“I will literally kill you,” I seethed.
“Hmm.” He nodded as he got off me. My eyes were drawn to his shorts, and I saw the tenting in them.
“This turns you on?” I asked in disbelief.
“Don’t lie and tell yourself you’re immune. I can see how much you’re responding. Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just give you what you want.”
“I didn’t think you could lower yourself,” I snapped in indignation. I shouldn’t admit that it burned that he could touch me with no effect on himself. His hard-on was the first sign he had given me that I affected him.
Raphe pulled a hoodie from the closet and pulled it on over his head. As he straightened his hoodie, his eyes glinted with amusement. With no self-consciousness, he pulled off his sleepwear, and I hastily averted my eyes from his naked lower half before my eyes flicked back and I realised he had boxer briefs on. He pulled on loose shorts, and then reaching into the closet, he brought out running shoes.
“You’re leaving me like this?”
“I am.”
“Raphe!”
“Yes, Devon?” he asked me as he laced his sneakers.
“Do you want me to apologise?”
“No.” He started doing stretches, and I watched him with narrowed eyes. “I want you to lie there like that, wet, panting and horny, and think about what you really want from me.”
My tongue felt clumsy as I blustered at his words. “I’m not wet!” I protested vehemently. “I want you to let me go and never look for me,” I said, so proud of myself that I sounded so sure.
He walked confidently over to the bed, and as he bent down, I tensed at the humour he watched me with. With deft fingers, his hand slipped into my panties, and he stroked through the pooled wetness a few times. “One day you’ll be honest with at least yourself,” he murmured as he pulled his hand away. “I’ll be back soon. Be a good girl and think about your actions.”
The bastard left me handcuffed to the bed. I heard him whistle—whistling—as he left the house. Angry tears leaked out my eyes. Why would I think I could suffocate him when I was tied to the bed? That wasn’t even stupid, it was embarrassing.
Was I that desperate? Really? To get away from him? I really wasn’t, I admitted to myself. Despite everything, he made me feel safe, which given the many times I found myself scared he was finally going to kill me, was alarming. I wanted to run but not from him. I glared down at my treacherous body. It needed to get the memo that the handcuffing serial killer was not accessible to me.
I decided that letting him touch me in the restroom of the diner was my downfall. My body wanted more; it didn’t care if it was from him. I needed him physically. I tested the handcuffs and succeeded in lifting myself up the bed. I recalled the way his eyes had run over me as I lay under him. Maybe he wasn’t as indifferent as he made out?
However, what I was sure of was that he wasn’t panting after me like a hound. I was making a fool of myself whenever he was near me and in close proximity. That had to stop. I lay there as I thought about him. He had said he would have left me in Missouri had I been honest with him. Was that why I hadn’t told him? Had I wanted him to take me back? I looked around his bedroom. He said he rented it, but I realised as I lay there that he had the house longer than we had been here. This wasn’t a new acquisition for him. Maybe it was a safe house?
It’s not been so safe for you, my head snarked at me.
No, that wasn’t right. I hadn’t been safe for me. I could tell him. He didn’t know me, and what had happened wouldn’t affect him. I wasn’t asking him to protect me. All Raphe needed to do was let me go. Before he came for me. He would come for me. He had been close to finding me a few times, twice on the streets in Denver. The first time, I had run almost right into him; the second, I had seen him before he had seen me. I had hidden all night.
I was sure that he didn’t know I was in Denver, but the more time I spent with Raphe, the more time I became settled into normality. The streets were the last place he would look for me. Who actively sought to live on the streets if they didn’t have to? No one but me.
The fear I always felt when I thought of him rose in me, and I cursed at the fact that I couldn’t even dry my tears. I had no choice but to lie there and hope my current captor didn’t have a penchant for long morning runs.
Sometime later, I heard Raphe come back. He took the stairs quickly, and then he was in front of me. His hair was damp with sweat as he pulled his hoodie off, and I saw the sweat patches on his shirt. Raphe grinned at me as he pulled his shorts off. My eyes couldn’t get enough of the feast he presented me with. He was all tight abs, cut muscles and gloriously perfect.
