by Gemma James
I shook my head, and the gesture probably came off as defiant, but really, I just wanted to crawl into myself and die. The thought of putting my body on display for him sent me into a panic. This body betrayed me, it attracted the wrong attention and glorified in it. All it would take was one touch of his hand for him to realize how I wanted him.
“I-I don’t understand.”
“What do you not understand, Alex? Sounds pretty clear to me.”
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded, retreating until I bumped into the bars with nowhere to go. I hid myself as much as possible, thighs pressed together and palms covering my breasts.
He unbuckled his belt and pulled it from his jeans.
“Please—” I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t budge even as adrenaline coursed through me.
“Do as you’re told, or I’ll make you wish you’d listened the first time.”
My arms weren’t part of me. Somehow, all on their own, they dropped to my sides like two sticks of deadweight. His eyes traveled over me, starting at my feet and slowly lifting to my belly before roaming higher.
“Look at the set of tits on you.”
I stood on a precipice of indecision, and taking the plunge could bring about two different outcomes. Fear, the kind that made your heart beat so fast, your mind tricked you into believing you were seconds from death. Or, I could take a free-fall into insanity. Rafe Mason was, essentially, the love of my life. I could lie to everyone else, but not to myself. Nothing he did would change that.
Even now, as his hand formed an angry fist around that belt, I came alive. Or maybe it was because he posed such a threat. God, I was fucked up. I knew what he was capable of. A memory of swollen and bloody flesh sprang to mind, so vividly I could describe it in Technicolor. That last cage fight before they’d arrested him, the one to trump all others, burned in my memory.
His attention lingered on my breasts, and the mere heat of his stare branded me. Here was a man furious, a man few would blame for wanting to do horrible things to the person who’d wrecked his life.
That person was me, and despite the threat in his expression, something about the way he caressed my body with a single glance reduced me to a puddle of need. It pooled between my legs until everything was tight and wet and hot.
With careful patience, he feathered the back of his hand across my nipple, and I felt his touch everywhere, especially between my legs where I ached and burned from the inside out. Until now, I’d never known what it was like to be on the receiving end of Rafe’s attention. He was the only guy capable of making me feel this way.
Hot.
Alive.
Needy.
Our gazes entwined, and the feelings spearing through me were too intense to ignore. I’d lost count of the number of fantasies I’d had of this moment when he would touch me. Really touch me. Not as the kid he treated like a sister, not as the bothersome girl who mercilessly drove him to madness, but as a woman.
A woman he wanted.
His hand drifted lower, fingers skimming over quivering stomach muscles. Breath eluded me. The circumstances mattered no more. Fear evaporated into particles of mist that lingered but weren’t powerful enough to douse the feelings I thought I’d buried years ago. All that mattered was his hand, lowering…lowering still. I clenched my thighs to keep from spreading them and braced my back against the bars, hands balled at my sides.
His body pressed into mine, and I closed my eyes, cataloging each sensation from the way his chest flattened my breasts to the heat of his thighs. He lifted my arms above my head and curled my fingers around the bars.
“Don’t move,” he growled, hands squeezing one last time before falling away. “You are such a fucking tease.” His words drifted across my cheek. “I never touched you. No matter how much—” Abruptly, he sprang away as if I’d burned him. “I never touched you.” He reached for the belt that must have fallen to the concrete. “You destroyed my life,” he said, fingers playing with the buckle. “I was this close to making it to the UFC, and you snatched it from me.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, you took my freedom, my reputation. You fucking took everything, Alex. I have to register as a sex offender now? Did you know that?”
“I’m sorr—”
The belt landed across my breasts hard, and I cried out as the breath stole from my lungs. My arms dropped, automatically moving to protect, but he struck again with a powerful crack. I gasped and clung to the bars as my nipples burned.
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re sorry! You’ve had eight fucking years to be sorry, but you left me there to rot.” The belt slid to his feet, and he kicked my legs apart before shoving a finger inside me.
