by JR King
Staring at the fragments of dust on my feet, I shuffled away. Shoes crunching shards, he stomped toward me and placed a steady hand on my chin. He roughly pulled my face up so that I had no choice but to meet his eyes. “Why’d you kiss the fucktard, you manipulative little cunt?”
Uttered in furious whispers, his words were vitriolic. Somehow that felt worse than them being screamed at me. A tear slipped down my cheek as I sagged against the wall, looking at the splinters all over the ground. Such a wasteland, and it was my fault.
He stepped back from me. “Get up.”
I should have listened to him. He sprang forward and pulled me to my feet. When he yanked on my arm and dragged me alongside him, I immediately felt sharp slivers scratch the sides of my feet, cutting me. I could feel the burn and the prickle of blood coming from wounds, and all I could think of was that the strappy snakeskin Alexander McQueen shoes were ruined, such a waste. More wasteland. I sucked in a deep breath. I did this. I turned a loving man into a monster.
I let out a gasp of fear when his hand wrapped itself around my throat, easing me up until I stood on my tiptoes. The other hand clamped over my mouth.
This is how he dragged me to the wall-length credenza where a great mirror hung above it, roughly pushed me forward to it and yanked up my dress. In his dogged rush to remove my panties, he tore them up.
“Alex,” I breathed out tersely, like expelling a gust of air. Loosely draping my arms around his neck, I watched our reflection in the mirror. My body became pliable as I molded myself against him, rubbing and seeking. I sank my fingers into the thickness of his hair and clung to his head, demanding him to come back to me.
“Bitch.” Eyes burning like hot steel, he held me so tight I could feel the evidence of his arousal. A low moan escaped me when he ground his hips against my behind, his strong hands cupping my breasts. I felt a shudder rippling across his body, and as per usual, something deep within me went liquid in response.
“Alex,” I breathed again, trying to get through to him. It was all I could say because my throat had closed up. I had to work to take steady breaths. I didn’t care about the shards digging into the sides of my feet. I welcomed the tangible pain. There was also a ghost of fear, but mostly lust boiled up in me. My nipples were diamond-tipped, and I was so wet that a rivulet of arousal trickled down, soaking the wadded mess of my gown.
“A bitch in heat.” We stared at each other’s reflection as he hurriedly unzipped his trousers. He guided himself down my slit, mocking me. “Hot for your ex?” In an instant, I realized how much power he had over me, making my body react when my mind wanted to turn away, and I hated myself for it. My obscene wetness lit another fuse of rage as he forced himself into me with a thrust so brutal that my body jolted forward. Then he was inside me and it hurt because he was hard and angry. I had to slap my palms flat on the surface of the credenza to stop myself from going headfirst into the mirror. Watching us in it—seeing him and the pain across his face in particular—was tearing me apart. “I’ll make you forget, kitten. I’ll try…,”
I didn’t hear the rest of it. Not when he took me this way; possessing me with urgency and concealed veneration, his movements strumming a tight string inside of me. All I knew was that with each thrust a little of his anger ebbed away.
“I wanted to break his neck,” he explained between thrusts, “still do.” He slowed down a little when my eyes widened.
“Jesus Christ, don’t,” I spluttered, wheezed, and cried altogether with eyes closed. Why’d I make an utter and complete fool of myself?
His arms reached around and he toyed with my nipples. I felt myself grow wetter. “No worries about Jax. Look at me,” he snarled, his gruff words making my stomach clench. “Don’t you dare close your eyes, I want you looking at me when I punish you.” The way he moved in and out of me gave me the idea that if he thrust hard enough he could eradicate the kiss with Jax.
It stunned me—with no little disgust—to realize how great I felt in his cruel arms, unwilling to stop the onslaught. My body was rigorously enjoying the uncompromising hardness and warmness pulsating between my thighs. We’d done some rough foreplay in the past, but he’d never taken violent liberties, never made me burn so high so fast. The hoarse, primitive groans being drawn from deep in his chest assured me that he was equally affected.
