn. He panted there, shudders gripping his body as he caught his breath. His stillness worried me. Don’t let him regret this. Don’t let him withdraw.
“Hell,” he said, rolling off me.
I followed, tucking my body against his, heedful of the jagged cut that ran wetly along his side and the matching one on my leg.
In the aftermath, cold settled over us by degrees. With it came dread, that he would forget or go back to the old way.
“Are you okay?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m fine, I promise.”
He turned his face away, and I clutched his arm as if it were a life raft. Where did this clinginess come from? I didn’t know, but it gripped me, and in turn, I couldn’t let him go. I didn’t mind his roughness earlier, didn’t mind the bruises. I couldn’t stand for him to push me away. If he left me now, there wouldn’t be any time to make it right between us. It wasn’t fair to him, putting all that pressure on one experience. Was it real? Intimacy, love? For once, finally? I had to know, as the unseen timer ticked down to zero. I had to believe I’d lived before I died.
“Please, Luke. Don’t shut me out, not now.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked with a challenge in his voice. “Tell me what you want me to say.”
I want it to be real between us. It was my plea this time, my unspoken words butting up against an uncaring lover. No, not uncaring. He was hurt and fighting back. I understood that, though I’d rarely done it myself. But that was Luke, who had clawed his way up until the world had given him respect. And this was me, who accepted what I was given and wondered, wondered, wondered if it would ever be enough.
“I’m sorry I pushed you. Forget I asked.” I stroked his chest, hoping his heart would calm.
He sat up, pulling away. “You know what it’s like. Right, Shelly? You know we don’t like to be touched. So why are you all over me? Why can’t I seem to shake you?”
Tears ran down my cheeks. I hated to see him like this, raging and hurting.
“I don’t know,” I said, shivering. I just wanted him to feel better. “I’ll pretend he never told me.”
“What for? You know the truth. You know that I was too much of a coward to tell you myself, even when I knew you did the same. You know that I took it up the ass since I was sixteen, but you know what else? I’m guessing you did too.”
I recoiled. “Stop it.”
“Am I right? If I guessed right, I think I should win a prize.”
My breath exhaled in shaky jolts. “You’re being cruel on purpose. To push me away.”
“Way to state the obvious, Shelly. Next you’ll tell me I know how to suck a cock. Probably better than you, and between the two of us, that’s saying something.”
I stared at him, burning the image of him into my mind. He was rabid, a cornered animal, a tortured one. And I couldn’t help him. I turned and crawled to the other side of the cell. It didn’t have quite the same effect without a slamming door and screech of tires, but we were beyond theatrics. There was only desolation here, only tears streaming down my face as I curled up, facing the wall. The problem with crying is that once you start, you can’t stop. Soon my silent tears had turned into sobs that racked my body. I put my hand to my mouth to try to keep them in, but somehow that only made them worse.
Luke picked me up and cradled me in his lap. I fought him at first, striking out, landing blows only God knows where. It didn’t deter him. If anything, he probably welcomed them, so rife was he with self-disgust.
“Oh God, Shelly. I’m sorry. Yes, hate me. I’m so sorry.”
I curled into his warmth and his hate and cried into his shirt. He rocked me, murmuring endearments and apologies and self-directed epithets until my tears had dried.
My head felt hollow but strangely heavy. “Did you think I would judge you?” I whispered.
His laugh was hoarse. “I don’t need you to judge me. I do that plenty for myself.”
“You did what you had to do to keep your sister safe.”
“I could have walked her into any police station. I should have. If I had, she would still be alive.”
“You were a teenager. You couldn’t know what would happen to her, especially after they had left you in that man’s care.”
“And I thought I could do better. I was so damn cocky. Isn’t that funny? The gay-for-pay guy was cocky.”
It was like watching myself from the outside. So full of anger and hurt, covering it all up with sexually insulting humor.
“How did she—” I bit my lip, stoppering the words.
“I wasn’t her pimp, if that’s what you thought. There are some lines even I wouldn’t cross.”
“I didn’t think that,” I said quickly and felt some of the tension leak from his body.
He swallowed. “I was gone every night. She was bored, like I told you. She started hanging out with a bad crowd who got her hooked on heroin. That was the point I really got scared. I knew we were both in over our heads, but I was so wrapped up in my own shit. I thought I could handle it all. I started being more careful with money, so she wouldn’t spend it all on the drugs. That’s when she started hooking, to make up the money. Most of the girls she hung out with were already doing it, so I guess it didn’t seem like a big deal. I only found out later, after she had gone.”
His grip on me tightened, and I couldn’t quite breathe, but at that moment, I would rather have suffocated than deny him comfort.
“I failed her,” he said, his voice cracking. “I failed her so bad, and I could never stop trying to make it right, even though I know it’s too late.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him to me. We shifted slightly so that his head lay on my chest. I wondered if he could hear my heart race, and I struggled to calm myself as if that could calm him too. At length, his breathing evened out, though small shifts in his body told me he was still awake.
Pulling himself up, he faced me, solemn and determined. His eyes were streaked red, though they didn’t look nearly as bad as mine probably did—puffy and swollen from tears unshed.
He brushed a tear that had remained on my cheek. “I owe you an apology. The things I said were unforgivable.”
“You were upset.”
A ghost of a smile touched his swollen face. “I think you would excuse me from murder if I tell you I had a bad day.”
“I forgive you.”
His voice grew husky as he said, “I don’t deserve that.”
“Forgiveness isn’t about whether you deserve it or not. It
comes freely or not at all. Like love.”
He swallowed. “You do love me, don’t you, Shelly? And I don’t deserve that either.”
He was more deserving of love than anybody I had ever known, but it wasn’t even relevant to how I felt about him. Love wasn’t a choice; it was an accident. Not a climb but a fall. I had slipped somewhere along my prickly path and down, down to the murky depths, hurtling ever farther, ever faster, and the only question left was whether he would meet me at the bottom.
Chapter Fourteen
I crouched behind the flat of the table, which had been turned on its side, wondering how Luke had talked me into this.
It was a suicide mission. His.
The plan was chillingly simple. Luke waited, prone on the floor and armed with our crude and blunt weaponry. He would lure the men to his side and fight them, distracting them long enough for me to escape through the door. I had argued vehemently at the beginning, flat-out refused. How could I leave him to his death? I could go for help, but we both knew it would be too late for him. But then he had pulled me tight and said that if we did nothing, we would both die. Let him do this much, he’d said.
Live, he’d told me.
I understood about guilt, however undeserved, and how it would eat at him in these final minutes if he believed I would die. So I agreed, still unsure whether I could run away. There were moments that defined a person, choices that separated me from my mother. Could I leave him to suffer in my place? Could I live with myself after? It was the same as when Henri had given me that gun. Could I become a murderer? I would save myself, but there were things worth more than my life.
My ankles ached, cold from the chill of the floor. I missed his body warmth, the way he breathed.
It felt like days passed before footsteps sounded from outside the room. I strained to make them out, to separate them into parts and count how many men were there. Two, maybe three.