9. Wren
9
WREN
W hy does everything keep getting worse?
I can hear Briggs’ feet pounding up the stairs behind me as I reach my front door. Why does he have to do this? Like I’m not nervous enough about going home in the first place. My nerves make me fumble with the keys, but I finally manage to find the one that fits into the deadbolt lock above the doorknob. Hurry, hurry . I turn it with shaking fingers and burst into the living room, which is messy as hell but thankfully empty for now.
The timing couldn’t be better, since Briggs’s footsteps are louder than ever by the time he reaches the landing and starts jogging down the hall. I only catch him out of the corner of my eye before shoving the door closed.
But not fast enough. “What are you hiding?” he asks in that joking way he has, like I’m so far beneath him. He wedges his body between the door and the frame, making it impossible for me to close it. “What, are you hiding something in here?”
With a grunt, he shoves hard enough that I stumble backward and almost fall on my ass when the backs of my legs hit the coffee table. Now he can stroll in like he owns the place, walking in and shutting the door before turning around to observe.
Right away, his nose wrinkles, his face screwing up in disdain. Somehow, this is worst of all. Worse than the fear of him forcing me into a blow job. I feel even dirtier than I did then. Exposed, like a raw nerve, and the pain pulses with every rapid beat of my heart.
“Wow. This is… even worse than I imagined, which is saying something.” His gaze lands on the empty beer bottles still lying around—I wasn’t exactly in the mood to clean up when I rushed out of here this morning. I was too busy being grateful to get away from Brandon and whatever it was he had in mind. He touches the toe of his shoe to one of those bottles, making it clink against the one next to it. “Feeling thirsty?” he asks with a laugh.
“They aren’t mine.” I feel a little smaller every time he reacts to something he sees. The sagging sofa. The scarred coffee table. The faded curtains over the windows.
I don’t have any reason to be embarrassed. He should be embarrassed for bursting in here uninvited. This place isn’t much, but I pay for it, and it’s my home. “My roommate’s going to be home any minute,” I tell him. When I hear the little tremor in my voice, I tighten my jaw and grit my teeth because, dammit, I can’t let him have that power over me. “You better get out of here. He’s gonna be pissed.”
“You’re not allowed to have visitors? That doesn’t sound like a roommate. It sounds like a jailer.” He doesn’t bother waiting for a response, and my heart sinks further when he crosses the room, throwing a single disgusted look toward the tiny kitchen before going down the hall.
“You have to leave! I didn’t ask you to come up here. I don’t want you here. And since you hate me so damn much, you should be in a hurry to get away from me, right?” I’m babbling, desperate. Alone. The truth is, I don’t know when Buck will come back—or whether it will be Brandon, instead. Either way, when that happens, I need to be in my room, behind a locked door.
“Oh, fuck. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse.” Briggs walks into my room and flops down on the foot of the bed, laughing by the time I join him. “When I was a kid, I had a dog with a little house in the backyard. I’m pretty sure it was bigger than this.”
Somebody trusted this psychopath with a dog? “That’s a great story. Now really, I have to ask you to leave. Or…”
I would swear the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. He arches an eyebrow, and that tiny gesture is worth a thousand words. The disdain and hatred in his eyes turns to something else. Something that makes my skin crawl.
“You know, little bird, there is nothing I would like better than to get out of here and pretend I never saw this sad place.” He waves a hand, scoffing, making me cringe a little. “Just one problem.”
“What problem?”
“I need payment. I mean, I went out of my way to drive you home. I had to look at this shithole and breathe the air. Do you realize how bad it smells in here?” he adds with something like genuine curiosity.
“Did you stop to think it’s because you’re in here?” I retort. His eyes narrow and now I’ve done it. I had to go and open my mouth. He deserves it—he deserves so much worse—but I can’t mouth off like that. Not when we’re here, alone.
“I already wanted payment, but now I’m going to need a little extra as interest for that smartass remark.” Slowly, he stands, unfolding his body until he towers over me. Everything in me tells me to run, but there’s nowhere to go. I couldn’t run fast enough or far enough to outrun him.
“What do you want? You have to know I don’t have a lot of money, but I can?—”
“Who said anything about money?” he asks with a soft laugh.
“So what do you want?” I ask, shaking inside, fighting to hide it.
He pretends to think about it. “All things considered, I’m owed at least a hand job.”
Here’s the thing about me. Sometimes, when I’m shocked—the way his sudden announcement shocks me—my immediate reaction is to laugh. Not that anything is funny. More like my brain doesn’t know how to process the surprise. So my confusion comes out as a laugh.
And of course, he takes it the wrong way. I barely have time to gasp when he takes a hold of my arms and throws me onto the bed hard enough that I almost bounce back onto the floor. I’m still trying to catch my breath when he looms over me, bending at the waist to pin me in place with a hand on either side of my head. “You think this is a joke? You don’t know better than that by now? I guess being a stupid slut runs in your family.”
