by Gemma James
Her body, her will, her freedom, trapped to my every whim.
I’d force her legs apart, rub my cock between them, taunting, taking power and leaving her with none, all the while pulling her head back by the strap of leather imprisoning her delicate neck.
With a groan, I freed my dick and slid a palm over the wet tip before closing frantic fingers around the base. I tightened my hold, pretended her fingers stroked me. More pre-cum escaped, and I swiped my thumb over the soft head, envisioning Alex on her knees, lips surrendering to my cock, her tongue lapping while her small hands encased my shaft in warm ecstasy as she sucked and bobbed. Shit, what I wouldn’t give to yank at her curls right now.
“Fuuuuck…Alex…”
I shot my load all over the ground, wishing like hell my dick was shoved down her throat for real. After my breathing settled and I’d adjusted my boxers, I returned to the bottle of vodka. A few long swigs later, I eyed the mind-numbing liquid with narrowed eyes. I didn’t know what prompted me to launch it across the room. Maybe the crushing shame of my fantasy and the equally shameful desire of wishing it was real.
The vodka collided with several wine bottles on the rack, and the shattering glass echoed in my ears with a haunting omen. For a split second, I saw an older version of Alex, naked, body shaking as she aimed the jagged edge of a broken bottleneck at me. The flash left just as suddenly, and I wished I had something else to throw. I fell into the wall, eyes squeezed shut as my fist pounded concrete. Why couldn’t I remember? Some part of me was desperate to remember, as if my life depended on it.
“Remember anything?”
I jumped at the sound of his voice. Squinting through my drunkenness and the shadowed space, I saw Jax leaning against the wall near the stairs, stocky figure hidden in darkness.
I let my hands fall to my sides. “How long have you been standing there?”
He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it between his lips. A second later, a lighter sparked. “Long enough,” he mumbled around the butt. He took a drag then exhaled with the ease of a practiced smoker. “Thought I’d come back for some stuff, but I heard a noise down here.”
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I quit months ago. Guess I’m taking up the habit again.” He lifted a finger toward me. “Guess you are too.”
“Whaddya mean?” I glanced toward the broken glass. The heavy scent of tobacco mingled with the vodka tainting my floor. “Did I hit the bottle a lot? Do I drink a lot?” I found that hard to believe. I never drank, as alcohol interfered with training. Except I wasn’t training anymore and I’d just finished off a good portion like it was nothing.
“No, beyond the occasional beer or two, you’re not a drinker.” His lips curled. “I was referring to your private moment with the ole Alex De Luca fantasy.”
I rubbed both hands down my face. “What am I doing?”
“Hopefully remembering something.”
“Not even close.” My attention swerved to the broken glass again. “Except…”
He stood up straighter. “What is it?”
“A flash of something…no. Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“Spit it out, Mason.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. I saw Alex threatening me with a wine bottle, and she was”—I summoned the image, and my fucking cock came to life again—“naked.”
Jax laughed, an unexpected reaction. “I’d say that’s a memory. You didn’t let that piece of ass wear a thing up until the day you decided to let her go.”
“Did I fuck her?” As soon as the words tumbled from my mouth, I wanted to yank them back.
Jax lifted an incredulous brow, and the wicked grin that spread across his face sent a gob of dread to my gut. “Damn right you fucked her.” He pointed upward. “You fucked her right on the kitchen table while I watched. That was after you paddled her ass for trying to escape.”
I gaped at him, shaking my head. “I can’t believe I did that.” I lowered to the floor and parked my ass on the cold cement.
“You did that and a lot more.” He wandered to where I sat and took the space next to me. “Are we gonna talk about Nikki?”
“You mean are you gonna tell me why you’re sneaking around with her?”
He took one last drag of his smoke before grounding it into the concrete. “It just happened.”
“I didn’t figure you for the cliché type.”
“Look,” he said with a sigh, “I know she used to be your girl, but not long ago, Alex was your girl.”
