16. Mandi
I’m tired, and Jason’s warm, and he smells like heaven — leather and man and motorbike. The room around us is filling with other smells. Perfumes or soaps.
The flow of the faucet shuts off with a soft squeak, and I open my eyes when he leans down to swirl the water in the tub with me in his arms.
“It’s ready for you, Princess,” he says softly. He peels me from my clothes and leaves me wearing only the G-string with the bulbous attachment. He slides his finger beneath the elastic and runs it gently back and forth against the sensitive skin of my groin crease until I shiver. “Think you can stand for me?”
I nod, because I’m his princess again, and it feels so good, I’ll do anything I can to please him.
He guides my feet to the floor, and I do my best to stand on my weak, trembling legs. Jason supports me to stay upright, and I need the help. My body is spent, and it takes effort not to melt on his bathroom tiles. Every muscle is heavy with relaxation, and it’s hard enough to keep my eyes open.
We’re in a house, but I don’t remember arriving. I was too busy, trying not to fall off his bike when the vibrations had sent my stuffed-full pussy into overdrive. The bumps in the road made it feel like getting fucked by a huge vibrator, and by the time we turned toward the lake, I was wound so tight, I was beside myself. As soon as my orgasm kicked off, it was like a rush of relief for the built-up bundle of stress inside me, and I unraveled. Completely unraveled. It’s a wonder there’s even a skeleton left inside me, to provide any structure.
When Jason lets me stand on my own, I sway so much, he leans me against him to slide the thong strings lower. He strokes my thigh and slips his hand between my legs, to grasp the flared base of the thick plug and slowly wiggle it loose.
A gush of warm fluid rushes from my pussy to dribble down my legs, the second it has the chance. We both moan, though his must be for a different reason than the relief I feel inside after being stretched taut all that time.
He presses his face to my belly and inhales deeply before moaning again. “I like the smell of you, bred, Princess,” he rumbles, gripping my ass.
Bred?As in… fucked with the intention to breed? To make babies? He wants his baby, inside me? My heart stutters, and so does my pussy.
“The sight of my seed, dripping down your legs again, is fucking bliss.”
Oh God. Oh God.Jason King is definitely talking about breeding me, and I’ve wanted that since he first started fucking me. Since he first came inside me, and I fell in love with the sensation and the idea of being his.
He flicks his hot tongue over my sensitive clit, and I lose my mind, collapsing into his waiting arms when my legs give way.
“I’ve got you.” He lifts my spent body and climbs into the huge, deep bath with me.
Something’s not right. My brain scrambles to make some sense.
I press my hand to his chest, grab his T-shirt, and frown. “Clothes,” I whisper.
“Scars,” he replies, as he lowers us into the warm, soothing water.
I force my heavy eyes to stay open, and I stare at him, fawning over my bare skin, while he gently soaps me up. I twist from his grasp, slipping under the water and pushing his hands away when he tries to help me.
I escape to the far side of the tub, and when I resurface and wipe the water from my eyes, it’s to glare at him.
He’s in his private bathroom, sitting nipple-deep in a full bathtub, in his T-shirt and boxers. Who does that?
“Why do you hide them from me?” I demand to know.
“So you can’t see them,” he replies flatly.
I roll my eyes, and he splashes water at me and smiles. “Last time you saw them, you cried, Mandi. I didn’t like it.”
“That was twenty years ago.”
“Nineteen,” he says, his eyes sparkling as he approaches like some sort of amphibious predator.
I keep him at bay with my foot. “Seeing the evidence of your pain made me feel guilty, but if I knew you were going to hide them from me forever, I would have?—”
“What do you mean, guilty?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “You would have been twelve when I got those scars, and you had nothing to do with the accident. I was young and thought I was invincible on my bike, took too many risks, and lost control. That was all me. Then an irresponsible, intoxicated asshole plowed into my sister’s truck when she was getting me to the hospital and mangled us both. I survived, she didn’t, and none of it had anything to do with you. You didn’t even know me. Why the fuck would you feel guilty?”
My cheeks warm, and my shame is amplified by about a million. “Because I thought they were pretty,” I admit, looking down through the water at my toes, as I hug my knees. “I shouldn’t have felt that way about something that hurt you so badly and ruined your life. A reminder of your sister’s tragedy. I didn’t want to like them, but I did. That’s why I couldn’t stop staring, even though I knew it was wrong and that it bothered you, and that was why I cried.”
