Ramshackle (Raegan of Ruin #3)

32. Raegan

Chapter thirty-two

Raegan

I toss and turn long after Kellan and Dane fall asleep. It doesn’t matter that my body is tired or that we’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours. My mind is spinning from one thought to the next. The second I try to push something from my mind, another item pops up to take its place.

Vera.

Royce.

Why did she give me the cuffs?

Dane maybe knowing my secret.

And if he does, did he tell the others?

The possibility of having a father.

The plan to capture Thorne.

Dane’s worry for Aiden.

Sighing, I rub my face. None of these thoughts are getting me anywhere. I need to get up and move around.

I’m dressed in a simple pajama shirt and shorts, but throw on slippers and a satin robe that came with the set before leaving the room.

It’s still the early hours of the morning, and most of the bunker is fast asleep. The lights in the hallway cast a soft, muted glow as if walking in the moonlight. It’s enough to see by, but also casts shadows and adds to the silent eeriness of a sleeping underground fortress.

I don’t know where I’m going at first. I think I’m wandering just to move, but when I find myself standing in the open doorway of Aiden’s office, I realize a part of me knew I was seeking him out.

Picking a fight with him is an easy distraction.

But I don’t like that I immediately ran to him when I needed one. Jack’s out watching Thorne, but why didn’t I wake up Kell? Or even Dane? Why did I go to Aiden?

I shouldn’t need him.

I shouldn’t want him around.

He tolerates me for the others, but that’s as much a concession as I think he’ll ever give.

Why can’t I let him go?

Aiden sets his pen down as he watches me watch him in silence. He gives me an assessing once-over, dragging his gaze over my night clothes and bare legs in slow measurement.

I resist the urge to pull my robe tighter and hide the flush that his stare incites. Just one look and my skin warms with an ache that can’t be satisfied. I hate to admit that I miss his chastisements. The way he’d cage me in his shadow. His words were meant to warn, but the way he looked at me offered dark promises instead.

“What are you doing?” I finally ask, teetering on the edge of if I’m going to start a fight or walk away.

“Looking at you? Or what was I doing before you appeared in my doorway to stare at me?”

A spark ignites in my chest.

“Why aren’t you asleep like everyone else?” I challenge, feeding that flame a little bit more.

“I’m working.”

“At four in the morning?”

“If that’s what time it is.”

“I didn’t ask you to stop sleeping,” I snap defensively. The anger swells in my chest, and I let it grow and take hold of me. “I didn’t ask for anything from you but a little trust. Or is that still too difficult for you?”

Aiden stands abruptly and stalks over to me. “You’re here for a fight. Why?” he demands, backing me into his desk. My thighs hit the edge, and I half-fall, half-sit on it.

My heart races furiously, trapped between anger and desire now that he’s invaded my space.

“I can’t sleep,” I admit. “And rumor has it that you don’t do that anymore, either. That you’re too busy trying to fix all my problems, which I would find hard to believe, but somehow you found someone to fix my knee, and now I might have a father. Why are you doing this?”

“I didn’t think a simple apology would mean anything to you.”

“It sure as hell wouldn’t hurt to try.”

I’m expecting hesitation. Side-stepping the apology in some way. But he doesn’t even stutter.

“I’m sorry.”

I freeze, stunned by his admission while my heart is hammering like it’s trying to break free of my chest.

“I’m sorry for what I did on the island. For not taking you with us on the boat. For not trusting you. For failing you as miserably as I have when I should have been the one protecting you. I know I’ve broken your trust, so these words may not mean anything to you. That’s why I’m going to fight to earn it back. I’m going to do whatever I can to fix my mistakes. To make it up to you.”

His words—words I never thought he’d say to me—make my eyes burn with emotion. Make my throat tight and my chest ache.

“I don’t understand. What changed your mind so suddenly?”

Aiden plants his hands on the desk on either side of me. “So suddenly?” he croons. “You risked your life for us. Went willingly back to hell and torture. You also didn’t give me a chance to respond when you finally talked to me in the locker room. I’ve had a lot of time to think of nothing else. And…” he hesitates.

“And?”

His eyes find mine. “I know what Gordon did.”

The fire that was stoking through my veins instantly chills.

“You…what?”

“We all know,” he tells me like he isn’t dropping a bombshell of catastrophic proportions in my lap.

Not just Dane. Aiden. Kellan. Jackson.

When Vera said she told Dane…how much? And he told the others?

Aiden’s finger and thumb gently pinch my chin, drawing my gaze back to his. “We’ve known since before we got you back. I don’t know what you’ve been telling yourself, but none of us are going anywhere. Nothing’s changed aside from what we have planned for Gordon. Slow and painful doesn’t begin to describe it.”

He’s still talking, but I’m frozen in my head.

They know.

They know .

How can they look at me?