“No, Alex was my prisoner.” My attention stalled on the cage, eyes narrowed. “You and Nik…that just doesn’t make sense. You can’t stand to be touched, for one.”
“What’d you say?”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, the last part.”
I turned back to him, head tilted. “You can’t stand to be touched?” The words hung between us, but Jax didn’t say anything. I opened my mouth, my mind struggling to comprehend what I’d just said. “How do I know that?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know, I just…do.”
“Anything else you suddenly just know?”
I reached inward, poking at the blank spots in my past, and came up empty. “I guess not.”
“It’ll come back. Maybe you’re trying too hard.”
“Maybe.” I dangled my hands between my bent knees. “Do you care about her?”
Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah, I do. She’s the first person since…”
“Since what?” I asked, not about to let him toss out that tidbit of information just to pull it back.
“Since I had to let go of someone else.”
“What happened?” I probably already knew the details, somewhere in the locked area of my brain.
Jax returned my gaze, and something about the intense longing there made me shiver. I missed the warmth of my buzz. The booze still corrupted my veins, but the shield of not-giving-a-fuck was long gone.
“Wasn’t meant to be,” he said. “I’ve accepted it.”
“And you think sneaking around with Nikki is smart? She’s engaged.” Fucking hypocrite. Hadn’t I stuck my tongue down her throat a few days ago? If not for the unnerving sense that being with her was wrong, I would have done a lot more than that.
Jax’s mouth formed an angry line. “Lyle Lewis is scum. All the shit-talk he’s done about you. He had half the town believing you were involved in Alex’s death.”
“From what you told me, I was involved in her ‘death.’” I added air quotes on the last word.
Jax waved off my logic. “Yeah, but he didn’t know shit, Rafe. We covered our tracks. He wasn’t pointing the finger at you because he thought you were guilty. He used what happened to tear what little reputation you had left to shreds. He was trying to run you out of town.”
“Why would he do that? It’s not like I’m causing him any problems living here on the island.”
“You’re a threat to him.”
“Because of Nikki?”
Jax raised a brow.
I shook my head, laughing. “Yet you’re the one seeing her. How fucking ironic is that?”
Jax wasn’t laughing. “Does it bother you?” He shifted, hunching over his knees, and tilted his head. “Because if it does, I won’t see her again.”
“But you’re in to her.”
He smiled, the first genuine, care-free grin I’d seen him wear. “I still can’t handle her touch, but yeah. I like her. Fucking crazy that she seems to feel the same way.” The smile bled from his face, and he pierced me with his deep stare. “But I’m not burying my head in the sand. She’ll run if you snap your fingers. I know it, and Lyle knows it.”
“His ring is on her fucking finger, so maybe he should get over it.”
Jax sighed. “I have no idea why she’s wearing that asshole’s ring. I doubt we know the whole story. She talks about the jerk like she’s scared of him.”
That made me sit
up straighter. “You think he’s hurting her?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, gaze on the ground between his feet. “How did everything go to hell so fast?”
“Fuck if I know,” I said, glancing at the broken glass on my floor. “But I can’t sit around and do nothing.” Missing so many years was dangerous. Even though we sat in a cellar full of incriminating evidence, talking about women and the screwed up shit we’d done together, Jax still felt like a stranger to me.
And Alex…
Her disappearance wasn’t going away on its own. “I have to find out what happened to her, Jax. Maybe I should talk to Abbott.”
“Are you insane? You were convicted of raping his daughter. You can’t just knock on his door and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going? By the way, have you seen your dead daughter lately?’”
“No shit.” With a sigh, I sank both hands into my hair and pulled. “But I’ve gotta do something. I’m responsible for her.”
“No,” Jax said. “I’ll do something. I’ve already been looking into it. You stay away from this.”
I studied his profile. Shaggy blond hair brushed his brows, and the scruff on his face, combined with a crooked nose, gave him an unkempt look. He managed to pull it off. How could I have shared a cell with this guy and not remember him? “You’d do that for me?”
He swept his hair back from his eyes. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. I’ll always have your back.”