He leans back against the far side of the tub and watches me. His legs stretch to my end, and he rests his ankle against the side of my ass. “You felt guilty for liking them? Because they caused me pain?”
I nod and meet his gaze.
“Huh.” It’s all he says for a long time. He trails his fingers back and forth in the water, as if hypnotized by the currents he creates. “What makes you think it ruined my life?”
I shake my head. “Sorry?”
“The accident,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck like it still hurts him. “You don’t think I recovered? Does my life look ruined?” He gestures around him.
I consider his fancy bathroom a moment and sigh. “It looks like you’ve done very well for yourself. I was talking about back then. How your injuries meant you lost your football scholarship, and how you worked so hard to get strong, and then still had to steal and scrimp and save for college, and… Not ruined,” I say to amend my initial statement. “Delayed, I guess. It looks like you got where you wanted to go, in the end.”
“Mostly.” He runs his hand along the edge of the bath, while he becomes distant and lost in thought. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“Time heals some wounds and offers the perspective of hindsight,” he says eventually. “I miss Candice, and I will always grieve the life she could have had, but my life may be the only thing that accident didn’t ruin. If I hadn’t been forced down that unexpected path, I would have had a different life — made different choices. I may have missed out on an opportunity to be a football star, but had I been one, I would have missed out or regretted other things.”
He lifts his gaze to me. “I might never have met the pretty girl with sad eyes I used to know. She has scars too. Not so many of the kind you can see, but they’re there.”
“You’d know where to look,” I say, since he has plenty of invisible scars as well. “Are you going to take your shirt off?”
He keeps his gaze steady and wets his lips. “What if I have more scars than you remember?”
“Visible or invisible?” I search his face.
“Both, I’d expect,” he says with a shrug.
“I want to see them,” I say without hesitation. “All of them.”
“What if I don’t want to make you cry?” he asks, his expression serious.
“I still want to see.”
“What if they caused me a lot of pain?” His eyebrow hitches. “What if you hate them? Or love them? Will you feel guilt, either way?”
I swallow hard. “I still want to see. I want to feel your skin against mine when you’re near me. I want to be allowed to touch you, the way I let you touch me.”
“You want to suck my tits and fuck my ass with your fingers?” He smirks and leans closer. “I’m not really into being penetrated, and I was going to rub you down and put you to bed, but if you want to stay awake and play the interrogation game, you can come over here and play. Maybe tug on my nipples, while we talk.”
“Will you take off your shirt?” I ease closer at the idea of gaining access to the unknown — even if it’ll take being interrogated to get it. If I can’t get my words out, I’m pretty sure I’ll hold up okay under torture. In a way, I’ve been doing it most of my life.
“I’ll think about it.” He swipes his tongue behind his lips, like he’s running it over his teeth, then lunges forward from the waist, grabs my hips, and pulls me in, to straddle his lap. “Stay,” he commands and reaches for the soap. He uses it to massage my arms, shoulders, and breasts, before he lathers one of my hands into a bubbling, slippery state and slips it up under his soaked T-shirt.
The fabric is heavy and suctioned to his skin, so it takes some effort to work my way to his chest, but it’s worth it. His pectorals are defined and smooth under my fingers, with ridged or gnarled transitions that mark the difference between clear skin and scars.
I circle his left nipple, and then try to grip it between my fingers, but they’re too slippery.
Jason smiles at me, his eyes dancing with amusement. “Problem?” he asks, swirling soapy circles over the globes of my ass. He’s getting closer and closer to my asshole, making it no secret where he’s heading.
“No problem.” I press my ass more firmly into his hands. He can put his fingers in or on any part of me he wants, if it means I can touch him too.
I slide my hand up to the bulk and strength of his shoulder, loving the feel of his skin beneath my palm instead of the T-shirt. He gives a sexy rumble when I sink my fingers into his sturdy muscles, and I rub my pussy against his clothed cock, as it strains beneath me. His slippery fingers tease my asshole, and I remain open to him, as I explore more of his body. I run my hand over his left pec and measure the size of it in my palm, as he would my breast.
It’s then that I encounter a series of unusual Braille-like bumps on his skin beneath my fingertips.
He stiffens slightly, but then acts as if all is well. He strokes my asshole and then breaches, but I clench and jerk forward, away from his prying fingers.
I stroke the strange pattern of scarring on his skin and frown down at him. “What are these?”
He grips my fingers through his T-shirt, to hinder my movements. Then he shoves my hand out of from under there, all together. He flips our positions and presses me to the bottom of the bathtub without the possibility of escape, my face barely above the water.
