by Lisa Ladew
March 12th
BFD said I have to start this diary because hitting me doesn’t change anything, and running me into the ground doesn’t change anything. Fuck him if he thinks I need to change. He’s the big fucking dick, not me. He can’t force me to show more emotion. Here’s all the emotion I got. Pissed off. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Fucker.
The next entry was only one word repeated fifty times.
Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. …
The next few entries were just repeats on the theme, except every once in a while the word fucker was thrown in to switch things up.
Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. …
Rogue frowned, wondering why, as an adult, Mac still did something that had started off so badly for him. And who was BFD. A teacher at some messed-up military school?
March 23
I shaved 0.2 seconds off my shifting time. Another fifth of a second, and I’ll be the fastest one here. Danger helps. I got sliced up pretty good, but it worked.
Shit. No wonder he’d never flinched when she cut him. Guilt flooded her, whispering how bad of a person she was.
March 24
Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. …
March 25.
BFD read this POS journal and beat my ass, but he called it ‘taking me to task’ like he always does. I swear on my life that I will never, ever do that. I’ll always say what I mean, no matter what other people think. I hate you, you stupid cat fucker. You do the stupidest shit I ever heard in my life. You say I didn’t learn anything, but you sure did, didn’t you? You learned I can’t be cowed. I’ll never let you get to me.
Rogue frowned deeper. He’d been beaten? In school?
March 26 through April 14 were all repeats of the word hate repeated fifty times.
April 15.
BFD hasn’t checked this journal in three weeks. I guess we know who won that round. Moo, motherfucker.
April 20
BFD has turned me into a fucking leper. Anyone who talks to me gets extra work, extra pushups, extra discipline. Everyone’s scared to even look at me. Babies. Brown-nosers. I don’t need any friends anyway. I do just fucking fine by myself.
April 24
I figured out what gets BFD’s goat the most. He hates being called nicknames. I slipped up, called him BFD to his face, and he lost it. Punched me right in the head. Knocked me out and everything. He got in trouble for it. They can work us over in the chest and gut, but no face shots. Fuck that. If I can get him to hit me one more time, he’s out. Fired, I hope. I got that from the head of the war camps himself. Gotta think of what might bother him the most. Girls’ names, maybe. Princess. Mi’Lady. Chicken-head. Cat-lover. Meow mix. I’ll think of something.
Rogue stared at the word Princess. He’d never reacted once when she’d called him that. He was smooth. And he’d seen all her shit before. Done it.
The next second had her sucking in a breath.
May 2
I met a girl today.
I found some tunnels under the camp that should probably be closed off, they’re old and unused, maze-like, and maybe forgotten, but I figured I’d follow them anyway. If I could get off-camp without BFD knowing how, that’d really piss him off. I ended up in another part of the forest, at a beach volleyball camp, probably about two miles away.
Her name is Sandra. She’s as tall as me, maybe an inch taller. And those legs, shit, they were three miles long. Went on forever. Even her braces were hot. I mean, all the girls there were hot, but she was easily the hottest. I told her I lost my number, could I have hers? She scowled at me and hit her volleyball at my head. But she kept looking at me. I even got a smile and her name out of her. Fuck, I gotta see her again.
May 5
Finally got away from BFD. The fucker is watching me 24/7. I swear he’d climb into my cot at night while I slept if he could.
Saw Sandra. I told her she was so beautiful she made me forget my pickup line. She giggled and let me play volleyball with her. Gotta think of better lines.
Rogue kept reading, fascinated by teenage Mac and his first crush, and a little scared to see where it ended up. Obviously they weren’t still together, but had he loved her?
May 6
Ok, I heard someone else say this one worked for him so I gave it a try on Sandra when I got out there last night. Did you read Dr. Seuss as a kid? Because green eggs and-damn! I’ve got better ones but thought I’d try it. It worked. She let me sneak a kiss. Fuck me, it was hot. I think I’m in love.
