18
18
Dolly
The pink cocktail that Goldie had given me tasted nothing like vodka. It was fruity with a slight kick to it. If I had to stay down here with these loud, rough, slightly scary people, then I needed something to ease my nerves. Two men had already gotten in a fight. Brick and Tex had broken it up. There was a blonde woman who was currently straddling a guy I didn’t know on one of the sofas, and I was afraid to look in that direction again because I wasn’t so sure they weren’t having sex.
“Hey, beautiful,” a guy I didn’t know said as he leaned against the bar, facing me.
I looked up at him and forced a smile. He was around my age, maybe a year or so older. His arms were bare and covered in tattoos, and he was lean but still built well.
“Off-limits, Pinch,” Nina informed him. “Go flirt with one of the club sluts.”
The guy grinned at Nina, but his gaze came right back to me. “Why would I want to do that when there’s a pretty thing like this one sitting here, all alone?”
“Unless you want Micah on your ass, you will walk away,” Nina warned.
He didn’t budge, but his grin grew bigger. “Micah’s busy fucking Dylan,” he replied. Then, he leaned closer to me. “Tell me, sweetheart, what’s your name?”
I’d never been hit in the chest, but I imagined that the current sensation that slammed into me at his words was what it would feel like. My nails bit into my thigh as I squeezed, trying to control the raw emotion creeping through me.
I wasn’t enough. I was never enough. I would never be enough. No one wanted me. I was nothing more than a pawn to the only guy who I’d thought wanted me. How much more rejection could I take before I cracked completely?
“PINCH!”
Micah’s shout caused me to jump, startled. The room quieted, and the guy in front of me paled as he began moving back from me, his eyes widening. The sting from my nails breaking my skin didn’t concern me. It was a relief in a way. The pain taking away from the reality of how unwanted I was. Reminding me of how I had once used that like a drug. I’d forgotten how it felt, how it numbed the truth.
“Don’t look at her again.” Micah’s voice was threatening. “Don’t talk to her. Don’t breathe her fucking air.”
“About time you got down here,” Goldie said to Micah with a scowl on her face.
Micah was beside me, his body close enough that his arm brushed against my back. “You okay?” he asked, leaning down toward me.
One hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two.
“Dolly?” His voice sounded concerned.
I had to respond.
One hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two.
I managed to nod my head. The guy he’d called Pinch muttered an apology in my general direction, then headed to the other side of the room.
Micah’s fingers wrapped around my upper arm. “Come with me.” His words didn’t leave anything up for discussion.
He was gently pulling me from my seat. I could either fight him or stand up. Not wanting to draw more attention to myself, I did as told, although I hoped he intended to take me to a room and leave me. Talking to him after what had happened at the apartment earlier would be more humiliation dropped on top of what I was already suffering.
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I kept my gaze down, not enjoying being the center of attention. I was unfamiliar with it, and I was finding I didn’t care for it at all. Micah wrapped an arm around my shoulders and led me out of there, through the red door. Once we were in the dark hallway and away from prying eyes, I moved away, shrugging him off me.
One hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two, one hundred twenty-two.
“I prefer you not touch me,” I said, walking away from him. Unsure where it was I should be going.
“We both know that’s not true, Tink,” he said behind me.
I stopped and inhaled a deep breath. I wouldn’t allow this to break me. I was stronger than that. I had to be. I’d lived through worse.
“Just take me to a room and drop me off. I want to be alone and get through this hell so that I can go back home,” I replied.
Micah walked past me and toward the stairs. “Fine,” was all he said.
I fell into step behind him and tried to tamp down all the anger, hurt, and mix of several emotions churning in my chest. I should add hate to that list. I hated that he could make me feel like this. That I cared what he thought of me. I hated that I wanted his approval. And I hated that he’d pushed me to self-harm. It had been years since I’d injured myself on purpose. To deal with my inner turmoil. I’d been to therapy for it. I had overcome it. Yet Micah had sent me back to it with little work on his part at all.
We reached the top, and he turned right, but he didn’t stop at the door to the room I had been left in the last time I was here. Instead, he kept walking until he reached the end of the hallway and opened the last door, then stood back and motioned for me to go inside. I didn’t bother looking at him as I walked by him and into the new room.