“Why did you leave me?” he asks, his eyes full of sadness and anger.
“You first,” I croak.
He searches my eyes a moment, and then releases me. He pulls his shirt over his head, to reveal the scars he’s been hiding since the day he made me his. They’re as beautiful as I remember, but there are definitely new ones, and it’s those that draw my gaze and make my heart ache.
My name is tattooed on his skin. Mandi. With a tiny pink crown standing in for the dot over the i.
And below that, etched into his skin with an implement sharp enough to scar him, are score marks. Nineteen of them. Three sets of five, and one set of four just waiting to be stricken through.
One scar for every year since I left, each nearly an inch in length.
I stare at them in both horror and awe. “What did you do?” I whisper, moving closer.
“I missed you.” He climbs out of the bath and walks away, dripping wet.
I follow, chasing the footprints he left on the carpet. They take me out the bathroom door and across a large room, through the open door to the balcony, but I stop short.
Not because he’s here. Not because I’m naked, and someone may see me. But because of the lake.
I can’t breathe.
The view is quite literally breathtaking. Because it’s my fucking view.
He bought my house.
My parents’ house. The one my dad loved, but Mom won in the divorce. Her consolation prize, for getting saddled with me, when neither of them wanted the burden.
I turn back to the room I walked through. The huge bedroom with the massive bathroom and a large, room-sized closet attached. There’s very little color, and the few framed artworks are so familiar to me, they make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Jason’s remodeled master suite must take up the whole top floor. I can’t even picture where my room used to be, but when I turn back to the vast lake, all I can think about is how awful it was to feel so alone in such a beautiful place. And how Jason changed all of that.
The guy who watched everything, learning every detail so he could use it to his advantage. The guy known about town for taking what he wanted… took me.
He thought I was to his advantage.
The girl everyone else cast aside.
Hewanted me.
I walk back inside and stand before the largest framed picture. I trail my fingers over the bright, textured painting as I study how such a heavy piece has been hung.
It’s an entire wall from inside my old closet. Cut from the house and lovingly displayed as a masterpiece in the bedroom of the man I love. The wall I painted in secret, with stolen supplies from the worksite down the street, because I was forbidden to make that kind of worthless mess in the house.
The children look so happy playing their games on his wall, and my heart is going to fucking burst with the amount of emotion crashing through me. He bought my house and kept my painting. He may have wanted to torture me all these years, but he hasn’t stopped loving me.
Because he doesn’t know the worst of it all.
Jason walks up behind me and drapes a soft blanket around my shoulders. “You’re shivering.” He picks me up and carries me downstairs to a big, warm kitchen-dining-living space with a fire roaring in the hearth. He tucks me into the corner of the couch in front of the fireplace and covers me with another blanket, before walking away to remove a whistling kettle from the stove.
The blankets fall to my feet when I stand to face him. “I didn’t have a choice.”
He looks me over. “If you’d rather stay cold, you’re going the right way about it. Seems like a choice to me.”
I sigh and pull one of the blankets back around me before joining him in the kitchen. “I wasn’t talking about you, trying to warm me up.”
“I know.” He pulls out a stool for me, and I sit on it.
He pours two cups of an herbal concoction that smells incredible, and slides one in front of me before he sits too. “You’re very naked,” he says, letting his eyes take their fill, before he blows across the top of his tea.
“You’re pleasantly naked-ish as well,” I point out, not caring to hide my fascination with the marks on his chest. He looks good without a shirt. Jeans and muscle and skin that tells the story of his life without the need for a single word.
My name is branded on his body in permanent ink.
The tally of years I’ve caused him pain are right there too.
How many more will I make him add before the end?
“I should tell you why I couldn’t stay,” I say.
“I know why you left.” He doesn’t meet my gaze.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. “You do?”
“Sure,” he says, without looking up from his tea. “What we had was too good to be true. The fantasy had to end sometime. Summer was over before I was ready, but I knew there’d be a time when your snooty family would take you back to your rich, luxurious life, and I’d become the story you’d giggle about to your friends, at your fancy art school. I’d be that guy you went slumming with so you could learn how nasty men from the mountains liked to fuck. I knew you were out of my league when I held you to the dirt and fucked your pretty cunt, Princess. I was your shameful, dirty hobby for the summer, but there was no place for me in your life away from here. I understood.”
I shake my head. “No. You didn’t,” I say with sincerity. “You don’t.”
