Savaged Dreams: Savaged Illusions Trilogy Book 1

by Jennifer Lyon

  His arms bulged; she could actually feel them thickening where he braced them on either side of her face. Then he leaned down, his eyes burning into hers. “Or I’ll lose control and fuck you like your mine. Hard. Until you’re writhing and begging to come. And you will come. None of this holding-back bullshit.” He dragged in an audible breath. “Now be still and give me a goddamned minute if you want gentle.”

  The control he exerted over himself was evident in every muscle. Even his stomach pressed to hers rippled with the tension of holding back. The realization bolted a spasm of pure sexual lightning through her. She didn’t need her glasses to feel his searing gaze on her or the energy coursing between them. Her nipples tightened, and an ardent yearning to be completely filled seized her. The frantic compulsion was more than physical, it was an emotional urge to be so totally connected to Justice that he’d leave a permanent imprint on her.

  “Screw gentle, I want you.” She arched her hips up, forcing his cock deeper.

  He hovered there a second longer, as if measuring her. His cock pulsed halfway inside her, as impatient as she was. Liza rocked and squeezed, determined to have as much of Justice as she could take.

  His control snapped. He surged in, sheathing himself to the hilt, stretching and penetrating her until she gasped with the too-full, and yet not enough, sensation.

  A dark laugh spilled from him. “Look at you,” he growled out. “Writhing like a wild thing, so hot I can’t stop. Can’t get enough.” He braced himself over her and thrust hard.

  Liza bowed as he hit a pleasure spot that tore a cry from her. Every time he pulled out, her internal walls spasmed, as if they could hold on to him. A primal fear that he’d leave her wanting, hurting with this unbearable need.

  He powered into her, his cock hot and steel-like, driving her higher. Her belly constricted. She planted her heels and tilted her pelvis up, meeting every thrust, her fingers clamping on his shoulders. “Please.”

  His eyes burned. Shifting to one arm, he slid his hand down her belly and thumbed her clit while slamming into her until all her sensors fired at once. Crazed noises spilled from her throat. Desperate panting echoed in her ears.

  “That’s it, Beth. Let go.”

  The pressure detonated at the sound of his voice. She exploded, sucked into a pleasure vortex.

  He pounded into her, stiffened and came. His cock pulsed hard and wild deep inside her while his chest heaved, his entire body bucking.

  Finally they both settled, and Justice leaned down, kissed her, and then brushed her damp hair from her face. “You okay?”

  Liza swallowed at the way he studied her while his cock still throbbed inside her body. He’d given her the thing she hadn’t realized she craved so badly, an intimate connection that made her feel cherished beyond physical satisfaction. A little overwhelmed, she opted for an understated answer. “A smidge better than okay, I think.”

  He laughed. “Yeah? Well, you damn near blew my mind. I’ll be right back.” He pulled out of her, rolled off the bed and headed through a door. She presumed a bathroom.

  As soon as the door closed, anxiety nibbled into her contentment. She scooped her glasses off the nightstand and put them on. The whole room came into focus, and with it a dose of reality. She’d slept with a rock star. And now she thought it was more than sex?

  Oh God.

  Her chest tightened, and the old scars on her wrist itched as panic built. All the names she’d been called, slut, whore, Lolita, pounded her head. The glare of the spotlight, the shame…

  What was she doing here? Was she going to become her mom and repeat all her mistakes? Think that Justice wanted her for more than sex?

  She had to get out of here now.

  * * *

  Justice came out of the bathroom to find Liza tugging on her panties.

  “Going someplace?” Not if he could help it. He fought the primal urge to scoop her up and plop her back in his bed.

  “I thought I’d leave.”

  He frowned, wondering where that had come from. She’d been fine a minute ago. Striding to her, he took hold of her wrist. “Regrets, Beth?” He loved calling her that, a name she didn’t share with everyone.

  Her gaze focused on him. “Not regret. I’m not sure how to do this.”

  Her uncertainty crawled into him. “Us?”

  “This is just sex, right? Because I’ve never had sex like that, not…” She looked down, twisting her watch. “I don’t want to be my mother, mistaking sex for a relationship. I’ll go home.”

