15. Misely
fifteen
Misely
“W hy aren’t you using your own car?” Birdie’s voice was concerned. The shame and anxiety that had become a constant companion over the course of the last few days swirled in my gut.
“I needed an oil change—you know how I am. And the mechanic said that I needed a few other things replaced. I decided it’d be better to get the work done and use a rental. Turns out the rental needed work too.” I paced over to a large bay window in the dining hall that overlooked The Lodge’s back lawn. Birds flitted about a feeder carelessly and in the distance I saw a buck step through the blanket of trees.
This place was beautiful.
“Mize, I’m worried about you.” Birdie paused, taking a slow breath. “Even for you this is…odd. And driving? When we moved after college you insisted on hiring a moving truck and flying. You said long distance driving like that made you antsy.”
If she only knew.
“I know, and it still does.” Maybe if I blanketed the lie with a little bit of truth it wouldn’t burn so bad coming out. “But this is good for me. Some one-on-one time with myself. The city was stifling.” So was her ridiculously hot sort-of-brother-in-law.
This time the silence was deafening. The problem with lying to Birdie was that she knew me better than anybody. Ever since we met, she’d always seen right through me like I was completely transparent to her. With every falsehood that left my lips, I was risking her calling me on it. Glancing around, I saw that Talon was being drug across the room reluctantly by Susie, who had her arm looped through his, chattering away about something I couldn’t hear.
He seemed especially annoyed this morning, despite the way he tried to keep his patience with our hostess. The frustration wasn’t only directed toward me though. He’d spoken to Rodger who had been unable to get a hold of Paulie. With every hour that passed without a clear indicator of when we could get back on the road, he grew more agitated. Talon’s eyes caught mine as I watched, his narrowing just a fraction—letting me know not to fuck anything up in his reluctant absence.
I knew that him leaving me alone with my phone was the absolute last thing he wanted to be doing, but if he made a fuss about it, it would raise a whole lot of eyebrows. The best thing he could do to maintain our charade was follow Susie and hope I didn't do the most obvious thing and rat him out.
And I could. Right now. I could spill my guts to Birdie, and we would come up with a plan. Hadn’t that been my intention all along anyway? Find a way to get a hold of her without my captor’s prying ears overhearing, and warn her? My mouth opened, the words, This is a trap ready to fall.
“I don’t know, Misely.” She sighed, halting my confession. “But if this is what you need, then I’ll support you. Could you do me a favor though?”
My chest tightened. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“Check in more. I worry with you driving all this way by yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” My lower lip trembled, the words from before fizzling out with a breath.
“But no texting and driving! I need you to get here in one piece!”
I forced out an appeasing laugh and we said our goodbyes.
It had been four days of this. Four days being trapped inside that car with Talon. Four days lying through my teeth to my best friend. All for what? To protect my parents? The same people who only called me on Christmas and Easter? Who stopped pretending to attempt to wish me happy birthdays when they accidentally called on my older sister’s?
I didn’t think Talon was bluffing. This was the same man who upended Birdie and Milo’s relationship last year. Who helped set Milo up to take the fall for their uncle’s drug operation. Who ripped our apartment to shreds for any information he could find on where the two had disappeared to. Who only three days ago sent me flying across my own living room, continuously handcuffed me to a bed, and just that morning had duct taped my mouth shut.
If I tested the validity of his threats, would I be able to live with the consequences of him carrying them out? And if I didn’t, and we reached Birdie and Milo—what would happen to them ? Could I live with those consequences? No matter which path I chose, I knew someone would get hurt. Being forced to choose was hurting me .
My chest had begun to rise and fall rapidly, my breathing harsh and painful, like I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. The room began to spin around me, color flashing too brightly. I knew this feeling. The combined sensation of anxiety, panic and utter helplessness. Air. I needed air.
