18. Jhene #3
His mouth and tongue on my pussy make me feel like I’m melting. I’m gradually sinking into the pleasure versus the chaotic explosion his dick often gives.
But it’s just as good—in some ways, so relaxing and blissful, I feel worshipped.
The orgasm crashes into me and wipes me out. A gasp rushes out of my lungs as my eyes roll back and a tremor rocks my body.
For a second or two, I forget where I am. The bed I’m lying in doesn’t register and neither do any of my other surroundings.
The pleasure’s too intense, too instant.
I give into it and bask in the tingly waves that pass over me. Then as I’m slowly returning to the moment and the orgasm subsides, I blink to tears.
The sudden weight of trauma crushes me, unloading all at once.
My pleased gasp turns into a small, warbling cry.
Killian’s head snaps up, panic flashing across his face. “Jhene? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
“No…” I murmur and twist my body to bury my face in his sheets. I don’t want him seeing me like this. “You didn’t hurt me at all. I’m sorry… I don’t know why I’m—”
Another cry forces its way out and interrupts me.
“Hey, don’t hide.” Killian’s moved up the bed and gathers me into his arms. He pulls me up ’til I’m propped against his chest and his fingers are stroking at my curls. “Tell me what it is. What’s going on in that head of yours, stray?”
I shake my head against his chest and mumble, “It’s not you. You’re… you’re so good to me, Killer. I just… I…”
He uses his other hand to rub circles on my back, encouraging me to continue. I sniffle and draw a fresh breath so I can.
“Sometimes when we’re together like this… I think about him.”
He tenses up, arms still around me, though he says nothing. He’s waiting for me to get the rest out.
“I hate it,” I whisper. “He’s not even here, yet sometimes it still feels like he is. It’s like he’s still in control of me and there’s nothing I can do about it. He’s in my head, and I can’t get him out.”
“Shhhh… don’t beat yourself up about that,” he says, his gruff tone gentler than usual. “You’re a free woman, you understand? He’s not here. He’s never gonna go anywhere near you again. Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”
“It’s just, I spent so many years trapped. I keep reverting back to that.”
“It’s gonna take time, stray. What you went through… that’s not something that goes away overnight. But know I’m never gonna judge you for any of that, alright?”
I nod and then press my face back into the hard plane of his chest. My eyes close, and I will the panic to go away.
Killian holds me as long as I need him to. We sit in his dark apartment in silence, his arms wrapped around me and my face buried in his chest.
“Do you ever look back on the past and wish you could warn yourself?” I mutter moments later. I lift my head up and peer at the shadowed lines of his face.
“Only to tell myself to fight back sooner,” he answers.
I understand what he’s alluding to—he’s told me about his alcoholic father and his drunken rages. He took it for years before he finally stood up for himself and his mom and sister.
I sigh and sit back, studying the palm of my hand as it rests in my lap. “I do all the time. I think about how I wish I could go back. Warn Mom not to make the deal she made.”
“With Fedorov?”
“She worked for him,” I confess darkly. “She was his accountant. His washer. Her job was to make money disappear. Make it so their books looked legit. But they didn’t pay her much, and as a single mom with two daughters, things were always tight.”
“That’s no surprise.”
“When Eva got sick, the medical bills piled up fast. We couldn’t keep up.
That’s why I got a tutoring job as soon as I could the summer I turned fourteen.
But it still wasn’t enough. So Fedorov offered my mom a loan.
” I laugh bitterly at the memory. “She thought she was saving us. She didn’t realize she was signing our lives away. ”
“What kind of deal was it?”
“The kind where there’s no escape from. The interest kept growing.
No matter how much she paid, it was never enough.
He kept changing the terms by adding more.
Moving the goalposts. When she finally realized she’d never be able to pay it off...
” I swallow hard, the grief rising up my throat.
“He told her he was going to take us. Me and Eva. As payment.”
Killian’s face darkens. “The sick fuck.”
“She panicked. She took us to the Greyhound station in the middle of the night and bought tickets across the country. We were going to go live with an old friend of hers in California. She told us to wait by the buses while she went to get snacks…”
“But she never came back,” he finishes for me, and I give a small nod.
“That was the last time I ever saw her,” I whisper, voice hoarse and throat aching. “Fedorov sent his enforcers to find us, and we were too young to get away. He told us she got on a bus and left us there. Abandoned us.”
“And you believed him?”
“I don’t know what to think.” I pause to wipe at my eyes, searching my mind for the answer and still, after all these years, coming up blank. “I’ll probably never really know what happened to her.”
“Anything could’ve,” he admits grimly. “But I’m not sure believing his version of events is the best option.”
“He took care of us after that. Made sure Eva got her treatments and gave us a place to live. But what I didn’t understand—what I wish I could warn myself about—was that Fedorov always expects a return. Nothing he ever does is free. Me and my baby sister were starting a debt of our own.
“Every single thing he gave us, we were going to have to pay back. Since we didn’t have money, he’d take his payment in other ways,” I say, feeling hollow.
Finding it difficult to meet Killian’s eyes.
His expression has only tightened, his scowl deepened.
“The meals and doctor’s visits and even the roof over our heads—it all had a price. ”
“Jhene…” he rasps.
“I found out when I turned eighteen. On my eighteenth birthday, he made it clear what I was to him from then on. How I’d be repaying my debt. I cried for days after it happened. But it was only the beginning. That was just the first time of many…”
Killian pulls me back into his arms, holding me so close it’s as if he thinks I’m about to slip away any second.
It’s immediately soothing. His arms are shields protecting me from the rest of the world, and I nestle myself deeper into him, taking comfort in that.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m so fucking sorry, Jhene.”
He sounds pained. My trauma deeply disturbs him, and I can sense it does.
That’s comforting too—that Killian Rourke cares about me so much, it upsets him to hear how I’ve been hurt.
I feel the same way about him.
Maybe the most unexpected twist of my lifetime.
The cruelest too.
Because no matter how much we care about each other and how safe he makes me feel, I’m still Fedorov’s property. I’m still bound to a debt I can never repay, trapped in a web I’ll never escape.
And knowing that breaks my heart most.