Chapter 12
Piper
Present Day
“Uh... Quill?”
He freezes at the door, his hand on the handle.His back is turned to me, but I’d know his scent anywhere. The spicy warmth of it. It wafted through my nightmares and woke me.
Time seems to come to a standstill as he remains at the door, so quiet and unmoving that I wonder if he’s even breathing.
At last, he utters, in a deep, guttural voice, “I’m not who you think I am.”
I lick my dry lips. “Okay.”
I’m sitting up by now, my hands clenched nervously in my lap. I should be calling the cops. I should be having him arrested. He entered my house. He’s been watching me sleep. Fucking creep.
But all I can think, with every thread of me, is:
Please. Don’t go.
He edges slowly away from the door and faces me. At least, I think he does. I can’t see his eyes behind the white mask.
Fuck. Did I just speak out loud?
“Don’t go.”
This time, there’s no doubt about it. I said those words. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Somehow, time slows down even more as I look up at him. I can’t believe I’m asking my parents’ murderer to stay.
No, begging.
Quill Nelson fries my brain cells.
Common sense goes out the window as I wait with baited breath. Is he going to listen? Is he going to stay? Is he going to call me a whore again?
Call me a whore. Call me anything. Just stay. Please stay.
When I lost Quill, I lost everything. He was my first, but he was also my only. He was the memory of my silent protector. It took only one kiss in the beginning of senior year to block out the entirety of high school. My memory has always been convenient.
And now, I’m struggling through the worst thing that’s ever happened, and I know he’s responsible. Just like he was responsible for the second worst thing that happened to me.
But who else am I supposed to turn to for comfort?
So I look up at him, waiting.
“Turn around,” he says gruffly.
“Turn around?” I echo dumbly.
“I don’t want to see your face.”
Every word he speaks is like an icepick to my heart. But every breath in a room with him is pure oxygen to my body.
I do as he says, barely able to breathe as I feel his presence draw near. His warmth. The spicy scent that’s him.
“On your hands and knees.”
How low can I fall? I don’t even think to refuse as I take that embarrassing position and feel him unzip my onesie.
This is why I didn’t want to come back to Astley. I can’t resist him. He’s like a fucking drug. The worst kind, the kind that makes you suffer even when you’re high, then kills you when you quit.
I wonder if I’m going to pass out when I feel his hand cupping my breast. The lightest touch makes my body burn. Two bodies shouldn’t respond to each other the way ours do. It’s too cruel.
Clearly he feels the same way. His reserve seems to melt the moment his fingers touch my nipple. I feel the sudden dip of the mattress as he kneels behind me, his hands hungrily raking over my body.
I arch into him desperately as his fingers crush my nipple, while the other hand makes its way to my pussy.
“Fuck, cricket,” he groans, and the old nickname makes me wet.
But the sound of it seems to startle him out of whatever state he’d sunken into. His hand abruptly leaves my folds and raises up to slap my ass, hard.
“Ow!”
He pushes my head down, tugging at my hair so it winds its way around his fingers, roughly shoving me against the mattress. He makes me arch higher with his other hand, then rains down smacks on my bottom.
“Hey! What the hell, Quill? Don’t hit me!”
It was always a favorite punishment of his, but I’d forgotten how much it hurts, and it hurts all the more now that I know there’s no love behind it.
The pain and the knowledge of that forces me out of my previous humiliated stupor, and my mouth opens to unleash a torrent of protest.
His hand pauses just long enough in the spanking to slam itself against my mouth.
“I wish I could fucking gag you.”
Then he pushes a pillow on my head. “Don’t fucking look me in the face. Don’t fucking call my name. You’ve lost that right.”
Anger courses through my veins as he holds my head down against the mattress, muffling my words with the pillow, while his other hand batters my ass cheeks.
Anger, not at what he’s doing to me, but at what he’s saying.
His words have always been so cruel.
“Ow! Okay! Then what the hell am I supposed to call you?”
He stops again, but this time, it’s to unzip his fly. I gasp, trying to turn around, trying to get a look at it, but he pins me down and I feel the moist head of his cock nudge against my asshole.
It’s been a very long time since he took me there, and I’m shaking all over, tensing as he presses against me. I don’t speak anymore. I don’t do anything but concentrate.