  No way was he letting her leave like this, upset and feeling used and uncared for. Justice curled his fingers around her arm and pulled her to him. “Not just sex. This was never just sex.” Not from the first second she’d walked into their practice wearing that ugly brown sweater and overflowing attitude. She’d stood up to him and taken control.

  So seeing her vulnerable and lost as if he couldn’t be bothered with her once he’d gotten his rocks off? He couldn’t bear it. “Don’t leave. Please. I know you can’t sleep in bed with me.” He hated that, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out she was afraid of what would happen when she was asleep. That asshole drugged her, then when she was helpless to fight him off, raped her. She needed to feel safe. “Sleep in the other room. You can brace the door with a chair or wedge something under it and no one can get in. Tomorrow I’ll get you a lock for it so you have a place when you stay over.”

  Liza jerked her head up, shock making her blink. “How do you understand so well?”

  “Because you’re not the only one who’s fucked up. If you leave me, I’ll be alone in this house, haunted by guilt and anger. I’ll go looking. I won’t be able to stop myself. I’ll go out on the streets, searching for the man who doesn’t want to see his son. But when you’re here, that compulsion dims. You share your troubles and let me help, and that makes me feel better and worthy in a way I haven’t for a long time.” He didn’t know how else to explain it. She let him touch her, hold her. Give her so much pleasure it clearly scared the hell out of her.

  She closed her eyes, swallowing, while twisting her watch. “I’ll stay.”

  Relief cascaded in cool waves, quieting the inner turmoil clawing at him. Two things usually did that, music and sex. And now Beth.

  His gaze caught on her watch, and he noticed that her pale skin had reddened at the edge of the metal band. He covered her fidgeting fingers in concern. Had he grabbed her wrist during sex and dug that woven mesh band into her flesh?

  “Did I do this?” He soothed the spot with the pad of his finger.

  Her eyes snapped open. “Do what?”

  “This irritated spot. Did I accidently press on the band? Here let me take it off and see—”

  “No.” She tugged her wrist from his hold.

  He drew back, startled. “Okay.” He wouldn’t touch her watch if it bothered her. But why was that a big deal? “Was it a gift? From your mom or something?” Before she went to prison?

  She compressed her lips, as if deciding. “Not a gift exactly. My aunt bought it for me.” With a deliberate inhalation, she released the hidden catch. “To hide these.” Liza slipped the watch off and turned her arm to show him the inside of her wrist.

  What the fuck? Two white, jagged scars slashed the delicate skin in a bumpy, uneven V shape. Icy shock dropped over him like a blanket. He couldn’t tear his stare from them. “These aren’t knife cuts. What happened?” Could Hayes have done this to her? Or had she… “Oh Christ, did you—?” A vortex opened up, trying to suck him in. “You tried to kill yourself?”

  She snapped her wrist down. “An accident.” With her back rigid, she snatched up her dress, bra and shoes, then strode out of the room.

  What just happened? Was she leaving? His muscles fired with adrenaline, the need to go after her pushing him. Quickly, he stepped into his shorts, and he followed her, fearing she’d rush out into the night.

  He only made it out the doorway of his bedroom when he caught sigh
t of Beth. She’d turned left down the hall and vanished into the room he’d told her to use, and softly closed the door.

  She’d shut him out, but she hadn’t left the house.

  He turned his attention to his dad’s room directly across from his bedroom. That door was closed too, although no one was inside it. But once in a while he found things in there disturbed, telling him that his dad had come in and out when Justice wasn’t home.

  Each time it hurt. His father wouldn’t see him, talk to him or let him help.

  When he’d seen those scars on Beth’s wrist, all he could think was she’d tried to leave too. Permanently. Would she do it again? What had he gotten himself into?

  All his brain cells screamed to go check on her, to make sure she stayed. But that door and his promise stood between them. If he broke his word now, how would she ever believe him?

  Fighting his instincts, he returned to his bedroom, snatched up his guitar and sat on the bed. He didn’t think, just played and sang, pouring his frustration and worry into the music. He’d played two songs and was on the third, when her voice broke in.