How could they say the things they did?

Was that why they didn’t say anything when they witnessed my memory of killing innocents for Gordon? Did they already know?

I can’t stay here. How can I look them in the eyes, knowing that they know?

Murderer.

Whore.

“Raegan,” he calls my name, sounding faint and far away as I begin to spiral.

A stinging pain on my ass cheek breaks me free.

I gasp more with surprise than pain and find myself lying chest down on his desk.

“Since you don’t seem to listen well with your ears, I’ll just have to impress it on your body.” Another smack rains down on me, and I inhale sharply.

This time, I notice it’s somewhat dulled by the barrier of my panties still in place. I can’t see or tell where my shorts went. His hand pins me to the desk between my shoulder blades, even when I struggle fruitlessly against him.

“Aiden,” I breathe out in an attempted reprimand, but it comes out as more of a desperate plea.

His hand rubs the pain away, and the chill in my blood thaws a little.

Another smack.

More stroking over the inflamed area.

Over and over again.

Each impact stokes the flames, and every following caress spreads the heat through my veins until I feel heavy. Languid. Warm.

At some point, my cries changed to moans of pleasure.

I can’t think. My mind is too consumed with anticipation for the next one. Too absorbed in the way my body feels and that growing ache between my thighs.

The next slap of his hand lands close to my core, and I shudder with pleasure. “Oh, please.”

I need more.

I need him to touch me.

I don’t want this to end. I don’t want him to turn me away after whatever lesson he’s supposedly giving me.

“Aiden,” I beg, my voice heady with lust.

His fingers push my panties aside and glide through my arousal. He hums his approval. “Such a good girl, soaking your panties for me,” he praises on a purr, my pussy clenching in response.

“Don’t stop,” I pant, my hips twitching to encourage his hand to continue.

He drags my arousal to my clit and works it at a dizzying pace. My hands grip the edge of the desk as I lean my weight into him, grinding against his touch as pressure builds at the base of my spine.

I’m so close. So close.

Aiden gives one last flick, and I scream his name as it pushes me over the edge. I collapse against the desk, fighting to catch my breath.

Oxygen filters back into my lungs. My brain.

What were we talking about that led to this?

I blink and raise my head to rediscover my surroundings. Aiden’s office. In the bunker.

What he’s been up to and…

He spanks me again before I can finish the thought. “You’re in your head again,” he chides firmly. There’s a soft click and then a buzzing noise. “Was that not enough to make you understand? Should we go again?”

Something presses between my thighs in a firm vibration, and I jolt with surprise.

“Is that a vibrator?!”

He drags it over my underwear, pulling another guttural note from me. “Was…was that…” I huff with frustration as he continues to move the toy, and it’s becoming more difficult to remember the words I’m trying to say. I try to reach for it, and him, with one hand so I can focus long enough to finish my question, but he shifts it out of reach. “…in…your drawer?” I finally manage with the brief reprieve.

“It was,” he answers unashamedly. “Now, no more interference.”

I’m pulled up off the desk for his jacket to slide down my front, and then he pushes me down and brings both of my arms behind my back. The jacket tightens around me, locking my arms in place. “What—?”

He covers my eyes with something soft, then kicks my feet further apart.

Whatever he used blocks out any chance for light, and I’m now trapped and blinded. I struggle against his jacket. The last time I trusted him with anything, I wound up gift-less and locked away for the night. “What are you doing?” I demand, anxiety spiking my heart rate.

Aiden presses down between my shoulder blades, and my cheek finds the cool wood of his desk. He leans over me, his velvety tone caressing my ear.

“You’re going to stop thinking. Focus on me and only me. Let yourself feel it all. Because if I catch you getting distracted”—his hand meets my ass— “I’ll punish you for it and delay your release that much longer.”

Holy shit.

It’s everything I’d always wanted from him. Every dark promise. Every threat for punishment and reward. We’d always flirted with the idea of this, but he’d never followed through.

Why now? Why is he doing this?

The buzzing starts up again, and my muscles tense.

Is it ironic that the one guy I think I can trust the least is the one I’m trusting now to do whatever he pleases with me?

He lands another slap on my backside and then brushes over it.

“You’re failing already,” he reprimands sharply. Then his tone flips back to a croon whispered in my ear. “I’m going to make you come so hard, you won’t have any room in that head of yours to think.”

I shudder at his words.

Fuck, that’s hot.

The vibrator trails from my clit to my cunt, moving over the fabric of my underwear in a torturous tease. I move my hips and try to sink onto it, to take in more of it as it pulses and plays with me. “Aiden,” I mewl. “My underwear.”

The toy disappears, and I whimper at the loss.

He spanks me again. And again.

“That sounds like thinking.”

Oh, fucking hell.

