by Gemma James
I knew what he was about to do, and a sob bubbled up, tearing from my throat as I sensed the mere inches separating my mouth from the abyss. I didn’t dare glance down, didn’t dare break free of his stare. The nightmares I’d had as a kid came rushing back, more vivid than they had in years, and I hyperventilated, remembering the suffocating terror, the blackness and how I’d been helpless to save myself. That dream had tortured me, and the only way I’d woken up was by letting out a scream I never remembered, though my mom had described it as the most chilling thing she’d ever heard.
“Please don’t. Oh God, please, Rafe!”
His expression was passive, tightly held in check, and that only added to the horror, until his smooth voice settled over me like a warm blanket. “Calm down. Deep breaths, Alex.”
I inhaled, drawing air into lungs that didn’t want to work right. He instructed me to do it again, and I repeated the exercise for several minutes, adding the calming ritual of counting until I no longer sounded like an asthmatic that had run a marathon.
“That’s better. Hyperventilating isn’t going to help you with this.” He pulled my hair, bringing my face toward his submerged lap. “Don’t even think of biting me.”
“No! No!” I screamed. “Stop!” The last word cracked, as did the final thread of my composure. I thrashed, hair pulling painfully at my scalp as he pushed my head down.
“Take a deep breath. You’re gonna need it.”
I did at the last second before my face broke the surface and he pushed his erection into my mouth. I couldn’t think beyond closing my lips to keep water from rushing down my throat.
He flexed his fingers in my hair and bobbed my head up and down in quick yet controlled movements that kept pace to the seconds ticking in my head. My heart beat much faster, at an insane speed that made my chest hurt, and I mentally chanted two words, over and over again.
Don’t panic.
His salty flavor hit my taste buds, but before he came, he pulled me up. With a huge gasp, I sucked in air, hoarded it as if I’d never breathe again. Water trickled down my face in rivulets, lost to the locks of hair clinging to my nose and lips, and I fell into the sea of his eyes.
“Tell me what you’re hiding.” His tone left no room for maneuvering. I was in deep water, figuratively and literally, because he wasn’t going to let this drop.
When I didn’t answer, he yanked on my hair again, bringing me toward the water, and I cried, “Wait!”
“I’m done waiting, sweetheart.”
With a violent downward thrust, he shoved me under the water once more, and I fastened my lips around his cock. He pushed against my tongue, and water forced its way down my throat. Lungs on fire, wrists burning at my back, I fought him, my whole body tense and vying for survival. Logically, I knew he wouldn’t kill me, at least, I didn’t think he would, but I was smack in the middle of fight or flight and trying to do both simultaneously.
Pockets of air escaped my nose and mouth, bubbling to the surface as my dark hair floated around me. My pleas came out as muffled rumbles. I was at the end of my ability to hold my breath and experienced the same panic I had when I’d fallen into the river. I was considering biting him, and weighing the consequences, when he yanked me up.
“Tell me why you accused me!”
“It was Zach!” I sobbed, gasping for air, coughing uncontrollably, and trying not to hyperventilate all over again as my brother’s name rang in my ears.
Rafe froze, his eyes going wide. “You’re lying.”
If I had any reason to be terrified of him, this was it—that tone which told me he’d submerge me again.
“Zach was my best friend,” he said. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“But he did…” Another sob burst free, and I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see the truth in them. “I didn’t stop him.”
“Fucking look at me! Why, Alex? Why would he…why would you go along with it?” He stood, water sluicing down his body, and stepped onto the rug. He dug both hands into his hair and pulled. “Why would you guys do that to me?”
I was openly bawling, and all the emotion I’d battled with for years erupted. I was Mt. Saint Helens, shooting ash of despair on anything and anyone around me. “He…he…”
“He what?” Rafe shouted. “Spit it out!”
“He was jealous!”
“Jealous of what? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t make me say it. Don’t make me tell you this.” My head drooped, chin to chest, and my shame poured from me in gut-wrenching sobs. I wished I could stop the dam from bursting, hide it all from him, but I’d never felt more exposed in my life. “He couldn’t stand the way I felt about you.”
“Look at me, Alex.”
I peeked up, watching with dread as he studied me for the longest seconds of my life. His mouth fell open. “He raped you?”
Unable to face him, I lowered my head again because that was only half of it, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the whole truth. It had started out that way, but then, at some point, I’d stopped fighting and my body had given in to Zach. My own step-brother. The step part didn’t make it any easier to swallow. It was sick and disgusting, and Rafe knowing twisted in my gut like a tornado.
He pulled me from the tepid water, gathered me in his arms, and strode into the bedroom where he deposited me on the bed, sopping wet. Warm hands settled on my face, fingers pushing tangled hair back, and when I risked looking at him, I fissured in two.
“I didn’t want it,” I sobbed. “I didn’t, I swear. I’m so fucked up, Rafe.” Humiliation, swift and debilitating, washed over me, and I gagged, close to vomiting. I struggled with the belt holding my hands at my back. “Let me free! Please, I need free!”
As he worked at releasing my hands, I nestled my cheek against his chest and took deep breaths to stem another episode of hyperventilation.
