Brutal Game (2 page)

She flinched at the word, a chill snaking through her. “D-don’t. Please, don’t.”

“You feel that?” He began to push, his cock a relentless intrusion, spreading her open.

Her eyes shut and her nails bit into his shoulders.

“Yeah.” He pushed deeper, deeper, in harsh thrusts until their hips met. “Don’t tell me you don’t want this. I feel how fuckin’ wet you are.”

“I don’t. Please, don’t do this.”

He gave her his length, slow and mean. “I know you never had a cock half this big, bitch, have you? Tell me.”

“Stop, pl—”

“TELL ME,”
he bellowed, as loud as he dared without risking a neighbor pounding on the wall or calling the cops.

“Never,” she stammered. “I’ve never had anyone…” She trailed off.

“Had anyone what?”

“Big as you.” Her voice was a trembling little mouse-squeak of a thing.

“Yeah, that’s right.” He owned her in rough strokes, making every inch a punishment. “Take that cock. Just like you been wanting.”

She shut her eyes, turned her face away.

“Watch me fuck.
Watch me
.”

She opened her eyes to slits.

“Yeah, look at me.” He made his motions long and filthy, hypnotizing. “Look at me, bitch.”

All at once, Laurel craved her name like water in the desert. She often hit this wall when they indulged his kink, the work of arousal and impatience, not discomfort. She didn’t want to be some stranger, some anonymous “sweetheart,” some “bitch”. She wanted her own name in that gruff accent, wanted it to slip free as control eluded him, same as she wanted to see helplessness glazing those eyes.

She could end the charade now, murmur “Flynn” in a telltale voice and turn this from fantasy to plain old fucking in a breath. But no. It was magic—ugly, dark, scary magic—the way this game affected him. She may be playing a powerless woman, but what she could give this man… She could turn him inside-out with a few whispered pleas. He might be on top, but she held his pleasure in her hands, as truly as she could feel his flesh under her fingernails.

His body punished hers, voice lost to grunts and moans. Her breaths had no choice but to sync with his as each thrust huffed the air from her lungs. She was dying to touch herself, praying for a shift in the angle that might rub him against her, give her relief, when—

“Turn over.” He didn’t give her a chance to obey. The second his weight lifted, he had her by the shoulder and arm, forcing her onto her hands and knees.

Touch me. For the love of God, touch me.

“Fuck, yeah.” He held her hips and drove deep, savored for the barest moment before the brutality resumed. “You get exactly what you were after, bitch?”

“Please.” Barely a whisper now.

“You feel good, girl. Don’t tell me you don’t love it.”

She did love it, in a way. If she thought too hard about it all, things grew murky. She got caught on questions, like, what did it mean that this was the thing that turned him on like nothing else?

It means jack,
she could imagine him saying.
It means the random thing my sexuality got snagged on is creepy as shit. Period.

It didn’t mean he wanted to hurt a woman, not any more than a woman who enjoyed such games really wanted to be forced. It was the taboo, the wrongness of wanting it that made it hot. Or for Laurel, it was Flynn. It was the balance of a man strong enough to hurt her for real also being the one she trusted above all others. And it was having the power to grant his darkest, dirtiest wishes, and to see and hear and feel what it did to him.

Behind her, the beast was loose and wild. His palms were slick on her hips, his cock hard in that way that only this game could make it. She longed to see his face, but more than that, she longed for selfish things. And finally, he gave her what she wanted.

He pulled out and his hands were urging her forward. “Up, on your knees. Hold the shelf.” When she hesitated he barked,
“Now.”

She knew what he was after. It was something they often did when they weren’t role-playing. She cast him a faux-fearful glance over her shoulder then moved, kneeling upright at the head of the bed, holding on to the edge of a shelf. He entered her roughly with a grunt that made her legs tremble. Her hair was twisted up and pushed to one side, his mouth claiming the bared side of her throat.

And finally, it came—his touch. One hand slipped around to palm her breast, the other moving between her legs, finding her clit.

