Winner Takes All (A Full Length Erotic Romance Novel) (9 page)

“Fuck!” she screamed. Her body flushed hot.

Damien grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and back and back. His
hands fell around her throat, gripped it. He slammed his cock into her,
tirelessly, endlessly as his hands tightened around her neck. Sasha gasped from
the pleasure, from the sensation of his strong hands at her slender throat, her
head swam, her body lifted high, floated above everything, ecstasy stabbed her.
Her pussy squeezed him, throbbed for him, wicked sensation moving through her
like a dream.

Behind her, Damien grunted as he fucked her. She felt her body
tightening. More and more. His hand tightened around her throat even more as
the orgasm rushed to meet her. Fire and ice and sensation and bliss beyond
anything she’d ever felt.

“Come for me, Sasha.” He yanked the clothes pins from her nipples.

She screamed, tumbling off the precipice, her world aflame, her eyes
blind. There was only sensation, the rush of blood into her nipples, his thick
cock slamming into her, the burn in her entrapped wrists, the ecstasy breaking
her apart. In some dim part of her, she was aware of Damien’s body exploding
inside of hers, the hot jet of his completion inside her pussy as he gasped her
name over and over again.

They were still for a long time. The only movement their chests heaving
from their hectic breaths. Damien was behind her, his softening cock still in
her pussy, her belted hands still trapped behind her. Then, he withdrew from
her body, unbuckled the belt trapping her wrists. She heard the sound of a
zipper, then a belt being buckled. He lifted her into his arms.

Damien took her to the couch. He lay down on the leather and drew her
down on top him. She snuggled into his chest, her fingers curling into the polo
shirt that smelled of his unique masculine scent, the outdoors and his sweat.
She rested against him enjoying the uncomplicated pleasure of his touch. The
utter comfort of her naked body on top of his clothed one. His heart beating
swiftly beneath her ear. If only things could stay like this forever.

But she knew they couldn’t. That wasn’t the world she lived in now.
That world was filled with threats and near poverty and the heavy weight of her
brother looming with a knife waiting for an excuse to slash her life to bits.
The tears Sasha had been fighting all day dripped from her eyes, rolled down
her face. Then she was trembling.

“Sasha?” His hand touched her cheek. He gasped and sat up, cradling her
against him. “Was that too much? Did I hurt you?”

She cried even harder at the note of concern in his voice, the
gentleness of his arms around her.

“No, no. It wasn’t that. What we did was perfect.” Her voice wobbled as
her fingers clutched at his shirt. His heart beat strong and steady under her
hand.

“Then what’s wrong?” he asked. “You can tell me anything.” His eyes met
hers, dark and full of concern.

The entire filthy confession of her predicament rested on the tip of
her tongue. If he asked her one more time what was wrong, she would just say
the words. She would tell him everything.

“Whatever is going on with you, I’ll take care of it,” he said.

She stiffened. Although she loved the way he took control of her during
sex, she would never allow him the same power outside the bedroom. She didn’t
want him to think she was weak and needed taking care of.

“I’m really okay.” She took a deep breath. “It’s just hormones, I
guess.” She hurriedly wiped her face, sat up. “I should go.”

For a moment, his hands tightened around her. Then, slowly,
reluctantly, he released her. Sasha stood up and started pulling on her
clothes. Damien picked up her bag for her, held it in his hand as she ran her
fingers through her hair, and shook the dark locks back over her shoulders.

Damien unlocked the door to his study. They walked in silence through
the house and out to the parking lot where she left her car. She took her bag
from him with a soft word of thanks.

“I’ll see you later,” she said as she climbed into her car.

She started the engine, already feeling the loneliness and despair tug
at her. She desperately wanted to stay with him, be sheltered in the warmth of
his arms, in his strength. But she knew that wasn’t an option. Her bottom lip
trembled. She savagely bit down on it, put the car in gear and drove away.