I didn’t even care that he was laughing at my hungry perusal of his body. Raphe moved to the foot of the bed, and as my eyes widened in alarm, he knelt on the bed and then half crawled up it. Firm hands slid under my butt, and then he flipped me effortlessly onto my front.
“Raphe?” I called out uncertainly when he forced me onto my knees. One hand pressed between my shoulder blades, and I was on my elbows with my ass in the air and my hands pulling at the cuffs. “Raphe, what the fuck—”
My cry cut my words off when I felt the first slap on my ass. He hit me ten more times until my head was burrowed in the pillow and tears streamed down my face.
I was flipped onto my back again, and I looked up at him as he gently cleared my tears. “You can’t say you don’t deserve punishment, Devon,” he murmured quietly.
“You fucking spanked me!” My breath caught on a hiccup. “Not even gently, that fucking hurt, asshole.”
“All lessons should be hard to learn,” he said with a soft smile as he reached forward and dropped a soft kiss on my nose.
“You’re a sick freak,” I sniffled as I hiccupped again.
Raphe’s hand caressed my cheek before his fingers tangled in my hair. “You’re so beautiful when you’re broken,” he murmured.
My breath caught when his lips covered mine, and I succumbed to his kiss. It was soft and sweet, the exact opposite of everything I knew Raphe to be. Despite being spanked, despite crying, despite loathing him, I kissed him back. As his hands buried themselves in my hair, I lamented over the fact that I couldn’t run my hands through his hair. Our tongues moved together as I arched into him, and I felt his hand trail over my thigh as he raised it up to curl around him.
I felt his hardening length grind against me, and my hips lifted to meet him. Raphe’s lips moved down my throat, and then he had my shirt over my head as his mouth and tongue worked my nipple. His hand was between my legs, and his clever fingers were playing me like he owned me and had owned me for a very long time. I no longer cared that he had spanked my ass so much it stung. Now all I could feel was the pleasure he was strumming out of me as his fingers slipped inside and his mouth moved to my other breast.
Suddenly I was clenching around him, and when I opened my eyes, the stark hunger in his made me clench again. “Let me touch you,” I whispered.
I watched as the shutter fell, and he drew back. “Not today,” he said with a kiss to my cheek.
He left me on the bed, and then I heard the shower running. I couldn’t sit up, I couldn’t fix my shirt or straighten my underwear, and as I came down from the euphoric state he had left me in, I realised my ass stung like a bitch and he had left me on my back for a reason. Not because he needed away from me, not because he wanted me, but because he was reminding me that I was at his mercy.
What had he said? Lessons should be hard to learn. I felt the tear slip over as I realised I was learning the hardest lesson of all.
Raphe was impenetrable, and I was not winning this fight. I wasn’t even close. In fact, as I lay there with my ass throbbing from his punishment, my body still clenching at his skilled fingers, I realised I wasn’t even in the same ring as him.
I would never win. Not against him. Not like this.
I stood at the kitchen table as I ate my toast. My ass
still smarted, and my glare on the reason why it still stung was unwavering as Raphe ate his bowl of cereal.
“How was your shower?” he asked me casually as he took another mouthful of food.
“Wet,” I snapped.
His mouth hooked up at the corner, and he continued to chew as he read his phone. “Pretty sure that’s the purpose of them.”
“Do you feel good about yourself?”
Raphe looked up at me, and I knew he was going to be a smart asshole. “Why yes, yes I do.”
“I meant about this morning.”
Raphe put his bowl down with a sigh. “What’s the problem this time? You regret reacting to my touch? You regret wanting to touch me right back? Or, heaven preserve us, you regret the actual fact you deserved the punishment in the first place?”
“I didn’t deserve to be beaten.”
“Beaten?” Raphe threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Fuck me, Devon. You think eleven slaps on your ass is a beating?” He stood and took his bowl to the sink. “You’ve had a fucking easy life.”
