by Dee Carney
91
Dee Carney
He frowned.
What was so special about her place that she sought refuge there every time this happened? The last time she’d needed a safe haven, she’d come out of it battered and bruised, a fact that still made his stomach knot.
He needed to get home. He needed to find Sabrina. And they needed to talk.
The cab ride to their apartment building took entirely too long for him. Every time they stopped for a red light, or for a pedestrian who lingered a little too long in the crosswalk, he ground his teeth together. All he could imagine was Sabrina locked in her apartment with the mysterious man from her past threatening her life or worse.
His fingers drummed along the thigh of his trousers. Why hadn’t he pushed harder to know about the voices? So intent on finding Teddy, it never occurred to him that hearing them might put her in danger. Goddamn it. Clues had been laid out before him and blind, he ignored every single one.
This time when he took the stairs two at a time up to the fourth floor, his heart hammered, not from exertion, but fear.
When he turned the knob to Sabrina’s door, it never occurred to him that she might have gotten into the infrequent habit of locking it. As many times as he’d admonished her for the oversight, she shrugged him off, stating it only mattered to her at night. She had nothing to steal. If he tried to point out her safety meant more to him than her possessions, she deftly ignored him.
It turned smoothly in his hand, and he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he held.
“Sabrina?” She wasn’t in the kitchen or living room, so made his way down the hall to her bedroom. She’d had a good five-minute head start and the front door was unlocked. Where the hell was she?
“Hey, baby? You here?”
He stopped cold at the threshold to her room.
Jesus.
The last thing he expected to find when her bedroom door swung open was Sabrina naked and beautiful, spread in one of the most seductive poses he’d ever witnessed in his life.
From his position, he first witnessed the underside of her rounded breasts, the chocolate-colored tips of her nipples aroused and all but calling to him. Not only that.
Sabrina’s hand cupped the triangle of hair between her thighs, her finger stroking up and down her cleft with an exaggerated slowness that sent blood flooding to his dick.
She rolled her hips toward him, inviting him to sample her sweet cream when she spread her thighs even wider.
Jason waffled between immediate lust and confusion. “Sab—” She shot upright, removing her hand and closing her thighs, cutting off the tantalizing view. “Oh my God. Jason, you have to go.” 92
Intimate Whispers
His dick stood at half-mast, his heart pounding from finding his girlfriend in such a provocative position. “Go? Wha…did I… I thought…” Thoughts rolled over on one another, but he was still too caught up in the vision of beauty he’d espied. How the hell did he form a coherent sentence after that?
“Jason, please…please…” She looked wide-eyed around the room, on anything and everything but him.
“We have to talk about what happened today.” And maybe talk a little bit about what she’d been doing in the last couple of minutes.
“Later, please, Jason. You have to go.”
“Go? I don’t mean to be arrogant here, but you’re naked and lying there and I’d be a fool to ignore you.”
Her voice wavered. “Please.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying we’re—us—we’re over?”
“No, not that, but…you have to go. You caught me masturbating and I’d really prefer a few minutes to die of embarrassment here.” She laughed, but it didn’t sound happy. “Just for a little while, go. Trust me, okay?” A wave of relief swept through him with those words. Obviously, she wanted privacy to finish what she’d started, but she only had to breathe at him the right way and he’d rush forward and complete the job. No questions asked.
Instead, he backed up slowly. “I’ll leave, but I want you to promise that you’ll call me or come on over later, okay?”
She gave him a hesitant smile. “Sure.”
Jason turned on his heel, his staccato heartbeat at last under control. The day’s events caught up with him and his mood elevated. He hadn’t spoken with Teddy, but had been pointed in the direction of Teddy’s family. Things were still shaky with Gibson, but smoothing out their relationship wouldn’t happen overnight. They’d taken a small step and that was huge. Despite the disagreement with Sabrina, at least they’d crossed that hurdle and survived it intact. They would talk later and they would be fine.
And most importantly, he’d come to the realization he wanted to marry her one day. Not necessarily any time soon, but if their romance stayed its course, the possibility floored him. In a good way.
He turned around again. One last endearment to let her know before they parted.
“Sabrina—”
Her face lost the erotic happiness he saw in it only seconds ago and morphed into this mask of stark fear. She kneeled on the bed, trembling, the bed sheets clenched between curled fists.
“No…no…no…” She’d gone pale, her expression a mask of fear. One that spiked through him and kept him in the cold clutches of terror as he watched her deal with the voices on her own. “Oh God, no,” she moaned. “He’s leaving. I swear, he’s leaving.
Please.”
93
Dee Carney
He knew at once this had to do with him. Whatever the voices said, whatever they were about to do, hinged on the fact he stood in her room after she’d already asked him to leave. Still, it was his worry for her that remained foremost in his mind. He could handle whatever they threw his way, but he would not stand by and do nothing while she suffered. “What is it, baby?”
“He’s gonna leave right now. See?” She waved her hands frantically at Jason, shooing him toward the doorway.
