Hundreds

by Pepper Winters

Pim

  RETURNING TO THE warehouse where I’d stolen the photo frame filled me with anxiety. I kept peering into workers’ faces, expecting to see accusation and knowledge about what I’d done.

  However, no one glanced at me strangely. No one acted cool or wronged. In fact, their smiles were warm and welcoming, recognising me from yesterday and already accepting me as part of their boss’s inner circle.

  If I was honest, I was surprised Elder invited me to accompany him. After what had happened last night and his disappearing act, followed by his cut lip and bruised appearance from what he said was routine exercise this morning, I’d prepared to be alone for a few days.

  But that was before Selix called and told me to be on deck within the hour.

  Before Elder had held out a hand with grazed knuckles and sore fingers to welcome my company.

  Now, here I stood again amongst a world I never knew existed, surrounded by hard working, kind people who had a normal existence just like the one I strove for.

  Elder stopped a few times to shake hands with overseers in different departments, sharing short conversations about rudders and ballasts and things I had no knowledge of.

  Not once did he comment that this yacht was mine or attempt to bully me into accepting such a ludicrous gift. Not once did he seem to care his cheekbone had coloured to a nice blemish or his tongue kept returning to the crack in his lower lip.

  He was stunning when unhurt. But he was drool-worthy slightly beaten up.

  I didn’t know why my belly clenched every time I looked at his mottled hands. Perhaps, it was the knowledge he knew how to protect with his body. Or I was just screwed up to like violence after my tragic past.

  Either way, most of the time, he pretended I wasn’t there.

  I didn’t mind.

  I was happy to be included. Thrilled he’d decided to let bygones be bygones.

  Whenever I looked at him, I saw past the stern businessman dressed immaculately in pressed jeans and black t-shirt to the man who was unwanted by those closest to him.

  Protectiveness and fierce loyalty filled me.

  I’d meant what I’d thought last night. Sleeping with Elder for myself was never an option. Sex still held its repugnant memories. But sleeping with him for his needs? I could do that. I could stay in my body while I gave him something he needed. Because I refused to take and take anymore. It wasn’t fair—especially when no one gave him anything in return.

  His cool, gruff voice cut through my thoughts.

  Blinking, I glanced up into serious black eyes, shuttering a past I desperately wanted to heal. “That work for you?”

  I shifted on the spot, unwilling to admit I hadn’t been listening but rather daydreaming about him. About sex with him. Who would’ve thought I would be capable of such a thing?

  His lips tilted into a smirk as he looked me up and down and crossed his arms. “You weren’t listening, were you?”

  My cheeks warmed. “Um…” I racked my brain, trying to recall what he’d said. “Sorry.” I cowered, ready for discipline. I stepped back, rolling my shoulders, my knees already loose and ready to tumble into a bowing position even while my mind knew he’d never hit me. The muscle memory was harder to shake.

  His jaw clenched, noticing my mannerisms and understanding the programming I’d undergone.

  I hated that I’d made him sad, making him think I still feared him. The opposite was true. My body might still seek self-preservation by habit, but my mind knew better. “I know you won’t hit me,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to flinch. Habit…”

  “A habit you need to break,” he growled.

  I nodded. “And I will.” Each day, it was getting easier to fight such instincts. I was just sorry I couldn’t stop it today. “What did you ask me?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Something else more important just came up.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ll be right back, gentleman.” Grabbing my elbow, he carted me away from Selix and the two managers he’d been talking to.

  My heart leapt into rainbow bubbles as he guided me swiftly around the warehouse floor and into the office. “What are we—”

  “Quiet.” Shoving me inside, he slammed the door shut and yanked the blinds over the window.

  Instantly, worry that I’d upset him cloaked me. His face battled right and wrong. His muscles tight and bunched.

  I backed up, moving toward the boardroom table. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did?” My breathing accelerated as he advanced, pushing me backward with his will power alone. “What?”

