Twelve
Simone
He didn’t touch me for hours.
It should have been a relief, but the silence had left me with far too much time to think about Rubin.
His fingers pressing against my wrist.
How inscrutable his expression was.
He’d said nothing once we reached the office, and once he released my wrist, he hadn’t even looked in my direction.
I’d been prepared for the opposite, and when he’d sat across from me, I hadn’t been able to miss the thick coil of cock, full, heavy—ready, so I’d figured he’d take what I’d offered cold and fast and be done with it.
And done with me.
How did I continue to underestimate Rubin?
Taking me hard and fast would have been a relief that wiped away the anxiety that gnawed at my stomach. It would have cut away all of the thinking, the torturous anticipation, and maybe given me something like the smallest sliver of peace.
Something Rubin would never allow. So he’d barricaded the door and then sat in the warden’s chair like it was his throne and waited.
For what, I wouldn’t even try to determine.
So I sat on the floor with my back against the filing cabinet and Rubin in my periphery and listened to the city die.
The screaming came and went and then came again. The brief periods of silence didn’t help. Sometimes the silence lasted long enough to make me believe the screaming was done.
It never was.
Then there was the shooting, the bursts of gunfire clanging like a twisted reveille.
The single shots were the worst, though.
They didn’t explode, they pierced the chaos, finality after the crescendo.
Underneath it all, the generators hummed, unbothered by the collapse around them.
That should have grounded me, the machine working as it intended, but it just reminded me of how meaningless I was.
That realization weighed so heavy, I was almost happy when something fell outside the warden’s office if only for the distraction. Well, as happy as I could be while choking back a scream, as I stared at Rubin.
He didn’t look up from his seemingly fascinating task of cleaning his nails with the warden’s letter opener wrapped in a tissue. “The generator turned over. They installed a cheap one, so it kicks.”
How stupid of me not to know that.
I swallowed the words like I’d swallowed the scream, unwilling to give Rubin the satisfaction of my sarcasm, and sank back against the filing cabinet.
I’d finally gotten used to the revolting carpet deodorizer, but my tailbone ached, and my mouth was dry.
Rubin still didn’t look up when I reached for one of the unopened bottles of water and settled back in my spot. I drank it slowly, deciding to look at everything in the room but him.
I failed.
My eyes strayed to him. His thick blunt-tipped fingers. The half-day’s stubble on his jaw, black and the perfect kind of rough. The angry set of his expression.
He terrified me. Had terrified me every day for seven years. I hated that fear I couldn’t control.
I hated what was underneath it even more.
Because sitting there, my ass numb, my belly empty, my life now measured in minutes, I wasn’t thinking of a way out. Wasn’t trying to renew my personal relationship with God. Wasn’t thinking about the death that surrounded me like air.
I was thinking of him.
His finger breaching me, how the loss of that half digit left me wet and wanting. How the brave version of me would have pulled him closer, forced him deeper.
How much I wished the brave version of me existed.
“You’re staring, miu,” he said, without looking at me.
“There’s not a lot else to look at.”
“No.” He kept his head down but I still felt his awareness like he was staring. “There isn’t.”
He said nothing else, and again I was left with my thoughts.
I was going to die in this jail. I’d mostly made peace with that.
I was also going to die as exactly what Rubin had named me, something I couldn’t deny. Plain, sure, but who cared? Boring? Today had proved excitement was overrated.
Weak.
The truth of it stung in a way that was unbearable.
Because never, not once, in three decades, had I been brave enough, strong enough, to reach for what I wanted.
Who I wanted.
And I’d lost my chance.
“Stand up, Simone.”
Rubin’s voice pierced my rumination like one of those gunshots, and my response to it was as automatic as the generator turning over.
I stood, blood rushing to my feet, though I barely felt the tingle.
Rubin stood and circled the desk, looking as expectant as he always did.
And I responded to his unspoken command and walked toward him, hating how pathetic I was, powerless against it like I was everything else.
I stopped when my shoes touched his, and he looked down, his frown deepening.
He was such a fucking asshole.
He wrapped those thick fingers around my wrist, let them lay there as my pulse raced, and stared at me for long seconds, his eyes excavating the depths of my soul.
I squirmed, anxious for him to excavate something else.
One second, I was staring into Rubin’s eyes, his fingers a heavy weight on my wrist.
The next, Rubin had turned me and I found myself face down on the warden’s desk.
My breath came out in a little umph, and it was only instinct that had me use my free hand to brace myself against the desk.
The wood was smooth against my palm and cheek, the contrast with Rubin’s tight grip only making the wood feel that much cooler, that much smoother, Rubin’s fingers that much more dangerous.
My breath fogged the surface of the desk, a film of white over the rich cherry veneer. The wood grain told me this was real, not the prefabricated junk I’d seen elsewhere. I wondered how much the warden had spent on it.
