by Winter James
Jake works himself between my knees. He lets out a hiss that tells me how much he needs this. It’s exactly how much I need this. A lightning flash of courage strikes, lightning up the dark sky in my mind. If not now, when? I reach between us and wrap my hand around the hard length of him.
I know he used his dick to fuck me last night, but the feel of it in my hand is nothing short of astonishing. My mouth drops open. Jake’s eyes glide over my wrist.
“You like that, little girl? That’s what made you mine last night.”
It’s so warm. It’s iron beneath the shockingly soft skin. I run my thumb experimentally over the tip, finding a bead of liquid there. Jake squeezes his eyes shut. Sometimes at the House of Rapture the other girls would whisper about these things. I tired not to listen, because listening to that kind of talk was a sin. But I remember words like pump and jerk. Those seem like the wrong things to do, so I go with a gentle pressure and push down, the ring of my fingers tight.
“Do that again,” says Jake through gritted teeth.
I do.
His eyes fly open.
“You know this only makes me need you more.”
The idea of him needing me sends a hot flush of pride rocketing through me. Jake sweeps my wrists up Into his grasp in one easy movement and puts them above my head. He leans up and kisses each wrist—one, two—and then he cages me in with his arms again. The wide head of him tests my secret place. God, god, he’s already stretching me and he’s not even all the way inside yet. My arms go to his shoulders on instinct. Something says hold on. And then Jake pushes himself inside, letting me feel every inch. Making me feel every inch.
Jake pauses when he’s all he way in, the tip of his dick meeting an uncrossable barrier inside my body. He’s taken all the space I have. I can’t open my legs any wider for him, and I can’t let him in any deeper. He has everything. He is everything.
“Hold on tight, little girl,” he growls into my ear.
I do, but it’s not enough. He’s like the ocean, and I’m turned upside down by the endless waves. He pumps into me again and again, until I’m stretched so deep inside it makes me scream. He pauses only to reposition himself, and then he goes even deeper.
“Please,” I whisper. “Wait. Wait.”
“No,” he mutters in my ear from behind. “This is what you dream about. Don’t lie to me, little girl. I know about your fantasies, about how you want me to pound into you from behind.”
A sob escapes me. “How? How do you know?”
“You dream about it. I heard you in your dream. It was all I could do not to fuck you while you were sleeping, let you wake up with my hard cock inside you, pound this tight little behind even as you were surprised, shocked, horrified about the animal fucking you.”
“No,” I whisper--I’m not saying no to him, I’m saying no to the idea that he’s an animal, that I would have turned him away. It would have seemed like an impossible dream.
“That’s right,” he says, taking my rejection with grim refusal. “You didn’t like anything about the cult, except for the way a man could fuck his woman anytime and anywhere. You liked that part, didn’t you?”
“Only when it was you,” I say, my voice gasping.
He slows. Stop. “Say that again.”
“I do like what you’re saying,” I say, shuddering from the thickness inside me. It feels almost bigger now that it’s moving, now that I don’t have that sweet friction easing his way. “I want you to take me whenever you want, however you want. But only you.”
“God,” he groans. “Yes. Fuck.”
With three quick pumps he comes with a roar, and I feel him pulse inside me. I’m way too full with his semen and his cock. I shiver on the bed, splayed completely open, my body overwhelmed. I wait passively for him to leave, but he only slides out--some of his come drips down my thigh. Then he pushes back in.
“What?” I whisper.
He flips me back over and sucks on my nipple. His cock presses deep inside. “You didn’t think I was done with you, did you? I was in prison, little girl. A man stores up a lot of come inside the joint. I’m not going to rest until it’s inside you.”
Chapter Twelve
Jake
Everything in me, every feeling I have, tells me that leaving Dove at the halfway house is a terrible fucking idea. I don’t ever want to leave her side again. For most of my life, fucking was something I did without feeling. It’s not that I didn’t like the women I was with. I’d I’d. But nothing compares to the wild need I have for Dove. It’s not something that can be tamed or silenced. All the things that came before this pale in comparison.
