Chapter Eleven – Chelsea
I was still shaking by the time we arrived at this new apartment. He'd said something about it being his brother’s, but I hadn’t really taken much else in. I was still too much in shock from what had happened back at the last place. Not just the actual events, what I had seen, but the way I had reacted, too.
The Dogs who had come to get me, they were younger prospects, led by Taylor, one of my father’s oldest friends and colleagues. I didn’t know what kind of state they were in, but I had to pray they were going to be alright.
I should have done more to help them, but I felt as though I couldn’t move. I couldn’t run, even when they had been calling for me. Their voices had sounded distant, as though they were coming from a million miles away.
There had been a part of me that wanted to flee to them, of course there had, the same part of me that had seen the door open when I had woken up that morning and gotten to my feet to leave. But there was another part of me… another part of me that wanted to stay right there, with Zane. And I didn’t know what the hell was going on with me.
Because he had kidnapped me. Fucking kidnapped me. I couldn’t forget that, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter what kind of connection I might have felt between the two of us, I knew better than to allow it to make my decisions for me.
He pulled the car to a halt outside a new apartment building and opened the car door, offering me a hand like he knew I might need his help. I grabbed it and clutched on hard. It was the one thing that was keeping me grounded right now. I stared at him for a moment.
“What is it?” he demanded. His voice was laced with doubt.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
What must he think of me? Was it obvious that he was totally in control right now? That I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, get out of this?
“Are you hurt?” he asked me as we stepped over the threshold. He seemed to notice how reticent I was.
“No, I’m fine,” I murmured. I was meant to be nothing more than a game token to him, a piece he could use to get what he wanted. No matter how much he tried to hide it, there was some part of him that cared.
The apartment he took me to was bare, just a few scattered pieces of furniture, none of which went together. I planted myself on an ancient couch, perching on the edge of the cushion and staring out of the window beyond. We were back in Atwood now, though I wasn’t sure exactly where. How near was I to my father right now...?
Guilt twisted in my guts when I thought about everything that he must have been going through right now. I should have done everything I could to get out of this mess and get back to him. I couldn’t imagine how much he was torturing himself for letting this happen, but he had no idea how complicit I was in still being a part of this.
I could vaguely hear Zane in the kitchen behind me, and I turned around to see what was going on there. He was standing over the sink, and I could see a flash of bright red blood against his skin. Almost on instinct, I got to my feet and made my way toward him. I took his arm and pulled it toward me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Let me,” I murmured and reached for a towel that was sitting on the edge of the sink. It looked as though this kitchen had hardly been touched at all. Whoever had lived here, they clearly hadn’t been cooking much.
I ran the tap until it was warm and wiped off a little of the blood that had pooled in a small wound on his arm. It didn’t look bad, but I still didn’t want him bleeding all over the place. I didn’t know why I cared about him so much, but there was a part of me that insisted I look after him.
I could feel him watching me as I tended to him, and I didn’t dare make eye contact with him, fearful of what it might give away, fearful of what he might see in me if I didn’t conceal myself from him well enough.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked me finally as I wrapped the towel around his arm, pressing against it lightly. I’d done a first aid course when I was in high school, and it had come in handy when some of my college friends had been drinking too hard and hurt themselves falling over on the way back from the bar. I never thought I would be using it to tend to a knife wound like this.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, finally. There was no point in lying to him. My head was a mess, especially after what happened the night before. I wanted to run from him, but I was rooted to the spot, right here, by his side. And I didn’t know why.
“Where are we, anyway?” I asked him, glancing around, gesturing to the apartment.
“My brother’s place,” he replied, finally drawing his arm away from me. My heart skipped a beat in my chest. So I had heard that right. I knew his brother was dead, and I knew he was the reason all of this had started in the first place.
“What... what happened to your brother?” I asked him softly. He let out a sigh and opened the fridge. It was full of beer—and not much else. He grabbed himself a bottle and then handed one to me. God, if I had ever needed a drink, it was now...
I popped open the beer and followed him to the living room, where he flopped down on the couch, and planted myself beside him. The door was just a few feet away, and I got the feeling I could have bolted for it right then and there and he wouldn’t have tried to stop me. But a curiosity was getting the better of me, and I needed to know what was going on in his head.
“My brother’s dead,” he told me, his voice almost cold. I wanted to reach for his hand, give it a squeeze, let him know how sorry I was, but I got the feeling he wouldn’t have liked it. He lifted the beer to his lips, and I couldn’t help but notice how his mouth glided across the top of the bottle. I shivered as I remembered how his lips had felt against mine the night before but pushed the thought aside.