My eyes grew wide as he probed me, though his jerky thrusts were far from gentle.
“I rotted while you dated that jerk who probably doesn’t know the first thing about setting you off.” He added three more fingers, wrecking my concentration, his touch stretching and reaching higher. “Did he make you feel this good?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and began counting. Five in, hold, five out. Repeat.
“Answer me!”
“He didn’t.” Lucas’ kisses and wandering hands had made me feel nothing, but Rafe…he made me feel everything. I swallowed past the self-loathing constricting my throat, tried to ignore the slippery plunder of his fingers, but a strangled moan escaped anyway.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Yes.
“No.” I extended to my toes, fingers gripping the bars for support, and barely breathed as his thumb rubbed circles on my clit. “Rafe!” I pushed my pelvis against his hand even as tears leaked down my face. His mouth opened over my throat, and I inhaled sharply, my pulse throbbing an erratic beat underneath his tongue.
This wasn’t happening. My body wasn’t betraying me again. No, no, no, no…
“I still remember how to touch a woman,” he said. “I bet my fingers are the best fuck you've had. Can you imagine my tongue on your pussy?” He licked up my throat, and I whimpered, imagining it all too well. I saw myself on my back, legs spread wide and his dark head disappearing between quaking thighs. The visual was too much, and I hurtled into deep space. I saw the celestial heavens.
“I'm coming,” I sobbed.
“Yes, you are, sweetheart. Enjoy it because it won't happen again.”
I clawed at his dark T-shirt, my spine bowing and knees threatening to give. The orgasm came in waves around his fingers, each one more intense than the last, and each one filled my heart with so much shame my chest was heavy with it. Riding the waves, I howled his name, my cries resembling a cat in the throes. Afterward, as my heartbeat slowed, I collapsed to the floor.
“You’re at my mercy,” he said, crouching to eye level. “You don’t eat unless I allow it, you don’t drink. You don’t get clothes or a shower or even a bed to sleep in unless I say so. I control every piece of you, including your fucking pussy.” I wrenched my head to the side, pained by the hardened features of his beautiful face, but he pressed his fingers into my jaw and forced me to meet his gaze. “You’re going to earn every damn privilege known to man. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” The force of his fury penetrated deep, and I would have agreed to anything in that moment.
“You are nothing to me, Alex. You will never be more than a piece of ass.” My heart cracked as he let go, forming a jagged chasm I feared would forever remain. I watched him walk away, tears sliding down my cheeks, one after the other in an endless stream of regret. He exited the prison without looking back and the lock clicked into place with an unsettling echo. He bent to retrieve a pile of neatly folded clothing—my clothing, by the looks of it—and then climbed a staircase. An instant later, the light shut off.
Total blackness.
I couldn’t stop crying. Not because I was scared. Not because he’d just humiliated me. I muffled heaving sobs into my palms because his utter contempt sliced to my soul. And now I knew.
He was going to break me
.
I’d just lied through my fucking teeth. She did mean something, which was why she was down in that prison. If she meant nothing, I wouldn’t have wanted her in the first place. The musky scent of her sex lingered on my skin, and I sucked a finger into my mouth, unable to resist tasting her. I couldn’t wait to spread those thighs, thumbs biting into soft skin, and bury my tongue in her heat.
Before she sent me away, I’d done my damnedest to do the honorable thing by keeping my distance, though there’d been times I’d slipped up. Like the time she baited me into a game of pool by implying she was unbeatable. We’d played a fiercely competitive game, all the while bantering about horror movies and alternative rock music. She loved the horror and loathed the rock. Not surprising, since she adored the piano.
I’d smoked her the first game. During the second, she conceded and asked for my help in positioning her for the end shot. That was the first time I acknowledged the familiar tingle rushing through me as I bent over her, my hand sliding along hers and guiding her to set up the shot that would win her the game.
