No Returns (The Blankenships Book 6) (2 page)

For a moment, Zoey thought he might storm out of the office without her, but he had that much left within him alive, at least. Though she wouldn’t have entirely blamed him if he’d walked away from her, she would have struggled to forgive him. His eyes were so cold, and she hated seeing him this way. The words Olivia had spoken — that he looked like his father now — made her stomach clench in fear.

Sometimes, Zoey felt like she had no idea in the world what she did or didn’t want, but she knew without having to think about it hard at all that Philip Blankenship was never, not for one second of his miserable life, the man she wanted. She reached deep inside to find some kind of trust that Alex would snap out of this cold daze in time. His sister had just been killed. A man had the right to some inner chill right now.

But if it didn’t break
, her heart whispered.
If he doesn’t change back
.

She squashed the line of thought with as much fervor as she could find in her shocked state and wove her fingers through Alex’s.

CHAPTER TWO

Alex let the doctors look him over, finally, and determined that he had somehow avoided a concussion. They gave him a laundry list of symptoms to watch out for and then let him go.

They took a cab back to the penthouse.

“Are you sure you want me to come with you?” Zoey asked. “I’d— I’d understand if you want to be alone.”

Alex’s eyes were still icy cold when they turned toward her, but his hand squeezed tightly around her fingers. She found herself wondering if he’d say something, if the words would squeeze out of his lips, but he was silent. Just his hand, clinging to hers told her that he wasn’t ready to let her go. Not now. Maybe not ever.

The ride up the elevator was awful. Stepping into the penthouse was awful. She saw his face start to crumple, and then he shook his head furiously. He took her bags, left them in the hallway, kicked off his shoes, and led her down the hall to the bedroom. She wondered if she should suggest speaking to Sophia, letting her know that they were back, but there were so many layers of fear and anger in his eyes, she didn’t dare say a thing.

In the bathroom, he turned the water on, hot enough that billowing clouds of steam wafted out of the stall, and then he turned to her. His voice sounded cold and rusted when he spoke, creaking gently out of his vocal chords. “You’re covered in blood,” he said, and Zoey finally looked down. He was right, and the scent of it, something she hadn’t noticed, flooded back into her senses. Her shirt, the concert tee that Claire had bought her, the gift to commemorate a day spent dancing to their favorite prog rock band, was glued to her, caked with the girl’s blood. Bile rose in her throat, and the knowledge that Claire was dead sank, slowly and permanently, into her consciousness. She felt hot tears begin to slide down her cheeks. Alex’s eyes were dry.

She peeled the shirt off gently, telling herself that a good cleaner might still be able to salvage it somehow, but she was rougher with her jeans. She just wanted them off, wanted the blood gone and wanted the horrible traces of this awful evening gone. They were going to live with its echoes forever, constantly wondering what they might have done differently, and wondering if it might have saved Claire’s life. She didn’t need to have the girl’s literal blood on her hands, as well as the metaphorical.

Alex stripped as well, his movements almost clinical. He reached out to Zoey with just one hand, and when she slipped her fingers into his, he drew her close.

After that, things happened quickly.

He tugged her into the shower. She winced at the scalding hot water, but there was nowhere to go but under the spray, and she forced herself to endure until her body calmed down. It wasn’t actually burning hot, and the intensity of her reaction told her that she was most likely even more shocked than the doctors had thought. She was covered in flecks of blood and bad memories, and the water would wash them all away, or at least give her enough distance to make it through a few hours and get some rest. One or the other.

Alex’s hands followed the trails of water down her body. He wasn’t demanding anything of her, just reassuring himself that she was with him, present, there, helping the water do its job of cleaning and cleansing her body.

Her hair was awful; he helped her get it soaking wet, run it through with conditioner, and then gently comb through the tangles and mats that had come from the splashes of blood. The tang of blood was dizzying, too much, too unpleasant. She hated it. Even when it was replaced with the soft coconut smell of the conditioner, she hated it. She wasn’t sure she would ever again be able to smell wet pennies and not remember this night.

When her hair was free of tangles, she twisted it up into a knot at the base of her skull and directed Alex gently into the spray. He’d caught less of the blood and gore, but he needed to be cleansed even more than she did. She followed his pattern, tracing her hands over the flat plains of his trim musculature, and when that wasn’t enough to break the layer of ice in his eyes, she leaned forward and ran her tongue over the hollow of his throat where water was collecting on his skin. He shivered under her tongue, and she looked up. He was almost posing for her; his hands tightened into fists and knotted behind his neck, his knuckles painfully pale with the tension he held in his arms. She pressed forward so that her hips brushed against his, and his erection swelled against her as she stared into his eyes.

