Chapter 27 #2
He proceeds to torture me for what feels like a hundred years. My moans seem to bolster him, but he stops, positioning himself over me. I smell myself on his breath.
“No one else gets to see you like this, legs wide, waiting for me,” he growls. “Tell me.”
“No one else, Trav.”
“Stay.”
I hear the telltale sound of the drawer where he keeps the lube and the snick of a cap, then the wheeze of the bottle as he drenches it.
He pushes his cock into me, bit by agonizing bit, and then drags it out of me.
That’s all it is for a slow minute from hell.
When he’s got a good rhythm going, he crushes me against the floor, pinning my wrists like I’m nothing but goddamn prey he’s captured and fucks into me.
I’m meant to lie here and take it, and oh God, what knowing that does to me.
I whimper, moaning. I don’t recognize my own voice.
“This is where you belong, pretty boy,” his rough voice scrapes out amidst gruff pants. “On your back, taking me, nothing above you but me.”
The rug scrapes under my shoulder blades, and he grinds down harder, fucking me, claiming me.
Yep, I’ll have carpet burn, but worth it.
Conflicting feelings course through me, part of me still wanting to punch him in the face, but the other part is unable to tear away from the delicious way he makes me feel.
But then I remember why I was pissed at him in the first place.
I’m pinned down because I let him pin me down.
All it takes is a surprise wrench and twist to tug my arms free, and before he can wrestle me back into place, I’ve got him on his back, straddling his legs, sinking onto his cock hard enough to tame the beast within him for a few heartbeats.
Gives me time to kick my right foot the rest of the way out of my sweatpants.
“You don’t get to decide my fucking life, Trav,” I snarl, riding him as he watches on in fascination. His fingers trail up my thick thigh.
His eyes are deep, dark spheres of coal, lips curled into a half-snarl, half-sneer that says he can’t decide if he wants to allow this to continue, or if he’s going to fight for dominance.
“If you were actually the one deciding, I wouldn’t intervene, but you’re not,” he says in a leisurely voice, finally deciding to enjoy the show he has on top of him. “So, we do it my way.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I ride him rough and furious, taking pleasure rather than giving it, taunting him, rather than pleasing him. He’s doing the same. It’s a battle of wills. Two of the stubbornest fucks to ever live, trying to break the other.
He meets me thrust for thrust, but as the orgasm inside me builds, it hits a different part of me than it usually does, squeezing something fragile, and my chest seizes.
I hate being at odds with Trav more than I hate him right now.
Angry tears break free, and the only way I want to work out my frustrations is on his dick.
I claw into his shoulders and ride him as the tears stream down my face.
When I look down, his eyes glisten, and my chest heaves again. Pain, there’s so much pain on his face. And that’s what this is all about. Something set Trav off. He’s gone into ultra protective mode, which includes me, apparently.
We come apart one after the other, I don’t know in which order.
He pours into me, and I ride him slow, looking him in the eyes, letting my tears drip onto his face.
I finally feel close to him again. And it’s an odd sort of closeness, tethered from the inside, like we’re two bodies meant to be one.
But it’s the energy swirling around us that’s wrong, dark winds threatening to sever us, influencing our reactions so we’ll keep our distance.
With our bodies pressed together, skin-to-skin, we’re safe in our Dirk and Trav fortress, but will we survive out there?
Trav sits up, sliding his arms up my back, resting his head on my chest. I gather him to me, knowing he’s not right, hoping he doesn’t disappear on me. Has he already solidified the plans with Maxwell? Where are they gonna do it? I’m not sure if I wanna know.
“C’mon, up,” he murmurs.
I find my sweats and the flip-flop that flew off my foot some time ago.
Keeping careful eyes on him, I stretch my sore body—got some new bites and bruises from that one—and he zips up his jeans, adjusting his clothes.
The burning need to say something builds, but I already know this is going nowhere.
“What happened, Trav?”
He scrubs a hand over his face, and I get the sense he’s genuinely trying to pull himself back from the brink. It’s just not going very well.
“Scratches all over his arms … nightmares,” he forces out. “Because of Robin.”
Oh.
Oh shit.
Is Dash still having those? I thought they’d stopped. No, I know they did. Have they resurfaced?
Trav squints. “Did you know?”
“What? No.” But then it dawns on me, he means before. “Well, not this time.”