  He didn’t talk, but his body did. His shoulders screamed at self-control. His jaw clenched in self-denial. His nostrils flared in tension. His steps heavy with deliberation. He was a walking poster for alpha authority, and it did the strangest things to my insides.

  I still wanted to bow at his feet—even stronger now we were alone than in company—but for the first time, it wasn’t just fear compounding me to slip into submission but desire.

  I wanted to please him.

  I wanted him to know I looked up to him, respected him, and would do everything I could to fit into his world because I never wanted to leave.

  That thought froze me.

  Where had my goals to return home, find my mother, tell my story to the police gone? I shouldn’t be here of my own free will. I should be doing all I could to call for help.

  But as Elder stalked me deeper into the room, and my butt crashed against the table, I couldn’t remember why. Why would I want to leave when he scared but protected me? Why would I want to run from his cruel honesty and go back to a home I no longer fit into, to a mother who didn’t want me, and fight to survive in a world that no longer understood me?

  Elder was my doctor, shrink, and coach all in one. He was training me to live again just by being himself. How could I give that up when I so desperately wanted to be the woman he expected me to be?

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “For whatever I did wrong.” My fingers latched around the table behind me, the ledge digging into the back of my thighs.

  “You’re not. But you will be.” His face etched with dangerous desires. “I don’t ask much of you, Pim. In fact, I give too much of myself in return for nothing from you. But then you fucking shy away from me. You look at me with worry after everything I told you last night. That is not acceptable.”

  “I told you, habits are hard to break.”

  And I told you, I wouldn’t break mine.” Having me pinned didn’t stop his advance. “Yet here I am. About to fucking break them.”

  My chest rose and fell as he erased the final distance, placing his hands on either side of me on the table. His flat palms made his long fingers splay out, showing silver scars and graphite scribbles from previous battles won, along with the newer abrasions from this morning.

  How much violence had he seen? How much love had he lost? Questions swarmed my mind like locusts desperate to be fed.

  Dark eyelashes hooded dark pupils as his gaze dropped to my lips.

  I licked them, breathy and paused, ready but not ready all at the same time.

  “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  My tummy leapt.

  I nodded slowly.

  “Answer me other than with silence, Pim.” His eyes tightened. “Speak because you have no fucking clue what that does to me. But take that away—after I’ve had the gift of your voice—and I won’t be accountable for what I’ll do.”

  I gasped as his hand left the table and looped around my neck.

  Old memories of ropes and strangulation made me stiffen and tears prick. My throat was still hardwired to a past that I slowly cracked the chrysalis off and spread newly minted wings. Those wings were wet and useless, though, still drying in the sun and not quite ready to fly.

  His thumb pressed over my pulse, his jaw clenched and lips pressed. “You still doubt me. Your heart is racing like a rabbit.”

  I swallowed, fe
eling the pressure of his fingers as I forced myself to remember this was Elder not Alrik. This was chemistry, not slavery.

  “I don’t doubt you.”

  His mouth parted to inhale. “Yet you fear me.”

  I couldn’t lie, not while my blood gushed beneath his touch. My veins and arteries were a perfect lie detector, and he was the sonographer programed to read them.

  “I do.” My voice tangled with breath. “But there’s more than just that.”

  “There is?” His tone drifted into coaxing sex. I didn’t think he’d done it by choice but merely slipped into the heavy fog rapidly deleting the outside world and amplifying him and me and whatever it was that grew between us.

  The unsaid things. The secrets. The bargains. The dangerous need growing quickly past controllable. We were on opposite ends of the scales. He couldn’t let himself go because he would go past sanity. And I couldn’t let myself go because I honestly didn’t know how to be a woman who wanted a man’s touch and not want to scream and die at the same time.

  We were fated for disaster before we’d even begun. And we had just begun. The fact Elder had been inside me didn’t count. In my mind, we hadn’t had sex. Not yet. That had been a fight turned mistake. A stumble turned awakening.