  “‘Something to Believe In’ by Poison. That’s one of my mom’s favorite songs. I grew up listening to it.”

  Liza—his Beth—leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb of his room, clutching her laptop to her chest with one arm. Hanging from her fingers was a bag of M&M’s.

  “You didn’t leave.”

  She came in, rounding the bed to settle next to him against the pillows, and set the computer on her thighs. “You didn’t follow me.”

  The feel of her next to him eased his tension. She’d pulled on a coral tank top, and her mahogany hair was around her shoulders—a perfect picture in his bed. “Wanted to. But I promised.” And meant it. “You’re not wearing the watch.” That she’d come to his room and left her wrist bare, exposing the scars that she normally hid, told him she was ready to talk about it.

  Beth lowered her gaze and fiddled with the bag of M&M’s. “For a while, when I got too scared, usually at night, I’d lock myself in the bathroom and sometimes…I cut.”

  “Yourself?” Stupid question, he’d seen the scars on her wrist.

  She closed her eyes. “Usually my thighs. The pain was a release, something else to focus on to block out the internal fear. I couldn’t sleep, sometimes for days.”

  Cold, sick dread spread in him. Another indication that this girl was dealing with some deep psychological issues.

  Like his father.

  Not the same thing, since Liza was here with him, and she hadn’t run off. Focusing on her, he asked, “So your wrist?” Had she done that to herself?

  “It happened the night the court announced that Hayes had fled the country. Gleeful protesters filled the street in front of our house with huge signs that said, Run, Hayes, Run! She asked for it! Recant! Hayes is the Real Victim! And they screamed things like lying whore, slut, even cunt. My little cousins, Kristen and Rafe, could hear it too. We had security, but on that day…the crowd couldn’t be stopped.” The bag crinkled beneath Liza’s fingers.

  He desperately wanted to pull her onto his lap and shield her from her memories. But she was trying to share with him, and he needed to let her do it. “And?”

  “My aunt and uncle had Rafe and Kristen in the family room with them at the back of the house where they wouldn’t hear it as much. But my bedroom was at the front. I could hear it all. Every word.” She lifted her eyes to him. “It wouldn’t stop, the voices screaming over and over, filling every part of my head until I was drowning in their hatred. I wanted to shriek back, but I wasn’t allowed to. It wasn’t just my aunt who told me that, but the DA’s office and everyone who worked with me to help prepare me for trial. They told me to only speak in the courtroom, or to my therapist, and even that, they warned, could be risky. What if the therapist’s notes got out? Or someone broke into her office? It happens.”

  Had they realized what they were doing to this girl? A victim? Justice knew all too well that many ambitious people didn’t give a shit. Oh they said they did, until it came down to a choice of their goals over the other person’s welfare. The military trotted his dad out as a hero until he became an embarrassment suffering severe PTSD, then they abandoned him. And Liza? She was their star witness whom they silenced to protect their case. Bastards. “That’s wrong. You know it is.”

  “Maybe. But they pointed out that if I spoke out and hurt the case, Hayes would do it again to some other girl. I couldn’t live with that.”

  He fisted his hands against the urge to punch the pricks who’d put that on her. Worse, they’d done it when she hadn’t had a mom or dad around to protect her. He honestly couldn’t tell if her aunt meant to protect her, or what. “So what did you do?”

  “I tried to stay quiet, but it was building in me. All the words I couldn’t say became a painful buzzing in my head, constantly there, pressing against my brain. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted it all to stop.”

  Had anyone even seen the signs that she was cracking under the strain? He prompted her with, “So what happened?”

  She braced her wrist on her laptop, staring at it. “I lost control. Broke a drinking glass and started cutting my wrist. The sharp, hot pain made everything else go away. I sat there on the floor of my room, pushing that jagged piece of glass in. Then I picked up a second one and pushed it in.”

  Christ. He could picture it, young Beth—Elizabeth then—alone in her room, hurting so much she jammed broken glass into her wrist. Would she do it again now? “What stopped you?”