He knew nothing about my life. “I’ve been homeless for two years, that’s not easy!” I snapped back at him.
“No, it isn’t, but I think it may have been for you,” he said softly. “Tell me why you’re running.”
“Will you let me go?”
“I might.”
“Why would you keep me?” I asked him softly. “You don’t want me. You don’t even like me, and you don’t know me, Raphe. Why would you keep me?”
His eyes ran over me slowly before he met my own curious stare with a small smile. “I wouldn’t say I would keep you, but I do want to know if I can trust you. Prove to me that I can trust you.”
“How?”
“Tell me who you run from.”
“Tell me why you care,” I countered.
“I don’t know.”
Startled, I looked at him, knowing my shock was evident. “What do you mean?”
“At first I thought it was because I thought you were a threat. You saw too much, Devon, we both know you did. What you saw could prove problematic for me and my friends.” I watched him pull his gun holster on as he spoke. “Then you never said a word, I know you didn’t, and you were very adamant I could trust you. But by then, I had watched you, seen you. You don’t actually blend, and the more I think about it, I realised you had to work very hard to remain on the streets.”
“I didn’t,” I scoffed.
“You would, you see, because for some unfathomable reason, people like you.” Raphe smirked again, and I levelled him with a glare. “You make them feel easy. I don’t like it. I don’t like it that you…could be anyone.”
“You don’t like that people like me?”
“I don’t like not knowing who you are. The boyfriend, Lance, unfortunate.” He watched me closely as he spoke. “But you know as well as I do that Lance overdosed. When I told you that you were a wanted felon, you didn’t even blink.” He walked towards me as he spoke until he was right in front of me. “You knew I was lying, and you said nothing.”
“Did I?” I felt my heart racing and hoped to God he couldn’t hear it.
“Why did you cry though? Was it part of your act? I don’t think so. I told you something that day that made you react. Or you told me something you hadn’t realised. Or, and I think this is more likely, you are running scared. So scared.”
“I ran from you,” I reminded him.
“No, I think you like me.” His hand cupped my cheek, and I shook it off angrily. “I wonder if that’s why you cling so desperately to staying. Is it me that makes you stay or the protection I can give you?”
“You make no sense.” I took a step away from him. “First you think I’m running, but not from you. Now you think I’m trying to stay with you, when only this morning, I put a pillow over your face. You know nothing.”
His hand snapped out and caught the back of my neck as he pulled me close. “You are running, at first it was me. Now, it’s not. You want me close because I think I make you feel safe. You put a pillow over my face with no hope of it working because you panicked I may let you go. What better way for me to keep you close if not because you keep telling me you will kill me?”
“Let me go,” I said, my voice tight with anger.
“Where will you run to? How far is far enough?” Raphe asked me quietly, his grip still tight on my neck. “Tell me.”
“Why?”
“I could help you run.”
My eyes searched his for the lie. “You would let me go?”
“If what’s coming for you has nothing to do with me or who I work with, you can go.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“It’s called trust. I gave you mine once. We both know what happened.” His eyes were cold, but I wasn’t afraid.
“You can’t help me,” I whispered, and despite myself, I leaned forward, resting my head on his chest.
“Why?” The gentleness in his voice was my undoing.
“I promised I would never tell.”
“I don’t count.” Raphe’s hand stroked over my hair as I clung to his shirt.
I huffed out a laugh at the thought that Raphe didn’t count. “He’ll kill me. Actually kill me.” I looked up at Raphe. “I’m not yours to save.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
Raphe looked at me for a long moment. “He is?”
I said his name out loud for the first time in a long time, and I saw the flare of recognition in Raphe’s eyes. “Will you help me run now?” I asked with more bite than I should have.
“No.” Raphe let me go and stood back. “You stay here, with me.”
“You said I could go.”
“I say a lot of things.”
“Who’s the liar now?” I mocked him softly.
