20. Jael
Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby - Cigarettes After Sex
M y eyes ache even as they open. They aren’t alone—the rest of my body feels sore and heavy, like I can barely move at all. I’m lying in bed under the covers, the ceiling light a bright halo. The room’s warm and quiet and there’s a glass of water on the bedside table.
I don’t realize how thirsty I am until I see the clear, cool liquid in the glass.
I shift in bed to push myself up into a sitting position only to find out I can’t. It would be impossible because my arms refuse to cooperate.
They’ve been… restrained.
Handcuffs.
A gasp catches in my dry throat. I’ve been handcuffed to the bed posts. I go to kick my legs and discover the same’s been done to my lower half. My ankles are restrained, secured in place by the metal binds.
Familiar panic floods me. My heart races and my breathing turns erratic and uneven. I tug and twist against the handcuffs as if hoping I’ll bust out of them. My sore body immediately protests, sending stitch after stitch of pain up my side.
“HELP!” I scream, jerking harder. “HELP ME!”
But I should know better as my eyes scan wildly around the room.
It’s the bedroom that belongs to the Klum family. The same bedroom I’ve slept in the past several nights as I’ve kept…
The thought cuts off, drowned out by my hysterical scream. I’m pushing my vocal cords to the max as I scream into the otherwise silent night.
Someone somewhere has to hear me. Someone from the road or one of the neighboring houses.
Please… please… PLEASE.
I scream until my throat burns and I’m out of air. Then I gulp some down and try again, yanking and thrashing in place, fighting the handcuffs that refuse to release me.
The bedroom door swings open and the last person I want to see appears in the doorway. Bront? fills the open space, both side to side and from the floor to the top of the doorframe. He stands there like he’s walked in on a new discovery and not come to check on the woman he’s bound to a bed.
“You fucking asshole!” I scream in hysterics. I thrash some more, hot tears spilling from my eyes and my expression twisted up in rage and anguish. “LET ME GO!”
He’s so calm. So fucking composed .
He stands there, unmoving and nonplussed, as I fill the room with my hoarse, high-pitched voice and wild jerks of my body.
Minutes must pass.
I don’t stop. I refuse to stop.
I scream until I’m lightheaded and my voice goes out. Waves of dizziness crash down on me and the metal handcuffs bite into the delicate skin on my wrists.
But I don’t care. I don’t care what damage I do to myself. I want him to uncuff me and let me go. For him to leave me the fuck alone for the rest of my life.
The hot tears splash on my cheeks. The room seemingly spins.
Except for the doorway where he stands observing my meltdown. He remains resolute through it all, an unmovable presence even in my hysteria.
When I’ve exerted every ounce of energy I have in my body and finally go still, he decides it’s time to move. He steps away from the door and approaches the bed, his boots loud on the wooden floorboards.
Tension bottles up inside me and I flinch before he ever touches me.
“Get away,” I croak, voice rubbed raw. “Don’t!”
I’m ignored.
Bront? grabs the glass of water and then brings it to my lips, signaling to take a drink. I turn my head away. He grips me by the chin and wrenches my head right back.
“Drink.”
“NO!”
He doesn’t ask a second time. His grip tightens until he’s prying my mouth open and tipping the glass against my lips with the other hand. My resistance pushes back against his efforts. I keep trying to turn my head to the side, lips clamped shut.
After several seconds of struggling, he succeeds, forcing my mouth to open enough that water slips past my lips. I choke on it, refusing to swallow to the very last drop. I’d rather die of thirst than accept anything, even water, from him.
He slams the half empty glass of water down on the bedside table. He moves onto the blanket swathed over me, his long, thick fingers twining in the fabric and snatching it away. The blanket flops to the foot of the bed and I’m left uncovered in nothing more than my bra and panties.
The realization I’ve been stripped down ignites more screams and thrashes.
“You asshole!” I yell, kicking my legs despite the handcuffs. “Undo these right now! Let me go right now! RIGHT NOW!”
He ignores me, working in silence.
It’s then that I realize he’s not empty-handed—he’s brought some kind of first aid kit with him. Probably a find he came across rummaging through the Klum’s things. They’d kept plenty of those kinds of supplies in the hall closet.
