It’s a losing battle. I’m panting like a runner. People back away and stare. I hear someone whisper, “no shoes,” and from another mouth, “addict.”
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
My head is still so foggy, but I realize I need to choose somewhere to go.
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I can only think of one hotel right now: the Carlyle, where Lyon and I stayed with Dad before he said goodbye to us that day in November. Almost a year ago. I bring my fist to my mouth. I pull my hand down at the last minute.
Now the train is here. People moving.
I manage the two steps up without losing my balance. It smells—like dirty laundry and old fruit. I grab a nearby pole, close my eyes to bear the pain in my feet.
The train lurches. I clutch the pole and let my broken body sway and tremble with the rocking motion.
Time thins out and starts to twist around things like a string. I can’t control the moaning. My knees can’t hold my weight. I’m on the floor and there’s a woman kneeling by me.
“Honey—you look ill. Are you okay?”
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I try to nod, even though the motion hurts my head.
“Would you like me to help you at the next stop?” she asks. “You’re not an addict, are you? You’re a veteran.”
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I swallow, using the razorblade sensation in the back of my throat to stay conscious.
“We’re stopping now. You want me to help you off, honey, or call someone?”
I lick my cracked lips.
Hands and shoulders get me to my feet—maybe more than one set. I’m moving down the stairs. The hands let go. So much effort to stay standing. The next time I open my eyes, it’s because tears are spilling from them. I’m swaying under an awning. I don’t feel anything but pain.
“Come sit down, sir. Mr... ?”
“Walsh.” My voice is so soft, I doubt she hears me—but the answer satisfies me. I will never be Kellan Drake again.
“Sit here.” There’s a bench. I slump onto it, keening like an animal. I hear the stranger tsk around me, murmuring to herself.
“Okay now, here’s a cab for you,” she says in soothing tones. “Where should I have him take you? How about the VA Hospital?”
“Hotel,” I manage. I groan. “Cash.”
“You know, my grandson is a Navy SEAL. I’ve got cash—about a hundred in my wallet. But look here, I see an ATM right over there across the way.”
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I reach into my jacket and pull out my debit card. It feels strange in my fingers. I crack one lid and hold it out toward her shadow. “Zero three... zero... five.”
“How much would you like?”
“Max,” I croak.
I see a yellow cab through bleary eyes. I can’t seem to focus on the shadow woman’s face.
Maybe she’s my mother, come to guide me through—
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I don’t so much step as fall into the cab. The driver jets off. I can’t remember if I told him where to go, or if I got my cash. The woman was...
I bend over. Clutch my head. I can’t remember how I got into the cab, can only think of—
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I crack my eyes open to a view of beads hanging from a rear-view mirror. Underneath it, the city marching by. “Do you...have sanitizer?” I rasp. “Hand—”
A bottle is thrust into my hands. My fingers shake.
“Here!” The driver snatches it away. I blink and swallow. My throat burns.
The bottle lands in my lap, the top flipped open. I squeeze some out into my palm. The smell of alcohol consumes me.
The next time I open my eyes, we’re at the Carlyle. My throat hurts so much, it’s making things blur.
I can’t go back. I won’t.
I hand the man my debit card. He shakes his head. “She paid, before we leave.”
I nod. Okay.
But I’m not okay. I can’t get my legs to move. My head is spinning like a top. I start to cough. The short man comes around to help me. As he wraps his hand around my wrist and I try to shift my hips, my jacket flops open. His eyes fly to my chest, and then pop wide.
“Not here,” he says, shaking his head. “This no the right place. You not get out here.”
I laugh and struggle out, onto my feet and through the hotel’s automatic doors. I stagger into the lobby like a bear into a palace. I find the nearest chair and list into it, sweating.
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
It can’t be true. It isn’t true. It can’t be true.
I try to focus. Breathe.
I guess somehow I get a room. I get a room with the wad of cash tucked into my jacket pocket, and manage to ride the elevator up to it.
When I open my eyes, the clock beside this strange bed says 11:49 PM.
My throat is dry. It hurts so much I start to shake.
My stomach is awash with nausea, even as my body screams for food. I roll over on my side and am surprised to find a tray beside me on the bed. With a trembling hand, I lift the receipt. My eyes seem wet. I can’t read it.
I tear a piece of bread, but it’s no use. As soon as I feel it in the back of my throat, I’m vomiting.
I feel the edge of panic start to fray around me.
Soon, someone will come...
I slide off the bed and crawl over to a chair beside the window. So dark outside. Maybe just stay here on the floor...
Two
Cleo
September 10, 2014
I step through the glass door slowly. Once, while I was still down on my hands and knees out on the balcony, I called his name. But that’s the only time.
I look around the bedroom. That bed—sans canopy now—with its thick headboard and tree-sized posts. The vast expanse of hardwood, topped by rug. The lamps on shelves and tables, wearing dust.
The urge to call out for him pulls at me, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. I straighten my shoulders and wait.
His arms come around me like a dream. His chest against my back, his hands cupping my hips. He turns me toward him, and we’re like a wicked fairy tale. Me with the sick gallop of my heart. Him with his hard face, his staunch mouth.
