48. Shane
48
Shane
L ying in my bed, shirtless, wearing only a pair of sweats, I stare at the ceiling, listening to the gentle sounds of the water raining down on her in the shower.
While Monty cleaned up, I offered Rocco some canned food that she’d picked up from the vet. He’d mouthed a few bites, licking my hand as if thanking me for being there. Now, he’s resting peacefully in the living room with a little something in his belly. It drives me mad, feeling like I’d wronged him by getting into this mess with Wesley. The guilt I feel for my actions in this is weighing heavily on my mind.
Montana finally creeps through my bedroom door, her bare feet padding across the floor before she slumps down beside me, wet and fresh out of the shower. Her pomegranate and pear scent invades my senses, and I turn to face her, studying her profile as she stares at the ceiling. Her face is unmoving, eyeing the crack in the ceiling as if it owes her something. As if she knew it was the same crack I’d stared at for endless hours, struggling to deal with a reality that didn’t include her. The same crack that stared back at me the night she moved in, and I felt myself falling into a space I’d never return.
I’m feeling so many things that it’s hard to put everything into place. Deceptions rule me, yet I still don’t feel as if I know Montana the way I should. I should question why I caught her in my room before this all went down, but with everything that transpired, I’m unable to feel anything but gratitude. What were they doing in here?
“So you gonna tell me why you and Wheeter were in my room when I got here?” I ask, unable to withhold my concern as I prop up on my elbow. It’s been eating away at me, the jealousy.
A soft sigh leaves her, and she finally turns her attention to me. She doesn’t utter a word, but lifts her hand to cup my face. Her thumb trails down my cheek and along my jaw, coasting gently over my lips. She touches both piercings, her tongue dragging across her own lips. There’s something twisting around in her mind, words that need to come out, but she’s so selective with her thoughts.
Those gorgeous brown eyes melt me down, and I forget what I even asked her. Her long lashes flutter, and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth as she gazes longingly at my lips. I wonder what memories of me haunt her. What words or phrases of mine stuck beneath her skin, planting their way into her soul. So many promises made, so many declarations of love and obsession.
“You gonna tell me why you have a padlocked fortress under your bed?” she finally asks.
I should’ve naturally assumed she’d be in here snooping at some point.
“Murdered ex-girlfriends. I keep a box of their momentos.”
“Not funny.”
“Don’t tell me you lost your sense of humor now, gutter rat. It was what I liked about you most,” I quip.
“You’re really not going to tell me,” she says, as if already knowing the answer.
“No,” I reply definitively.
I’d love to be open and honest about everything with her, but her secrets still have my heart guarded. That and it’s my only lifeline to her should something pull her away again. Selfishly, I just can’t give that up.
She shakes her head, a solemn look overtaking her as she realizes she’s getting nothing more out of this conversation. Peering at that crack again, she contemplates her next words.
“Liars and thieves between us, you said…”
My hand finds her hip, her shirt showcasing a sliver of flesh, and my thumb dusts over the area, needing to touch the soft skin of her abdomen. It’s impossible not to touch her when she’s so close. It’s as if our flesh was designed to fit together. She leans into it, allowing her body to mold against mine.
“I believe I said that, yes,” I admit. “Just as you claimed to hate dogs.” I peer at her mouth and back, wanting to kiss her.
“Damn dog won me over,” she says despairingly.
“Knew we would,” I say triumphantly.
There’s a slight pause in conversation, but I feel the sizzle of the unanswered questions coming to a head.
“We’re never going to trust each other, are we?” she says softly.
My mind toys with that idea as I catalog the history between us, everything known and everything not.
“I don’t think we’re meant to,” I answer honestly.
Her eyes focus on mine.
“People lie for all different reasons, Montana. To gain an advantage over someone, steer clear of embarrassment, to cover up feelings, avoid punishment, control various scenarios, to protect themselves from others, or to protect others from them.”
She studies me, her eyes searching and picking apart the depths of my statement.
“Sometimes I feel people show the truth of who they are through their lies. That maybe we’re more ourselves with each other because of it.”
All of my betrayals have served to ensure she’s mine because I’ve loved her in the darkest ways you can love someone—possession, infatuation, mania. What I’ve done isn’t right, but it’s what I needed to do to survive while subconsciously finding a way to keep her. Her heart still contains mysteries I’ll never know. But I don’t need all of her stories in order to love her, do I?
“But that’s just me reading into my own psyche.” I grin.
After a small pause, she asks another question that hits me hard, gripping my heart.
“Will you ever feel for me what you felt for Venom?”
