by C. M. Owens
“You said you wanted a date, so I fucking delivered. This is the part where you get excited to reward me for good behavior,” I say quietly against her ear.
She glances through the glass, and I narrow my eyes when her lips waver like she’s resisting the urge to smile.
“What?” I ask a little angrily, feeling defensive.
“I just forgot what it was like to be with you until this moment. For whatever reason, you seem to think we’re just supposed to pick right back up where we left off, and I’m your captive that you’re taking on a date at a sex club. After barricading us in your bedroom and holding a gun on people. To be honest, your damage is definitely running deeper these days.”
“No. I’ve just gotten fucking brilliant because being a naïve target only made me weak,” I bite out.
Her breath hisses out, and her back bows, as her hands press against the glass, when I find the spot on her neck I’ve been searching for. It’s closer to her ear than I remember.
She trembles against me when I slide my hand up her inner thigh, finally getting her in the right mood.
“W-when will she get here?” she says on a shuddering breath.
“Who said she was coming here?” I ask her with a shrug, unhooking her bra and watching it slide off in a slow motion until it bounces off her leg and claps the floor.
She turns her head, eyes half-lidded, as she watches me in the dimly lit booth, as the music thumps from the other side.
“Why are we here if she’s not coming?”
“I told you, this is a fucking date. But I prefer having you all to myself, while giving you the romantic vibe you need to take this more seriously.”
Again, her fucking lips waver like she’s trying not to smile.
“I’m not attempting to amuse you,” I dutifully inform her.
I stand abruptly, dropping her to the ground. Before she can speak, I toss my cuts to the table, tug my shirt over my head and drop it to the ground, and I drop my jeans without even undoing them. My boxers are last to go.
She still almost smiles.
Her amusement fades as I hit the button again, roughly spin her around, and press her to the glass just as it turns into a mirror for us.
“Now they can see us, but we can’t see them,” I say against her ear, as she stares at my eyes through the reflection.
A cold smirk comes to my lips as her fingers curl on the glass, anticipation replacing indifference real damn fast.
“You can take the girl out of Halo, but you can’t take Halo out of the girl,” I murmur, kicking her feet apart.
One of her hands slips, and she shudders again as I slide my hand down her back, my eyes following her spine to the curve of her generous ass.
Each little tremble my touch elicits only builds to her mounting suspense, so I take my time kissing patches in various familiar spots down her back. She responds predictably, and my grip tightens as I scrape my teeth over her side.
Her legs spread a little wider all on their own.
At least some things remain the same.
Chapter 23
KARA
I told myself I wasn’t going to have sex with Rush now that I know he’s up to some diabolical scheme of some sort. Then he made me think he was crazy. Again. Now I don’t actually have a clue what state of mind he’s in.
I don’t particularly care, either, because my mind is mush. My hands keep slipping as my breaths fog and create condescension, and my forehead presses against the mirror as I actively work on swallowing my sounds.
I’m in a state of euphoric misery, if that is even possible. My entire body is on fire from teasing to chaste kisses he’s strategically peppered along my body. His hands deliberately slide so close to the unmarked boundaries, skirting the edges, and then leaving me bereft without crossing those lines.
For every ounce of unsated ache I’m agonizing through, there’s a steady build of desperate want I’ve lacked for a really long time. My vibrator handles things very quickly.
It’s not sweet torture with a fear of interruption that will have me screaming and possibly shooting someone for stealing this right now.
It’s like he’s intentionally kissing all my weak spots, and deliberately avoiding all my very desperate spots.
He’s pure evil.
I feel his smile against my hip, because I swear it’s like he can read my mind at every given moment. Well, sort of. I was thinking dinner and movie...maybe a few serious talks about how stupid it’d be to think we could be in an actual relationship, given our past and our present circumstances. Possibly some limited-boundaries sex for some stress relief...
I wasn’t expecting a genuine attempt at a date—romance via Rush.
I’d laugh at how ridiculous he’d sound to anyone living in the town I’ve called home, but—
I hiss out a breath of surprise when he spins me abruptly, and he pins my hands over my head as my back claps against the glass. His lips come down on mine so suddenly that it stuns me, and I don’t react at first.
The kiss is almost an attack, as though he’s angry he even started it, and he bites my lip just barely hard enough to sting as punishment when I don’t immediately kiss him back.
In the next instant, my eyes flutter shut, and I lean forward as much as I can, pressing skin to skin in a way that has him groaning against my lips. The kiss grows hungrier when I finally participate, and his hands slide down my back as he drags one of my legs over his hips with his free hand.
That hand travels up my outer thigh, roughly tugging me closer, while his other hand keeps my hands pinned at the crossed wrists.
He breaks the kiss, and my breaths come out in short, sharp pants as he starts kissing his way back down my neck, icing some of the intensity. I feel the bastard smiling when my leg works on its own to urge him on.
It physically hurts when I’m denied, and he casually begins teasing my weak spots down my front, slowly releasing my hands.
