by Jane Lark
“Rach.” His fingers ran into my hair.
I didn’t look up at him, just undid his button and his zipper, then pulled down his jeans and boxers with one sharp tug.
“Shit.” He laughed as his back bumped against the window, then his head hit against it as he looked up. I consumed him, physically and mentally. In my head it gave me control over him. The wicked thoughts that spun around made me suck him harder with hunger and viciousness. It was the bipolar doing this. My Mr. Hyde. The angry side of me.
I hadn’t had angry sex with Jason before, and I could tell he didn’t know I was still angry; he was being too gentle. His fingers stroked through my hair and he groaned in a low guttural sound of innocent pleasure.
This was the me that Declan knew.
Jason had unleashed that bitter, vindictive hard-edged woman, and he’d have to deal with her, because she was a part of me. He’d learn that this was angry sex. I wanted anger back. This was a battle. I wanted him to come in my mouth. He’d hate that. He preferred to come in me. But I wanted to be in control. Because it would make me feel better. It would just make me feel… This was me. This was how I’d had sex with loads of people. I ruled them. I managed it. I was in control.
He held my head and sighed out as I sucked the length of him hard, with my fist gripping him tight, so he’d feel completely absorbed and handled. I flicked my tongue and nipped his sensitive tip, being mean, really, not sexy.
He groaned louder, maybe with pain, but maybe still with pleasure, and his fingertips pressed hard into my scalp. He was enjoying this. I didn’t know that I wanted him to. A part of me wanted him to hate it. I needed him to hate it. I didn’t want him to like this me.
Declan had enjoyed my angry sex. He used to make me mad at him just so I’d be angry when we did it, he’d give me drugs and then do something that would annoy me, and then there would be a battle, with him and his friends.
I gripped Jason’s backside, urging him to move, to press into me, to be aggressive and angry back. That was what I wanted—a fight. A sex fight.
I suppose, with Declan, it had really been rape. Only I’d been too confused, mentally sick and misguided to ever bother to say no to him. I hadn’t known how to say no to guys. Jason had taught me that.
Jason started pressing into my mouth, but not fighting.
Jason didn’t do that. He wasn’t Declan, or any of the other bad guys I’d punished and tortured myself with.
Jason’s fingers stroked through my hair. The gentleness of the movement touched something inside me. The sounds in his throat were definitely sounds of pleasure and appreciation—gratitude. Not anger. He sighed out hard when I let him withdraw, with a guttural sound of satisfaction.
“If you don’t want me to come, you’d better stop,” he said a moment later, in such a sweet, Jason-like voice. His pitch said I love you, and I love making love to you but I want you to get something out of this.
I still wanted him to come. I wanted to win. To prove to myself that I could still win—but it didn’t feel like a fight anymore, just a competition.
“Rach. Shit.” He clasped at my head and pushed into my mouth. Then he came, throbbing in my hand and hot and bitter in my throat. I held his buttocks and swallowed, then he was pulling me up by his grip in my hair.
“I love you.” The words were said over my lips, then his mouth came down on mine. Whatever he’d thought about my sudden, random decision to suck him off, he’d enjoyed it and he was not complaining. He loved absorbing my bomb-blasts of madness.
His hands cradled the back of my thighs, then clutched and lifted me. He walked forward and threw me on to my back on the bed, with a growl that was half laugh.
“Ah!” I squealed. He was killing my bad mood as swiftly as I’d attacked him. His hands went to the waistband of my jeans and undid the button, then he pulled my jeans, and the thong he’d chosen this morning, down to my thighs.
He hadn’t taken his pants off, and he didn’t take my bra off but dived straight into reciprocating with oral sex.
His tongue touched me as his fingers still gripped my jeans. I rocked my hips up against him, my fingers splayed over his hair, urging him on, smiling up at the ceiling. I wanted to come. I wanted to escape. I wanted more sensations and feelings.
Give me every sensation and feeling, let me fly.
