Chapter 8
Aleks
I’m sorry, Miss Penny.
Aleks, if you’d only been good they wouldn’t have hurt me…
I jerked awake at the sound of Miss Penny’s voice.
She hadn’t spoken after Brian had left the room.
I’d apologized dozens of times, but she’d never once spoken.
I’d known why, of course, but my mind had tried to convince me she’d just been sleeping.
Even when the man who’d worked for Brian had come to take her away, I’d kept right on reading.
When Brian had come to get me later that morning, he’d led me to his bedroom, washed me off in his big bathtub and then had tucked me into his bed and told me how much he would have missed me if Miss Penny had tried to take me away from him.
When his touch had stopped being about comfort, I’d silently begun repeating the names of the flowers and their meanings from Miss Penny’s book and within seconds I’d slipped away to my safe place on the beach with my family.
After a long day spent building that epic sand castle, I’d fallen asleep on the sand and when I’d awoken, I’d been alone in Brian’s bed.
And Miss Penny had still been gone.
As the present returned full-force, I tried to catch my breath and immediately reached across the console to look for Vaughn’s hand. But it wasn’t there.
Because we weren’t in the car anymore.
There was no console, but Vaughn was next to me. Only, we were in bed.
Together.
Again.
Like the night before.
This time, though, Vaughn was asleep. Whereas I’d been lying flat and under the covers, Vaughn was sitting up, his back against the headboard. His hands were folded in his lap. On the nightstand was a gun sitting on top of a laptop computer.
Had I blacked out? Was Vaughn actually right about all that?
I shook my head.
No, I was okay… I was on my way back to being normal. Well, normal enough.
Dante was so proud of how well I was doing. I could see it in his eyes every time I did something like leave for work or make a decision about something.
Vaughn was wrong.
He just had to be.
I struggled to remember the events of the day.
It took a moment but things finally became clearer as my breathing evened out.
I’d stopped talking to Vaughn after he’d said those things to me.
I wasn’t sure how many hours we’d driven for after that, but when he’d asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch, then eventually dinner, I’d politely told him I wasn’t hungry.
Fortunately, he hadn’t tried to make me eat because I wasn’t sure I would have been able to survive the humiliation of throwing up in front of the man twice in twenty-four hours.
It had once again been dark when he’d pulled off the interstate.
I’d had no idea where we were and I’d been too tired to care.
I’d only heard Vaughn briefly say the house belonged to a friend of his and that we were safe there as he’d shown me to the bedroom.
I’d made use of the bathroom and then I’d crawled into the bed and couldn’t remember anything after that.
But luckily only because I’d been asleep.
Not because I’d blacked out.
Because I was normal… I didn’t have that thing Vaughn said I did.
He was wrong.
He just was.
I glanced at him, then the clock on the nightstand.
It was just after three in the morning. There was a small lamp on the nightstand that was turned on, but it didn’t offer much light.
I could see that the room we were in seemed a little more modern than the room we’d spent the previous night in, but it didn’t look particularly fancy.
There was what looked like an old-fashioned fan on the dresser that was turned on and made a soft whirring sound that broke up the silence of the room.
I turned to look at the nightstand on my side of the bed and stilled at the sight of a small bottle of chocolate milk sitting there.
It was open and empty.
I vaguely remembered Vaughn stopping at a gas station shortly before we’d gotten to the house, but I hadn’t noticed him buying the milk.
And when had I drunk it?
I couldn’t remember that.
God, what was wrong with me? Why did everything seem so muddled in my head?
I glanced at Vaughn again. I wanted to ask him if things would ever just go back to the way they’d been before those men had grabbed me.
I hadn’t exactly been living a dream life but considering all that had happened and compared to what I was going through now, I might as well have been on top of the world.
I missed Dante.
And Magnus.
And Matty.
I felt tears threaten but refused to let them fall. My eyes hurt so bad from all the crying that if I shed even one more tear, I’d probably never be able to close my eyes again.
I wondered if Vaughn would let me call Dante again in the morning.
