15. Chapter 15
Asher
I wake up with a start and the distinct feeling that something is wrong.
Noah isn’t here.
He was here; I had my arms around him, my hand resting under his chin, but now he’s not anymore, and the basement is cold and damp without him, making a shiver lash through me.
Something else is wrong too.
My hand is free. The weight of the chain is gone, and where my makeshift handcuff used to be, there’s a red indent on my wrist.
Did he forget? Did he not chain me up when we returned from the bath? No, he did?…?I remember?…?Don’t I? Yeah—yesterday, I was dancing, and I fucked up. I stumbled. It should be there.
Why would he unchain me? Why would he leave me alone?
The stairs loom in front of me, and my feet take me there on their own. I just have to see where he went?…?Maybe he’s upstairs, making me breakfast. Yeah, that has to be it.
The tap of my foot against the first step feels wrong. As does the next. And the next. The sense of dread increases the further I go. When I reach the unlocked door, it creaks ominously when I open it.
“Noah?”
The house echoes his name back to me, confirming I’m alone.
There’s a kitchen to my left, an entryway with a closet to my right, and a corridor leading into two bedrooms. I check them, but they’re all empty. The interior is about what I expected: outdated furniture, patterned wallpaper. Looks like no work has been done here for at least two decades.
I settle on a barstool by the kitchen island, trying to calm myself down, to think rationally. Noah always lets me know when he goes hunting. He would have waited for me to wake up or shaken me awake himself. He wouldn’t just leave me uncuffed like that, right? He wouldn’t.
After a look around, I find my phone on the kitchen counter. It unlocks as soon as I swipe the screen.
There are a few emails from school and a notification about my parents topping my account up, but that’s it.
I check the messaging history with Lilith just to see if Noah was telling the truth back then, and he was; Lilith asked me where I’d run off to, and Noah replied, asking her not to contact me again. And she hasn’t.
It’s January 21. Three weeks of radio silence. None of my so-called friends have tried to contact me either.
Nobody cares about me.
The realization hits me like a punch to the chest.
They don’t care if I live or die. They don’t care if I vanish in the middle of a party and don’t show up to school for weeks. They don’t give a shit about me.
No one does. No one but Noah.
Where the hell is he?
I don’t have his number, so I can’t call him. I could look for him, but where? I’ve never ventured into the forests where he does his hunting, and forests creep me out, anyway. All I can do is wait.
I glance out the window and at the back door to the yard. The weather outside is a dreary mixture of white and gray. The light is already waning.
I thought I’d be relieved to be free, but instead, my mind is occupied with worry for my captor. My former captor, I suppose.
I could run right now. I could walk out of here and never come back, but I can’t escape the feeling that something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong, and my mind fills with dread and a possibility I don’t want to consider.
If you don’t, I’ll do it myself.
He can’t?…?He can’t have just left me like this, right? No, I have to wait for him to come back. When he returns, I can get out of here, but not before I know he’s okay.
I wait for hours, until tears press against the back of my throat, and as time passes, so does the hope that he’ll ever return. What if he’s truly gone? What if he’s done what he promised he’d do, what he was about to do the night he found me?
I hide my face in my hands, elbows on the kitchen island as I sob, feeling more alone than I ever have in my life.
“Noah,” I whimper. “Please come back.”
Fleeting thoughts come and go of getting out of here and getting drunk or high. I could use some distraction from the pain of losing Noah—Noah, who I’m supposed to hate, who caused me so much humiliation and despair. But what he’s done so far is nothing compared to this.
The worst thing he’s ever done to me is leaving me alone.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting and crying by the kitchen island.
I can’t think through my grief, can’t move through it, even if I wanted to.
My palms are covered in snot and tears, and I wipe at my face, but they keep coming.
The grief?…?I can’t stand it. I can’t stand him being gone, and the feeling alone is terrifying, but what if it’s true?…
What terror would come to me, then? I’m completely alone. Without Noah, I have no one.
Damn him for making me this way. Damn him for making me depend on him for more than food and water.
I need his comfort, his compassion, his touch?…
I can’t be without him, and he can’t make me.
But what do I do if he doesn’t come back?
Return to my old life of drugging and drinking and not giving a fuck?
I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that.
