Jacked (66 page)

I still wanted him to stop this, to allow me adequate time to analyze and to draw educated conclusions. Normal love didn’t include these perversions and yet my body was tingling.

Adam worked quickly but precisely. He bathed me in tenderness, preparing each area with soft kisses before his ropes made their next pass. Above my breasts, below. Around my ribs, across my back, and over my shoulders. The zip ties were cut, allowing me to straighten while each arm, each wrist was wrapped. The ropes pulled my arms up straight above my head and bit into my skin, driving me to stand on the tips of my toes.

Then he moved on to wrapping my lower half.

“You look so beautiful,” he whispered below my ear, and, without any control of my own body, my feet left the ground. He kissed my left ankle and then wrapped and tugged, tethering me to the sun or the moon or whatever center of the sky he commanded.

He wasn’t the spider. He was the puppet master.

I was the marionette, awaiting his bidding.

He tugged on one of the ropes, sending my body gently swinging.

My every thought, every stress, every insecurity and responsibility fled, solely focused on swaying in the air. I was free.

Adam cradled my head against his bare chest and kissed me. I’d been starving but until I felt his tongue caress mine, I didn’t realize how close to expiring I’d been. His kisses were infused with so much intensity, they were silent words and meanings and messages meant only for me. He slipped the covering off my eyes, connecting us even deeper.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Yes.” I’d been broken down into the rawest of truths.

“Tell me why,” he whispered, stroking my hair.

“I don’t know. So many reasons.” Each one was like trying to catch a leaf in the swirling wind. “I see you in everything. I hear you in every song. I feel you in places I didn’t know existed.”

His smile was gentle and kind; a panther momentarily friendly before it sank its teeth.

“Do you remember when you put those stitches in my hand?”

I nodded.

“You said to me, ‘my first priority is you’. Do you remember that?”

It was hard to think through the hazy fog his kisses had left me in.

“I remember,” he went on. “It shocked the hell out of me. That’s what love is all about, right? Putting each other first?”

My heart felt even more impossibly heavy. Could dreams actually come true?

“Why don’t you want children?” he asked, still caressing me.

“Adam…” This was not a conversation to have and yet there it was—tossed out front and center.

His tenderness ended when he pinched and rolled my nipple between his fingers, sending a zing of pleasure-filled pain right into my bottom. It was a punishment—instant retribution for my apparent insolence.

“It’s an important question.”

When he stepped away, my head hung back, weighted by gravity. Ropes tugged and my thighs parted, and not on their own volition. My arms were bound to the ropes running to the metal circle in the ceiling, but after a few adjustments, he left me with some range of movement. I could hold on or relax back, cradled within his webbing. Right now, I was holding on for dear life, trying to pull myself up to watch him, but it was nearly impossible.

His hands squeezed my inner thighs. “I can’t tell you how many times I’d envisioned you like this.”

“What? Bound and helpless?”

He added another length of rope, cradling my calves. “Sweetheart, you are far from helpless. And your body is in a sling, so you shouldn’t be in any pain. Well, maybe just in here.” His finger tapped on my forehead. “But bound and helpless has worked for us before.”

I hated when he was right. I felt like I was lying in a loosely-woven hammock. Another pull and tug and my thighs split wide open.

“And I think you’re going to enjoy the hell out of this.” His hands took ownership, his warm breath heated my anticipation, and then his tongue struck out. My body arched, all needy and wanting more. I hated my body for betraying me so quickly. A finger worked inside me, then two—in and out—scissoring and curling with master precision.

Every thought, every synapse, tied to the rising sensations. My focus—singular. Only one direction—up—reaching for the ultimate release. Oh so close. So close.

Abruptly, his fingers withdrew, his warm mouth left my skin, and he shoved the ropes, spinning me.

“Let’s see how much you want my body,” he drawled, opening up his pants. Silky flesh rolled over my lips, firm and ready. His musky scent bloomed across my nose, adding depravity to my surmounting want. My mouth opened, tasting him with my tongue. He grabbed the ropes above me and hissed, groaning as I took him deeper.

