by Jo Raven
“He pulled me out of that funk,” he goes on, “only for us to be dragged into prison soon after. And after that, even he couldn’t help me. Nobody can, Cass.”
God, the pain in his voice is killing me. But I’m not the type to give up easily.
“Come back to bed.” An idea is forming inside my mind, and it’s probably crazy, but he won’t talk, and I have to start from somewhere. I’m winging it here, but he says he wants me, so… “Lie down with me.”
“And then what?”
“Then you show me how you jack off.”
Chapter Nine
Shane
“Cass.” What the fuck? My ears are ringing. Has to be why I thought I heard… “What did you say?”
She’s tugging me back toward the bed like a small, sexy heat-seeking missile. I’m too tired to dig in my heels, to stop this train wreck from happening.
Too tired to resist her. Fucking exhausted. Especially since I don’t want to resist her, dammit. I want her more than a drug, more than pain. More than anything I’ve ever wanted. The blood is still humming in my veins, in my dick, despite my fear.
Her hand is small but strong in mine, and the thought of kissing her again, of touching her, sends a searing bolt of need in my gut.
“Is this okay?” she asks, pulling until I sit down beside her on my bed. Her gaze moves from my face down to my bare chest, dark and hot, and the need intensifies, my dick so hard I open my legs to give it some room.
Okay? Yeah, I’m okay. I want to grab her and fuck her across the mattress, but I nod.
“Do you trust me?” Her fingers trail up my forearm, tracing the scars, and I flinch, but don’t pull away.
She knows. She knows and she’s still here.
In reply, I lean in, grip her face, kiss her. Back where we started.
That’s my yes.
She seems to get the message, because she kisses me back, but then climbs onto the bed and scoots back. Her blue eyes are bright, her pale hair glinting, the pale stretch of her neck dragging my eyes down her cleavage.
I swallow, try to speak.
“What do you want?” she whispers, and oh fuck, she’s grabbing the hem of her blouse, tugging it up. “Do you want me?”
“Hell, yeah.” I watch, hypnotized, as she tugs it over her head and off, throwing it to the floor somewhere.
Underneath she’s wearing a thin tank top, a deep blue that matches her eyes and barely hides her tits. A pendant hanging on a black leather string dips between them. Her nipples are hard, poking through the flimsy fabric, and I grunt, shifting on the bed, reaching down to push on my dick.
“Do you think of me when you jack off?”
“Every time,” I say, unable to keep the truth from spilling. “Every night, ever since I met you.”
Something goes through her eyes, and it looks like excitement and happiness and somehow also like pain.
“How do you imagine me?” She’s kneeling on my bed, in her tight jeans and even tighter tank top, the creamy skin of her tits and shoulders and arms almost glowing—and her question takes forever to sink in—because my brain is sluggish, deprived of oxygen.
Breathing is important, I realize, and suck in air, almost choking on it.
Shit.
“You’re serious,” I manage after the second try.
“You bet I am.” She smiles, leans forward more, and her tits strain against her top. My breathing is still uncertain, as if my lungs forgot how to work, and I stare, my mouth parched.
“Do you want me to undress?” she asks. “Would you like to watch while I do that? Want to see me naked?”
Holy fuck. “Yeah.”
“What else?” She leans back again, gives me a look from heavy-lidded eyes and Christ, she’s so sexy. “Want me to touch myself while you jack off?”
I groan, unable to help myself. This has to be one of those good dreams, the ones that have me waking up gasping, a hot sticky mess in my sheets.
But if she’s serious…
“Why…?” I swallow, force the question out. “Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. You’re hot. You’re the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.” And when I gape at her, disbelieving, her smile returns, sweeter than before. “I need to know your triggers before we try anything else. And I want to try more stuff. Because I like you. A lot.”
Shaking my head to myself, I turn so that I can stretch out my legs on the bed, my back propped on the wall.