But then quickest way to blow our cover would be to skip out on work.
Plus, for all the shit I give Brad and Greg, they’re decent enough guys. They don’t need to finish the rest area by themselves. We’ve got to pour concrete today. It blows, pouring concrete, but it’s the kind of mindless work that’ll make the hours pass quickly until I can get back to Dove. I try not to think about what will happen if the other guys figure out she’s there. The landlord would be worst of all. When my mother was still alive she used to say that dwelling on worst-case scenarios makes them come true.
I try to dwell on the best-case scenario instead, which is that work goes off without a hitch.
It does, right up to the moment I pull my Buick off the into the rest area. I know something’s wrong as soon as I make the turn. I know something’s wrong because there are three cop cars waiting next to my backhoe.
Fuck.
Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck and my hands go so tight on the wheel I don’t think I’ll be able to let go. How can I get out? Where’s the way out? We’ve chewed up enough of the parking lot that the only way to get back to the highway is to turn around.
My car’s not fast enough for that.
And—fuck. If this becomes a high-speed chase, I’m never getting back to Dove again. They’ll throw everything they’ve got at me, and I’ll go away for a long fucking time. Bile splashes up into my throat. It was one thing to avoid going back to prison for my own sake. Now that Dove’s in the picture, at least for today, it’s a different ballgame.
I park on the other side of the backhoe and take a deep breath. I didn’t do anything wrong, except fuck Dove senseless a few times between last night and now. But she’s an adult. I didn’t do anything wrong.
I climb out of my Buick like it’s normal as fuck to meet the cops at your place of work. On the way around it, I give the backhoe a pat. It was a good fucking backhoe. Maybe I’ll see it again one day.
Six cops. That’s how many stand in a row next to the cop cars. Brad and Greg sit at the picnic table by the trees. They’re not trying to hide the fact that they’re staring, blank looks on both their faces. What did the cops tell them? Fuckers.
I give them a cautious wave and watch four hands go to guns. The other two hands are already on them.
My mouth goes bone-dry. I wish I’d had more than few handfuls of water out of the sink this morning. I was so focused on wanting to stay with Dove that I got complacent like a fucking idiot. I kept acting like everything would be the same, when nothing will ever be the same.
Nice and easy, I put my other hand in front of me so they can see I don’t have anything.
“Good morning, officers.” Calling the words across the space between us seems like overkill and not enough, all at the same time. “Can I help you with something?”
The big guy in the middle, with a paunch to match his hat-covered high and tight, isn’t bothering to hide a scowl.
“Jake Ellis?”
“That’s me.”
They’re on me before I have a chance to say what the fuck is all this about? Paunch is the one to yank my arms around my behind my back and slap on a pair of cuffs. Metal against my skin makes me break out in a flop sweat. Anger burns it away. Someone’s reading my Miranda rights.
“Wait, wait.” The other voice tugs me up from the crash a
nd roll of my own heart in my ears. Brad, bless his asshole fucking soul, stands just outside the ring of cops. His orange vest flutters in the wind. His cheeks have gone red below his sunburn and his pulse ticks at the side of his neck. “Are you arresting him, Officer? He’s been a good guy.”
A good guy. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with Brad, but I’m grateful for it anyway. Brad’s pulse ticks at the side of his neck. No idea if he’s just nervous because the boys in blue brought enough backup to arrest the three of us or if he’s had run-ins with the police before. Either way, he’s stepped up here to tell them I’m a good guy.
Brad rubs the back of his neck. “I thought you were just here to talk to him.”
Paunch tugs on the cuffs. It’s an unnecessary yank and they bite into my wrists. It’s like I’ve never left prison. I can already feel my face settling into a blank expression—they’ll read it however they want to. There’s no point in pleading my case. Never is. I learned that last time. Then the officer steps out from behind me, his hand pinned to my wrists.