Round, timid eyes blink up at me, and for a moment, I question her vulnerability.
“No,” I answer simply. “I’m not meant to.”
Her face drops, and she looks down at my chest. Placing two fingers under her chin, I raise her head, needing her eyes on mine.
“Because Venom isn’t you . And this woman right here, the one beneath me, the one who drives me to the point of madness, the one that rules me in every sense of the word, who forgives me for the unforgivable, the one who allowed me to lose myself within her knowing I was lost to my demons, the one that selflessly came to protect me and my own at that house tonight, the one that learned to play the cello in a few years time to excel at a mission that’s entirely hers to own…that’s the one I feel everything for. The woman that’s right here.”
Her brows lower, and a frown overtakes the softness of her face, placing divots where they don’t belong. She looks away, her eyes daring to part from mine.
“I don’t know your reasons for everything just as you aren’t aware of mine. All I know for certain is that what I feel with you isn’t something that can be reproduced or forgotten. I felt it when I knew one side of you, through codes and data, and I feel it now, even stronger, seeing the other.”
Her lips part, appearing breathless.
“Can you ever forgive me? For what I did to you?” she asks softly.
“Forgiveness isn’t really in my wheelhouse, just as I know it’s not really in yours.”
“We aren’t the forgiving type,” she agrees. “We’d rather seek our own destiny, ruthlessly fighting for vengeance to earn our freedom, never allowing anyone or anything to come in the way of that. Freedom in place of forgiving.”
I sit with her words, wondering what she’s ruthlessly fighting for. Knowing what I know of Montana, I’m still so unsure of her origins. What freedoms is she seeking? It can’t simply be a life away from the disturbing realities of her cam-girl days. Can it?
“But if I’m honest,” I finish, “forgiveness aside, all I ever really wanted was to have you here, asking me that question. So it’s a start.”
Her hand stalls on my chest, fingertips feathering over my tattoos, making me feel a false sense of comfort in her unfamiliar touch.
“I want you to trust me, Shane. I want you to really know me, but opening myself up in that way, revealing the pieces of myself I keep hidden from the world, is something I’ve never done for anyone. Not my mother. Not even my best friend,” she says, eyeing me wearily. “Opening myself to people feels like a pain I can’t even interpret. It’s like unzipping my skin and sloughing it off, standing raw and oozing, my fingers slippery with the inability to pull it back and cover me once again. The torture of vulnerability.”
I swallow the lump in my throat at her words.
“What does your best friend know about you that I don’t?” I question.
Her brow quirks, and the faintest smile toys with the corner of her lip. Just seeing the joy there shatters everything we’re building right now.
“Well, occasionally, contrary to popular belief, certain women never really tell anyone their deepest secrets. Not even someone considered a best friend.”
“I know you aren’t like most, Montana. Your secrets, your darkness…that's why I can’t stay away.” I caress the side of her face, trailing my fingers to her soft, full lips. “You don’t play by the same rules as anyone I’ve ever met. You draw me in, sink your teeth into me, then take me out with your venom. I die, and you bury me beneath the earth, only to have me crawling back, craving more. I can’t explain it. I would never want to. But you know of your power over me. You’ve always known you possess me in the worst, most tragic way.”
“And I’m the weakest I’ve ever been around you, which terrifies me because I’ve never met a man I could trust,” she says, gently grabbing my hand from her jaw and holding it near her chest.
I can feel her heart beating erratically, and I’m unsure if it’s pure discomfort, or insurmountable pleasure at being in my company. I hope for the latter as we silently stare at one another, appreciating that we are both doing something we’ve never done—slowly hammering away at the bricks built up around our guarded castles.
“He was always so kind before he hurt me,” she begins, staring down at the chain around my neck. “He’d sweeten the deal by bringing donuts and candy, watching as my eyes lit up and my mouth watered. He had somehow known that inquiring about my incessant hunger reduced me to that little girl, scared and alone all over again, as if it was the key to harnessing my psyche and ruling me by my own psychological inadequacies. After sweetening me up and filling my belly with treats, he’d make me feel guilty about the gifts he’d given me. I’ve always taken care of you when your mother was sick. The least you can do is wrap your hand around it. Better yet, your mouth.”
“The night you first told me about him, that piece of shit dealer, I was ready to search the entire county for you and lay his corpse at your feet,” I reply, my tone laced with violence. “I didn’t know where you existed, so I scoured the internet, working to find you by any means necessary.”
My hand shakes; I’m revealing too much.
“I knew you would, which is why I couldn’t tell you more.”
