I tug at my arms, but it’s no use. These guys are massive. My backpack falls to the floor, and I hear my laptop break inside.
“Let me go, motherfuckers!” I spit, gnashing my teeth together, and I try and fail and again and again to fight them off. They smell of body odor and liquor. My stomach jumps again at the stench.
“What kind of fun would that be? Kid, we’re just gettin’ started,” the man I ripped off cackles as they tug me deep into the shadows of the parking lot.
I lose both of my sneakers trying to get a grip on the pavement. But it’s no use. They’re too big, and I’m too small and too weak. They shove me into the cab of the truck and gag me with a rag that smells like motor oil. I try to push away and lunge for the door, but I’m knocked on the side of my head by something hard.
As the world around me goes fuzzy, one thought comes to mind.
Not a single fucking person will care when I’m dead.
An image of a naked woman below me takes shape. She’s writhing and begging for my cock, but I’m struck with images of the past. Images from my subconscious that hits me just as I’m about to push inside of her. The touching. The pain. The helplessness I feel when I try to move away but can’t.
I roll off the woman, but I’m assaulted with more and more images until I’m pounding on my head and screaming at them to go away.
* * *
LENNY
I’m familiar with nightmares. In fact, I just woke up from one of my own. One where I was falling. Facing death while looking up at the boy and the future I was never going to have.
I quickly realize that it wasn’t my nightmare that woke me.
It’s Nine.
He’s covered in sweat and writhing around violently. I try to wake him, by shouting his name, but it’s no use. His eyes are pinched shut, his forehead lined with confusion. He’s shouting, “No! Go away! No! No more! Leave me alone! I’ll fucking kill you!”
I leap on top of him and shake him hard. When that doesn’t work, I try a less conventional tactic.
I slap him across the face.
Hard,
His eyes fly open and I’m flipped onto my back and pressed into the bed.
I gasp as his hands wrap around my throat and squeeze.
“It’s you,” he says, his eyes focusing on me. The tension leaves his hand on my throat, but the hand remains. “It’s really you.”
“It’s just me.”
Nine blinks rapidly like for a moment he might have thought I was someone else, but his weight remains on top of me.
I shiver. Not because I’m afraid, but because close to him like this is like standing close to an electric current. My entire body is humming with either anticipation or the fear of being electrocuted.
“Do you feel that?” I ask, breathlessly. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Nine says, splaying his fingers on my throat then moving down to my collar bone and shoulder. “Never felt it before.”
“Me either,” I admit.
“Not even with…?” he asks.
“Not even with him,” I admit. I’m hyper focus on his lips. Lips that I want on mine. On my body. Everywhere.
“Why were you with him? Of all people, why him?” he dips his fingertips inside the neckline of my t-shirt.
I’m almost giddy at the compliment in his question.
He means that Jared was such a shit that he can’t believe anyone would actually be with him, not that you’re so amazing you can have anyone you want so why did you pick Jared.
Ego much?
“I don’t know. It just happened.” I look away, rolling my head to the side. “My parents died, and he was there for me, and that was it. He was the only man I’ve ever been with. I didn’t love him, but I stayed because it was just easier to stay.” I’m embarrassed by my own admission. Hearing it out loud sounds ridiculous, even to me.
Apparently, it sounds ridiculous to Nine as well.
“You don’t know why you were with him, except that he was the first man to make you cum?” He’s not mocking me. He’s just asking a valid question while his hands explore pulling the large collar down in the front to trail his hand between my breasts while the other traces my outer thigh, leaving a heat trail on my skin everywhere he touches.
“I…” I stutter, not knowing how to correct him without saying the actual words, but finding it hard to come up with the right ones. “He never…”
“He never made you come?” he finishes for me.
I take a deep breath through my nose. “Never.”
Nine’s eyes widen. His lips part. He licks the silver lip ring hooped through his right side of his bottom lip. “So, no man has ever made you…”
I simply shake my head.
Nine sucks in a breath, his eyes gleam, darkening with each passing second. He smirks and my stomach flips. “Oh, little bird, this is going to be fun.”
“What is?” I ask, wondering if he’s decided to finally begin the torture.
And in a way, I’m right.
“This.” He presses his lips to mine again. They’re soft, yet the kiss is hard. Demanding. Seeking.
I pull back. My words come out breathless. “This is a dangerous game of cat and mouse we’re playing.”
A devilish smirk plays on his handsome face. I hold his jaw in my hands. “More like a game of cat and bird.”
My nipples graze his warm chest, hardening on contact. “And we all know how that turns out in the end,” I reply, lifting my hips to his. “The cat eats the bird.”
Nine groans, then lightly scrapes his nails over my bare arms before pressing them firmly into my skin. I gasp at the bite of pain. “That’s not what happens,” he says. “The pretty bird swoops down from nowhere and sinks her sharp talons into the cat, marking him for life.”
There’s no sarcasm in his voice. I don’t know how to begin to process what it is he’s trying to tell me, but I need to know what happens next in this twisted story. It takes all of my concentration to get out my next few words.
“And...and then what?”
