by Stasia Black
Shay squeezed his hand again. “Don’t you see how remarkable that is? Plenty of people left their wives and sisters on the steps of the overfilled hospitals during the later stages of the disease. They couldn’t cope. It was part of what made so many people go crazy. Staring their own cowardice in the face.”
Jonas shrugged yet again. “I don’t know. I probably just did it because I thought it was what ‘good people’ did. And I still considered myself good then. I thought I wouldn’t carry any guilt if I did everything humanly possible to take care of her body. But in the end it was probably crueler to keep her locked up with me in that house. But they say everyone has a fatal flaw, right? Mine is that I can’t forgive. I couldn’t forgive my wife and I can’t forgive God. I can’t forgive, so I’ve done my damndest to forget.”
He gave a half smile, but there was nothing humorous about it. Shay just nodded.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
Jonas took the time to breathe. Shit. He hadn’t thought about all this in so long. He wasn’t sure if talking about it made him feel better or worse. Talking about stuff was supposed to help, right? It was kind of the basic assumption for the entire field of psychology.
Then again, he’d counseled people for years and seen firsthand that shit often got worse before it got better.
Sometimes he fucking hated having the training he did. He didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to know how messy it could get if he finally dug all this bullshit up from where he’d buried it.
He wanted to believe that now that he’d told Shay, finally talked about it to someone, that boom, he could dust his hands off. All done.
He really fucking wished it worked that way. And hated knowing that in most cases, it didn’t.
“Why’d you say ‘him spanking her of all things’ like that? Why was it so much worse that he was spanking her?”
Well, shit.
“Oh, um.” Jonas tugged at the collar of his t-shirt. “Just that, you know… um. Katherine was never that adventuresome in bed. I was always trying to get her to… anyway. But with him she was willing to let—”
“So you like that kind of thing? Spanking? Like, is that what you meant? Because you wished you could have been the one spanking her?”
Goddamn. Was she trying to fucking kill him?
“Like BSDM or whatever?”
“BDSM,” he immediately corrected without thinking.
At the little triumph in her eyes, he wondered if she’d pronounced it wrong on purpose. He flexed his hand.
Oh she was playing with fire here.
“I’ve heard about it. Read about it in books.”
Jonas almost choked. What kind of books had she been reading?
“What does it stand for? The letters in the acronym.”
“Um,” Jonas said, wishing he had a tall glass of water so he’d have an excuse not to answer until he could scramble to come up with something appropriate.
But she just kept staring expectantly at him. So finally he let out a breath. What the hell? Apparently today was sharing day.
“Some of the letters can stand for different things, but the basics are “Bondage, Discipline, Submission, and Masochism.”
Her eyes perked up.
“Discipline. Does that mean like… as in, punishment?”
Ah, and now they were coming full circle. She’d started this entire conversation by asking about Hell. The ultimate place of punishment for sinners.
He softened his voice. “Do you feel like you need to be punished for something, Shay?”
He meant to follow up with some leading questions that would guide her to finally open up and tell him what was wrong.
What he didn’t expect was for a determined, desperate excitement to glint in her eyes.
She reached out and gripped his hand so hard he bet he’d have little moon imprints from her fingernails later.
But it was her words that really made an impression on him. Especially his goddamned cock.
“Oh God, Jonas, yes. Please. Punish me.”
Before he even fully thought through what he was doing, his hand was shooting out and grabbing her underneath her jaw.
At her sharp intake of breath and her expanding pupils, his cock hardened even more.
Yes.
Everything inside him roared the word.
He scraped his thumb across her bottom lip and felt the tremor that went through her entire body.
Holy fuck. Yes.
He wanted to shove her back against the riverbank, rip her jeans down, and impale her right there.
He wanted to bite her nipples until she screamed.
He wanted her to suck on his finger and then shove it up her ass while he—
“If I put my hand down your pants right now,” he whispered through gritted teeth, “how wet would I find your cunt?”
She gasped again and sucked his thumb into her mouth. Her green eyes locked on him as she started bobbing and sucking on his thumb.
He jerked it out and stood up abruptly. Then he leaned down a hand for her. She took it and he pulled her to her feet as well. He wasn’t gentle about it, either.
As soon as she was standing, he spun her around and smacked her on her impertinent little ass.
Fuuuuuuuuuuck yes.
The sense of relief at finally giving in to his impulses was so overwhelming, he felt goddamned staggered by it.
It was what he’d wanted to do ever since he’d looked over the edge of the bridge and saw the danger she’d so carelessly put herself in.
He smacked her again, harder and she cried out.
It wasn’t in pain, though.
At least, not only in pain.
Her little whimper had his cock hardening to fucking steel and he couldn’t help making good on his earlier threat.
Holding her to his body with one arm, he yanked the button on her pants undone and shoved his hand down her underwear.
She was fucking drenched.
She squirmed against his hand. She wanted friction.
Her eyes were closed.
Fuck that.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded, at the same time as he stuck his middle two fingers inside her sopping cunt.