“Did the... did the Dogs have something to do with it?” I prompted him, my voice hitching at the back of my throat as I forced the words out. I did my best to live in denial of what my father and his colleagues did for a living, but there was no point denying it.
He grunted. I took that for a yes. I felt so bad for him, knowing what he had lost. His actions, to some extent, made more sense to me in the context I had now. If I had lost my father, I would have done anything it took to get revenge on the people who took him for me. I wouldn’t have given a damn what it had taken. I would have made them pay.
“He lived here alone?”
“Neither of us had anyone else,” he replied, picking at the label on his beer bottle. “It was always just the two of us.”
“Not even your parents?”
“Never. They were pretty shitty parents, to be honest. Never knew how to handle themselves. Drunks. Both of them.”
“I’m sorry, Zane,” I murmured, reaching over to take his hand without thinking. “I... nobody should have to deal with that.”
He stared down at my hand for a long moment, like he didn’t know what to do with my touch right now. I got the feeling he hadn’t had many moments like this over the course of his life, people showing him gentleness.
“Fuck it, it’s fine,” he replied, shaking his head. “Plenty of people deal with worse.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you should have had to deal with all of that,” I shot back. “You were a kid. You were meant to have parents looking out for you. My dad...”
I trailed off. He glanced up at me. I could see something in his eyes, anger, maybe, but more than that—hurt, too. Hurt. The little boy who had been forced to live his life without the support of his parents, without the care he deserved, was staring back at me, and my heart ached for him.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” I finished up. He took another swig of his beer and shook his head.
“Shit, I don’t even know if I am.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You should have seen some of the shit he was involved in,” he replied. “Lombardi, that was the fucker that he was working with when it happened...”
“Lombardi?” I gasped. That was a name I had heard thrown around a lot and never in the context of anything good. No, whenever I’d heard someone speaking that name, it had been a whisper, something fearful and dangerous. It made sense that his brother would have wound up dead if he had been involved with someone like that. Shit, had he been part of the sex trafficking ring that I’d heard some stories about...?
“Yeah, I know,” Zane muttered. “I know the shit he was into. And trust me, I didn’t want him near any of it. If I could have found some way to get him out...” He trailed off. “He would never have left,” he admitted to himself. “He always wanted more. It would never have been enough for him, working for someone else. It would have felt like a step back. That was always his fucking problem. He was an addict, just like our parents, only his poison wasn’t booze, it was money. Power.”
The words came spilling from him faster than I could take them in. I wondered if he’d ever admitted this to himself before or if this was the first time he was contending with the enormity of everything he had just said out loud. But there it was, a glimpse of the man I had seen last night. Not a man who wanted revenge but this man who just needed to make sense of losing the last connection to his family he’d had, a man who couldn’t wrap his head around being so, so alone in the world and had come looking for me.
He tightened his grip on my hand slightly, rubbing his thumb against my knuckles. I didn’t let go of him. I could see some of the blood leaking through the towel I had wrapped around his arm, and I couldn’t stop staring at it, the sight of it a reminder of what he had done to keep me close, how he had fought to make sure I didn’t get away.
Even if he was keeping me from my chosen family in the process.
God, I was so confused. But at the same time, it all made perfect sense to me. I was here, with him, the two of us together, and that was all I needed to understand.
I pulled the towel away from his arm and dabbed at it again. The bleeding seemed to have eased a little, much to my relief. He didn’t seem to even register the pain, his hand still wrapped around the beer bottle, his eyes still fixed on me.
As I drew my hand away, he caught it again—and brought it to his lips. He pressed a kiss to the center of my palm, not breaking my gaze for a moment. The warmth of his breath on my skin, oh, it made my toes curl. It made it impossible for me to control myself, even though I knew I needed to.
I couldn’t deny how easy it was for him to seduce me with nothing more than a glance.
His lips grazed over my hand, and he brought my finger to his lips. Extending his tongue, he traced it along my fingerprint, as though tasting the very essence of me. I could hardly breathe, a moan of pleasure hitching in my throat as he slowly drew my index finger between his lips and traced his tongue around it, sending sparkling waves of want spiraling down between my legs to take control of me completely.
He drew his teeth across the sensitive pad of my finger, and I couldn’t hold back the groan this time, not even if I wanted to. I bit down on my lip, hating how obvious I was making my want for him but, at the same time, unable to deny it. He grinned as he moved his lips away from my hand, and I knew exactly what he was doing. I knew he was just trying to divert me from the serious conversation the two of us were having right now with nothing but the feel of his mouth on my skin. But it was working.