Come on. Things like that don’t happen to me. Hell, they don’t happen to guys in general, period. Not with girls like Cassie. I mean, fuck, she’s a sex goddess. Hot as hell. Prettiest girl on earth. The fact she wants to try with a fucked up guy like me, do this so we can explore what makes my screwed up mind tick and what sets me off, because she likes—
Oh shit. Whoa. Time-out. Brain is now officially off.
She’s undressing.
I tip my head back, my dick burning, pulsing in my pants as she unbuttons her jeans and pushes them down. Her legs are smooth and long, her panties hot pink and tiny. She sits on the mattress across from me, and tugs her tank top off, revealing her hot pink bra, and I cup my hard-on, helplessly thrusting against my hand.
Holy shit.
With her hair loose, her expression soft, her tits threatening to burst from her bra, her pussy barely covered, she’ll be the death of me.
Death by arousal. Christ.
“Your turn,” she says, her voice low, flickering over my skin. “Take off your pants. I want to see you, too.”
Panting, my dick throbbing, I reach for the waistband of my pants and tug. “Bossy.”
“Yeah, well. You’re not the only one with fantasies, you know.” She winks at me.
I blink, frozen mid-motion. “What are you saying?”
“Fantasies with you, Shane Tucker.” She licks her lips. “Didn’t I say you’re hot?”
Huffing a laugh under my breath, I push down my pants and briefs, let them drop to the floor with her clothes. Warmth is seeping into my neck, my face.
“Did you…?” I wave a hand at her, suddenly needing to know and fucking nervous. “Get off thinking of me?”
“Uh-huh.” She runs her hands over her tits, over the colorful bra, and my cock twitches, making me groan. She’s staring at my dick. “God, you’re big. Bigger than I imagined.”
I want to ask what she fantasized about, what she saw me do—but the need to come is more urgent. Grabbing my cock, I drag my fist up and down, once, twice. It’s so wet, my hand slips effortlessly along its length.
Fire sparks, licks at my balls. Feels so damn good.
“Tell me,” she says, breathless. Her hands move in circles over her breasts. “What next? What do you want me to do?”
Christ, this girl. I have to still my hand, squeeze hard the base of my dick to stop from coming. “Take it off,” I rasp, not fucking believing we’re doing this, but fuck, can’t complain. “Take off your bra.”
Have to see her tits. Her nipples. Been imagining them, jerking off to the fantasy of them for too long.
She reaches behind her back, unclasps the bra and takes it off. Then she cups her tits, offering them up to me, the pale green pendant, shaped like a star, hanging between them, her pale pink nipples puckered and hard.
Oh fuck… Smearing more precum from the small slit on the crown down my dick, I pull on it, biting the inside of my cheek not to moan out loud.
“You’re…” I’m panting, my balls drawn up tight, so damn close to coming. “So much prettier than I imagined.”
Her eyes close, her breath hitching. “What next?”
My dick jumps in my hand, and I squeeze again, harder this time. “Your panties. You’re sliding them off, and then…” A groan escapes me, and I tug on my cock once, shivering at the pleasure.
“Then what?” she whispers, sliding her tiny panties off, exposing her shaved pussy to me. Goddammit. So perfect.
“Then you touch yourself. Rub your hand over your
clit.” I swallow hard, dimly wondering if this is the part where she gets up and leaves, slamming the door on her way out. “And you push two fingers inside of you. God…”
Somewhere during my recounting, my hand has started moving faster over my dick, and I knock my head back on the wall, because this is too much.
“Hey.” She leans closer to me, her cool hair slipping over my legs. “Is this okay?”
Takes me a second to understand what she’s asking. I nod, unable to do more, but still okay. No flashback teasing at my senses. No panic.
“You know, I’ve never done anything like this with anyone else,” she says, leaning back again, her eyes uncertain. “Ever.”
Fuck. A sense of joy fills me, but if she’s uneasy… “We could stop—”
“No.” She drags her hand over one breast, and my gaze is torn from her pretty face to her tits, her belly, the dark space between her pale legs. “This is hot, Shane. You’re so hot.”
“I need to touch you,” I hiss. “Be inside you.”