“Are you deliberately torturing me as a punishment, or do you just want to piss me off and ruin any shot you have of scoring on your cheap version of a date?” I ask, admittedly a little irritated when I feel him start grinning mid-rant.
“You used to enjoy delayed gratification,” he murmurs against my side.
My breath catches in my throat again when he drops to his knees, but I almost want to scream when he kisses his way down my thigh, instead of kissing his way up.
“I feel like you’re manipulating me into picking up where we left off, only with you being the one who’s wiser to all that’s really going on in Halo,” I murmur almost absently when he gently scrapes his teeth over the inside of my thigh, nipping playfully around another grin.
My entire body trembles, and I get really annoyed when I’m denied even his mouth where I want it.
“We’re too different for that,” he says. “They all should have seen this coming,” he adds, confusing me. “I shut down completely, biding my time, waiting on my opportunity, hanging on the fucking edge to find out if you were dead or alive. It was a motherfucking nightmare.”
I swallow thickly as my eyes open, and I stare down at him as he drops my leg from his shoulder. Slowly, he starts standing back up to his full, slightly intimidating height. He seems a lot taller in this small box.
“Then Eve came along, shook shit up, and made things a little interesting. Enough to pull me from the fog. Drex finally cracked, and I finally learned you’d called him. Not me—”
“He’s my brother, and—”
He spins me so fast that I don’t get my hands up to stop my face from hitting the glass. But his hand catches me at the throat in such a gentle way that it almost feels premediated, and my face stops inches from the mirror.
My eyes connect with his as he continues holding me at the throat, his thumb massaging the side as he slides his other hand down my side. Once more, he kicks my feet apart, this time much wider and more aggressively.
My heartbeat kicks up, and he gives me
a dark grin when he feels my pulse quickening beneath his fingertips. The dick knows exactly how to play me.
“Everyone else is learning that I’ll go a hell of a lot farther for you than he will. I don’t give a damn if he’s your brother,” he drawls, eyes dipping to my ass...that he tugs toward him a little more.
Skin bumps skin, and I instinctively push back, my pulse only speeding up as I idly wish I had something to grip.
The image is too close at this angle, so all I can see is just a little of his chest, neck and head.
His words slowly sink in as all the sensations quit overwhelming me in the situation, and I’m drawn back to the conversation at hand. When my brow furrows, he reaches up, dusts my hair away from my shoulder, and locks eyes with mine in the mirror as he leans down to kiss the skin there.
“You’ll never leave me behind again,” he says very seriously. “You’ll learn to fucking love me. And I’ll keep you chained to my damn wrist if you make it too difficult.”
I genuinely cannot gauge if he’s screwing with me or being serious.
I see the cold smile in his eyes as his lips brush over more skin.
“The second I set eyes on you again, I began planning for your every possible move. Aside from a few surprises, I studied you long enough to figure you out. This time, I’m not the novice. It’s a whole new club, Kara. A whole lot of new fucking rules. And there’s a hell of a lot I’m going to keep you out of, just because I fucking can.”
I don’t even realize he’s moved my arms into some sort of softly-lined shackles until he buckles them on both my wrists simultaneously.
My eyes dart down, seeing them protruding from the wall. When I tug at them, chain feeds through the hole, leaving me with lenient, yet limited mobility when I quickly find about two feet of length.
He leans down, putting himself on an eye-to-eye level with me. “The only way you’re ever leaving Halo without me, is if someone puts me in a fucking box,” he adds, eyes dead serious. “I’ll remind you why you love me, because that shit just doesn’t go away because you want it to, Kara. It sticks around.”
I open my mouth to argue, but no words of rebuttal form on my tongue. His grin slowly forms when I struggle to figure out what to say. A rit rit rit rit clink rit rit distracts me, the sound of a mechanical something or another.
My eyes dart to my left, watching as he holds his hand to a button that begins slowly pulling my arms over my head, the chain holes moving on a track toward the ceiling. My head falls back as I watch my hands meet at the top, and it distracts me from feeling the floor moving under me.
As my hands cross, the chains clinging together, I glance down at the Lazy Suzan floor piece that is completely turning me.
The false panel we came in from suddenly turns into a viewing window, and I suck in a breath, seeing the couple beside us I didn’t know existed. In their box, the girl is wearing some really ornate device, and she’s not going gently on the guy’s ass.
It’s not my thing, but it’s still weirdly hot to watch. Only, there’s no sound whatsoever, aside from the pulsing music that vibrates the box with every thump of the bass.
My hands get lowered, and I stumble forward as the chains continue to slide through the track at a waist level, horizontal angle. Rush has already moved behind me, hungrily raking his eyes over me as my hands press against that glass. I’m forced to spread my legs and back up when my hands go a lot lower.
The image falters, and I realize it’s not a viewing window. Apparently it’s a TV screen, because Drex’s crew are tech geeks with a killer instinct.
It’s an uniquely confusing compilation of skillsets.
The image genuinely looks like we’re staring into the room next to us, but it’s yet another couple doing something very confusing with a lot of leather straps on something that resembles a cargo net.