Under the influence of pure ignorant bliss, I’d slipped up and called him Rafe. The silence that blasted from Zach was so loud, I cowered in the corner with my hands over my ears.
Time was an elusive concept while high. I had no idea how long I’d been sitting like this. I vaguely recalled dragging myself across the floor, far, far away from the rage surging through the veins cording his arms. I peeked through the messy curls obscuring my sight and found him hunched on the bed, his head clutched in his hands. I swiped the damp strands from my face.
“Zach—”
He jumped to his feet, and I shrank against the wall, pressing so tightly I felt as if I could melt through to the other side.
He grabbed a bottle of water from the nightstand and came toward me, the floor quaking with every stomp of his feet.
“Drink this. As soon as you crash, I’ll deal with you.” When he stalked across the room and slammed the door, the vibration rattled through my bones.
I was already crashing. Crying out one man’s name while another fucked me had a dousing effect on the high. Unscrewing the cap, I sat up straighter and brought the mouth of the bottle to my lips. God. So fucking thirsty. Unable to sit still any longer, especially since he’d left me alone, I stood and wandered toward the bed as I emptied the bottle.
The familiar weight of desolation landed on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I climbed onto the mattress, drew up my knees, and stifled my wailing into a pillow. Every thought and feeling raced through my being, muddying my sense of reality. I tried to latch on to something tangible, something I could form, if only mentally, but I couldn’t snatch anything in the chaotic processes of my mind.
Time continued its useless ticking. Zach returned and found me curled into a ball, eyes staring unblinkingly ahead, though I saw nothing. This room, my whole existence, blurred until only shapes and shadows emerged.
My life had shape-shifted into something distorted and sick.
So had Zach. He’d been morphing all along, I just hadn’t realized to what extent until it was too late.
He didn’t say a word as he rolled me to my back. He positioned me on the bed so my thighs draped open and the bottom of my ass nearly hung off the mattress. I tried to sit up, but he shoved me down with such little effort, I didn’t try moving again. A rip sounded and the unyielding stickiness of duct tape attached to my skin. He rendered my limbs useless by restraining me, wrist to ankle on either side.
He leaned over, fists depressing the mattress by my head, and a hint of fear scattered through me. He reeked of the whiskey he loved so much. Rage and alcohol didn’t mesh well in people, and that was especially true for Zach.
“I’m going to fuck your brains out. No drugs to numb your agony, baby girl. Just my cock ripping through you.” One hand clutched my hair as he unzipped his jeans and let them fall down his muscular thighs. He fisted his erection. I tried moving my face to the side, but his grip tightened in my hair. “Don’t you fucking take your eyes off of me.”
He pushed in with a fierce plunge, and I grunted from the grating burn. My foggy state dissolved, whisked away by the harshness of his thrusts.
“Feel that, Lex?” He ground out as he pumped, his gaze commanding mine, challenging me to break the contact. I didn’t dare. “That’s my cock in you. Not his. Mine.”
Tears leaked from my eyes as he plowed into me mercilessly. The salty drops trailed down the sides of my face and pooled at my ears.
“Apologize for being a whore, and maybe I won’t choke you with my dick.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, despising the whining plea of my tone. I wasn’t sorry at all—I was only sorry I’d let Rafe’s name slip from my lips. He plowed against my cervix, and I shrieked.
“What the fuck is my name?”
“Zach.”
He withdrew, removed the belt from his loops as he shuffled back, and brought the strap down on my pussy. I squealed like a pig, the pain so searing, he might as well have used an electric prod.
“Say it again.”
“Zach!”
“Scream it!”
“Zach!” I sobbed. “This isn’t you. Please, remember us. Please. You used to make me feel safe.”
“And you never appreciated it.” He tossed the belt on the floor then rammed me so hard, my ass slid up the mattress a few inches. My cries echoed, hoarse from screaming for him to stop. I don’t think he even heard me.