“Need you, too.” Her hand stalls, teasing the nipple, and she gasps. “God, Shane…”
She’s biting her lip. I’m torn between watching the expressions flitting over her face and her hand that’s heading south. Her fingers dip between her folds, and her body arches backward.
I think I’ve stopped breathing.
God, I want to kiss her. I wanna be the one touching her, running my mouth over her skin, sucking on her rosy nipples. Licking a path down her belly to her pussy, stroking her until she comes.
My cock swells in my grip, straining toward her. It’s so wet, so hard it hurts. My balls press up and I moan, my body racing toward release. No way to stop it now.
“Come with me,” I manage, struggling to keep my eyes open, to see her touching herself, her fingers pumping inside her pussy. “Cassie…”
Her body a taut bow, her thumb pressed on her clit, she lets out a keening cry, her hips rolling, and goddammit, she’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Sexier than I imagined. Sexier than anything—
The pleasure hits without warning, the pressure behind my balls snapping, hurtling me into a blinding orgasm that has my body shaking and strangled sounds coming from deep inside me. My cum splashes my chin, my arms, my chest, and I’m still coming in wrenching spasms that seem to go on forever.
Jesus Christ.
Fuck.
Somehow, the black void is still waiting to suck me down. I can feel it teasing the back of my mind. Need something to bring me back before I fall too deep and I knock my head back again, the pain exploding in my skull pushing the void back.
“Shane, stop.” When she leans over me and kisses my mouth, I sigh, my body going limp and heavy. Everything stops when she touches me like this.
The world stops turning.
My eyes are closing, the surge of energy that kept me going since she appeared on my doorstep used up. I’m crashing hard, and the last thing I remember is her face, and her voice telling me to go to sleep before the dark snuffs me out.
***
It always starts with the smell, even in my dreams. Onion-sour sweat, chlorine and the ever-present fucking cinnamon, who the hell knows why.
By then, of course, I’m in too deep to know it’s a dream—as my body hits the tiled floor of the bathrooms with a thud and a sparkle of pain radiates from my spine, as I’m pulled by my hair and the sharp claws of hurt drag a gasp from my throat.
As despair swallows me whole, and every attempt to fight and free myself results in vicious kicks in my ribs and back, and the sound of hooting laughter.
I don’t wanna be here. Why am I here again?
“Miss me, little bitch?” Rotten meat breath, a scar under a pale eye, a sneer. “Thought I wouldn’t come for you again? Thought I’d ever let you go?”
“No.” I shake my head, wince when the hand in my hair tightens, tiny pinpricks of fire. “Please.”
“That’s right. Beg for it.” He’s chewing gum, every single fucking time. He grins. Then he draws his fist back and crashes it into my face. Pain explodes. “This,” he says pleasantly, “is for ratting us out to the nurse. Did you really think anything would happen?”
“What will happen,” says Christoph, twisting his hand in my hair, snapping my head back so that I’m looking up at his inverted face, “is that we’re gonna fuck you that much harder.”
When they stuff the dirty cloth into my mouth, I know what’s coming, I know what came, I’ve lived it, seen it a thousand times over, and my body jerks like a fish on a hook.
No one can save me. This will never end. Seth can’t save me.
I need to end this. End me, so that I get out of this hell. I need—
“ShaneComeOnShaneWakeUpComeOnShane…” The voice is low and urgent, high-pitched with fear and different from the ones still echoing in my head… A woman’s voice, a light pressure on my shoulder. “Shane. Wake up. It’s a dream. You’re okay. Shane!”
My mouth is open in a scream I can’t push out. Breathing isn’t an option, not yet. Pain is shooting through me like a jagged bullet, carving up my insides. I finally manage to suck air into my tight lungs, and it comes out in a hiss.
There’s a dull thud-thud-thud behind the buzzing in my ears and the booming of my heart. Dimly I realize it’s because I’m shaking so hard the headboard is knocking against the wall.
Jesus.
A bed. Not the floor. The bedside lamp is on behind me, throwing long shadows on the wall and a person is crouched there, a dark ghost.
