Chapter 12 #2
“When it happens in the middle of something else.” Damon watches me with careful, gray eyes. “Like being held underwater. Or chased through the woods. Or,” I take a deep breath, “being tied to a cross.”
“That’s fair,” he pushes a strand of damp hair off his forehead. “Trauma begets trauma.”
“What did you remember?” Hunter asks, not interested in my baggage.
“I think it was while I was taken. I can remember a small room. There was a bed. And a small shaft of light. Slats like it came through bars.”
“You were in a cell?” Hunter asks.
“Maybe? Everything was old and musty. It was cold.” I shiver, the feeling rushing back over me. “It felt like I was buried.”
“Like you were underground?” Hunter asks quietly. “Anything else?”
“I could hear people. Whispering.”
“How many?” Damon asks instantly. “What did they say?”
“I don’t know.” The trails of their words echo faintly in my skull. “But they were female.”
Damon’s eyes narrow. “Why are you just telling us this now?”
“At first I wasn’t sure, and I’m still not, but if I’m going to be put under hypnosis, it seemed like I should say something before it comes out with them.”
The Dukes. Our enemy.
“Good call,” Hunter says. “For once.”
We push outside into the crisp morning air and walk toward the truck. Hunter circles to the driver's side and unlocks the door. As I climb in, I feel a tug on my skirt.
“What’s this?” Damon asks, pressing his fingertips above my hips. I wince at the tender spot. His voice turns hard. “Someone touched you?”
I glance over my shoulder and pull down the sweater. “The King. Last night.”
He makes a sound–maybe approval. I slide across the bench seat, moving to the middle. A moment later, I’m squeezed between them, and the truck rumbles to life.
“So you had this memory when I held your head under water?” Damon asks, thinking hard.
“Yes…” I swallow. “I couldn’t breathe, and your hands were tight around my throat. I blacked out for a minute, then I had the first flash. Then later, when I was cleaning up, taking a shower, it came back to me.”
Damon and Hunter share a look over my head–silent and loaded.
“What?” I ask.
Hunter’s jaw tightens.
“Something triggered that,” Damon says at last. “Something like being held under water…”
“Or being hurt,” Hunter adds. “Scared.”
The truck rolls down the drive, the weight of what he isn’t saying settling colder than the morning air. Pain and fear revealed my memories. That’s not something I want to reflect on right now.
Instead I focus on the road ahead, on the way I’m wedged between them on the bench seat, knees pulled up, my skirt riding high enough that the cold vinyl bites into the backs of my thighs.
Damon’s arm stretches along the back of the seat behind me, fingers idly brushing the nape of my neck like he owns the skin there.
“It’s good to know what makes you tick,” Damon says, low and warm, in a way he hasn’t spoken to me in weeks. “So, thank you for sharing that.”
“You’re welcome.”
His tone is soft. Gentle. I’ve heard it before, back on that night we were in the car after he took me to feed the cats, before the wedding. When he let me use him to make myself feel calmer. Safer.
My knee falls against his. Those fingertips trail across my neck. The heat of him feels good. Right.
Warm.
“The King was rough with you last night.”
I feel Hunter glance over, waiting for my response. “I’m okay.”
“But you’ve got that feeling again–the one where you need something to help you feel steady?” He knows what I want and he shifts, spreading his knees wider so the denim of his jeans presses against my leg.
Heat burns my cheeks but I admit, “Yes.”
“That information you shared with us? The memories. That was good, Doll Baby.”
I take a deep breath, liking the way his words feel in my chest.
“I think you’ve earned it, don’t you?”
I nod before I can think about Hunter watching this unfold between me and Damon. My mouth is already watering.
Damon leans back against the door, lazy and sure, and pops the button of his fly with one hand. The zipper rasps down. “Go on, baby. Warm me up. You can suck me the whole way to campus if you need to.”
Hunter’s fingers drum once on the steering wheel, but he doesn’t say a word. The truck doesn’t slow.
