by Sorcha Black
The shop was just about to close when she got there, and she begged her way in. She’d meant to grab the one thing, but ended up buying a bag full of junk food. Sadly, there hadn’t been an apple in sight. Apple juice would have to do.
“Tess!” Todd caught her attention just before she was about to get in the elevator. “What are you up to?”
“I’m about to eat a metric shit ton of junk food. You?”
“Just hanging out down here until Drew finishes banging the girl he picked up at the bar. Next tour I’m picking a different roomie.” He laughed. His smile made him more handsome than she’d remembered.
“Want some? If I eat all this I’m going to puke on the bus tomorrow.”
“A hot chick with a bag of junk food? That’s the best kind of company.”
She walked over and took the seat beside him, a small table connecting their armchairs.
Tess took the apple juice out of the bag before handing the rest to him.
“Juice? That’s not junk. Are you some sort of false advertising nutrition freak?” Todd angled his body toward her and laid his arm along the back of the seat, his smile slow and interested.
Oh.
He was a nice enough guy, and sexy, but she didn’t think she was the kind of girl who hooked up with guys she barely knew. With Elodie and Lock it had been different, right? And it would be like cheating on El, if not on them both. Lock had never actually said things between them were over.
She made polite conversation with him for a few minutes and let him raid her stash of chocolate. When he started flirting too much, she panicked.
“I-my stomach is killing me. I have to head to bed.”
Todd grimaced sympathetically. “That sucks. I hope you feel better by the time we take off tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” She made her escape and ducked into the elevator. The motion made her a little green around the gills. If she had food poisoning – or worse, a flu – it would make traveling hell for the next few days. She’d better not get Spider sick. Or the band.
In her room, she locked all of the available door locks, then stripped off her clothes and stood around in the bathroom for a while, but after a few minutes her stomach settled. When she crawled into bed she wished there was someone there to take care of her. What if she needed Gatorade or medicine?
Piling the pillows along one side of her body, she snuggled against them, the cool pillowcases feeling good on her skin. Greasy food and traveler’s stomach sucked.
She grabbed her phone off the nightstand, wondering if Elodie had left her a message. A kiss picture would make her feel better. Six messages?
Ugh, my cramps are so bad. Kill me now.
Still no answer from you? Stubborn little Souris. I’m not giving up.
Fiiine. I’m going to bed. Mr. Grumpy wants company while he’s watching the idiot box. I wish you were in bed with us so I’d have someone fun to play with.
You must have your period by now too, if we’re still synched up. I hope your cramps aren’t as bad as mine.
Goodnight! xoxoxoxox Bye! <3
Talk to you tomorrow, belle Souris.
Tess touched the texted heart, wishing it would jump off her phone and cuddle with her. The lights were still on, but there was no way she wanted to fumble around in the dark looking for the bathroom if she needed to puke.
She laid her phone on the pillow, next to her head, in case Elodie texted her in the middle of the night. Sometimes inspiration struck, and she’d stay up all night working on something while texting Tess. Her eyelids drooped shut and she sank into the mattress.
If Lock didn’t want her, she’d probably never sleep next to Elodie again, let alone both of them. Tears came and she let them. So much crying since she’d left. Dimwit. She should have discussed things with them, instead of leaving, but it had been an intense couple of days and she hadn’t been thinking straight. Also, she was a chickenshit. Asking Lock if he really loved her had been too scary, so she’d run away. Dumbass.
His face came to mind, smiling at her, his hand on her cheek. That feeling she got when she was with him – a mix of being safe and protected, in danger and desired – made her wrap her arms around herself, wishing the thickness in her throat would go away. Her feelings for him were complicated, but were comprised mostly of awe, adoration, and love. She worshipped him, let him rule her body, and that influence spilled over into her mind. In their time together, he’d shown her that she had strength where she’d never noticed it before.
She drifted in and out of sleep.
Lock grabbed her, whispering words that dripped with sexual tension. As though they obeyed his thoughts, vines shot from the trees and bound her arms and legs, holding her suspended. He examined her, touching her like he owned her. When she begged him to ease her, he groaned with frustration. They had to wait. They were waiting for fried chicken that made her stomach hurt, and for condoms because big shaggy creatures had stolen them all. His cock was huge and was painful to look at. He growled. Was he turning into a creature too? She struggled, trying to get loose and run away, but the vines tightened. Holding her so he could rut with her. She whimpered, but the sound was drowned out by his evil laugh. Lock’s teeth had become fangs and his hair stood out from his head like an angry dog. Her body shuddered, terrified of him, that he’d bite her, hurt her, but her pussy ached with need. There was no one to stop him from breeding her. He would plant his seed in her belly. To her horror, desire dripped from her. Her mouth opened to beg for freedom, but instead she begged to be used.
Tess jerked awake. She squirmed and made a desperate noise. So close! She needed to get off so bad, but he wasn’t there to use her like she wanted to be used. When she pressed a hand against her groin, it didn’t help at all.
