A Kiss For You

by Rachel Van Dyken

  “No,” he countered. “I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did,” I argued. “I heard you tell Preppy you killed her. Why would you deny it?”

  “Think about it. Did you actually hear me say that I killed her?”

  He was right. I didn’t hear him say the actual words.

  “I only said she was dead. I’m sorry, Pup, but she is. I found her with a needle in her arm in a shitty motel a town over.”

  King wiped a wayward tear from under my eye with the pad of his thumb.

  “She shot you. Does she really deserve that tear?” He surprised me by sucking it off his thumb.

  “She didn’t shoot me,” I defended. “She was trying to escape. She shot me by accident. She was aiming at you. She was desperate. We both were. Desperate people do desperate things.”

  It was then I realized that I missed her. As fucked up as our relationship was, she was all I had.

  And now she was gone.

  “Pup, on purpose or not, the bitch shot you. To be honest, if I’d found her alive and she drew that gun again, she’d be dead now anyway.”

  “My life seems to be a bunch of questions piled on top of a bunch of questions, and frankly, I’m ready to add some fucking answers into the mix before my brain explodes and leaks out of my ears.”

  “How…graphic of you.”

  “I’m serious. Why did you look for me? Why did you even bother bringing me back here?”

  “When I let you go, it was a momentary lapse in judgment. The reason why I let you go doesn’t matter. The fact is that your friend is dead, and you still owe me. You’re my property, and you will be mine until I decide otherwise.”

  He ran the washcloth down my legs and brushed over the wound on my foot. I cried out, and he scowled. “You’re pretty banged up.”

  “I guess that’s what happens when you’re left in the woods to rot and then walk miles barefoot in the blazing sun,” I spat. I expected him to argue with me, fight with me, but he surprised me.

  “I’m sorry about that. As I said, momentary lapse in judgment.”

  “Did you just apologize to me?”

  “No, I said I was sorry about having a momentary lapse in judgment. I didn’t say I was sorry to you.”

  “How exactly am I supposed to pay you?” I asked hesitantly. “We’ve been through this. I don’t have anything to give you,” I sighed. “I don’t have anything at all.”

  “In whatever way I want, Pup.”

  “What if I don’t want to be yours?”

  King didn’t hesitate. “Then, I’ll let Preppy have his way with you. He may seem nice, but you’ll learn that kid is a sick fuck who will smash your back door in without warning. He likes it when they scream. He likes it when they’re passed out. He likes it even better when they say no. Or maybe, I’ll loan you out to Bear’s crew. I hear Harris and Mono have a fetish for knife play.”

  There was no humor in his voice.

  “But if you cooperate, you’ll be mine and mine alone. You’ll be under my protection. When I’m tired of you and I feel your debt has been paid, you will be free to go.”

  “Protection,” I repeated. The very thing I’d been looking for. “What happens if you don’t get tired of me?”

  King chuckled. “Oh, it will happen. Always does. But until then, you’ll do what I say. You’ll live in my house.” His eyes narrowed to the space between my legs. “You’ll sleep in my bed.”

  “You’re going to rape me?” My heart hammered in my chest. “Because it’s one thing to sell myself. It’s another thing entirely to have the decision taken from me. If that’s your plan, you can just shove my head under the water and get this over with now.”

  “You may be weak in body, but it doesn’t seem that mouth of yours got the message.” Adrenaline sprung to life inside me, coursing through my veins, readying my body for another fight for my life.

  I stood up, splashing more water onto the tile floor, my nakedness on full display. I didn’t bother to cover myself.

  King surprised me by standing up and stepping into the tub, soaking his jeans up to his shins. I held my clenched fists out in front of me like I was going to box him. He laughed and wrapped both arms around my waist, hauling me into his colorful, bare chest.

  “You’ll find out that I’m a lot of things, but I’m no fucking rapist. Before I fuck you—and I will fuck you, Pup—you’ll be begging me for it,” he whispered against my neck.