Fuck. I jerk back a moment before I realize it’s Cassie, long blond hair tangled around her face, her eyes round as saucers.
Cassie.
I curl in on myself. My teeth are chattering. So damn cold. And I’m naked. Another realization, and it isn’t helping me get free of the nightmare.
She pulls the covers over me, puts her arm over my hip, and I draw another shallow breath, some of the pain and panic fading to background noise.
Her face is right in front of mine, her delicate brows knit. “Okay?”
I just breathe, panting into the quiet, waiting for the fading voices in my head to go away. My heart is thudding so hard I think I might break a rib.
Christ.
“Want me to stay? Or go back to the couch?”
Dazed, I snake out a hand and grip her wrist, drag her closer, while my mind wraps itself around the fact she’s sleeping on my couch. In my apartment.
But not in my bed. My breathing comes a little easier now, both from realizing she’s careful, careful not to make my dreams worse, and from the voices from the memory finally falling silent.
Not that I don’t want her in my bed. I do. I do want everything with her. Touching her, tugging her closer is like walking on the edge of a knife. Dangerous. Thrilling. Potentially stupid.
Fucking awesome.
She climbs onto my bed. She’s dressed in an oversized T-shirt—one of mine, I think, and it makes me want to smile, though it’s too soon for that—and her hot pink lacy panties. The rest is long, smooth legs, and if I slip my hands under the T-shirt I know I’ll find her creamy stomach and her perfect tits.
How the hell can I be getting hard after this motherfucking nightmare when my lungs are still struggling to draw oxygen from the air? I let her curl beside me and pull the covers over both of us.
“Light?” she asks.
I hesitate. “Leave it on,” I croak, deciding it’s too late to be more embarrassed.
“Are you okay now?” Her voice is small. She’s frightened. That makes two of us. “I heard you scream.”
Hell. So I managed a scream after all.
“Why?” I swallow, try again. “Why are you here, Cass?”
“What do you mean?” She scrunches up her nose.
“You could be with any guy right now, out, partying. Dancing and drinking. Christ, having sex, and not having to tiptoe around my triggers and sleep on my couch only to be woken up by my screaming.” My pulse is racing a
gain, and something hot presses behind my eyes.
“You don’t know why?”
“Fuck.” I close my eyes, try to breathe around the knot in my throat. “No, I fucking don’t. What do you want from me? Why are you doing all this?”
“Because, you stupid boy.” Her voice trembles a little, and I frown. “I told you. I’ve never done this with anyone before.”
This. “Touching yourself?”
A huff of laughter escapes her. “That, too. But also this. Lying next to a guy, talking. Understanding. Just being together. Didn’t I tell you I like you?”
I don’t know if she said it. Wouldn’t have thought she meant it. Anyway, “like” is too broad a term to mean what I want it to mean.
What I want is to be the only guy for her. In everything.
I shiver, and she burrows closer to me. I’m still gripping her wrist, and I pull her hand to my chest. She’s warm. Leaving her hand over my pounding heart, I put my arm around her and press our bodies together.
“This okay, then?” she whispers. “I thought maybe you don’t want to touch so much after the nightmare.”
“With you it’s good,” I admit, though I don’t have the energy to explain more. I already talked much more than I thought possible after waking up like that.
I never told Seth that the real reason I can’t share an apartment with him is that his voice, his presence is a goddamn trigger. He was right there, in my nightmare. He was in the prison with me, a few cells down, and every time I was dragged away to the showers, I could hear him yelling my name, then yelling for the guard—the guard I knew beat him senseless every time—and banging on the bars.
It never helped. His voice became part of the memory, so intertwined with the men’s voices and the pain I can’t pull it apart anymore.
Seth rescued me every time something bad happened to me—except in the prison. I know it was killing him, tearing him apart that he listened but couldn’t come save me. And now there’s nothing worse than waking up from a flashback or nightmare to find Seth there. Throws me right back into a loop.
But Cassie… Cassie wasn’t there. She has nothing to do with my past. She’s my today, and for some reason I can’t quite fathom, she’s my tomorrow.