His woven web was quite convenient, allowing all sorts of rocking movements that were left unexplored on the static ground. His strong abs, the swell of his chest, all looked different at this angle. I wished I had the use of my hands, just to feel his hot skin, merge us together in different ways.

He pulled out of my mouth and released the ropes, letting me swing freely again. Being suspended like this, he was upside down taking his jeans off his legs. Watching him stroke his length had to be one of the most erotic things I loved about him.

Love.

There it was again.

Love wasn’t an emotion—it was a misdiagnosed mental condition with physical symptoms and no medical cure. I’d spent days, weeks, lamenting over the word and its meaning. And here I was, exacerbating the situation by putting stipulations on what we’d built together. What we
could
build together.

Adam stepped in between my legs, rubbing himself up and over me repeatedly, driving me slowly insane. He grabbed my hips, finding grip on the bindings, and pressed in.

Air stuttered out of both of us.

He eased in and out, setting a beautiful pace, before pounding into me. Skin smacked violently into skin, breaching the surrounding silence. His face twisted with his determination; it was challenge and anger and other emotions I’d recognized. I was getting close to coming, relishing the clenching rush inside me.

“So tell me, Erin…” His fingertips bit into my skin. “What happens if I get you pregnant?” His eyebrows rose. “No condom between us…” He rolled his hips over and over again, bouncing me hard and rough over his bare skin. “Pretty sure if I dig in there I can find the strings to remove that thing.”

Fear caused new pressure to build. I was drawn and quartered and completely unable to stop him from doing anything he wanted.

“So what happens, huh? You gonna cut our baby out of your body? Toss it in the garbage like Nikki did?”

I felt the bottom drop out, knowing with absolute certainty what angry fucking felt like. He stunned me and broke my heart, railing into me so hard it took my breath away.

“She did that, you know. Told me she miscarried and I believed it… ’til I got the fucking bill.”

I didn’t know. I gripped the ropes in both hands, wishing to get free, wishing I could take his pain away, wishing he wasn’t inside me while losing his mind. My head shook back and forth, trying to deny that I’d be like that. I knew the value of life and how precious it was and how quickly and violently it ended. We weren’t humans—we were biological marvels.
If Adam got me pregnant—

Sweat dripped down his chest. His teeth were clenched. “Would you do that, Erin? Would you? Answer me!”

“No!” I’d never hurt him that way.

“No? I saw the way you shied away from Turk’s kid, so I know you’re fucking lying to me. You know what I think?”

I didn’t even want to venture a guess.

“I think you’d rip that miracle right out of your belly and lie to my face like she did.”

Tears stung my eyes. I’d never felt so hopeless in all of my life, powerless to convince him beyond what he believed. His lack of faith in me tore open new gaping wounds. I was nothing like his ex. “I wouldn’t.”

He squeezed my legs together, pressing my thighs to his body within his muscular arm and fucked me harder, ebbing the pleasure toward pain. “Why don’t I believe you? It’s okay, I’ll give you want you want. After all, my cock is good enough for you.”

“I wouldn’t,” I cried out, needing him to believe me. “I swear.”

He released my legs as if they’d burned him. They flopped apart with a twitchy jerk, back to their bent positions. Muscles within my thighs quivered and quaked. Adam reached forward, grabbing me by the back of my neck, pulling me up to meet the ferocity in his eyes.

“Lie to my face, Doc.”

He impaled me again.

He was just as torn, equally as broken.

“I’m not lying.”

He slammed into me, holding our gaze with each thrust. “Then fucking tell me the truth. You want a future or a memory?”

I wanted the moon and stars, wrapped in his unyielding promises. “I want you.”

My hair tangled in his clawed fingers. “Would you want what we created too? Would you?”

“Please don’t.” He was asking too much—asking me to become a danger to myself and others. “Please.”

“Answer me!”

“You’ll hate me,” I cried, my chest cracking into a million pieces of pain. “I’m not a murderer. Don’t… Oh God, please. When I turn, you’ll hate me.”

His scowl turned cruel. I tried to hide my face in my shoulder; my self-loathing burned the edges of my eyes. I choked on my tears, sputtering through the rising sobs that shook me while I dangled in the air. He’d turned our love to hate and me into my darkest fear, where the ugliness consumed me. The desolation and despair pulled me under. “You’ll hate me.” I barely whispered the words, drowning in their validity.