  I clenched my thighs together to try and ease the ache he created there. The adrenaline surge I was ready to use for combat changed into something else entirely. I was still ready for him. Only in a completely different way.

  Traitorous body.

  “But first, you need to heal. Your feet are all sliced up and your ear is bleeding again.” King stepped from the tub and lifted me out with him, setting me onto the cold tile my teeth started to chatter. He opened the cabinet under the sink and wrapped me in a soft towel large enough to double as a blanket. “And there are a few other things I need you to tell me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Preppy told me what you’d told him, what happened to you. But how is it that someone like you is missing in the world?”

  “Someone like me?”

  “There has got to be someone out there who misses these beautiful eyes.” He locked his fingers into my wet hair and tilted my head back.

  “I tried to find someone who knows me,” I said with my teeth still clacking together. King dried me with the towel, treading carefully over my injuries. “The police tried, too, but there was no missing person’s report that matched my description. My fingerprints aren’t on file anywhere. No paper-trail.”

  King unbuttoned his jeans and stripped them off, hanging the wet fabric off of the shower rod to dry. All that was left of his clothes were his black boxer briefs, his enormous erection straining against the stretchy fabric. He noticed me looking and made no move to make an excuse for his arousal. He didn’t make any move to cover himself. He smiled out of the corner of his mouth, took a few steps toward me. He lifted me up into his arms as if he were cradling a baby and carried me out into his bedroom where he set me on the bed.

  The cuffs from the night before still hung from the headboard.

  “So that’s it? I’m your prisoner? You’re just going to keep me cuffed to the bed?”

  King shook his head. “No, Pup. You’re not my prisoner. I don’t think we need these anymore.” He gestured to the cuffs. His well-built, highly-tattooed, muscular physique gleamed under the light of the moon shining through the window. My mouth went dry, and I again had to press my thighs together to quell the building ache that was starting to overshadow my other injuries.

  He may have been the devil, but his body was sculpted like a god.

  I scrambled to form my question. “Then, what am I?” I whispered. My exhaustion beginning to take hold.

  “I told you before.” King leaned in close stripped the towel away, letting his gaze linger on my body before covering me with the bed sheets. With one knee on the mattress, King leaned over and sucked my bottom lip into his mouth. A tingling sensation started in my belly. He released my lip with a pop. “You’re not my prisoner. You’re mine.”

  King

  Against my better judgment, I’d brought her back to my house. I fed her. I bathed her. I put her to bed, and she didn’t bother to fight me off when I climbed in beside her and held her close while she cried herself to sleep. She was here against her will and I was one fucked up motherfucker.

  Because I’d never been happier.

  It was the kiss that fucked everything up. I hadn’t meant to kiss her in the woods, but I couldn’t ignore the overwhelming urge to take her mouth. At first, I thought it was just a sick part of me that needed to kiss a girl who was struggling underneath me. But then, she opened her mouth to me, and all the sense I’d ever had was lost in that kiss.

  Her taste, her tongue, the pull I’d felt toward her when she was first in my bed h
ad exploded into something I couldn’t reign in. I lost myself in her for a good minute before I came to my senses. Stopping was the hardest thing I’d ever done even though the idea of taking my revenge out on her body made every part of me turn rock hard.

  I wasn’t going to go after her. But the entire night I lay awake and stared at the ceiling fan. I didn’t even fucking know the girl and I was worried about her. What was she doing? Did she make it out of the woods? Then, I spent hours hoping she went in the right direction, because if she went toward Coral Pines, she wouldn’t find any sort of civilization for over ten miles.

  I wrestled with the idea of going after her all day. Then, Preppy had filled me in on what she’d told him about not having a memory.

  So I did something. Something that made the decision to go after her an easy one. A decision that would forever change the lives of everyone around me.

  Some for the good.

  Some for the bad.

  Some for the dead.

  I found out who Doe really was.