  “My aunt when she came in to check on me.” She looked over at him, her eyes unfocused. “She screamed at me. I can still hear the crunch of glass as she stepped on it to kneel down, her hands shaking me. ‘What have you done? Elizabeth, you can’t do this.’ But it kept bleeding. My uncle came in, and he called an ambulance.

  “While we waited, Mari calmed down and said, ‘It has to be an accident. Do you hear me, Elizabeth? Tell them you broke the glass accidentally. If the hospital thinks that you tried to hurt yourself, they’ll take you away, put you in an institution or group home. They might even take Rafe and Kristen away, fearing we’re unfit. You can’t ever tell anyone. And you can’t do this ever again. Ever. No cutting.’”

  Justice narrowed his eyes, rage nearly blinding him. “She knew you had been cutting? And did nothing?”

  “Guessed. Bloody tissue in the trash, that kind of thing. And before you jump all over them, thinking they didn’t care, they did. But we were all living in a pressure cooker. Mari had a sister in prison for murder, an infamous niece at the center of a media circus trial, her house surrounded by protesters, and just going to the grocery store or mailbox was almost impossible. Her life, all our lives, was this house of cards, and she kept trying to shut out the smallest breeze that would cave it in. She was trying to hold it all together and shield her kids.”

  “You needed help. You should have told someone.”

  “Really?” she snapped back. “And then what? Get them in trouble for not reporting it? Be taken away? They had legal guardianship, but they were subjected to social worker visits and their family scrutinized. Even the media spotlighted them. After all, Amber Ranger is Mari’s sister. Are they alike? They were raised together. Why would I make it worse for them? And then end up living in some home where I was even less wanted?”

  “Shit. I just hate it. It’s wrong.” He’d had his grandmother fighting for him, and later, Drake too. Then he’d had friends. Who had Beth had? An aunt and a whole legal system that kept silencing her. “So you hid your scars?”

  “Yep. The ones on my thighs are barely noticeable. Few people ever see those.”

  He jerked, realizing now why… “That’s why you stopped me when I was licking you.” He’d been so into her, he hadn’t noticed any scars.

  A blush stained her skin.

  Putting his arm around her, he tugged her chin up and waited. She’d answer when she was ready.


  “That was most of the reason. And it was just overwhelming. Sex isn’t like this for me. I don’t lose control. That’s part of cutting. I have control over something.”

  “Two conversations here. First, on sex, you don’t need control when you’re in my bed. All you need are words to tell me when something crosses your line. You did that.”

  “It’s not a permanent line.”

  “You want my mouth on you, sweetheart?” Damned if his cock didn’t totally get into the idea. But not right now, they had a conversation to finish.

  “I liked it.”

  He fought a grin. He’d tasted exactly how much she liked it. “I’d love to talk about spreading your legs and licking you, but I need to know.” His stomach clenched. “Do you still cut?”

  “No. At my next visit with my mom, she saw the bandages. I told her it was an accident, but she knew.” Liza closed her eyes. “She said, ‘Don’t leave me, Beth. I can bear living in here. I can bear anything but losing you. Please, baby, don’t leave me. I wish I’d gotten there sooner, saved you before that bastard ever drugged or touched you. Find a way to survive. Please.’”

  Justice pushed the computer off her lap and pulled her into his arms. He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. He’d been so furious that she had no one, but she had—her mom.

  “I realized then exactly what she’d sacrificed for me,” she said softly. “My father was dead, so he didn’t matter, but I wasn’t going to let Hayes take any more from us.” She looked up at him. “I found a way to get through the nights.”

  Her glasses were slightly askew from him pressing her face against his chest, and she was damned beautiful. Adjusting her glasses, he asked, “How?”

  “When I got scared, I escaped into my own world by writing. They started out as short stories, and now I’m writing books. It’s my secret place where no one else can go. And I control everything.”

  That was a hell of a lot better than cutting. “You’ve never told anyone?”

  “I mentioned I like to write to my mom, but not that I’m writing books.” She smiled at him. “Until now.”