The room is warm with sunlight. He carries me away from the gold glow, toward the shadow of the bed. He lays me on my back and folds my arms over my chest. My hands rest on my shoulders.
I wonder where he went before he hid behind me, in the curtains, but I don’t think it really matters. It’s a game we’re playing. I want to stay in it, so I just lick my lips.
I keep my eyes fixed on the ceiling, even as I feel him moving just behind my line of sight. I hear him opening a drawer. The ceiling gives a groan, and then it opens. Fear deadens my limbs. I watch a metal fixture lower down over me. Ropes. I don’t know what this means. My eyes try to tug toward him, but I don’t let them. For reasons unknowable to me, I don’t want him to see my nervousness.
A metal bar shaped like an X hovers over me, about five feet above the bed. Thick, white ropes hang down from each of its four ends.
Kellan comes into my line of sight, standing shirtless by the bed. He’s grim and...different. I don’t know exactly how, but I can sense a shift inside him—and it makes my heart pound harder, even though I wouldn’t say I’m scared.
He climbs up on the bed and takes one of the ropes in hand.
“If you stay,” he says slowly, “I’m going to bind your wrists and
ankles. I’m going to fuck you until I’m tired.” He blows his breath out. “It takes a long time, Cleo.” He tightens his fist around the rope. “This is for me. I will make sure you enjoy it, but at some point, you’ll get tired—and I’ll want to keep going.”
I whisper, “Try me.”
I don’t know why. Because I’m scared? Because I’m spurred by my ridiculous bravado? This same shadow, tucked inside me, laughs when police cruisers rotate through the parking lots on campus, booting tires... while I walk by, my straw bag swinging from my shoulders.
There’s something bad about me. Years ago, before I learned to hide it, Grans would call it pride—but it’s more than that. It’s recklessness. It’s sin.
This stupid bar, these stupid ropes, they’re nothing. There’s a part of me that needs to play this game with him. I didn’t even know my dark spirit could rise to sex, but...
“Try me, Kellan.”
“You want to do this?”
“Yeah.” The word sounds nervous. The girl inside me, normal Cleo, is nervous, but I don’t tell him that. I’m shaking a little as he watches me. He’s serious and still. He’s beautiful.
“What’s your safe word, Cleo?”
“Sloth,” I whisper.
“Is that a nickname?”
I nod and he slides his arms under mine, pulls me against his chest, and moves me over, so he can lower the X-bar down to the bed. When it’s lying atop the sheets, he reaches down to the footboard for a slip of mattress he smooths over the X. This way I’ll be lying on padding, with the X-shaped bar beneath them. The only purpose the bar will serve is to anchor the rope that will bind my ankles and wrists. He lays me down on the tuft of padding like a sacrifice.
He doesn’t speak or even seem to breathe as he mounts my hips and begins to bind my right wrist.
My heart throbs in my ears. I start to look at him for lines, for the point where I would start if I were sketching him. I’d do his shoulder lines real smooth. I’d make his cheeks stand out the way they do right now. And pensive lips. I close my eyes and feel his fingers brushing my hand. Flexing and straining as he gets the rope just right.
I take a slow breath as that wrist is fully bound.
He shifts his weight, and I feel a bolt of something hot and satisfying. I love being under him. I think maybe this proximity is the best thing I’ve ever felt. How I can feel it when he takes a breath. How I can smell him. How it’s foreign and I want to breathe it deeper. He’s so pretty. He’s so strange. He’s got my left hand now.
“You’re at my mercy,” he murmurs.
I’m proud that I’m excited now, not scared.
He moves his heavy straddle down my hips, my thighs. He leans back on his heels and spreads my knees apart. His hands are gentle, running down my calves.
He coils the rope around my ankle. “Scaring you is not my goal.”
“What is?” I whisper, peeking up at him.
His eyes bore through me, slide away. He lifts my right ankle and sets it down atop the rope. “Making you feel pain and pleasure—so you can enjoy them both. Have you ever gotten off from pain?”
The word burns through me. I shift my head a little, trying to escape the warm blush on my cheeks. A strand of hair falls in my face. I reach for it. The rope stops my wrist before my fingers even fully stretch.
Kellan’s blue gaze presses on mine. I shift my eyes away, but feel his linger on me in a subtle show of dominance. I have to work to stop a smile from blooming on my face.
He finishes tying my ankle and I try to scissor my legs, just for the sensation of failure.
Kellan grins, wolfish. He’s crouched at my feet in nothing but his khakis. He looks vibrant. Energized. And his upper body... damn. It’s like a statue.
His dancing eyes elevate his beauty to an almost supernatural level. For once, his face looks...light. I scrutinize his features and find the word I’m looking for: jubilant.
He moves between my legs and leans to plant a kiss behind my knee. I thought seeing me bound would stoke him to a frenzy, but I didn’t understand. Now that he has me where he wants me, he’s relaxed.
He trails his warm mouth up and down my inner thighs until my pussy has its own heartbeat—and when he parts my lips and strokes me with his tongue, my hips buck off the bed.