I press my lips together and struggle to keep from wriggling in my impatience for him to touch me again. When it comes back, he picks up exactly where he left off.

And he doesn’t remove my panties.

The asshole is probably going to make it a point to leave them on now just because I tried to tell him what to do.

Smack!

He doesn’t bother saying anything this time, but it does the trick.

Even though my eyes are covered, I close them. I take a deep breath and try to focus only on what he’s doing to me. On the way my legs twitch and quiver from the fast vibrations. On the aching pulse of need from my clit for more .

Once I let go, there is nothing but the pleasure he’s feeding me. I don’t monitor the noises escaping my lips as he builds me higher than I thought I could go without breaking. When I think I must be at the top, he orders me, “Not yet,” and encourages me further.

I’m shaking with the need to come. “Please, please…” Words fall mindlessly, begging for release. The vibrator slowly pushes into me, but the fabric blocks it from entering me more than the barest amount. I push and grind onto it, desperate to fulfill the need that’s clawing at me from the inside.

His other hand strums over my swollen clit just as he commands, “Come for me, Raegan. Let go.”

I’m not in control of my body anymore.

He is.

It reacts to his words without hesitation, and finally, finally , I’m free-falling through my orgasm. My pussy clenches in rhythmic waves, seeking out more but taking whatever it can as it wrings me dry.

My knees give out, and I slide back to his desk, but Aiden catches me. He pulls my hips back until it feels like I’m sitting in his lap but leaning forward on the desk.

I have maybe thirty seconds to catch my breath before he speaks.

“Again.”

I’m floating on a cloud.

Or that’s how it feels because I’m too exhausted to so much as crack my eyes open to see where Aiden’s taking me. My body is nothing but a bliss-filled leaden weight.

Something squeaks, and then there’s the sound of rushing water. A bath?

I drift back to sleep to the sound of running water and don’t wake until my bare backside touches the heated water. It feels nice, cocooning me in its warmth until I’m submerged up to the mounds of my breasts.

But it doesn’t hold me enough on its own, and I start leaning to the side. I open my eyes in a panic, the fear of drowning enough to give me that control back to find Aiden undressed to boxers.

“You’re awake?” he questions, drawing his leg back and foot to the floor as if he’d been about to join me.

“I…” My eyes catch on his toned body, and words fail me. His chest and torso are smooth and firm…but his arms . He clearly works out, or uses his gift frequently, because there is more definition with the muscles in his arms than anywhere else. The urge to run my hands over them is almost all-consuming, and I’m grateful that I can’t move right now, even if I wanted to.

I drag my gaze down his legs as far as I can see from my seated position and where he’s standing.

Aiden clears his throat, then inquires dryly, “I take it you like what you see?”

Blinking to break my stare, I force my eyes back to his face. “Oh, uh, um…sorry?”

I’m not sorry.

“If you’re finished staring, can you wash yourself?”

I want to say yes. He gave me orgasm after orgasm, and I don’t think I could handle another without putting my health at risk, but having him looking like that reminds me that while he got me off, we didn’t have sex.

I try to lift my arm, but everything aches.

He should’ve let me stretch before tying me up and keeping his word.

I shake my head. “Can you help me get out? I can shower after some sleep.”

“You should wash before going to sleep,” he murmurs, shifting forward again and kneeling onto the folded towel. He picks up soap from the floor and lathers it in his hands.

I watch him, entranced. And then it clicks that he isn’t getting in the tub with me. “You needed to take your clothes off to help me?”

“You were asleep at the time, and it would be easier if I was in with you,” he explains evenly.

Oh.

Well, I’ll pretend to not be disappointed that he caught me awake.

His hands work a soaped-up washcloth over my back. I close my eyes and hum with pleasure.

The soap smells like cinnamon. Like him.

“You know,” I muse dreamily. “If your plan all along is to drown me, then you’ve done a good job,” I tease, only half kidding because seriously. I can’t move.

“Don’t joke about that,” he admonishes, and my lips curl to a small smile.

I can joke about it because I know he would never hurt me. Spanking or rough sex aside. Tie me up? Yes. Lock me up? Without question.

But even when he said he didn’t trust me, he let me in more than anyone else. He looked out for me. After Portia was taken and Vera surprised us all, he brought me back into their inner circle. He could say whatever he wanted, but that didn’t stop him from doing what he always did, what he’s still doing now.

Taking care of others.

Like he’s doing for me. How he’s been protecting Dane. Running the Guild.

He may be controlling and demanding or make me do things I don’t want to do, but it usually winds up being what’s best for me, even if I can’t see it at the time.

Not that I’ll ever admit any of this to his face.

“Here.” I open my eyes. He holds a washcloth in front of me. “Wash between your legs.”

His ebony gaze is intense on mine. I still can’t read anything from his expression, but his eyes…

They’re so dark that they appear endless, like two black holes that would suck me in if I let them. I feel drawn to them when I have his full attention, their gravity drawing me closer.

