“I’ll take care of it… and you,” he murmured.
My bra was trapped between us, unhooked but caught on my arms.
“Just tonight.” I needed to forget, to feel alive, to not be afraid for a little while. I wanted Adam, the man I dreamed about, but I wasn’t good enough for him. I had done so much wrong, and tonight… tonight, I’d been there when we hid the shooting of a drug dealer. Being with Tommy was a mistake, but I wanted to be held. I wanted to erase the fear of being killed that kept threatening to rise up and drown me.
“This doesn’t mean we’re back together,” I added.
Tommy didn’t argue or agree. I knew it was his way of postponing the conversation again. It didn’t matter as much this time. After I got rid of the drugs, I was leaving town. This was our goodbye.
I stepped back and let my bra drop to the floor.
Even now, I couldn’t stop looking at the line on the table. Even now with him touching me, I couldn’t ignore it. If I was going to give up on the rules, why not go all in? Tonight, I needed everything. I’d already hate myself in the morning. What was one more mistake? The cocaine would make me feel invincible tonight. I wanted that after feeling so powerless at The Coffee Cave.
“One bump,” I whispered. “Promise me you won’t let me have any more tomorrow.”
“Promise.” Tommy bent his head to capture my nipple in a gentle open-mouthed kiss. He was only gentle for a moment before he pulled back and scraped his teeth over me.
I kneeled down. He stood at my side and gathered my hair in his hand, holding it back while I inhaled the line he’d left for me. My eyes closed as my entire body came alive. It was like my nerves multiplied. I could feel everything, and it was amazing. I could do anything. No one could hurt me. Nothing could stop me. I fucking loved this feeling.
I didn’t bother opening my eyes when I felt Tommy move to kneel naked behind me. He still had my hair in his hand. An amazing high and on the precipice of amazing sex—I had everything I could ever want in that moment.
Not everything, a guilty voice reminded me. I didn’t have Adam. I didn’t have the fantasy that I had started to dream of more and more. I don’t deserve that though.
I felt powerful, and I wanted it to last forever. It was a sort of perfect lie that I’d willingly die for when I was in it. Tomorrow, I’d remember why both the sex and drugs were a bad idea. Tonight, all I could say was, “More.”
He let go of my hair, draping it over one shoulder as he kissed down my spine and worked my jeans and underwear off my hips. One hand was between my shoulder blades, pushing me forward onto the table. My jeans were bunched around my legs, just under my hips, and Tommy was pressed against my back. I couldn’t move if I wanted to, not that I wanted to. I wanted to be consumed. I wanted to feel everything. With the drugs riding me, the pain-pleasure that Tommy liked when he was high was perfect.
He leaned over my body, crushing me to the table, and snorted the last line.
I knew what came next, so I stretched my arms across his table as he slammed into me with a groan. A fleeting thought of Adam came crashing into my mind, and I wondered if he’d be so harsh. I shoved it away. I was with Tommy tonight. Adam would never be mine.
“Fucking missed you, Sugar Sweet,” Tommy said between thrusts. He kept a hand on my back, making me stay trapped and at his mercy. “I own you. You can keep leaving forever, but you’ll never belong to anyone else.”
I knew the rules. If I said what he wanted, he’d let me move. When we were first together, I’d loved it. I couldn’t say the lies anymore, not the way he wanted. It was hard not to agree just to get him to satisfy me, but I’d learned how to play this game. I kept my mouth shut, refusing to say anything. I knew it would make him work harder to make me break.
Tommy didn’t disappoint. He kept pounding into me until I screamed. He didn’t even pause. Cocaine meant hours of hard, fast sex. My body clenched around his cock, and he demanded, “Say it.”
I closed my eyes, letting myself surrender to the first of what would be many orgasms of the night roll over me, and then I said, “No one else has touched me, not since you.”
It wasn’t what he wanted.