I slide down, knees curling up underneath me. My hands shake a little when I tug his jeans open. He lifts his hips just enough to help, and then he’s heavy in my palm, hot and half-hard already. I wrap my fingers around the base and guide him to my lips.
The first taste of him makes me whimper around the head. Salt and skin and that faint bitterness I’ve missed. I thought about this so much in the cage. Wondering if he’d come to me, just to let me take the edge off.
He never did.
But now, I sink lower, letting him fill my mouth until my lips meet my own fingers.
My tongue flattens along the underside, tracing the hard metal rungs of his Jacob’s Ladder one by one, the cool silver warming instantly against the heat of my mouth as I just hold him there, breathing through my nose, letting the warmth do the work he asked for.
“Fuck, that’s it,” Damon sighs above me. His hand settles on the back of my head, not pushing, just resting, thumb stroking my hair. “Such a good girl this morning.”
I close my eyes. The praise settles in my stomach like honey, thick and sweet.
The truck rumbles beneath us, tires humming over asphalt, and I start to move with small, lazy bobs of my head, sucking gently, keeping him snug and wet.
Each time I pull back, the piercings glide over my tongue in a steady metallic rhythm; when I sink down again, they drag deliciously along my tongue.
Every time Hunter shifts gears, the motion rocks me forward, forcing another bar past my lips, taking Damon a little deeper.
Minutes blur. Sunlight cuts across the windshield, painting us gold. Damon’s breathing gets rougher, but he doesn’t thrust, doesn’t take over. He lets me just hold him, lets me feel every rung of that ladder.
“This is different,” Hunter mutters at one point, voice gravel-rough.
“The Baroness likes to soothe herself,” Damon chuckles, the sound vibrating through his cock and every piercing straight into my throat. “Lately, she’s been such a bad girl that she didn’t have the privilege. But today she earned it.”
We’re almost at campus when Damon’s fingers tighten in my hair. He pulls me off gently, a wet pop echoing in the cab as each metal bar slips free in turn. I blink up at him, lips swollen, chin slick.
“Down,” he says, nudging me with his knee.
I fold myself onto the floorboard without hesitation, and he angles his hips toward me, cock shiny and flushed dark. The silver piercings gleam with my spit, stretched tight along the rigid length, every bar catching the morning light like wicked little promises.
“This time you finish me, Doll Baby. All the way.” He strokes my hair. “Hunt wants to watch.”
I don’t need to be told twice. I take him deep on the first slide, nose brushing the open fly of his jeans, the ladder rungs sliding over my tongue in one smooth, relentless line until the last bar nudges the back of my throat.
I start a steady rhythm, hands braced on his thighs, feeling the muscle jump under denim.
Each time I pull back, the piercings tug gently at my lips; each time I swallow him down, they click softly against my teeth. His praise comes in broken pieces now.
“There you go… fuck, just like that…” He inhales. “You see how good she looks with my cock buried in her sweet little mouth?”
Hunter grunts, but from my peripheral, I see him run his hand down the front of his pants.
The truck rolls to a stop, and Hunter kills the engine, but we’re not finished.
I’m not finished. Damon’s hips lift once, twice, and then he’s holding my head down, spilling hot across my tongue with a low, gritted curse.
I swallow everything, throat working around him until he’s done. Only then does he let me up. I lick my lips, wipe my chin with the back of my hand, and sit back on the seat between them like nothing happened.
Damon tucks himself away, zips up, and cups my cheek. “Good girl,” he whispers again, softer this time. “You keep remembering, I’ll keep rewarding.”
Hunter finally looks over, eyes dark with a glimmer of whatever it is that holds him back.
“I can–” I start.
“No.”
He opens the door and gets out, slamming it behind him.
“I don’t know what he wants,” I say, watching Hunter walk off.
“You’ll figure it out,” Damon says. “You just have to find what makes him tick.”
A moment later, I’m in the car alone, jaw sore, but feeling steadier than I have in weeks.