I’d also realized, too late, how she’d used the game as a ploy to get close to me. We’d both jumped a foot apart when Zach’s boots thumped down the stairs, and our faces must have given us away because he was furious. The protective thumb he held over her wasn’t new. Guys couldn’t go near her without him losing it, but he should have known better when it came to me. Beyond helping her with a game of pool, I would have never crossed that line. Twenty-one and fifteen didn’t mix.
I didn’t touch her again, until the day, a few weeks later, when she had a total meltdown after her mom’s funeral. I’d needed her in my arms, needed to absorb some of her pain.
Leaning my head against the cellar door, I let my breath even out as a tremor seized my body, and the memory of our history together vanished. I fought the urge to go back down there and finish what I’d started. My dick throbbed with the need, though I held back. I was still too fucking raw, and I didn’t want to make the kind of mistake that proved fatal. With the visual I had going through my mind—hands wrapped around her delicate throat as I emptied eight years of pent-up rage and desire into her—I knew I couldn’t rush this. Control was imperative.
But shit, I wanted to fuck her.
I waited, listening for a while, but she didn't make a sound, and I had to give her credit. I’d left her in total darkness, naked, and no doubt, freezing. These next few days were going to be hell compared to her pampered princess life.
I’d scared the utter crap out of her, and some sick part of me rejoiced in reducing her to nothing. She didn’t even have a bucket to piss in. Watching her cower had been the biggest rush of my life, and that was saying a lot, considering I used to live for pummeling bodies inside the cage.
Maybe it was because I'd fixated on her in prison. At first, nothing but hatred consumed me, but then as my incarceration started playing with my mind, I’d let my imagination run wild. I’d fucked her every way possible, and in each scenario, she’d sobbed and pleaded for me to stop. I’d envisioned sexually torturing her in ways no sane, normal man should be able put into words.
Those fantasies kept me on the brink of sanity, especially during the endless weeks I’d spent in the hole, bereft of interaction with humans and confined to a dark cell smaller than most bathrooms for twenty-three hours a day.
When I looked in the mirror these days, I didn’t recognize the man staring back. The guy who’d wiped the sorrow from her face the day she buried her mother, absorbing liquid grief that dripped from her eyes in torrents of despair, was gone, replaced by a man who thrilled in eliciting her tears. Darkness turned at the core of my being, a turbulent need that had simmered for years.
No one knew of my fucked up nature better than my old cellmate Jax. As I entered the kitchen, her clothes weighing heavily in my hands, he watched me carefully from the kitchen table as I disposed of them.
“Did you fuck her yet?” That was the thing I liked most about him—he didn’t beat around the bush. He put everything out there without reservation.
As I prepared dinner, I didn’t answer, and he didn’t speak at first. His silence wasn’t uncomfortable. We’d spent hours upon hours in the same cell with nothing but silence and each other.
We’d forged an alliance after I’d beaten the shit out of his would-be killer in prison. He owed me, or so he insisted, and when they paroled him two years ago, he’d set out to repay the debt by keeping tabs on Alex. He’d also taken care of the island since the deed transferred to my name. In exchange, I gave him a place to live.
After last night, I considered the debt more than paid. He’d helped drag Alex’s limp body from her car to mine, then we’d shared a minute of silence as we watched her Volvo sink into the river.
“Well, did ya?” he pressed, breaking into my recollection of how satisfying it’d been to follow through with my plan.
I gave him a single glance, and he laughed.
“Man, you’re whipped. I can’t believe you didn’t fuck her yet.”
“I didn’t say a word, so how do you know if I fucked her or not?”
“I know you,” he said, pushing his dark blond hair back from his forehead. “You go all quiet and shit when you don’t wanna talk. Alex De Luca has been our topic of choice for years. What the fuck is the holdup, man?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go there yet.” I dropped my head with a sigh. Going where I wanted to go would probably turn what was left of me to stone.
“‘Cause you’re not a rapist. I told you so. No way can you do that to her. Not after what you’ve been through.”
“No, believe me—I want to go there.” I returned my attention to the oven and slid the chicken onto the rack. “She wanted it too much.”
