Chapter Twenty-Six
Kytten
I heard the prospect say she was here. Heard King tell him to bring her in. I squeezed Melissa’s hand, and she turned to study my face. She saw it immediately. The secret I had been hiding.
There was something in her eyes, something familiar. Something dark that made me wonder if she and I were more alike than I had realized.
I couldn’t look at any of them. I felt the love from the club. But I was still ashamed of what I had let her do to me. The way I had let her manipulate me and control me. The way I had clung to the monsters, letting them convince me that hiding was better.
“Kytten,” Torment called out. “Would you like to start?”
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I whispered, my eyes pleading with Melissa. I knew I had been awful to her. The way I spoke to her about her relationship with Val’s granddaughter.
But she was here.
Holding my hand.
Helping me battle the monsters.
I could feel the rage in Cash’s body. It rolled off him in waves the minute Syrena walked in the room. The monsters fed off the tension in his body.
“Cash,” Melissa said, her eyes never leaving mine. Holding me hostage, preventing me from running out of the room. “I need you to calm down.”
“Fuck that.”
My eyes welled at his words. His anger for what I went through gave me strength. He was barely holding on, and so was I. Together we were about to explode. Me, with shame and panic, while he was filled with rage and murder.
I knew that was what he was thinking. He told me so when he learned what she had done.
“Brother.” Jingles stood behind us, one hand on Cash’s shoulder, the other on Thorne’s. His attempt to hold them both back would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.
“Kytten,” Val softly called my name. “Sweetheart, what happened?”
“Do you want me to tell them?” Melissa asked. I wanted to say yes. But I knew I had to do it.
“She has to do this, Melissa,” Dr. Dunaway said.
“She can’t, Torment.”
“She can. She’s stronger than she thinks.”
They were talking about me as if I weren’t there. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be anywhere but in this room.
“Kytten.” The sound of my name coming from Syrena’s mouth was like a bomb going off in my head. Cash growled beneath me. His body vibrated with anger and something darker.
“Ask me again,” I said softly to Melissa.
She tilted her head as if she were seeing something for the first time. Something she couldn’t quite grasp.
I reached behind me and pulled the knife from my back pocket. Placing it in her hands, I repeated, “Ask me again.”
Melissa sat up. She looked at the knife in her hand. When she looked back at me, she asked, “Does Val know you’re hurting yourself?”
“No.”
I heard Val gasp. I heard the chair scrape against the floor. My eyes stayed locked on Melissa, but from the corner I could see Bane holding on to her. Keeping her from moving to me.
“Let me go, asshole.”
“How do you think Val would feel if she knew?” Melissa asked.
“Sad. Angry. Disappointed.”
“Kytten, no,” Val cried. I couldn’t look at her. If I saw her face, I would lose what little courage was holding me together right now.
“Can you tell me why you hurt yourself?”
“The monsters needed to scream.”
“Why did the monsters need to scream, Kytten?”
Tears ran down my cheeks. Cash rested his chin on my shoulder, and his arms held on to me tightly. Finally, I had the courage to look around the room, first at Val, tears falling as Bane held her back. Then Arsyn, with a curious look on her face, shadowed by something dark.
Magyk looked confused. And Harmony was sad. But Lucky was the one that surprised me. She looked angry. Like she knew what was coming.
It was only when I looked at Syrena and saw the fear in her eyes, the panic that said she knew what I was about to say, that I felt like I could speak the words.
“Because I couldn’t.”
“Why couldn’t you scream, Kytten?”
“No one was there to hear it. They were always busy helping others. I didn’t want to take away from the people who really needed help.”
“What did you need, Kytten?” Melissa asked.
“I needed to cry; I needed to yell and throw things and be angry. But I couldn’t.
They expected me to be happy. The smiling Kytten who had never experienced anything bad.
Except that my whole life had been bad. From the beginning, no one knew we existed.
We were hidden away like a dirty secret. Then he took our mother away.”
I let go of Melissa and turned to my brother.
“She tried to fight. She scratched at him and kicked, but he wouldn’t let her go.
Then he hit her. Over and over until she didn’t get up.
” Thorne stared at me as I told him everything about the day our mother was taken.
“He picked her up and put her in the car. I don’t even know if she was still alive. She wouldn’t have told him about you.”
“You didn’t tell me,” he said. “You didn’t tell me any of that.”
“You were so angry. When you left, I thought you’d left me. I thought you weren’t coming back because you didn’t want me anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Rose. I tried to come back. I tried to get away.”
“I know. Now we both know the truth.”
“Rose, he needs to know all of it. So does Val,” Cash said. I nodded and turned back around.
