Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out his cell phone. I tried not to peek at the screen while he repeatedly punched the on-screen buttons, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from veering over long enough to realize he was sending a message to his two best friends. Only moments after he sent it, the screen lit up with a response.

  I felt like I might puke with trepidation over whatever they were discussing.

  Finally, after a few more exchanges, Hayes locked his phone screen and slipped the whole thing back into his pocket. Then he undid his zipper and took out his cock. He stroked it a few times, but that wasn’t strictly necessary. He was already hard.

  He always got hard when he hit me.

  “Suck me off,” he demanded. “Unless you want me to drag you out into the front yard, bend you over the goddamned fire hydrant, and fuck your ass for the whole neighborhood to see. Suck it!”

  I blinked a couple of times, but then I bent over and took his length into my mouth. Because I didn’t doubt he’d do exactly what he’d threatened, if not worse.

  I slid the pointed tip of my tongue along the underside of his cock, the way he liked, but apparently that wasn’t going to be enough for him tonight. He put one hand at the base of my skull and pushed, forcing me to take so much that I gagged, but he didn’t let up.

  He slipped his other hand inside the waistband of my jeans and started finger fucking my ass. I hated anal, and he knew it. I especially hated it without lube, so he often chose to forgo anything that would make it easier for me to bear. That was just one more way he liked to punish me.

  Two fingers. Then a third.

  He pushed down on the base of my skull so hard that I choked and fought for air, even as he added a fourth finger, stretching me so wide it brought a fresh wave of tears to my eyes.

  “Don’t you fucking dare puke on me,” he ground out.

  I swallowed my bile, my tears, and his cockhead, willing myself to endure whatever he intended to put me through. I just had to get through it. Survive this and move on to whatever was next.

  I’d been existing in survival mode for so long now I didn’t know anything else, any other way of living.

  He thrust his hips up to meet me, forcing more than I could handle into my mouth, laughing as I struggled.

  Just when I was sure I couldn’t take it anymore, he said, “Fuck, I need that ass.” And then he dragged me up by the hair. “Take off your jeans. Now!” he added when I didn’t respond fast enough.

  I fumbled with the button and fly, my head throbbing and swimming as I tugged them off my hips. I kicked to get them off one leg, wincing when I made contact with the center console. They got stuck on my left leg, but Hayes didn’t let that stop him. He grabbed me by my thighs, forced me to straddle him with the steering wheel pressing into my back, and shoved his cock into my ass.

  I whimpered at the invasion that his fingers couldn’t have fully prepared me for, but I knew better than to complain.

  “Ride me, bitch,” he commanded, and he forced his fingers—the ones he’d used to stretch me—into my mouth so I tasted myself on him.

  He pressed those fingers into my throat until I gagged on them, and I did my best to bounce up and down, but every movement felt as if it was ripping me to shreds inside.

  At least it didn’t take him long this time.

  When he got close, he put both his arms beneath mine, wrapping his hands up to grab hold of my shoulders so he could slam my body onto him repeatedly. A few punishing strokes later, I felt his completion filling me.

  He held me like that for a long time, either oblivious to my tears or reveling in them, his softening cock still buried deep in my ass, his head resting against my breasts, the steering wheel digging into my back.

  But then he shoved me onto the passenger seat, tucked his cock back inside his pants, zipped up, and tossed his head back against the seat rest with a beleaguered sigh.

  “How long?” he demanded, not bothering to look at me.

  How long? I couldn’t follow his train of thought. What exactly was he asking me?

  Nothing in the countless scenarios I’d been contemplating would explain this question.

  Giving him the wrong answer was typically worse than giving no answer, so I bit my tongue and kept quiet, hoping that would be the case tonight.

  Hayes slammed both hands on the steering wheel, and I flinched when the horn blared.

  “How long, bitch?” he roared. “Answer me! How long have you been fucking Higgins behind my back?”

  I was so taken aback by the question that I couldn’t come up with an answer fast enough to appease him.