  Doe

  Although my eyes are open, there is a darkness surrounding me that is about to open the flood gates of my panic. A pair of heavily-lidded chestnut brown eyes loom over me and remind me I’m not alone, and my fear is momentarily suppressed. The look of raw desire reflected in his gaze sends a flush of wetness between my legs. The heat of his naked chest radiates against mine, and I am lost in sensations of skin against skin.

  Slowly, he drags his fingers up my thigh, touching every part of my body except the one place burning for his touch, aching and pulsing with a need I’d never known. His touch is soft but nervous, like he doesn’t know where to place his hands next. I shift in an effort to send him where I crave his touch the most.

  “Ssshhhh,” a deep voice whispers into my neck, causing the hair on my arms to stand on end and my stomach to flip flop with anticipation. “Is this where you need me to touch you?”

  His hand comes to rest on my breast, rolling my already sensitive nipple between his fingers. I arch my back and groan from deep within my throat.

  “No,” I say. It comes out as barely a breath. I need him lower. Much lower.

  He releases my nipple and a soft hand cups my breast and squeezes lightly. “Is this where you need me?” the voice asks, teasing me with his words as well as his touch.

  “No,” I moan again, the agonizing torture of waiting for him to make contact is too much to bear.

  I kick out my legs impatiently.

  “Ssssshhhhh. Behave, and you’ll get what you want,” the voice whispers, trailing his tongue down the side of my neck at the same time working his hands between my legs. Slowly, two fingers brush over my clit, lingering there without any movement. An almost touch.

  His body stills.

  I writhe beneath him, seeking the release he is denying me. “Please,” I beg.

  No answer.

  “Please,” I say again.

  Still no answer.

  I look up into the eyes that held the promise of pleasure just a moment before, but they are slowly fading away. I reach for him, but I grasp only the night air. Even though I can still feel the places where he touched me as if he’d burned my skin, I can no longer feel him on me.

  Then, he is gone altogether, and I am left alone in the dark.

  Before I can panic, what I’d felt on top of me is now behind me, but the feeling isn’t quite the same. The person isn’t the same. This body is warmer, harder, and much, much larger. The hand rubbing my thigh isn’t soft and gentle; it’s rough and callused. The erection prodding against my lower back is thick and long, rubbing against the slit in my ass, into my wet folds and back again.

  “Please,” I beg. Release. There must be some sort of release at the end of all this. I craved it, needed it, and I knew he could give it to me.

  These new fingers don’t linger, and I almost fall apart when they find the wetness between my legs, spreading it over my clit until I am writhing against the thickness behind me, begging for it with my body, needing to be filled with it until the pure pleasure of it all splits me in two.

  Two fingers penetrated me.

  My eyes flew open. It was then that I realized I was no longer dreaming. I lay on my side, facing the wall. In a bed.

  In King’s bed.

  WITH KING.

  It was his fingers filling me, stretching me. He curled them inside me, and they brushed against a spot that caused me to buck up against him and arch my back. I gasped and tried to tear away when King tucked me under his forearm, wrapping it tightly across my chest, holding me against him.

  “I’ve got you, Pup,” he growled, his breath teasing a spot behind my ear, sending shivers down my spine.

  I knew I should argue, or at the very least push him away, but I couldn’t think. Right or wrong and good or bad escaped me because his fingers started pumping while the pad of his thumb circled my clit, faster and faster until I was panting into the pillow, throwing myself back against his hard body, chasing the release that I craved more than my next breath.

  “I’ve got you,” King said again. His voice was strained and thick. I lost myself in a fog of sensation.

  “What are you—” I started to ask, but I couldn’t form the words because my body clamped down on King’s fingers, causing me to gasp.

  “I’m going to make you come, Pup. I’m going to make you come real hard,” he promised. When it felt like I was reaching the edge, King held me tighter and pressed down on my clit. I hung on, afraid to fall from the heights he’d brought me to.

