Death Before Dawn

by Amelia Hutchins

  Yeah, so that happened.

  He found me with my top askew, breasts exposed, head tilted, watching porn. My mouth was doing a wonderful ‘fish out of water’ impression, and I had nothing. I couldn’t very well say that it wasn’t what it looked like, because it was exactly what it looked like. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his eyes slowly caressed their way up my body and finally focused on mine.

  He’d said days, hadn’t he? It hadn’t been days.

  I unlocked my gaze from his, leaned over, grabbed the wine, and drank deeply. Hadn’t I been planning to seduce him anyway? I had been. Might as well make the most out of this disaster, right?

  “Wine?” I choked out hoarsely. My voice came out throaty, more seductive than I’d planned for it to. He didn’t speak, but he sat on the couch next to me, closer than I’d thought he would, and his leg brushed against mine. It was enough to make the nerves in my body strain, and the butterflies took flight. I leaned over again, feeling the weight of his stare as I poured him a glass of wine. I leaned back and extended my hand to offer the wine to him. He took it, and our fingers brushed against each other, sending sparks through my system.

  The couple on the screen was reaching the climax of the scene and the room was filled with the sounds of her screams and moans, mixed with the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

  I was watching porn with my abductor…so, yeah, that happened too…

  “Emma,” he started, as I chewed my lip, and after a brief hesitation, I turned to look at him.

  “I still don’t know your name,” I blurted out, and he paused, narrowing his eyes at me before he turned back to the movie and polished off his glass, then held it out for more. I leaned over without thinking, and my top gave way, exposing my breast once again. His eyes left the screen, locked onto my puckered nipple, and he swallowed so hard it was audible. “It was supposed to be Harry Potter,” I blurted again. “The top won’t stay on.”

  “It’s on backwards,” he rasped, and I blushed. “The shirt, it’s on backwards.”

  “Of course it is,” I whispered.

  “Take it off,” he murmured, and my eyes locked with his.

  “What?” I squeaked. That sealed it. I was the worst seductress in the history of all mankind.

  “I’ll show you how it is supposed to go on if you take it off,” he replied.

  Oh boy.

  I slowly lifted the top and sat there, trembling as a new couple started up on the screen. I turned to my abductor and wasn’t prepared for the heat in his gaze, or the fire that ignited as he pushed me flat on the sofa, spilling the wine I held onto the floor. I swallowed, noticing his chest was magnificent. He watched me, his eyes slowly roaming over my flesh. His fingers touched me, and I closed my eyes.

  I could do this. It was my plan, right? Seduce him, get into his good graces, get him to lower his guard, and I’d be gone before he even realized it. I opened my eyes as I felt the tremble of his fingers as he slowly ran the tips over the globes of my breasts.

  “So fucking soft,” he murmured, his mouth lowering until it hovered over the heated tip, and his tongue darted out, tasting my nipple. I groaned as pleasure swept through me, as blisteringly hot as molten lava. He sucked one tip between his teeth, nipping at one then the other. His hands trembled as they continued to trace soft circles upon my naked flesh. I was so absorbed by his mouth and the effect it was having on me, that I hadn’t even realized his other hand had dipped into the lounge pants I wore.

  His fingers found my wet flesh and stroked it slowly, leisurely. I arched my back, spreading my legs for his smoldering touch. His finger pushed inside me, and I cried out; his mouth captured mine, smothering the cries that continued even after his tongue found mine.

  It wasn’t like the lightning of Jaeden’s touch, it was so much more. I felt him to my soul. As if he held the key to it, and was slowly opening it to test its depths. His kiss was gentle, and yet there was an urgency to it that drove me wild. Like if he didn’t continue, he’d wither and die. My lungs burned, and I didn’t care. Another finger pushed inside and I felt myself teetering on the edge of a cliff. His thumb rubbed against my clitoris, and when his mouth pulled away, his eyes locked with mine as he turned his head to get a better view of my messed-up hair, my heavy-lidded stare.