“Tell me what you need,” she said, and then hated herself. What he needed was his sister back. She couldn’t give him that.

He seemed to understand what she meant. “I need to feel alive,” he whispered, and she ran a hand between them, grasping his cock at the root and making long, sweeping strokes along the length of him.

“Take what you need, then,” she said.

He turned her, fast, his expression unchanging as he spun her around to face the wall of the shower. He pushed at her shoulders until she bent forward enough to stick her ass out, and his foot pressing her apart so that he could fit between her thighs, his fingers opening her up almost savagely. And she found herself loving it, loving the brutal need of him, because she needed to feel, too; she was exhausted and afraid and so sad, and he was fucking her with his fingers so hard that she thought she might unwind right there and right then, coming sloppily all over his fingertips because if she didn’t feel alive, she thought she might die.

His fingers pulled out, and she mewled with frustration at the emptiness until the head of his cock was pressing against her, pushing inexorably into her. She keened at the position, at the sheer riotous need that was flooding through her. Her instincts were to drive back, to fill herself with him, but she held her hips still, letting the walls of her grip him as he pushed further into her. She wasn’t wet enough for him to take her like this she desperately needed him to pull back, but she didn’t care; she wanted to give this to him. She needed to.

He drilled slowly forward until he was as deep inside her as he’d ever been, and then he pulled back, just as slowly. She braced her hands against the wall of the shower as he pushed forward again, impaling her, one hand gripping the back of her neck, the other making fast, rasping circles around her clit as he drove into her. He groaned behind her, and she could feel him shaking, the horror of what had happened driving them both to this strange coupling as they sought—God above, she didn’t know what, but she knew that she was keening now in rhythm with his fingers surging over her, and she was wet now, slick and hot as he fucked her, and he was shaking against her, and she needed to come before he did, she needed to, she had to—

The orgasm wasn’t really the earth shattering explosion she’d hoped for. It was a gentle roll of sensation that washed through her, twisting her up, causing her body to clutch at Alex as he followed her gently down. She felt the hot wash of him inside of her and felt him stumble, clutching at her body.

His head was shaking back and forth as he pulled free from her. “Not enough,” he said, “it’s not enough, it’s never enough—”

She wrapped him up as best as she could, stroking her hands down his neck and his shoulders. He made noises like he was in pain, like he was sobbing, but his face seemed to stay dry. She cleaned them both up, shut off the water, and led him naked out to the bed. He stood there like a child as she tossed the fancy pillows down onto the floor and slid between the sheets.

He grabbed at her as soon as she climbed under the covers. She let him and let him pull her close. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and flung her leg over his hips, doing everything she could to pull him into a tight, warm cocoon of comfort. He took several long, ragged breaths. It was actually a few moments before she realized that he’d begun to cry. She didn’t say anything and didn’t try to soothe him. She just held him. Eventually, they both slept.

CHAPTER THREE

When Zoey woke, her internal clock desperately confused, there was a moment when she didn’t remember. Why she felt so groggy, why she had the weird sense that it was both the middle of the day and the depth of the night, and why she felt like she’d been crying before she fell asleep.

It was only a moment, and then everything that had happened came flooding back in. She choked back the little sob that tried to escape and fumbled on the nightstand for her phone to check the time.

Four in the afternoon, and she had a dozen voicemails. She was ready to just dial the number and enter her password, but given the past day, she went ahead and checked her missed calls notifications first.

Two of the calls were from her parents. The rest were from numbers she didn’t know. Her stomach all but curdled; she’d bet solid money that they were all calls from reporters. Claire had been of age. Her name would have been released to the papers who would have glommed onto the story like a bunch of piranhas and might very well have identified her as an easier to reach target than Alex.

It was what she would have done, after all.

Alex woke then all at once, his throat too tight to scream, but a paralyzing sound leaking out between his teeth. Zoey moved to him, soothing him as softly as she could, running her hands down his chest and moving into his field of vision.

It was a long moment before he actually saw her and focused on her, and once he did, it was several more moments before the tension in his body started to fade slowly down and out.

“Nightmare?” She asked quietly, once the muscles in his neck were no longer as tight as steel cables.

He nodded, and then his lips bent in a gesture she couldn’t quite call a grin, not with the ugly emotion that lay behind it. “Is it a nightmare if it happens in the afternoon?”