“How did it happen?” He spoke in a perilous tone, and when he inched back, I wanted to recoil at the unyielding set of his jaw. “How did I get brought into it?”
“I-I had an abortion.” I wiped my eyes, palms digging in as that horrible day flooded back. “Someone from the clinic leaked it. Dad found out and kept the story from spreading, but he was so furious—” My voice broke, and I stared at his bunched shoulders, my face flaming even hotter. “He flipped, demanded to know who I’d slept with. That’s when Zach pointed the finger at you.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “He said you raped me. Said he couldn’t keep quiet about it anymore.”
Rafe’s silence was too disturbing, and when I opened my eyes to face his reaction, utter betrayal blanketed his expression.
“You went along with the lie.” No question, no inflection in his words. Just cold, hard truth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a sob constricting my throat. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“How about tell the fucking truth?”
I jerked back as his rage thundered over me. “I c-couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?” He leaned over the mattress, arms supporting his weight as he dripped water all over the bed and me.
“Couldn’t.” Our gazes collided. “He said he’d kill you if I didn’t keep quiet.”
Closing his eyes, he dropped his head and let out a breath. The admission seemed to burrow beneath his rage. His body pressed into mine, and we stayed that way for a few seconds until he suddenly bolted and let out a roar I was sure reached every crevice of the cabin. He whirled around and all but flew into the wall, his fist slamming into it, again and again, until his knuckles dripped with blood.
18. DESTROYED
Rafe
She cried for me to stop, but I continued to beat my fist against solid log as memories flickered behind my eyes in red-hazed horror. Instead of me taking the abuse, it was her. Zach holding her down, violating her, smothering her cries as he rammed into her.
The images shifted, and I was back in prison, full of rage yet unable to do anything about it as they took turns
fucking me while the guards let it happen. All this time, I thought she’d callously tossed me aside, but I hadn’t known why. Knowing didn’t resolve anything, didn’t bring me closure, and it sure as fuck didn’t absolve us of our sins. Knowing only made me feel worse, because she’d suffered in silence out of fear for me.
I risked a glance at her, searching her expression for signs of duplicity. I’d rather find she was lying than accept what she’d told me as truth, but the same harrowing pain I’d seen in the mirror, day after day for the past eight years, haunted her face. I had trouble reconciling the Zach I remembered with the picture she painted. We’d been close, fiercely competitive but like brothers, and to find out such vile poison ran through his veins, that he’d hurt his own sister and threaten me…I couldn’t comprehend it.
I dropped my bloodied fist, and it was a miracle my hand wasn’t broken. Her whimpers tore through me as I staggered into the bathroom, heart pounding so fucking hard, I thought it would rip from my chest and tumble to the floor. Flinging the door to the medicine cabinet open, I pulled out gauze and wound it around my hand, but my head was still back in the bedroom with her, still wrapped up in the waves of shame that emanated from her being.
I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, especially when I laid eyes on the bathtub. Water still pooled around it, evidence of my torture methods. What I’d done to her in order to get the truth…now I wanted nothing more than to undo it, to go on believing she’d been a spoiled teenager, pride bruised over rejection. Just a selfish kid who’d flung out a single lie without giving thought to the destruction she’d cause.
Swallowing hard, I brought my injured hand to my throat, as if that would alleviate the need for air. I had to get out of there for a while, had to get my head on straight before I tried to straighten out hers. I almost laughed. How did one straighten out so many years of pain and betrayal?
She was huddling under the bedding when I returned to the room. I pulled on a pair of jeans, and the weight of her stare pressed on me, burned to my bones.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Outside.” I shrugged on a T-shirt, then escaped the room and the desolation seeping from her gaze. Her soft cries followed me down the ladder, but I was in no shape to comfort her, especially since I was no better than her brother, no better than the men who’d raped me in prison. If only I’d stopped long enough to think of all the angles, past my fury, maybe I would have considered she was a victim in this.
I’d kidnapped a girl who at age fifteen had been helpless in a situation forced upon her. I’d punished her without knowing the whole fucking picture. It wasn’t even the sex that bothered me, as she’d wanted it. It was everything else—like being a cold and heartless ass who’d used her fear against her, debased her, and made her feel like she meant nothing to me.
I stormed outside but didn’t go far, as if an invisible line anchored me to the house, to her. I clenched my jaw with the need to find Zach and dismember his dick from his body, but I couldn’t leave her alone, and it dawned on me that I couldn’t confront him either. He thought she was dead.
Fuck.
The whole world thought she was dead. I balled my fists. I’d taken her, and it was too late to go back. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted her, all of her—her pain and sorrow, her joy and triumphs, her orgasms and her agony when I held them at bay. But letting her go would be the right thing to do.
I glanced toward the cabin and stilled. She stood in the doorway, eyes red-rimmed and haunted, her body wrapped in my sheet. She’d just admitted to being raped by her own brother, yet I wanted to tear that sheet from her and throw her to the ground. The memory of her mouth around my dick in the bathtub hit me, as did the fact I hadn’t reached orgasm. I was royally fucked up.