  For both of us.

  “What else do you feel for me, little mouse?” His whisper kissed my lips, making my nipples pebble. If he wasn’t pinning me with his body, I would’ve swayed closer just because I wanted to rub the tingles on my skin against his.

  I forced my brain to work. “That’s not a fair question.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  He breathed, “How so?”

  “Because I don’t know how you feel about me. Why must I be the one to show any weakness?”

  “You feel weak around me?”

  I sighed as his thumb dropped from my pulse, caressing my throat in tiny sensual circles.

  “In what way do I make you weak, Pim?” His voice dropped into a growl, thick and potent, rough and consuming.

  “In every way?” I’d meant it as a statement, but it came out as a question. Seeking his approval. Unsure how to fight passion with passion.

  “Pick one.” His knees bent, bringing his mouth in line with my neck. His teeth found me first, nipping at my overheated flesh before licking me with the tip of his tongue. “Tell me.”

  My heart exploded into tiny finches, all desperate to find a way out of the cage of my ribs. I turned woozy and hazy. I felt drunk.

  How could he make my skin so hypersensitive and my body so warm and heavy by a simple kiss and touch? What magic did he hold? What curse had he put over me?

  I couldn’t answer. I had no answer. How could I explain that I never thought I’d feel this way about touching or affection? That he’d done more for me than I ever dreamt possible?

  His teeth found me again, smothering his frustration into my neck with a harsh groan. My back buckled, tumbling into his arms as his hot mouth sealed over my throat and sucked.

  I tingled. I shivered. I became wet and warm and ready for things I couldn’t describe.

  “Yet again you won’t answer me.” He sank incisors into my neck. “You won’t put me out of my goddamn misery.” Pulling back, he captured my chin, holding me steady even as my eyes did their best to shed the tiny anchors dangling like dew on my eyelashes.

  “I’ll tell you why you make me weak, Pim. You make me so fucking hard I can’t think straight. You crawl inside my mind when you have no right to do so. You intrigue me, confuse me, and make me contradict everything I know and believe. You corrupt me.”

  Taking my wrist, he tugged me slightly to see how pliable I was. Finding I offered no resistance, he slowly brought my arm forward, never taking his eyes off mine.

  I dropped my gaze to where he held me, lips parting to breathe harder as he increased the pressure until my arm lowered to between his legs.

  His eyes glittered with black diamonds as he leaned back, rotating my wrist and turning my palm upwards. I knew what he was about to do. Any woman would with this much lust crackling in the space and his confession echoing in her ears.

  I didn’t want it.

  I did want it.

  I wanted to pull away.

  I didn’t want to pull away.

  I swallowed a moan as he pressed my palm against his erection, forcing me to cup him even while his fingers remained loose enough for me to jerk away.

  He made me do it, but I was the one who obeyed. I didn’t have to. I could yank back. I could punch. I could scream.

  But I didn’t.

  Our eyes locked as my fingers curled around the large, long, hot length in his jeans. My fingernails scraped on the denim.

  His eyes shot blacker than solar systems with no stars or planets. He stumbled, wedging himself harder into my hold.

  His throat contracted with so many things. But he didn’t command me to suck him. He didn’t throw me to the floor and break every rule by taking his need out on me.

  Instead, he stood quaking and steadfast, allowing me to touch him how I wanted. His hand fell away from my wrist, planting back onto the table beside my hip. He didn’t thrust into my touch, merely gave himself to me in the basest of ways.

  My eyes watered with blended joy, terror, and confusion as I squeezed in experimentation. I didn’t squeeze to bring him pleasure. I didn’t harness the many skills I’d been taught to make a man orgasm. I allowed foreign to become known, feeling the thud of his pulse beneath the jeans, the heat of his desire, and the heaviness of a man’s body that had once been inside mine unwanted but now might just be tolerated.