He pulled out, making me whimper at the loss, and pushed me onto my back on the living room floor. In what felt like a moment, he was back inside me, and I had to hold onto the underside of the sofa to keep from being turned into a mess of carpet-burn.
“Say you’re mine,” he demanded.
He reached down to wrap his hand around my throat, and I said, “No.”
A look of disappointment flashed over his face, but we weren’t a couple now. I didn’t have to feel guilt for saying no to the words he wanted to hear or the pain he liked to deliver. I’d let him sometimes in the past, but after my scare at The Coffee Cave earlier, I just couldn’t.
He paused, grabbed my legs, and forced them as high as he could. My legs were straight in the air, my ankles were by his head, and he was deep enough to hurt me with every thrust. It felt amazing, but it was a devil’s brand of heaven. Every bit of pleasure was tainted with guilt and pain.
By the time my arms ached from holding myself steady against the sofa and my leg muscles were shaking from being up in the air so long, he’d made me come twice more.
There’s nothing in the world like cocaine sex. Sometimes I think I was more addicted to the things we did than the drugs. Sober sex was still good, but not like this. Nothing was like this. No matter how awful I’d feel tomorrow, no matter how sick in the soul it made me, my body still felt sated.
I was shaking all over, and he was still rock hard and in control. He stopped moving again. He pulled out, ignoring my cry of loss, and asked, “Who do you belong to, Sugar? Who makes you feel like this?”
“You,” I whispered. I think we both knew I wasn’t answering his first question, but it was close enough of an answer to make us both okay with what we were now.
“One of these days, you’re going to stop forgetting that.” He took my hand and pulled me to my feet.
“I don’t forget, no matter how much I try,” I admitted.
All he said in reply was one word: “Bed.”
I didn’t move.
He hadn’t kept hold of my hand or done anything that could be mistaken for kindness. He stroked his hand up and down his cock a few times while I watched, and then he nodded toward the door and added, “Now.”
I didn’t argue. Cocaine was like powdered stamina, and the coke we’d had was amazingly pure. If I was lucky or he was generous, he’d let me get a rest after a few more orgasms, but it would be hours until that erection went away.
Inside our… his bedroom was what looked like a towel bar mounted on the wall. He pushed me against the wall underneath it.
I was already reaching for the bar when he said, “Hold on.”
Then he grabbed my legs, lifted me, and drove into me again. I was slammed hard into the wall. The only things supporting me were the bruising hands holding on to my hips and the bar I held onto. Depending on his mood, he’d either let me down when I came or he’d make me stay against the wall until my arms were shaking so badly that I couldn’t hold on anymore.
Just as suddenly as he’d entered me, he stopped. His movement became slow, like we were making love instead of fucking. Slow wasn’t what I wanted when I was hanging from a bar on the wall. Slow meant my arms would be stretched, and my muscles screaming before he was done.
“Tell me,” he demanded as he slid slowly in and out of my body.
“No one else has touched me since our first night.” I didn’t tell him that I had thoughts about someone else. Thoughts weren’t touches. I didn’t deserve more than thoughts when it came to Adam.
“Move back in with me,” Tommy demanded.
There was no good answer to that. I couldn’t say yes, but if I said no, he’d make me suffer. I leaned forward and kissed him.
After a few minutes, he jerked away from my kiss and repeated, “Move back in
with me.”
“Bastard.”
“Move back in with me,” he demanded.
He had impressive control when it came to both drugs and sex, which meant he kept a steady, languorous pace that would have been perfect if I wasn’t hanging from the wall. I was though, and I could feel my arms trembling from the strain.
“Please,” I begged.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t speed up. He wasn’t going to come anytime soon, so he was in no hurry. My exquisite pain made him happy, and we both knew it.
By the time he relented, I was sobbing and shaking. He sped up, moving hard, deep, and fast.
I couldn’t hold on. I let go of the bar when I came, wrapping my arms around him and crying in pleasure-pain.
“Bastard,” I whispered.
