Chapter Seven
Luna
I awake a few mornings later to the sensation of Ethan kissing down my body. A grumbled “good morning” from me sends his emerald eyes shooting up to me. “Good morning, sweetheart, thought you could use some relief, I know you didn’t sleep well last night.” He’s right about that, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not totally clear of the mobsters and I’m desperate to feel anything, do anything to escape it.
“Thank you, Ethan,” I say, reaching down and stroking his cheek. I tangle my fingers in his hair and pull him up to me, sighing when his mouth meets mine. “What if… what if I wanted to distract myself, with you—by tasting you? I know we haven’t tried that yet, but I want to learn. I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel.” I finish sheepishly. He smiles down at me and tells me I don’t have to ask him twice. We flip so that he is on his back and I reach down to pull off his plaid sleep pants.
His thick cock springs free, ready for me just from our brief kiss. I love how he’s always turned on by me and by my body, it makes me feel wanted and cherished in a way I never dreamed of.
“Is there anything you like or don’t want me to do?” I ask, reaching for his length and slowly beginning to stroke up and down.
“No, Lu, anything you do to me will make me cum,” he says with a laugh. After a moment he adds, “Just take as much of me as you can, baby.” He knots a hand in my hair and pulls me down. I moan at the first taste of him as I swirl my tongue around his leaky tip. Slowly, I slide more of him into my throat, gagging as he fully seats himself in the back of my throat.
“That’s it, Lu, you’re doing so well.” His praise sets me on fire, and I moan again. The sound sends him running and he begins fucking my throat, the pain is nothing compared to the pleasure I’m getting at seeing him let go. He’s always so focused on my release that I’m glad to finally be able to do this for him.
“Is this too rough?” he asks, breathless after a moment, his cock is soaked with a mixture of my saliva and his pre-cum and it’s glorious. I shake my head before lowering again, swirling my tongue all the way down. I continue stroking him, desperate to see him lose control and he begins thrusting into my mouth again.
“About to cum. Want to finish inside of you,” he says, reaching under my shoulders and lifts me so I’m straddling his lap. “Is that okay?” I smile and tell him it is. Luckily, I’m not wearing any panties under the oversized shirt I slept in last night. He reaches a handout and strokes me.
“God, your pussy is drenched, is this all for me?”
“It’s always for you, Ethan,” I gasp as he inserts a finger before removing it and sucking it clean. Next thing I know, I’m lifting my hips and settling on his firm length. He fills me in the most perfect way and the more time we’ve spent together, the gladder I am I waited for him to be my first. To be my only. The thought should scare me, but it doesn’t. Not with him.
He begins thrusting into me and I work to meet each stroke. He reaches out a hand and circles my clit and I can feel myself falling over the edge.
“Can’t last much longer,” Ethan says, “are you almost here?”
“Yes,” I pant, “I-I’m going to cum now.”
I explode. I feel like I’m seeing stars as Ethan erupts inside of me, the hot burst of him already dripping around us.
“God, you look so gorgeous all full of me,” he says, planting a kiss on my lips before lifting me off of him and placing me beside him on the bed. He rises and returns with a warm cloth, wiping me up and planting a kiss on my pussy before laying beside me.
“Well, that definitely distracted me,” I say with a laugh.
***
I’m relaxing on the couch, curled up with the third book in my series and sipping the vanilla latte Ethan made me before he left for work. He brought his fancy espresso machine over here a few mornings ago and it’s been a gamechanger. Although I miss him, I’m glad for the day to myself to read and recharge.
My nightmares have been getting worse and I think Ethan can tell. I’m hoping that by escaping to a new world, I’ll be able to feel a bit better, a bit more like myself. I’m stretched out, facing the back of the cabin when I hear a car pull up. I just assume it’s Ethan coming back early, so I don’t react as quickly as I normally would.
As I turn to greet him, I feel my heart plummet. It’s not Ethan. It’s the dark haired man I saw racing away from the murder scene that night, and what looks to be one of his lackeys. Before I know it, a blindfold is being forcibly wrapped around my eyes and I’m being lifted off the couch.
I start screaming and kicking my assailant, terrified but unwilling to go down without a fight.
“Don’t make this difficult, Luna Stevens, age 24, child of Mark and Louisa Stevens, killed last October.” I shiver at the man’s words, absolutely disgusted that he knows so much about me, so much about my parents.
“What the hell do you want from me!” I scream, still kicking and clawing anywhere I can reach, but it seems to be having no effect. The man that’s holding me is apparently made of steel and I feel my hope dwindling with each passing second.