His tongue rolls through my swollen slit. I push myself against his face. The ropes tug at my wrists and ankles. Pleasure sears me as his tongue laps at my sopping core. I try to scoot away. I moan. I rock forward.
“It’s too soon to come, Cleo.”
He teases at my entrance, stuffing his tongue inside, dragging it out. He laps up and down my folds. When I’m moaning, trembling and helpless, he scoops his hands under my ass. He shifts my hips up off the bed, tugs my ass cheeks apart, and meets my puckered entrance with his soft, wet lips. I gasp as he tries to push his tongue inside.
Into my dripping pussy, he stuffs a third finger.
“I like this little asshole, Cleo,” he breathes against it. “One day soon, I’m going to work my way inside it.”
For today, he lubes me with his tongue and pushes a pinkie finger in. It’s overwhelming, being stretched back there, while three fingers writhe in my cunt and his slick, hot tongue teases my swollen clit.
I come hard and helpless, panting as my wrists jerk against their binds.
My chest is heaving when my brain reboots. I feel electrified. I curl my fingers inward, pull against the ropes.
“Relax.”
I do—because I want to show him I can handle this.
He licks my pussy once more, making me struggle against my binds, then tugs his pants down just below his rigid hips, revealing a mouth-watering treasure trail and his long, stiff dick.
It’s fucking huge: a cock, for sure. It’s so ridiculously... perfect—like everything about him. It could be a mold for a dildo company. He wraps his hand around it, loosely pumping up and down, and I think this should be a .gif, gracing Tumblr feeds.
He grins. His eyes look sleepy—hypnotized. He tips his weeping head toward me. “You want my cock inside your pussy, Cleo?”
I nod. Restraint, propriety, pride: all fall to the feet of lust.
He shifts on his knees and pulls a condom from the pocket of his pants, still bunched below his hips. Then he parts my folds with deft fingers. He swirls his swollen head through my slickness, pressing at my entrance long enough to make me moan.
He grabs my hips and nudges in. I freeze at the invasion, all my focus falling to my tender entrance. I’m soaked, but swollen too, and he’s so big. It’s a stretch, even just the tip of him.
I shift my hips a little at the sting.
He groans.
I writhe against him.
“Cleo...you’re so fucking tight.”
The sting sharpens as he pushes slowly in. Oh fuck, he can’t get in. With a swift thrust of his hips, his head pops in. I moan.
I look down because I feel so full of him, but...it’s just his head.
“Oh, shit,” I pant.
His eyes hold mine as he pushes inside, inch by inch. I moan, clenching. I peek up at him, watching his face tighten as he settles. His eyes slip shut, and I can hear him swallow.
God—he feels so good. I bite my lip and try to keep myself from rocking against him yet.
He twists his hips a little, sending waves of bliss through me. He presses his palms on each side of my shoulders and stretches his glorious torso over me. With his eyes hot on mine, he shifts his hips, pressing the base of his dick against my clit. I let my breath out.
“Oh my God...”
I feel every inch of him—and that’s enough. It’s more than enough... until his forehead drops into the crevice of my neck. I feel his soft lips brush my shoulder. His voice drifts through me. “You’re so tight...”
I love the rasp of it. The need.
“I like this,” I say. It’s all I can think of, and I mean it.
I nudge my chin into his hair. My heart beats ha
rd. I whisper, “You’re so big.”
He punches deeper and my eyes roll back.
He draws out slowly.
Shoves back in.
“I would call you a slut. A little cock whore.” He withdraws his hard length as his eyes hold mine. “But I don’t think you are.” He thrusts his head slowly back in, stretching my entrance. “You’re not a whore, Cleo. You’re playing slut—for me.” His words flare like a match inside my chest.
He shoves his cock deeper inside me, rolls his hips. The base of his cock teases my clit.
I feel his hand against my throat. “Is it because I’m pretty?” he rasps.
I peek at him through my lashes, finding his face tight. He thrusts harder, deeper, and I come up off the bed.
His fingers press against my chin, lifting my head up. His eyes hold mine: searching.
Hard thrust in, then slow draw out... hard thrust in. I jerk around him, stretched so tight I can’t help moaning.
“Master,” I try, aiming to please.
He squeezes my hip. “This body is mine. No one else’s. I’m gonna fuck you hard and use you up and treat you like my whore—and afterward, you’re gonna tell me why you want me so much you’ve got tears coming out of your eyes.”
He flexes his shoulders and finds a harder, deeper rhythm.
“What do you like about me?” His teeth nip my cheek. “Is it the money?” he purrs, his words punctuated by the hard thrusts of his cock. “Are you greedy, Cleo?”
I gasp, “Yes.”
He kisses my lips tenderly, then sucks my neck so hard I moan. “Is it my body? My cock?”
“Your cock.”
It’s stretching me so wide, I’m gasping.
“It’s because I make you come so hard. I can feel you squirt around me. I’m going to have to change the sheets.”
My clit is throbbing. He shifts his weight, forcing himself deeper, so I feel...so full.
“Keep your eyes shut, Cleo. You’re going to take what I give you. Keep on crying out. I like your little noises. I like shocking you.”
His hands slide off my shoulders, and he punches in with so much force, I jerk against my binds.
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