by Jo Raven
She’s hope.
***
I wake up again at some later time, my limbs loose and warm, a girl curled up on my chest. Feels like long hours have passed, but my cell on the nightstand reads six in the morning.
Maybe it has been long hours. I don’t know at what time the nightmare woke me up earlier.
“Hey,” she murmurs, looping her arms around my neck, shifting closer. So warm and soft. Her slight weight feels so good where she’s draped over my chest.
Closer than ever, her scent seeping into my senses, her face tilted up toward me. I lean in, drawn despite the blaring alarms inside my head, and brush my mouth over hers.
Sweet. So soft and sweet. I deepen the kiss, my body finally catching up, jolting wherever she touches—awake at long last, so fucking aroused and hypersensitive. My cock swells more with every flick of my tongue against hers, with every tiny moan I swallow. The tip presses into her stomach, smearing precum in slippery circles as my hips rock back and forth and her leg slides over mine.
Oh fuck, yes. I want her so much. I wait for panic to hit, for a flashback to distort the room, for cinnamon to replace vanilla.
Nothing happens. She’s still in my arms, and I’m in hers, trying to get closer, always closer. Her mouth leaves mine and trails kisses down my jaw to my neck, and I groan, the shivery pleasure cascading down my spine to pool in my groin. Never had anyone do anything like this to me, and where a second before my thoughts were on how to touch her and pleasure her, now I can only gasp when she licks and lightly bites my nipples, then mouths my abs and blows cool air on my overheated cock.
Then her mouth closes around it, and my mind goes supernova. Shit… Pressure, heat, suction, and I’m ready to blow my load, my balls tightening painfully. Grunting, I flop onto my back, grabbing at the sheets, and she follows the movement, bowing over me, taking me in deep.
My back arches. My stomach clenches. I vaguely remember blowjobs from the time before the prison, but they’re pale dreams. This is red-hot sensation ricocheting off my nerve endings, condensing in a ball of unbearable pressure.
Her hair trails over my thighs, and she does something with her tongue that makes me see stars. Can’t believe she’s sucking me off, can’t believe how fucking good this feels and how I still wish I could be inside her, fucking her pussy, feeling her clench around me.
Panting, I stare down at her, at her eyes half-closed as if she’s the one getting a blowjob and not me, and my hair catches on something.
A vague sense of unease hits me. I glance to the side, and something flits out of the corner of my eye, a shadow. A raucous laughter sounds behind me, and I jerk, trying to see. The pleasure is ebbing away, replaced by cold and numbness. I see Cassie, and it’s as if I’m watching from far away, her mouth around someone else’s cock, not mine.
No.
Need an anchor. Fuck. I fumble clumsily with one hand on the nightstand, pushing the lamp until it’s tittering on the edge, dip my hand into the half-open drawer and encounter pencils and erasers and loose papers where I draw my terrors sometimes at night.
My hand closes around something jagged. A broken, plastic pencil sharpener. I clench my fingers around it tightly, let the sharp edges press into my palm. Deeper. Harder. Until the edges cut into my skin and my teeth grit.
Oh fuck… I swallow back a groan as the pain shoves me back into my body, and suddenly I feel everything—her lips stretched around my cock, her hand on my balls, the heat and pressure gathering and tightening my muscles.
My mouth opens in a silent cry as orgasm hits me like a sledgehammer, pounding into my insides, releasing a river of fire that pours through my dick before I can even think of warning her.
She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t stop, doesn’t move away. Her lips press around my dick, and I pour into her mouth, convulsing on the mattress as wave after wave of pleasure hits me, jolting me.
Hot damn. I stare up at the ceiling, a cobweb darkening one corner, and the shadows cast by the lamp and bed are no longer scary.
So when I push her off me and down on the bed, when I push up her borrowed T-shirt and kiss her nipples, when I tug down her panties and finally settle between her legs to taste her, it doesn’t matter if my brain is still fizzling from going from extreme to extreme—from terror to mind-blowing pleasure.
