51. Montana
51
Montana
I try to not-so-subtly stare at him as he sleeps, wondering how someone so deviant and vile can sleep so soundly.
Thinking of his dirty mouth makes me smile. I don’t feel like a day will come when I’m not in awe of the dauntless man before me. He isn’t coded like the rest. Most would find him absolutely appalling. His violent nature, addictive tendencies, endless jealousy, and loathsome behavior are all a storm of chaos that would lead any normal, right-minded person astray.
But his chaos calls to mine.
I’m still sore in various places from last night. We fucked like animals. We fucked like it was our last day on earth. We fucked like two people who’d never reconnect again. It was wild and uninhibited. Insane and ruthless.
Shane took me like a man gone mad, marking my skin as his own, then begging and pleading to lick his mess from my body as he whispered words of love and admiration. It was a whirlwind of emotions that cycled through us, an onslaught of feelings that compounded unto us both.
I’ve never experienced a connection like his. It started as physical, from my appearance alone drawing him to me in a world of code and anonymity, bled into emotional, where lines got crossed as our conversation grew personal, then became tragic and destitute, when I shut off that world and sought justice for the wronged humans behind the screen. We’re lucky, though. Through the mess, our soiled hearts always demanded each other. Pushing through walls and barriers, we found that two lost souls could save one another.
I’m stuck on a memory of a conversation we had on CyprusX.
A day that goes by without talking to my Ven isn’t a day at all. It’s impenetrable hell.
You always know how to light me up again, King. Will we always be like this? Will I always have you?
I feel we’ll always be tied in some twisted, intangible way. When you really love someone, you appreciate their worth, flaws and all. You refuse to let go, no matter what tries to tear you apart. I refuse to let this go.
The boy I loved who turned into a man I’m only beginning to know. My heart throbs in its cage, and the words spill from my lips.
“I’m in love with you, Shane,” I whisper ever so softly, rubbing my thumb over his uniquely carved eyebrow before running my palm along his jaw. “Forever my King. It’s not right, but it’s true.”
“I’ve always loved you,” he whispers back, barely moving his mouth. “Refuse to let you go.”
My heart skids to a stop in my chest, panic swirling. I didn’t even realize he was awake. His thick lashes flutter open as he orients himself, his eyes full of admiration and tenderness. Wrapping his arm over my hip, he pulls me closer beneath the covers until our chests meet. He drapes his leg over my calves, locking me against him, and sighs in contentment.
“You’re the dirtiest little moth I’ve ever seen.”
My smile widens at the reminder of last night. My hatred of butterflies.
“Covered in your dirt.” I smirk.
“Among other things.” He grins to himself, pride written on his face.
“I really need to get up and get ready,” I whine, snuggling into his embrace.
He tightens his hold. “No.”
I try to pull back again, but his firm arms encase me, holding me tighter.
“You’re staying in this bed with me all day.”
That sounds phenomenal, if I'm honest. A day of losing myself to this man, exploring ourselves sexually, and pushing boundaries we’ve never imagined…but reality slips into my mind’s forefront, and the reasons for my being here trickle down on me.
“Shane, I have to email this economics paper to my professor.”
“Fuck school, you don’t even care.”
“Well, then I have a meeting later today.”
“Emphasis on later . We’ve got all day.”
“But it’s important,” I say.
He pulls back to look at me. “With the conductor?”
I’m not sure how or why he would assume that, but I’m not surprised he’d know. The only reason I leave this house is generally because of my music.
“Yeah, some asshole burned my cello, and my replacement instrument is like playing a box with shoe strings.”
“Well, this asshole sure loves your asshole,” he murmurs into my neck, sucking the skin beneath my ear and dragging his tongue up my jaw.
I try to push him away, but the fight is useless.
“God, I want to come in that ass every day,” he continues, his tongue grazing the side of my neck, awakening my core again. “Felt so fucking good, you dirty slut.” He nips at my ear.