Her eyes popped open, wild and dark as she continued gasping for air. He moved so that he was chest to chest with her, his fingers in her cunt directing her like a goddamned puppet. Then he reached around and smacked her ass again.
And again, he didn’t hold back.
She arched her chest into his, head lolling to the side, never breaking eye contact with him.
He cradled her jaw roughly, thumb to her bottom lip.
And that’s when he saw it. Beneath her desire, her desperation was as clear as day. It was a different desperation than Melissa had that night so long ago. Shay wasn’t looking for someone to help her hurt herself to get relief from her demons.
No, Shay had the look of an animal caught in a trap. She wasn’t giving into the demons chasing her like Melissa. She was terrified and fighting and hoping against hope for salvation from them.
And the last thing she needed was a man as fucked up as he was, just waking up to how much he himself had been repressing.
Goddammit.
He couldn’t be what Shay needed right now.
He never thought he’d regret his years retreating from the world but shit, did he. The fact that he couldn’t be Shay’s white knight? Or even her dark one?
It gutted him.
And then he remembered. It was true, he might not be able to offer Shay the steady, loving guidance she needed right now. Not all by himself, anyway.
But he wasn’t all by himself anymore, was he?
“Come with me.” It was not a request and when he reached his arm out, Shay took it silently.
He didn’t say a word the entire time he helped her back up the steep embankment to the road. Then, right before they made their way out of the woods onto the road, he stopped her.
He
ran his hand down her throat and curved it around the back of her neck. Then he jerked her body to his.
“You are never to go down to the river and put yourself in such reckless danger again. Do you understand me?”
She blinked and at first, he thought she was going to object, but then she nodded.
“Good. Now. Your punishment’s only begun, baby doll,” he whispered darkly in her ear. Again, he felt her breath hitch and his cock pulsed so hard it was almost painful. Still, he kept his voice steady. “Follow me back to the house. And don’t say a single word. Nod if you understand and promise to be a good girl.”
He pulled back just in time to see her swallow hard and, trembling, give a shaky nod.
“Good girl,” he said then he turned and started back for the road. He didn’t look back once, but he heard the quiet footsteps behind him that said she was following obediently.
Chapter 16
CHARLIE
Charlie had come downstairs after his sponge bath expecting to spend the rest of the late afternoon with Shay while she worked on the amazing rose sculpture she was creating for Sophia.
After a long morning and early afternoon at the stables, though, he didn’t want to skip out on the bath. He even washed his hair, which was a bit of a feat with only a couple of buckets of water.
He couldn’t believe how much had changed in just a month.
As much as he hated to admit it, Jacob’s Well wasn’t actually so bad. Audrey was right—not that he’d ever tell her that. It wasn’t like what he’d first assumed. People in town were, well… nice. The other guys at the stable worked hard. And his sister really did seem genuinely happy.
He kept waiting for the dark underbelly of the town to show itself.
But… it never did.
Everywhere he looked, there were smiles on people’s faces. They did their jobs, earned their local tokens to spend on food and at the shops in town, and went about their lives. If you didn’t have enough tokens, you could still get a basic ration of food twice a day from the Food Pantry. So nobody starved.
It wasn’t perfect. He’d explored a little while he knew Shay was safe at the house with one of the other clan guys. He’d seen some of the overcrowded apartments where men slept six or eight to a room. But according to the men themselves, that was just for the new arrivals. You could quickly work your way into better accommodations. Work hard and it paid off, that was what he heard over and over. The longer you were a citizen of the territory, the better the benefits.
All Charlie really cared about were his sister and Shay, though. And they were both undeniably happy. Well, his sister was anyway. Her only complaint was that she wasn’t pregnant yet in spite of how hard she and her clan were apparently trying. Yeah, that had been an awkward conversation.
But with Shay he couldn’t always tell.
She smiled often enough but her smiles didn’t always reach her eyes. And he’d catch her staring off into the distance sometimes when she didn’t think anyone was looking. Like she was thinking about something sad or someone she’d lost.
There was still so much about her he didn’t know.
He pulled a shirt on over his head and toweled his hair off, then headed out of the bathroom, determined to try gently prodding her for answers again.
But she was nowhere to be found. There was only Gabe and the boys in the house. And after he’d asked about Shay, the littlest one, Alex, piped up, “New Mommy was sad because I fell out of the tree. Then she ran away.”
Charlie jerked his gaze up to Gabriel. “What?”
“I thought I explained this. Mommy just needed to go for a walk, that was all. Why don’t you go play with Tim? I need to talk to Uncle Charlie.”
As soon as Alex ran off, Gabriel explained what had happened in the backyard while Charlie had been cleaning up.
“And you don’t know where she went?” Charlie looked toward the front door. All his muscles were tense. He wanted to run after her. He wanted to call out the goddamned guard to find her and make sure she was all right.
Yet again, she’d needed him and he hadn’t been there for her. “Goddammit, he swore.”
“Jonas went after her,” Gabe said, obviously trying to be reassuring. “I’m sure he found her.”
Charlie ran a hand through his still-damp hair. “How long ago?” Damn, why had he spent the extra time washing his hair twice?