I know what I want, in spite of nightmares and panic attacks and night terrors. She’s here, she’s still here, and dammit, I’m gonna give her an orgasm she won’t ever forget.
Not because I’m an expert. Not because I have experience or special skills. Nothing like that. I bet she’s been with guys who know what the hell they’re doing.
But I’ve never done this with any girl, and I’ve never wanted a girl like I want her—and right now, everything seems possible.
That’s what she does to me.
Chapter Ten
Cassie
My whole focus was on making Shane come while checking he didn’t react badly to anything. Making my checklist of triggers to keep in mind for the future.
Which is another thing niggling at me. Future. I’m thinking of a future with Shane, when we’ve only just started moving from friends to cautious lovers, with no promises of anything more than a good time in bed.
I’m a little distracted when he suddenly tenses and fumbles for something on the nightstand, but then he relaxes again and other parts of him tense—his stomach, rippling with impressive abs, his hands at his sides, his balls, and then his cock, jerking in my mouth as he comes in hot jets.
Swallowing, massaging his balls to prolong the pleasure, I watch fascinated as he writhes on the sheets, his mouth open, his eyes fluttering shut.
So beautiful. The image will haunt my dreams. Okay, scratch that, he haunts my dreams already.
And then, before I even realized he’s done and conscious, he flips me over on my back, rips off my clothes and goes down on me like he’s thirsty and I’m a cool Mai Tai. Or something.
My brain refuses to work, especially when his fingers part my folds and his tongue dives between them, flicking over my clit.
Jeez. Not ten minutes ago I came in to find him fighting to get free of sleep, then I made him come— the image is still lodged behind my lids, flashing before me whenever I close my eyes, of him coming, his whole body arching with it—and now he’s on a mission to make me come, too.
He hesitates before giving me a long lick that has me panting with arousal. Then hesitates again before using his finger to push a little into me. It’s obvious he’s not experienced, but do I care? Not one bit.
It’s Shane. The boy I’ve been fantasizing about, going down on me, his eyes bright whenever he glances up at me. Pretty, dark eyes under thick brows, a strand of black hair sliding over his cheek, his dreamcatcher earring grazing his jaw.
Gorgeous.
He fucks me lightly with his finger, licks at me again, like a big cat lapping cream from a dish, his eyes going hooded. One side of his mouth tips up in a half smirk before he dives deeper.
And yet not enough.
I want to tell him I need more, much more, that I want all of him, that I can sense it: just a bit of him will never be enough. I want everything he has, everything he is.
Whoa, where did this come from? Take it easy, Cass, this isn’t anything serious. It never is. Boys like sex, they like you, and that’s that. Shane is pretty, and damaged, and your friend, and—
His fingers sink inside me, and his lips replace his tongue on my clit. He sucks and pumps his fingers, and oh man, this boy’s a natural. A moan catches in my throat as my spine arches off the bed, and my legs tremble as I struggle not to move.
In the end, it’s a lost battle. I roll my hips, riding his fingers, and he gets back at me for moving by sucking harder, or so it seems like to my fuzzy brain. He twists his fingers, setting something off inside me, and the pressure crests and breaks in a deep, steady whumph that echoes through my whole body, inside my skull.
I shatter into a
million glittering pieces.
Nothing makes sense for a long moment, and when it does, he’s leaning over me, cool hair trailing over my stomach, over my breasts, that small, pleased smirk back on his lips.
“Like that?” he asks, and in his twinkling eyes I see he knows the answer. I also see a sparkle and a calm below the surface that wasn’t there before.
“Just like that,” I say and pull him down beside me.
***
I’m dozing, a happy buzz running under my skin where our naked bodies touch under the covers. His eyes are half-closed whenever I open mine, looking at me, and his forehead is smooth. I never realized how often he frowns and scowls until now when that absence turns his face from sharply handsome to heart-breakingly beautiful.
He lifts a hand to my cheek, sweeps a strand of hair away. “You’re not sleeping.”
“Neither are you.”
He rolls one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t sleep much.”
“Bad dreams?”
“Very bad.”