She sat up and padded to the bathroom, needing to pee again. In the doorway her head started to spin. She grabbed for the wall, but missed and fell hard on one knee. What the fuck? Stupid flu. Rather than chance another fall, she sat and waited for the dizziness to pass. Nausea followed. She huddled in a ball and felt sorry for herself, wishing she could send someone to get her some medication or something.
To distract herself, she focused on the dream.
Why was she into noncon? It made her feel like a perv in a bad way. Not that she ever wanted something like that to happen to her for real. Never. But when she had a safeword and could make it stop, the adrenaline rush it gave her, and knowing that Lock had so much self control, was wild.
How many Doms could bind a girl, have her at his mercy, and pull out before he came inside her?
In the dream he had no intention of pulling out. She shivered, glad her period would start any time. Again, good for a dream, but in real life...
Tension twisted her stomach around and she crawled for the toilet. Puking on the floor would mean smelling it all night, and that would have made her queasy even if she’d been well. She gathered her hair and tied it back, waiting.
Stupid fried chicken and no condoms.
“Oh God.” She made it to the bowl before she lost her dinner. Panic rose, clutching at her.
What if it wasn’t the chicken? She’d been bus sick on and off since they left, but it had been getting worse instead of better. What if...fuck!
The puking stopped and she forced herself to stand, her legs shaking but they were just trying to keep up with the rest of her. She looked in the mirror then moved to the door, to use the full-length mirror. With trembling hands she lifted her tits high, then turned back and forth. Her breasts were sore, but maybe that just meant she was going to start her period? Her body hadn’t changed, but it had only been a few weeks.
What if she was pregnant?
Memories of Lock fucking her in the woods mixed with her dream-Lock. The animal wouldn’t have stopped, but the real Lock had tried to talk her out of it then had stopped even when she begged him for more.
He’d pulled out soon enough, hadn’t he? Seriously, what were the chances?
Her p
hone was in her hand before she realized she was moving. The web said chances were so, so low, unless he didn’t pull out soon enough. The stories on the pregnancy forums said differently. She stopped reading forums.
She replayed that afternoon over and over in her mind, but she’d been so spacey that her memories were both vague and knee-meltingly hot.
Not knowing what else to do, she threw her clothes back on and grabbed some money and her room key and went out to the street. For a while she walked, hoping she’d find some sort of pharmacy or store still open. She searched a gas station a block away, but although they had condoms, it was a bit fucking late for that now. The attendant directed her to a grocery store down the street that was still open. They had tests, so she picked one at random and tried not to see the sympathetic expression she got from the cashier.
Fuck you. I’m not.
When she got back out into the street she realized she couldn’t remember her way to the hotel. She jammed the test in her hoody pocket, and went one way for a while, but the slope seemed all wrong. Oh jeez, if she had to call Winter to find her she’d just jump off a bridge. There was no way she wanted to explain this.
For an hour she walked, clutching her phone. She desperately wanted to call Elodie or Lock – someone who gave a shit about her. Someone who would be concerned and tell her that she’d figure things out and this wasn’t the end of the world. But the truth was she was alone in this. There was no way she could tell Elodie, who’d rat her out to Lock, who’d take her back out of a sense of obligation. She didn’t want pity from anyone anymore. She couldn’t live there under those circumstances again.
When she’d decided she was hopelessly lost, she saw the gas station. Her stomach had settled and now she was just tired. It probably was just some bad chicken. She’d worried over nothing. At three forty-five she walked back into the lobby, thinking she should have bought a snack instead of a pregnancy test. She was being ridiculous. If she was pregnant she’d know it. Instinctively. She knew her body better than some crappy piece of plastic did.
When she got back into her room and had relocked the doors, she ate a chocolate bar to soothe a now ravenous hunger. She glared at the test from where she’d put it on the desk.
Screw this. She was going back to sleep.
Screw getting undressed too.
Feeling safer fully clothed, she crawled into bed, trying to warm up. It wasn’t cold out, but she felt as though she’d never be warm again. Her heart was going so fast she felt light headed.
Bock, bock, bock. Chicken.
She pushed herself to her feet and grabbed the damn test. Did she even have to pee?
The instructions were easy, but she spent ages trying to get pee to come out of her body. It had crawled back up and refused to cooperate. She turned the water on in the sink and waited. Four lifetimes later, she managed to get enough out to do the test, and also managed not to get any on her hand. Win.
She thumped the thing down on the back of the toilet and left the room. Maybe she should just throw it out and not look. Was it a good idea to look at these things alone?
Every cruel prediction her father had made for her life had now come true – minus the job as a stripper. Here she was, alone in a hotel room, in a town whose name she didn’t even know, waiting to see if her girlfriend’s boyfriend had knocked her up. She was a horrible, immoral woman.
If there was a baby, she needed to find the poor thing a real family. Someone who wouldn’t screw it up.
Her hand crept protectively over her belly.
Fuck morality.
Who gets to define it for me anyway? Me, that’s who.
She was a big girl. She could handle anything. She’d figure it out.
Maybe she was a mouse, but a mouse still had teeth.
Defiantly, she walked back in.
Chapter Seventeen
Lock sat outside Tess’s apartment building, feeling like a stalker. For all intents and purposes, he was one. Only a desperate man did shit like this.
