His (26 page)

“That’s why I let you go,” he whispered.

“Because…”

“Because I love you. It’s a weakness, isn’t it, kitten?”

He smiled. Oh, lord, he smiled.

I nodded slowly, my heart swelling in my chest.

“Yes. A good weakness.”

His breath came back to him. He reached for the rope and took it up in his hand, turning it over and over.

“I was almost there,” he murmured. “Almost dead.”

The thought sent ice through my veins. Just thinking about his body hanging from the ceiling made me want to scream again.

“Did you see anything?” I asked.

“Nothing to see,” he said, tossing the rope off to the side. “I suppose now we simply have to live.”

We.

The word was a fingernail plucking my nerves. Vibrating them. He coughed again.

“What happens now, kitten? Have you thought that far?”

I hadn’t thought that far, but apparently my subconscious had started to. The pieces clicked into place one by one as I thought about it.

I moved over to where he was sitting against the bed and sat with him, shoulder to shoulder. The explanation came to my lips mechanically. I ticked off the points one after another.

“I tell everyone I had a panic attack. I ran away to be alone for a while with my friend.”

“A friend?”

“A secret friend, one I’d never told anybody about. You get away scot-free. And…”

“Yes?”

“And you pay for me to go back to school in the fall.”

“Oh?” His eyebrow raised.

“It’s a fair trade.”

“A trade? What do I get in return?”

I paused. There was no hesitation in my heart, but I didn’t know how he would take it. His head turned to the side, and he stared into my eyes.

“Me.” My hands pressed into the floor, holding me still. “All of me.”

“All of you.”

His hand lifted. His knuckles grazed my elbow. He moved his hand down, brushing his fingertips along my arm.

“You would be mine?”

“Yes.” My voice was shaky. After all this, his rejection would be the thing that would hurt me the most. His hand glided down my lower arm and his fingers slipped loosely around my wrist. I could feel his thumb pressing against my pulse point. Where my scar was.

“You’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying
not
to be mine, kitten.”

“I—I didn’t know what I wanted before.”

“And now?”

“I want you. And I want to be yours.”

His hand tightened around my wrist and he lifted my hand to his mouth.

His lips kissed my palm at the heel. I didn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. I was balancing on the edge of something dangerous, I knew. But I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be his.

Finally he spoke, the whisper tickling my skin.

“Yes. That sounds nice, kitten.”

     Gav    

I pulled her to me, then. She, who had seen the shadow inside of me. She, who had been trapped for so long in my home, She had left… and come back.

She had saved me.

There was no trace of the shadow as I lifted her in my arms, lay her down on the bed. There was no trace of it when I kissed her hard, so hard that I lost my own breath in the whirlwind of passion. Hands, clothes flew everywhere.

I needed her so badly. Needed to know—

“It’s really you, isn’t it?” I asked, my hand splayed across her cheek. Dark soulful brown eyes gazed up at me.

“Of course.”

“This isn’t a hallucination? A dream? I’m not dead?”

“If you were dead, what would this be?” she asked, reaching down and grabbing my hip, pulling me against her body with a groan of desire that sent light exploding in my mind.

“Heaven,” I whispered.

“You really think you died and went to heaven?” She smirked, and the strangest thing happened. A bubbling inside that turned into laughter, pure laughter. I fell against her body, laughing uncontrollably. At last I wiped the tears from my eyes.

“Good point. I concede the argument.”

Her fingers were touching me now, pulling at my length. Already aroused, I growled in her ear and flipped her back, pinning her wrists back to the bed. She grinned at me and twisted, sending new flames of lust through my body as her soft curves moved under me.

“Do I need to tie you up?” I teased.

“Please,” she whispered. Her lips were plump and pink, so innocent and yet so demanding. I kissed her again, kissed her and kissed her and could not stop until she gasped for breath. Then I got the rope.

I paused after finishing the last knot. Her body was stretched across the bed, ready and willing. The rose-red slit between her legs was hot and swollen. I ran a single finger down her thigh, tracing the outline of her mound, wetting myself with her juices. I tasted her sweetness and she moaned. I could see her hips jerking upward slightly, wanting me to take her.

“Gavriel—”

I paused then. I looked around the room. Everything was the same. The sunlight came through the window the same as it always had. The bed was in the same place. And yet, there was no hint of the shadow.

She had driven it away.

Her chestnut eyes watched my every move as I climbed into bed and positioned myself between her legs. I loved the little jerks of her body, the twisting muscles in her arms as she strained against the ties. I could have watched her forever.

“Gav?”

My mind came back to the present. I leaned down, my cock sliding against the deliciously slick opening. She gasped as I found her slit and entered, letting her folds caress my tip. Then I thrust hard, stabbing her with my whole self, plunging deep into oblivion.

When I spoke in her ear, my breath was already ragged.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for saving me.”

     Kat    

He teased me. He tortured me.

Most of all, he satisfied me. Satisfied my every single urge in ways I couldn’t have imagined before him. His hands spanked my skin raw and red and I begged him for more. His cock filled me, pushing me to the outer edge of my limits, and my screams were screams of delight. He twisted my nipples, sucked bruises on my hip, licked my wrists until I came from only his tongue touching me in places I’d never known I wanted to be touched.