  “You haven’t pulled away yet.” His forehead furrowed with discipline and torture. “Why?”

  I drew my hand up toward the head of his erection, pressing on the soft, hard flesh hidden by his trousers.

  He shuddered but didn’t grunt or swear. His fingers dug into the table, rocking the furniture beneath me.

  “You haven’t forced me to my knees or commanded my mouth yet.” I looked up, trusting and imploring. “Why?”

  He grimaced. “Believe me; it’s a battle I’m not sure how long I’ll win.”

  His admission at how close he was to snapping made fear crawl through me, hiking up my spine like a rock climber with sharp crampons and hooks.

  But I didn’t let it control me.

  If he could be honest, so could I.

  I didn’t care we were at his place of work, in an unknown office, surrounded by staff behind a shuttered window. All I cared about was evolving. “Touching you like this…it’s different.” My fingers explored further, dropping down and down to the soft bulge where delicate flesh resided.

  He let out a low groan, the animalistic noise echoing in the chambers of my heart.

  “I see how you struggle not to use me, and that empowers me to explore.” I feathered my fingers wider, pressing the steel against him. “I’ve never touched someone like this before.”

  “Never?” His eyes blazed. “Not a boyfriend? Before—”

  Before the rapes.

  I shook my head, glad when a lock of hair fell over my eye, offering partial shielding from his intensity. “Never.”

  His back arched as I pressed my thumb into his crown, growing frustrated with the thick denim protecting him. I never thought I would willingly entertain the thought of unzipping and pulling a man free just because I wanted to. Because there were no expectations on where his cock would end up and no fear that it would hurt me.

  I wanted to explore him. To learn how to make him buckle because seeing him fight his base desires, all to keep me safe, made something glow deep and red and hot inside me.

  “Do you like it?” His question was a bite. “Touching me?”

  I answered back in kind. “Yes.”

  He froze, searching for lies. I froze, searching for insanity. A shared look of understanding blazed from him to me. I’d just admitted to being open to a sexual friendship. I’d just
given him permission to unlock whatever chains he kept around himself and believe there could be more between us.

  “Fuck.” His hand cupped my nape, bringing my face toward his. Pressing his forehead to mine, our noses brushed, our lips so close to kissing but still separate. “What are you doing to me, Pim?”

  “What are you doing to me?”

  He chuckled darkly. “Giving you a better existence…if I’m doing it right.”

  I smiled then gasped as he dragged me forward and kissed me. This kiss vibrated with tension; an explosion just waiting to detonate. But he kept himself controlled, gentle. His tongue barely broached my mouth. His taste subtle and sweet. The faintest flavour of copper from his cut lip. He pulled away before I was ready, leaving me aching and needy.

  “You still owe me that bet.”

  I frowned. “What bet?”

  “The one where you agreed to spend one night with me if you stole something but didn’t keep it.” His lips turned into a calculating smile. “You failed. You owe me.”

  The bet in question came back. We’d been on the deck after my first pickpocketing lesson. He’d gambled my freedom in return for one night. Funny how I no longer looked upon my freedom as the preferred choice.

  My throat went dry as images of abuse and rape tangled with innocent dreams of caresses and cuddles.

  He noticed, his fingers tightening around the back of my neck.

  “I told you last night I wouldn’t sleep with you. And even if I did, it would never be painful for you. You have my word.” He licked his lips. “I’ve already been inside you without your permission. I should keep my distance. My one-time rule is fulfilled. But, fuck, Pim…” His gaze hooded, turning hazy with want. “You drive me goddamn insane.”

  His lips smashed on mine again, cancelling words in favour of pleasure.

  I gave into him, kissing him back until he ended it as quickly as he’d started.

  “I shouldn’t do this. I know I shouldn’t do this. But—” He squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again with manic resolution. “Give me one night. One night and then I’ll be better. I’m fucked up from telling you things I’ve never told anyone. I need something from you after what you took from me. I need balance between us.”