Bront? selects a few bandages and antibiotic ointment from the kit. He reaches for my right arm first, even his slight touch making my pulse beat harder.
“I don’t want you touching me,” I tell him. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
I’m ignored again. Disregarded as he peels the first Band-Aid from the wrapper and then carefully applies it to a thick scratch I must’ve gotten from running in the woods.
So many branches had whipped against me, it’s no surprise I’m cut up. At the time, with my adrenaline rushing and terror growing, I’d ignored the stinging pain. I’d forced myself to keep going.
Bront?’s massive palm slides over the bandage once it’s applied as if making sure it’ll hold. His touch is warm and heavy, almost clumsy. He can’t perform basic tasks others do; he’s not human enough to do so.
It becomes clear as I watch him move onto the next scrape. He’s doing what he’s seen others do, his thick fingers fumbling with the cap on the antibiotic ointment.
“Do you hear me? Are you too slow to understand?” I snap at him. “I don’t want you touching me! So don’t fucking touch me!”
His large hand makes the tube of ointment look miniature as he squirts a line of gel onto a nasty scrape on my shoulder. I jerk against the binds to emphasize what I’ve said.
“Why won’t you listen to me? I don’t want your hands on me!”
“Behave,” he grunts.
I give a delirious-sounding laugh and a shake of my head. “Behave?” I grind out. “BEHAVE!?”
He’s moved onto a scratch on my cheek. I jerk my head out of his grip and glare at him, intense loathing burning in my gaze. “I hate you,” I say, and I mean it. I mean it with every bone in my body. “I fucking hate you! Why can’t you leave me alone!?”
He pauses for a second as if thrown by my declaration, then his thumb and forefinger clip my chin all over again. He carries on applying some of the ointment to the scratch on my cheek.
Frustration explodes from inside me. I scream all over again.
“I HATE YOU!” I shriek, tugging and fighting the binds some more. I wrench at them so hard, the tube of ointment slips from his fingers and the metal cuffs clang against the wooden bed posts. “IhateyouIhateyouIhateyouIhateyou!” I repeat like a chant. “I fucking hate you and I wish you would fucking die! I want you dead! You’re pathetic, did you know that? You’re fucking pathetic!”
He goes still, his head slanting to the side. His dark green eyes hook mine as he watches the hate purge from within. As I scream every horrible, vile, cruel thing I can think of at him, hoping deep down that he’ll change his mind.
He’ll realize I want nothing to do with him and he’ll finally just… leave.
“You’re hideous!” I hurl at him. I add a laugh that sounds crazed and manic, bursting with desperation. “Did you know that? You’re hideous and I can’t stand the sight of you! I’ve never wanted you, and if you thought I did… if you thought what happened between us… you’re wrong! You make me sick. You’re not even a man. You’re some monster and no one would ever want anything to do with you!”
The cruel words tumble out of me one after another until I do what feels impossible. I strike a nerve and Bront?’s large hand clamps shut around my throat. He cuts me off midsentence, squeezing at the sides to restrict my air. He leans closer, his dark and violent eyes boring into mine and sending a chill down my spine.
I sputter the tighter he squeezes, choking me hard with little effort, though I refuse to blink. I refuse to break contact. I defy him just like he’d defied me when the tables were turned.
My glare communicates one thing—do it.
Hurt me. Punish me. Make me pay for what I’ve done.
He understands. I can study the shades of ever-darkening green and read their meaning. A language we’ve developed without even knowing we have.
His grip gradually loosens from around my throat ’til his hand rests at the base with no pressure at all.
I’m out of breath, my chest rising and falling fast. He’s gripped me so roughly, he’ll likely leave a bruise on my throat. You’d think I’d learned my lesson, but I won’t give in until this is over and one of us loses.
“I mean it,” I whisper. “I mean it all.”
“No.”
“YES!”
His choking grip returns, crushing my windpipe with ease. He forces my head back as he bows his closer to mine and I realize what he wants.
The temptation that swirls in the air between us. At least from his end.
…but also from mine, even if I’d never admit it.