Nine raises my arms and pins my wrists to the mattress. He grazes his teeth over the sensitive spot behind my ear. He lowers his voice to a deliciously deep rumble that has me vibrating with his every word. “And then he eats her.”
He releases my hands and tugs up the t-shirt. He tears my panties from my body and tosses them to the floor, placing both hands on my hips. I don’t know if he’s anchoring me to the bed or to him, but regardless of which, it’s him not wanting to let me go.
And for the first time, I don’t want to run.
He pushes his hair from his face and admires me from head to nipples, to stomach, to legs. He parts my thighs, pushing them wide at the knees until there’s no secrets left between us. I’m bared to him. All of me is his for the taking.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmurs against my skin, painting a hot trail with his tongue as he lowers himself down my body, across my upper thigh to the apex between my legs where his mouth lingers softly over the pulsing aching flesh.
He reaches up, and pinches my right nipple as he lowers his mouth and covers my clit with warmth, again lightly sucking, but this time right where I’m craving his touch. Immediately, the pressure and tension in my body makes me feel like a Stretch Armstrong, pulling me further and further apart, ready to snap back at any second. I feel my pussy tense and release, contract, gripping at nothing until his tongue fills the empty space inside of me, and I clamp down around him over and over again.
I arch up high above the bed and grip his hair between my hands. He pushes me back down, grabbing my thighs and throwing them over his shoulder. Holding me in place by my hips.
It’s a kind of torture, but the last kind I expected.
When I can’t take anymore, coming undone is nothing like I ever experienced. A man has never given me an orgasm before now, and I half expected it to be like a series of waves gently washing over me, causing my body to shudde
r in satisfactory bliss.
But that’s the shit in my mother’s old romance novels.
This is reality.
This is Nine, the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on, with his tongue between my legs.
It’s so much better.
But this thing between us, connecting us, is far from a romance.
It's a crash.
A fucking freefall.
My throat burns along with the rest of my body as a scream tears from my throat, until I can no longer hear my own voice. The pressure builds and builds until I’m falling faster. Harder. My vision blurs. I can’t see anything, but I feel everything.
I hit the ground below, and I hit it hard.
So hard that my entire body breaks apart on impact. I writhe to both relish in and relieve myself from the intensity. The pressure.
The pain.
This is what death feels like.
No, this is what life feels like.
I press my thighs around his head as the force of the impact hits me. I thread my fingers in his hair, crying out his name. Moaning through the pleasure that continues and continues and doesn’t let up because Nine hasn’t let up. He continues licking and sucking until the last vibration of pleasure courses through me. I shudder as it leaves my body, my muscles go completely slack.
When I come to, my eyes flutter open to find myself eye to eye with Nine, who is staring down at me with wide-eyed wonderment. His hair is disheveled. His swollen lips parted. His chest heaving as he licks his lips and stares down between my spread thighs.
I’m incoherent as I babble, “I think I hit the ground. Hard.” I wiggle to check to see if my muscles are still working and sit up when I feel the sheets are completely soaked beneath me.
Nine chuckles. “No, you didn't hit the ground. You hit the water.”
My face flames. “I…” I trail off, feeling suddenly embarrassed.
“Don’t you dare fucking apologize for that.” Nine rasps, removing my hands from the damp sheet I am now using to cover my bare breasts. “I’ve never been so hard from making a girl come in my entire damn life, and I won’t have you ruin it by apologizing.”
I meet his heavily lidded gaze. He presses a soft kiss to my inner thighs before reaching up and pressing on my chest, pushing me back down to the mattress. He grips my thighs and tosses them back over his shoulders, so his head is between my legs once more.
“What are you doing?” I ask just as his lips graze my already too-sensitive sex, I buck my hips at the contact.
He licks between my folds and mutters. “I’m drinking you.” He closes his mouth over my clit and rolls his tongue and holy shit of all shits I decide that this is most definitely torture because I don’t know how much more I can take.
This time, I don’t give a shit about not having a parachute because I want to fall, and as fucked up as it is, I want him to be the one to catch me.
His tongue circles my clit over and over. Faster and faster, and I’m coming undone once again, screaming his name into the night.
This time it takes even longer for me to come back to reality, and when I do, I sit up and open my eyes only to look around and find that I’m completely alone.
The door slams.
Nine’s gone.
Chapter Eighteen
NINE
When two hurricanes collide, either the weaker storm is absorbed by the stronger one or they fuse together to become a much stronger, super storm. Nobody knows which until it happens.
The way I see it, is that either way it’s still a fucking hurricane, and damage will still be done. Shit will still be torn apart.
People will probably die.
Which is why I couldn’t stay in that RV for one more second.
Lenny and I are both hurricanes, on a course for collision, and who the fuck knows what’s going to happen when or if the skies clear.
The more I look at her, the more I touch her, the more my fucked-up heart cracks. It took everything I have not fuck her into oblivion. She was right there. Ready. Willing. Wet.
Fucking perfect. Better than any dream I’ve ever had. Better than any porn I’ve ever watched. I thought I was broken before, but the more time I spend with Poe, the more I realize that I have no idea what broken is.
Because when all of this is over, I know without a doubt that one way or another, she’ll be the one who truly breaks me.