Not the most important question all things considered, but there was the puzzle of the warden’s taste in decor, which I might have a shot at unraveling, or the puzzle of Rubin, and what he was doing behind me. That, I didn’t have a hope in hell of figuring out, mostly because I didn’t want to.
My heart beat at the same rate as my breath, the cold surface warm now. My wrist throbbed in Rubin’s grip. The rest of my body was on fire.
Because Rubin was behind me, calculating, studying. Deciding. The fear was one thing. The desire something else. Them together was intoxicating.
He kicked my legs apart and stepped into the gap. The press of his muscular thigh against my soft one was distracting in a way I had no framework for, and I was torn between shame and need. Rubin rested his hands on my waist for a moment that was both too long and not nearly long enough.
Then he dragged my jeans and underwear down in one pull and left them bunched around my knees, leaving me bare to him.
I pressed my cheek harder against the desk, trying to imagine what he saw, and worse, wondering what he thought. My curves drew looks that ranged from admiration to disgust. Where would Rubin fall? I was too scared to look back and find out. Reminded myself of what this was—and what it wasn’t.
His voice broke my anxiety-riddled thoughts. “No pretty things under the boring clothes. You wear plain, ugly ones. Why?”
“They do the job.” My cheek was still on the wood, my eyes slammed shut.
“You’re shaking.” His voice dropped, went almost soft, the mocking attempt at kindness just the right amount of cruelty he’d been looking for. “Why?”
“Because I think you’ll change your mind.”
“About killing you, or fucking you?”
“Yes.”
He laughed. “You know I don’t change my mind, Simone.”
He pushed a finger into me before I could brace for it, then pulled it out. “You’re tight. And wet. And shivering.”
He circled my clit and then pumped a finger into me while his other hand squeezed my ass. “Is this a part of the game, too? The whore plays the virgin and tames the big bad wolf?”
He pulled his finger out and left me clenching on nothing, and then the blunt head of his cock was there instead, hot and thick and heavier than his fingers by a mile.
I turned my head and looked back at him. Had his cock not been pressed against my hole and my ass flush with his uniform, I wouldn’t have believed this was happening.
There was something in his eyes, though, there and gone so fast I could have missed it.
But I hadn’t, just like I didn’t miss the anger that flared in its place.
The dare.
Could I take it?
Would I?
“Yes.”
The word was barely a whisper, one that was lost on Rubin’s grunt as he pushed in.
It hurt. He was too big and my body locked down and tried to keep him out, and he came in anyway, slow, forcing me open around him. He fed his cock into me inch by inch and made me take every one of them.
I felt all of it, the burn and the stretch and the impossible thickness dragging deeper and deeper, until his hips hit the backs of my thighs and he was all the way in. Buried. I couldn’t breathe around how full I was. Split open. Stuffed with him.
Again something passed his face, and then his hand came down between my shoulder blades and he looked down at where our bodies connected.
“You are untouched. Were anyway.” His voice was rough, surprised.
“I told you the truth, Rubin.”
He huffed, and his voice came out low and mean. “You’re a liar, miu.”
He pressed my face harder into the desk and then he moved and I lost the ability to think.
He pulled almost all the way out, so slow I felt every inch of him leave me, then pushed back in with a long brutal stroke. Then again, and again, pulling out so slow it set my teeth on edge, then slamming back in so hard it drove the air out of my lungs.
When I’d dreamed of this, I’d imagined soft kisses, the gentle sway of bodies coming together.
In reality, Rubin fucked me with all the hate I’d seen in his eyes, one hand fisted in my hair, the other clamped on my hip hard enough to bruise, hauling me back onto him to meet every thrust. His breath had gone ragged.
His rhythm, which had started so controlled, so deliberate, was coming apart at the edges and giving less than a fuck if I came with him.
“That’s it,” he ground out. “Take every fucking inch.”
I did, the pain of his entry a distant memory, the pleasure of his claiming crowding out everything. There were no rose petals here, no candlelight, only Rubin’s cock conquering my pussy and making it his to use as he pleased.
Everything I’d never known I wanted, and when he curled his fingers into my ass cheek and leaned forward to bite my neck, I came. I didn’t mean to.
I didn’t even know it was coming.
There was no warning, no climb, just climax that tore through me in wave after wave as my pussy clenched around his cock like it didn’t want to let go.
He lost his rhythm midstroke and his cock jerked hard inside me.
He cursed, the meaning of the word uttered in his native tongue unknown, but the fury unmistakable.
My eyes snapped open and I looked back at him as he fisted his cock, slick with me, the crown angry red and leaking as he jerked it hard and came, spilling his cum across my ass.
He stepped back and grabbed a tissue and wiped his cock and tucked himself back into his uniform.
He roughly pulled my jeans up and handed me a tissue. When I met his eyes again, I shivered. It had nothing to do with the cold.