“Yeah, well, no one saw fit to tell me what was going on with my son, so it’s the first I’m hearing of it.” The bitterness is clear from his tone.
My body clenches with guilt. It hasn’t always been easy being friends with Dash and his dad.
When I made decisions about stuff, the kind of stuff that would leave one of them feeling betrayed, I usually sided with Dash.
Not out of feeling less obligated to Trav—Trav and I formed a strong bond while we hunted for Dash, and that stuck—but I reasoned that Trav was older, that his added life experience would lend understanding to any complicated situation.
For the most part, it’s been true.
But not this time.
He’s hurt.
Not just any old kind of hurt, either, the kind that hits a nerve, that corrodes you from the inside—piercing, slicing, ice-cold treason through the heart of you.
We’d formed an unofficial pact about Dash during the hockey season, and I kept him up to date about his well-being.
Mostly. But there were other pacts about Dash I was involved in.
Like the house one, and the one with Dash himself.
My only real parent has been Hunter, but I still recognized that there were just some things you didn’t tell your parents.
But what do you keep from a friend about his son?
“I’m sorry, Trav. Fuck, I swear if I’d known about it this time, I would have told you.” It’s all I’ve got, but sorry isn’t gonna erase the pain etched into his face.
“It’s fine,” he says, even though it’s not. “I don’t expect you to get it.”
Ouch.
Knife through my chest. And his tone’s all distance.
“Will that make it easier for you, Trav? Will ending Robin be sweeter if you don’t have to worry about my inconvenient opinion?” My tone’s sharper than I mean it to be, but he won’t fucking listen.
He’s got nothing to say because it is the reason, and I guess that’s something. It means my words are getting through to him—they’re just having a helluva time sinking in.
“You’re fucking wrong, though,” I bite out, voice cracking in the same pattern as my heart. “I didn’t get why my mother hated me so much, still don’t, but this I get. Destruction’s coming for you, Trav, for Dash, for us.”
I choke on that last word. Us. Because we are still us, right?
C’mon. Look at me, Trav. Look. At. Me.
“S-Say you’ll forget it—forget about Robin—and I’ll tell my brother about everything. You and me. That I’m only quitting hockey to appease him. Also, I won’t quit hockey.” Yeah, I’m begging. Does he need me on my knees? I’ll get on my knees.
He’s silent, jaw locked.
“Don’t do this!” The words rip out of me, raw and desperate. They echo from the terrified place I never go anymore. It’s a hopeless place. A place I go when something’s already slipped through my fingers.
Trav doesn’t flinch. He still can’t look at me.
“Choose us, Trav. Me and you. C’mon. Choose. Us.”
He finally looks up, and hope blooms warm across my chest. But there’s tension where his smile should be. His features don’t move at all, the tenderness I’ve grown used to vanished as if it were never there to begin with.
And if he does this, it’ll never be there again.
“I have to,” he bites out, forcing himself to keep his gaze locked with mine.
He wants to hide, because it’s all etched into the steel lines of his face.
He’s not choosing vengeance over me. He’s choosing it because he thinks that’s all he’s good for.
Trav protects what he loves—it’s what he knows, his default mode.
But Dash would never want this. He thinks doing this makes Dash safe?
It doesn’t. Maybe from Robin, but not from losing the future that means everything to him.
“I gotta get outta here,” I choke out before storming out the door. Anger’s all that’s protecting me, so I let it rage through me. Without it, I’d run back to him like a fool, begging for something he’s never gonna give me.
Iam fucking pissed. I’m so mad that I haven’t gone in for any of my shifts, which is shitty, I know, but I’d rather that than fight with Trav anymore.
I hate fighting with him, even more than I hate what he’s planning on doing.
And let’s not forget about the fact that I’m barely holding my shit together.
Yeah, no. I’m not leaving the house. Not until I can figure out what to do about it.
He hasn’t called. No texts either. He’s probably with his new bestie, Maxwell.
And I have zero experience with this shit. It’s one thing to get over your man making a massive purchase you asked him not to, but this is murder—murder! I guess … I guess what I have to do is find a way to be okay with it. No one’ll miss Robin. He deserves it for what he’s done.
But should Trav be playing God like that? Deciding who lives and dies?
I don’t believe in God. Well, maybe a “higher power”, but not God. Maybe that means he can decide?
No. No one should get to decide that.
Or are there exceptions?
Ugh. I don’t fucking know.