Chapter Eighteen – Zane
My head lolled back in the seat as I stared up at the ceiling, my ears still ringing, my heart still pounding, adrenaline doing its best to handle the pain that was coursing through every inch of my body right now.
I was lucky to be alive, and I knew it. After the Dogs had forced me back to the compound, I fully expected them to kill me right then and there. But the moment that man got me alone, it was clear he intended to make the most of having me right where he wanted me.
Ian, that was his name. Once they had caught me, he’d shoved his face close to mine, hands on my collar.
“You know who I am?”
I shook my head.
“Chelsea’s father,” he snarled at me. “Ian. You remember that fucking name, boy. You put some respect on it.”
He had just walked out after slamming his fist into my jaw and my chin, sending my head flying in each direction. My hands were tied behind me, and there was nothing I could do to fight back. Even if I managed to break out of this room, I knew they would come find me. It wouldn’t take much for them to track me down again, and when they did, I had no doubt that my punishment was going to be even more brutal.
My days were numbered. This was what I got for trying to put right my brother’s death. I should have known when I’d first come here that it was a stupid choice, but I had never been good at keeping my head. After all the shit Liam had been involved in, he must have known that he would meet his end at the hands of someone like the Dogs, and I doubted he would have expected me to try and take revenge.
He wouldn’t have done the same for me. I hated to admit that, but I knew it was true. My brother had always been out for himself. He had left me behind a long time ago, and I was the one who hadn’t been able to let go of that family connection that we still shared, even though I knew I should have. He didn’t care about me. If he had, he would have stayed close to me, but he had left because he wanted to pursue his own life, his own success, his own involvement with the dark shit that people like Lombardi carried out in this town.
But I hadn’t been able to let him go. Even after all this time, even after everything I had been through, I hadn’t been able to let him go, and that killed me. I was so fucking alone in the world that my shithead brother was the one thing I had left, and I decided to risk my life getting revenge for his loss, like it would bring him back—like it would serve to hold up the ties I had to my family.
My fucking family. My family, who had failed me at every turn. My parents, who had left me to fend for myself when I was barely older than a child and then dropped dead, drinking themselves into this sick, useless pit of addiction—my big brother, leaving when I was still a kid, letting me live with them alone when he knew he was the only one I could rely on. Nobody had cared about me. I had fooled myself into thinking they did, but they never had.
Not in my family, at least. Because there was one person who might have actually given a damn about me, and she was the reason I was in the mess in the first place. Chelsea.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Did she know what was going on with me right now? I had no idea if her father told her. Did he intend to deal with me himself? I didn’t know, but I got the feeling that the two of us were close right now. She wasn’t far from me. It was like my system could sense her, and I would have done anything to have her in my arms, just one more time.
I should have opened up to her when I had the chance, but I had been stupid enough to shut it down whenever she got close. I just couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing through me, seeing the person I really was. It seemed too... dangerous. I feared that she would look at me and turn her back on me, the way so many other people had done.
Maybe it was for the best. This way, she wouldn’t see the other side of me, that side of me that craved closeness and connection, the side of me that felt like I had finally found it with her. That was a part of me I had fought to keep quiet from everyone else, and I doubted she would have liked it. She wanted me to be strong, dangerous for her, and the reality of it was that...
I heard the scrape of a door and lifted my head again, tensing myself for what I was sure was going to be another beating from her father. Fuck, maybe he would finish me off this time. Maybe it would have been a mercy.
Finish my family line right here and now, end it before it goes any further, put us out of our misery for good...
“Zane?” Her voice, whispered, came through the darkness of the dank room, and my heart skipped a beat.
“Chelsea?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Was it her? Could it really be her? It felt as though this had to be some kind of hallucination because there was no way she was...
The light flicked on, and sure enough, there she was, standing in the doorway, hands clenched by her sides, her eyes wide as she fixed them on to me like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Oh, my God, Zane,” she gasped as she pushed the door shut and hurried toward me. “What happened to you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I replied as she reached out to touch my face. I couldn’t help but wince, and she drew her hand back at once.
“I’m sorry, I— did he hurt you?” she asked. I nodded. No point in trying to hide it. Her father hadn’t fucked around, and I was sure he had made it clear to her just how he felt about me.
“Yeah, he did,” I muttered. “Your dad, I guess...”
“Badly?”
I shook my head. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank God,” she murmured, pressing her forehead to mine. “I— I managed to convince him that he had to run it by Chuck first, the head of the Dogs, before he killed someone on our property. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, though.”
“At least he listens to you…”
“Not enough. He told me he was coming after you,” she confessed. “I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He just wanted revenge. Oh, God, Zane...”