My breathing shallows. “I can’t move,” I repeat, knowing full well that I’m asking him to touch there again.

“Brat.”

The nickname brings me back to our days of push and pull between us, and I smile.

He shakes his head, then raises himself off his heels to position himself better.

Aiden shifts against the side of the tub, his hand and the washcloth disappearing beneath the water. The next thing I know, his face is hovering close to mine as he rubs the cloth along my inner thigh. The side of his nose brushes against mine, and the air between us heats to scorching levels.

I can’t breathe.

His eyes are focused downward on his task, but I can’t see past how close his lips are to mine.

The washcloth moves to my other thigh and up. Up. It grazes over my core, and a shiver of pleasure curls down my spine. My muscles clench eagerly, even as weary as they are.

I pop my mouth open to drag in more oxygen.

Aiden’s stare pierces mine. “Is this what you wanted?” he purrs. “I thought I’d worn you out.” The washcloth runs along the hollow of my thigh.

I grip the edge of the bathtub on either side to keep myself from grabbing and directing his arm. “If I’m going to go out, then I choose death by orgasm.”

His head drops, and I catch his shoulders shaking for a second.

“What? Do you have something better?”

The washcloth and his hand disappear. I almost make a noise of disappointment, but I really do think another one might kill me, so I let it go. Aiden pulls back and moves to sit on a step stool behind me. “Lean your head back. I’m going to wash your hair.”

I realize he never answered my question, but take his non-answer for one.

There isn’t anything better.

I bend far enough to dip my hair underwater; then he has to help me back upright before he starts the wonderful task of scrubbing shampoo into my hair.

I’m feeling good.

Even though I know what upset me earlier is still lingering in the back of my thoughts, I’m unwilling to give it any room to breathe right now. I’m practically glowing with the way Aiden made me feel, and being pampered right after is the cherry on top.

I won’t let that be ruined.

And because I’m feeling so good, I choose to talk. Aiden’s behind me, so I can almost pretend I’m just purging all the bad things from my mind during a bath without any consequence behind it. At this point, he knows the worst there is already. This is all just…filler.

“After you knocked me out on the island, my roommate Tara found me. She got others to help bring me into a boat, and we left.”

His fingers slow when the story flows out of me, and I know I have his attention. But he doesn’t interrupt, and I’m able to continue as I feel comfortable.

“Everyone split once we made it back to the States. I only had Grams to look for, but I didn’t know anything about how the world worked. I was homeless and stole food to survive. I stole a couple of wallets and purses, too, to get enough money for a bus to bring me North. It landed me in a big city, and I tried to find a job to earn money to get to Alaska.”

I pull my knees up and fold my arms over them, resting my chin on top as Aiden pulls the soap through the ends of my hair.

“A guy found me on the streets and offered me a place to stay. Long story short, he became my boyfriend and my boss. I worked his bar for him as anything he wanted. I can see now that I leaned on him for too much. I believed everything he said. He just used me for free work and sex. I’d forgotten what my purpose was or if I even had one. I was just…lost…for a long time.”

Clearing my throat and swallowing the lump there, I continue, “I was with him for almost two years when he brought his buddies over one night. They cornered me in the shower and raped me.”

His fingers freeze in my hair. “What was his name?”

“James. But it doesn’t matter.”

“It—”

“He’s dead. I killed him and his friends that night using my gift. I hadn’t used it up until then. I’d been afraid of it since leaving the island. And using it reminded me of GE and what I was running from. I was tired of running. I found my new purpose in taking them down. I started hunting them after that. And once they knew I was alive and out there, they began looking for me, too.”

I breathe in deep and exhale. “Anything else you want to know?”

He proceeds to rinse the soap from my hair in silence, but I know he’s considering my offer seriously. I almost fall back asleep in the quiet as he tugs my hair and massages my scalp before he finally speaks.

“What happened this last time that Gordon had you?”

“Training, mostly. Would not recommend his method,” I add with a slight giggle. I think I’m becoming overtired because things are just feeling silly now when I know they shouldn’t be. “Five out of ten. And it’s only that high because he did get results. I’m stronger. I can control it better. It doesn’t hurt anymore. So, joke’s on him.” I chuckle again at the irony.

“Did he touch you?”

“No, thank fuck. Not like that. My progress and mind control meant more to him this time, I guess. Even put me in a crazy water tank to fuck with my head. Used a little girl against me.” The next thoughts sober my mood. “I killed people again.”

“No. He killed people. I’m sure if you weren’t there, he would have found someone else to kill them for him.” Aiden kneels by the side of the bathtub, where I can see him. His eyes search my half-lidded ones, and I think he was going to say something else, but he reaches behind him for a towel instead. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”