It’s also incredibly erotic to witness, because this is an emotional connection and not just cold sex. I see it in her eyes, the way she looks at him with praise.
I see it in his desire for her, and the passion that accompanies each and every single touch.
Just as my thighs start to clench, one of Rush’s hands goes to my hip, and I feel his other graze my ass, just as the telling, blunt tip of his cock teases me with a minimal warning.
He doesn’t shove himself inside me with the desperate abandon I wish he would.
My legs tremble when he takes his time, as his freed hand comes up to my shoulder, his fingers digging in with conscious awareness of their firm grip.
As this man, he could break me if he wasn’t conscious. He’s lethally lean, because no one can account for just how strong he is, given the lack of visible bulk.
His hand smooths up my back, and I miss the mirror image, because I’d love to know what he looks like while making that guttural noise that matches the trembling anticipation that comes out in my shaky breath.
He glides easily inside me, ensuring I feel each inch of him with that torturous pace.
When his hand reaches the top of my spine, his fingers spread, touching the dip of my neck on either side as he gently grips. He shoves himself in the rest of the way so abruptly that it feels like a chilled shock of electricity by this drawn-out point.
A ridiculous, degrading sound escapes me before I can swallow it back, and I feel, rather than see, him smile, just based on the way his grip changes.
I forgot just how well I remembered him until he began plucking every single weakness on my body like he was reacquainting himself with his favorite instrument.
In the next thrust, I’m reminded of his strength once again, but he anchors me in place to keep me from stumbling. I also make another embarrassing noise.
“Soft girls date soft guys. You’ve gotten too soft,” he tells me, squeezing my ass like he’s making a rude pun.
Doing all I can not to react like a desperate fool, I clear my throat. “You still talk too much, I see,” I deadpan.
The box we’re in rocks, and the screen in front of me turns into a window once more, this time more discernable as the two change directly before my eyes.
The box begins rotating so slowly that it barely rattles the chains with the abrupt start. A gradual panoramic view of the very debauched sex club steadily grows, expanding as each panel becomes a window to the club around us.
I finally realize we’re on a track that has just started moving, and there are a lot more boxes, like ours, moving along with us. The people out there are looking in on us, and the people in the boxes are looking out on them.
Who the hell thinks of this shit?
Rush thrusts in again, and I moan, my mind so stimulated by all the working parts around me that it almost creates a heady fog I’m willing to surrender to.
The chains start moving, dragging me forward, as he grows more aggressive behind me. He somehow moves us closer and closer to the glass, until my hands are anchored above our heads, and I’m fully pressed against the glass.
My head lulls to the side, and his arm slides up my chest until he’s cupped my chin. When our lips collide this time, every pent-up emotion flows from my lips to his, and from his to mine.
It’s retribution and redemption.
It’s beautifully tainted memories mixed with a naïve sense of false hope.
It’s unpredictable danger and limited safety woven in one net.
It’s past and present colliding in a way that could only bring about a more damaging future.
It’s drugging.
It’s intoxicating.
It’s pretty freaking explosive, too, because he loses himself.
My body slams forward on the glass, and his rhythm grows more insistent, as he continues to drink me in like he’s missed me as much as I worked so hard to not to miss him.
This is why we won’t work.
We both get too lost in each other, and then we act like two reckless kids. The more things change...
“We’ll be dead in a year,” I say between breaths,
even as I kiss him harder before he can respond.
He bites down on my bottom lip, as his thrusts grow more punishing. Between his pull on my heart and devastating intimate knowledge on all the right buttons to push—and how to push them—I shatter like a cheap glass table in the middle of a bar brawl.
It’s probably the most painful pleasure I’ve experienced in too long, because delayed gratification is a mercilessly wondrous bitch when in the hands of Rush.
My nails bite into my own palms, and a garbled cry escapes me that I work desperately hard to smother, as my legs give out.
My body doesn’t even move, in spite of the gelatin status of my legs, because he has me thoroughly pinned to the glass. I’m not even sure if my feet are touching the floor, to be honest.
All I know is that he’s still lost to me when he buries his face in the crook of my neck, and muffles his own sound. He stills inside me, and his head comes up, lips colliding with mine as he kisses me differently, his arms holding me tightly in a possessive, yet almost reverent manner.
It’s doing a lot of things to my head that I like too much to be healthy and rational.
It feels too much like I’m enjoying being Kara Caine again. Simply because Kara Caine got to have the fucked-up boy she loved so damn much.
Chapter 24
RUSH
Kara melts like warm putty against me after I finish dressing her and start massaging her sore wrists.
My lips twist in a private grin when she struggles to stand up on unsteady legs. She even elects to sit down for a minute, which I find amusing.
My eyes stay on her as I finish pulling all my clothes back on, and she darts a look at me from moment to moment, like she’s waiting for me to look away so she can study me in private.
“I can’t tell if I should take you seriously or think you’re insane,” she mumbles at last, clearing her throat as she fans herself with her shirt. “And this box gets really hot. You should mention better ventilation to Snake if he’s so hell-bent on being complicated-kinky.”