May 9
Shit. I fucking hate bureaucracy. I hate that we are all fucking helpless until we are big enough to get a job and beat someone’s ass if they try to force us to do something. I found a lost little girl in the tunnels today, when I was skipping class to go see Sandra, and of course I didn’t have any options but to turn her over to the camps. I know they’ll dynamite the tunnels closed now, but that doesn’t matter at all. What’s worse is that the little girl had to go home, had to go back with her aunt and her uncle who were absolute shits to her. Why couldn’t anyone else see it? Fuck. Life is just not fair sometimes.
Rogue froze. Absolutely froze, her skin prickling, her hair standing on end. Even the long hairs on her head. A memory, long-buried, long-denied, rose in her mind. One of the most traumatic events in her life, especially when she used to lay in the dark and imagine her sister lost in the tunnel, with spiders crawling all over her. That’s why she’d gone down there in the first place. Looking for Amara. That was the only thing that could have dragged her underground.
No way. No fucking way. It could not be. Could it? She kept reading, her eyes skipping over the doodle that covered most of the rest of the page, right to the next words.
Sandra said she’d meet me by the boat dock, but she could only wait till midnight. BFD was determined to stay awake and catch me sneaking out, so I snuck some laxatives into his coffee and hit the tunnel while he was stuck in the bathroom. It’s always worth getting punched around to see Sandra. Especially if he hits me in the face.
But I didn’t see her. I was about halfway there, running hard, when something made me stop. A noise in the tunnel. I followed it, and eventually I figured out it was someone crying. It sounded like a little girl who was scared out of her mind. I called out to her, and she got really quiet, like she was scared of me, but then I didn’t need to hear her to find her. I could smell her clearly, a biting, pungent smell that I eventually realized was absolute terror.
I rounded a corner and found her, holed up in the very center of a small room off the main tunnel. She had no light, and my light was off, so it was pitch black, and I could more smell her than see her, knew she was curled up in a little ball, her hands around her knees, rocking back and forth as she talked to herself. “It’s ok, Rogue,” she said. “You can do it. Just try again. The spiders can’t hurt you. They are little and you are big. You can smash them. You’ll find your way out this time. You just have to get up and walk.”
Rogue scrambled to her feet, walking around the room in tight little circles, her skin crawling, her spine tingling. She might have died in that tunnel if Mac hadn’t found her.
Mac. Found her. When she was five. Saved her. Shit. Shit! There really was more at work here than she knew or had been able to admit, but if she didn’t face that now, she was stupid. It seemed like her life had been leading her to this male, even if it had taken a roundabout way to get there.
She lifted her head and stared at the closed door that separated her from Mac. Soul mate? Mate? Destiny? She didn’t believe in that, but should she? Was it time to change, at least a little?
Her mind crawled over that experience, underground in the tunnel, spiders everywhere, examining it fully for the first time in almost two decades.
Shit.
Chapter 38
Mac sat on the couch, scratching the stupid, itchy beard. Rogue liked it, so he’d never shave the damn thing off unless she wanted him to, but damn, could it just stop itching already?
Bruin offered him another slice of pizza from across the room. Mac shook his head. All he could do was wonder what Roe was thinking back there. In his room, reading his notebooks. He couldn’t even remember everything that he’d written in them. He hoped it wasn’t too much about other women. But she wanted to read them, and he had nothing to hide from her. Never would. Bruin said he allowed himself five lies in a relationship, but Mac swore he would never, ever lie to Rogue. No matter what. The only way he had even a chance with her was if he was the best possible mate he could be. No slip-ups. No fuckups.
His bedroom door opened, and Mac froze. Shit, was he about to get reamed? He looked wildly at Bruin then waited for his mate to come to him. Waited to hear what she was pissed off about now.
But when she appeared in front of him, her face was soft. She climbed right into his lap, straddling him, then cradled his face in her hands, a soft smile on her face as she stared at him. “Is that how you knew my name? Because you remembered me, then looked it up in your diary?”