“You interfering with his arrest, son?”
Brad’s eyes go wide. “No, man—officer. Just wondered what happened. He’s the guy who drives the backhoe, so we’re pretty screwed without him.”
It’s the kind of sentimental shit that would make me misty-eyed if I’d trained myself out of crying long before I got to prison. Sure, me and Brad ribbed each other about our moms. I never thought he’d stand up for me. Even if it is pointless.
“You’ve been tricked.” I keep my eyes on Brad. The scowl on Paunch’s face is right there in his voice—i don’t need to see it to know it’s there. It’s the twisted mouth of a man who knows, deep down in his heart, that I’m a piece of shit who deserves to rot in jail. “This bastard’s under arrest for kidnapping. You still think he’s a good guy now?”
“I didn’t kidnap anyone,” I burst out. It’s a fucking mistake. All the blue uniforms around me tense. Guns come out of holsters into hands ready to shoot. “What’s this about? I didn’t kidnap anyone.”
How is it kidnapping if you’re saving a girl from a cult? A woman? Because Dove is twenty.
That’s what she said to me, and it was true. Dove doesn’t have a lying bone in her body.
A creeping horror sloshes through my stomach. Dove believes she’s twenty. But what if the same scumbag who bruised her for the crime of kissing lied to her?
I didn’t want to admit it before, but I’d been holding out hope. Hope for a mistake. Hope for the cops to say that they thought I violated my parole but it had all been a misunderstanding. Hope that Paunch would name a crime so ridiculous that we’d all laugh, and he’d take the cuffs off and let me go. I’d climb into that fucking backhoe and drive it all day, and then get back into my Buick and go home to Dove tonight.
That hope dies like a man with a knife to the kidney. It falls to the ground with a dull thud. I should have known from the moment I saw her white dress that I was walking into a trap. A fucking evil trap. I got suckered into it the way everybody else around here does—by thinking that the biggest secret of the cult is that it’s full of religious zealots who want to be close to nature. The real secret is that they keep their members hemmed in with a web of lies. Soon they’ll make it physical. Soon they’ll close the wall around her, and nobody will ever be able to fight them.
I sure as hell won’t, because I’ll be in prison.
Brad is saying something.
“—evidence of kidnapping. I didn’t see him with anyone, and he’s here every day.”
“We’ve got the report, son.” Paunch taps his foot. He’s pissed. He doesn’t want to be here arguing with Brad. It’ll fuck up their show of force and power if they have to stop and debate arresting some ex-con bastard who stole a woman that didn’t belong to him. “Now I don’t have to tell you this, but she was reported missing last night. We’ve got officers at his halfway house right now.”
Fuck. Fuck. Dove doesn’t need this, and neither do the other guys at the halfway house. I should’ve taken her and run. We could be borders away by now. Doing the right thing is as much of a mistake as breaking the law is. I’ve known that for years. I should have known it now.
Paunch puts a hand on my shoulder and I open my mouth to tell him not to fucking touch me. I have enough sense to stop myself at the last second. These guys look twitchy and being in the back of a police car with a chance to plead my case is better than being dead.
“It’s fine, Brad. I’ll be OK.”
He steps back, looking relieved. I’m glad he believes me. I fucking don’t.
Chapter Thirteen
Jake
The handcuffs came off hours ago, but the metal burn still circles my wrists. It’ll take weeks for that to go away. Weeks—if that fucking cult is done coming after me. I don’t think they are, but I’m out for now.
My first step outside the county jail is like coming back to life after being buried in a deep, dark grave. Grass grows in the field across the street. Somebody cut it while I was inside. That new-plant fresh-cut smell is how plants tell you they’re panicking, you know that? But I’d take tortured grass over the reek of piss and cinderblocks any day. Grass can come back to life. A guy behind bars can’t always do that. I’ve done it twice now. There can’t be a third time. That’s all I know.