  He moved his free hand and cupped my face as his thumb trailed over the edge of my bottom lip. He only did it for a moment before he yanked the lounge pants off, as if they were made of some cheap, flimsy fabric, revealing the silk panties I wore. His head lowered until his mouth was close to my stomach, his tongue slowly darting out to taste my skin before he reached his hand out and brought his wine glass over to dribble just enough into my navel to lick it out.

  I shivered as a million sensations hit me at once. My legs were parted as his fingers continued to work my pussy over until I danced on the edge of climax, and he held me prisoner there. The coolness of the wine on my heated flesh sent tiny bumps racing over my skin as he continued to kiss his way down my body until his hot breath fanned my wetness.

  Was I really going to go through with this? Oh boy…

  His fingers left my heat and his tongue licked it from one side to the other in a slow, torturous move that pulled a moan from deep inside of me. He continued doing it until my head thrashed against the couch, moving from side to side as my nails dug into his hair, holding him where I needed him. He laughed against my flesh and I pleaded for him to end the pain, to end the heat that threatened to consume me.

  “You enjoy my touch,” he said as he captured my hands and shoved them down onto my stomach. “Gods, you taste like heaven, Emma,” he whispered as he rained kisses down over my needy flesh.

  This was insane! I didn’t even know his fucking name. Not that it mattered; I didn’t need to know it to escape from him. I felt his fingers push back inside of me and I tried to recall who I was with, but it didn’t help. Bodies don’t care about things like names, or if it’s wrong. That’s the brain’s job. But mine wasn’t functioning. It was misfiring, not computing facts. His mouth sucked on my clit and I cried out, saying things that didn’t make sense. I didn’t care. I was so close that my body was trembling, shaking with the need for release, to the point that it actually hurt.

  “Please,” I whispered, begging him to send me over the edge. He pulled up, started moving, and I paused, as I foggily realized where I was and who I was with. “I can’t do this, not yet,” I mumbled as I slowly pulled up my panties and my eyes slowly drifted down his chest to where his bulge strained against the loose jeans he wore. They hung just below his hips, exposing a dark patch of hair that led into Blissville. “Can we talk?” I felt a trickle of sweat as it beaded at the base of my neck and slowly meandered down my back.

  “He is in your mind, is he not?” he asked, his head tilted to the side, and those tranquil blue eyes burned my soul, as if they could see past what I wanted him to see, straight into the part I didn’t want him to know of me.

  “He’s not here,” I pointed out. “It’s just you and me, but I don’t even know what to call you.”

  “Names don’t matter,” he growled, and his hand lifted, his fingers pinching my nipple and pulling on the delicate flesh. I whimpered, and my head rolled back as he continued to apply pressure until it danced between pain and pleasure and lingered on total bliss. “You fucked him on a dirty floor of a cabin and yet you won’t accept me?” he snapped, and I knew he wasn’t pleased with me stopping him. “You’re mine, what else matters?”

  “Names might not matter to you, but they do to me. Jaeden has nothing to do with this. I’m not here willingly; you say you know me, you’ve watched me, so you do know that I just don’t fall into bed with anyone. You may know me, but I know nothing about you. That’s why I stopped this!” I argued.

  “You want to talk, let’s talk,” he growled as he roug
hly pulled the shirt around my head and shoulders, crossing what I had thought were the shoulder straps over my head, and crisscrossing them as he tugged the shirt in place to where it opened to reveal my navel. I’d been way off on the shirt; what I had thought were the sides were the front and back. I wasn’t into fashion, and shirts that took an effort to guess how they fit hadn’t ever been in my father’s or my price range. “Ask the questions burning your tongue, little phoenix,” he demanded.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I admitted.

  “Did you like being his whore?” His tone was sharp enough to wound as he ran his fingers through his hair. I raised my hand, intending to slap his beautiful face, but he caught it effortlessly and twisted it. “It’s a valid question. You followed him around like one of his blood whores. You may not have provided blood, but you gave him something much more precious.”

