by Riley Ashby
“Are you hungry?” she asked, feigning nonchalance as she towel-dried her hair in the mirror.
“No,” I answered honestly, and I won a small smile.
“Too bad.”
In the freezer was enough meat to feed an army, and combined with the pasta in the pantry, it made for a simple but filling meal. She forced me to clean my plate, threatening to spoon-feed me if I didn’t finish it on my own. When my eyelids started to droop, she stood and dragged me into the bedroom. The dirty plates sat on the table with no one to clean up after us for once. I stood dead on my feet while she pulled back the covers, then I allowed myself to be placed on the bed. She put me on the right side, opposite of where I usually slept, so that my injured hand was on the edge. Then, with no trace of hesitation in her movements, she slipped under the covers next to me. She put her head on my shoulder, and my good hand wrapped around her. She hitched a leg over mine and threw one arm across my chest.
Wrapped in the warmth and comfort of blankets and this woman, far from the reach of those who wanted to hurt me, I drifted into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, she was gone.
Madeline
I roused from sleep noiselessly, still wrapped around Meyer. He had rolled over during the night and had his other arm around me now, trapping me against his chest. His heart beat against my ear.
I skated my fingers across the bruise on his arm, light enough not to cause him any additional pain. Still, he shifted. His forehead wrinkled, eyebrows meeting above his nose. I ran the tip of my finger down his nose and across his lips, and he relaxed. A little sigh slipped past his lips as I extricated myself and went into the main room.
In the kitchen, I found a glass and filled it from the tap, draining it twice. I dropped the glass into the sink, grimacing as it clattered loudly but resisting the urge to smash it.
My mother had hidden the truth about her past for years. I never knew why she hated Schaf Industries so much as they became more visible in the media along with the increasing violence in the Middle East, but she used it as a learning example. She opened my eyes to the dangers that lurked in our own country from men who would fund war simply because it lined their own pocketbooks and didn’t give a damn about the lives it cost. Instead of scaring me, it drove my passion. I set about solving the problems caused by men like Meyer and Conrad Schaf, determined to help the refugees affected by the violence they couldn’t escape or the sex trafficking they turned to as a means of escape.
“Never apologize for doing what you had to do in order to survive,” I told groups of survivors at galas and fundraisers focused on helping more women like them. Each individual had suffered enough trauma for a hundred lifetimes, but we told them to focus on what lay ahead—not what they left behind.
My mother, though, had left behind a little boy. And while she knew what she had done had been less than ideal, she never could have fathomed the betrayal he felt and the way it had twisted and grown inside him to create the monster I met a few short weeks ago.
The rational part of my brain, the one that insisted I not fault her for this, was fighting a losing battle against my heart. I had in front of me a victim that she had failed to help, and I wanted to know why. Why hadn’t she gone to the police? Surely, she’d been reported missing. She was below the age of consent. And the abuse that she and Meyer suffered would have been evident to anyone taking more than a moment to look. But instead of going for help, she’d picked up with my father and run across the country.
Was it possible that my mother was as much at fault for Meyer’s suffering as his father was?
Floorboards creaked, the only warning I had, and I turned around only to find myself trapped against the sink, Meyer’s damaged hands on my cheeks and his lips on my lips.
“I thought you’d gone,” he breathed.
I tried to reply, but he consumed me completely. My hands snaked around his neck, holding him back from destroying me. I had seen him come apart yesterday. Today, it felt like my turn.
He finally pulled back, looking at me quizzically.
“What’s wrong?”
I started, surprised that he picked up on my distress when he was the one in so much worse shape.
“I don’t want to burden you with anything else.”
His lips, swollen from pressing so deeply against mine, curled into a cruel sneer.
“Stop fucking doing that.”
Pushing back from the countertop, he walked to a window and threw it open. He leaned out into the winter air, trying to equalize his temperature. His breath didn’t even fog.
“I’m not a crippled baby animal, Madeline. I’ve made it this far. I can go another thirty years without your pity or anyone else’s.”
I crossed the room to him in two steps, grabbing his arm and turning him to face me. I fisted the material of his shirt at his neck, yanking his face down to mine again.
I bit his lip and spoke, not letting go. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
He wrapped me up again, uninjured hand in my hair, holding me in place as he pushed his tongue past my lips and traced the roof of my mouth as he had weeks ago in front of the entire world; the first night I let myself feel something besides hate and fear. I groaned, leaning into him. He bent me backward with the force of his kiss. My palm flattened against his chest, feeling for the ridges of his muscles beneath his shirt. I contemplated ripping it open at the collar.
When he broke away suddenly, I groaned again in frustration.
“You’re killing me,” I complained, my voice deeper than usual.
“Now you know how I’ve felt the last few weeks.” He pressed his forehead against mine, staring into my eyes. “Tell me what’s going on. I broke down in front of you yesterday. Let me show you I can be a decent person.”
He briefly nuzzled my neck, then stepped back, pulling me to the couch. He sat nearer to the window and wrapped me up against him, pulling a blanket around us to shield me from the air even if he didn’t have any warmth to give me.