He slipped his fingers into me, and moved them fast, in and out, over and over. Like he wanted me to come quick. He was applying the same intensity I’d used on him. That was all he’d seen my aggressive sex as, intensity.
I fell into an orgasm with a wonderful rush I hadn’t known for months. Yes… I wanted to scream. I’d broken the chains of my meds. Escaped them. I could feel!
He rose over me, his erection protruding and ready. He’d have pulled my jeans off but I rolled on to my belly. I was enjoying our half-naked sex. Obeying my implied order, he yanked me up on to all-fours and shoved into me, doggy-style. My fingers clasped the bed covers as he worked.
When he bumped against me, we bumped the headboard against the wall. He clasped my shoulders to pull me back into him and stop the bed rocking. It intensified my feeling but it didn’t stop the bed moving. I pushed back against him, fighting again. To ruin it for him, to make him come first. But it was only to make the sex better, not for a vicious reason. It wasn’t bipolar doing it, it was me.
The air in the room filled up with the sound of us having sex, panting, sighs, and little catches of throaty sounds as the bed creaked along with his rhythm, in a symphony for the fun of anyone in the room next to ours.
“Come first!” I shouted, when he hadn’t broken. I was getting close to the edge, the sensation in my blood was so sweet, but there was still a need for competition, for me to win.
“No way.”
His hand came around the front of my thigh and pressed on to the sensitive spot at the front of my sex. I came. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to… It was a beautiful sensation. “Ahh!” I cried out, slightly angry and slightly celebrating.
He thrust about six more times. The intensified sensation of it made me wish I’d given in and come earlier. He came then, pressing deep into me and holding still.
Then he leaned down and growled by my ear.
I laughed and when he withdrew I tumbled to my back smiling. My jeans were halfway down my thighs but my bra was still on.
He knelt back, his buttocks on his heels, his chest bare and his jeans open and hanging down. The sight made me laugh again.
He poked his forefinger into my belly. “What was that about? Why are you laughing?”
I laughed again. Perhaps it sounded a little twisted. I wasn’t even sure why I was laughing. I smiled, though, my anger forgotten.
Why had I been angry? I couldn’t even really remember.
He leaned down and kissed a scar left by a stretch mark on my belly. Then he tumbled on to his back.
Jason was not like any other guy I’d been with. He was nice, it was in the heart of him, bred into him by his nice parents. He couldn’t be bad or mean to me. Even when I’d walked into a river and nearly drowned Saint. Even when I was angry and was used to beating myself up by winding up bad guys who’d treat me badly… Jason wouldn’t be wound up. He’d never lash out or hit me, he’d never even be violent when we had sex. Violence and aggression weren’t in Jason.
He was the thing that made me different. Made me good—like him.
I laughed.
“Rach…” He rolled on to his side and his fingers brushed down the side of my face. “Are you still mad at me?”
I sighed. “Yes, and no.”
His lips twisted a little sideways. “What does that mean? Are we okay then?”
“Yes and no.”
He smiled fully. “I’m saying yes for you, then. We’re okay.”
“We are,” I answered. But the words cut through me and my smile fell. The images of my bad behavior before I’d met Jason were in my head. But they reminded me. “I want to go to
the club I used to go to, where I met Declan, and see if he’s there? May we go tonight? If you want to find out facts we can trip him up with, you’ll find them there, not at his office or from that woman, and I want to see him. I want to stand up to him. I want him to know I’m going to fight.”
His lips twisted, like he was trying to work out the puzzles inside me. He never would. I never had. Bipolar was an unbreakable code, a maze you could get lost in over and over again, with dead ends and wrong turns.
“We’ll go to the club if you want. But we’ll speak to Portia and Justin too. I had my doubts about Portia before we left New York, but I used to get along with Justin and I trust him, so I trust her.”
His fingers ran along my jawline, gently.
I looked into his brown eyes. “I was really angry at you—”
“I know. I didn’t miss what was going on, Rach.”