Standing his ground took a reserve of strength. It was either very brave…
Or very foolish.
“Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
She shook her head at him, another signal to either go, or at least remain quiet. He tensed, dying to know what was going through her mind. Needing to know what they told her. He still wondered about the antipsychotic prescription she’d made him shred.
Had he made a mistake in believing medication wouldn’t help her?
Tears tracked down Sabrina’s face, making his heart clench.
“Please, no,” she moaned. “You don’t need him here. He’s leaving.” Torn, Jason still waffled. Leave or stay? Neither option held any appeal. Finally, he decided that he had to trust her and honor her wishes. Still, each backward step felt like the one that would be his last on the face of the earth. One wrong step, maybe the next one, or the one after that, would take him tumbling over a ledge. A fall from which he could never recover.
Sabrina cried out, a sound of pain that made the hair rise on his neck. “Jason, wait!” Fuck. What was going on?
He was dying to question her, but obviously something important he was not privy to was happening in the room.
She made another sound of anguish, kowtowing into a position of complete kneeling submission. Her shoulders pressed toward the bed, but behind, he saw the way her thighs were spread, open and inviting.
They kept their gazes locked on one another, but he couldn’t get past the fear rippling within hers. “Are you okay?” he mouthed silently. Who the hell knew if the voices could hear him, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
Her chest lifted as a sob broke out of her throat. Her head slowly shook from side to side, the universal signal for “no”.
When she started speaking, he didn’t catch if her words were meant for him or for the voices. The more she spoke, however, the more horror that seeped through him.
“Some say what happens to me when I hear the voices is a gift. But only someone who has never had to listen to the an
guished cries of the dead, the incessant pleading and moaning, would ever call this a gift. At first it’s only one voice, then another and another. Soon, it’s so overwhelming I can’t hear myself think.” Her voice grew more bitter.
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Intimate Whispers
“But,” she continued, “I found a way to put an end to it. Or rather, it found me. For a few hours, I let myself go and it’s a small sacrifice. Not even a sacrifice. An exchange.” Jason dared to take a step forward. “What kind of exchange? With whom?”
“Him. He came forward and gave me a way out. He drove the voices away and kept my sanity intact. Please forgive me, Jason.”
“Forgive you for what? You’ve never done anything—”
“I give myself to him. All of myself. Hours of his pleasure. Days of my freedom.” He frowned, still not understanding.
“You don’t get it do you?”
“What could be so wrong?”
Tears still ran down her cheeks, but she kept her voice smooth and coherent. “I fuck him. Once a week, sometimes more, he comes to me and I let him… I let him.” A new wave of anger simmered his blood. “You and some ghost or something, you have sex?”
“I haven’t found another way. I don’t know how else to deal with it. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how scared I am when it happens. When I lose chunks of time and can’t recollect what happened in them. Do you know how many times I’ve been hospitalized?”
“How could I know? You won’t talk to me. And now that you do, it’s to tell me this…” He threw his hands into his hair, using his fingers to pull at the base. Maybe he was dreaming. Some fucked-up nightmare that would end any minute now.
“Four years in Saint Hope trying to convince the psychiatrists there that I’m not crazy. Every time I visit the ER, having to work like hell to make sure they don’t think I’m a danger to myself or others. Otherwise, end up involuntarily incarcerated for my trouble. That’s happened twice already.”
Four years at a well-known psychiatric institute. The same one where Kelly worked as an administrative assistant, in fact. Twice being involuntarily committed until they deemed her well enough to be on her own. Jesus. What else had she been through?
“So this is what’s happening now? The voices are back and you need this…this thing to drive them away for you?”
“Don’t judge me.” A new surge of venom seized her words. “I don’t have a choice.”
“I have—I don’t know how to deal with this. I have to go.” He half-turned, about to leave this madness behind, but Sabrina cried out again.
“Please,” she murmured. “Leave him alone.”
Fuck. Despite his anger, he couldn’t leave her like this. “What’s going on?” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “He says you have to stay. He wants—he wants you to,” her throat caught before she finished her sentence, “watch.”
“Stay? For you two…no, I don’t.”
95
Dee Carney
Sabrina tried to muffle the sound, but her low moan started somewhere in her belly.
On her back, near the healing puncture wounds, a thin line of blood ran from a new cut across her shoulder blade.
His heart plummeted at the sight. So this creature of hers was the “man” who’d hurt her? From the looks of things, he threatened more of the same now.
“Why’s it doing this?” he demanded. She called this an exchange. This thing had no reason to cause her pain.
Hoarsely, she replied, “Jealousy.”
Resigned, Sabrina waited for Jason to bolt. It’s what she might have done in his shoes. What kind of woman told her boyfriend that she had sex with another man because she had to? Not because she wanted to, but because she had to.
Right.
What would he say if she told him that she welcomed His touch each time? That she’d been alone for so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to have a real man make love to her. Much less love her.