Sasha felt Damien’s eyes on her but never once looked back.

Sasha brought in the last of the boxes into her new apartment, dropping
it near the door before heading back out to the grass to take her car and move
it to the parking lot. It was raining and dark. The perfect expression of her
mood.

A steady drizzle patted her head and face with cold beads of moisture.
The rain dripped into her shirt, soaking her with each trip she took from her
car to the new apartment. The short walkway was cracked and old. A few times,
she’d stumbled and almost fallen from a haphazardly raised piece of concrete or
vine growing up through the ancient foundation. Sasha was damn lucky she hadn’t
twisted her ankle and gone sprawling in the grass.

She parked the car in the cramped parking lot, watching her new
neighbors as she sat behind the wheel after turning off the engine. A couple of
women lay stretched out on a balcony in their underwear, smoking cigarettes and
staring out into the rain. A man dashed through the parking lot with a folded
newspaper held over his head. As he ran, his white t-shirt flapped up,
revealing the handle of a pistol tucked in his waistband. A clothesline hung
with wet and limp t-shirts, dresses, and baby onesies was strung between two
balconies. The sound of heavy, pounding bass jolted out into the dark afternoon,
a counterpoint to her miserably beating heart. This neighborhood was too much
like the one she and James had grown up in with their parents. Sasha wiped
raindrops from her face, tucked her hair behind her ear.

Taking a deep breath, she heaved herself from the car, her body feeling
heavy and unwieldy. Paying little attention to the rain that started to come
down harder, she trudged up from the parking lot. At the door to her apartment,
a smaller place than she’d had before and in a rougher part of town than she
would have liked, she wiped her feet on the welcome mat.

The apartment and the neighborhood were both admittedly awful. But it
was all she had been able to afford after getting evicted from her studio
apartment for nonpayment of rent. Even now, the humiliation of it stung her
cheeks. The surprise on the office woman’s face when she’d seen that after five
years of an impeccable rental history, Sasha had stopped paying the rent.

The woman, pretty and brown-skinned with kind eyes, had asked if she
could do anything for Sasha, if there was anything that she could set in motion
to help her keep her apartment. But Sasha hadn’t been able to think of
anything. She just didn’t have the money. She pulled good salary at a really
great job. There was no assistance that she could qualify for. Nothing that
could be done for her.

In the end, the woman had given Sasha the names of several cheaper
apartments where she could stay and that would overlook her current eviction.
She had thanked the woman, fighting tears of gratitude that a stranger had gone
out of her way to help while it was her own brother who had brought her to such
a low point in her life.

Of the half dozen apartments the woman had suggested, Sasha had only
been able to afford one of them after taking out the amount of money her
brother demanded of her every month. The six thousand dollars he leeched from
her was barely keeping him afloat, if what he said to her on the phone was to
be believed. She’d lived on less than half that amount every month herself,
leaving the rest of her salary in savings. But now, she had no savings. She
barely had any of her salary left after James was done with her.

Sasha wiped feet on the indoor mat, slipped off her shoes and left them
near the door. She stared around her new place. The boxes in haphazard piles on
the floor. The walls with their cracked plaster and peeling paint. The
water-stained roof and overhead light that would not come on.

It was nearly three in the afternoon, but it felt like the dead of
night. Dark clouds hovered in the sky, thick with rain and misery. Occasional
flashes of lightning burned across the sky while thunder rumbled in the
distance. Sasha turned on the floor lamp and huddled on the couch over her
boxes, searching through her belongings for valuables she could sell. Already,
she’d put aside her diamond earrings, the small flat-screen television, a
couple of gold rings she bought years ago but had barely worn.

She looked through the boxes, in theory unpacking her meager belongings
into what had turned out to be the smallest and dingiest apartment she’d ever
lived in. But she had done very little unpacking and instead was salvaging as
many valuables from the wreckage of her life as possible. Aside from that
afternoon when she’d burst into tears on top of Damien, Sasha had not cried.
She had too much pride. She refused to give her brother the satisfaction of her
tears.