“Jake!” Noah waves his arms above his head from the first spot in the parking lot. He’s not going to come any closer, and I wouldn’t either if I were him. “Get in the car. Let’s go.”
He was my one phone call, nine hours ago when I got to the jail. Thank fuck I caught him before he went to work. Noah drove my Buick here.
My skin pulls up into goose bumps. I should be putting distance between me and the jail, but I have the sense that this isn’t over yet—that taking one step away will be breaking some unwritten rule that will give the police enough of a reason to drag me back inside.
Then the passenger door of my Buick opens and a woman gets out.
For a split second I have no idea what woman Noah would have possibly brought to the police station with him. That seems stupid as hell, picking up a girl on the way. But then her hair and face—those big blue eyes—click into place.
My Dove.
My feet move before my brain can catch up. Before I can check for oncoming cars or vindictive cops. The pull to her is so strong I can’t resist it. I don’t want to resist it. All I know is that it’s going to hurt like a bitch when I end this. What the hell else would I do? I’ve already been arrested once for touching her. We can’t spend our lives—
Dove runs to me.
She’s a blur of blue jeans and a purple tank top, her blonde hair pulled up into a high ponytail that catches the fading sunlight. The clothes, the hair—she could be anybody out there in the world, running free.
At the last moment she jumps and I catch her in my arms. I take a big breath of her sunshine and new clothes smell and she buries her face into my neck like she was on the verge of death without me.
“Jake, I’m sorry,” she breathes into my neck. “I didn’t think he’d go this far. I was—I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault, little girl.” I stroke a hand down the length of her ponytail. “It’s always been mine.”
“It wasn’t,” she insists. “I’m the one who—”
I set her back on her feet. It would be better to walk off with her into the sunset, but facts are facts—you can’t get as far on foot as you can in a car. Dove looks up at me.
“We have to go. It’s not good to hang around a jail.”
Noah shakes my hand, slaps my back, and climbs into the backseat. Last time I was behind the wheel I drove myself to my own arrest. This time Dove’s in the passenger seat next to me, and as soon as I turn the key in the ignition she slips her little hand into mine and holds on tight.
We drop Noah off at the halfway house and I go in to get my stuff. Dove comes with me. I’m sure as hell not going to leave her alone in the car, and I
only need a minute to gather everything I own. The landlord, a too-thin guy with a permanent scowl, lurks at the end of the hallway while I pack my single duffle bag. Some nights I’ve sat in this room thinking I should have bought more stuff since I got out of prison, but now that I’m well and truly fucked, it’s a silver lining that I’ll be able to travel light.
The landlord trails us out to the parking lot. He waits until Dove’s in the car and my hand is on the handle.
“Jake?”
“Don’t bother.” I wave him off. “I won’t come back.”
The situation isn’t ideal but I feel a thousand times lighter driving away from the halfway house.
That lasts for about a block.
Dove and me, we’re basically homeless. I can’t go back to my job—they frown on shit like getting arrested at work.
“Noah went with me to the police station earlier,” she says softly, running her thumb over my knuckle, back and forth, back and forth. “I told them you didn’t get kidnapped. I swore it. I even signed a paper. You shouldn’t be in any trouble.”
The laugh that bursts out of me is made of despair. “We’re in trouble, little girl.”
“We’re together, right?” The hope in her voice is a deep cut into the soft part of my heart. She has no idea how fucked we are. “It can’t be that bad. Can it?”
It can. It really fucking can.
I let her question hang there while I drive us down the highway and stop at this shitty little motel I passed every day on my way to work. It’s the closest, cheapest place I can think of. Dove follows me silently into the lobby, where we pay the disinterested woman behind the counter for one night in cash. I’m too tired to fuck around with leaving town tonight.
Dove brings a plastic bag from one of the clothing stores in the mall to the room with us and puts it on the rickety chair in the corner. “Noah took me shopping,” she says by way of explanation. “He thought I shouldn’t show up at the police station in your t-shirt.”