“Takes one to know one,” he said as he checked his gun. “Stay here today. Do I need to cuff you?”
“No.”
“Devon?”
“No, I won’t run. I have nothing to run with.” I sank onto the couch as he put his suit jacket on, wincing at the burn on my backside.
“I won’t be gone long today,” Raphe said quietly from the doorway. I nodded in acknowledgement, tired of talking. “Devon?” I turned to look up at him. “Despite what you think, I do know you. You should have told me this from the beginning.”
“Why? What difference does it make?”
“Because your instincts were wrong; your father is a scary bastard”—his words were cold and his smile tight—“but I’m worse, Devon, I’m so much worse.”
He left me in stunned silence before I jumped to my feet and ran to the window to see him open his shiny Jag. He cast a look to the window, and with a wink, he got in the car and drove away.
Raphe was scarier than my father? I went back to the couch and gingerly sat down. My head was reeling, not because of what Raphe said, but because he had winked at me. That small casual familiarity, I hadn’t felt so safe for a long time.
I sat on the couch for a while, trying in vain to get some relief for my ass. Jesus, what had he spanked me with? I swear it was only his hand. I went up the stairs and into Raphe’s bedroom, casting a hard glare towards the bed. It wasn’t the bed’s fault I became a complete wanton harlot when I was around Raphe. It was mine. I opened his closet and searched inside for any toiletries. Because there was only one bathroom, he hadn’t put any products in the bathroom except shower gel, face wash and shampoo. He had flawless skin, so there had to be some moisturiser somewhere.
I fully supported the fact that men took care of their appearance these days. Some even spent more on their products than women did. Would Raphe be one of those people? Probably not, when I thought about it. I gave up on his closet and moved into the bathroom, but there was nothing here. There was no way he didn’t use anything.
Going back to my room where he had put my stuff from the penthouse, I could have laughed out loud. Sitting inno
cuously on the chair was a bottle of moisturiser with extra aloe vera. Beside it was the bar of chocolate he had picked up for me in the store. I couldn’t stop the smile at his complete audacity, even though I knew I should have been pissed off.
I stripped out of my jeans, and closing the door, I pulled my panties down and gently rubbed the soothing lotion into my ass. As I did so, I recalled his firm hard strokes as he hit my ass. It had hurt, which was what he intended. He wasn’t a gentle man, and I wondered if it was a fetish for him. He was always in control; did he have the same urges in the bedroom? He hadn’t made a move towards me. If I hadn’t tried to smother him, I wonder if he would have done anything at all.
When I thought about it, I realised he would. The spanking wasn’t for this morning, it was for yesterday. It was for running. It was for keeping secrets from him. He obviously knew who my father was. I wish he didn’t. Fuck, I wish I hadn’t found out either. Who my dad was came as more of a surprise to me than I think it did for anyone who subsequently found out.
Pulling my sweater off, I climbed onto the bed and lay down flat on my stomach. I would let the cream soothe my butt cheeks, I decided as I opened the chocolate. Breaking off a square, I chewed it slowly. I had missed chocolate the most, I think. Street life was hard, it was even harder when you were hiding from something.
Laying my head on my arms, I thought back to four years ago and the day I left the hospital.
I had managed to hitchhike a ride over the state line. The trucker hadn’t been the least bit interested in why I was hitching or that I was a young woman. He had been older, a shiny wedding ring on his finger, and he loved to talk about his wife and grandkids. I knew of the dangers of hitchhiking; however, the man who was my saviour that day only wanted some company on a long road. I was happy to listen to him, and when he assumed from my bruises and stuffed duffel bag that I was running from a violent partner, I hadn’t corrected him.
He took me straight to Phoenix, and when he pulled up in his normal layover spot, he gave me fifty dollars to get myself a hot meal. I didn’t want to tell him I had four grand in my bag. I took his money because I was already memorable to him, and a woman running scared refusing cash would only stick in his mind more. I didn’t want to be on anybody’s mind.
Beautifully Broken (The Denver Series Book 2) Page 26