“Is that why you have the dreamcatchers?” The earring, and the one tattooed on his muscular stomach.
He nods.
“Do they work?”
He shakes his head.
His nightmares are too bad and too real. He doesn’t say it, but I hear it anyway.
He cups my cheek and something scrapes on it. I put my hand over it, tug his off and turn it over to examine his palm.
A cut, half-scabbed over, a bead of bright fresh blood seeping at one end. “When did this happen? It’s fresh.” I glance up, and his expression is shutting down. “When I was going down on you. When you reached into the bedside table. What…?”
Then I see the small object on top of the quilt. A tiny thing, broken and uneven, its yellow plastic dyed red on one side.
We make a grab for it at the same time, and I’m a nanosecond faster because it’s in my hand. He sighs as I unfurl my fingers and look at it.
“A pencil sharpener?”
“It’s what I could find on short notice.”
“Why would you need…?” I bite my lip, think back on the moment. He’d stilled, fallen quiet, his body tensing, I remember. Then he’d taken this thing from the drawer, and he’d come back to life. “The pain.”
A scowl, his customary expression, tightens his fine features, but he says nothing.
“Did you feel it?” I ask, and he lifts a brow. He’s not making it any easier. Maybe he doesn’t know how. “Were you about to have a flashback?” I consider my own question as he struggles with it, rolling away from me, his jaw working. “Can you tell when you’re about to have one?”
He scoots up until he’s sitting, his back to the headboard. His hair falls in his face. “Sometimes I know,” he whispers.
“Like this time?”
Another nod. “Voices. Smells. And I feel cold. Numb.” He rubs his chest, leans his head back, observing me from under his dark lashes. “Dead.”
The word makes me wince. I can see the scars on his wrists in the low light of his bedside lamp, and familiar dread stirs inside me.
It’s not the same, I tell myself. Not the same as Angel. Angel didn’t make it. Angel didn’t stop trying to die. Shane’s scars are old. He survived. He went on living—and hasn’t tried to die since then.
Right?
“Tell me about these.” I scoot up until I’m sitting beside him and pull the covers over our legs.
Taking his hand in mine, I turn it over, exposing the ink and the scar on his wrist. If he wants, he can pull his hand away, I think, and when he doesn’t, a tiny thrill goes through me—both excitement and foreboding.
“There was a time,” he starts but stops abruptly. He looks down, stares hard at my hand locked around his wrist. I resist the urge to run my fingers over the scar, and the smaller one crisscrossing it. “A bad time. When I thought there was no way out.”
“In prison?”
A tiny flinch, quickly suppressed. “Yeah.”
“But you don’t want that now.” I swallow, something twisting in my chest. “You don’t want to die anymore, do you?”
I need to hear it from him. Because if he still wants to die, then I don’t know if I can help him. Don’t know if I can take it.
Not again.
His fingers curl inward, and I slide my hand down, over his rough palm. He’s silent and for a while I think he won’t answer me. That scares me. It’s almost an answer itself if he doesn’t.
But his fingers close over mine, strong and warm, and he nods at the broken sharpener still in my other hand. “That thing. The pencil sharpener. It broke last month. I kept it. You’d think I’m a hoarder. Perhaps my time on the fucking streets saw to that, and maybe I am a little. But that’s not really true. It’s pretty much empty in here, isn’t it?”
I nod. Spartan is the word that leaps to mind. Sparse. Military, almost.
“I kept the sharpener thinking I could fix it. I keep the things I believe I can fix.”
I blink. Open my mouth to ask why he’s telling me this little story that has nothing to do with my question. Anger simmers in my stomach. Is he dismissing my fears? Is he ignoring me?
His eyes hold mine when I look up, dark like the night. Intense. Willing me to understand.
Shane doesn’t talk much. He also doesn’t say things without a reason. And he doesn’t ignore me, or my fears.
“You are,” I search for the words but settle on one he used before about himself, “damaged. Broken. But you believe you can fix yourself.” My eyes sting, but it’s a good feeling. “So you decided to keep yourself, like you kept that sharpener. Keep alive.”