I crossed the distance, climbed the steps to the porch, and shoved past her. Her footsteps pattered on my heels as I entered the living room. She walked timidly, as if scared to make a sound. Slumping to the couch, I held my head in my good hand while my injured one dangled between my knees. She sank to the floor and took my bad hand in hers. It didn’t seem to matter what I’d done to her, or what I would do to her—I was starting to believe she was incapable of flushing me from her system.
She unwound the gauze and brushed her fingers over my swollen knuckles. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s not bad.”
“I’m sorry.”
I angled my head and looked at her. “You didn’t force my fist into the wall.”
“I’m not just talking about your hand. I’m talking about all of it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. She inched away, gaze downcast. I grabbed her hand and pulled her near again. “If I’d known what he did to you—”
“It’s my fault you didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter, Alex. I took every fucking thing that happened to me in the last eight years and dumped it on you.” Holes riddled my soul, each one representing something I’d never get back. My father’s funeral, the first years of my son’s life, having my career snatched from me—all because of Zach’s jealousy. Even knowing she was a victim didn’t quench my thirst for her pain, and that made me the vilest form of a bastard. “I got off on hurting you.” I stared at her long and hard so she’d understand just how screwed up I was. “I still want to hurt you, so fucking much.”
Her breath escaped in a shaky sigh. She wiped underneath her eyes, though she tried to hide it.
I hauled her onto my lap, unable to contain myself, and settled her knees on either side of me. The sheet draped open, and her hot pussy smothered my lap through my jeans. My cock sat between us, hard and painful, a reminder we had unfinished business.
“It’s all my fault,” she said, clutching my shirt.
“You were just a kid. You need to know it wasn’t your fault.” I swallowed hard as memories of my own assault broke free. I’d learned to contain them, to continue getting out of bed every morning and living life without freezing whenever something—a smell, a sound, or simple touch—triggered the flashbacks. “Zach knew better. Fuck, he was my age, and I sure as hell knew better.” I ran a hand through her hair, fingers catching in the tangles, and pulled. She winced, but I didn’t stop. “For fuck’s sake, he was your brother.”
“Step-brother.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” How it was possible for us to carry on this conversation with her naked and in my lap, my erection growing by the second, was beyond me. “He had no right to touch you.” Instantly, I dropped my hand from her hair as my own words came back to me like a boomerang. “I’m no better. I shouldn’t have taken you.” And I sure as fuck shouldn’t entertain the thought of bending her over the couch and pushing into her.
“I’m glad you did.”
Did she not realize what she was saying? I’d put her through hell, and my dick wasn’t done with her yet, not even close. “I wanted to take you.” My gaze veered to her neck when she swallowed hard. I settled a hand around her throat, surprised when she didn’t fight me. The compulsion to squeeze the breath from her beckoned. “I have a demon inside me. That’s what happens when a man has dark tendencies and no outlet for them. I used to fight them out of me in the cage.”
“Rafe.” My name fell from her lips with a breathy sigh. I pressed a thumb against her collarbone where her pulse fluttered as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
I didn’t want to think it, let alone say it, but fuck, somewhere inside me a conscience still pulsed. I had to set her free. Except I had no end game. I’d fantasized about taking her for years, had planned out every last detail, but I hadn’t foreseen the need to let her go. I didn’t think she’d run to the cops, as her guilt came off her in palpable waves, but where would letting her off this island leave me, besides my life in utter disarray? I cursed my fucking conscience and its bad timing. “This has to end, Alex.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m letting you go.” The words hung between us, and now that
they were out there, I wanted to snatch them back. There were so many reasons not to keep her here, namely that she wasn’t as guilty as I initially thought in sending me to prison. She’d played a part, but how much choice had she really had? Fifteen was young, much too young to deal with rape, abortions, and blackmail.
“Why?” she whispered, as if the thought of getting her freedom back was unbearable.
I moved my hand to the back of her neck and drew her close, aching to take her mouth. “Because I still want to hurt you,” I said, my attention drifting to her parted lips, “still want you in ways that isn’t right. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll beg to be mine, and that’s a bad idea.”
“I want to be yours,” she said without hesitation, as if she wanted to be my everything, as if the idea of my being done with her tortured her. What we shared was pure obsession, nothing more and nothing less, and it was the sweetest madness in hell.
I shook my head, trying to convince myself as much as her. “I can’t keep doing this to you. I battled with myself enough before I knew Zach’s part in this, but now…”
She averted her gaze, but not before new tears formed. Watching her emotionally withdraw pissed me off.
“What is it? What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
I clutched her jaw and forced her to look at me. “What are you holding back?”
“Nothing,” she said again, though I saw the lie in her eyes.
“You need to be straight with me, on all of it, because I’m so fucking close to hunting his ass down and killing him.” The need to make him pay for what he’d done to her, for what he’d done to me, was strong and growing stronger with each second she tried to hide shit from me. And he would pay. Someway, somehow, I’d make him wish he’d never met me.
She shut her eyes to the tears slipping down her face, and I was a bastard because I wanted to taste them.