I danced my fingers along his palm. “How is your pain?”
“Manageable. What’s bothering you?”
Still, I hesitated. We had been on the verge of throwing blows yesterday, and now he wanted me to open up to him.
A lot had happened between those two things, though.
“Is this my mother’s fault?”
He wove his fingers through mine and squeezed me back against his chest.
“I wanted it to be. I really did.” He pressed his lips against the crown of my head. “I certainly blamed her for long enough. But no, it’s not her fault.”
“I just can’t help feeling like she should have tried harder to save you.”
“She tried her hardest. Believe me.” His skin seemed to grow warmer the longer I pressed against him. “There were so many adults who could have helped me throughout the years, and none of them managed it. Most of them didn’t even try, to be honest. It wasn’t fair to ask a teenage slave to try to secret me away with her. She barely escaped with her life.”
We were quiet for a while as he combed out the tangles in my hair.
“What do you remember about her?”
A pair of birds called to each other outside the window. The sounds of morning traffic drifted from the street.
“I was very young, obviously, but I latched onto her. Conrad realized he could use me against her, but I was too young to understand that. I just knew she was the closest thing I had to a mother.” I twisted to look at him, and his eyes were glassy as he stared into nothing. “She called me her little lamb. Our last name is German—that’s what it means.” He looked at me, leaning down to kiss me quickly. “You’re my Sheppard.”
I smiled as he kissed me deeper, tongue tracing the curve of my lips.
“So corny.”
“You love it.”
I turned in place to face him, spreading my legs across his lap and my fingers on his chest. “Maybe just a little.”
&nb
sp; His fingers traced up and down my spine, slowing when he realized I wasn’t wearing a bra. He moved his hands to my front, and his breath caught as he grazed his fingers over my firm nipples.
“I love this,” he said and dropped his hands below the hem of my T-shirt. He pulled away from me, and I leaned forward, pouting, but he quickly lifted the shirt up and over my head. I gasped, covering myself against the cold air. He tugged my hands away from where I covered myself, running his fingertips over my peaked nipples. “I dream about you like this,” he murmured, arching his neck down to run his lips over my skin. My head fell back as a shiver that started from my core ran the length of my body, stretching to the crown of my head and the tips of my toes.
“Why do you want me?”
He sucked on my collarbone before responding. “I used to stare at pictures of you. Conrad made me track your movements, your grades, everything. I know the names of every boy you ever went home with and had to hold myself back from flying out to the university and murdering them for daring to touch you.”
Knowing he’d been following me around for so many years should have frightened me, but instead, it felt like the thread pulling us together had cinched even tighter. I pushed him back gently onto the couch, letting my breasts fall against his face so he could lick my nipples.
“Why didn’t you come to me before now?”
“So you could hate me even more when I destroyed your entire world? No thanks.” His hands at my back held me steady as he sat up and switched our positions. He kissed down between my breasts to my stomach until he got to my shorts. “You never would have given me the time of day.”
“I might have, if you did this to me.” A shuddering sigh escaped me as he tugged off my shorts and kissed between my thighs, then back up my body until he was covering me once more. “I love it. I love—”
His breath caught in his throat as he sat up and pushed his lips against mine, cutting off the last word before I could say it. Who could blame him for not wanting to hear it? I couldn’t even fathom what I was hinting at, just that I knew it was true. I’d deal with his reaction later because judging by the way he ground his hips even harder against me, he wasn’t running scared. He held me down harder, pressing against me as if he was afraid I’d slip away and evaporate like dew in the morning light. When he pulled away again, I let him go. He tugged his shirt over his head before standing to remove his pants. I couldn’t ignore the shaking in his right arm or the bruise that stretched across his entire bicep, but when he fell on me again, it was with all the vigor and intensity that he’d shown the night he saved my life.
“Sit up,” I said, pushing on his chest and kneeling beside the couch. “I have a favor to repay.”
“That wasn’t a favor,” he insisted, but he settled back onto the couch and spread his legs wide all the same, giving me plenty of room to slide between them. I hadn’t gotten a chance to look too closely at him before, but now, I wanted to get as close as I could. It felt ridiculous, but I pressed my cheek against it and closed my eyes. He was so much warmer here than anywhere else on his body.
“This is perfect,” I whispered, then dragged my tongue from his base all the way to the tip. He twitched and gasped, then seized himself with one large hand and pointed his tip directly at me.
“Suck it. Now,” he commanded, and I flicked my eyes up to his.
“So demanding,” I whispered as I leaned in and wrapped my lips around the head. He groaned and let his head drop back, and I slid my lips down to swallow him whole.
“Fuck, your mouth is warm.” Fingers wound through my hair and pushed me deeper, letting up when I started to gag. He only gave me a moment to catch my breath before pushing my head down again, demanding I take him as deep as my throat would allow. I grabbed his balls in retaliation, and he let his hand drop from my head with a curse.
“I dream about this too. I’ve probably come every night in my sleep since I brought you home.”
His length pulsed and cum leaked onto my tongue. I sat up briefly to swallow, but before he could force me back down, I was on him again. I wanted more of that.