“Yeah.” He said it so softly, it wasn’t part of the game. There was wonder in his voice, the tone that overtook him sometimes when he found her wet, or found her clit as stiff as it was now. It excited her nearly as much as the rough fingertips circling her and the thick cock gliding in and out, in and out.

For Laurel, the narrative fell away. He could imagine whatever sinful things he liked, but she didn’t need anything more than exactly what this was—a powerful man using her and serving her at once. No lover had ever understood her body the way this one did. His fingers knew the exact speed, the precise pressure, his touch masterful even as his body pounded into hers, harsh and frantic. Always contradictions, with Flynn. Selfish and catering. Cruelty underpinned by blind trust. A no-nonsense, frequently tactless man, but under the surface possessing so much tenderness and loyalty and intuition.

She was losing it, falling to pieces. Her hands shook on the shelf, sweaty and crampy and weak from the pleasure coursing through her body. Her legs were water, sex molten. Her breathing came in long, low groans, sounding pained and crazed and intoxicated. She hoped maybe it was standing in for some facsimile of fear for Flynn, but honestly, she was beyond caring. All she wanted was more, more of this, until she broke apart completely.

His mouth was at her neck, just behind her ear, his breath as hot as steam. “You love that cock, girl?”

She could only gasp and pant.

“I think you do. I think you’re gonna come on that cock, aren’t you?”

“Please.” Her last stab at feigned resistance, though that plea was genuine.
Make me come. Please, please, please.

“I know what you need,” he told her. “I’m gonna make you come harder than any man ever has.”

She was dying to say his name. It echoed in her head, through her body, pulsing in every cell. It was that syllable as much as his rushing cock or taunting fingertips that pushed her over the edge.

She came hard, knuckles chalk-white where she clung to the shelf, body bucking into his, seeking and trying to escape his touch at the same time, all of it too much, never enough. Her cry was deep and animal, telling him every filthy thing she had no words for.

Behind her, that perennial chant: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” punctuating every twitch, every spasm, until she was nothing but a sweaty, trembling mess.

From Flynn, a massive groan, then, “On your back.”

She obeyed, flopping gracelessly across the bed, feet on the pillow. She welcomed the heat and weight and desperation of him. Their game felt done and she held him, tugged at those same arms she’d pretended to push away not long ago.

“Fuck, honey.”

She smiled to herself, slid her palms low and rode the motions of his hammering hips. “You look so fucking good.”

He smiled, the gesture all but lost to the agony of his pleasure. “You’re one to talk.”

“You gonna come for me?”

“So goddamn hard.”

“Show me, then.”

She let her hands and gaze wander his body, stroking his back and arms, feasting on the spectacle of his surging cock.

“Yeah, watch me.” His voice gave him away, and his half-shut eyes, the pace of his thrusts.

“Come on, Flynn.”

“Yeah. Say it.”

“Flynn. Show me.”

“You want my come?”

“Always.”

“Where? Your cunt?”

She shivered at that word. “Please.”

“I like that. Beg for it.”

“Give it to me, please. Deep.”

His back arched and his words devolved to grunts and moans and the odd, “Yeah.” He was lost, helpless, and Laurel lived for these moments.

“Come on. Please.”

He sounded more animal than man, riding on the brink of madness, then all at once, he froze. He rammed so deep, Laurel winced through a cramp. Every muscle in that astounding body clenched, softened, clenched again, and ultimately went still.

She wrapped her arms around him, memorized his weight, the smell of his skin. Never let this moment cease to floor and humble her. Never let this man fail to amaze, and never let her fail to excite him. Never let familiarity curdle to boredom, she prayed.

Let this feel so easy and so wrong and so right, always.

F
lynn rolled over
, drunker than drunk. Drunker than he’d been for real in the better half of a decade. “Fuck, honey.”

Laurel chuckled and he could see the round shape of her cheek where the lamplight hit it. It made him smile in return.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You,” he proclaimed grandly, “can ask me any goddamn thing you want, as long as it doesn’t require me to leave this bed.”