“Shane!” I wrap my hand around his throat, pushing him back to arm’s length. “Get a hold of yourself.”
His mouth tilts into the cutest, most menacing smile.
“Sorry, I just…never experienced something so profound in all of my life.” He drops his head back against the pillow with a sigh, gazing longingly at the ceiling in remembrance.
“Fucking me in my ass was your most profound experience?” I question. “What a sad life you live.”
“Lived. Sad life I lived ,” he emphasizes, turning his head to face me. “Everything hurt without you, Ven.”
His menacing look grows soft. He licks his lips, his piercings shining before me, but not as bright as the look in his heartfelt eyes.
I lay beside him, my head nuzzled in the space between his neck and shoulder. I grab for his hand, pulling it up before us and studying it. These hands were the only connection to me in a digital world. These very hands. The sporadic tattoos on his fingers, the endless cuts and nicks on his knobby joints, the piles of scars layered on his knuckles…I trace my finger over them and feel a pain I can’t interpret. Guilt? Sorrow? Robbed of a version of him that should never have existed?
“Tell me how you got this one,” I ask, trailing my finger over a long, fleshy scar that cuts to the middle of his hand.
He eyes the mark and loosens his hand, allowing me to mold it in mine. Nerves get the better of me as his silence eats away at my question.
“I honestly don’t remember,” he says softly.
I swallow what feels like sand, pieces of my heart dying off as I ask, “What about this one?”
“Montana,” he groans, discomfort warping his tone.
“What happened to cause this?”
Cupping his wrist, I trace my thumb over a curved gash beneath his thumb.
“Montana, I can’t tell you any of it. I don’t know. I don’t remember. Most of these came from drug-induced blackouts. I couldn’t tell you where I was, who I saw, who I hurt, or who hurt me,” he says definitively.
“Tell me what I did to you,” I plead, needing to hear it. “I need to know what happened. Drown me in it, Shane.”
He pauses for a moment before saying, “I just…lost it. Lost whoever I was going to be. I fell off the deep end. Got into drugs, the streets, places I could find pain again. I craved pain because I needed my outsides to reflect my insides. I was dying inside without you, yet harboring so much hate because of how you left.”
I squeeze his wrist, bringing his hand to my mouth. Softly, I place tender kisses on each knuckle, feeling the pain of each and every tear in his flesh. The ones I caused. The time I missed.
“I made you hate me. It felt easier that way. It was easier than explaining, easier than you not understanding. I’d hoped you’d wait for me, but as the years went on, I just assumed you’d forgotten about us. After a certain amount of time passed, I couldn’t bring myself to reach out again, even though I knew right where to find you.”
He swallows, his mind taking him back to that time.
“How can you ever love me after that?”
“I’ve always loved you, Montana. Even when I hated you. I didn’t know…I-I couldn’t handle the complexity of the emotions. I just…” he stalls, seeking the right words. “You gave me something that I never had at a time in my life when I needed it most. Something I’d been searching for but didn’t even know I craved, and then you took it away so violently. I didn’t know how to act. I sought revenge on the only one I needed saving from.”
I know what he means because he gave it to me, too.
“Hope,” I answer for him. “It was something we gave each other in the midst of surviving the horrific lives we were living.”
Shane was my saving grace, just as I was his. So much of who I am now is because he gave me the strength to fight injustice and face the terrifying reality that I am about to face. His words spoke to me on those late nights when I felt used and defeated after allowing men to have what they wanted of me. Drained and at my limit, his words had lifted me back up and made me feel human again, unknowingly allowing me to grow and prevail. When the world feels like it's falling apart, never forget that someone out there loves you for the pieces you cannot show. Always us. Forever your King.
One day, I’ll tell him everything.
One day, my secrets will bleed before him.
But today cannot be that day.
Shane nods, and his hands capture my face again. We lie side by side and he does that thing where he studies me, attempting to read my mind. He searches the dark abyss that is my soul, looking for the one sliver of forewarning that I might leave again. He always pursues it because it's there, hidden beneath my shield.