“Yes, I do, Amanda. What else was a poor little rich girl to do when summer came to an end?” He smiles sadly. “She couldn’t very well marry the lowly thief who couldn’t give her the life she deserved, no matter what promises they made under the full moon. We were young, and I was stupid to believe anything different.”
“You weren’t stupid.”
“Oh, I was,” he says with a cold laugh. “The amount of effort it took to reach the front steps of your gated fucking castle, only to have your mom sit me down on her plush sofa and give me pitiful looks, while she explained that you already left for Europe, for some prestigious art program after you’d manipulated your dad to cough up tuition fees?—”
“She told you that?”
Jason slams his cup down, spilling pink tea. “Yeah, she fucking told me. And hurt as I was that you left without saying goodbye, I was happy for you. Happy you’d realized your worth. That even if he needed his hand to be forced, your dad was supporting your passions. Knowing you were happy lessened the sting of your absence, because I knew it was best for you. I told myself that loving you was letting you go. That, if it was meant to be, maybe you’d come find me again — if you wanted. But you never did. Until now.”
I blink away my tears, and he leans across the counter, to wipe my cheek with his thumb. “Why are you crying, Princess?”
“Because it wasn’t like that,” I squeeze past the tight grip of emotion in my throat.
“Like what?” He frowns. “Your being given an amazing opportunity to follow your dreams? Your leaving me with five fucking words, to haunt me for the rest of my life? I deserve better. Goodbye forever.”
My breath catches in my throat. “What did you say?” I croak.
“It’s not like I didn’t agree with you, Mandi. You did deserve better. I tried to fucking leave you alone, but you kept dragging me in, so I could punish us both.”
“It wasn’t like that.” I push off my seat with a scowl, spilling my tea too. “There was no art school. No Europe. No Mommy and Daddy — reluctant or otherwise — seeing a light inside me and wanting it to shine. There was no magical fucking experience for me in the hell I was sent to, Jason King.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, his face paling.
“My mother caught me sneaking out. I left that note for her. I was leaving to be with you forever, when she had Melvin hold me down until some fucking goons came to deal with me. His disgusting dick was hard the whole time, too. I threw up twice before the other men relieved him from duty, then they bound me, gagged me, and stuffed me in the trunk of a car. When it finally stopped to throw me out, I was in the middle of nowhere, trapped in a fucking prison for wayward girls, with barbed wire, high walls, and guards who’d spout Bible verses any time I asked where I was.”
Jason grips the counter so hard his arms shake. “What?”
His stool clatters to the floor, and he launches himself over the table. He takes me in his arms and holds me so close, I can feel his heart pounding against my cheek and hear it roaring in my ear. “Why would she do that?” he says, over and over again.
“Because I told her I belonged with you.”
He shakes his head and strokes my hair. “No. She was nice to me. Well, not nice, but civil. Practically sympathetic for my loss. I fucking cried when I read that note, and she patted my shoulder and said she was sorry, but maybe it was for the best that I don’t hold you back. We both knew you were too good for me, and that art school was a fresh start for you. She didn’t send you there as punishment, either. You were?—”
“Seriously?” I push him back, so he can see my face. “Why would an anal-retentive bitch, intent on preserving her fake, flawless lifestyle, be nice to a known criminal? A criminal she claimed was responsible for her daughter’s running wild? Being wild? Fucking wild? Melvin informed her at length about my incorrigible depravity — conveniently adapting the truth to avoid any incriminating details of his involvement. There was no fucking European art school, Jason.” I squint at him in disbelief when I appraise his mortified expression, because he so clearly believed the lie. “Maybe you were stupid,” I mutter.
He grips my shoulders and holds me at arm’s length, his eyes huge as he searches my face. The truth will be plain to see.
He shakes his head again. “No. No, no, no. She was almost proud of you. Her voice, she…” He utters a pained sound and pulls me back into his arms. “Tell me nothing bad happened, Princess. Tell me you were safe, laughing with your friends and living a life of color.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “It’s taken nineteen years of fighting demons and having nothing more to lose, for me to face you again, because I’m weak and didn’t want to tell you what happened.”
“What did they do?” The words come out through gritted teeth.
My body is shaking and I can’t control it. I close my eyes and guide his hands to my throat. He wraps them around my neck, squeezing just enough for me to feel secure inside the risk of harm. “Will you show me mercy?”
“For what?” He tightens his grip.
“For not being able to stop them, when they took our baby away.”