“About fifteen minutes.”
Charlie swore, glancing toward the grandfather clock in the living room. He wanted to go looking for her, but what if he left and then she came home and he missed her?
So he paced back and forth in the living room, eyes on the clock until he thought the tick, tick, tick of the damn thing would drive him insane.
“That’s it,” he declared after another twenty minutes passed. To an empty room. Gabriel was out back preparing beans and rice over the cookstove. “I’m gonna go—”
But right then, the front door opened.
Jonas strode in, Shay on his heels, her head bowed, hands behind her back. What the hell was going on? Why did she look like a kid in trouble headed to the principal’s office?
“Shay,” Charlie started, heading toward her, but Jonas held a hand up.
“Don’t. She’s in the middle of a punishment.”
What? He had to have fucking heard that wrong.
“Come again?” If Jonas was a smart man, he’d pick up on the steel edge to Charlie’s words. He better start backpedaling, and fast, or else he was going to find his face rearranged.
But Jonas just looked at him calmly and over annunciated each word. “She’s. Being. Punished.”
“You son of a—” Charlie was about to take a swing at the man, former pastor or not, but Shay’s head suddenly shot up. She jumped between Charlie and Jonas.
“No!” she said. “Charlie, no.” Her eyes were almost wild. “Please.” She grabbed the fist he lifted to punch Jonas and kissed his knuckles. He’d never seen her eyes so pleading. “Please, Charlie, I need this. And if you care about me at all, then you’ll let Jonas teach you so you can give me what I need, too.”
Charlie felt his mouth drop open. What the hell was she talking about. But when he glanced to Jonas, he seemed to understand her words perfectly.
“Shh, that’s a good girl,” he said, combing his fingers through her hair from her temples down to the nape of her neck and drawing her close.
Charlie’s first impulse was to scream at the manipulative fucker to get his hands off her. Here was the brainwashing bullshit he’d always suspected was going on in this town. It was playing out right in front of his eyes.
But Shay, God, her whole body went limp as she leaned into Jonas’s touch. Every line of tension disappeared from her face and it was the first time, the only time, Charlie had seen her look truly… peaceful. Free from whatever burden she carried like an invisible lead weight on her shoulders everywhere she went.
Jonas walked to the back door and opened it. “Gabriel,” his voice was sharp as a whip. When Gabriel jogged up, his voice was just as clipped. “Take the boys to Sophia’s for the night. Then go get Henry and come back. Rafe’s shift is almost over so he should be home soon on his own. Shay needs all of us tonight.”
Gabriel didn’t say a word of disagreement. He just went to call for the boys.
What the fuck? Was everybody under this bastard’s spell?
Charlie turned back to Jonas, ready to call him out on his bullshit, only to find Jonas’s steely glare locked on him.
“Come upstairs with us. You’re important to Shay and she needs you now.”
It was only Shay’s pleading eyes that had Charlie biting his tongue.
Charlie told himself he didn’t follow them up the stairs because Jonas ordered him to. He followed because no way was he going to let Shay be alone with that chameleon motherfucker. Some of the guys in the house were okay—mostly Gabriel and occasionally Rafe—but he didn’t trust Jonas one goddamned bit.
Jonas l
ed Shay straight to the master bedroom and once they were there, he immediately stripped her t-shirt off over her head. She lifted her arms to help him. When he reached for her jeans, she raised one leg and then the other.
Charlie stood and stared on with his hands fisted in frustration.
He hadn’t said another word of protest as she climbed into bed and they took her night after night. It wasn’t always all of them. But usually at least two and often more.
Himself included.
There were at least a few nights that she’d taken all four of them, one after the other. Gabe had stayed true to his word and always slept downstairs with the boys. Part of Charlie wished he could be as strong. Because being part of this always felt… wrong, somehow. Like they were taking advantage of her.
But then every night he’d find himself back in bed. And when she pleaded and gasped and begged, every night he gave in.
He told himself he was only doing what she wanted. She’d been right that first night. She should be the one with the choice. And if she chose… this, well then, who was he to judge?
But then why was she so distant all the time? Why did she seem so unhappy?
What if it was all some sort of act—her just performing the way she thought they wanted her to act? Yeah, she seemed to get off and orgasm, but that could be an act too.
Charlie’s stomach only cramped with more worry as Jonas led Shay by the small of her back toward the bed. He laid her down in the center of it and then lifted one arm above her head. He was gentle at first, and then he roughly slammed it down against the mattress. Shay’s breathing went from normal to quick little gasps.
Was she aroused?
Or afraid?
Shit. Charlie dragged his hand through his hair again.
All he’d wanted from the start was to protect her. And here he was, fucking up yet again. Just like he hadn’t protected his own goddamned sister.
He’d known there’d been something off in the way their cousin Rodney watched her when they’d been staying with their Uncle Dale. But Audrey said Charlie was being ridiculous, that Rodney was family. So Charlie had ignored that voice inside him and left her alone with Rodney. Then the bastard had attacked her.