Adam’s arm cinched around my waist, my legs circled his hips. With one hand, he pulled one of the ropes, releasing some of the tension holding me aloft. He bent sideways, fetching something long and silver. With a few passes, the sharp blade sliced through the tangle of rope above me.

His knife hit the ground, using both arms to hold me to him as my legs failed to support my weight. A few steps and he sat with me sprawled over top of him.

“Shh… sweetheart.” He brushed my hair back over and over again. “What is it that has you so scared? Please, please tell me. I want to understand.”

“I didn’t do it. I could never… I save lives.” Memories slammed into each other with such violence, it was hard to stop shaking. “I didn’t do it. I’m not like that. I could never… hurt… but so many women do. So many women… She made me carry the jugs, putting my fingerprints over everything. And when the police came she just pointed and said that I did it. I didn’t. But they didn’t believe me. They didn’t even care or question her.”

Adam just watched me intently as I fell apart. The silence was deadly.

“That’s why I need to finish. So that never happens to another child. But what happens when
I
break? Will I turn into a monster, too?”

I knew he didn’t understand.

I had nothing left. Irrationality had taken control. “I don’t want to turn into a monster.”

“That won’t happen, Erin. You’re an angel. You’re a savior, not a monster.”

We were both in denial, except mine was wrapped in a thick layer of hysterics. “You don’t know that. Women change. The hormones or something.” I shook my head. “They do unspeakable things.”

He held my face in his hands, imploring me. “What happened to you?”

It was a simple question, one of which I’d been avoiding answering for years, masking it under a façade of righteous purpose. But one look in his eyes and I unraveled, the agony from hidden shame bubbled up out of me. “She had me feed the baby poison, but I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

He tried to hold me still. “Who, sweetheart?”

Desperation was making me wild. “You have to believe me. I swear I didn’t know.”

“I do.”

I covered his hands with my own, thankful that his grip was holding me together.

“Tabitha.” The memory of her name tasted like bitter acid on my tongue. “Morton.” It was the first time I’d spoken her name out loud in fourteen years, though the burning animosity didn’t feel as fresh. I, my parents—we’d boxed that dirty secret away, adding ignorance and well-crafted lies to our family memories. But I couldn’t hide them anymore. I can’t protect and pretend and go about as though it didn’t happen. Detachment was what was separating us. “She was a friend of my mother’s.”

Just admitting that eased the constricting panic in my lungs somewhat. “I was young, Adam. I didn’t know about such things. I was a self-absorbed teenager, not a mother. I would never…”

He wiped my face, taking special care in my fragile state. He was built so much larger than me and yet he tended to me as if I were made of glass. He listened while I slowly explained about Mrs. Morton’s divorce and her odd behavior, which now made a whole hell of a lot more sense and should have been glaring signs of looming danger. At the time, I was clueless.

I had expected his revulsion, but instead he just gazed at me impassively while untangling me from the ropes. “What happened? It’s okay. Just tell me.”

“What did you do?” Tabitha Morton shrieked. “You killed her! You killed my baby!”

My head swayed as I stepped back in time.

“She was jealous, officer. She tried to punish me for hiring her little boy-crush to do yard work at my house. That has to be it. I left for two hours and she murdered my baby!”

“She bought four gallons of antifreeze that day. Four. Made me carry each one from the car.” My breath hitched after each admission. “Hannah was only… she was only a year old.”

Adam’s hands massaged over each spot he’d exposed, rubbing and soothing my skin. It was starting to feel wonderful, relaxing, but I didn’t deserve it. I’d never atone for my transgressions.

“I didn’t know the signs of ethylene glycol poisoning. I thought… I babysat her all the time. I just thought the baby was sick.”

He unwrapped the ropes around my ribs. “You didn’t know, Erin. How could you?”

A chill ran through me; I was cold and exposed and completely naked.

“So many children come in… neglected, beaten, sexually…” My throat constricted. “Sexually abused, malnourished.” It was hard to swallow. “Left in hot cars… poi… poisoned.”