I was trembling so much that I couldn’t stand. He carried me to bed and held me for a while, but he was still too aroused to let me rest long. He soothed my shaking body with kisses and licks, and I didn’t bother asking him to let me have a minute. I knew the answer.
It wasn’t like at the start of our relationship. Then, he was patient. Now, we both knew what would happen when I touched that line of cocaine, and while it wasn’t what I wanted, it was the only way I had to cope with seeing a man bleeding as he died in front of me. I wanted both the pain and the bliss to erase the memories of The Coffee Cave. I could still see it in my mind though.
“I remember you having more stamina,” I taunted, my voice harsh from screams and weeping and begging.
He laughed, low and dark and delicious. “You asked for it. Remember that, Sugar Sweet.”
‡
The next morning, when I saw myself in the harsh light of his bathroom, I winced. I had more orgasms the past three hours than I’d had throughout the whole last month. I passed out an hour ago, crashing after a hazy blur of sex when Tommy finally came. He knew my body better than any one-nighter could, and he took an almost sick amount of pride in making me come over and over. It was difficult to find fault with that.
I bruised too easy for some of the things Tommy liked. My wrists and upper arms were dotted with his fingerprints. So were my thighs and hips. My stomach had a long bruise from being slammed into the table. The only ones that were going to be hard to hide were the marks on my wrists.
I killed the light and went back into the bedroom. He was sprawled out on the bed, naked and ready again. He was watching me as he smoked another cigarette.
“I’m going to make some calls later.” He patted the mattress beside him. “Come to bed for a while.”
I walked farther into the room, but not all the way to the bed. “Keep my name out of it, okay?”
He dropped the cigarette into a longneck bottle on the bedside table. “Sure.”
I reached the edge of the bed, and he grabbed me and yanked me onto him. Instead of sliding into me like I expected, he put a hand on either hip and ordered, “Up.”
He guided me up his body with firm hands until I was kneeling over his chest.
“Hands on the head board.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Hands on the head board.”
Once I obeyed, he slid down farther so I was straddling his face. I wanted to argue. I hated this position, and my pussy was sore and swollen from so many hours of abuse. But his tongue was amazing, and we both knew that I’d let him put me wherever he wanted me because of it.
My hands tightened on the headboard like they had so many other nights while he licked and sucked. My hair fell over my face as I bowed my head.
He was gentle with me.
I didn’t want soft touches, even though I was sore. I wanted Tommy to lose control. I took one hand off the headboard, holding myself steady with the other and reaching back to stroke him with my right hand. He groaned and arched into my hand instead of stopping me.
He licked slower, and I knew he was still punishing me for disobeying even though he didn’t tell me to stop. I tried to push against him, but he held me up so I couldn’t get the pressure I wanted.
I removed my hand and in an instant, he had slid me down his body and impaled me. Even now that I was on top, he was the one in control. His hands bruised my skin, controlling how fast and how deep I could take him.
I looked down at him and met his eyes. “I want you.”
He pressed his lips together.
I had to fight the urge to try to push against his restraining grip, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t say the words he wanted. I didn’t love him. I wouldn’t love him. I couldn’t stay around the drugs that were in his life all the time. I couldn’t stay around him. If I did, I’d die. It was that simple.
“I need you, Tommy,” I whispered.
He gave in. Not only did he thrust up, but he let go of my hips, letting me fuck him instead of controlling me, letting me make him lose control for a change.
I slid my hands up his stomach and chest, settling them on his shoulders, and leaned down to kiss him. My hair fell over my shoulder and brushed against his face.
He reached between us and fingered my clit, making me gasp into his mouth, and I started moving again, slowly, oh so very slowly for the first time. I didn’t speed up even as his fingers danced faster and faster. I kept kissing him because I needed to keep him from saying the words I didn’t want to hear. I only stopped kissing him as my orgasm crashed over me.
A moment later, he followed me over and once spent, he pulled me tighter to him. “Love you,” he muttered against my throat.
