by Riley Ashby
“You seem nervous.”
“I am.” I licked his nipple. Another groan. “Make me feel something else.”
His fingers were gentle, not pushing too hard, as he reached between my legs to spread the lips of my pussy. I whimpered as his fingers touched my clit.
“You’ve never come?”
“Not with another person.”
He used his free hand to drag my face up to his, kissing me deeply as his fingers pressed harder against me. His thumb moved against me, pressing the sensitive nub with increasing force until I couldn’t kiss him anymore.
“Oh,” I moaned, my back arching as he pressed me just right.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…” I didn’t know another person’s hands could feel this good on me. I had no idea it could be soft.
“I’m gonna enter you, okay?”
“Oh God, please do.”
His chuckle rumbled my chest. I tensed as a finger slid inside me, then moaned in ecstasy as he curled against that secret spot deep within. His thumb continued moving as we thrust against each other, lost in the connection between us.
The fear I had at being close to him was rapidly fading as the pleasure between my legs was growing. How could I have doubted that he would take care of me when I needed it most?
“More,” I begged, and he twinged harder. “Not that,” I said. I reached out and cupped his length. I couldn’t even cover him with my hand. “This.”
He thrust into my palm. “I don’t think…”
“I do.”
He sat up, pulling me with him, dragging my legs across his hips.
“Can I see more of you?”
I hesitated. It didn’t seem like much, so I lifted my arms over my head.
He pulled my shirt off in one motion, flipping me onto my back with the next.
“This is how I dreamed of you,” he said. I bit his lower lip. He kissed my neck as his hands moved up my back to unclasp my bra; my fingers pulled at his belt.
When I opened my eyes again, I was somewhere else. I saw a gray ceiling, not my wood beams. It was familiar but not like home. Not one I ever wanted to see again.
When I looked at the man on top of me, the man pawing at my body, he wasn’t the same one who had touched me so tenderly.
It was Chase.
And he wanted to hurt me.
My heart started racing for an entirely different reason. But why was it racing before? I couldn’t remember. All I knew was I was back there now, somehow. My fingers fell into his hair, trying to push him away. It wasn’t Castel. This wasn’t the right person. I didn’t want him here, not on top of me, not trying to hurt me. Not anymore. Why was he here? I thought I was safe.
They told me I was safe.
“Please don’t,” I whispered, but he ignored me as he tested the knots at my wrist. When he was sure that I couldn’t escape, he moved to my ankles. Then my legs, and the rope drawn across the tops of my thighs. A length beneath my breasts, and on top, so I couldn’t move my chest. The final cable went around my waist twice, ensuring I couldn’t so much as wiggle back and forth.
“You look so beautiful like this,” he murmured, grabbing my breasts with rough hands. He squeezed past the point of what would have been pleasurable, bringing tears to my eyes. He removed his hands, but the pain didn’t go away; I looked down to see shiny metal clamps pinching my nipples.
“That hurts,” I begged. “Please, take them off. I won’t fight you.”
He laughed a low, dark sound. “Now why would I believe that? You’ve been a very bad girl so far.” He shoved his hand between my legs, fondling me, finding only dry skin. “That’s all right by me since it means I get to play with you, but my colleague is not so satisfied.” He pushed on my clit. I felt a sensation, the knowledge that someone was pressing down on millions of nerves, but no pleasure. My fear overrode any positive response.
“I wouldn’t do that to you.” Maybe flattery was the answer. He wanted the girlfriend experience too? I could do that.
“I know you won’t.” His tongue flicked out to lick my lips as his hands traveled back to my breasts. The added pressure accelerated the pain and brought tears to my eyes. “We have a very special set of rules for you now, my dear. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still have some fun.”
Someone was touching my breasts.
I couldn’t breathe.
I had told myself I wouldn’t fight anymore. It was too hard. But at this moment, sitting back and taking it wasn’t an option. I had to stand up for myself. I had gotten free once, so I could do it again. Daring myself, knowing the pain it would bring me later if I couldn’t escape, I raised my hand and slapped him hard across the face.
He reared back from me, hand on his face.
“Vail? What happened?”
The voice was wrong. It sounded safe, but I knew better.
“Get away,” I growled, pushing at his chest, thrashing my legs to kick him away. “I told you. I don’t want you.”
He didn’t let me go. Of course, he wouldn’t. He held my arms, shaking me.
“Vail, snap out of it. It’s me. You’re safe.”
“Get off me, Chase! Do you think I won’t kill you?” I heard my voice echo in the room as he tried to wrap me up, push his skin against mine, and every part of me burned like acid. I screamed and writhed until he let me go, throwing me away, backing out of the room with hands raised.
Chase had never let me go before. I blinked, seeing the photographs on the walls that I had picked out when I had decorated up the room. The bedspread under my fingertips was soft, not the bare mattress I was used to. And the man by the door…
Castel backed out, trying not to trip over his pants. “I’m leaving,” he said, panting, and the pain in his eyes was so much that it further broke the tiny shards of glass that my heart had already collapsed into.
“Good,” I said.
He turned and ran.