He nodded, holding his breath. She shook her head, just a little, from side to side. “I’m glad you came for me that day. I was terrified until you showed up. I really hate being underground.”
His fingers crept to her hips and he grasped her to him, his cock swelling in his pants at her nearness. Mindless idiot. But she didn’t seem to mind. She shifted to get closer to him. “I just wish I could have done more for you,” he said.
She lifted one shoulder. “You were just a kid, too. Not your fault.”
She leaned in and kissed him, but this time it wasn’t the frenzied, frantic kiss they’d shared before. It was soft, sweet, half-promise, half-statement. A gentle meeting of lips and tongues that said, This thing between us, maybe it could work, let’s give it a shot.
Her arms crept around his head and she held him closer, snuggling into him, sighing into him, pouring herself into the kiss.
“Awwww,” Bruin said from the dining area. “I knew you two would work it out. You’re meant for each other.”
Rogue stiffened slightly and Mac broke the kiss to stare into her eyes. “I was wrong before. You weren’t made for me. I was made for you. If you’ll just give us a chance, Rogue, I’ll spend my life proving it to you. And no babies. Not unless you want them.”
Her lips curled. “Who knew the big bad wolf could be so romantic.”
She hadn’t agreed, but when she kissed him again, he didn’t care. Her mouth became more greedy, and her hips shifted over the top of him. He didn’t need a written invitation. He lunged forward on the couch, bringing her with him, wrestling himself to standing with one arm underneath her ass, then both arms. He carried her down the hallway as she made him promises with her lips.
He slammed the door, and lowered his mate gently to the bed, staring in her eyes as he slipped off her pants. No panties. That got a smile out of him. She pulled her shirt over her head, then propped her heels up on the bed and waited for him to come to her. Her knife holsters weren’t on her arms, either, and neither was that pack she wore around her waist. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“Let me just look at you for a minute,” he growled, rubbing his hands ever so lightly down her legs. Her inner thighs jumped and her hands curled into fists, but she didn’t stop him. Her hair was haloed out around her head and he thought she’d never looked so beautiful. Naked and in his bed was her best look. “You’re so beautiful,” he rasped.
“More beautiful than Sandra?”
He nodded. “A hundred times more beautiful than her.”
“What happened to her?”
He cocked a brow at her as he continued to rub his hands along the soft skin of her legs, making her flesh break out into goosebumps.
She shrugged. “I stopped reading after the tunnels. I-I felt different about reading your stuff then. Wrong.”
“The next time I made it back, the camp was over. She was gone. I never did get her number. All I knew was that she lived in Connecticut. I never saw her again.”
Rogue pursed her lips, seeming half-glad, half-sad that she’d made him miss out on meeting Sandra that day. “My fault.”
“Make it up to me,” he growled, kneeling in front of her. “Let me make you come.”
Her hands fell onto the blankets on either side of her hips. He grabbed both of them, pinning her in place with his hands, then lowering his head to her core, where she was already dripping wet, her sweet scent filling the room.
“I’m not gentle when I do this, so make sure you tell me if it’s too much. I want to learn your way, how you like it.”
Her hips bucked. “Not gentle sounds about right.”
He latched onto her clit, creating an immediate suction he knew had to be a little bit painful, but his Rogue, she didn’t seem to mind flirting with pain here and there. She screamed and her hips bucked again, making him smile, which made him lose his suction. Damn. He kissed and licked around her sweet pussy a few times, getting all up in there, imagining he could see her clit throb. Fuck, yeah, time for lunch.
He set upon her, sucking at her like she was a damn lollipop. She tasted good enough to be one, her swollen flesh slick around his mouth. With more gentle suction this time, he flicked his tongue against her, again, again, then flattened it and rubbed it up and down while she moaned and writhed. Her right hand almost got out of his grip, so he choked up on her wrists, tightening his hold on her.
