Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Monk
Her nails raked down my back hard enough to draw blood, digging in with a desperate urgency that should have sent shivers through me.
I didn’t feel it.
Nothing registered. Not the sting, not the heat, not even the faint wetness trickling down my spine.
Ruby was underneath me, legs wrapped tight around my waist, ankles locked behind my ass, making those high-pitched sounds that were supposed to be sexy but just grated on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.
Her bleached blonde hair was spread across my pillow in a tangled mess, her heavy makeup smeared across her face in dark streaks—mascara running, lipstick smudged across her chin.
Her tits bounced with every brutal thrust I delivered, nipples hard and pink, the flesh jiggling obscenely as I pounded into her.
I had her pinned beneath me, my weight crushing her into the mattress, one hand gripping her hip hard enough to bruise while the other braced against the headboard for leverage.
My cock drove into her pussy with mechanical precision—deep, hard strokes that made her whole body jolt with the impact.
I could feel every inch of her wrapped around me, hot and slick and tight, her inner walls clenching and fluttering as I hit bottom with each thrust.
I fucked her harder.
Faster. More brutal.
Pulled almost all the way out until just the head of my cock was still inside her, then slammed back in to the hilt in one savage motion.
The wet sound of flesh slapping against flesh filled the room—obscene, rhythmic, mechanical.
Her pussy made lewd squelching noises as I drove into her again and again, her arousal coating my shaft, dripping down onto the sheets beneath us.
Not because I wanted to. Not because she felt good. Not because her body did anything for me.
Because I needed to feel something.
Anything.
Some spark of sensation. Some hint of pleasure or pain or connection. Some proof I was still alive inside, still human, still capable of experiencing the world instead of just moving through it like a ghost.
“Oh God, Monk—yes—right there—fuck—”
I gripped both her hips now, fingers digging into soft flesh, and drove into her with enough force to make the headboard slam against the wall.
The sound echoed through my room at the clubhouse—rhythmic, mechanical, empty.
A metronome counting down the minutes until I could be alone again.
I changed the angle, lifting her hips higher, and felt my cock slide even deeper.
She cried out, her back arching off the bed, her hands scrabbling at my shoulders.
She wasn’t as tight as I liked, but she was wet and eager. Her pussy gripped my cock like a vise, hot and slick and pulsing around me. Everything a man was supposed to want.
And I felt nothing.
Not a damn thing except the dull throb of exertion and the familiar hollowness that had taken up permanent residence in my chest.
I closed my eyes and tried to lose myself in it.
In the heat of her body, the slick slide of my cock pumping in and out of her cunt, the way her inner walls clenched around me when I hit that spot deep inside her that made her scream my name like a prayer.
I focused on the physical sensations—her nails raking down my back, her breath hot and ragged against my neck, the desperate little sounds she made as she got closer to the edge.
The way her thighs trembled against my sides.
The way her pussy got wetter, hotter, tighter with every thrust.
But it was just friction.
Just bodies colliding in the dark. Just the mechanical slide of flesh into flesh, the biological response of arousal and penetration.
Just another way to kill time and forget, even if only for a few minutes, that I was empty inside. That I’d been empty for so long I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be whole.
“Fuck—Monk—I’m gonna—”
I shifted position, pulling out of her completely.
She whimpered at the loss, but I flipped her over onto her stomach before she could protest, yanking her hips up so her ass was in the air, face pressed into the pillow.
I lined my cock up with her entrance and drove back in with one brutal thrust, burying myself to the hilt.
From this angle I could go even deeper, could feel her cervix kissing the head of my cock with every stroke.
She came with a cry that was too loud, too performative, too rehearsed, her whole body shaking beneath me in what I recognized as an exaggerated display.
I felt her pussy clamp down around my cock, rhythmic pulses that squeezed and released, felt her nails dig deeper into the sheets, heard her gasping my name like I was some kind of god, some savior she’d been waiting for her entire life.
Her arousal gushed around my shaft, making everything wetter, slicker.
I kept going, unmoved by her theatrics.
Chasing my own release with the same grim determination I brought to everything else in my life.