  “I’m not a whore,” I growled back, not bothering to show him the pain he was causing with his twisting of my arm. “I was never his whore. I didn’t sleep with Jaeden because I had to; I did it because I wanted him.”

  “He’s your enemy, our enemy, and yet you continued to part that sweet flesh and let him use you. Doesn’t it bother you that he uses you to his own end?”

  “He didn’t use me,” I argued. “The last time we were together, I used him.”

  “On a dirty floor,” he added.

  “I didn’t care what or where the floor was,” I whispered guiltily. “I just wanted to forget what I had done.”

  “I felt it,” he rasped, his voice raw; his eyes were cold and emotionless.

  “What?” I asked, thinking I’d heard him wrong, or misunderstood.

  “I felt the moment you climaxed around his cock, Emma. I watched you together through your eyes,” he snapped coldly. “Like a nightmare unfolding in vivid color.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I mumbled. He had made mention of nightmares of Jaeden and I together, and he had arrived at the house and tried to kill Jaeden, like he was having some sort of jealous fit, but how was this possible?

  “I feel you just like you feel me. When I’m near, your heart lets you know. Mine does the same,” he replied softly. “Imagine what it would feel like for you if I found release with someone else, Emma. It’s ugly, that much I assure you. The pain of it when we are near one another is excruciating. At least when you were in Newport, the distance allowed me to only see you with him through the connection we share, but the last time? I wasn’t so lucky.”

  “Nothing,” I snapped. “I would feel fucking nothing. Whatever you think is between us? It’s not. If you think you have some sick connection to me? Sever it,” I hissed. “I don’t want it or you.”

  I stood to leave, but he pushed me down hard. My teeth rattled and he loomed over me. Towering over me where I was seated on the couch.

  “The only way to sever it is for one of us to die, and neither of us can be killed easily,” he growled, his eyes glowing a crimson red color. “Go to bed before I do something we both regret.”

  *~*~*

  I bathed, washing his scent from my body, and yet his touch was seared into my flesh. His scent lingered on my skin, and it was making it hard to sleep. Eventually, my brain turned off and sleep took hold. It didn’t last long, though. Dreams of his heated kisses and feather-soft fingertips took control.

  In the dream, his words played on repeat. How he’d felt it, and then it got really weird. Instead of me and Jaeden alone in the cabin, it was me, Jaeden, and my abductor. They were kissing me, touching my flesh until I was crazed from it. One moved behind me while the other slid his pants down and pushed me to my knees. I took him inside my mouth, which one, I wasn’t sure. Both were doing unspeakable things to my senses. A cock pushed deeper into my mouth, almost touching my throat as the other entered me from behind. I cried out around the one in my mouth as I felt the other growing inside of me until pain ripped through me.

  I cried and begged around the cock in my mouth for him to release me, but merciless hands held my head firmly where it was, while laughter filled the cabin and tears blinded me. I shook my head, but the dick in my mouth was growing as well, and I was trapped. Impaled from both, the pain was never ending, and it was tearing me apart while they laughed, enjoying my blood and pain.

  Heat burned me; my body ached, arched, and a moan slipped from my lips as I opened my eyes, pulling out of the nightmare. I kicked off the blankets, fighting past the remnants of the dream. I didn’t feel as if I was out of it. I kicked the blankets off the bed, too sensitive to be covered or touched by anything. I sat up, ripping at the thin nightgown I wore until it was in tatters on the floor. I lay back, struggling to bring my body back under control. My breathing was labored, causing me to become lightheaded as I smoothed my hands down over my curves, trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I felt like I was in the throes of passion. My pussy was soaking wet; I could feel it as my arousal wet the skin between my legs. My nipples were hard as rocks, and my body was thrashing against the sheets.

