by Emma Vikes
“Where is he?” I needed to know where Damien was because I refused to believe that he was the boy haunting me in my dreams.
Jasmine licked her lips and she was quiet for a moment. I didn’t press her, knowing that she was too lost in her own thoughts for the time being. The silence was deafening between the two of us as I sat in front of her, staring at my own hands, wondering if I had caused the deaths of ones I saw in my dreams.
It felt like forever until Jasmine finally spoke again. “Since our father died in an accident, I was the sole guardian left for my brother. I was tasked with raising him on my own. He was only nine when Dad died and we lost Mom when he was seven. To lose parents at such a tender and young age, he didn’t deserve it, Wes.”
Her voice sounded so far away, as if she was lost in the retelling of a story that she had desperately tried to forget. “I was scared of losing him, Wes. I couldn’t bear to lose another family member so I was strict with him. When he became a teen, I would let him go to parties as long as he allowed me or Paul to drive him to the party and pick him up.
“One night, there was a party he really wanted to go to but neither Paul nor I were available to give him a ride. I didn’t let him go. I told him that he had to stay in the house and he was so spiteful toward me the entire day.” Jasmine bit her quivering bottom lip, willing herself to continue. “I had the next-door neighbor make sure that Damien wouldn’t go out or escape. Mr. Heckles had a habit of sitting by his porch and it gave a straight view to the house. But he went to pee and Damien chose that moment to escape. He rushed his bike out of the garage and headed off to the party.”
She looked stoic when she turned to face me. “He never got there. The woods that they found you in, that’s where Paul and the other cops found his bike. But no Damien.” She closed her eyes and I watched as a tear slid down her face. “I haven’t seen my brother in a year, Wes. I feel like a mother who has lost her child but isn’t allowed to grieve because life doesn’t stop and it demands me to continue living.”
I moved closer to her and pulled her into a hug, letting her cry her heart out. It broke my heart to see her suffer in this way. I stroked her blonde hair, holding her as her body was racked with sobs. By the time that she had finally pulled herself together, I knew I needed to tell her what was bothering me, what my dreams were about and that Damien was almost always present.
“I think I’ve seen him before, Jasmine.”
My words made her do a double-take as she looked at me with a tearstained face. “What?”
I swallowed and I slowly let go of her, moving slightly to give us more room apart. “I keep having these dreams. Bad dreams. The one I just had earlier, it was Damien accusing me of killing teens. I think… I think whatever happened to me before, the reason why I got beaten up, I think it had something to do with Damien and what happened to him. I don’t have any memories of anything I have done, Jasmine, and that scares the living shit out of me.”
Jasmine stared at me and I watched as the realization slowly dawned on her. She sucked in a harsh breath and blinked, her eyebrows furrowing and her hand going to her chest, clutching it tight. She had every right to be afraid of me at this moment because neither of us knew what happened and how I was involved with Damien. I could’ve done something wrong; I could be the reason why he was kidnapped. Hell, for all we knew, I might’ve been the one who kidnapped him.
The world was suddenly spinning and I was losing focus of the room, the probable truth hitting me straight in the gut and leaving me in gut-wrenching pain. I felt Jasmine’s hand closing in on mine, tethering me back into the moment, into the reality and away from all the sick versions of truth that my mind kept suggesting. From my hand, she placed both of her hands on my face, cradling me and forcing me to look at her.
“I know you,” she whispered, her brown eyes staring at me with such fierce intensity, “and I believe that even if you don’t have any memories of what you’ve done, if you’re a good person, then you’re always going to be a good person, amnesia or not.”
I placed my hand on her face and pulled her closer to me until I kissed her. I pushed her gently down on the bed, removing the hoodie that she had thrown on herself when we rushed out of her house. My hands traced the curves of her body, my mouth pulling away from hers so I could leave heated kisses on her body. She wasn’t wearing any underwear; she was naked beneath me. She was all mine.
I kissed the insides of her arms and her thighs, wanting her to feel what she made me feel. The sense of security and comfort and trust that she surrounded me in, as if she created a bubble and trapped me in it, and I never wanted the bubble to pop. I wanted to surround her in it with me so we could be trapped together.
I’d never kissed her or fucked her this slow and sensual but I guess fuck wasn’t the right term. I wanted to make love with her right now. I wanted her to feel the billion and one emotions she made me feel. She didn’t treat me like I was a stranger. She welcomed me into her life and trusted me. Jasmine had faith in me, even when I was losing the faith in who I thought I was.
I kissed and sucked every part of her body. Not in the same rough way that I did the other night, but gently, lovingly. I spread her legs apart and stuck my tongue inside her pussy, listening to the sweet symphony of her moan. I grazed her clit with my teeth and she hissed in pleasure, the sensitive bud heightening the pleasure that she felt at that moment.
She was moaning and writhing with pleasure beneath me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been pleasuring her but by the time I entered her, the sweet bliss of pleasure made my eyes slide closed. My strokes were slow and measured and I wanted it to last for as long as I could. The sweet release was even better and by the time that I pulled out of her, Jasmine was in a daze from the way I had made her feel.