But tears weren’t the only sign of a life broken down into nothing. She
knew that now. Nearly all her joy had been robbed from her. She couldn’t afford
to have a single meal outside her own kitchen which severely narrowed her
opportunities for socializing. When her co-workers asked her out for drinks or
for lunch, she had no choice but to decline. The more she put them off, the
more they stepped away from her until even her work relationship with them was
strained. Sasha had never felt so alone and bereft in her life. So at the mercy
of someone else. Her savings were at zero and her checking account often ran in
the red. She lived from paycheck to paycheck to survive to be miserable another
day.

From the couch, she sighed. The rain sounded against the roof, tapped
on the window panes. Echoed the misery in her heart. She looked at the small
pile of jewelry in the paper bag on the coffee table, at the little television
she had no choice but to sell. It was time to go to the pawn shop and see what
she could get for these things. There was no use in putting it off any longer.

She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder, wrapped the TV
and its cords in a plastic bag, picked up the pile of bills, most of them
overdue, from the counter and folded them, put them in her purse. With the
bills in her purse, the little bag felt almost unbearably heavy, its emotional
weight dragging her toward the floor. She’d never been late on a bill before
her brother came back into her life. Had never been evicted. Had never had to
live so meagerly. At least not since leaving her parents’ home that had been a
horror of cold baloney sandwiches and threadbare clothes since all their money
went toward buying alcohol. 

Sasha grabbed the plastic covered television, the bag of jewelry, and
then left the apartment. She stepped out into the rain and trudged through the
grass and mud toward her car. She had things to take care of. There was no one
else in the world to help her. She had to do everything herself.

The keys made an empty, lonely sound as Sasha threw them on the
bookshelf by the front door. She closed the door behind her, sat down on the
couch with a sigh to pull off her riding boots.

She wriggled her toes in the threadbare socks, noticing for the first
time the hole in her favorite pair of SpongeBob SquarePants socks. Her big toe
poked out of the hole, another depressing development in a long litany of
depressing developments. Even my misery had become boring, she thought with a
wry smile.

A knock rattled her front door. Sasha looked toward it, not expecting
anyone at all. No one knew she lived here, no one knew she had moved, although
she wouldn’t put it past her brother to have hunted for her and followed her to
the last place she wanted anyone to see her.

She stiffened, still sitting on the couch and staring at the door.
Whoever it was knocked again, louder this time.

“Sasha, open the door. I know you’re in there.”

Damien?

Sasha shot to her feet in surprise and darted to the door. She opened
it to see her lover standing on the welcome mat, his hair tousled, a worried
look on his face. She’d seen him earlier at the stables where they’d talked
about Heavy Impact and the other proven winners at the stables. She thought
they’d agreed to see each other the next morning. Humiliation at her
impoverished surroundings colored her cheeks. She gripped the doorknob,
refusing to allow him in.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, cursing the tremor in her voice.
“How did you know where to find me?”

“Find you? I didn’t realize you were trying not to be found.” He
brushed her hand aside and pushed his way into the apartment, looking around in
shock.

She flushed, embarrassed at the shabby apartment, the mess of boxes and
clothes that she hadn’t bothered to put away since moving in a few days before.
Her shame made her lash out in anger.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded again. “Did you follow
me?”

“Of course I followed you.” He shrugged as if that was the most normal
thing in the world to do. “I went to your old apartment to invite you out for
drinks but the woman at the rental office told me you had been evicted. She’s
worried for you, by the way. She thinks you might be into something you can’t
get out of on your own.” His gaze swept around the apartment again. She could
almost see his lips curling up in distaste. Damien’s eyes met hers again. “When
you didn’t mention having to move into a new place the last time we were
together, when you acted like nothing had changed in your life, I figured the
best way to find out what was going on with you was to follow you after work.
So here I am.”