But as addicts often do, he doesn’t listen to the thoughts that plague him. The ones that scream to the depths of his core, telling him to run away. He now sees the euphoria before him, forcing all negative thoughts aside for the gratification he so desperately yearns for but was vehemently denied. It hurts parts of my being I didn’t even know existed.
He shifts forward, capturing my lips with his, and our hands and bodies slide together again. My bare chest rubs against his, teasing and taunting my nipples, still reddened from their abuse last night. His ready cock lies hard between us, the aching rock of his need stirring the wetness of mine. My palms coast over his ribs, his body tattered with his scars from a past I’ve yet to learn.
He pulls back from my lips. “I’ve been deceiving you.” He moves to kiss me again, but I hold him back by the throat.
“I’m aware.” I scowl. I was waiting for this conversation, but I was so lost in him and our connection that I let it slip.
He grips my wrist tightly, removing my hand from his neck so he can lean closer. “Don’t do that.” Planting his lips on me again, he captures a few more stolen kisses before I push him back.
“How much?” I ask. “How much have you made from our little collaboration?”
He sighs, sitting up on an elbow, his guilt-filled eyes darting away from mine. “Enough.”
“Enough to make up for what I took?”
He glances back at me, withholding his answer.
“Are you even aware of how wrong that is?” I question, my lashes fluttering as I recall the videos, the strangled moans that left his throat, the dirty verbiage he spewed while stroking himself at the sight of my sleeping body. My thighs tighten together at the thought. He was smart to exclude our faces.
“If it was so wrong, why are you wet just thinking about it?” He cocks a brow, his hand slipping between my tense thighs. His middle finger glides through the sopping-wet mess that I am. “Montana, I know what gets you off. You expressed it often, the idea of someone doing something so vile in real life. I know the dark thoughts that plague your ruthless little mind because we’d always planned to do it.”
I can’t deny he’s right. The videos of him defiling me scream to the core of who I am. I loved it. Sinfully, I thrived in it. I only wish he pushed the line further and stuck it in me.
Leaning over, he grabs the camera from his nightstand. He inspects it, pressing a few buttons before he sets it back down, angling the lens in our direction.
“We are of that same dirt, sweetheart,” he mutters, kissing along my neck. “Why not show the world.”
He repositions himself above me, his erection brushing against my sex. Nudging my entrance, I open my thighs wide, making room for his hard body on mine. When he pushes into me, we both moan as he slowly sinks his length deeper. My back bows beneath him and I tilt my hips, opening myself further.
“You like to be in control,” he continues, a low grumble in his throat. “On camera, it’s your world, and you can control every aspect of your pleasure and the pleasure of everyone around you. It’s power. It’s domination.”
His cock glides in and out of me, and we both peer down, moaning as we watch the place we connect. His size disappears within me with each rock of his hips against mine, then retreats, glistening from my arousal. He’s so thick at the base, lengthy where it counts, with the perfect curve that hits that spot every time he buries deep.
“But what you love is to be used.”
I swallow, meeting his menacing stare.
“Used as nothing but a fuck toy with holes built for pleasure.”
Arousal coils in my abdomen at the words he’s speaking. The way he knows what I need sends me into a spiral of lust and reckless desire. I want to be used of my own accord, a psychological erasure of my traumatic past.
In a surprising move, Shane pulls out of me and rises to his feet. I prop up on an elbow, already feeling the loss of him, and watch as he makes his way to his desk. Naked as the day he was born, he stands in all his glory, his built frame towering on those sculpted thighs, his tight ass, and the massive tool hanging wet and heavy between his legs, making my mouth water.
Grabbing a few items from the bottom drawer, he saunters his way back toward me. With his head tipped back, Shane peers down at me with hooded eyes, danger lurking in his sinful stare.
“Let’s show them how I leash my girl,” he growls, tossing a studded collar on the bed at my feet.