Chapter 29 Monroe #2
My fingers curl into fists, but I resist the urge to slam the bathroom door in Kieren’s face.
I don’t know what version of Kieren is out there this morning, and I don’t want to take my chances.
Plus, now that a weapon has entered the chat and been pointed at my head, the stakes have, needless to say, escalated.
I must tread carefully, at least for the next few hours until I can get out here.
To distract myself, I rage-brush my teeth until they have a pearlescent sheen and start a shower.
Hot water streams down the crown of my head as I slowly come back to life. Every memory from last night I suppressed so I could get a lick of sleep resurfaces with a vengeance.
He held me at fucking gunpoint.
Jace called me Kieren’s trophy.
He put me in a fucking dog cage.
The hidden room within a room.
He threatened to duct tape my mouth shut.
The putrid smell of decay.
He made me sleep in a FUCKING DOG CAGE.
Just as I want to scream, metal shower curtain rings scrape across the rod.
I startle but don’t turn around. The loofa I keep here hangs around the shower knob.
I unhook it and hold it under the container of body wash while I pump out enough soap to wash an elephant.
I start rage-cleaning every inch of my skin, summoning the same vigor I found when brushing my teeth.
Frothy, white foam slides down my shoulders, my back, my breasts.
I scrub at my ass and vagina, not caring that Kieren is naked beside me, because I hope he’s doing the same with his parts after whatever he did in that hidden room last night.
After sleeping with his dried cum residue on my skin, I need it gone.
My face is last to be cleansed, although I cried off all my makeup, and my eyes are still puffy and red.
The second I’m finished with my shower routine, I reach for the curtain, ready to towel dry and get the hell out of this place, when Kieren grabs my upper arm.
“Stop,” he says with chilling firmness.
I stumble until I feel the cool tile of the shower wall against my back.
Kieren’s body presses into mine, shielding me from the cascading water.
His forearms are on either side of my head; his groin is flush with my stomach.
Droplets cling to his long, dark lashes.
Rivulets stream down his tattooed chest, his defined abdomen, catching in the pubic hair around his cock.
My gaze flicks up to his. Hot tears sting my eyes, clouding my vision.
“You put me in a cage,” I finally whimper. I can barely get the words out. My chest heaves in tight, rapid bursts as I try to clamp down my pain.
“You broke my trust,” he grits.
“That’s bullshit Kieren. You held a gun to my fucking head and made me sleep in there the entire night. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me? I woke up and you were gone, Monroe. I thought you had been taken. You have no idea what these heathens are capable of, especially on a night like last. But to find you snooping around in the fucking basement? Are you kidding me? Don’t ever let me catch you down there again, do you understand?
You don’t know the pressure I’m under. You don’t know the sacrifices I have to make for my future. ”
“Then tell me,” I plead. My fingertips skim the stubble on his cheek.
“I can’t,” he says with a heavy hang of his head.
“I’m losing you again,” I cry. “Just like sophomore year. I’m losing you.”
He shakes his head. Water runs down his face, but he makes no attempt to wipe it away. Steam envelopes us in stifling heat, and I start to feel like I’m suffocating.
“I’m right here, Monroe. But I need you to understand something.
” He lifts his head and his dark brown eyes stare directly into mine.
“You are part of this now. You are Sigma. More than that, you’re mine.
As I’ve already told you, if you try to run, I’ll catch you.
If you hide, I'll find you. But most importantly, if you try to fuck up what I’ve worked so hard to achieve, if you get in the way, I will be forced to choose, and I fear it won’t be you. ”
I suck in a ragged breath at his words. Suddenly, the shower feels too hot, my head too light. I push him off me and scramble over the tub ledge. I don’t even bother with a towel.
My knuckles turn white as I grip the sink, struggling to breathe; struggling to make sense of what apparently is my new reality.
The tap squeals shut, and the water stops. Kieren steps out of the shower with ease. A soft terry cloth towel is wrapped around my torso, encasing my wet skin from my breasts to my thighs. Gooseflesh blankets my entire body, and my sopping wet hair has left a generous puddle at my feet.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” I growl, whirling around to see him true. “Whatever is going on with you, since these Ceremonies started, scares me. You’re different.”
“I’m not,” he says insistently, kissing my damp forehead. “I’m the same person I’ve always been. The same person I thought you loved.”
My face quivers with unleashed emotions.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I croak.
“Doing what? Protecting you? Loving you?”
I shake my head as crocodile tears fall. “You don’t. You don’t put someone you love in a fucking cage at gunpoint!”
“I’m sorry, Monroe, if you think I overacted, but try to see it from my point of view.
It was four in the morning. I had barely slept and was hardly able to function.
I roll over and find you missing. I panicked.
Then when I found you snooping around behind my back, I snapped.
You pushed me to my limit,” he explains unapologetically.
“If you don’t want me to snap, don’t do shit like that! ”
“I can’t do this,” I say through ragged breaths. His arms wrap around my back as he pulls me into his chest.
“Yes, you can,” he insists.
“Why do you have a gun, Kieren?”
“For safety, obviously.”
“For your safety or mine, because I sure as fuck do not feel safe.”