I took a deep breath, and I told them everything. Everything I told Cash and Dr. Dunaway, I told Val and everyone in that room.
Cash held me in his arms as I lay in bed. When I told everyone my secrets, the room was quiet. Until I got to what Syrena had done to me, and then the room exploded.
Cash picked me up and brought me upstairs. I didn’t know what happened after that. I cried into his chest until I fell asleep. I didn’t know where Syrena was or if she was still alive.
I wasn’t sure I cared. She had already had a front-row seat in my life. It was time she was ejected so space could be made for people who loved me the way I deserved to be loved.
“How are you feeling, Rose?”
“Exhausted, but free. I feel like I am finally able to scream.”
It was a strange feeling, knowing I could scream if I wanted to. If I needed to. But also, not feeling like I had to. I felt safe here. In his arms. In this room.
In this clubhouse.
For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe. Like I could be myself. Cash did that for me. He saw me when no one else did. I rolled over in his arms so I could look at him.
“Thank you.”
“For what, baby?”
“For seeing me. For wanting me. For loving me. You’ve given me so much. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have my brother. I would never have told anyone what Syrena did. No one would know I was hurting myself. You taught me how to trust again.”
“You don’t stop knowing how to trust, Rose.
Sometimes it’s just harder to know who to trust. I want to believe you can trust Val, and maybe you can.
But something held you back from that. Maybe it was what Syrena did to you; maybe it was a voice inside you that you listened to.
I don’t know. But I’m glad you trust me.
I never want to do anything to make you lose that trust in me. ”
I leaned over and kissed him. He was my home. I still needed to have a conversation with Val. I knew that. There was so much I needed to tell her. But right now, at this moment, Cash was my priority.
Everything else could wait.
He rolled me over so that he was on top of me. His hand cradled the back of my head, and he held himself up with his other hand pressed into the mattress.
He brought his thigh up between my legs as he deepened the kiss. My hands explored his chest. When I pinched his nipples, he groaned, pressing against me harder.
I could feel his hard cock against my thigh. Letting my hands wander further, I traced his abs. Cash was years older than me, and some people might think it was wrong. That I was too young. But I had already been a victim. I’d already had someone older take advantage of me.
This was my decision. This was who I wanted; so, fuck them and their opinions on my life. They hadn’t lived through what I had. They weren’t inside my head with the monsters. They didn’t feel what I did.
If loving Cash was wrong, then fuck being right.
My hands grasped his hips; my mouth never leaving his. My fingertips played with the band of his boxers.
“Rose,” he moaned.
“Fuck me, Cash,” I whispered against his mouth. I reached inside and wrapped my hand around his length. He was hard and firm. But the skin was soft and silky. I stroked him and his hips lurched forward against me.
I laughed at the pained sound he released. There was no doubt I owned this man, and we both knew it. I bit my lip as I searched his eyes. Watching the battle that raged in his mind play out.
“I want you, Cash. I want to feel you inside me. I want to feel you lose control.”
“Rose,” he growled against my neck. “You’re too wrung out. From everything. Too raw,” he said as I fucked him with my hand.
“I want to feel, Cash. I want to feel everything.”
I released his cock and shimmied against him. He lifted up. Balanced on one hand, I pushed him over so he lay on his back. Then, I removed my panties and straddled him.
I stared down at him. He put his hands behind his head, and I knew he had lost the battle. “Take what you need, Rose.”
I smiled, and he smiled back. He loved my smile. The real one. The one that for a while was only for him. Tears gathered and spilled over. He brought his hand up to cradle my cheek, and I leaned into it.
“I will always give you what you need. If you need my dick inside your pussy, then it’s yours. If you need me to take the monsters so you can scream, then I will rip my heart open and let them crawl inside me. I’ll do anything you want me to do, baby. I love you, Rosebud Peterson.”
I leaned down and kissed him. He opened his mouth and let me have the control. My tongue played with his. His hands rested on my hips, but he didn’t try to move me. He didn’t deepen the kiss to what he wanted. He let me have my way. And when I sat up and impaled myself on his cock, he let me move.
I took his hands, lacing my fingers with his. His arms held me up. Giving me balance to move up and down. It would take no effort for him to overpower me and press me into the mattress to take what he wanted. But he let me set the pace.
I rocked my hips back and forth. This wouldn’t get him off.
There wasn’t the right friction, not for him.
This was for me. He let me use his body for my own pleasure.
And when I came on his dick, screaming out his name and collapsing on his chest, he held me while I cried again.
Ignoring his own needs, he gave me everything I could ask for. Everything I had always wanted.
Someone who loved me.
Rosebud Peterson.
The lonely, broken and damaged girl who hid behind the monsters and the Kytten’s fake smiles.