I fled the dining room, forgetting about Talon and my family and Birdie and Milo, my sole purpose to get out . Without detouring to our room for my coat, I darted for the back door of The Lodge, flying out into the bitter cold of Wyoming. The icy air penetrated my lungs like a million tiny needles but I gulped it down hungrily, desperate for the panic attack to abate.
It settled like iron into my toes, and before I realized what I was doing, my feet were trudging forward toward the woods. My legs led me to the edge of the tree line where the deer had been, the snow level lower there, like there had once been a path for casual hikers to take walks. There was little sound that came from within the trees, as if every creature had tucked away for the season.
“Hey!” Talon’s rough voice reached me over the expanse of the yard, accusation heavy in his tone, breaking the peaceful quiet. Dread coiled up in my belly when I looked back to find him glaring. I didn’t want to go back. Not yet. I just wanted a few minutes to myself, where I wasn’t being held captive and nobody I loved was in danger and the odd sense of emptiness I’d been feeling for months wasn’t drowning me.
Talon glanced back at the hotel for just a moment, probably to see if there was anyone else witnessing our strange interaction. I took full advantage of that brief moment, bolting through the trees. I ignored small twigs weighed down by frozen snow as they smacked my cheeks and grabbed at the loose strands of my hair. I ignored the way the heels of my impractical boots sunk down into the snow, slowing me down more with every step. I just ran, despite the sound of Talon’s own heavy steps growing on me by the second.
It felt good; the exertion and adrenaline twisting together like a serpent in my chest, burning my lungs with each inhale I took. It felt better than anything I’d felt in days, hell, in months.
Talon’s body slammed into me with the force of a freight train, tackling me to the ground under his weight. We landed painfully, both grunting as we hit the frozen forest floor. I tried to catch my breath, twisting onto my back beneath him. Within seconds, my hands were pinned above my head, Talon’s face only centimeters from mine.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he seethed, breathing heavily through his nose.
“I-I—”
“Where did you think you were going to fucking run to, huh?” The volume of his words rose, echoing off the trees around us, reminding me how badly I’d just wanted quiet. “The goddamned mountains ?! Did you think you’d be protected by the wolves? The bears, the fucking mountain lions ?”
“I wasn’t—”
“Were you going to try to call for help?” He ripped the cell phone from my pocket. “Newsflash, Blondie, nobody is going to help you. And nothing is going to protect you from me .” He grew closer and closer, the tips of our noses brushing. This close, I could see how golden his eyes really were as light from the snow surrounding us reflected off them.
“I just wanted to be alone,” I whispered, frozen where I lay pinned by his body. Both of our chests were heaving and he was so close.
"Too bad. Until I say otherwise, you're stuck with me." Again, I felt the temperature between us rise, the adrenaline shifting course. So close I could almost taste that cinnamon gum.
My lips met his angrily, but unlike the first unexpected kiss we’d shared in Chicago, everything around me felt as though it had gone still. The forest around us was so silent the sound of my pulse hammering through my body seemed to ricochet off the insides of my skull.
Talon froze, stiffening over me so rapidly I wondered if he had gone into shock. Then I wondered, only briefly, if I had imagined all the heated looks. I thought I was pretty good at sussing out mutual desire, but after the week I'd had, who could blame me if I was a little off my game? Still, I had to know. Biting down roughly on his lip, I sucked it into my mouth hard enough to bruise. Mercifully, those golden eyes sparked like a fire had been lit, his entire body shuddering over me. Any doubts I'd had about his attraction to me melted away as he went from frozen solid to returning the kiss like his life depended on it. As if he were trying to swallow me whole.
As much as I hated to admit it, and to him I never would—he’d been right. That first kiss in my apartment had hardly been a kiss at all. It hadn’t even been an adequate preview of what Talon was capable of once he really got to work. And God , he went to work. His tongue slid along mine like they were dancing, cinnamon and mint overwhelming my senses. His teeth knew just where to nip and when. I couldn’t help the moan that left me, low and desperate.