I remember how painful it was. But I derived pleasure from it because I knew it was pleasing him.
Now, I don’t want to please him. I don’t want to do anything but hurt him as much as he’s hurting me.
No, that’s not true. I want him, even more than I want to hurt him.
And his cock is still at my entrance, not moving. Clearly, he’s waiting for me to humiliate myself again and beg.
“Okay, yes... please.”
God, I fucking hate myself.
I hate him, too. Why can’t he allow me the belief that I don’t have a choice? Why does he make me admit my twisted need?
I swallow the rising lump in my throat, trying to relax. He’s not being gentle. Yet he’s also not slamming into me. He’s entering me slowly. Maybe he wants to allow me the time to get used to the painful sensation.
Nothing he does is for you, I think to myself desperately. He doesn’t care. Stop telling yourself he cares.
Then I stop thinking altogether as his cock keeps pushing into me, feeling like it’s going to split me in two. I’ve never felt such a stretch. It hurts like hell. A metal rod, searing my insides.
At last he stills inside me, and I know he’s taken me fully. I can’t help the whimper that escapes my throat as I feel the full length of him filling me.
At once he wraps his arms around me in a gesture I could almost imagine was soothing.
No. No. He’s not trying to soothe you. He’ll never soothe you again.
You lost that when you lost him.
The worst thing happens then. A tear squeezes itself out of my eye. He can’t tell from his position, but he definitely hears the loud sniff that accompanies it.
He’s still not moving, his arms holding me in a way that could trick me into thinking he cares. But I know how cruel he truly is.
“Do you want me to stop?”
His words feel far too gentle right now. They make me want to stab him in the throat.
“No. Please stay. Please continue–” I bite down on his name as I plead my parents’ murderer to keep fucking me. “What should I call you?”
His voice is deep and raspy again as he grunts, “Nothing. I’m nothing to you but a monster.”
But he keeps his arms wrapped around my middle, squeezing me as he starts to fuck me. I gasp in pain as his cock drives in and out of me, but his arms, still holding me, make it bearable. No, more than bearable.
At some point, I get used to the thickness filling me, and somehow, as his rhythm increases, as his thrusts grow harder, my insides start to curl again with a deep ache.
I can feel myself clench around him desperately, milking his cock as I try to edge my hand to my folds. But he doesn’t let me move.
He’s not going to let me come.
His cock still spears me hard, and he forgets himself again as he cries out, “Fuck, cricket! Fuck!”
I have to force down the name that’s ready to spill from my lips as he keeps going, my body burning up, my inner walls spasming around his cock, his arms melting into mine.
Take me. Fuck me. Own me.
I’m grinding into him, arching my ass back to meet his every thrust, moaning loudly. My pussy is engorged, leaking with need, but he doesn’t let me touch myself. And his arms are still locking mine to my body, his hands folded over my waist. This is a punishment fuck.
And it’s fucking hot.
I groan with regret as I feel him shudder inside me and his seed fill me. This means he’s going to leave. It’s over.
But he falls on top of me, crushing me under him. His cock is still inside me as he reaches around. I nearly cry out with relief when I feel his hand land on my pussy, but when his fingers reach my clit, he pinches it.
“Ow!” I scream.
He pinches hard, making me writhe in pain, but he doesn’t let up. It’s merciless, crushing the most sensitive part of me. But I can’t move because he’s still got me pinned down under him.
And moments later, that intolerable pain, coupled with my intense arousal, inexplicably cause a wave to crash into me.
It’s the most painful, forceful orgasm I’ve ever had.
By the end of it I’m wheezing, out of breath, but he doesn’t let up yet.
He keeps his fingers around my clit, torturing me, as he repeats his earlier threat.
“Stay the fuck away from Devil Tower. Keep your fucking nose out of my business.”
Then he removes himself from me. Huffing out a sigh that I could almost imagine is as regretful as I’m feeling, he walks away, leaving me lying naked on the bed, overcome by everything that’s just happened.
By the contradictory emotions searing my brain.
By the touch of his hands all over my body, the proof, maybe, that there’s something beyond his cruelty.
Fuck that. Who am I kidding?
My monster hates me.