Pulling out of me and slamming back inside, he threaded splayed fingers into my hair, clutching a handful to turn my head with it. “I will fuck the ever living daylights out of you.” He spat the words at me and his saliva showered my cheek, his mirrored eyes lowering to mine. Untiringly, he kept lunging his cock into me with fast, deep plunges while his other hand moved to my clit. My hands clenched, the pressure he exerted set fire to every cell in my body.
Currents of electricity coursed through me, leaving me quaking in their wake. My insides whirled feverishly, my breath speeding up. I felt his cock swelling, and his breath was starting to pick up. He groaned in that sexy way of his that drove me crazy whenever he felt me tighten around him.
“You’re going to come soon, aren’t you, baby?”
My skin was goose-pimpled. It felt as if I was coming apart at the seams. Glad he no longer called me a whore, I smiled and nodded at his reflection.
He fucked me harder and I let out long whines, my voice loud and cracking. The fucking turned basic and brutal as he thoroughly thrust in and out. Enduring this, my lower belly and hips would surely be bruised after being repeatedly slammed into the credenza. Minutes later, I was coming, spiraling out of control as perception scattered into millions of tangled threads. He did curse at me as I came, muttering invective things I couldn’t perceive clearly and didn’t want to either way. I was beyond caring.
When my body settled down, I watched his expression change in the mirror. It went from smug to confident, to sad and helpless, to strong and smug back again. “Such a bitch in heat.” He buried his face in my hair. “You’d spread your legs for any cock, just so you could come over and over again.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh yeah?” I could hear disgust tainting his voice. It was soft but a sudden revulsion gilded the tone of the scarce words. “I’ll teach you not to lie.”
I braced myself, a smile pulling at my cheeks. “I’ll learn.”
The first blow on my butt cheek felt like a lick of fire, pain blooming like fireworks in the night sky. It seemed like time stopped between the following impacts and my ability to scream in response. Very slowly, my cramped fingers relaxed. “You’ve got to stop lying,” he whispered.
“I never lied to you,” I whispered back, hiccoughs cluttering up my words. However mush it sounded, it was true.
“You’re such a liar,” he whispered again, “but I can’t stop loving you.” I looked up; he didn’t meet my reflected gaze. “What am I going to do with you?” He moved back a little and squeezed my sore ass with greedy hands.
“Don’t stop.”
He slipped out of my soaked flesh and let his cock slide between my buttocks. Then he rammed back into me, making me endure a horrific shock. He glared at my reflection in the mirror. “I want to watch you watch yourself get fucked. I want you to see me use you. I want you to see how much you enjoy this.” He’d delivered the words with a couple of brutal thrusts, and from here on his pace grew frenzied. His face was red with effort, his eyes crinkled up slightly, and his lips parted in a soundless groan. He made me see it all, and I watched, entirely enraptured. I always loved watching his face as he came.
To see my own expression, awed and sated, as he came was shocking. I felt his cock swell and stiffen and pulse. Immediately, he pulled himself out and I could hear the slick sound of his hand furiously jacking off the slippery member. He pushed the crown against my ass until his come exploded all over my skin. His cock jabbed at me a few more times, his hand running over my ass, smearing his ejaculate all around, then he moved his sticky fingers up my back, gripping my hair. I could feel semen dripping do
wn my behind, over my thighs, to the floor and undoubtedly on my feet and shoes. A garish sting detonated on my feet’s skin as the semen came in contact with the tiny nicks.
Alexander’s lips touched my ear, and he stared at our reflections. “Betrayal is in your blood, isn’t it? Finally poking its head out. I hope your experimental foray was fucking worth it. Now that I’ve seen your true colors, I’m going to be relentless. I’ll tear you apart, piece by slow piece, inch by slow inch. I’ll bring you to your knees, Elena. I’ll make you beg me to touch you. To kiss you.”
He brushed my hair back and lessened his grip on my head, thoughtlessly wiping his messy cock on my thigh before letting go to pull his trousers up. With ungraceful haste, he shoved his shirttails somewhat incongruously in his trousers. He peered only at his reflection this time, and smoothed his hair back. He might as well have been winking at himself, as if he were proud he’d won the war raging inside him, awarding himself a high five.
