Chapter 35 #2
My heart is nearly leaping out of my throat when I yank the door open and scramble across the small deck, leaping over the four stairs and hitting the cool, damp grass in my thick socks.
There isn’t much around here. Some trees around the house proper, but other than that, it’s just fields for half a mile before there are some scant trees marking the property line.
Still, I run.
Out in the open, my heart calms a bit. I could run forever out in the open.
I love running. My legs carry me easily as I lope through the tall grass and the distant trees inch closer and closer.
I haven’t run like this in ages. A smile pulls at my lips as my legs pump furiously, but I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder.
He’s less than a dozen yards behind me.
Fuck.
I dig deep, picking up the pace, and in a minute, I blow through the treeline, but it’s too dark this far from the house, and I realize I don’t know this area at all.
My foot catches on a root, and I pitch forward, crashing to the ground with a shout of pain.
I roll over, and don’t see him, but it’s utterly black out here . . . so I can’t be sure.
Getting my feet under me, I feel for the root I tripped on and follow it to the trunk of the tree it belongs to and pull myself up against it. I’m breathing too hard. It’s too loud, but he could have bailed in the field, and I wouldn’t know. Jesus, I can’t see anything.
An arm wraps around my neck, squeezing. I kick back but miss, and then I’m lifted off my feet and dragged away from the tree.
His chest heaves against my back, and his hot breath flashes against my cheek as his other arm wraps around my waist. “Say yes to me.”
I squirm against his hold, gritting my teeth, but he lifts me off the ground again. When he puts me back down, his lips press into my cheek, and his hand fists my hair, and my whole body vibrates again. My head is nodding rapidly before I realize it and the word “yes” spills off my tongue.
He pushes me forward into the tree, my cheek pressed to the damp bark as my head spins and my heart hammers.
“Say it again,” he groans as his body presses into mine.
I want it. I want it really badly now, but I don’t want him to get his way entirely.
“Get off me,” I hiss.
Freezing at my words, it takes a moment, and his breathing stutters, but his arms slip away, and he steps back from me.
I push myself away from the tree and turn around, dropping my back against it as I pant.
William isn’t that bad after all, it seems. I really didn’t think consent would be a sticky point for him.
I pull my sweater off. “If you’re going to fuck me, you can look me in the eye while you do it.”
“I can barely see you either way,” he pants out. “So, I don’t give a shit.”
He grabs my face, and his mouth crashes into mine, his tongue probing deeply as I wrap my arms around his neck and start tugging at his shirt. Breaking the kiss, he leans back and tugs it overhead.
“Take these off, or I’ll rip them off.” He pulls at my tights.
I shove the socks off and roll the tights down, slipping my feet out as the sound of his zipper opening fills the air.
Grabbing my thighs, he hauls me up and pins me to the tree. “Do you always fuck people you hate?”
“You’re the first,” I whisper, nuzzling into his face and tugging at his lip with my teeth.
“I still fucking loathe you.”
“Prove it,” I whisper.
I watch his mouth in the dark, a shadow of a smile as he leans into me, and his cock crowns me slowly. Without warning, he pulls out entirely and then drives back into me hard.
“Fuck!” I cry out in the dark.
The bark digs into my back as he angrily drives his body into mine. William is not a small man in any sense, and I groan as he uses me without a fucking care for anything else.
“Are you used to this?” he pants out. “As a pussy for hire?”
I grab him by the back of the hair and jerk his mouth away from me. He shakes his head, trying to free himself as he pulls against my grip until his lips are near my ear and bits of hair are coming free in my fist. “I mean getting railed like a slut.”
I let go of his hair and smile as my orgasm stirs. “York broke me in,” I say venomously in his ear. “But he spanks and chokes me until I come because . . . he knows what he’s doing.”
“Bitch,” he breathes into my neck, and my back arches as the heat between my thighs spikes into my hips. “That’s it, tighten up . . . Teach this cock a lesson.”
Jesus, he’s worse than York. My hips jerk as the tension snaps, and I cry out, clutching the back of his neck as I slid back and forth on his cock, riding out the ecstasy of the moment.
“So fucking tight,” he groans. “You have no right to be so tight.”
I keep riding the wave, trying to get closer until he grabs my hips and yanks me forward.
My breathing stutters as he buries himself with a shout, and I clutch his back, the muscles tightening beneath my hands as my nails dig into him, and he groans.
His thrusts slow with strained breaths puffed against the side of my neck.
We hang there for a moment, with my legs still wrapped around him as his dead weight pushes me into the tree. What the fuck is wrong with me? Sure, it felt good, really good . . . intense . . . but now the thought of York lying in my bed begins polluting my head.
I’m not his. He’s not mine . . . I’ve agreed to nothing. I’ve promised myself I’d run. I told him I would likely run. It’s unfortunate that sometimes we grow a conscience when we aren’t paying attention.
“Get away.” I push against William’s shoulders.