She reached behind me to undo the rope wrapped around my hands, and I pulled her into my lap, wrapping my arms around her and pressing my face into her neck. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, inhaling the scent of her, reminding myself just how good it felt to be this near to her again.
“Fuck,” I muttered against her. I didn’t even know what I was cursing for, not really, but all of this... it seemed impossible. I had no idea how we were going to get through it, what we were going to do to come out the other side in one piece. If that was even possible. It felt doomed, like the weight of the world was pushing down on top of us.
She pulled back, clasping my face in her hands and gazing into my eyes.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her softly. “Does your father know—”
“No, of course not,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I snuck in here when he got back to the apartment. I figured they would be holding you in the compound. I just didn’t know if you would still be...”
She trailed off before finishing that sentence. Alive. That was what she was going to say. If I would still be alive. Because she knew, as well as I did, that it was a damn miracle I had made it this far. It was only a matter of time before that changed, before one of them came in here with a gun in hand and finished me off, once and for all. I gritted my teeth, trying to focus on the moment, not the horrors that I knew were going to come.
“You should go,” I told her, squeezing her close again. “I don’t want you getting caught in here. Your father, he would—”
“No, I can’t leave, not without you.”
Her voice was firm, certain. I shook my head.
“There’s no point,” I muttered. “They’ll find us.”
“You can’t think like that…”
“They found me at the motel,” I shot back. “They’ll find me again. And they’ll drag me back…”
“There’s something I need to tell you, Zane,” she murmured to me, cutting me off before I could finish what I was saying. I could tell from the tone in her voice that this was serious, whatever it was. I eyed her, confused.
“What is it?”
She took a deep breath and brushed her thumb lightly over my cheek. A small smile crept up her lips before she replied. “I’m pregnant.”
My jaw dropped. That had been the last thing I’d expected her to come out with. Pregnant? She was fucking pregnant? Was this some kind of joke, some twisted game she had been put up to by her father to torture me further...?
But as I looked into her eyes, I knew she wasn’t making this up. There was no way. The way she was gazing at me, with such open sincerity in her eyes, I knew she wasn’t lying to me. I reached down, planting a hand over her belly. She wasn’t showing yet, of course not, it was far too soon for that, but there was still something sacred about touching her like this.
“Really?” I asked her. She nodded.
“Really,” she replied, smiling slightly as she shared the news with me. “I... I just found out. I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I thought my father had already...”
She trailed off again, and I kissed her before she could get the words out. We didn’t need to talk about that, not now, not when I was sharing in this news with her. I could hardly believe it. After all this time, feeling like I was alone in the world, feeling like I didn’t have a place or a connection with anyone... I had a child, a child with a woman who meant more to me than I had ever imagined she would.
“I don’t know what to do,” she told me, finally, her voice cracking as she spoke. I pressed my forehead into hers, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to commit every little detail of her to memory. I knew I wouldn’t have much longer to do it, not before someone caught us, and I wanted to make the very most of it while I still had the chance.
“Do you want this baby?” I asked her. She nodded slowly.
“I’ve never thought about being a mom before,” she confessed. “But I... I know I want this child. I want them with you, Zane.”
I stared at her. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Why would someone like her, someone who had her whole life ahead of her, want that with someone like me? It didn’t make sense. In all the time I had been alive, nobody had ever chosen me—nobody had ever made me their priority.
“What are you talking about?” I replied, and she gazed at me, her eyes welling with tears.
“What do you mean?” she breathed. “You don’t want this...?”
“That’s not what I said,” I corrected her quickly. “I mean... why do you want this? With me?”
She took a deep, shaky breath, her eyes glazed with emotion.
“Because I think there’s a good man inside you, Zane. A really good man. A man who doesn’t believe he’s worth the effort. A man who... a man who got taught when he was a little boy that he didn’t deserve care or attention or love. And I want to prove that man wrong.”
I could hardly draw a breath as I listened to her speak to me. Those words—this was the first time anyone had ever said anything like that to me, the first time anyone had told me there might be more to me than I let meet the eye. There was a reason I had done everything I could to hide that part of myself from the world, and I didn’t intend to let it all come spilling out now, but knowing that she saw it, saw some of the potential that I hadn’t even realized I’d had in me before I had met her, it was almost more than I could take.
All I could do was kiss her. I couldn’t speak. Nothing I could have said would have matched the enormity of those words. I could show her how much I cared for her, though, and I intended to do just that. I didn’t know how much time we had left together before someone would discover us, and I intended to make the most of it I could.
Her mouth softened into a smile as we kissed, like she understood this was the affirmation she had been looking for. She straddled me, legs balancing on the chair I had been tied to all night. This was the closeness I craved from her, and I wanted to lose myself to it, for as long as I could.