There’s a scratching noise to my right, then a blast of cool air to the side of my body, but I barely notice it. I keep hiding my face in my hands, wiping at my tears, still lost in my grief.
“Asher?”
I look up.
Noah stands there, a rifle in his hands, hair soaked from the rain-mixed snow.
“Oh god, Noah?…” My voice is thick, choked up, as if I’ve swallowed all the sorrow in the world. “I thought?…?I thought you’d left me.”
“I thought you’d done the same.” Noah places the rifle on the kitchen island. He looks like he’s been crying too, his eyes red-rimmed and shiny. Fuck, he’s so beautiful.
“You let me go,” I sob.
“I know.”
“And you?…?you were?…”
“I was about to go through with it, but?…” He shakes his head, jaw clenching.
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry ?” I shoot from the barstool so violently that it flips over and crashes to the floor. I lurch toward him, grabbing hold of his collar and pushing him to the wall so hard our teeth clatter. “You thought you could just abandon me like this?”
“It’s what you wanted,” he protests. “You wanted me to let you go.”
I shake my head, gritting my teeth. “Not like this, Noah. Not like this.”
“Then how?…” He swallows thickly. “Then what do you want?”
“Why did you uncuff me?”
“You know why.”
“Why did you leave?”
“You know that too.”
“Then why?…?why did you come back?”
He shakes his head, jaw clenched hard. “I was just trying to do the right thing, Ash.”
“Fuck the right thing. Come here.” I rip him toward me, capturing his lips with mine.
He gives a muffled groan of protest, but I shove him harder into the wall, our bodies pressed tight. Eventually, his hands come up to scramble at my hair. I grip his own hair ruthlessly and rip his head backward, leaving a trail of kisses down his throat.
“Fuck you,” I whisper into his skin. “Fuck you for making me worry like that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d?…?That you’d worry about me in that way. I didn’t know you cared.”
“Yeah, you did. You just wanted to make me say it.”
“No, Asher. I didn’t want?…” He gulps. “I didn’t know?…”
“Well,” I say roughly. “Before you die, you have to experience this.” I get down on my knees and rip at his jeans, gazing up at him.
“You have no idea how good this feels.” With that, I yank his waistband down and free his half-hard cock.
It’s uncut, and what’s visible of the head is flushed a dark pink.
“Oh god?…” Noah trembles, hands braced on the wall.
Okay?…?what now?
A few girls have done this for me, and I’ve seen it done in porn more times than I can count. How hard can it be?
I lean in and lick a testing strip at the head.
The reaction is immediate; Noah inhales a shaky breath above me, and his legs start shaking.
I grip his trembling thighs, keeping him in place as I take the head into my mouth, just holding it there for a while, feeling it swell on my tongue.
He tastes of musk, a little of the forest, and a lot like just?… him.
I slide further down, taking him in along with the staggering relief that he’s alive . That we’re both alive.
Fuck, I could choke on that relief, and I do—taking him too far down my throat and bumping up against a part that makes me gag.
“Holy shit,” Noah mumbles. “Ash, that feels?…”
I pull off his cock and jerk him with my hand instead. Sloppily, eagerly, exposing the shiny head. “Don’t hold back. You can come when you want to. Come in my mouth if you want.”
“I will,” Noah breathes. “Soon.”
Yeah, I thought so. Smirking, I flick my gaze up to him as I swallow him back down.
His cock is shaped differently from mine—the head smaller while the shaft tapers and gets wider at the base.
It makes sucking him off a little difficult; I have to hinge my jaw open so wide it hurts, but I don’t care as long as he’s staring down at me, slack-jawed, eyes glittering, and fingers trembling in my hair.
Lilith used to enjoy pinning me down out of nowhere and blowing me until I came. She used to make it a game, acting all smug and satisfied when I’d shot my load into her mouth. She used to kiss me afterward, having me taste myself on her lips.
I want to do the same to Noah. Find out what his pleasure will taste like. See his reaction when I kiss him breathless and push his cum into his virgin mouth.
I’m the first to ever do this for him. I’m the first to run my tongue along the underside of his cock, and I’m the first to push him as far into my throat as I can.
I grip his thighs to keep balance, feeling them shake.
I dig my fingers into them, wanting him to hurt a bit, wanting him to realize this is really happening—that he’s really getting his dick sucked for the first time in his life.