“But I was having angry sex with you and you didn’t play.”
He laughed at me.
I smacked his arm. “Don’t laugh at me!”
“Honey, you having sex with me is never going to make me angry.” He held my gaze, just looking into my eyes. Just being Jason. Challenging me with silence louder than anyone else had challenged me by shouting.
When he looked at me like that he’d always made me feel like he saw me—the real me—the emotionally naked woman—and he didn’t judge her. That girl who’d run away from abuse at the age of fifteen into a relationship that had only ever been consensual abuse, and that was how it had gone on. I’d let men abuse me constantly and not cared… because I’d never cared about myself until I’d met Jason. I’d learned to care about me because he cared about me.
Why had I been angry at him? I couldn’t remember. I knew why I’d wanted sex with him, though.
“I think I used to use sex as medication…” Of course then I had been too ill to even know I was ill and it was that which had been firing it. But now that I thought about it, I’d used it to keep my mood up, or fight my lows, because when I’d been having sex, even if it was letting someone abuse me, I’d felt something. I’d connected with the world—with the one emotion I could understand, that made me feel good. “I feel better now.” The sex we’d had, had changed my mood.
I’d used sex because I’d always felt better after sex, no matter who it was with, where or how—until I’d finally realized it was a form of self-harming, and what I did was twisted out of shape. Then I’d run away to end it all, to escape who I’d become.
Then Jason had found me—or I’d found him.
He’d been a knight in shining armor to my damsel in distress, and like a fairytale we’d married and run off to Oregon for our happy ending.
But the problem with fairytales was that they ended at the beginning. The couples begin their lives together when the fairytale ends—fairytales never say what happened next.
Jason and I were living what happened next, and what happened next wasn’t always good, or happy—sometimes stuff went wrong and forever didn’t happen. That thought sent fear sliding into my veins.
He leaned down and pressed a kiss on my lips, maybe seeing the mood shift in my eyes. Then he rolled on to his back. “Shall we watch a movie then eat at Joe’s? Then we’ll be brave and go to this club of yours, if you want? And you can have your moment to tell Mr. Rees what a jerk-off he is.”
“Yeah.” I rolled over and pillowed my head on his chest. His arm came around me.
He made me feel safe.
“I was trying to protect you. That’s what I do. I try to protect you and Saint…” Yeah. That’s what he did, and it was one of the reasons I loved him so much. He’d been protecting me from the day I’d met him, when he hadn’t even known who I was or what I was like.
Watching a movie included stripping right off and making love again, slowly, the opposite of the way I’d prodded him to do it before, making it clear, although I didn’t think it was deliberate, how different it was being with a nice guy who loved me. He didn’t just protect me, he cherished me, and when he touched my body everything about it said that was true.
He couldn’t know the difference, though—between sex to have an orgasm and sex with someone who loved you—because he’d never done it with anyone he didn’t care about or who didn’t care about him.
That thought hung around in my head as we dressed to go out.
I’d dressed up for the club so I felt overdressed in the restaurant in my high heels, tight skirt, and glittery top. Jason looked fine, he never did over-dressed. He had a dark shirt on that I’d gotten him last Christmas and his black skinny pants.
But then, as we waited in the cold, in the queue to the club, I started to panic. He wouldn’t fit in here. It wasn’t about what he wore. It was him. I’d never met a good guy in here. He was too nice for this place. Declan would eat him alive in this place.
Jason was gonna be shocked.
He’d see who I’d been.
He’d understand who he’d gotten together with.
He’d never done anything wild in his life until he’d met me. I’d told him everything from the get-go, but he hadn’t lived like I had so he couldn’t understand or visualize it when I’d talked about it.
I was mad taking him here…
Why had I said I’d take him here?
What if he got hurt? What if he didn’t like what he saw?
I wanted to turn around and run. I didn’t want to see Declan anymore. But then Jason would wanna know why I’d changed my mind. Every muscle in my body tightened as concern flared into anxiety, and it tightened about my lungs, restricting my breath.