I’m breathless and aching, my body sore from pain. I’m shaking from the anger and frustration and lightheaded from the intense hatred. But there’s another part of me where my pulse races and my spine shivers and my pussy spasms. This part of me that screams just as loudly as the cruel words I’ve spoken. That begs for a moment of peace.
For pleasure.
Bront? closes the gap. He squeezes my throat and drags me toward him and then presses his mouth against mine—or what would be his mouth if it weren’t for the mask.
I’m left kissing leather. I’m kissing the wide gape that’s supposed to be his mouth.
Yet desire sparks through me like an explosion of fireworks. I return his kiss with a lash of my tongue, licking at the opening of his mask as he tightens his grip on my throat and then gropes at my breasts.
He pushes me back against the pillows and tugs down the cups of my bra. Both breasts spill free, the supple mounds exposed, my nipples dark and puffy.
I cry out as he pinches the right one between his large fingers, tugging and pulling it forward.
Tears mist my eyes at the sharp prick of pain. He only tugs harder, twisting the puffy bead and watching the emotion flicker across my face.
“Don’t!” I pant. “I said… don’t… touch me…”
But who the fuck am I kidding?
My pants are wanton. They’re breathy and my skin’s hot.
My nipples grow stiffer, more erect as Bront? tortures them. He pinches and pulls. He twists and tugs. As I turn my head to the side and cry out some more, he lets go completely and then smacks my breasts hard with the open side of his palm.
“AH!” I scream at the smarting pain. “STOP! I said… I said… st-st…”
My mouth drops open and no sound comes out.
I’m robbed of all air as Bront? cups both breasts into his hands and gives them a rough, crushing squeeze. The pain percolates across the soft mounds of flesh, leaving them sore and enflamed like the rest of my body.
But as it does, and as I jerk against the handcuffs, I realize I’m playing along. I’m slick and flushed, my pussy throbbing in want.
He knows it too; he knows it because we understand each other.
“I hate you,” I whisper, and he grabs me by the face and forces me to look up at him. I spit at him, and he twists my nipple. I cry out and he silences me with fingers in my mouth, shoving them down deep. He makes me choke on them just like my hallucination—or was it real?
At this point, I don’t know anymore.
My head’s reeling and I’m gasping for air as he withdraws his fingers. They shine with my saliva as he rips my panties away and slides them into my pussy.
“Don’t touch me!” I demand. “I hate you and you’re hideous and you make me?—”
Bront? silences me with a smack across the cheek. It’s sharp and abrupt, though not hard. Just enough to startle me and shut me up.
I blink up at him through wet lashes, more confused than I’ve ever been in my life.
“You don’t,” he says simply.
His fingers move inside me. They slide in and out of my throbbing pussy in slow, deliberate fashion, intensifying the arousal I was already feeling.
I turn my head away from him and focus on the hate. I concentrate on how deeply I loathe him and how I wish I would’ve shot him when I had the chance.
Anything but the hot feelings of arousal that crash like tidal waves over me as his fingers move deeper and rougher inside me. My pussy squeezes back, milking his fingers, pulsing around the thick digits as if begging for more.
“You make me sick,” I pant. “You disgust me and I’ll never want you!”
Bront?’s hand returns to my throat, another dominating warning. He withdraws the fingers from his other hand that’s slid inside my pussy and wipes them across my cheek. The sticky wet evidence of my arousal.
“SO WHAT!” I choke out despite the squeeze of his grip. “I STILL HATE YOU!”
Click.
My eyes widen watching him pull the pistol from behind him. He must’ve had it secured in the waistband of his pants.
The same sleek, silver pistol I’d taken with me when I ran into the woods. The same pistol I’d shot Sheriff McGrath with.
The same pistol I pointed at his head as I fucked him.
I swallow against the sudden hard lump in my throat. “Bront?…” I mutter. “What are you… DON’T!”
He’s pointed the pistol at his head, his finger hovering over the trigger. He redirects it toward me as I lay handcuffed in bed at his mercy.
Fear like I’ve never known floods me, ice cold and paralyzing. It’s like I’ve plunged into arctic waters, my breath permanently stolen away. I can’t breathe as I glare up at him, yet I still don’t beg. I don’t take it back.
I let my cruel words hang in the dark air that’s poisoning the room.