  Panic engulfed me as my eyes searched the room frantically. What the fuck was happening to me? My body wasn’t my own, I didn’t have control. It hurt. The ache in my belly was excruciating, but the one between my legs felt like my nightmare. It felt like I was being ripped apart. I could feel the painful arousal as it threatened to rip through me. I was crying, moaning, and screaming, and then it let loose. It tore through me and my limbs went stiff, my body gyrated and trembled as pain pushed through the pleasure, and I almost passed out. It wasn’t an orgasm, no; it was a sharp ache between my legs, as if I’d been denied the real thing. A sob escaped my lips as sweat covered my entire body. I rolled into a ball on my side and cried, and then it hit me, what he’d said.

  He’d felt it. I was smart enough to put it together. He’d just fucked someone, making sure I knew exactly what he’d felt. But how? This was insane. No one could feel another person having sex, no one!

  The ache between my thighs was brutal; the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was growing still, long after the pain abated. I rolled over, spent from the nightmare and whatever had just happened to me. I fumbled to my knees, trying to get up from the bed, but it was useless. I felt as if I’d been beaten up, and violated in the process. I was in the middle of moving to the edge of the bed so I could make it to the bathroom and wash the nightmare off of me, when the door opened, and he leaned against it, looking at me with a knowing smirk. His feet and chest were bare; his hair was messy. He shoved his hands into the pockets of the jeans he wore and watched me as I struggled to pull myself together.

  “Now you know how it feels for me when you are with him,” he whispered as his eyes moved over my sweat-covered body.

  “Get out,” I whispered back weakly. What the fuck was that? How the hell had I felt him with someone else? I felt everything. I had felt his excitement during the beginning of it, and the buildup as he’d headed towards the finish line. That was where it ended, though. There’d been no pleasure past that point, only horrifying pain. He’d done this on purpose, because he’d wanted me to feel what he had. He’d taken another to his bed just to prove his point. Asshole. I hated him.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, I sat on the couch in a pair of lounge pants with a snug black tank top covering my body. I felt horrible; so horrible that I hadn’t eaten a thing since last night. I was lost in my head, and riddled with guilt at what I’d allowed to happen without even knowing his name. I’d planned on seduction, but that wasn’t what had happened. He’d taken control and I’d allowed it. He’d been in full control of me while I’d been mesmerized by his touch.

  Then the nightmare had played out. I’d enjoyed having both of them inside of me. I’d never considered a ménage until that dream. I wasn’t the girl who’d ever entertained that type of situation; it was too far out of my comfort zone, which was why I’d ne
ver thought about it. Sure, Addy had filled me in on her adventures; I’d called her dirty names and then we’d both laughed. But I wasn’t Addy. I felt everything too deeply to ever consider doing something like that.

  I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing anymore. Everything was upside down, and I was losing control. I did feel guilty about moving on, but I had ended it with Jaeden. What had happened between us when I’d left the group had been the final straw between us…it had left me broken; I’d severed the proverbial limb. The only way to deal with an infection is to cut it out. It didn’t mean I didn’t love him, because I did. It just wasn’t the same type of love anymore.

  Whatever had been happening to us had forced us to drift apart, and while I wasn’t fully to blame, I knew that I hadn’t helped the situation, either. Jaeden was a soldier, he followed orders. I’d known that from the beginning, and I hadn’t expected him to change. Of course, I hadn’t expected to fall in love with him, either. I hadn’t expected him to stick around. Life was short these days, and tomorrow wasn’t even remotely predictable anymore.

  I’d done my best to live by the rules of the old world, but the more I tried, the more I figured out how impossible it was. I wanted to protect those in the Ark, and I still did, but we had changed a lot of the ways my father had done things, because we’d evolved. Jaeden and I weren’t any different. I evolved into something else, a Sentinel. He was still a warrior, controlled by his elders. He’d changed, though, to be more of what I needed him to be, but only to a point. Unfortunately, I needed more than he was able to give.