He’d snapped, and I couldn’t reach the human part of him. The part that was my brother. This untamed creature was unrecognizable, blind with bloodlust and rage. He’d waited until I crashed from the ecstasy to unleash the beast, mouth snarling and teeth gnashing, knowing how I’d be incapable of becoming aroused after coming off the drug. Every thrust of his cock bruised, burned, and rubbed me raw. Whatever tenderness he’d shown in the past couple of weeks had vanished. He was wasted and pissed, and no one was coming to save me.
“Zach…stop…” My voice failed me, coming out as nothing more than a whimper. “Stop.”
“You don’t fuckin’ tell me what to do.” The rip of tape screeched through my ears, and he secured a strip over my mouth. “Go on, Lex. Say his name now. I dare you to try.” His laughter tingled down my spine. He withdrew his knife from the pocket of his jeans. “I’ll make sure you never forget who’s fucking you again.”
The cool edge of his blade pressed into my stomach. On the inside, I screamed in agony, but only a pathetic whine escaped my sealed lips. My heart pounded in my chest, panic rising as I struggled, digging my feet into the mattress and pushing up the bed a couple of inches. His forceful hands grabbed my thighs and yanked me back in place, and his cock plunged in again.
“Hold the fuck still.” His knife sliced into my skin, deeper this time. I kept my attention on his face, terrified of seeing the damage he was doing, but also giving one last attempt at reaching him with my eyes.
“Fucking gorgeous.” He swiveled his hips and moaned. “Fuck…your cunt never felt this good.” He continued carving, saying more, but the words were indiscernible beyond my smothered cries. I feared he would kill me, dig the blade in too deeply, slash an organ. With that last thought came the disturbing discovery that maybe he’d finally give me a way out. No more pain. No more guilt or shame. No more surviving.
I’d been surviving for ten years, and I was tired. Second by second, my body grew limp, hands and feet losing strength, limbs going listless. The broken organ in my chest was ready to give up. I didn’t have any fight left. Only acceptance. I’d never get out of this
hell. The days would continue, erasing any remnant of my brother, only to be permanently replaced by this brutal impostor driven by alcohol, obsession, and the most dangerous of all—jealousy. The will to fight abandoned me.
As he slashed and fucked, his thrusts slow and erratic, I closed my eyes and gave up.
“Mmm, this is gonna be my favorite way to fuck you. You’re so sexy, vulnerable, with my name carved in your skin.” He bent down, and the wet slide of his tongue lapped at where he’d sliced. “You’re mine to brand. Shit, baby. I should’ve taken you years ago. No one’s standing in our way now.” Sliding up my body, his stomach smeared the blood I knew tainted my belly, and he pushed his cock deeper.
I gave in to the blank place in my mind where I didn’t exist. The small cubbyhole where I could hibernate for the rest of my life. But something wouldn’t let me go. Hope licked the edges of my consciousness, demanding more.
I don’t have anything left to give.
Fight, dammit! Find a way to escape.
Can’t.
Rafe is still alive.
My heart skipped. He doesn’t want me.
Zach lied to you. Of course he wants you. He would never turn his back.
I hurt him too much. He couldn’t forgive me.
You need to forgive yourself first. After you get the hell out of here.
I tried! Zach will never let me go.
Try harder.
Shut up, shut up, shut up! I mentally screamed as laughter rumbled in my chest. God, I was losing my mind. But I didn’t need the crazy phantom in my head giving me false hope. Rafe wasn’t coming. I wasn’t worth it.
You don’t know that.
Shut up!
I was on my own, and I couldn’t even blame Rafe. He’d had to deal with eight years of imprisonment. Just because his incarceration had been at the hands of the system didn’t make it any less horrific than what I suffered now. He’d been raped, just like me.
Zach grunted, pulling me from the turmoil of my mind, and his cock stilled in my bruised cunt. He let out a frustrated growl. The alcohol flooding his system messed with his libido, making it difficult for him to come. I preferred when he stuck it in and got it over with. But he’d wanted to unleash his anger, and I was his favorite plaything. His hands moved to my burning wrists.