“Revenge,” the other man growls. I feel the tears dripping through my blindfold as they throw me in the back of their van.
I can’t believe this was the first day I wasn’t full on guard. I’ve been so careful, only leaving the cabin with Ethan or to go to work, where Scott always is if Ethan isn’t there. We decided to tell Scott about my predicament on my first day, knowing that he would protect me if it came down to this.
I feel a pinch in my thigh and a heaviness fills my veins.
God, I hope Ethan can find me. I think before falling into darkness.
***
The sensation of being dragged wakes me. I have no sense of where I am, of where I could be. I feel a quick blast of cold, signaling I must be outdoors and the slight light I can see through my blindfold brightens for a moment. I hear the raising of a door before I’m placed in a chair. Tight rope wraps around my ankles and wrists—the pull of the rope straining my freshly healed wrist—sealing me to the chair.
I hear the door roll down before my blindfold is ripped off and the two grisly men stand before me. I can tell we’re in another storage unit, empty this time, and I’m hoping it’s not too far from Whiskey Mountain so that Ethan stands a chance at finding me.
“Tell us what you saw,” the man from the car shouts at me. I keep silent and he slaps me right across the cheek. A single tear falls at the pain, but I remain silent, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of hearing my pain.
“I’ll give you one more chance,” he says. I debate whether to say anything, but apparently don’t answer him fast enough. He slaps me so hard I see stars.
I hope Ethan knows how to find me.
Ethan
The last few days have flown by in a blur as we settle into a routine. Luna joins me working at the brewery a few days a week and spends her days off at the cabin adjusting to her new life, trying to figure out what her next step should be.
Personally, I think she should stay here forever, but I don’t want to influence her decisions and want her to want to stay in Whiskey Mountain .
Every night, we curl up at her place. I’ve offered to have her come to mine, but I think she feels safest in the cabin and doesn’t want to risk going to a different location when she’s just starting to feel settled. I get it, and I want her to feel safe. Especially because I hear her when she has nightmares about the mafia men coming after her. She wakes up sweating, desperate for some form of comfort. I rub small circles around her back as she gulps water to calm down.
She can usually relax after about fifteen minutes, but it’s not the same and I know the stress is eating at her. I wish there was something I could do, I wish I knew who these men were so I could put them in their place for her. Make sure she never has a sleepless night again.
I’m lost in my thoughts as I walk back to the bar area at the brewery from the kitchen. We were down a cook today so I had to step in for the lunch rush. I was supposed to be spending the afternoon taking Luna on a hike around the lake, but when Scott called saying they were desperate, I came right over.
I think Luna was content to hang at her cabin, she’s been flying through her fantasy series and I know she likes to read when I’m not around to distract her.
I join Matt, one of our bartenders behind the bar while Scott is busy putting out some fires in the brew room.
“Hey, boss,” Matt says as I sidle up next to him. The rush just ended, so there’s only a few stragglers remaining at the bar.
“Hey, buddy, what’s up?”
“Thought you should know, some pretty rough looking guys came in here earlier. They were talking about some girl they were looking for,” he stops and swallows, as if weighing his next words carefully. “I, uh, caught a glimpse of their phones and she looked like Luna, but like Luna on a blurry security cam.”
My stomach drops at his words and I’m running out of the brewery before I can even think about what I’m doing. Scott is coming out of a door just as I’m running past.
“Hey!” he shouts. “What the hell is going on?”
“Luna. Those guys that are after her that we mentioned. Hurry up and come with me!”
Scott doesn’t think twice, he jumps into the passenger seat of my truck and we race off, back to Luna’s cabin. I just hope we’re not too late.
I speed all the way there and we make it to her cabin in less than five minutes. I jump out of truck as soon as we park and immediately know something is drastically wrong, her door has been left open and I know she never would’ve done that on her own.
I hear Scott’s door close behind me and he comes up and pats my shoulder. “I’m sorry, buddy,” he says. Together, we walk into the house and as soon as I see her blanket bunched up on the floor and her book carelessly tossed on the floor, I know she’s been taken.
Scott takes a look around and calls me over when he spots something on the floor. It’s not much, just a card with “Unit 118” and a cut off street name on it. Immediately I know where these sick bastards have taken her. I grab Scott and we jump back in the truck, he suggests we swing by his place and grab some guns before we confront these guys, so after a quick stop to load up, we end up speeding all the way to the only storage complex in Whiskey Mountain.