  His right arm shot out quicker than I could blink, and he grabbed a fistful of my hair. “Fucking cheating bitch.”

  Then he was dragging me across the center console by my hair. My scalp was on fire. My knees hit hard on the concrete floor of the garage, scraping as he dragged me, and tears poured down my cheeks like a waterfall, but I couldn’t even let out a squeak of pain or horror.

  “You want to fuck around on me?” Hayes shouted, throwing open the door to the kitchen. He dragged me halfway through the house and threw me on the floor of the living room, then kicked me hard in the ribs, so hard all I could do was curl in on myself. “You want to make a fool out of me? You want to be a fucking whore, like Razor’s girl, huh? You like fucking other men?”

  His foot landed on the back of my skull, making me see stars. Then he kicked again, connecting with the small of my back. And again, right on the ribs.

  Again and again and again, he kicked me until I was nothing but a sobbing ball of pain.

  Some kicks landed on my face, and my other eye swelled closed. My lip felt fat and I tasted blood. I wasn’t sure when the other two guys had joined in, but they were there. Laughing. Egging one another on. Kicking me just as hard as Hayes was.

  “She wants to be a whore, let’s make her into a fucking whore,” Hayes ground out.

  Someone grabbed me by the hair and dragged me off the floor. Then they were ripping at what was left of my clothes, tearing them from my body, but they left my jeans dangling from a single ankle, and my mouth was forced down onto a hard cock until I choked and gagged on it, and another was splitting into my already sore and abused ass, and I felt like I was being ripped in two.

  I’d never prayed before. But right now seemed like a good time to start. For the first time in my life, I said a silent prayer.

  I prayed for it all to end.

  Somehow.

  Someway.

  I didn’t even care how.

  I just needed it to end.

  Death sounded like the best option, but I didn’t get the impression Hayes would let me off so easily.

  WHEN I CAME to, I could only tell the sun was up because of the reddish glow behind my closed eyelids. I couldn’t open one eye at all, although the other opened just a crack and seemed as if I might eventually be able to pry it all the way open if I worked at it diligently. They were both still swollen, painful and puffy and burning, just like the rest of me.

  Even the cool sheets against my skin hurt when I tested my fingers to see if I could move them.

  Huh. Sheets.

  I didn’t remember being put in the bed. Hayes must have brought me up here sometime after I’d passed out from sheer exhaustion.

  I needed to pee, but the second I shifted my hips, I wished I hadn’t. My entire body felt as if it were on fire. I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a whimper. Hayes rolled over, causing the mattress to dip, and drew a hand over my cheek, then slid it down the column of my neck.

  I froze, wondering if he would strangle me and end it once and for all, but I had no such luck.

  He moved on, tracing the line of my collarbone, brushing over my breast, trailing down my belly, and then settling his hand at the aching, swollen apex of my thighs. He pinched my clit so hard I couldn’t stop myself from whimpering in pain.

  “See what happens when you fuck around on me, baby? You ma
de me do this, you know. You got me so fucking jealous I couldn’t stand it.”

  He leaned over me, forcing his tongue into my battered mouth. He pried my thighs apart, stretched one of my legs all the way up until my ankle was above my head, hefted his weight over me, and settled himself at my core.

  The hard evidence of his arousal had me cringing in trepidation. Pussy or ass? Which would be worse right now? I honestly wasn’t sure.

  With a swift thrust, he impaled me, choosing my ass again, and I couldn’t stop the moan of pain from falling through my lips. He crushed his hard, powerful body to me, lowered his head next to mine, and drove into me repeatedly. But at least he came quickly, grunting against my ear as he stilled, the warmth of his semen seeming to burn a hole inside me.

  When he rolled off me, he brushed the hair back from my face. “I’ve gotta go to practice. Alex and Jason are going to stick around today, though. They’ll take good care of you. You do whatever they tell you, baby, all right? They’re resting up now, but they’ll come take care of you after a bit.”