Well, just the three of us, if you included the baby.
She deepened the kiss, and I slid my hands to her waist, feeling the soft curve of her body beneath my touch. Every movement, it felt like it might be the last time I got to be this close to her, and I soaked it all up as best I could.
Her fingers trailed along my neck, her soft touch sending shivers all the way through my body. I could already feel myself getting hard, just being this near to her, and she pulled up the skirt she was wearing; reaching beneath the fabric, I cupped my hand over her pussy and realized she hadn’t bothered wearing panties.
“Oh, you knew what you wanted before you came here, huh?” I teased her lightly. I could feel how soaked she was already, her pussy sopping-wet for me, a sure sign of how badly she needed this, how badly she needed me.
And I was more than willing to give it to her.
She reached down to my zipper, biting her lip as she tugged it down, and then drew my cock into her hands. Wrapping her fingers around my girth, she stroked me a couple of times, drawing a thick drop of pre-cum from my tip. Groaning, I leaned up in the seat, watching her caress me and bring me to full hardness.
And then, slowly, she shifted her weight so that her slit was hovering just above my achingly hard cock. She kept her grip on it as I rested my hand on her hip, moving so that I could get a good view of my erection vanishing into her pussy.
I held her skirt to the side as I watched her lips spread to take me, and she groaned as she felt me nudging open her tight slit all over again. It felt like a lifetime since I had been this close to her, even though it had been a matter of days. I couldn’t stand being apart from her, not for any length of time. I needed her, now more than ever.
She moaned as she let herself down on top of me, enveloping me in her pussy, and I lifted a hand to clamp it over her mouth. Much as I wanted to hear those sweet little noises she made, I knew we couldn’t risk being busted right now. I wasn’t going to let someone walk in and stop us in the act, not when she felt so good.
I could feel her breath against my palm as she began to ride me properly, gripping on to my shoulders tight, moving against me like this was what she had been waiting for all this time. She felt so fucking good wrapped around me like that, so wet I could already see her juices glistening on the inside of her thighs.
Sliding my hands around behind her, I gripped her ass, groping at her flesh greedily, reminding myself of just how perfect her body was. I wished I had time to go down on her again, taste the sweet musk of her pussy on my tongue once more, but I would have to satisfy myself with making her come like this.
I pressed a hand to her lower belly and used my thumb to stimulate her clit as she moved on top of me, riding me hard, grinding her whole weight down on my cock over and over and over again. I felt her lips part slightly against my palm as I played with her swollen nub, the wetness from her slit allowing my thumb to glide across her with ease. I could already feel her starting to tense around me, the muscles of her pussy squeezing around my erection. As if she couldn’t have been any tighter...
I started to move up and into her, fucking her deep, meeting her every time she pushed down. Our bodies were moving in perfect unison with one another, and I could see that need in her eyes, the hazy look as the pleasure got the better of her. I wanted her to be looking at me when she came. I wanted her to look deep into my eyes when she reached her release and connect every orgasm she had here on out to the way I looked at her.
I pushed up into her one last time and held myself there, pressing my thumb down against her clit in the same instant and watched as her body shuddered on top of mine. I could feel the way her pussy clenched around me hard, the vibrations of the moans against my palm telling me everything I needed to know.
And it was that which took me over the edge, the sight of her coming on my cock, the sight of her, unable to hold back, giving herself over to the sheer pleasure that she knew only I would be able to give her. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment as she squeezed around my erection.
“Look at me,” I ordered her, and she forced her eyes open once more, gazing back at me as though she could hardly think straight. I grinned, pulling my hand back from her mouth, and kissed her, still gently toying with her swollen clit as I thrust into her pulsating pussy.
And as soon as our mouths crashed together again, I went over the edge and into my own release. Thrusting deep inside of her, I filled her pussy with my seed, blowing my load deep within in, marking her completely as mine. There was no need to be careful now, what with her being pregnant. We could just have each other exactly as we wanted to.
Because I might not live long enough to see the consequences.
I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. I wasn’t ready for her to go yet, but I knew she had to.
“You should leave,” I breathed in her ear. She grabbed me tightly, clinging to me like she didn’t ever want to let go.
“I... I can’t, Zane...”
“You have to,” I repeated myself, pulling back so I could look her in the eye. “Please, baby. Don’t put yourself in danger. If something happened to you because of me...”
I trailed off. I wasn’t going to finish that. I couldn’t even bear the thought of it. If she got hurt because of me, I would never have been able to forgive myself. It was that simple.
I breathed in the scent of her and prayed it wouldn’t be the last time.