  “It’s okay, baby. I want to make you feel good. Don’t be afraid to come for me.”

  With one final stroke of his fingers, I saw stars. Then, I plummeted, crashing down in the most amazing free-fall I never knew existed, off of a place that I never wanted to leave. Screaming into the pillow, fisting it into my hands, my orgasm tore through me from my chest to my toes and back again. My core continued to pulse around King’s fingers as I fluttered back down to earth.

  “You’re gonna fucking kill me, Pup,” King groaned. He removed his fingers and then sucked them into his mouth. “Ahhhh fuck.”

  What the hell had just happened?

  King sat up against the headboard. As much as I wanted to move, I was frozen to the mattress. “Something you need to know right now. Next time you’re having dreams that make you moan and touch yourself in my bed, I’m not going to be responsible for what happens. That’s on you. Because next time, I’m not going to be a nice guy and use my fingers to solve your little problem.”

  “Who said I needed you to solve anything? I don’t remember asking for your help,” I snapped. Blood rushed to my cheeks, burning me with embarrassment.

  “Shit, anyone within ten miles knew what you wanted, but next time, you’re going to wake up with something much larger than my fingers inside that pussy of yours. And when that happens, you’re going to come so fucking hard you’ll think what you had tonight was nothing more than a fucking hiccup. And I’ll remind you that this is my bed. This is where I sleep, and now it’s where you sleep. So, tread carefully.”

  “I…”

  “And I don’t need you dreaming about some guy while you’re sleeping next to me in MY FUCKING BED.” The sudden anger lacing his voice confused me.

  And pissed me off.

  “One, I don’t see why, what or who I dream about is ANY of your fucking business, and secondly—” I held up two fingers. “I don’t want to sleep in bed with you. It’s you who carried me here. And three, how do you know it WASN’T you I was dreaming about?” I’d hoped to take some of the embarrassment off of me, but with every word I spoke, it built and built until I felt everything from my eyelids to my ear lobes burning red hot.

  “You weren’t dreaming about me,” he said confidently, crossing his arms. Suddenly, I was aware of something.

  “Did I call out someone’s name? Whose name?”

  “No, Pup. You didn’t call out anyone’s name. Although I can’t w
ait until I’m making you call out mine.”

  “You weren’t in my head so there is NO WAY you could know who or what I was dreaming about,” I argued, my voice getting louder with each sentence. Disappointed that I’d gotten my hopes up over a name. Angry with myself for enjoying the mind-blowing orgasm he’d given me.

  “Pup, do you want to know how it is I knew you weren’t dreaming about me when you were about to come in your sleep?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  The anger faded from his eyes for a brief moment. He fixed a cocky smile on his perfect lips and rolled over on top of me, forcing me to lie back against the pillows as he caged me in. He lowered his face to mine, his breath cool against my heated skin.

  “Cause, baby, if it were me you were dreaming about, you’d been screaming a fuck of a lot louder than that,” King growled.

  “You cocky son of a fucking bitch!” I shouted, but he’d already leapt off the bed and left the room. My shouts reaching no one but the already closed door.

  As much as my body responded to him, as great as I knew he could make me feel—and I had no doubt he could fulfill every promise he made about making me come—I had to stay away from him and keep my renewed promise to her.

  Which was going to be very hard, since I was going to be sleeping in his bed.

  The dream I was having before King interrupted me was too real, too vivid. I had an underlying sense that it was more than just a dream. Maybe, if I was lucky, it was a glimpse into my past.

  The chestnut brown eyes just might be the key to unlocking the truth about who I really was and what had happened to me.

  I went back to sleep that night dreaming that the boy with the chestnut colored eyes came and rescued me, taking me back to a life filled with family and friends, and everything that had happened in the past few days was nothing more than a quickly forgotten nightmare. I dreamed there were really people out there who were sick with worry, who wouldn’t rest until they found me.

  I ran this scenario through my mind over and over again until I almost believed it.