  In my present condition, I doubted I could do anything at all, and I knew Alex and Jason had no intention of doing anything that would remotely resemble taking care of me. They might beat me. They might rape me some more. They might do all of the above and then some.

  The thought of being alone with them terrified me.

  I mumbled something that Hayes seemed to accept as my acquiescence, because then he rolled out of bed. A moment later, I heard the shower running, followed by Hayes’s tone-deaf singing to himself.

  I curled in on myself, trying to find a comfortable position even though there was no such thing. My left leg didn’t want to come with the rest of me, so I tugged harder and finally got it to budge.

  Why was it being so difficult?

  Had they broken some of my bones? Maybe. I honestly wasn’t sure, because I couldn’t move enough to test them out.

  Had they ripped me open internally? Probably. Everything felt like fire down below. I dreaded trying to go to the bathroom even though I was practically bursting with the need to pee.

  The shower cut off, and a few minutes later, Hayes was leaning over me again, kissing my swollen cheek. “Be a good girl, Nat. I don’t like having to punish you.”

  Then, finally, blessedly, he was gone.

  But at least his buddies didn’t immediately come up the stairs to replace him.

  I tugged once more on my left leg, and I realized that my jeans were still caught around my ankle. In all the frenzy of beating me and fucking me, they’d never fully removed them from my body.

  In the distance, I heard the gentle hum of Hayes starting the car. Then it faded, and the rattling of the garage door closing behind him acted as a jumpstart to my survival instincts.

  Hayes was gone.

  Alex and Jason were still somewhere in the house, but they were sleeping, and not here, where they could hurt me.

  The memory of a wadded-up sticky note flashed through my mind.

  And then I thought of my cell phone, because I’d shoved the bit of paper into the pocket where I kept my phone. But even if it was still there, even if Hayes hadn’t destroyed it or simply removed it while I was passed out, could I pry my eyes open far enough to do anything with it?

  I heard the unmistakable sounds of movement from downstairs, which meant that Jason and Alex—or at least one of them—was stirring.

  I didn’t have much time.

  I contorted my body as best I could, flinging my left leg up toward me so that the bulk of my jeans shifted toward my hands. My hands were swollen and painful, but I somehow forced one into my pocket. Nothing there, but I couldn’t see to tell which pocket I’d started with. I shifted the material with my hands, bunching up the fabric so I could feel for something solid, and then, just as I heard the unmistakable grunt of one of the guys shuffling through the hall toward the downstairs bathroom, my fingers brushed over my phone.

  Despite the pain, I somehow managed to close my hand around the phone and tug it free of my pocket.

  The toilet flushed, which meant I might not have long at all before I had company. Seconds? Minutes, maybe, if I was lucky.

  I lifted my other hand to my face and tried to pry the eyelid of my left eye open since it seemed to be in better shape than the right. It burned and stung, hot tears assaulting me to soothe the sting, but with my fingers, I managed to open it enough that I could just make out the numbers on the phone.

  I couldn’t risk speaking. The sound of my voice would draw the guys to the bedroom.

  Should I call 9-1-1 and leave the line open, and then hope that the emergency operator could figure out that I needed help? But since it was a cell and not a landline, how would they be able to find me if I couldn’t tell them an address? I wasn’t sure how that worked.

  I quickly nixed that idea. Too risky, and far too uncertain.

  But…there was still the sticky note Ethan had given me with his phone number. Surely it had to be in that pocket. If they hadn’t bothered to take my phone from me, there was no way they would have thought to do anything about a scrap of paper.

  I contorted my body once again, tugging my leg toward my chest so I could dig through the pockets.

  More feet shuffling in the hall. Muffled voices. They were both awake.

  Panic had my chest heaving. My breathing turned slow, shallow, the oxygen rattling in my chest in an imitation of pneumonia.

  Then I felt it, one finger brushing against the corner of the paper.

  The toilet flushed again. Fuck.