“That’s why I was always awake before you. I had to clean up as if I was a teenager having wet dreams and hiding it from the housekeeper. In my mind, I’ve had you like this a hundred times.”
My fingers ran up and down his thighs, feeling the tight muscles of his legs clench every time I dipped my head. With as much of him in my mouth as I could manage, my tongue flitted out to lick his balls as I began to knead them again. His cologne might have been whiskey and cedar, but here, he was all man, all musk and inimitable Meyer. His hands were in my hair again, gently massaging the sides of my head as I sucked him. Even now, he paid attention to the bruise at the back of my head where his sister had tried to kill me not twenty-four hours prior. I reached behind him to grab at his back, jamming him farther down my throat, gagging until I couldn’t breathe.
“I didn’t think anything would be better than your pussy, Maddie, but that little mouth of yours is giving it a run for its money. I might never let you get off your knees.”
I hummed in response, earning another curse, and then he was grabbing me by my arms and pulling me to my feet, pushing me over the arm of the couch before kicking my legs out wide.
“But then, I wouldn’t get to enjoy this beautiful sight, either.” He ran his hands along my bare ass, alternating his soft palm and the scratchy gauze, spreading me wide to take in the entirety of me. “You’ve got a beautiful asshole, too. I’m definitely going to have to get in there someday.” His fingers found my clit, causing me to fall forward farther over the couch.
“That’s it, Meyer. You work me so good.”
“What did I tell you, Maddie? It’s because I know you. Now give me a nice little orgasm before we fuck. Let me watch you come from behind.”
It didn’t take me long, not with his filthy words and other hand in my hair, pulling me back to kiss me while he flicked my sensitive bundle of nerves as if it had offended him. He was there to kiss me as I cried out, and then his hand hooked underneath my hips, lifting me up to meet him. His cock pushed at my entrance, swirling in the wetness gushing out of me and dripping down my legs while he seemed completely unaffected. Unaffected, except for his hardness slamming into me, thrusting me forward, and his fingernails digging into my hips as he jammed me back against him.
“Fuck yes,” he grunted, thrusting his hips and pulling me against him in equal time. I couldn’t do anything but moan and hang on, but the angle was such that I was coming again before long. He just kept fucking me through it. “I love the way you pulse around me when you come,” he grunted. “Sucking me deeper inside as if you can’t get enough.”
“I can’t,” I admitted. “I want it all the time.” He thought he was obsessed? I was the one who’d kissed him, again and again, despite repeated vows to oppose him at every turn. “It has to be you.”
“You bet your ass it does.” He flipped me around and set me on the edge of the couch, pushing into me again, only now we were face to face. His hair fell in front of his face, and I wanted to move it away and get lost in his blue eyes once more, but I had to clutch him to keep from falling backward. There was no doubt I would be sore the next day—hell, probably in the next few hours—from the unrelenting way he slammed into me. But despite the ache, my head began to fall back as more pleasure coursed through me. He gasped and held me tighter with one hand, putting the other between us so he could assault my clit once more.
“Give me another one. I need it, Maddie. I need your cum on me while I’m inside you. Are you going to give it to me?”
“Yes,” I gasped. He changed direction. “I’ll give you anything.”
“Then give me this,” he said, “right now.”
His fingers pinched me.
And I exploded.
I lost all semblance of control over my body, collapsing onto his chest as he lifted me off the couch to thrust into me harder. I could do nothing but
rely on him to support me, and I buried my face in his neck so I could surrender to the sensation. My orgasm resurged with the pulsing of his cock inside me. I was barely aware of the sound he was making and the shaking of his arms as I clung to him tighter. Anything to make this last longer. I grabbed his hair, licked the sweat from his neck, and bit his shoulder so hard I tasted his blood. But I didn’t care because all he did was hold me tighter as he fell to his knees and then tumbled to the side, laying me on the ground but never letting go. One arm stretched behind my head to support me, and I let my legs drop away from his waist so he could pull out. He kissed my chest, the bruise he’d left the night before, and pressed his forehead against my sternum.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
His hand pressed flat against my spine. “You know.”
I rested my lips against his crown, inhaling every bit of him that I could, wishing for all the world that what he’d promised before could be true.
It could be like this all the time.
Only if we stayed right here forever.
“Yeah,” I whispered, and he sighed with such relief that my heart shattered into one thousand jagged edges, so broken I knew it would never come together again. “I do.”
Meyer
In the aftermath, we laid tangled together on the floor while the sun rose outside. I put my fingers on her pulse point just as I had the night that the lake almost took her, feeling for that heartbeat to ensure she was still breathing even though I could feel the rise and fall of her chest. She pressed her lips against my rib cage, right over my own heart, and I felt it skip a beat. I smoothed back sweat-dampened hair from her face.
“I’m going to make you elotes,” she said.
“What the hell are elotes?”
“Grilled Mexican street corn. Slathered in cheese. Mom used to make them in the summer. I haven’t had any since I moved to New York.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That can’t be good for you.”