“Two,” Jason said when we got to the door.
I turned my head into his shoulder.
I’d had sex with every one of the security guys who worked at the club. I didn’t want to face them, and I didn’t want to face that me either—the old self-abusing me. Not in front of Jason. So why had I said I wanted to try and find Declan here?
“Go on.” The guy unclipped the rope.
Jason’s arm hung around my shoulders as we walked past. I kept my head turned and tried not to remember the things I wished I’d never done. I wished the past could be scrubbed out, scratched out—burnt.
This place was an evil nightmare.
Why had I asked to come?
The walls closed in as we walked up the stairs, and I actually saw a couple of hands reaching out from them. My heart pounded hard. I was seeing things…
Jason’s arm fell from my shoulders. Instead, he gripped my hand and pulled me on up the stairs. We checked our coats at the cloakroom; my hands shook when I handed mine over.
“Are you cold?” Jason asked me.
I shook my head.
When we walked into the club the noise and the beat of the music bounced through my chest, reverberating in my bones. I loved music. I loved noise. It pulled me back from the anxiety threatening to drown me. I wanted to dance. I could forget about Declan if I danced. But we weren’t here to dance.
Why hadn’t my brain thought harder about this?
But we were here now and if I was gonna face Declan we needed to get into what I used to call the dirty millionaires’ den—the VIP area. That was why I’d slept with the security men because for sex they’d let me in there to mix with the rich and famous. The guys who kept themselves fit and had money.
I’d walked out on the money too when I’d run away from Declan; he’d given me loads of meaningless trinkets to pay me off for the things I’d done with him. I hadn’t wanted any of them. I’d left them all at his apartment.
“So where do we go now?” Jason shouted into my ear over the music, as his arm wrapped around me and his hand touched my waist.
“We get a drink and then we go up to the VIP bar, where Declan hangs out!” And I’d look at my past and probably see it as it really was for the first time. I didn’t want to go up there anymore. I wanted to be like Jason and run away.
He took my hand and wove us a path through the cro
wded club, holding on to my hand behind his hip as we walked single file.
When we got to the bar, he turned. “What do you want?”
“You!”
He smiled. “To drink!”
“Vodka and orange juice!”
“With your meds!”
“One won’t harm!”
“Okay. One! I’ll let you charge yourself up so you can face him!” He turned to order.
I’d guess he’d been thinking all the way here about the moment we’d face Declan.
My heart pounded out along with the dance track that was playing. The music had a really heavy bass beat that was getting into my blood. I wanted to be up close to Jason, dancing and not thinking about Declan, with my arms on Jason’s shoulders and my hips rocking against his.
Jason turned around, holding a narrow glass containing my vodka and orange, and a large glass of lager for him. I took my glass.
“Do you still wanna do this? You don’t have to.”
Jason’s instinct to protect was precious. I wanted to give in to it and back out. Everything in me screamed to back out. But I couldn’t let myself, because if Declan was upstairs, I needed to tell him I wasn’t going to let him win; to push the demons of the past out of the way; to make him stop.
Jason’s hand settled on my shoulder, sheltering me, as I turned towards the stairs at the side of the room. My heart played a beat right along with the heavy bass of the music.
I didn’t recognize the guy who stood before the rope.
I glanced up into the air. Thank you, good, sweet Lord. That was one nightmare I did not have to face.
But the guy had to let us up to the VIP area otherwise there was zero point in us being here and if he didn’t know me…
“Hi!” I shouted over the music. “We’re friends of Declan Rees. I come here with him all the time.” I hoped the guy was so new he wouldn’t know it was a lie. I wanted to add, is he upstairs? But if I asked, then it would make it sound more like I didn’t know him.
“Do you?” The guy looked at Jason with disbelieving eyes, judging his shirt and his shoes. Jason wasn’t dressed like he hung out with VIPs.