“I just wanted to protect you.”
“You would’ve destroyed me by taking away the only thing that meant anything.”
“So you struck first,” I say, finally understanding. “Leave them before they can leave you. Is that why you ghosted me?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. I was working to protect you.”
“From what?”
She takes a deep breath. “I can’t say.”
Confusion rains down on me like boulders. Nothing about her reasoning makes sense to me. I fight the urge to battle this out, shooting her down with words from a time when revenge was my only means of survival.
“I know you’re not set up to trust easily, Montana. But, neither am I. You leveled me with our history, then I worked to level you. We’re nothing but toxic together.”
Her eyes wince in the corners, taking the blow.
“I’m sorry for what I’ve done to hurt you. Know that it was never for nothing.”
My heart twists in my chest, and I swallow hard. If I knew what caused her to leave me, would it change everything? Would it change how I feel about her now?
“You know some of the darkest aspects of my young adult life,” I admit, remembering our conversations about my abuse, the self-harm, and how it all amplified in her absence.
“And you mine,” she says.
I recall more of those conversations. The way the anger had fueled me, listening to her describe the horrors of living beneath her mother’s roof. All I wanted was to protect her, to free her of that cage, and I did everything I could to ensure it would happen.
“How are we really here?” I question myself.
So many days, I envisioned this moment—her lying here beneath me, expressing her reasons, silently wanting me. Needing this. Craving me the way I so vividly craved her. I worry it’s that fever dream again. Terror fills me, horrified that I’ll wake up on the street, bloodied and bruised, this all being the worst kind of drug-binge-induced fantasy that sent me too far. I never want to tear away from this moment. Her presence being ripped from my hands again would be my greatest tragedy.
“I want to try something,” she murmurs against the skin of my chest. Her fingers trace the curvature of my pecs, then run down the line of my abdomen, dragging back up beneath my sternum.
She looks at me like she can hear my thoughts.
“I want to make us real, Shane.”
My lips part and my pulse pounds in my throat. I feel unsteady. Making us real means entertaining a new element—one we have yet to cross into.
“Real?” I question.
“Yes. I want it to be me you envision this time, not her .”
I understand what she’s saying. I want it to be her too, not dreams of a person who’s an online fantasy without her own dirt. I want the pain that comes with love, the messiness, the risk, because without it I’m dead anyway.
“I hope you’re careful,” I whisper, locking her into my gaze. “This isn’t something you can come back from.”
She sits up beside me, cautiously eyeing my mouth.
“I mean it, Montana. I won’t lose you again. I won’t survive it.”
My hand slides behind the back of her head, fingers weaving into her hair, holding her.
“I wouldn’t want you to,” she whispers.
Her fingers trace the line of my necklace along my neck before she slowly wraps it around two of them, tightening it like a leash, and roughly pulls my mouth to hers.
Our lips connect, and I’m like a man starved.
Kissing Montana is like touching a live wire. It hurts like hell, and shocks your system entirely, but you just can’t let go. You can’t stop, because even if it’s torture to your soul in all the worst ways, the conductive force that she contains would find you again and again until she ends you so tragically. There’s no use in letting go.
Our tongues dance together with slow strokes, caressing, and our bodies ignite, rubbing together like a couple of teens, new to the overwhelming exploration of sensations. The need to claim her overtakes me, but her need to claim me overpowers us both.
Her body writhes against mine, her deprived center rubbing against my thigh, all needy and hot. My focus is on her mouth, her perfect fucking mouth. She meets my every suck and nip with her own. Her phenomenal tongue teases in the most enticing way, licking along the length of mine as if it was my throbbing cock.
She pulls back from the kiss, and we fixate on each other, the roughness of our choppy breaths meeting between us. She orders me to sit up higher on the bed. I obey, sure she’s going to straddle me and continue with the kiss, but she surprises me by hopping off the bed to search for something. Reaching behind the bars of my headrest, she lifts a spare extension cord.
A daring glance finds me, and she reaches for my wrist, wrapping the cord tightly around it. She knots it, then does the same to the other wrist, effectively restraining me to my bed. I watch her every move, living for the reality of being her puppet—her toy to play with. Her object to own.
“I’ve always felt it unfair that butterflies were so beautiful,” she says, tightening up each knot.
I flex my fingers, attempting to pull at the restraints, to no avail. Fuck, she locked me up good.
“Something about it never really sat right with me.”