His breathing gets faster when he leans closer. There’s nowhere for me to go, no way to avoid the hot breath fanning across my face. “Here’s how this is going to work, little bird. Either you’re going to jerk me off, or I’m going to fuck you. But either way, before I leave this apartment, my cum will be on your skin. It’s up to you how it gets there.”
His eyes flash dangerously before his hands start to move. He takes one of my ankles and pulls off my sneaker. He’s serious. He really means this. Panic flares to life in my gut, boiling hot, filling me with a rush of strength that makes me kick out instinctively. I hit him with my foot, but he doesn’t seem to notice, stripping off my other shoe before he reaches for my waist.
“Stop! What the hell is wrong with you? Please, don’t!” I’m talking to myself. It’s as useless as kicking and slapping. It makes no difference. By the time I’m sweating and breathless, he’s pulled my jeans down around my ankles and is tossing them aside. There’s something wild in his eyes, brutal, chilling.
“What’s it going to be?” He runs a hand over his crotch, and my stomach drops when I see how it bulges. “We can do this the easy way, or I can fuck you. The choice is yours.”
As if there’s any choice. As if I’ve ever had a choice. “Fine,” I blurt out, hating myself but knowing there’s no other option. “I’ll give you a hand job.”
“See? That wasn’t so difficult.”
I wish he wouldn’t stare at me the way he does while sitting next to me on the bed. I don’t want him to look at me at all. My throat is so tight, and my chest hurts from the way my heart pounds, but it’s the skin-crawling disgust that’s worst of all. Disgust with him, with myself for knowing I can’t avoid this. I wish I was stronger, but wishing never got me anywhere.
I can barely breathe in the last seconds before he unzips his fly. “Take it out,” he grunts, and even though I’ve never done anything like this before and sure as hell wouldn’t ever choose him as a partner, I close my eyes and grit my teeth before sliding a hand into his open fly, feeling my way around until I can dip inside his shorts. My fingers close around something hard and soft at the same time, like silk over steel.
“Take it out,” he grunts again, leaning back until he’s on his elbows, watching me as I carefully take his dick out. I feel so clumsy, but it’s the embarrassment that’s worse. Not having the first clue, wanting to cry while my stomach churns.
It’s big. That’s the first thought that goes through my head. Big, thick, and veiny. Once he’s out in the open, swaying a little, I don’t know what to do. When I look at him, his half-closed eyes tell me how much he’s liking this. I can’t imagine why. I’m not really doing anything.
“Well?” he asks, taking my hand and moving it up and down. “I swear, you’re fucking useless.” I have to bite my tongue to keep my thoughts inside, rubbing him up and down the way he wants.
Still, he grunts like he’s dissatisfied. “Don’t you have any lotion or something?” He finds a small tube on the table next to the bed and squirts some on my palm. Now it’s easier, now he seems to like it more. Instead of looking at his face, I stare at his dick, almost hypnotized, as my hand moves up and down, up and down. The quicker I get this over with, the better. The less I think about it, the easier it will be to look at myself in the mirror later. I just have to get through it. It will be over soon… Right?
“I finally found something you’re good for,” he whispers, and now he’s breathing faster. “There you go… Just like that. Don’t stop.”
Humiliated tears fill my eyes, but I won’t stop. Not because he said so. Because I need this to be over before I start screaming. He’s breathing harder, faster, moving his hips a little. “That’s right. Keep going. So close…”
Then, all of a sudden, he shoves my hand away. I don’t know what to think as he fights his way to his knees and pushes me back until I’m lying flat. He takes himself in his hand, his teeth gritted, his face going red before he grunts loudly.
And then he comes, and something warm hits the inside of my thigh. He gets more of it on my other thigh, grunting, groaning, painting my panties next. By the time he’s finished, I’m covered in sticky wetness, and he’s smiling like he just achieved something important.
“See?” he asks with a satisfied grin. “I told you you would end up wearing my cum either way. Wouldn’t it have been easier to give me what I wanted right away instead of trying to fight?”
He’s not looking for an answer, so I don’t bother giving one. I’m too ashamed to speak, frozen in place, staring at the ceiling and wondering when this is ever going to end. And how much worse it will get before it does.
He lets out a soft chuckle before zipping himself up. “I would tell you to have a good night, but I can’t imagine how you would in this shit hole.” He even whistles softly on his way down the hall, finally leaving me alone in the bedroom. Only when I hear the front door close, do I sit up, gagging at the warmth on my legs. What matters right now is locking the door, which I do after running out to the living room.
I’ll never wear these panties again, that much is for sure. I couldn’t look at them without remembering what he just put me through. A few tears fight their way down my cheeks as I get in the shower, feeling defeated, tainted.
But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is the slickness in my pussy when I wash myself down there. Because while the whole thing was scary and gross and not at all what I wanted… it was also kind of exciting. And I don’t know what that says about me.