Lazily, he leans back, and I lower my legs without waiting for him to make room before snatching up my sweater and pulling it over my head.
My teeth chatter as I tug my tights on, and he takes his time pulling on his shirt in the shadows.
I can’t really see him out here . . . but I felt enough to know he looks good naked. Very good.
By the time I’ve jammed my feet into my grimy, damp wool socks, I wish I was a million miles away from all of this.
My breath floats on the air as I start back to the house without a word, picking my way through the field as I shiver harder.
Stripping down to nothing outside in fall in Maine was a bad fucking idea.
Talk about desperation.
The house glows in the distance, surrounded by the shadows of large old trees, and beyond that, a void of nothingness. Darkness. I’m happy the moon wasn’t out to shed even its faintest light on that scene. Although . . . maybe if I could have seen more, I would’ve stopped myself.
Swiping my hair back from my face, I sniffle, rubbing my nose as I struggle to warm up.
“Are you crying?” William asks, not far behind me.
I laugh. “No. I’m freezing.”
Then I pitch forward, sweater-covered hands smashing into the soggy grass with a yelp as a sharp pain fires through the ball of my foot, and I curse.
William passes me without a second look.
Asshole.
I get back up, but when I take another step, I stumble in pain. “Ah!”
William keeps going, putting yards between us.
“Stop,” I say meekly, but he keeps going. “Stop!”
Pausing, he turns around, but I can’t see his face in the dark.
“I can’t walk. Something is wrong with my foot.”
He says nothing, does nothing.
“Can you help me . . . please?”
Without a word, he walks back toward me, a long shadow in a landscape of shadows.
I stand there awkwardly on the side of my foot, shivering as he approaches with no sense of urgency.
I want to yell at him and tell him he’s a dick, but I believe he’d just turn back to the house and leave me out here to crawl back.
He grabs me and tosses me over his shoulder, his hand slapping on the back of my thigh, and I shout, slapping his back as he laughs. As if he had to carry me this way. I could have just used him as a crutch.
I’m carried through the mudroom, and the smell of food makes my stomach growl and my mouth water.
“What the hell is going on?” Carter barks as we cross the kitchen.
“She ran,” is all William says as he hefts my ass down on the counter.
“I ran from you,” I hiss. “If I was running from this shit”—I fling my arms out—“I would have put shoes on!”
He crouches to look at my injured foot, and I kick him in the shoulder with my other foot, causing him to lose his balance and fall to his ass. Rocketing back to his feet, he gets in my face, chest heaving.
“Back up.” Carter grabs his arm, but William shakes him off.
“Back up,” York’s voice repeats, cutting through the tension.
I break William’s glare to find York in the entryway from the hall staring at us.
William grunts in frustration and swipes at the ceramic canisters on the counter.
The unexpected movement makes me squeeze my eyes shut.
The sound of the canisters breaking as they hit the floor makes them open again.
Tea and sugar are all over the place as William stalks out of the room.
York edges into the kitchen. “What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does when it looks like you’ve taken a beating.”
Looking down at myself, I find my tights and sleeves muddied with bits of grass clinging to my clothing. With his good arm, he drags a chair over and sits in front of me wordlessly, and I lift my sore foot.
August and Carter busy themselves setting takeout containers on the dining table behind me, along with plates. York and I sit in this odd scene apart from them as he slides off my muddy sock and looks at the sole of my foot.
“Thorns of some kind,” he says quietly and then gets up. “August, can you pull those out?”
“I got it,” I grumble and cross my foot over my thigh, grabbing the tweezers from beside the sink. I must have stepped on a bramble. The three small brown spikes sting as I pull them out, but once it’s done, the pain is gone.
Torn between eating and showering, the decision is made for me when I feel William begin to drip down the inside of my thigh. Sighing, I head up to the bathroom and take a quick shower before redressing in clean, dry clothes and throwing everything else in the washing machine.
When I walk into the dining room, they’re all still at the table, save William, who I can see in the kitchen sweeping up the floor.
“I’ll change your dressing when you’re ready.” I glance at York.
York nods, going back to his conversation with August as I stare at the food numbly for a moment. Eventually, I serve myself some rice and orange chicken, eating quietly before disappearing upstairs.
You’d think I’d want them to be more shocked or enraged at the idea that William chased me out of the house, but I don’t. I don’t want their concern or attention on the matter at all. The truth is, I instigated it. Whatever weird energy William and I keep exchanging is fucking toxic but alluring.
York has put some silent claim on me that I never agreed to, and I like that William doesn’t seem to give a shit about it. I like that he is darker than York, exacerbated and unrefined . . . the opposite of York. I want them both differently, separately, but also not at all.
I want them, but I don’t want to keep them.
I’m not sure how York would react to finding out about William.
I’m not sure how he’s going to react if I say I’m not going to stay with him. Would he really track me down, or is he just being romantic when he says the things he says?