  I stretched my fingers as far as they would go. Finally managed to trap the paper between two fingers. Careful not to lose my grip on it, I tugged it free of my jeans and quickly flattened it out so I could read the numbers.

  I opened a new message and punched in Ethan’s digits as quickly as I could.

  Deep, masculine voices rumbled in the hall, very close to the door, but my head was in a fog so I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  I typed out the only thing I could think of. The only thing I had time for.

  911 Nat—

  The door opened before I could finish spelling out my name, so I hit Send and dropped the phone in the sheets, hoping they wouldn’t notice. Hoping Ethan would understand. Hoping he would help me.

  “Morning, sunshine,” Alex said seconds before he and Jason sat on either side of me, their combined weight causing the mattress to dip. Alex reached for one of my hands and guided it to his cock, closing my fingers around his length and forcing me to stroke him to readiness. “What do you say about a nice wake-up fuck to start the day, hmm?”

  He didn’t really want an answer. I knew it, and they knew it. And even if he did, I couldn’t answer because Jason had already straddled my chest and was shoving his hard dick between my battered, swollen lips.

  I prayed that Ethan would see my text message and act on it. I clung to the desperate hope that he would help me, even though I knew it wouldn’t happen.

  No one could get me out of this.

  Get through it. Endure it. Survive.

  That was all I could think. It was all I could do.

  Survival was the best I could hope for.

  Although, at the moment, with Alex settling himself between my bruised thighs and Jason’s cock bringing up bile in my mouth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive anymore. Death seemed more appealing. Maybe Jason would manage to cut off my air supply completely and I could suffocate on his dick.

  There was a thought. Something I could hope for and hang on to. A tiny bit of solace in the nightmare I was being forced to bear.

  Hot tears stung my eyes and tracked down my cheeks, and I tried to take more of his cock into my throat than I could manage in the hope that it would kill me.

  I didn’t want to endure. I couldn’t bear the thought that I might somehow survive.

  I just wanted it all to end.

  LENNON HAD ONE hell of a shiner at practice. I only wished I’d do
ne more damage than I had. I couldn’t help but notice that his hands were kind of swollen, too. I didn’t remember doing anything to him that would have caused it, but maybe he’d hurt them while trying to remove my fingers from his throat. Served the bastard right if that was the reason for the damage. I hoped it was due to something I’d done to him and not due to something he’d done to Natalie after they’d gone home.

  The coaches called him in after practice was over for a meeting, presumably to find out what the hell he’d been doing to get a black eye. He’d been known to party and get into bar fights while out on the town with his previous team, so no doubt they were doing damage control. The team’s owners wouldn’t be happy about this because the behavior of the guys on the team would reflect on them.

  I wasn’t worried that he’d tell them I was the one who’d caused it. He’d have to explain why I’d done it, and that was the last thing a son of a bitch like Lennon would want. Abusers liked to keep their abuse quiet.

  The rest of the boys called him Haymaker. I had been, too.

  That was before.

  Now that I knew he threw haymakers at women just for the hell of it, for fun, for sport, or however the hell he thought of it, I wasn’t inclined to call him anything but Dirtbag, Piece of Shit, or Toe Scum.

  Even those seemed too good for him.

  I showered and got dressed to head home after briefly stopping in to request a meeting with the coaches and the general manager. I still hadn’t quite decided what I intended to ask of them—whether I wanted to be traded or if I would insist on Lennon being shipped out or something else—but I’d have time to think about it. My meeting couldn’t be arranged for a couple more days.

  Either way, I had no intention of remaining on a team with this motherfucker. One of us had to go, and I wasn’t overly particular which one it was. I couldn’t fight as part of a team alongside someone like him.

  Carter had spent the morning with Tallie and Harper Fielding, our starting goaltender’s wife and daughter. I’d promised I’d take him out for ice cream when I picked him up. We had a date for burgers and ice cream at Braum’s this afternoon—not somewhere I normally ate, but whatever. Carter liked it, and I liked to make my kid happy, so we were going. At least their burgers were good, for fast food.