What about if she told him now that some twisted sense of arousal made her stomach flutter now? To think Jason might watch her with another, or maybe, even participate. Because she allowed it didn’t mean she loved Him. To her, their relationship was too symbiotic for emotions to find room.
Even now, He stroked her lips, listening intently to what she told Jason, no doubt, but also readying her for their tryst.
No matter how she tried though, she kept looking into the hurt on her lover’s face and couldn’t channel the stimulation she needed to ensure she enjoyed this. His touch was not Jason’s touch. His attention not the same.
“Jason, please don’t leave me. Not now.” She didn’t fear His repercussions. That she could handle. But if Jason walked out before they talked it over, before she could make him understand what it was like, she’d never get him back. She knew that as sure as she knew her own name.
He collapsed onto his knees and the impact must have been excruciating, but his gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Do you understand how much I care for you? I told my father today…I told him…”
The tip of Him pushed into her pussy and though her eyes threatened to close, she forced them open, swallowing down her usual moan of pleasure. Her body felt numb.
Any stirring tonight came from habit—for no other reason. Only the cool trickle of moisture tracking down her cheeks reminded her she still cried for Jason. Cried for what He forced her to do in front of him.
It didn’t even make sense. She’d given up almost everything for Him. And now, when she’d found one last person to cling to in this world, He did everything to make certain she ended up giving him up too.
96
Intimate Whispers
She wasn’t stupid. The second this was over, Jason would be gone from her life forever.
He thrust forward, a surge meant to take the wind out of her and that’s exactly what it did. Jason rocked toward her, the concern he tried to shake off still foremost.
“Are you okay?”
This time she gave in and averted her gaze. She wouldn’t look at him, watching the caring—the love—in his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Just, please. Stay and it’ll be over soon.” She hoped. Maybe he would consider her punishment reason enough not to prolong their coupling, but that went against the whole idea of punishment in the first place, didn’t it?
A swirling sensation began in her belly. The all too familiar rush of orgasm starting in its usual place until it spread, locking her limbs and vocal cords until all she could do was tremble. Small, gasping sounds escaped while she did, turning Him—and Jason—
on even more.
This time was so different though. While she couldn’t fight physiology, the emotions usually accompanying orgasmic highs had gone missing.
“If you had any other way, would this still happen?”
“Oh God,” she cried out. A vibration rippled through her body. A shake of her head helped fight off the looming rush. “No. No, believe me, if there were any other way.”
“Does he treat you well?”
That question startled her into looking up. “Usually. Not always.” There was something surreal about this. They carried on a regular conversation, neither behaving as if her sex perfumed the air, moans and small cries interrupting her responses.
“When will it be over?”
“When he…after…he will finish inside me. I don’t know for certain, but I think that’s what keeps them away.” Them. The voices.
Talking became too much of a task now. Her face dropped toward the bed, her eyes slamming shut against the wave. She fought it for as long as she could, all the while knowing she only prolonged the inevitable.
As if to prove the point, only seconds later her muscles locked, a scream trapped in her throat, as she trembled through the first violent orgasm. It caught her with a force that was more embarrassing than erotic. Her nipples hardened, though, and her pussy pulsed, gripping Him tighter and urging his own release. She didn’t know how long she froze beneath Him as
He pounded into her.
Awareness slowly seeped back into her consciousness. The smell of sex. The methodic tick of a clock from maybe the living room. The harsh scissoring of her breath.
Her cheeks were molten, but the moment she looked up to find Jason studying her, she wished the flame would engulf her whole.
97
Dee Carney
“I’m sorry,” she croaked through a dry throat.
Jason said nothing.
He watched as she lost track of time. She’d long since given up fighting the waves of orgasm He coaxed from her again and again. They’d been doing this together for too long. He knew her weak points, pinpointed the sweet ones with unerring accuracy.
Sweat poured off her in sheets, slickening her back and soaking the bed beneath. Jason remained stoic, his attention never leaving her. He sat with his back braced by the wall, but he stayed. For now.
She’d stopped blushing after recovery maybe four or five orgasms ago. Now, she remained resigned. The inevitability of what would happen once He left almost not worth fighting against any longer.
Jason would leave. She would be alone once again. He would be her sole companion.
She’d been a fool to believe this time might be different. That He would allow her some small semblance of happiness in this maddening world of hers where voices and the dead were more familiar to her than the neighbors in this building. She’d wanted a little romance. Maybe even a shot at love. Stupidly.
So tired now. She wanted rest. To be left alone.
Her fingers screamed in pain as she let go of the sheets. They’d been curled around the material so tightly, clenched into fists so hard, now they ached when she moved them. But she didn’t want to fight anymore.
Sabrina relaxed her back, allowing a sway to slightly lower her belly to the bed. The muscles on her thighs released all tension, no longer working to push back against His thrusts. Her knees sank into the soft mattress, no longer supporting her weight and the force of His. She spread her arms, her limbs almost lifeless as she surrendered.
Yes. Total and absolute surrender.