She turned to face him, rubbing his chin with her thumb and seeming to address the spot. “I feel like more and more, when we’re doing the kinky stuff, by the time it’s over, we’re not acting.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Just that by the end, we’re you and me again. I’m not fighting you anymore.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s probably true.” His chest unknotted. He’d worried she’d meant it had gotten too real for her comfort.

“Do you mind that?” she asked. “I can’t figure out if I’m the one who changes things. By the time I’m about to come it’s hard to pretend not to like it, is all.”

“Nah, I don’t mind.”

“You sure?”

He nodded, then caught her lingering thumb between his teeth, biting softly.

“If it seems like I’m just getting lazy,” she said, “tell me. I’ll step it up.”

He let her thumb go. “By the time the role-playing falls apart, I’m already as hot as I’m gonna get. The first half, that’s what matters. The stuff before the actual sex, and the start of the sex. By the time it’s all underway, I’m happy just bein’ bossy.”

“You sure?”

“How many times you gonna ask me that?”

She shrugged, studying his mouth. “I just want to make sure I’m not dropping the ball. Your kink’s important to me.”

“I know it is. And you don’t have anything to worry about. Plus you know me—if there’s something I need, I’ll ask for it.”

“True.” She paused, then smiled.

“What?”

“You know how I can tell you’re not pretending anymore?” she asked. “During the sex?”

“How?”

“You call me ‘honey’, instead of ‘sweetheart’.”

His brows rose. “Do I?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.” He supposed that was true.

“You used to call me ‘sub shop girl’,” she added.

“I did.”

“And ‘kiddo’. Actually, you still call me that.”

“I call every woman who’s younger than me ‘kiddo’. But ‘honey’—that’s all you.”

She didn’t have a pet name for him, he realized. If she called him anything, it was Flynn, or occasionally Michael, but only when she was panting and overwrought, on the cusp of a violent orgasm. She liked his given name, but he preferred his last name. He’d been called that for so many years, it felt right in a way that Michael didn’t. Call him “Michael” and he couldn’t help it—all he heard was his shithead father’s voice, drenched in Four Roses.

His sister called him Mike, which he put up with, having no choice. Looking back, it was her boyfriend, Robbie, who’d taken to calling him Flynn. He’d hero-worshipped the guy, and it was Robbie who’d gotten him into boxing, so no surprise that was the name that made him feel the most empowered, the most worthy of respect. He could’ve so easily been Mike or Mikey, some anonymous hoodlum selling stolen stereos out of the back of a van. Crazy what magic a strong male role model could work for a lost and angry kid.

No matter that you could probably shout the name Flynn into a megaphone from a St. Paddy’s float in South Boston and have twenty people turn their heads. Far as he was concerned, that name was his. Robbie had given it to him. Given him so much and never took…not until he’d taken his own life, and far too young.

He rolled over to face Laurel, admiring the creamy glow of her bare skin, that pretty, flushed face with its sweet and wasted expression. “Christ, I fuckin’ love you.”

She laughed and gave his sweaty hair a limp, lazy pat. “You always say that right after we have the most depraved sex.”

“That’s when I’m the most grateful.”

He liked things rougher than most women were down with, no matter if half the world had read that
Fifty Shades
book and decided BDSM was the new black. He was no damaged billionaire and this apartment was no tricked-out playroom. Their props were duct tape and rope and the cold, hard floor under Laurel’s knees, his own two hands. Gags and blindfolds were whatever shirt he might grab, and he’d bound her with an extension cord once. This was BDSM as furnished by Home Depot, and without most of the tiresome honorifics and other formalities he found so cheesy. He didn’t mind “Sir,” but if any woman ever called him “Master” he’d be improvising himself a gag real quick.

He didn’t want to be a woman’s master; he wanted to be her assailant.

During sex, he felt all the things the sick shit he played did, hearing a lover’s fear in her voice, seeing it strain her face. He’d never in a million years do this to a woman who didn’t want it, but it had taken ages to get good with that distinction. To believe that it was okay to want these things, when they were consensual.