“You want her to put up a fight?”
Blood rushed to my cock, confirming his theory. “I’m fucking whacked.”
“No, you just want payback. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
Thanks to Alex, I knew firsthand what it was like to be helpless, though I hadn’t made a single sound of defeat once in the last eight years. Not when they closed the bars on me for something I didn’t do, not when other inmates jumped me, held me down, and took turns ramming into my ass. Not even when my father died and I’d been denied the chance to go to his funeral.
I hated to consider what he’d think of me now, how much shame calling me his son would bring him. I’d taken the island he’d willed to me, the one place I equated with happy summertime memories during my childhood, and had turned it into my own personal Alcatraz.
No amount of guilt or shame would change what I wanted most—to unleash the same torment I’d experienced on my single prisoner. The way she looked at me though, the way she responded, really pissed me off. I wanted a fight. I wanted her fingernails digging into me. I wanted her kicking and screaming and begging for mercy. I wanted her tears and her fucking pain. “Payback is one thing, but the things I want to do to her…”
Jax settled his chin in his hand, and a wide grin split his face. “Have you forgotten we used to jack off in the same cell? You also talk in your sleep. I know what you want to do to that girl. I just never thought you’d have the balls to go through with it.”
“Trust me, my balls aren’t the problem. And she’s not a girl anymore.”
“All the better. What are you waiting for? Go fuck her rough-like. Find the right buttons and push the fuck outta them. Hell, if you don’t want her, I’ll take her.”
He only said it to goad me, and it worked. “Stay away from her,” I said with a growl.
Jax held up his hands. “‘Nough said. I’m a firm believer in the code.”
“What code?”
“The leave-my-woman-the-fuck-alone code. You want her? She’s all yours.” He pushed up from the table. “I’ve gotta be back in town.” He paused with a wicked grin. “Got plans tonight.”
“Seriously?” I arched a brow, surprised because Jax had issues when it came
to women. Being with a woman usually involved physical contact, and he couldn’t stand to be touched.
“Plans as in a date?”
“Uh-huh.”
“With a woman?”
He leveled me with a stare. “Yes, with a woman.”
“Hey, I’m just surprised, is all. Whatever gets you out there, man.”
“Goes both ways. You need to get down there and fuck her senseless. Eight years is a long time to wait.”
Shit. He was good at turning a conversation on its head.
He lifted his jacket off the back of the chair. “Gotta work tomorrow, so I won’t be too late.”
My brother Adam had given Jax a job when no one else in the area would touch a felon. I also put in hours at Mason Vineyards, but it was mostly to uphold the illusion I was a positive contributing citizen. I didn’t need to work, thanks to my inheritance. However, idleness drove me nuts, made me want to rip into something, and Alex had ruined my career as a fighter, so working off steam the way I used to wasn’t an option. A punching bag didn’t deliver the same gratifying release as pounding flesh. Since I’d taken her though, my presence at the winery was about to become nonexistent, at least for a while.
“Seriously, Rafe. Fuck the shit outta her.”
“Is that an order?”
“Damn right. You’ve earned a piece of that.”
I was one sick SOB because I felt he was right.
The first time I saw Rafe Mason, he was beating the crap out of my brother. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but watching through the inexperienced eyes of a 13-year-old, even I’d realized Zach didn’t stand a chance.
Rafe was all rippling muscle, sweat dripping down his biceps as he tightened his choke hold. Let me back up here. They hadn’t really been fighting. They’d been in the middle of an intense sparring match at one of the gyms our father owned. Fuck if I’d cared though. I couldn’t take my eyes off Rafe. His dark and wild hair, plastered to his forehead from sweat, had curled slightly above squinted green eyes. I remembered Mom’s stiff posture and the rigid set of her back as we stood watching. Her mouth had fallen open, as if she were this close to shouting “let him go!” We'd come in on the tail end of the session, and Mom should have known better. She never could stomach watching Zach get his balls handed to him.