He’d given her almost two months, but now they needed to talk. Originally, he’d planned on giving her some breathing room, then throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her home. After a week. He would have dommed her into sitting down with them to sort things out. Instead, she’d hopped on a bus with her metalhead friends, and flipped him and Elodie the bird.
Now she was almost home, according to a text she’d sent Elodie this morning. He was supposed to be picking up supplies for their business, but he’d come here instead. He figured Elodie knew where he was, considering the tone she’d used when she told him the news, and the fact that she hadn’t come running over here, herself. Whatever had gone wrong in their relationship – the reason why Tess had left – was something they had to sort out between the two of them.
He’d been walking around with the chain collar he’d bought her in his pocket since the day after she went back to her apartment, not sure if he needed a psych evaluation. Tess had been pretty clear that she was done with them, just from her actions. But he’d wandered into the jewelry store on a whim, and there was the chain, perfect and waiting for him to fasten it around her neck.
She and Elodie had never lost touch, but he couldn’t bring himself to text her back. Texting left out too many of the huge feelings he had, and he was afraid of fucking things up worse, so he just listened to Elodie’s end of things. He was desperate for every scrap of news El told him, but he pretended he didn’t care. There was no use in getting her hopes up if their girl was never coming back to them.
For a few days he’d thought he and Elodie had been done too. When she’d walked out after he’d spanked her, he spent several desperate hours thinking she wasn’t coming back. It would have served him right. As her Dom he’d been within his rights to discipline her after her outburst, but as the man who loved her, he should have cut her some slack. After he’d found her and brought her home, she’d given him the cold shoulder for a while, but when she was calmer they’d talked it all out. She was one of the best things that had ever happened to him, and finding out he could fuck that up in a matter of minutes had been a shock. Next time, talk first, spank later.
About two hours after he’d arrived at Tess’s, an old pickup truck pulled up in front of her building. A big blond guy was driving. Jealousy shot through him. Maybe the guy was just a friend, but what if he wasn’t?
The man got out and opened the passenger door for her, then gave her a hug.
Possessiveness overwhelmed Lock and he gripped the steering wheel hard enough he was surprised it was still round when he let go. When the guy got her bag out of the truck box, handed it to her and left, Lock breathed a sigh of relief. If he’d gone up to her apartment with her, he wasn’t sure what he would have done.
Everything had gone south so abruptly, he wasn’t even sure if she still considered him her Dom. If she’d hooked up with someone else, he couldn’t have blamed her.
He should have texted her back. Maybe Kylie could have checked his messages before he sent them, to make sure he didn’t put his foot in his mouth. It would have been a good idea if he’d thought of that at the beginning.
Feeling like a criminal, as soon as she went into the building, he followed. She was already in her apartment and was locking her door when he got there.
He knocked.
“Did I forget something, Ramsay?” The door swung open and there she was, sweet and tiny, her eyes round with shock. She was even thinner than he remembered.
“You forgot to tell me you were leaving, for one.” He smiled at her, trying to lessen the sting of bitterness behind his words. Tess backed into her apartment, and he hoped that was an invitation to go in. “Can I come in, or is this a bad time?”
Tess raised a self-conscious hand to her hair, her eyes round and her cheeks pink. She gazed at him like a lovelorn calf, then looked down at her toes, then back up at him, before giving him a weak smile. “N-no, it’s fine. I just got home.”
He thoug
ht of telling her he already knew that, but didn’t think his stalking would sound romantic. The apartment was freezing and smelled of mold and stale cigarettes, even though she didn’t smoke. His knight in dented armor complex was telling him to get her the hell out of there, but saving damsels who didn’t want saving was rude and presumptuous. She’d left him. She wasn’t his anymore.
In an effort to look less intimidating, he sat on the couch. She sat too, as though she didn’t trust her legs. Tentatively, he touched her hand, and was happy when she didn’t pull it away.
“I missed you.”
She frowned in confusion. “If you missed me, why didn’t you answer my texts?”
“I-I don’t really have a good answer for that. I read the three you sent me a hundred times, but I could never think of how to answer that wouldn’t mess things up worse.” He grimaced at her. “I’m not very good at expressing myself when I’m upset.”
Tess shrank away, their hands losing connection. Shit. What had he said to throw her off?
“What’s the matter?”
“I didn’t know you were upset. I thought you’d be glad I was gone.”
“Oh Mouse, why would you think that?” He moved closer and when she didn’t edge away again, he slid an arm around her.
She shrugged again. “You had enough to worry about. I was a problem in the first place, interfering in your relationship with Elodie, but then when you lost your job because of me and had no money, I couldn’t expect you to keep supporting me.”
Was that what she’d been thinking, or was that a way for her to let him down gently?
“Maybe I resented your relationship with Elodie right at the beginning, but that was short lived. And me losing my job had nothing to do with you.” He hugged her, and she allowed it. “I wanted you to come to the tournament, and we knew we’d eventually run into people from work if we kept going out places, the three of us. Me losing my job was Caper Toys’ fault, not yours. You can’t take responsibility for their bigotry. That’s all on them and a society that can’t think outside the box.”