Laurel was growing drowsy and he scrunched her messy hair.

“Say it back,” he said.

“I love you.” The final word was swallowed by a broad yawn.

He smiled. He’d waited for her to say it first, and that must’ve happened back around Thanksgiving. She was cautious, reserved in some ways, not the kind of girl you rushed. He was normally the same, though he’d never been with someone who felt this right, this easy. They knocked heads now and again, but by and large all was peaceful…outside of the sex, that was.

He’d been ready to tell Laurel he loved her after maybe six weeks, but he’d known better than to have risked scaring her off. Her parents had been a real shit show, same as his, and he’d come to understand that the tighter you tried to hang on to Laurel, the more she’d edge away from you. Plus her occasional depressive bouts did a number on her confidence.

She didn’t love herself the way Flynn loved her, or how her friends did. Something inside her didn’t trust people who cared for her deeply. It made her feel like a fraud, or undeserving. Pretty standard, as baggage went. Plus all the practice Flynn’s fucked-up family had given him at standing by difficult people made loving her feel like the easiest thing in the world.

“You remember when we first said it?” he asked.

“What? ‘I love you’?”

“Mm hm.”

“I do indeed. It was October thirtieth.”

He blinked. “That early? You been keepin’ a diary I don’t know about?”

“It was the day before Halloween, I’m pretty sure. We were lying right here, and I’d had, like, three beers, and I was going on and on and
on
about all the costumes I’d made myself as a kid. And I caught myself, and I caught
you,
how you were just listening, asking me questions, letting me be drunk and sentimental and boring and acting like you were actually interested.”

“Maybe I was.”

She laughed. “No sober person would’ve been. But it just hit me, out of the blue. I think there was some complete non sequitur, like, ‘And when I was eleven I went as Lisa Simpson,’ and then a big dumbfounded pause and, ‘I love you.’”

“‘I love you,
Flynn
,’” he corrected.

She smiled. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Same as I’ll take your word it was October. We didn’t wait that long, did we?”

“No, not really. Three months?”

“You say that to many guys before me?”

“Two. How many women did you say it to?”

“Just one.”

“You mean it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did. Did you?”

“One of them, yeah, I meant it. The other one, I meant it, but I also didn’t really know what I was talking about. I think I was mostly infatuated.”

“Who was he? I’ll kill him. Tomorrow. After breakfast.”

She snorted. “Down, boy. He was my high school boyfriend. Who did you say it to? That woman who taught you all about rough sex and stuff?”

“No, not her.” She’d meant a lot to Flynn, and he had loved her, had felt that, but he’d known it wasn’t that serious to her. She wouldn’t have said it back, and he’d spared the both of them the awkwardness of underscoring how mismatched their investments had been.

“Who?” she asked again.

“My first serious girlfriend. The one I half-traumatized, wanting to fake-rape her all the time.”

“Oh, right.”

“Who was the second guy you said it to?”

“Someone I dated in college.”

“Why’d you break up?”

“I can’t remember, exactly. I just remember he annoyed me by the end, and I think I bummed him out. The second half of college was really hard for me. I’m surprised I made it through, looking back.”

“You’re at least twice as strong as you give yourself credit for.”

“Probably.”

“You’re the first woman I’ve said that to since I was man enough to know what the fuck it really means,” he offered. And since he’d truly known who he was, and what he needed from a lover.

“Aw. Well, you’re the first
man
I’ve said it to, period. Both the other boyfriends were, like… I dunno. Dudes.”

“Tell me I’m better in bed than either of them.”

“Oh my God, yes. I feel like I never even had sex before I fucked you.”

“I love you.”

She laughed. “It’s true. I mean, not like I’d never been given an orgasm or anything, but
fuck,
Flynn.”

He grinned, all lit up inside.

“It’s like I thought I knew what a strawberry tasted like because I’d smelled a scratch-n-sniff sticker of one. But you…”

“Never stop talking.”

“Not that fucking you isn’t a little terrifying,” she said, “but you’ve absolutely ruined me for every other man on the planet for all time.”