There it was. It was now out in the open, exactly how broken I was. It was impossible to hide, impossible to overcome, no matter how much “recovery” I engaged in.
There would be no coming back from this for us.
We were done.
A charm hung on a thin chain around her neck, and when I kissed her neck, I could feel it against my lips. I opened my mouth to suck on her skin, feeling the rough chain against my tongue. I ran along the length of it, moving from the front of her throat to the side. She tasted just as I had imagined, jasmine and chai. It was like she was made to taste just for me.
Her spine arched, pressing her body against mine as my hands roamed up her back. When I found the clasp of her bra, I hesitated a second, meaning to ask for permission. I thought she had said it was okay. Later, I wondered if I waited long enough and gave her the right amount of time to tell me yes or no. I wondered if deep down I was as bad as he was, unable to put a halt to the beast beneath my belt for the one moment it would have taken for me to be absolutely sure.
“Castel,” she whispered as I undid the bra, shoved the straps down her shoulders, and threw it to the side. She was pulling on my hair. Was it because she wanted me to stop? Maybe she was pulling my mouth back up to hers, away from her breasts. But I didn’t care. I was so consumed by the need to see her. Finally, after years of fantasies and surreptitious glances, I was going to see what she looked like beneath her clothes. I was so focused on myself that I didn’t even listen to her.
I brushed my lips over her skin first; the smoothness I had expected and was dying to run my hands over. I kissed the space between her breasts and ground my hips against hers. I was so hard I could feel the zipper of my jeans pressing into my cock through my boxers.
“You’re so gorgeous,” I whispered, kissing that chain around her neck once more. “I’ve dreamed about you like this. And now I have you.”
I wanted to pull back to look at her, but I was afraid to lose her touch. Afraid that if I broke the contact between us, something would be lost. I gripped one breast i
n my hand and closed my mouth around her. Flicking my tongue across the hard nipple made my cock bulge, and I reached for her hand. I wanted her to touch me. I wanted her to know how much she was making me crazy.
But her hand wouldn’t move, or at least not the way I wanted it to. It was a fist, and hitting me, and as I pulled back, I realized she was saying someone’s name, and it wasn’t mine. She didn’t even know I was here.
And even then, I fucked up. I should have let her go. I should have run for help right away. But I tried to pull her to me, hold her still, and remind her where she was. It worked with her nightmares, so I thought it would work now too.
But what was happening now was so much worse than her nightmares. She was fully awake and coherent, except for the fact that she was calling me his name. And she was screaming and hitting me, and nothing I was saying to her was bringing her out of it.
So I did the one thing I had sworn I would never do again. I left her. I left her crying and screaming on the floor of her bedroom and sought out someone else who could help her. Because I couldn’t. I probably never could again.
*
I sprinted barefoot across the yard with barely the frame of mind to do up my belt. I was still shirtless, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care if Ellery saw me and knew what had happened. I had to get someone.
“Tori!” I bellowed, bursting into the house. For a second, my voice echoed through an empty room, and I feared the house to be vacant. They had left, they had gone to a movie and hadn’t told us, all the staff was gone, everyone had died, and Vail would be stuck on earth with me for the rest of her life, and she would never want to look at me again. But Sophie ran into the foyer a minute later with her hand on her belly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, taking in my state. She pursed her lips as Tori and Ellery flew into the room a minute later.
“What the hell?” Ellery asked, but Tori only paused for a moment before she took off out the door. She knew what to do. Thank God, because I was apparently the biggest fucking schmuck on the planet.
“Should I go too?” Sophie asked, but Ellery stepped in front of her.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off me. “Tell me what’s going on.” His voice was hard. I’d heard it before, in a dorm room almost a decade ago, when he thought I’d tried to make a move on his underage sister. What was he going to say now that I actually had hurt her?
It was wrong of me to push her. Asking her to be with me so soon after her trauma was selfish. All this time, I thought I was helping her, but in reality, I had just driven her deeper into the dark. If I stuck around, I would only make things worse.
I had to leave.
I ran through the next steps in my head. After packing a bag in ten minutes, I could be on a plane in under two hours. Even take my car if I had to, at least to get me out of the state and put as much distance between us as I could manage. I had to make sure to take everything I wanted with me. I doubted anything I touched would go unpurged.
“I have to go.” I pushed past them, running up the stairs and down the hallway to my room. Not your room. The room I had stayed in while I was here, that I would never sleep in again now that I was unwelcome.
“Go to our bedroom and stay there,” Ellery said to Sophie, and then his footsteps sounded on the hardwood floors behind me. I started throwing clothes haphazardly into a bag, not bothering to remove hangers.
“What are you doing? Stop packing. You need to tell me what happened.”
“I’m sure Tori will fill you in. I don’t want to be here when it happens.”
“Did you hurt my sister?”
My blood froze in to ice. My movements turned jerky. I fumbled with the shirt I had grabbed, sticking my head through one of the arms before straightening it.
“I have to go.”
“I’m not an idiot, Castel.” I stopped in place, staring into my half-packed bag. A tiny suitcase that only carried a few changes of clothes and toiletries. Everything else, I had bought while I was here. Always on the move. Always ready to go where I was assigned. And when I wanted to settle down, it was at the worst possible time.