She switched our positions so she was straddling me. She lowered her position and grabbed my cock so she could suck it. Her teeth grazed my cock and I shivered in delight, tugging at her hair because I wanted to kiss her lips but she refused to move up until I came for her. When I did, I was surprised that she swallowed everything without gagging.
Jasmine slowly moved up and whispered against my ear, “I’ll ride you hard, baby.”
She slid my cock into her pussy and began to ride me slowly until she started gaining momentum. My hands flew to her waist, helping her move on top of me at the pace that she wanted to go. I pulled out of her and forced her onto her stomach, grabbing her ass and lifting it up in the air. I took her from behind, as roughly as I could until we came simultaneously.
Jasmine moved closer to me and rested her head against my arm, her eyes closed, as I stared at her. I knew at that moment that whoever I was in the life that I had forgotten, whatever kind of life I had led, I was willing to drop everything in a snap if it meant that I got to be with this woman who was fast asleep in my arms.
It was crazy how I’d only known her for such a short amount of time but I was willing to do anything for her; to protect her at all costs. We had never really discussed what we had going on between us. But for some reason, everything just fell into place between the two of us, and whatever it was, I wasn’t willing to risk it.
Chapter 11
Jasmine
When Wes fell asleep, I knew I had to contact Paul. I quietly slipped out of the room and headed to the lobby of the motel. My head was spinning. Wes knew Damien and believed he had something to do with his disappearance.
“Hi. By any chance, can I borrow your phone? I really need to make a call to a friend,” I said to the receptionist at the lobby. She eyed me for a moment as if contemplating whether or not she should let me borrow her phone until she finally did. I dialed Paul’s number immediately, having memorized it by heart since he was the only other important person to me in Norwynne aside from my brother.
He answered during the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Paul, it’s Jasmine.”
“Shit. Jasmine! Where have you been?” I could hear the worry and the pan
ic in his voice. “Tell me where you are, now, Jasmine!”
I inhaled for a moment, trying to build the confidence I needed to talk to my friend. “I’m at New Greenwich. Listen, Paul, I want you to meet me at the Target here. I need to talk to you. I have so many things that I need to talk to you about. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”
I wasn’t even sure if talking to Paul was the right decision.
Wes and I spent the day looking for reports of a missing adult here in New Greenwich and the towns nearby. There had been none, which dismayed him. And, frankly, me, as well.
There was a small part of me that was frightened about what Wes’ involvement with Damien’s disappearance was. Wes had almost total amnesia, yet he had a vague feeling that my brother was familiar to him. This fact was unnerving and I was a little afraid. The last thing I wanted was for the guy that I had been screwing with, the guy I had helped escape from people who wanted him dead, to be involved with the circumstances that ripped my brother away from me. My little brother; the only family I had left.
How had I suddenly found myself in this predicament, this nightmare? The two people who were the most important in my life were somehow involved in the same case.
And, yes, Wes was now important to me, too. In the few days that we had spent together, I had become completely drawn to Wes. I was feeling things I had never felt with any man before. I had been consumed by paralyzing fear when I thought Wes would be taken from me.
When I saw those two men looking for him, when I felt the cold adrenaline rush of having to escape when we were ambushed in my own home – thrice, I had thought that I was going to lose him and the intense fear and panic that washed over my body was almost crippling. I had to kept moving from instinct alone. The only thing important in those moments was to protect him.
When Wes told me that he remembered Damien, when the probability that he was behind his disappearance occurred to me, it felt like the whole world was closing in on me. As if life hadn’t been devastating enough to me, taking my parents and brother from me, life wanted to paint Wes in bad light, too. I couldn’t bear it. I refused to believe that he was involved. If he was, I refused to believe that the man whose arms I had been sleeping in at nights was a bad guy. A bad guy couldn’t caress me and make love to me the way Wes did.
Being with Wes made me sure that he was incapable of cruelty or crime. I was aware of how people knew how to manipulate others, but when I looked into Wes’ blue-green eyes, I knew that he was completely sincere. The way he with wanted to spend time with me, with the flash of emotion in his eyes every time he saw me after we’d been apart, was proof that he was a kind person.
“Hey,” he murmured and I turned to look at him. I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and contemplating my thoughts while he had been asleep beside me. He had turned to the side to look at me. “I look at you every morning and I think to myself, damn, she’s fucking beautiful.”
My heart soared, my mind flashing back to what happened between us last night after he confessed to me that he thought he might have been involved with Damien. I touched his face gingerly, wondering again at how someone could fall in love this fast and this hard, even though they had just met. Because that’s what had happened. I had fallen for him. I had told myself it was the amazing sex, the way he heated up my body instantly.
When I was being honest with myself, I knew I wasn’t this protective of Wes just because of the sex. People don’t endure harrowing near-death experiences and fight as hard as I had to protect him just for great sex. People don’t risk their career, and most definitely their life, for someone unless that someone had become embedded in their heart.
“No more nightmares?” I asked, tracing his jawline with my index finger. He shivered under my touch and I smirked, satisfied with how he reacted to my touch.