Only then did I notice my erratic breathing, which sounded much more like wheezing. I felt frozen, like if I moved all of my body parts would disassemble and I’d stop existing altogether. I lost it when he walked to the door without acknowledging me. “The pot calling the kettle black? You fucking…fucking hypocrite! Bastard! Asshole! Don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” I yelled contemptuously.
I saw him slam the door, only to watch it open again. “I beg your pardon, did you say something? Did I ask for your fucking opinion? No? Then why are you giving it? Or did you gratuitously insult me? Think, Elena. Please, think fucking carefully before you answer,” he rambled, his voice dangerously low and dark. The fact that his eyes were unblinking made his facial expression go lost in translation.
Slowly, I pushed my soiled dress down. My destroyed panties lay next to me on the shard-filled rug. My feet had bled all over my shoes, and the floor. My eyes caught my reflection in the mirror. I noted how awful I looked. Entirely annihilated. Wrecked.
I had one thing left to do. I screamed like the wrecked woman I’d become. “YES, Alexander. I insulted you. Well, since you’re asking in the specific for me to think about giving my opinion, I’ve figured it out. You set a trap for me by kissing the woman so you could return to your old ways, a heartless bastard who fucks anything with fake tits. Things were great, but you couldn’t bear being with one girl, could you? Did you expect a thank you for ruining my life? Is that what you’d like to hear? Thank you, Mr. Turner. There, you’ve got your answer. Go on now, ruin whatever is left of my life, it’s what you’re good at.”
“Ruin is exactly what a cheating, hallucinating bitch like you deserves. I kissed no one, and I sure as shit won’t be kissing you again.”
I took in a short breath and looked away. How predictable: his words against mine. Men are such liars. Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me came to my mind, how ridiculous. I continued my train of thought and concluded that—and although it was plain cosmic injustice—men were liars because that’s what contemporary society told and groomed them to be. “You kissed her! That tall blonde in a black dress. The slit of it was so whorishly high! I wasn’t hallucinating! I saw it! You left me to answer her call, and then met up with her covertly. You started this!” I paused to catch my breath. The way I was yelling the words at him sounded like I was trying to convince myself. Had I hallucinated? “You’re so good looking, and so clever, and so charming; you even have a huge penis. Put all this together with your billions and you’re totally irresistible. You know you’re a total babe and you use this against women. All I could do was kiss Jax because I have none of your wit, or appeal, or money. At least that got your attention!”
His inhale was sharp and disbelieving. “Shit.” Giving me a twitchy look, that’s all he said.
His disinclination was eloquent enough, and should have hurt, but it didn’t. I felt relieved I hadn’t hallucinated. I took a giant backward step, desperately eager to get away from his house. That’s when I saw his gaze cataloguing the drops of blood trickling from my feet, the shaking of my legs, and the paleness of my body.
“Did you cut yourself, sweetheart? I’m predictable. I am what I am—inexcusable.”
“I can take care of myself,” I shot back, refusing to meet his eyes.
He bolted forward and tugged me in his arms. Shaking uncontrollably, I skimmed my hand down his arms, finding purchase when I clutched his wrists. “Slow and steady. Hush now, don’t you worry,” he murmured, as if nothing had happened. On his breath, I could smell the earthy odor of regret laced with guilt, its coppery tang assailing my senses. His guilt was my triumph. It felt as good as having an orgasm.
After he put me down on the bed, he left the bedroom only to return one moment later with a first-aid kit. That he’d care about my health after shredding my heart into tiny little pieces struck me as so bizarre that I couldn’t repress a snort.
I received a half-glare, half-smile as his hands slid down my ankle to unclasp the strip of shiny snakeskin around it, carefully lifting my foot out of the shoe, left first then right. His gentleness was almost more unbearable than his anger. While he treated the wounds, they stung terribly, but it’s what I deserved for not listening to him when he’d told me to stand up. Or so I kept telling myself.
Raising his head to gaze into my eyes, “Good girl,” he told me, his voice surprisingly calm. “I’m sorry.” He really looked sorry for me.