What would things have been like if I’d taken her with me all those years ago? Convinced her to attend a nursing program on the East Coast and asked her out without Ellery looking over our shoulders all the time. We could have had a normal courtship. We’d be married by now, sharing a home, and none of this ever would have happened. She never would have looked at me like that. She never would have said those things. I never would have had to feel this way.
The enormity of it all hit me like a ton of bricks. I fell back against the bed and sank to the ground with my head in my hands. God, I had fucked this up so bad. And now it was all ruined. I asked her to give me a piece of her that had been stolen by someone vicious and vile, and it broke her. It broke us.
I never should have pushed her. She built up those walls for a reason. Instead of knocking and entering only when invited, I had completely destroyed all her defenses.
The air shifted as Ellery sank down next to me. There was a rustle of fabric, and I opened my eyes as he tossed his suit jacket on the carpet. He kicked his shoes off next, sending them sailing across the room. He opened his shirt at the collar and closed his eyes.
“You pushed her too fast.”
“No! Or I didn’t … we didn’t … it was an accident. One moment, everything was fine, and the next, she was hitting me, she was screaming, and she told me to get out. I just ran. I tried to hold her, but she was wild. Completely unrestrained.”
He groaned and rubbed his face. “I suppose I would prefer that to her shutting down and letting it happen.”
“God.” I couldn’t even imagine. Would I have even noticed if she had gone silent, slack, and let me do things to her while she locked her mind down like a fortress in order to escape what was happening?
Of course, you would. You’re not that kind of person.
Wasn’t I?
I jumped as Ellery’s hand fell on my shoulder. “I’m pissed at you, Castel, and I don’t want you to forget that. But this isn’t your fault.”
I groaned deeply, but I was happy for his anger. I deserved it. “Of course it is. Who else’s fault could it be?”
“Chase’s.”
My fear and shame turned suddenly to rage. “Don’t say his name. Not here, not now. I can’t take it.”
We were quiet for a long time. Standing, he grabbed my bag and put my clothes back in my dresser. Hung my jacket in the closet once more. Put my toothbrush back in the bathroom.
“Go to sleep,” he said, picking up his shoes and jacket off the floor. “I’ll talk to her. We’ll all talk to her. And then you’ll talk to her.” He reached out a hand, and I took it after some hesitation. I still didn’t look at him, but I got to my feet, swaying slightly on the carpet. I was suddenly so tired, but I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. “Something like this was bound to happen. If not now, then next month. Or two years from now. It might happen again. But the two of you have to work it out.”
I shook my head, unable to look at him. My eyes felt hot and wet. “I can’t stand her looking at me like that again.”
“Do you love her?”
I put my hands over my face. He grabbed my wrists and pulled them away, forcing me to look at him. He looked so incredibly sad. I had never seen him sad before. Angry, nervous, scared to death, yes, but not sad.
“She needs you to do this for her. She needs to know she’s not going to scare you away. How is she going to live a normal life if she thinks she can’t have the kind of romantic relationship she’s always wanted? If you run away from her now, you won’t be helping her. You’ll be setting her back even more than you did tonight.”
I shook my head again. “No. I can’t take it, Ellery. If she looks at me like that again, I will lose my mind. It would drive me over the edge.”
He sighed. “Then you never should have co
me back in the first place.”
I looked at him. “What did you say?”
He shrugged. “I mean it. You shouldn’t have come back if you were just going to run out on her the moment things got tough.”
I wanted to hit him. “What the fuck are you talking about? I held her hand through so much. I kept the cottage ready for her so she’d have a place to stay when she came back. I’ve dedicated the past four months to finding her and making sure he stays behind bars so he can never hurt her or anyone else ever again. I’ve done more than anyone, including you.”
His jaw clenched at that. I saw him weighing how hard to hit back and whether to kick me when I was down. What could he say to make me stay and not run out the door with only the clothes on my back? Or maybe he wanted to send me out, send me running, to keep me away from his family for the rest of my life so that I couldn’t play with his sister’s heart ever again.
I wanted him to hit me. I wanted him to beat me to a pulp and leave my bloodstains on the carpet so that everyone who stepped in this room would know what a piece of shit I had been. Or maybe they would close it up, throw away the key, and pretend I had never existed at all. Erase me from existence.
It was what I deserved.
“She called out for you at night. When Tori would wake her up, she said there was always a moment when she would look around for you before she remembered you were gone. And then you came back, and you helped her through the dark. You got her past that block. She was drowning, and you threw her the rope when she wouldn’t accept help from anyone else. She wouldn’t let Tori sleep in bed with her, but she lets you, doesn’t she?”
I started. How did he know that?
“If you take that back from her now, you’re damning her to a lifetime of grief. She won’t recover. And if you can’t stick by her through this, then you don’t deserve her, and I was right to threaten you all those years ago.”
I stood silent, humbled, as a shame of a different kind returned tenfold and filled up my throat so I couldn’t breathe. He knew everything. I didn’t know how, but he did. We hadn’t been sneaking around at all. I had lied to my best friend for no reason.