I was so focused on showing no reaction to him at all that I didn’t realize the room looked like it belonged to someone. It was clearly lived in. The door slammed, startling me. I spun around to see Micah standing there, watching me.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“My room.”
His room? My eyes scanned the area again, paying more attention to details. The king-size bed didn’t take up even half the space. The room was twice the size, if not three times bigger, than the other room I had seen. A massive flat screen covered the wall across from the bed. A black dresser sat below it. There was a guitar in a stand in the left corner of the room, a pair of jeans thrown over a brown leather chair. And the scent, it was as if I had shoved my face in Micah’s chest.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked him, finally turning my gaze back to his.
“All the rooms are full. My bed is the only available one,” he replied, then began to shrug off his leather vest as he made his way over to the dresser. “It’s a big bed, Tink. You’ll have plenty of room.”
Was he being serious? He was planning on us both sleeping in the same bed? My hands fisted at my sides. Did he think this was funny?
“I won’t sleep in that bed,” I said, staring at it with loathing. Knowing what he’d been doing up here just a few minutes ago.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Is that so? Interesting since you were ready to let me fuck you just a few hours ago.”
The humiliation from his words hit me, and I closed my eyes and tried to focus on not showing any emotion. When I looked at him again, I felt all the anger, rejection, and betrayal rise up inside me.
“I had a moment of insanity,” I snapped. “Let’s blame it on my being…slow.”
Micah took three long strides until he was standing so close that I could feel the heat from his body.
“Don’t ever,” he said through clenched teeth, “say shit like that about yourself again.”
I tilted back my head and glared up at him. “I’m sorry. I was unaware only you were allowed to insult and demean me.”
His nostrils flared as he stared down at me. The flash of regret I saw in his pale blue eyes wasn’t enough for me to feel any sympathy for him.
“Dolly, I…” His gaze dropped then, and his entire body tensed. “What the fuck happened to your leg?” he demanded angrily, then went down on one knee and pushed my skirt up further to see the smeared blood from where my nails had broken my skin. “Who did this?!” The threat in his voice made me shiver. But his touch probably also had something to do with that.
“I did,” I bit out, pulling my leg free from his hold as I stepped back.
He stayed there on the floor, staring at me as if he didn’t know me. Confusion softened his expression, but his jawline told me he was still clenching his teeth. “You did this? On purpose?”
I didn’t have to answer him. He deserved nothing from me. Yet it seemed impossible to say nothing when he was looking at me like that. As if he was physically in pain himself.
“I didn’t mean to. I was dealing, internally. It happened,” I explained, then turned around so he couldn’t see my face or the damage I had done to my thigh. “Just leave me alone. Please. I just want to be alone.” So I could curl up and cry without an audience.
I heard his footsteps on the hardwood floor, but he wasn’t leaving. I closed my eyes just as his hands wrapped around my upper arms.
“I don’t want to leave. I want to be here. With you.”
No, no, no. He would not do this to me. I couldn’t ride the roller coaster of emotions that Micah Abe could send me spiraling on and come out intact.
“You made it very clear you didn’t want me.”
His grip on my arms tightened. “You think my leaving was not wanting you?” He let out a sigh. “Tink, that was the opposite. That was me saving you from me. You deserve better.”
Of course he’d make himself out to be the hero. Soften the blow so I wouldn’t hate him. Micah was an expert at manipulating women and men alike.
“I’m sure that was the reason you stared at me as if I were a freak of nature, then bolted from the room,” I replied and tried to free myself from his grasp. My attempt was done in vain.
Micah pulled me back against his chest with ease, as if I hadn’t been pulling in the opposite direction. “Nothing,” he whispered, his mouth close to my ear, “about you is a freak of nature.” His right hand slid up and over my shoulder, then brushed my hair back. His thumb began to caress my neck in a small, circular movement. “You’re beautiful, sweet, thoughtful, kind, charming. I can’t think of a man that is good enough for you. That deserves to have the privilege to touch you.” His lips pressed against my temple. “I sure as fuck don’t. But I want to. So bad that it’s eating me alive inside. The smell of you on my fingers is driving me crazy. I’ve almost sucked your taste completely off, trying to get more of it.”