Every deal. Every negotiation. Every meaningless encounter.
My rhythm didn’t change. Didn’t speed up or slow down.
Just the same relentless pace, driving into her oversensitive pussy like I could fuck my way through the emptiness, like I could find something resembling feeling if I just pushed hard enough.
She was whimpering now, overstimulated, her body jerking with each thrust, but I didn’t stop.
Didn’t slow down. Just kept pounding into her with mechanical precision.
It took another five minutes before I finally came, and even that felt like work.
No buildup. No explosion of pleasure. No moment of transcendence or connection.
Just a release. Physical. Mechanical. A biological function completed. I felt my cock pulse inside her, felt the warmth of my cum filling her, but there was no satisfaction in it. No relief. Just the same hollow emptiness I’d felt before, maybe worse now.
I pulled out immediately, rolling off her and onto my back, my chest heaving as I stared at the ceiling. The same ceiling I’d stared at a hundred times before with a hundred different women. Sweat cooled on my skin, leaving me cold. My heart rate slowed, returning to its normal, steady beat.
And I felt exactly the same as I had before. Maybe worse.
Empty. Hollow. Like I had just gone through the motions of being human without actually feeling any of it.
Ruby curled against my side, her hand sliding across my chest, as her fingers traced the tattoos that covered my torso.
Her touch was light, exploratory, as if she were trying to memorize the patterns etched into my skin.
The phoenix on my left pec. The skull wrapped in barbed wire on my ribs.
The scripture I had gotten when I still believed in something.
“That was amazing,” she purred, her voice breathy and satisfied, still catching from the exertion. “You always know how to—”
“Get out.”
She froze, her hand going still against my skin. “What?”
I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, my back to her. The mattress shifted as I moved, springs creaking in the quiet room. “I said get the fuck out.”
“But I thought…” Her voice had changed now, confusion mixing with hurt, with the first edge of anger.
“You fucking thought wrong.” I stood, grabbed my jeans from the floor where I had kicked them off an hour ago, and pulled them on. I didn’t bother with the button. The denim was rough against my skin, still holding the warmth of my body. “This was a fuck. That’s it. Nothing more. Now leave.”
I heard her move behind me. The rustle of sheets. The soft thud of her feet hitting the floor. The sound of her gathering her clothes, muttering under her breath. Words I couldn’t quite make out and didn’t care to.
“You’re such an asshole,” she said louder, making damn sure I heard her that time.
I didn’t respond. I just stood there with my hands braced on my dresser, white-knuckled, and stared at my reflection in the mirror mounted above it. The glass was smudged, fingerprints and dust obscuring parts of the image, but I could see enough.
Dark hair, longer than it should be, falling past my collar.
Dark eyes that looked black in the dim light, hollow and empty.
Ink covering most of my visible skin—arms, chest, shoulders, neck.
A canvas of bad decisions and worse memories.
Scars from fights I barely remembered, thin white lines cutting through the tattoos.
A knife wound on my shoulder from a bar fight in Reno.
A jagged scar above my left eyebrow from a broken bottle in Vegas.
A face that looked older than thirty-six, harder than it should have been, weathered by too many years of too much everything.
A stranger.
I had been looking at this stranger for seven years now. Ever since Lina. Ever since everything went to hell, and I stopped recognizing the man in the mirror.
Behind me, Ruby pulled on her dress. Some tight red thing that barely covered her ass, the kind of dress that screamed “take me home” from across a crowded bar. I heard the rasp of the zipper, heard her stumble slightly as she stepped into her heels.
She paused with her hand on the knob, standing there in my doorway like she had something important to say. Like she had figured me out in the many times we had done this dance.
“You know what your problem is, Monk?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Just kept staring at that stranger in the mirror.
“You’re dead inside. You fuck like you’re trying to feel something, anything, but you can’t. Because there’s nothing left in you. You’re just a shell pretending to be a man.”
The door slammed behind her, hard enough to rattle the frame, hard enough to make the mirror shake.
I exhaled slowly and turned away from the mirror, my reflection already fading from my mind like smoke dissipating in the wind.