He rolled himself against me, swollen rock hard and throbbing, and I matched his rhythm and he made me come against his cock, my body milking him, clenched viselike and shivering. He pulled out and made me come again with his tongue.

And when I ached too much, when every part of me was shattered and wide open, he pressed his thumb against my lips and I sucked hard, licked the pad of his brilliant fingers. Without waiting for a breath, he split me open with his thickness and pressed a finger between my ass cheeks and filled me in every hole, and climax after climax shuddered my body, leaving me empty of anything except the desire for more, more—

For hours he took me, used me, and gave me back myself.

When he was done at last, my breath was jagged in the air. My eyes were closed and I only felt his fingers at the ropes around my wrists. The knots loosened and opened and then he was rubbing my wrists with his hands, massaging them deeply.

I opened my eyes and saw him examining my wrists, the red lines from the rope standing out brightly on my skin.

“Would you like to get rid of them?” he asked softly.

“What?”

“The scars. Do you want the surgery? We could clean them up for you.”

“We?”

“I have an old friend. He’s a cosmetic surgeon.”

I looked down at the white seams on the insides of my wrists. They caught the light and gleamed, just for a moment, shining brightly. Like my soul was peeking through the thin parts of me.

“You would be there?”

“I would assist.”

I raised my eyebrows as he lay down beside me. His hand cupped my breast and he nuzzled into the side of me. I had never thought about getting rid of my scars. Even in the summer, I would wear long sleeves to hide them. To be able to walk around freely, without worrying… it was tempting.

“You would assist, because…”

“For one, there’s nobody else I would trust to come into my home.”

“Oh! You would do it here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“You know where, kitten.”

I thought of the kitchen table, the straps. The blood.

The man he had murdered. He was a murderer.

My inner self was more intelligent than my outer body, and I squirmed uncomfortably, thinking about the idea.

“You wouldn’t be tied,” he said. “You would be drugged. Local anesthesia.”

“I wouldn’t be zonked out?”

“No.”

“But this friend of yours, then, he would know about us? About you?”

He blinked deliberately. Stalling. There could only be one reason for his hesitation.

“He already knows?”

“He’s… he’s like me. In certain ways. In others, not so much.”

“How so?”

“He’s much less patient than I am.”

I stared at the man who had tied me up and teased me to the edge of insane desire. Someone worse than him?

“You’re skirting the question, kitten,” he said.

“I…”

I looked down at the lines once more. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them gone. Tried to imagine my skin bare and unpuckered again. The image in my mind was of myself, but younger. Fifteen. Before I had taken a knife to my veins.

“No.” The word left my mouth as if of its own accord.

“No? You don’t want them removed?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I turned my face up toward him. I thought of the box inside his closet. All those pictures of him as a boy, covered in bruises.

“Why do you keep those photographs?”

His jaw clenched, sending the vein at his temple pulsing. He took a deep breath and relaxed.

“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t remember the pain.”

“But you’ll feel the pain of the past no matter what,” I said. “And remembering this way… it shows you the danger inside of you.”

“It reminds you how dangerous you are?” He smiled. “How dangerous are you, kitten?”

“I’m more dangerous than you. Suicide is the ultimate escape route.”

“Is that what it was? Escape?”

“Maybe.”

He paused, looking down at the scars on my wrists.

“I wished that I could escape,” he said. “I wished it every night when I heard her crying. I wished it every night when he came up to my room. And one night, when he swung the door open, his belt already half-undone, I wished that he would go away.

“I wished that he would go hurt
her
.”

“Gav—” I wanted to stop him from telling me this. This was a confession that I could not comprehend. As bad as my parents had been, it had never been that bad.

“I wanted him to stop hitting me and hurt her instead. And he did. He hurt her so bad that I did something I never did. She screamed and screamed and finally I couldn’t take it. I ran downstairs and into their room, something I was
never
allowed to do. Not under any circumstances, understand? And there he was, with the knife. And there she was, the blood soaking into the carpet like a dark wine stain. She was still beautiful.”

His shoulders shuddered. His mouth twitched.

“Still as beautiful as the day.”

“You don’t know what happened to him? Your father? You don’t know where he is?”

“No. If I did know, I would be there right now with a syringe in one hand and a father’s day card in the other.” His mouth quirked. “I’m a terrible son.”

“You’ve never had a chance.”

“Maybe. Maybe I should have killed him before he killed her.”

His eyelids fluttered at that, cast down.

“So you don’t want to remove your scars?” he asked again, quietly.

“No.” I was firmer now. Resolved.

“Why? Because you might forget? Is that the only reason?”

“No. It’s…” I closed my eyes, trying to make the right words form in my mind. “It’s because they remind me of how close I came to never being here right now.”

“And where are you right now?” he murmured.

I cradled his head against my chest. His arms wrapped around me, his palms warm against my lower back. His ear was pressed against me like he wanted to sink into my flesh.

“I’m here,” I said simply. “I’m here with you.”

The End

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HIS

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