Wes shook his head. “No. You were beside me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You woke up screaming the other night, and I was right next to you.”
He grinned and then leaned closer, so close that his lips brushed against mine. “I didn’t get to make love to you before I fell asleep. I wasn’t that close to you.”
I pushed him away playfully. “So, we have to have sex so you can sleep peacefully?”
Wes nodded his head and then climbed on top of me, leaning down to kiss my body. I sighed in delight. This was the way I wanted to spend my mornings until the end of my time.
But the end of my time was dangling so close to my face lately. If I didn’t do something, if Wes and I simply continued to run away every time we were at the edge of death’s hands, we would constantly be on the run. I didn’t want to run forever, always half afraid, feeling like we had to work hard to steal these moments of pleasure. Because time would eventually steal it from us.
Wes suddenly got up and grabbed a towel from the bathroom. He came back to the bed and spread my legs apart. My eyes widened from the excitement that flooded through me. We had never done anything like this before and the anticipation flooded through my every fiber when I thought about what he going to do me.
Wes stuck his finger inside my pussy, his finger covered by the towel, and the rough texture felt so foreign inside of my body.
I gasped in delight at the new sensation as Wes began to move his hand roughly against me. Then he would pause, or do it excruciatingly slow. “Wes, god, please, Wes. Do it faster.”
He smirked, teasing me even more by pulling his hand out and positioning himself with his dick a few inches above me. I tried to lift my hips up to reach his cock, to feel the slightest touch of his skin but he had another idea in his head.
“I want to have you from behind, Jasmine.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. He had me from behind before. But I quickly rolled over, kneeling on all fours. I gasped when I suddenly felt his hot tongue against my butt crack and my eyes widened, realizing what he planned to do. He stuck two fingers inside my butthole, widening me as I became wet with my own juices.
When he knew I was ready, he put his dick at the entrance and I closed my eyes in pleasure. He moved slowly inside me, so slowly. My hands clenched the sheets and I told him, “Faster, Wes, please. Harder and faster, take me harder!”
Wes didn’t need to be told twice. He gripped my waist tightly and thrust into me roughly. It felt as if he could’ve torn my butt apart, but it also felt amazing. Different. I didn’t want it to end.
But then he pulled out of me and pushed me onto my back. He lifted my leg over his shoulder and slammed himself inside of me. I yelled out in pleasure, he felt so wonderful, turning me into a hot, wet mess.
I wanted to pleasure him my way so I found the strength to flip us so that I could ride him. I rode him hard, getting faster, loving him with as much passion as he fucked me until we both reached our climax.
We were spent. Wes pulled out of me and I rolled to my back, staring at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath. I felt him shift his position and when I turned my head, he was on his side and looking at me. “Not a bad way to exercise first thing in the morning.”
I laughed and hit him on the chest before gathering the blanket to cover my body. “I need a shower.”
“Want me to join?”
I did. I wanted a repeat of what just happened between the two of us. But I was needed elsewhere.
The hospital had probably been calling me to see why I suddenly went AWOL yesterday. I had left my phone back at the house and if anyone went there, they would realize that I wasn’t there. All I had on me was my wallet with enough money to pay for a few days in the motel, food, and a few clothes for the both of us. I didn’t want to risk withdrawing money in case that the men looking for Wes found out who I was and tried to track me down.
Slowly, I shook my head at him and grabbed the clothes I wore yesterday. “No. I’ll be quick. I need to be somewhere.”
Wes looked at me questioningly. “Where?”
I didn’t want to tell him about my meeting with Paul. The l
ast thing I needed was Wes worrying if I was going to turn him in. I grabbed a clean towel and said, “Just wanna know what’s going on back home and if I can figure out our financial situation.”
Wes sat up on the bed. “Don’t you want me to come? I can’t let you shoulder everything, Jasmine. I’ve already dragged you into the mess I’m in and that’s not fair to you.”
The fact that he was taking all the blame warmed my heart. He sounded so sincere and worried about what we were facing that I had to walk back to the bed and put my hand on his face. I forced him to look me in the eyes and said, “This was my decision too, Wes. I wanted to save you from the hospital, from the diner, and from my house. I brought you into this motel. I wanted to be in this mess so, please, let me have the morning to myself. I promise I’ll be back soon.”
Confusion flashed in his eyes. I understood why he didn’t want me to go. The man who ambushed us at home saw me and knew what I looked like. Being alone meant being in danger. But I didn’t know how Paul was going to respond when I told him what Wes told me last night. The probability of Paul cuffing him scared the shit out of me.
Wes nodded his head slowly and after a slow, sensual kiss, I jumped in for a quick shower and headed over to meet Paul in Target. I had a cap on and kept my head low, being careful not to be seen. I told Paul in the message that I sent him yesterday that I’d meet him at the women’s wear in Target. I could only hope he was there.
The light tap on my shoulder made me jump and turn around quickly. “You look like a fugitive on the run.”
In a way I was. “Hey, Paul.”
He pulled me into a fierce hug and kissed the top of my head. Even though things hadn’t work out romantically between Paul and myself, the fierce protectiveness and loving friendship remained.