My body rebelled against my brain as it trembled and seemed to melt back against his hard chest. His words held power over my good sense.
“Sit down on the bed and let me get something to clean up your leg. I don’t like seeing you hurt,” he said as his hands moved to my waist, and he moved me forward until I had no choice but to turn and sit down, like he had instructed.
My eyes slowly traveled up his jean-clad thighs and stopped at the bulge in his crotch. Surprised, I snapped my eyes up to his face. I felt my own cheeks heating as a devilish grin tugged at his lips.
“Stay here,” he said simply, then made his way to the bathroom door that stood open on the other side of his room.
When he was out of sight, I dropped my focus to my thigh.
The marks from my nails were clearly visible, even with the smeared blood surrounding them. Shame began to unfurl in my chest. It had been years since I had taken a knife to myself. Once, it had been a need so strong that I couldn’t control it. Memories of locking myself in the attic with my dad’s pocketknife haunted me.
“Tell me why.” Micah’s urge wasn’t harsh, but it felt as if it was a demand. He knelt down in front of me again and took a damp cloth to wipe away the blood. He looked up at me once he had it clean. “Your nails?”
I nodded, but as to telling him the why, I wasn’t ready for that yet. The why was a part of my past that only Pepper knew about.
He ran the pad of his thumb just under the broken flesh. I wanted to cover it up, hide it. Especially from him. It revealed too much. More than I was capable of sharing. Micah wasn’t someone that others ignored. He always got what he wanted. But this wasn’t something I could give him. The reason why was mine. It had to stay there, locked away. I feared talking about it would bring it back. The dark draw to cause pain that had once held me.
“This might sting a little,” he warned me as he took the antibiotic ointment and squeezed some on his fingertip, then coated the marks I’d left.
The coating didn’t hurt, but there was a warm tingling with it that I couldn’t be sure was the cream or just my body’s reaction to Micah’s touch.
He cleaned the excess from his finger, then opened a bandage and placed it over my wounds. He took my hand and found the blood under my fingernails, then cleaned it with the cloth. Once he was done, I expected him to stand up, but instead, he bent his head and kissed right below the bandage, then lifted his gaze to mine.
“Never hurt any part of this beautiful body again,” he told me with a fierceness in his expression. “If you need to hurt something, then hurt me. Not you. Never you.”
I’d never hurt another person in my life, but his request—or rather demand—felt as if he had managed to reach inside me where I was the most damaged and soothe it, the way he had my visible marks. My head knew that allowing Micah to have any hold on me was asking for future agony, but the rest of me wanted nothing more but to beg him to hold me. Even if for a moment. It was foolish, but he made me feel safe. I’d had very little of that in my life.
“These heels you wear are sexy as hell, but they can’t be comfortable.” His tone was softer, slightly teasing. He slipped my shoes off my feet and ran his hand over them, massaging the ache before letting them go.
When he began to stand back up, I knew it was over. I’d be alone again, and the torment of the past would seep in. I’d handle it the best way I could and hope that my will was stronger than my urge.
He nodded his head toward the other end of the bed. “Get up there and lie down. I swear the sheets are clean. No one has been in them but me.”
Sinking into his scent might be the worst idea for my current mental state, but I wanted it. If I had to be left with my demons to battle, then at least I could pull the covers over me and soak in where his body had been. I was done arguing or trying to save myself from the future misery this would bring me. I scooted back and pulled down the blankets to slide underneath. The soft warmth gave me little comfort, but it was better than nothing.
Micah bent down and began to unlace his boots. I watched him in silence, unsure what to make of it. When he stood back up and made his way over to the bed, hope slowly began to unfurl inside my chest. He pulled back the covers, and still wearing his jeans, he slid in beside me.
“Roll over,” he said in a husky whisper.
I was facing him, and I wanted to keep looking at him, but I did as he had asked. Once I was turned, his arm came around me, and he pulled me back until I was pressed against his chest.
“You’re staying with me?” I asked, surprised and almost giddy at the thought of being held like this by Micah Abe.
“Seems there is no place else I’d rather be,” he replied. He pressed his face into my hair, then inhaled deeply. “Go to sleep, Tink. I’ll be here.”