My skin is covered in a sheen of sweat, but deep inside, I’m chilled to the bone. My spine is a rod of ice.
I walk to the center of the field and look around. I spot my brother on the far side and head toward him.
Preppy inhales the air deeply, then proceeds to light a one-hitter shaped like a unicorn and inhales even deeper. He blows the smoke out through his nose and mouth then passes it to me.
“Seriously? This is your one-hitter?” I ask, turning over the white and pink sparkling unicorn in my hand. Its back is carved out and has a small metal bowl perfectly packed with Preppy’s best weed. Or OUR best weed, I should say.
“Are you being judgy, brother? ‘Cause if you don’t like that one, I’ve got one shaped like a pink elephant, an eggplant, or…” he rummages around in his pocket and pulls out what looks like a pack of gum. “Or this,” he says, pulling on the silver foil which turns out to be the bowl you pack the weed in.
“Dude, where did you get this?” I take it from his hands. “It’s genius.”
“I made it,” he says with a shrug.
“You can sell these, you know,” I say. “I can make it happen. Find a factory, distribution, and sell it on our website.”
He shrugs again. “If you want to, go ahead, but brother, it’s small change compared to what we are doing here,” he says, looking out lovingly over the field. It’s about halfway to harvest time, and we’ve got all of the medical dispensaries ready to take first delivery the second the first plants are ready. “You gotta look at the big picture.”
“I see it, Preppy. I do.”
“Good,” he says.
I go to hand him back his gum pack one-hitter, but he holds up his hand. “Keep it. Recreational still isn’t legal so I need you to be careful. Cops around here aren’t as bribable as they used to be, and I can’t afford to be springing another person from jail.”
“Another person?”
Preppy smiles. “My boy, Grim. Long story. Starts with a phone call saying he needs my help. Ends in a small explosion, a rescue, and scratching the fuck out of King’s truck.” He scratches his head. “Actually, that’s the whole story.”
On the other side of the field, a man walks through the clearing and waves to Preppy. He’s wearing an ill-fitting suit. As he approaches, he takes off his jacket and drapes it around his arm.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Someone who’s going to take Clearwater Cannabis to the top,” Preppy answers through his teeth so that our guest can’t read his lips.
“Mr. Clearwater, nice to see you again,” the red-faced man says, sounding out of breath. “I didn’t realize how far out this place was. I would have worn something different if I knew I had to track through half a mile of woods in 90 degree heat.”
Preppy shakes the man’s hand. “I didn’t think the locals would appreciate this being too close to town. Although the medical part might be legal and they might agree with it in theory, there is still too much of a stigma to risk a misguided group of conservatives gathering their pitchforks and storming the field, burning my crops to shit in the middle of the night.”
“Smart,” the man says.
“Would you care for a sample?” Preppy asks, nodding to the unicorn one-hitter still in my hand.
“I would. I would,” the man says eagerly.
I pass it to him, and he takes a long hit, keeping his eyes closed as he blows out the smoke. “It’s so smooth,” he says, finally opening his eyes.
“That’s only a small taste of what we have going on here at Clearwater Brothers’ Farm,” Preppy says proudly, sla
pping me on the back.
“Clearwater Brothers?” I ask Preppy frozen in shock. The money I invested with that shit Jared was supposed to make me enough in interest over the next couple of years to buy into the business. I don’t want shit given to me. I’ve always worked for what I have, and I’m not about to take shit just because we’re blood.
Preppy ignores me. “Governor Jenkins, have you met my brother, Nine?”
“No, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” he extends his hand, and I take it. “Great to meet you. Governor Joshua Jenkins at your service.”
“Governor?” I ask, watching as he takes another hit.
The governor smiles. “We will get recreational cannabis passed as soon as we can. Until then, if anyone asks, and according to my quack of a doctor who I pay a lot of money to give me the diagnosis of my choosing, I have glaucoma.”
“Glaucoma, it is,” I say with a smile. I decide that now is not the time to tell him that glaucoma is not on the list of diseases that medical marijuana is legally allowed to be prescribed to treat.
“You know, with all the shit you’ve been through, Preppy, you can get yourself a medical card and list post-traumatic stress disorder,” the governor says.
Preppy pulls out his wallet. “Nah,” he hands the governor the green card.
The governor laughs. “Crohn’s disease? You’d rather tell people you have a debilitating case of the shits than claim PTSD?”
Crohn's disease, also not on the list.
“PTSD means a lot of questions about what happened to me and why, and I don’t much care for those,” Preppy responds, taking the card back and shoving it back into his wallet. “Besides, I don’t need a shrink. I got Dre.”
“That wife of yours. She’s a good one,” the governor says. “I lost my first wife because I was a shit and forgot to actually court her. Date her. Take her places. Make her smile. Now, I look back and think about how simple it would’ve been just to be there for her. Show her that I understand. Find out what she needed most from me and just given it to her. Even if I knew it was still going to end, at least, I would be happy knowing I made a difference in her life and that the difference was for the good and not a shot of penicillin because hubby likes hookers.” He wags his finger at Preppy. “You gotta hang on to that one, by force if necessary.”
Nine, the Tale of Kevin Clearwater Page 15
