Condemned (15 page)

She cried for me to stop, but I continued to beat my fist against solid log as memories flickered behind my eyes in red-hazed horror. Instead of me taking the abuse, it was her. Zach holding her down, violating her, smothering her cries as he rammed into her.

The images shifted, and I was back in prison, full of rage yet unable to do anything about it as they took turns fucking me while the guards let it happen. All this time, I thought she’d callously tossed me aside, but I hadn’t known why. Knowing didn't resolve anything, didn’t bring me closure, and it sure as fuck didn't absolve us of our sins. Knowing only made me feel worse, because she’d suffered in silence out of fear for me.

I risked a glance at her, searching her expression for signs of duplicity. I’d rather find she was lying than accept what she'd told me as truth, but the same harrowing pain I’d seen in the mirror, day after day for the past eight years, haunted her face. I had trouble reconciling the Zach I remembered with the picture she painted. We’d been close, fiercely competitive but like brothers, and to find out such vile poison ran through his veins, that he’d hurt his own sister and threaten me…I couldn’t comprehend it.

I dropped my bloodied fist, and it was a miracle my hand wasn’t broken. Her whimpers tore through me as I staggered into the bathroom, heart pounding so fucking hard, I thought it would rip from my chest and tumble to the floor. Flinging the door to the medicine cabinet open, I pulled out gauze and wound it around my hand, but my head was still back in the bedroom with her, still wrapped up in the waves of shame that emanated from her being.

I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, especially when I laid eyes on the bathtub. Water still pooled around it, evidence of my torture methods. What I’d done to her in order to get the truth…now I wanted nothing more than to undo it, to go on believing she’d been a spoiled teenager, pride bruised over rejection. Just a selfish kid who’d flung out a single lie without giving thought to the destruction she'd cause.

Swallowing hard, I brought my injured hand to my throat, as if that would alleviate the need for air. I had to get out of there for a while, had to get my head on straight before I tried to straighten out hers. I almost laughed. How did one straighten out so many years of pain and betrayal?

She was huddling under the bedding when I returned to the room. I pulled on a pair of jeans, and the weight of her stare pressed on me, burned to my bones.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Outside.” I shrugged on a T-shirt, then escaped the room and the desolation seeping from her gaze. Her soft cries followed me down the ladder, but I was in no shape to comfort her, especially since I was no better than her brother, no better than the men who’d raped me in prison. If only I’d stopped long enough to think of all the angles, past my fury, maybe I would have considered she was a victim in this.

I’d kidnapped a girl who at age fifteen had been helpless in a situation forced upon her. I’d punished her without knowing the whole fucking picture. It wasn’t even the sex that bothered me, as she’d wanted it. It was everything else—like being a cold and heartless ass who’d used her fear against her, debased her, and made her feel like she meant nothing to me.

I stormed outside but didn't go far, as if an invisible line anchored me to the house, to her. I clenched my jaw with the need to find Zach and dismember his dick from his body, but I couldn't leave her alone, and it dawned on me that I couldn't confront him either. He thought she was dead.

Fuck.

The whole world thought she was dead. I balled my fists. I'd taken her, and it was too late to go back. I didn't want to go back. I wanted her, all of her—her pain and sorrow, her joy and triumphs, her orgasms and her agony when I held them at bay. But letting her go would be the
right
thing to do.

I glanced toward the cabin and stilled. She stood in the doorway, eyes red-rimmed and haunted, her body wrapped in my sheet. She'd just admitted to being raped by her own brother, yet I wanted to tear that sheet from her and throw her to the ground. The memory of her mouth around my dick in the bathtub hit me, as did the fact I hadn't reached orgasm. I was royally fucked up.

I crossed the distance, climbed the steps to the porch, and shoved past her. Her footsteps pattered on my heels as I entered the living room. She walked timidly, as if scared to make a sound. Slumping to the couch, I held my head in my good hand while my injured one dangled between my knees. She sank to the floor and took my bad hand in hers. It didn't seem to matter what I’d done to her, or what I would do to her—I was starting to believe she was incapable of flushing me from her system.

She unwound the gauze and brushed her fingers over my swollen knuckles. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s not bad.”

“I’m sorry.”

I angled my head and looked at her. “You didn't force my fist into the wall.”

“I’m not just talking about your hand. I’m talking about all of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. She inched away, gaze downcast. I grabbed her hand and pulled her near again. “If I’d known what he did to you—”

“It’s my fault you didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter, Alex. I took every fucking thing that happened to me in the last eight years and dumped it on you.” Holes riddled my soul, each one representing something I’d never get back. My father’s funeral, the first years of my son’s life, having my career snatched from me—all because of Zach’s jealousy. Even knowing she was a victim didn’t quench my thirst for her pain, and that made me the vilest form of a bastard. “I got off on hurting you.” I stared at her long and hard so she'd understand just how screwed up I was. “I still want to hurt you, so fucking much.”

Her breath escaped in a shaky sigh. She wiped underneath her eyes, though she tried to hide it.

I hauled her onto my lap, unable to contain myself, and settled her knees on either side of me. The sheet draped open, and her hot pussy smothered my lap through my jeans. My cock sat between us, hard and painful, a reminder we had unfinished business.

“It’s all my fault,” she said, clutching my shirt.