“Afternoonmare?” She asked, an eyebrow raised.

He made a sound that almost sounded like a laugh. If you strangled the laugh and bathed it in acid before you let it escape. “I almost forgot,” he said.

Even if she hadn’t had the same experience just moments before, she wouldn’t have needed him to clarify.

“What can I do to help?”

He gave a loose shrug, and then laughed. “Tie me down and fuck me until I scream?”

It was an odd moment. That cold layer of crackling distance hadn’t quite left his eyes, not really, and she wasn’t entirely sure what she should do, say, or feel. “I—Alex, I don’t know—”

“I understand,” he said, but too quickly, his eyes darting away from hers. “I get it. It’s a time of mourning, and I react strangely to things like that, you don’t need to—”

The only way to get him to shut up was to kiss him. She leaned forward, hard and fast, pressing her lips down onto his with as much firm pressure as she had. He groaned into her mouth, his hands coming to her hips and kneading her flesh hard enough to bruise.

“You want me to fuck you that hard?” She asked, catching his lower lip between her teeth and dragging it out just a little bit, just enough to make him whimper. “You want me to make you mine and make you beg?”

He gave her a long look, and that was what tipped her over the edge. She swore she could see the ice shifting and see the man she had fallen for so thoroughly under there trying to escape. “I want to feel,” he said. “I want to— feel everything.”

She sat up, the sheets falling away from her breasts. He came to kiss her, and she caught his shoulder with her hand, pressing hard at him so that he fell back away from her into the sheets. “Then go get me a cup of coffee,” she said. “I need to check my email and some messages. We’ll have to see if you’re worthy of my attention.” 

It felt like a daring thing to say. For all that he’d talked about liking her being a bit more controlling, not always being the one in control, giving him such a direct command felt like it was taking it a step too far.

But his eyes didn’t flare with anger. The opposite. Something seemed to lighten in his expression. Soften. She wanted to keep watching him, keep experiencing the moment with him, but the best move would be to pick up her phone and start reading through her email as if he was so completely irrelevant to her. She posed as artfully as she could manage without being utterly obvious, the sheet draped over her naked hips while her breasts rested on top of the covers, her head resting on her hand.

He made a growling sound from low in his throat, and she flicked her glance at him, one eyebrow raised. “I thought I told you to get me coffee,” she said, her voice as dismissive and uncaring as she could manage to make it.

He gave her a bow. An un-ironic, sincere looking bow. “Yes, mistress,” he said, and the word shot straight to her core, lighting her up and leaving her to burn. He walked out of the room, exactly like she’d told him to, and her fingers crept under the sheets as soon as he was gone. Her core was slick and wet, and she dipped into that heat, spread it around, and luxuriated in the sensation of her body sighing against the touch of her fingers.

Before Alex, she’d never touched herself just because. She’d thought of herself as sex positive and feminist, but she’d dealt with her own sexual desires as if they were a mere inconvenience. If she wasn’t in a relationship — and sometimes, even when she was – sex was just something to get out of the way. Not that she was just doing it for her partner, but it was utilitarian, a means to an end. Orgasm was a chemical release that her body sometimes craved. Not something to enjoy. Not something to relish.

Touching her body just because it was there, and it felt pleasant, not to push towards orgasm, was something both foreign and wonderful. She curved under her own touch, pushing her pussy a little more firmly into her own hand, feeling the soft surge of delight at sending these sensations through her own body.

All the boring magazine articles always talked about how a woman needed to know how to enjoy her own body in order to let anyone else enjoy it, but somehow, even that had become a thing that was done just to get off. She’d never taken the time to just explore, to just play.

Alex came back with the coffee after a few minutes. She’d kicked off the covers, and her right hand still played delicately between her lower lips, while her left had found her nipple and was teasing and pulling at it, experimenting between the rough touches that Alex favored whenever he took her breast into his mouth, and the lightest brush of skin over pebbled skin that made her back arch, and her mouth make a soundless little O. He watched her for a moment while she slowed her fingers, panting softly, pushing herself up to sitting even as her cunt pulsed with a kind of want she hadn’t experienced before. She took the mug from him. He’d made her coffee light and sweet, and it was delicious. Sweeter than she would have wanted it any other day, but that was all right. She’d show him later. Teach him.

“I want to tie you down,” she said, surprised at the conversational tone of her voice. “I want to play with your body like a toy.”

“All right,” he said without hesitation. “I have leather cuffs that fasten onto the headboard. Shall I get them?” She arched an eyebrow, and he whispered the word again, his mouth as sensual as if his lips were pressed up against her cleft sex. “Shall I get them, mistress?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can you tie yourself down?”