I pulled the beer from his hand and slid into his lap, wrapping my arms around him and sinking my lips against his.
He sank his teeth into my bottom lip softly, and a shudder of pain and pleasure coursed through my body helplessly. God, he knew exactly what he was doing to me, exactly how to touch me. I brushed my fingers along his jaw, feeling that dark stubble beneath my fingers, and he slid his hands to my waist, digging his fingers into me roughly. I knew he would leave marks, and I wanted him to. I wanted him to brand me as his. I wanted him to show me just how badly and completely he needed me.
Nothing else would come close to sating me.
Grabbing my hips, he moved me slightly so I was straddling him. I could already feel his hardness pressing against me through my jeans, no doubt a result of the adrenaline from the fight earlier.
The fight he’d gone through to keep me.
No man had ever gone so far to make sure I was theirs, and the thought sent another shockwave of want through me. I moaned against his mouth, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him against me tightly, needing to feel him, every part of him, in that moment, to show him that I desired him just the same way that he wanted me. He slid his hands up my back and into my hair, balling a fist in my short bob and tugging my head back so he could glide his teeth along my throat. It was almost a threat, a suggestion that he could sink them into me at any second. Maybe I wanted him to...
He pulled me down again so he could kiss me properly, his tongue soon in my mouth, dominant, controlling. I grabbed his face, kissing him back, needing him to know just how much I wanted this, too, just how badly my body ached for him, despite everything he had put me through, despite everything he had done to me. In that moment, he could have done anything he wanted to me, and I still would have given myself to him, my body taking control of all my better instincts and calling the shots, whether I liked it or not.
All at once, he pulled me from his lap and lay me down on the couch below him. I could feel the heat burning between our bodies, the pressure of his cock through his pants, and all I could do was moan as I stared back at him. He gazed at me for a moment, a grin spreading over his face, like his head was flooding with ideas of everything he wanted to do to me. I was completely at his mercy, and he knew it.
And I loved it.
Tugging my shirt off over my head, he started to strip me down slowly, taking his time, exposing every inch of me in turn, like he was unwrapping a gift he had waited all year for. Once he had pulled off my bra, he leaned down to take my nipples into his mouth, grazing his teeth along my swollen nipples one at a time. I couldn’t stop staring at him, taking him in, taking in the sight of him like this—this man who I wanted so badly that it was getting in the way of my better judgement, of everything I should have been focused on right now. If anyone in the Dogs knew what I was doing, they would have known I was crazy. Maybe I had lost my mind entirely.
He continued his journey down, brushing his lips across my lower belly and glancing up at me again. I lifted my hips, letting him know that he was more than welcome to continue with what he was doing. I could feel my pussy throbbing already, practically crying out for his touch, and I couldn’t focus on anything but how good I knew his mouth was going to feel against me for the first time.
Unzipping my pants, he slowly eased them down my thighs, groaning as the puff of pubic hair showed through my soft, white panties. He stared at me like he could hardly believe this was happening, like he could hardly believe he got to have me like this. No man had ever looked at me this way, as though I was a prize to be savored, and I knew I was already addicted to the way it made me feel, to be desired so completely.
Hooking his fingers around the hips of my panties, he tugged them down slowly, exposing me to him for the first time. Normally, I would have been self-conscious about a guy seeing me so vulnerable this way, but with him, I was so consumed by sheer lust, I couldn’t even let my mind go there. I was panting, belly rising and falling quickly, as he slid himself between my legs, grazing his lips tantalizingly along the crease of my thigh just to hear my helpless groan in reaction. I could feel him smiling against me, clearly enjoying how desperate I was for him.
Shifting, he hovered his mouth just an inch or two above my pussy, letting me feel the warmth of his breath against my lips. I was so wet, I could feel the slipperiness on my thighs, my clit pulsing with every breath I took as I willed him to give me what I so clearly needed right now.
And then, finally, he did. At last, he pressed his mouth to my pussy, his tongue finding my clit with ease, hands sliding beneath my thighs to hold me in place. As if I could have moved from him right now, as if I could have broken free for anything in this moment. He swirled his tongue around my clit, fingers digging into my thighs, pressing so tight into my skin I could see it indenting beneath his touch.
I gasped and tipped my head back on the couch, doing everything I could to catch my breath, but the pleasure was already starting to get the better of me. I could feel my orgasm stirring from some place deep inside of me, and I wanted nothing more than to just tip over into that pleasure that was tempting me.
He kissed my clit slowly, drawing it between his lips, teasing my sensitive nub with a near-infuriating softness. Oh, he knew just what he was doing to me, just how desperate I was for him. I whined and tried to push my hips back against his face, but he pulled back slightly, looking up at me, flashing me that cocky grin of his, reminding me, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was the one in control, and nothing was going to change that.