“You were just a kid. You need to know it
wasn't
your fault.” I swallowed hard as memories of my own assault broke free. I’d learned to contain them, to continue getting out of bed every morning and living life without freezing whenever something—a smell, a sound, or simple touch—triggered the flashbacks. “Zach knew better. Fuck, he was my age, and I sure as hell knew better.” I ran a hand through her hair, fingers catching in the tangles, and pulled. She winced, but I didn’t stop. “For fuck’s sake, he was your brother.”

“
Step
-brother.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” How it was possible for us to carry on this conversation with her naked and in my lap, my erection growing by the second, was beyond me. “He had no right to touch you.” Instantly, I dropped my hand from her hair as my own words came back to me like a boomerang. “I’m no better. I shouldn’t have taken you.” And I sure as fuck shouldn’t entertain the thought of bending her over the couch and pushing into her.

“I’m glad you did.”

Did she not realize what she was saying? I'd put her through hell, and my dick wasn't done with her yet, not even close. “I
wanted
to take you.” My gaze veered to her neck when she swallowed hard. I settled a hand around her throat, surprised when she didn't fight me. The compulsion to squeeze the breath from her beckoned. “I have a demon inside me. That’s what happens when a man has dark tendencies and no outlet for them. I used to fight them out of me in the cage.”

“Rafe.” My name fell from her lips with a breathy sigh. I pressed a thumb against her collarbone where her pulse fluttered as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

I didn’t want to think it, let alone say it, but fuck, somewhere inside me a conscience still pulsed. I had to set her free. Except I had no end game. I’d fantasized about taking her for years, had planned out every last detail, but I hadn’t foreseen the need to let her go. I didn’t think she’d run to the cops, as her guilt came off her in palpable waves, but where would letting her off this island leave me, besides my life in utter disarray? I cursed my fucking conscience and its bad timing. “This has to end, Alex.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m letting you go.” The words hung between us, and now that they were out there, I wanted to snatch them back. There were so many reasons
not
to keep her here, namely that she wasn’t as guilty as I initially thought in sending me to prison. She’d played a part, but how much choice had she really had? Fifteen was young, much too young to deal with rape, abortions, and blackmail.

“Why?” she whispered, as if the thought of getting her freedom back was unbearable.

I moved my hand to the back of her neck and drew her close, aching to take her mouth. “Because I still want to hurt you,” I said, my attention drifting to her parted lips, “still want you in ways that isn’t right. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll beg to be mine, and that’s a bad idea.”

“I want to be yours,” she said without hesitation, as if she wanted to be my everything, as if the idea of my being done with her tortured her. What we shared was pure obsession, nothing more and nothing less, and it was the sweetest madness in hell.

I shook my head, trying to convince myself as much as her. “I can’t keep doing this to you. I battled with myself enough before I knew Zach’s part in this, but now…”

She averted her gaze, but not before new tears formed. Watching her emotionally withdraw pissed me off.

“What is it? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

I clutched her jaw and forced her to look at me. “What are you holding back?”

“Nothing,” she said again, though I saw the lie in her eyes.

“You need to be straight with me, on all of it, because I'm so fucking close to hunting his ass down and killing him.” The need to make him pay for what he'd done to her, for what he'd done to me, was strong and growing stronger with each second she tried to hide shit from me. And he would pay. Someway, somehow, I’d make him wish he’d never met me.

She shut her eyes to the tears slipping down her face, and I was a bastard because I wanted to taste them.

“Just tell me, sweetheart.” Before I lost control and gave in to the boiling need inside me, to the demon that gnashed his teeth and almost broke free at the sight of her pain.

“He made me come.”

“You got off when he raped you?” I wasn't surprised, not if the way she'd responded to me was any indication.

“Yes.” She blinked several times but the flood had started and wouldn't stop. Her chest heaved with rising sobs. She didn’t even try to pull away. She fucking sat in my lap, her chin trapped in my grip, and let me witness her shame. “He’s been fucking me for years. I’m not as innocent as you think.”

Her deviant nature pulled at me like a habit I couldn’t quit. I took her mouth with greed, forcing her lips apart and thrusting my tongue inside. No build up, no closed-mouthed kisses to ease us into it. We plummeted into a full-on mouth fuck. With a deep moan, she pushed her tongue against mine, and I sucked her deeper, tasting her flavor and her tears.

Her needy fingers sifted through my hair and yanked, and I thought I'd die if I didn't taste more of her. Her perky tits with nipples partially obscured from the sheet, her belly button where I ached to dip my tongue. Her drenched pussy. I wanted to work her body until she begged, then push her further, making her scream and writhe with the need to come. I held her by the nape, placed my bloodied hand at the small of her back, and locked her in my kiss.

The issues between us didn't matter. Nothing mattered so long as she surrendered her soul to my demon and let him devour her. That single thought was powerful enough to make me pull away. I wouldn’t let him finish her off. She’d been used and abused by her own brother, no one around to protect her. I’d be damned if I destroyed her too.

I pushed her from my lap. “This isn’t happening.” I rose to my feet, silently cursing as she folded the sheet around herself in shame, and adjusted my pants.

“W-what are you doing?” she asked as I headed toward the loft. Her bare feet scampered after me.

“Getting you some clothes.” Until Jax and I figured out what to do with her, I wasn’t going to tempt myself with her naked body. I climbed the steps and marched to my dresser, where I’d stashed a couple of outfits in her size. I pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and tossed them at her.

“Rafe…please.” Her voice cracked on a sob. “Don’t push me away. I need you.”

“I’m the last person you need.” I stumbled toward the bathroom without looking at her, my heart in my throat, and prepared myself for a long, cold shower and sex with my own fucking hand.