When I didn’t say anything, he wrapped an arm around me and held me to his chest. “You’re sleeping here.”
I nodded.
“And Sugar?” He paused, waiting for an answer this time.
“Yeah?”
“I know damn well that you didn’t just find the coke.” He brushed my hair back and gently trailed his finger along my jaw. “These bruises were already on your face, along with the ones on your arm, when you got here.”
My breath hitched at his words.
“You don’t have to tell me what really happened, but promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will,” I whispered. “You need to get rid of it for me. I’m going to go in and quit work. Whoever it belonged to won’t ever find me.”
I tried not to think about what happened a few hours ago. A man died, killed with my gun, and I couldn’t go back to that job except to quit. I didn’t have any savings, and I needed to leave Rio Verde. I wasn’t sure what I’d use to run if not for the dead man’s money, but I walked out of the night’s mistakes with thousands of dollars and a good quantity of coke. I had enough money to be long gone when someone came around asking questions. I just needed Tommy to get rid of the coke first. He’d turn it into money, and I’d run.
Chapter 4
I slipped out of Tommy’s arms only a couple hours later. I ached all over, and as much as I liked the naked relationship that we had going on, I was jittery from the bump I’d had the night before. I kept thinking about the drugs that were currently hidden in the box of Rice Krispies at my apartment. It wasn’t the most original hiding place, but there wasn’t anyone who’d be in my place without me. I wasn’t the kind of person who passed out keys to my place even to my close friends. No pets. No plants. If I wasn’t there, there was no reason for anyone to go into my apartment. If I was there, any guests could knock on the door.
“Sneaking out?” Tommy’s voice had the rough morning sound that made me think about crawling right back into bed, but I was battling the awful letdown that followed coke. I couldn’t stay still. I felt like my skin would crawl right off my body. And I was fairly sure that I was about ten seconds from mean.
“Itching,” I admitted.
“I can’t sell it for you if you snort it up, Sugar.” He grabbed my wrist and kept me from moving too far from the bed. I winced as his hand closed over bruises from our night together and from the things that went down at The Coffee Cave.
“I won’t,�
� I whispered. “You know I’m done with the shit.”
“You didn’t seem that done a few hours ago.”
“It fell in my lap. Once I get clear of this, I’m done with it again.” I sat on the edge of the bed next to him. I didn’t tell him that I was sure to be done with it because I’d be done with him too. There was no way I could keep seeing him and stay clean. I’d never have a future with him in my life.
As if he read the thoughts in my mind, he snaked an arm around my waist and asked, “And me?”
“We’re no good together.” I knew it wasn’t anything new I was saying, but this time I had the means of keeping true to my decision and the reason to get out of Rio Verde for good. “We’re a mistake.”
“Really?” He trailed his fingers up my leg. That was perilous enough if I’d been dressed, but right now I was bare-assed naked. My breath hitched as he stopped, not yet touching where I wanted him to, and asked, “You really think this is no good?”
It wasn’t the way he was or the way we were with our clothes on that made me catch his hand in mine. It was that soft sound in his voice. Tommy loved me. I couldn’t pretend his words were lies right now. I fell into his arms over and over because he knew all of my weaknesses—and because he loved me enough to keep pulling me back to him no matter how often I pushed him away.
I squeezed his hand, bent down and kissed him tenderly, and then pulled away from him. I stood and turned my back to him. Tears were in my eyes, and I didn’t know if it was because I couldn’t give him the answers he wanted or because I was exhausted and craving drugs that I only had when I was around him. Either way, in the next minute I had warm tears streaking down my cheeks.
“So you’re saying this is really it,” he said.
“I can’t keep doing this.” I glanced over my shoulder at him as I snatched up one of his t-shirts from a pile of clean laundry that he had stacked on an upturned box on the floor. I pulled the shirt over my head. “Let’s just get rid of the stuff, and maybe it’s best to stay apart.”
Unfiltered & Unlawful (The Unfiltered Series) Page 4