As soon as I settled back on to the couch and let him take control of me once more, he planted his mouth to my pussy and began to lap at my clit with more hunger than before. My thighs were twitching, my toes curling against the couch, the boiling pressure in my belly threatening to rise up and overtake me at any moment. I just couldn’t hold back...
And, when I stole a glance down at him, that was what tipped me over the edge. The sight of him between my legs, this man, this dangerous, terrifying man who had fought to keep me this close to him, that was when my orgasm consumed me. I squeezed my thighs around his head, crying out, the sound filling the air around us. I didn’t care who heard, even though I knew that we weren’t in that abandoned apartment building anymore. This place was likely filled with neighbors, people who could hear me coming with his face between my thighs, but in that moment, it was hard to care.
I rocked against his face, the pleasure rising in waves as I moved against him. He didn’t break contact with my clit for a moment, his hands prying my thighs apart so I couldn’t squeeze him out, pushing me to that point of no return and taking me over it, leaving me no choice but to become helpless to the pleasure.
When he finally pulled back, I could see his lips glistening with wetness. The sight of him like that, fresh from between my thighs, it sent another shudder of pleasure through my body, and I couldn’t resist leaning down to catch his face in my hands and kiss him properly. Our tongues danced together, and I could taste the musk of my pussy on his tongue. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had gone down on me like that, eaten me out like they were truly starving for me. Every other guy I had been with had treated it like something that needed to be gotten out of the way, but Zane. Zane savored the chance to press his mouth to my pussy.
He moved up on top of me, unzipping his pants, and I pulled off his shirt so I could admire his naked body for the first time. Fuck, he was so sexy. A snake tattoo wrapped around the back of his neck, the head of it slithering down his chest and spitting across his toned torso. I traced the shape of it with my fingers before he let himself down on me again, kissing me hard, pushing my knees back so he could press his cock to the entrance of my slit.
I hooked my ankles behind his back and drew him in deep, feeling his cock slip past my entrance with ease and fill me up to the very hilt. I moaned, my head sinking back on to the couch, and he ran his tongue up my throat again before he kissed me once more, an almost tender make-out session that matched with the stillness of his cock thrust all the way inside of me.
But then, finally, he began to move, to really move. I loved the way he fucked me, filling me in deep, satisfying strokes that sent echoes of pleasure all the way through my body.
And when he pulled back, hands planted on either side of my head so he could look into my eyes, I could tell he felt it, too. All the pleasure that was throbbing through me right now, it was passing through him in the same way. His strong body moved on top of me, his muscles flexing beneath his skin. I reached up and planted my hands against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart in time with his movements inside of me, letting the scent and sensation of him take me over entirely.
“Fuck, you look so beautiful,” he groaned as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. I was rocking back against him now, my knees pulled back, ankles hooked behind his back, needing him even deeper. I felt like I couldn’t get close enough to him, and I could tell from the way he was fucking me that he couldn’t get near enough to me, either. We might not have been able to open up to each other with words yet, but with our bodies, that was a different story entirely. It felt almost... easy, being this close to him, even if everything around it was complete and utter madness.
I could feel myself reaching toward another climax as the two of us moved together, our bodies matching each other perfectly as though they had been made to fit together like this. I cupped the back of his head, feeling the stubble of his hair under my fingertips, the rawest thing about him. His forehead was leaning against mine, his breath mingling with mine as we panted into each other’s mouths, and I could see it, scrawled all over his face, how close he was...
“Come inside me,” I pleaded with him. I knew he needed my permission, just like he had done the night before. He needed me to tell him how much I wanted this. For all his hardness, he needed to know that I wanted him just as much as he wanted me, and I wouldn’t hesitate in giving him that.
He bottomed out as soon as the words were out of my mouth, groaning loudly as he pushed into me one last time. I could feel his cock twitching inside of me, that feeling of him filling me with his seed. I could feel the warmth of him inside of me, that closeness that I had never allowed anyone to feel with me before. Because if I was being reckless in all the other ways I could think of... hell, I might as well be reckless in this one, too, right?
It was that feeling that pushed me up and over the edge into my own second climax, my pussy squeezing around him as though my body was pleading with him to stay this close to me. I knew when he pulled back, we would be back to square one again. He would draw away from me, and it would be impossible to guide him back to that point where he would open up once more.
But here, now, as we gasped and held on to one another, we could get lost in that mutual pleasure. And, finally, for a moment, we could be on the same page.
And that had to count for something.