“Fuck, Mac,” she breathed. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“Maybe,” he growled, then went back at it, his only goal wringing as much pleasure from her as possible. He found his rhythm, one that made her pant and make little noises that were sexy as anything he could imagine. His cock throbbed in his pants and he ignored the shit out of that fucker.
She moved her hips under his mouth, creating her own rhythm, and he countered it. Her legs clamped around his ears, her muscles tightening, as her little noises came quicker, her panting faster.
He kept his pace, never hurrying, not pushing, not rushing, trying to see her face over the planes of her body. She threw her head back against his bed, and a scream built in her throat, starting loud, getting ear-splitting, as she came all over his face. Good lord, his mate was a screamer, and he fucking loved it. He’d hand out schedules so the neighbors could clear out when he was gonna go to town on her.
Her orgasm went on and on, as Mac kept his rhythm, watching the sex-blush spread out from her belly to her breasts, up to her face, making her look even more lovely.
She collapsed, her muscles soft, her wrists limp in his grip, and he moved away from her enough that she wouldn’t push him away, still breathing on her. Give her a minute to recover, then he would be right back at it.
But no, she had other plans. When his lips found her again, she wrestled one hand out of his grip and tried to grab him by the hair but it was too short, so she found an ear again and pulled him up to her mouth, her kiss just as sweet as it had been in the living room. “Take your clothes off,” she panted, kissing the remnants of her desire off his face.
Shit. He was naked in 1.2 seconds, and just as quickly, she had him by the stiff cock, feeding him inside her. “I want you to fuck me,” she said. “Make me come again.”
“I love it when you order me around.”
She smiled a little at that. Good, the smile said, and when her hand was out from between them and he was fully seated inside her, he took her wrists again, pushing them up over her head, holding her just above her elbows, as he went to work on her breasts, giving them the attention they hadn’t gotten from him yet. He pumped into her, loving the glide of her slick flesh against his, sucking first one nipple, then the other, into his mouth, as heat spilled off both of them, coming together the same way they were coming together.
He found his rhythm again, slow, steady, wanting to stay that way so he could focus on her breasts, little more than apple size, but perfect, pert, firm, and all in his face.
“What happened to BFD?” she panted.<
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He frowned, letting go of her arms and propping himself up, his energy turning hard, so he pumped faster, then harder as he told her. “I got him fired. He went up to Alaska to guard a substation up there from the moose.”
“He was a real shit, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” he said, frowning more, thrusting into his mate, aggression spilling inside him at the memories he hadn’t thought about in years. Her eyes closed and her head lolled on the mattress, as she yelped with each of his thrusts. He dropped over her body again, staring at her. She liked it this way. “If you want it rough, Roe, all you gotta do is ask. You don’t have to maneuver me,” he said, ramming into her harder.
Her eyes opened halfway, the pleasure on her face obvious. “Ok. I want it rough. I want you to fuck me hard. I like it hard.”
“Shit, I bet you do,” he panted, thrusting, retreating, thrusting again, until she writhed underneath him, panting as hard as he was. He pulled her wrists down so he could pin them in place on one side of her with one hand, then grabbed her hip hard with his other, using his strength to give her that last extra little bit of leverage, forcing himself inside her, making her give up the moans and the noises that drove him out of his mind. Fuck, he was going to need months to figure out what kind of kinky shit she was into, maybe years. He knew he wasn’t her first, but something told him he was the first that she let this side of herself show to. She probably didn’t even know what she liked, beyond the simple, ‘rough’ and ‘hard’. They could discover it together.
His heart bloomed with simple gratitude that almost floored him. She wasn’t running. She was going to give them a chance. He bit his lip, staying the promises that wanted to spill from his mouth, keeping inside the declarations of love and faithfulness that were running through his head. He didn’t want to do anything to ruin her quiet acceptance of their situation, didn’t want to push or scare her. He would give her what she wanted, not what he needed.