“You’ll have to do the last fastening,” he said, ducking into the closet. He didn’t have to go all the way into the play room apparently; she heard a drawer open in the closet, and whatever he was looking for seemed to be there.

“Do what you can,” she said. She stepped off the bed while he fastened the leather cuffs to the headboard, and then closed the snaps on one side. Her fingers stayed busy in her hot cunt while he did it.
Greedy today. Is this my way of coming back to life? Will he enjoy it? I hope he does. I hope he wants this, too
. He placed his free hand inside the cuff, and then glanced at her.

Zoey took a moment and then crawled forward on the bed, snapping the leather cuff in place around his wrist. She pulled on his hands for a moment, testing how firmly he was bound. He could probably pull free if he tried to, but otherwise, he was tightly held.

She leaned back on her heels and looked him over, debating how she wanted to go about exploring this man. He watched her with calm, neutral eyes. It was refreshing. Reassuring. Feeling his trust, feeling his confidence that she would take care of them both. She liked that.

She started with her fingertips after a little bit. She ran her hands down every inch of his skin, carefully exploring the lines of his pectorals, the soft curves of his abs, the divots that led her down his hips and towards his cock, resting languidly in its nest of pubic hair. She ran one fingertip over the soft flesh, watching his hips shift as she almost scraped him with a nail and then continued on, tracing over the cleft of his ass, and down the muscled lines of his legs.

When she came back to his cock, it was because she had an overwhelming desire to slip him into her mouth, to devour him. He was still semi-soft, and when she wrapped her lips around him, he was small and soft. She sucked hard at him, dragging her teeth over his most delicate skin, and he groaned again, his hips coming off the bed as his body begged to fuck her. He hardened, thickened, and the transition against the sensitive flesh of her tongue was a delight she hadn’t anticipated.

She crawled up his body, nestling the tip of him against her aching, empty core, and she grinned at him. “Talk to me,” she whispered. “Tell me all the dirty things you want.”

“I want what you want,” he said, his eyes locked on hers.

She slapped at his nipple, not hard, but with enough sting to make him bite his lip and shift. “Pretty answer,” she said, “Very pretty, and some day, that’s what I’ll want to hear you say, but it’ll be because you’re kneeling at my feet and there’s no other answer that’s allowed. Right now? Right now, I want to hear what you want.”

She’d never thought of herself as someone who needed to be in control, who even wanted that responsibility. She’d so often been passive in the bedroom — and in so many other spheres — but seeing him squirm under her gaze was so delightful. She could see the appeal. She could utterly understand it. “I want to watch you use me,” he said, his voice suddenly breathless and needy. God, she loved that, she loved the way he wanted her so much that he couldn’t breathe.

She knelt over him, taking the tip of him deep into her core, sliding delicately down until he was buried in her, and little electric shocks were sliding up and down her spine. And then a funny little idea occurred to her. “Bend your legs for me.”

His eyes were tight and unfocused. “What?”

She slapped at his knees to get his attention. “Bend your legs. Up. So I can lean back against them.”

He did it, making a vee with his torso and his thighs. She leaned back against his legs and braced her feet against the bed. “Oh, holy shit,” he said, his eyes slipping wide, and she had to laugh, she absolutely had to, watching his face go from easy pleasure to serious tension as she spread herself open for him. He could see everything from this angle, her pussy spread wide open by her thighs and his cock, the glistening slide of his body burying in her again and again, the glorious way she shivered as she slid her back up and down her legs.

“I want to touch you,” he whispered, his hands clenching into fists and his shoulders clenching as he strained against the cuffs. “Mistress, please. I have to touch you.”

She didn’t even slow down. “No,” she said. “You stay where you are. I’m busy.” She let her tone slide towards irritated. How dare he argue with her, she tried to say, and he bit his lips furiously against whatever words wanted to slide out of him next. “Is this what you want to see?” She let one hand slide down again, trapping her clit between her fingers and stroking it gently, tugging at it as his eyes locked down on the sensitive nub. It felt amazing to touch herself when she was so stretched; it was nothing at all like touching herself before.

“Zoey—” She slapped at his knee again, and he cried out this time, not in pain, but in frustration. “God—Mistress—” But whatever words he was going to speak were swallowed as he burst within her, his hips slamming up into her, completely outside of his control. He ran out of breath before his body was done making noise, and she watched him as he strained and struggled against bonds both physical and metaphysical.