Bront? seems to know this. He accepts that I won’t give in… so he decides to make me.
He bows his head over mine for another heated kiss. Another touch of my lips against the mask that he hides behind.
I’m almost lost in it before I feel what’s prodding at my entrance.
The cool, sleek barrel of the pistol.
“NO!” I scream, trying to clamp shut my thighs to no avail.
He presses down against my lips, kissing me harder, and pushes my thighs open with one hand. The other nudges the pistol until it slides inside, aided by my natural juices.
It feels wrong. More wrong than anything I’ve ever felt or experienced in my life.
Fresh tears blur my vision, a cry spilling past my lips.
But the rest of me pulses with need—my nipples are so hard, they ache. My pussy stretches to accommodate the pistol’s stiff metal, the discomfort at the intrusion present until cravings take over, and all I want in the moment is to come.
All I need is the wave of pleasure that he can give me.
The confusing juxtaposition of emotions bubbles up inside me as he drags the pistol out and then back in.
I clench shut my eyes in shame yet so turned on I’m already close.
There’s a fucking gun in my pussy and I’m maybe more wet and aroused than I’ve ever been in my life.
It’s held by a man who is a twisted, psychotic stalker, and who has made my life a living hell for years. All it would take is a pull of the trigger and he could ruin me in unspeakable ways.
Sick. Vile. Truly fucked in the head.
But it’s that fear that plays into the dark desires consuming me.
The fear so intense that I’m lightheaded. So intense that it morphs into the arousal lubricating my pussy, making my walls slick enough to even accommodate the pistol in the first place.
Bront? fists my curls and forces my eyes open. He makes me hold his gaze as he fucks me with the same weapon I’d used against him.
I find myself stifling moans as he pushes it deeper, rougher , and a spark of pleasure-pain lights me up. It spreads from the nerve endings of my pussy to the rest of my body. Tingles travel up my spine, the beginnings of my impending orgasm.
My walls clench and ache around the hard foreign object, sensitive and overstimulated.
He slides it in slow and deep, then pulls it out even slower, making me feel twisted and empty without.
As perverse as it is, it’s begun to feel good. It’s begun to make me want more. For him to keep fucking me with it, harder and deeper, as I quiver and my hips buck against the weapon buried in my pussy.
“Ask me,” he demands, pressing his brow against mine.
I know what he means and yet I hang on until the very end. I bite down on my bottom lip to keep the moan from slipping out.
It happens anyway as my pussy throbs and pleasure looms.
“P-please,” I whine. “Please… just let me… make me…”
Come.
My orgasm crashes over me all at once. He’s pushed the pistol in deep and stimulated the right spot that’s my undoing. I’m crying, shedding tears, and writhing in place as tingly wave after tingly wave passes through me.
It leaves me dizzy and disoriented for seconds to come.
I barely register him withdrawing the pistol from my pussy. The sleek metal gleams with my juices.
He holds it up and then does the last thing I’d expect—he lifts his mask just enough for his scarred mouth to be visible and swipes his tongue at my cum. He returns the pistol to where he’d pointed it before, right at the side of his head.
My eyes widen like earlier, trying to make sense of this surreal moment.
Bront? squeezes the trigger.
Nothing.
Nothing happens. The pistol clicks, signaling no bullet. I watch in confusion as he drops open the chamber for me to see the inside of.
It’s empty. It’s been empty all along, like mine was when I fucked with him the other night.
I’d scream and rage at him if I weren’t so swept up in relief. If the powerful orgasm I just had didn’t leave me on damn cloud nine.
He produces a rough, guttural sound that can only be a laugh. The first laugh of his I’ve ever heard.
Maybe the first time a bubble of fondness floats to life inside me as I can’t help joining him. My dark laugh joins his as we share in the twisted moment together.
No one else would get it. No one would find humor in this situation like we have. The rest of the world would label us insane.
…and they’d probably be right.
Bront? returns the pistol to the waistband of his pants and then reaches out. His thumb travels the soft curve of my cheek before he leans closer and I find myself going still. Except for the flutter of my belly at his proximity.
He nuzzles the side of my face and grunts into my ear the last five words I’d ever expect. The longest sentence he’s said to me yet.
“I would never hurt you.”