He disappeared, and I fell back to rest. I let out a long, sharp burst of air. I laughed. No, I tried to laugh. My best attempt at it was an inelegant bray. The sick things we did to each other. The shameful ways we loved to hurt each other. Was life intended to be this way? Was love supposed to be this way?
Heart aching, I rolled on my side, intent on falling asleep with knees bent and a pillow tucked between my legs. The stinging in my feet kept me from falling soundly asleep. Kept drifting me in and out of consciousness.
“Why’d you follow me upstairs, Elena?” I suddenly heard Alexander asking, not unkindly. Buck-naked, he was too beautiful, standing at the head of the bed, his eyes goring, plundering me. Gorgeously muscled, without the overkill of a bodybuilder.
“I was curious.” Even in my injured, drowsy state, my response came fractionally fast, like a puppy snapping at a treat that might be taken back at any moment. “Who is she? Is she your mistress?”
The tendons in his neck tensed, and his hands balled up into clenched fists in his lap. He clambered into bed, edged closer and kissed my lips tenderly, then shuffled himself so he was lying on his front. “She always kisses me on the lips.” He grinned. “I remind her of a younger version of him. She likes that. Tonight I told her to stop kissing me on the lips, I believe that’s why she prolonged the smack.”
The relief I felt was mind-blowing and parlous all the same, like I was standing on tightrope suspended between two skyscrapers in the Windy City. One wrong step and I could fall to my death without a parachute. “A younger version of whom?”
His hand cupped my shoulder, his fingers kneading into the muscle. “My father. She’s his—ah, companion, I would call it. A glorified version of a mistress.”
My mind rolled around and gradually absorbed every word he’d said. His openness flattered and disconcerted me all at once. He held my gaze, waiting for me to react, but I was too surprised.
“Elena?”
He was studying me, so I did the same. I surmised I would never figure him out. Take his eyes for example. They were the focal point of his face, just like a kitchen island was the focal point of open-concept living. Sometimes ruthless, sometimes seductive, they made hearts melt, or drove people away. They were a mystery as much as he was, and I couldn’t help myself from drowning in them over and over again. And, today of all days, his eyes were clouded. Or maybe it was sadness. The ruthless spark that usually roamed in them was gone, and though they were still handsome, they were much less stunning. They kept studying me, as if the details of my face were intricately alien.
“Elena?” he repea
ted, louder this time.
“His yacht never capsized?”
His lips twitched, his forefinger tracing my eyebrow. “Japery.” He laughed a bitter laugh. “Well-staged. Even I didn’t know at first. I cried at the funeral.”
My eyes moistened at the thought, heat rising to my face. “Why would he do such a thing?” I took a big gulp of air. “How could he leave you to fend for yourself?”
His eyes became glossy. I suspected with horror that he was holding back tears. It was like the first time I’d ever seem grandpa cry. He huffed, looked away. “My mother’s death gravely impacted us both. He needed out. Needed to be alone. I sympathized because I myself wanted to blow my brains out.”
The finality of the low tone he’d used rendered me speechless. I was certain I would sound dim-witted if I said anything after hearing something so sad. It’d never occurred to me that his father could be roaming the earth, or mine. It made sense, Conrad Turner’s body had never been found. Perhaps my father was alive, too. Living off his money in Zürich.
When Alexander touched me, I jerked up. “Shh,” he shushed and soothed, stroking my brow. His lips pressed against my temple. I realized we hadn’t kissed. I couldn’t allow that. I bent over and he opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t give a fuck. I kissed his soft, wet lips and let my tongue fuck his mouth. His tongue rode alongside mine and his hands snaked down to my ass, clutching it to bring me even closer.
Pausing, I took several calming breaths before asking, “Where is your father?”
His laugh was bitter. “A private island in Oceania.” He pushed my hair aside so he could suck at the skin under my ear. “Do you understand the importance of this conversation?”
“I do, sir.” There were many other things I wanted to ask him, many things neither of us was ready to talk about. I rested my chin on his shoulders to let my words flow into his ears. “You were so possessive tonight.”