We pull up to the line of units and sure enough see a glossy van with out of state plates parked outside of unit 118. The door to the unit is closed and we can’t hear anyone inside, but I can sense Luna is here. I just know it.
Scott and I both spent more than a decade in the military and have broken into our fair share of “secure” locations. This storage unit should be a piece of cake. After scoping around the unit for a few minutes, we find an internal hallway that leads to normal doors through each of the units. We figure this route is our best bet as there’s no way they’ll see us coming.
On my count, Scott breaks down that door and I immediately see Luna, tied to a chair, head hanging low, like she’s barely holding on to consciousness. I want to scream at the sight of her, but immediately compose myself to deal with the two men in front of us. They’re caught off guard which works to our advantage.
While we were at Scott’s, we also grabbed some zip ties and duct tape, wanting to be prepared for whatever we encountered here. We hold them at gunpoint, backing them into the empty corner of the storage unit. Once they’re trapped, Scott and I each take one and flip them on their stomachs, placing them each in a kind of hog tie before duct tapping their mouths.
It’s honestly kind of pathetic how easy it was to take these guys down and it’s clear that their life of crime was no match for our military training.
The second I can tell that they’re not going anywhere, I rush to Luna, cutting off her ties with my pocketknife.
“Hey, Luna sweetheart, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” I say pulling her off the chair and scooping her into my arms. She leans her head against my chest and starts sobbing.
“I wasn’t sure how you were going to be able to find me, but I knew you’d come for me,” she says through the flood of tears rushing down her face.
“I’ll always find you,” I say, holding her closer. Never wanting to let her go.
Scott clears his throat in the corner. “I’ll call the cops and handle these guys, E. Get her home.” I thank my friend, giving him a quick hug with Luna still pressed between us, and he places a light, friendly kiss on her head.
“Thanks for coming, Scott,” she says, her smile breaking through her tears.
“You’re one us now,” he says, “besides, we couldn’t lose you at the brewery, we need the help.” That gets a real laugh out of her and she lightly slaps him. I’m glad they’ve gotten close, too. They’re the only two people I care about in this world.
Scott turns and presses the button to open the garage-style door of the unit, clearing the way for us to leave. As I set Luna down in the seat, I see Scott pull out his phone to dial the cops.
“Call me if you need anything,” I shout back, before hopping into the truck. “Just get your girl home safe,” he yells back, turning to kick one of the guys as he was inching towards him. Those guys have no idea what they’re in for with Scott in charge. I don’t feel bad for them at all.
Luna leans on my shoulder the whole way back. Instead of taking her to her cabin, where I know she probably no longer feels safe, I take her back to my place, hoping the change of scenery and the sense of security will make her feel better.
We pull up my winding gravel driveway and she lets out a small gasp as she sees where we are.
“This is where you’ve lived the whole time? We should’ve been staying here from the start,” she says, taking in the 360 view of the mountains, the small pond peeking through the back of the house.
I laugh, glad she can still joke after all she’s been here. I stop the truck and get out, rounding the front to open her door and scoop her out. She tries to tell me she doesn’t need to be carried, but I don’t bother listening and she settles back against me as soon as I shut the door. We walk up the steps and inside, I stop by a panel on the wall before settling with her on the couch.
She tilts her chin to look up for me. “Thank you again for finding me,” she says through a sniffle. “I never doubted you but I was so, so scared that they took me somewhere far away. I didn’t answer any of their questions, I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
“I would’ve found you if it took me days, weeks, years, Luna. And I’m so proud of you for holding out against them, but I’m glad you’re safe. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I lost you. I know it’s soon, and it might seem crazy, but I love you, Luna. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything,” I finish, holding back tears at how much I love this woman and how close I came to losing her forever.
“Oh, Ethan, I love you, too. I think I’ve loved you from the second you helped me in the woods with no questions asked. You make me feel like I have a home for the first time since my parents died and I can’t thank you enough for that.”
We’re both crying now, overcome with the emotion of the day, of this moment. Without another word, we’re peeling off our clothes and I’m crawling on top of her, reaching down to find her already slick between her thighs. I lower myself for her and find myself devouring her pussy, desperate to taste her, to know she’s safe, to know she’s mine.
When she comes apart moments later, I rise and swiftly slide into her, my eyes rolling back at the feel of her warm core wrapped around me. Each stroke feels like coming home and before I know it, we’re both falling apart.
I collapse on top of her, stroking her hair and holding her close, grateful to have her whole, here, and mine.
“I love you, my moon,” I say, stroking her hair that glows in the evening light.
She blushes at the endearment. “I love you too, my hero,” she says with a giggle.