I listen to her words as she begins removing her clothing piece by piece. Lifting her shirt over her head, her hair falls across her face. I crave tucking it behind her ears, desperate to see what I’d spent so long being denied. The masks online never did hide that haunted look in her eyes, however. My beautifully broken girl.
She removes her bra next, her supple breasts swaying before me, and my mouth waters for a taste. The handfuls of soft flesh are just out of my reach, those pink-tinted nipples luring me with their perfection. She keeps her underwear on, a red lace thong reminiscent of the one Lana once wore. The one she’d stuck into the wall with my knife.
I wonder if she was truly envious of her. Lana had selective parts of me that Montana left in the dust, but she never had all of me. It almost makes me want to call up Lana and invite her over just to see if my girl's claws come out. I want to see what all those cunt-slitting threats were about.
“Who could hate the beauty of butterflies, Monty?” I ask, entertaining her random statement.
Her leg slips over my propped-up body until she’s comfortably straddling me, her ass resting just above the heavy tent in my sweats.
“Someone who can appreciate the disturbing truth of evolution.”
She has my full attention. My heart races as she touches the inside of my forearms, the scars that are piled on top of one another, layered in traumatic expansion.
“Why should change insinuate something more visually appealing? I feel like our dirt, scars, pasts, and darkness should be worn proudly. Why celebrate morphing into an acceptable societal standard when the trauma and grit we’ve endured stays with us into our next phase?”
Her fingers dust over the cigarette burns, touching each one of them. The ones he gave me on those nights he forgot who he was, and the ones I gave myself every time I remembered. I shudder beneath her caress.
“Are we to hide our past simply because it isn’t pretty? Should we not wear our scars as badges of honor, proudly flaunting them in the faces of those who’ve led a life lacking real pain? Real grit?”
Leaning over me, her taut nipples feather over my chest, and I clench my jaw. She slides up higher, her breasts hovering over my mouth. I part my lips, my tongue seeking her flesh, but yet again, she moves just out of reach. She dips her head, and her breath tickles the skin of my wrist. Her lips press gentle kisses over every previous wound leading from my wrist to my elbow, inching closer to the raised, lengthy scar on my left forearm. I peer up at her through my lashes, and her eyes connect with mine as her pink tongue darts from between her lips. She licks the length of my scar, and my body shivers beneath her.
“What darkness have you carried into your next phase, Montana?” I whisper, working to contain my desires.
I know her history—her past sexual abuse—but she doesn’t wear visual badges like I do. Her scars are invisible. The kind you battle every day in the darkness and solitude of your restless mind. She conquers and defeats those all on her own. Her dirt is the kind you swallow after being buried beneath it, left desperate for air. The kind that threatens to silence you daily.
Montana’s head rolls along mine, our noses brushing together before her lips move softly against my mouth.
“You,” she whispers back. “You are the darkness that I want to wear proudly.”
My throat tightens with her words, my heart open and awaiting hers, needing her to an extent that would terrify anyone who considers themselves normal. My mouth opens, and I extend my neck to kiss her, but again, she withdraws at the last minute.
Leaning to the side, I study the curvature of her waist as she reaches toward my nightstand, noting the small scars on her ribs with stories left untold. I seek to own them all. To know her every tale.
When she opens the drawer, I perk up, curious as to what’s coming next. She rummages around for a second, grabbing something before sitting her round ass directly on top of my blood-filled cock. Popping a cigarette between her lips, she sparks a lighter, and the flame ignites. I’ve never seen her smoke before, but she does it like a seasoned vet. Her luscious lips form an O, and she blows the smoke over my awaiting body.
“What’s your safe word?” she asks, eyeing my neck, then abdomen, unabashedly fucking me with her eyes as she takes another drag of the cigarette.
My brow quirks. “Red.”
Her lips curl into a tight smile. “How original.”
I drag my tongue across my bottom lip, attempting to withhold my smirk, remembering the feel of our first time.
Something about us together is so innately lethal and wrong. We are the type of people who, in reality, should never be together, but will find any way to make it happen. We get high off the other’s crazy, come alive beneath the other’s torment, and fall harder under the other’s spell.
“I deceived you, Shane,” she whispers. “Just as you’ve deceived me. Time and time again…”
“Does the guilt ever let up?” I ask, needing answers of my own.
She contemplates before saying, “Only if you believe you’re in the wrong.”
She stretches her arm toward the nightstand, tapping the excess ash from the cigarette into an old Coke can.
“We’ve hurt each other so many times,” I say. “Tormented adoration…will it ever end?”
Shaking her head, Montana regards me with a look of understanding laced with some darker. Deeper.
“Not today.”