Large, strong hands grabbed for my breasts over the fabric of my top, squeezing hard enough to make me cry out. Talon pulled back, staring down at me with a look that I couldn’t decipher—some mixture of lust and disgust. He pulled away from me only long enough to grab me, flipping me back over onto my knees.
His chest pressed down into my back, lips touching my ear. “You say the word, and I’ll stop.” The promise was made so soft and gentle that I questioned if I’d actually heard him. Especially with the contradictory way his palm came up to shove my face downward, my cheek pressed into the frigid ground. There was a pause, a lull where he didn’t touch me at all, only the sound of our mutually choppy breathing in the dead silence of the forest.
I knew what he was doing. He was waiting for me to object. To tell him no, this isn’t what I want, to not touch me. And I knew that I should say those things. That I should shove him off me and hightail it back to The Lodge and tell Susie everything. I knew that I shouldn’t be doing what I knew we were about to do. But I couldn’t. My lips would not form the words.
I never did what was good for me, and it didn’t seem I was about to start now. So I did not move; did not object. I sat perfectly still and I waited with unreasonable impatience for his next move, blistering heat flaring to life inside of me.
Seeming to have been given all the permission he needed, Talon’s fingers gripped the edge of my fleece lined leggings and yanked them down my thighs. Brisk winter air nipped at my exposed flesh, but that wasn’t why I shivered. No, my skin felt feverish under the attention of this man, burning hot to the touch. It was the guttural groan he released that did it, just as two thick fingers slid through the center of me, coating me in my own arousal.
“Is this what you needed, Blondie?” I might’ve been embarrassed by the squelching sound my body made as he pressed those fingers inside of me, but all I could focus on was the blissful sensation that came with his touch. “Needed to be chased down and filled up? Don’t worry, princess. If that’s what you want, that’s what I’ll give you.”
Vaguely, I heard the sound of his belt and zipper over the sound of my erratically beating heart, and in one smooth movement, he was thrust inside me to the hilt. I screamed at the rapid intrusion and his palm came down sharply across my right ass cheek, but the sting only made me tremble harder. Talon began to move at an agonizingly slow pace, stretching me to capacity, working me until sparks lit me up and my body adjusted to him. It felt as if I were on fire from the inside out, my mind blank as I took him over and over.
When he pulled completely out and shoved into me again, hard, I cried out again. Talon growled deep in his chest, leaning over me at an angle that made him grind inside of me. I whimpered as his hips punched forward, his teeth grabbing onto my ear lobe. “For once in your life.” Another rough thrust, “Shut the fuck up. Unless you want everyone at the hotel to hear you being fucked on the ground in the woods.”
Something was wrong with me. There had to have been because I felt myself tighten around him, a desperation for him to move again. One of his hands gripped my hip and the other the back of my neck, pressing me down into the icy floor hard enough that the sharp particles burned against my cheek. But I could not bring myself to care, my thoughts only, yes, yes, yes, yes, please never stop. Every sensation was heightened, smell, sound, touch; if he never stopped, I would never stop him.
When I came, it was to that realization, a gargled sound escaping me that I attempted poorly to mask in the snow rapidly melting beneath my face. Talon groaned, deft fingers finding my clit to work me back up over that edge, his movements never slowing. And just as I was hurled through a second orgasm, he followed me over, his come sliding down the inside of my thighs, hot against my skin. Stars invaded my vision, my lungs burning from exertion.
Talon did not speak until after he’d tucked himself back into his jeans and stood. I prepared myself for the awkward conversation that always followed sex, turning until my bare ass was beneath me, chill from the snow burning my skin. But Talon offered no platitudes, didn’t so much as offer to help me up, instead sliding my phone that had fallen to the ground into his pocket and sneering. “You have five minutes to get back to our room, Blondie. Don’t make me come back out here to drag your ass back.”
As his figure receded back through the trees, I remained rooted in place, with my leggings still wrapped around my ankles waiting to feel it; the boredom. The discontent or the underwhelm. Moreover, the shame and humiliation and guilt that never came.