An emotion flickers across his face—surprise? Gladness? Relief?
No, something more. Something bigger, deeper that makes my heart pound.
“I hope I’m right,” he says quietly, looking away. “That I can do this.”
“You can.” I let the sharpener roll back on the covers and put my hand on his face so that he has to turn back toward me. “You will. And I’m right here to help you.”
***
“I should get ready for work,” he says when I intercept him at the door of the small bathroom. When I woke up five minutes ago, he wasn’t in bed with me, his side cold. His drawing pad and pencils are strewn on the sofa, though.
I wonder how long he sat there, putting his nightmares on paper until I realized he was gone. If he had another nightmare, and I didn’t notice.
I wrap my arms around him, and he makes a startled sound but hugs me back. He’s only dressed in his low-slung pants, and I press my mouth to the warm skin of his shoulder before I pull back again.
The early morning light silvers his lashes and the lines of his face, the strong bones of his jaw and cheekbones, his long collarbone. Picks out the hollows on his muscled chest, shadows mingling with the dark ink spread there.
Makes his eyes darker.
“I liked spending the night with you,” I whisper, and he makes another sound, this time a ghost of a laugh, because it tugs his lips into a smile.
“What the fuck ever,” he says, but his voice is soft, as if he’s wondering whether I’m telling the truth. “Nightmares, triggers…”
“And blowjobs and kissing…” I wink at him, pleased to see his smile widen.
“I really should get ready,” he says, but makes no move to step around me. I brush his long hair off his shoulders, tug lightly on the dreamcatcher earring.
Testing.
“You said you trust me.” I trail my hands down his defined pecs, press lightly. “You need anchors for those moments when you can’t tell the present from the past. Anchors that don’t make you bleed.”
He goes still, the muscles under my palms turning to stone. His eyes go flat. “That’s the only thing that works. Do you think I haven’t tried everything I could think of?”
Oh crap. “I know. I’m only—”
This time he does sidestep me and marches into the bathroom. I spin around and a
m treated to the sight of his beautiful broad back and shiny long hair.
I draw a deep breath. “I think I can help you, if you’ll tell me more. I know it’s hard, talking about this, thinking about it. But it could really make a difference.”
His shoulders tense up more. He braces one hand on the sink, curls the other into a fist and bows forward, and for a moment I think maybe I’ve gone too far because he lifts his fist as if he’s about to punch a hole through the mirror.
“What makes you an expert?” he asks instead, his voice gravelly as if he’s been chain-smoking. “In what can bring me back from the past?”
Anger runs under the deceptively calm tone like a hot current, but he’s right to ask. I’ve been acting like I know better than him, and he’s the one who has been living with these demons for years now. Who am I to offer help? How can I convince him I could?
“I’m not an expert.” Shit. Give a little ground, Cass. Give a clue about yourself. You know his worst demons, and he knows nothing about you. “But I’ve studied post-traumatic stress disorder, especially flashbacks, because of Angel.” I meet his questioning gaze in the cracked mirror. “My brother.”
He turns slowly. It’s as if some invisible barrier has fallen. There’s something unguarded about his expression now, curious and hopeful. “He has flashbacks, too?”
“He did. And nightmares. From his time in the military.”
“And he got over them?”
He’s making the same mistake Seth and Manon did, and it’s my fault for not giving him the truth outright. It’s not an easy truth, and it probably won’t make me look good, either. How can you trust someone to help you when this someone has failed her own brother?
“Angel died. He killed himself when I was twelve. He was only twenty-five.” I lean against the doorjamb, suddenly cold. A shiver wracks me. I rub my hands up and down my bare arms. “I found him in the shower, his wrists slit. It was too late to save him.”
This is it. Tell me to go home now, Shane. To fuck off. Tell me what a failure I am, and why should you listen to anything I say?
Crap.
Silence presses down on us, fills the small bathroom like a living creature, and suddenly all I can see is Angel’s sprawled form, the pool of dark blood, the stillness… God, the stillness and the fear and the loss.