“My work here is done.”

L
aurel woke with the sun
, which was to say, late. The winter light looked lazy, more slinking through the blinds than shining. She wished she could stay in this bed, beside this warm man, all day. But such was not reality.

She rolled over, shoving at Flynn’s arm until he did the same and let her spoon him.

His work had him up around five most mornings, and even with the punishment of fight nights he was awake by six on the weekends. “You slept in,” she said through a yawn.

“Not entirely. Mostly I’ve just been sitting here, watching you sleep.” He said it in a creepy, breathy voice, and wrestled around to take a dramatic whiff of her hair, sending her into giggles. He knew she found that trope laughably disturbing.

She poked his chest. “Gross. Why do people think that’s a sexy thing for a guy to do in books and movies? Watch a woman sleep?”

“Stalkers must do well in fiction.”

“Very. But believe me—I know and trust and love you, but if I ever wake up to find you sitting beside me on my bed, just staring at me…”

“Dumpsville?”

“I dunno. Just… Just be jacking it, please.”

He laughed.

“Have the decency not to pretend like it’s broody and romantic. Perv all-in. If not, yes, Dumpsville. Population: you.”

“That go both ways?”

She considered it. “The thing about reversing the genders on pervy bullshit is that while the woman would still seem creepy as fuck to other women, the dude she was victimizing would probably be stoked, because he could get laid.”

“Feminism’s complicated.”

“Not complicated—complex. And don’t act like you’re not one. You’re a product of the matriarchy if I’ve ever seen one.” He’d been raised by his charmingly domineering older sister from puberty onward. “Plus if you didn’t know how to treat women with respect and consideration, you’d never get your way in bed.”

“Fair.”

“You, my darling, would be creepy as fuck, if not for your feminism.”

He shushed her, pulled her to him for a kiss Laurel refused to part her lips for. He might not care about her morning breath, but she did. She stroked his rough jaw and cheeks, wondering as always how he’d look with a week’s stubble, the beginnings of a beard. Sadly, he shaved every morning he was working.

“Hang on,” she said, regretfully leaving the covers. She’d not gotten around to putting anything on and could feel goose bumps breaking out all over her body as she scrambled for her tee and pajama bottoms. “Jesus, it must be fifty degrees in here.”

“Thermostat’s set to sixty-two.”

“That’s barbaric. If I ever move in with you, I’m reprogramming it.”

“Small price.”

She glanced his way to catch him grinning. He’d already invited her to move in, when she’d been bitching about her landlord hiking the rent again. It was Laurel who wasn’t quite ready. For one, her apartment was six minutes’ walk from her job. For another, one of her two roommates was her best friend. Plus being here when Flynn wasn’t… There was something lonely about it. Maybe it wouldn’t feel that way if she moved her stuff in and there was a TV and she could listen to her music, but all the same, she wasn’t there yet. Whether she could stand Flynn twenty-four-seven, that wasn’t an issue. It was whether or not he’d be up for
her
around the clock that worried Laurel. Maybe that was insecurity talking, or maybe pragmatism. Either way, she wasn’t yet ready to find out which.

She brushed her teeth and tamed her hair, bumped the thermostat up to sixty-eight before climbing back under the covers.

“Oh, so warm. Let’s just hibernate until May.”

“When do you need to be at work?” He kissed her neck.

“Ten.”

He eyed the clock on the shelf above their heads. “Let’s see… Twenty-minute shower, ten-minute drive… That leaves nearly an hour for fucking.”

“Hang on, now—factor in putting on makeup, drying my hair…”

“Your hair’ll dry during the fucking.”

“I think I’ll earn better tips if I don’t look like I’ve got a red bird’s nest on my head.”

“Fine. Still leaves plenty of time if we shut up and get down to it.”

“Fine.” Better than fine. She’d been especially horny of late, probably her body finally getting used to the Pill, or just the benefit of being on the far swing of the depression pendulum, maximum distance from the next inevitable blue phase. Might as well make the most of the hormones while they were on her side. “Let’s get filthy, then.”