My brother had to be going crazy with worry and Magnus would be doing his best to keep Dante calm.
Vaughn shifted slightly but it wasn’t until he whispered, “I’m sorry, Aleks” that I turned to look at him, fully expecting him to be watching me.
But he was still asleep.
Which meant… God, was he dreaming about me?
He’d turned his head so one side was pressed against the headboard and he was facing in my direction. My eyes fell to his mouth, which was slightly open.
Why was he even in bed with me again? Had I been having bad dreams again? Before the one that had woken me up?
“Aleks…”
He said my name on a soft sigh and my body responded to it.
I didn’t really know what was happening, but I couldn’t say it was a bad feeling exactly.
But I didn’t like how my lower half was reacting.
My penis was tightening uncomfortably in my pants.
It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was the first time the sensation kept getting stronger and the urge to touch myself started filtering through my head.
I wasn’t completely na?ve – I knew what it meant when that part of a man’s body hardened.
But I knew also that that kind of a reaction usually meant I would be the one to pay for it.
I didn’t know what it meant that I was the one experiencing that particular thing.
I did know it had only ever happened around Vaughn, though.
After Dante had gotten me back to Seattle, he’d explained to me that he and Magnus planned to spend the rest of their lives together, just like Mama and Papa.
I’d known my brother liked both boys and girls when we’d been younger, and it hadn’t ever bothered me, but admittedly, after all the things that had been done to me, I couldn’t imagine why my brother liked being with another man.
Maybe it didn’t work the same when two people loved each other?
I’d never been brave enough to ask Dante, because then I would have had to answer questions. I knew that he knew what had happened to me but that didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it in detail.
Besides, not everybody had to want that kind of thing, right? Brian and Father and all the other men had used their bodies to hurt mine, so any man who wanted to be with me like that again would just do the same, wouldn’t they?
Did Vaughn want me like that?
If he did, would he care that I didn’t want it? Would he hurt me anyway?
My head began to hurt as I tried to make sense of things.
I willed my body to go back to being normal but when Vaughn’s hand slid over his own stomach, drawing up his shirt a little in the process, my mouth suddenly felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton.
He wasn’t pale and soft like Father had been.
His skin was darker, but not as dark as mine, and there was just a little bit of black hair that trailed down his body and disappeared into his pants.
Would the hair feel the same as the hair on his beard?
I automatically looked up at his face again.
A strange itchiness began running through my fingers, then up my arms and out to the rest of my body.
I knew I should get up and go to the bathroom, so I could wash my hands and face with cold water to help clear my mind, but my body wouldn’t listen to the silent command.
Instead, I found myself shifting so I was sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed.
I leaned my upper body against the headboard so I could see Vaughn’s face straight on.
I actually found myself waiting for him to say my name again.
I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. Even with the beard, his lips looked really full and soft.
I dropped my eyes to the spot on his chest where the top couple of buttons on his shirt were undone.
There was some black hair there too. I chanced a look at his forearms which were exposed by drawn-up sleeves.
The tattoo on his right arm looked like a cross, though it was very intricate in its design and it looked like there were angel wings coming out the two shorter sides.
Before I could even ask myself what I was doing, I ran my finger along the arm he had resting on his stomach.
When I realized what I’d done, I jerked my hand back.
But he didn’t wake and the memory of how warm his skin had been was already etched into my brain.
I wanted to touch him there again, but I knew it was wrong, so I didn’t.
I told myself to just go back to sleep, but something about watching him sleep calmed me.
Maybe because he looked so calm. It wasn’t that he seemed out of control or anything like that when he was awake…
more like he was always too much in control.
At first, I’d thought him more like Magnus in that he seemed like someone who was naturally relaxed and laid back, but the more I thought about it, Vaughn seemed like he was always looking for something. And that the calm demeanor was a mask.
So he was calm, but not relaxed.
I thought back to the night he’d shot Father. He’d killed so easily, like he’d been born to it. But for some reason, my mind was trying to convince me that wasn’t who he was.