“Stop, Monroe,” he soothes, kissing the top of my head as he strokes my wet hair. “You need to calm down. You should know by now not to push me like you did.”
I try to steady my breath. “What happened last night in that room? Did you and the elders have sex with that woman who went back there? Please, don’t lie to me.”
“How do you know they’re called elders?”
“Jace told me,” I admit.
“Why does that not surprise me,” Kieren scoffs. “No, Monroe. I swear on my life. On my grandfather’s life. I did not have sex with that woman.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, the fear that he had been unfaithful.
“Monroe, why would I cheat on you? Look how perfect you are,” he says, spinning me around to face my reflection.
Perfection is not the word I would use to describe my present appearance.
My eyes are bloodshot and puffy. My face is marred with patches of irritated, flushed skin.
Dark crescents rim my under-eyes, and I look pale and exhausted.
“Tell me what happened, then, if it wasn’t sex.”
“It’s an old Sigma ritual. A bunch of chanting. But there are rich and powerful alumni who take it very seriously, and I need to appease these people because I need them to donate funds to Sigma. We’re fucking broke, Monroe. This chapter is one delinquent payment away from foreclosure.”
“Sigma is broke?” I ask with surprise.
“Not Sigma as a whole, but our chapter has struggled for years. Maintaining this massive house on top all the expenses associated with the parties we throw has drained our coffers. I shouldn’t tell you this.
No one is supposed to know about our financial situation nor that Sigma alumni are attending these Full Moon Ceremonies.
Especially that, because if word got out, I would lose everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve. I’d probably get expelled.”
“I won’t say anything,” I promise.
A moment of understanding passes between us as we silently take in our reflection. The tendons of Kieren’s forearms flex as he holds me flush against his chest, and despite the way I felt when I woke up, it feels like we’ve managed a truce.
“Do you still love me?” he asks. His voice cracks in a way that is both desperate and endearing.
I tense, uncertain if I’m ready to forgive him.
“Please, Monroe. I need to hear you say it.”
My stomach knots with inner conflict. He needs me, and in this moment, I cannot remember who I was before Kieren, but I also fear who I will become if we breakup.
“Yes,” I concede, setting my unresolved emotions aside for another time. “I do.”
He kisses my earlobe and down the side of my neck at my response.
My towel plops to the floor, and I stare back at my naked self in the mirror. My teardrop breasts, my shaved pussy, the indentation down the center of my abdomen that Kieren now traces with his fingers.
“Kieren,” I stammer, halting the progression of his hand.
“Don’t push me away, Monroe. Let me give you what I wasn’t able to give you last night.”
He holds my questioning stare in the mirror.
“What? Did you think I didn’t notice how badly you wanted me to fuck you like that woman on the table?
I could smell how aroused you were as you watched.
I knew you wanted me to bend you over the dais and fuck you senseless.
You wanted it raw, like an animal, and it killed me that I couldn’t give you the pleasure you deserved. ”
The hand on my abdomen skims the curve in my waist and runs down my ass. I gasp when Kieren shoves two thick fingers inside my pussy from behind, pumping them in and out.
I hinge forward, watching him finger fuck me in the mirror, his eyes never leaving mine.
He removes his fingers and runs the soft tip of his penis up and down my slit, lubricating his erection with my arousal, then sinks himself inside me, pushing the entire length of his shaft into my tight pussy in one thrust.
A choked moan leaves my lips at the sudden increase in pressure.
His first few strokes are languid and deliberate as he stretches my walls.
I bend forward, resting my forehead on my arms now crossed in front of me, and stand on my tiptoes to give him better access.
Each thrust lifts me off the ground just a little, and fuck, do I want this.
“Look at me, Monroe,” Kieren barks as he picks up the pace.
“I said, look at me.” My head is jerked up from its perch by my hair, and even though my head feels too heavy to keep upright, I force the muscles of my neck to hold it in place.
Satisfied I won’t look away, Kieren lets my damp strands go.
The wet clap of his groin against my ass elicits heated groans, and just like the woman last night, I start begging.
I beg him to fuck me harder, to ruthlessly spear my pussy like a savage, to slam into me until I burst.
I feel my orgasm begin to build alongside the sensation of mounting pressure.
“Pull out when you come,” I plead as his thrusts quicken.
“Fuck, baby, yes. Yes, I want you to soak me. Fucking squirt all over this floor. Fucking drench me, Monroe.”
I scream his name over and over again as he slams into me. The same two fingers that were inside me minutes ago press firmly against my clit, stroking, coaxing me to my breaking point before administering the pinch of pain I need to topple over the edge.
I’ve stopped breathing. My body clenches, turning red, waiting to push out my release.
“Kieren please,” are the last words I cry before he ruins me with one last thrust so deep, I can practically taste him.
He pulls out, shooting hot ribbons of cum across my back, and I explode.
My pussy pulses with my orgasm as I simultaneously bear down, squirting onto Kieren’s thighs just as he demanded.
The sensation of such an intense climax, of that much liquid leaving my body, is… dizzying.
Is…
Oh God…
A fleeting thought to yell, to give warning that I’m going to pass out, flickers in my mind, but not fast enough.
I hit the floor.
And the world goes black.