Chapter 15
Heath
Wainscott Hollow is where she belongs. Not because of the house or the belongings or the family history. But this is our sacred ground. These dunes, this ocean, is where we fell in love. It’s not the house or the estate, it’s Kat and me, the two of us, our souls united.
She takes in the decrepit estate as I carry her, the corridors we used to run as children. Our laughter vibrated off these same walls as we played and chased each other with wild abandon.
“Why would Henry let you stay here, Heath? He hates you.”
I carry Kat upstairs without a reply, kick in her old bedroom door, and place her on the bed before covering her body with mine.
She shivers from the chill of the stormy ocean, and I brush her hair back from her face as I plank myself over the length of her body.
How I long to tear the clothing off her body and bury myself in her softness.
Her skin is the map that leads my soul home.
I know every inch of her body better than I know my own.
Silence encircles us as we stare into the depths of one other’s eyes, terrified that once a word is uttered, our bubble will burst and we’ll crash back into the hell of the reality we’ve made. There’s too much to say, and words do not suffice the chaos of our emotions.
Her fingers move into my hair, and my eyes close, yet I grab her wrist and yank her touch away from me. The resolve I’m precariously holding onto is about to explode from a single touch.
“Don’t, Kat,” I growl. “You don’t know what—I don't know what I’ll do to you. Just don’t.”
“What would you do to me, Heath?” she tests me with a twinge of venom laced through her voice.
“My anger is at a boiling point. I’m too filled with hate,” I tell her.
“You don’t hate me, Heath. You might want to, but you never could. Just like I could never hate you. You can’t hate your own heart, even if you want to.”
I clamp my hands around her wrists, yanking her arms up and pinning them above her head. My fingers dig into her soft, supple flesh.
“My heart turned to ash the day you told me to leave. Not only can I hate my own heart, but I can tear it out with my bare hands if it hurts me too much.”
“You don’t think it killed me inside, too, saying those things to you?”
“No, Princess, I don’t. I think you meant what you said.
Playing poor was fun for a while, but once you realized it might have consequences, you chose the safe and easy path, the one that had been laid out before you.
Part of me hates you, and another part doesn’t blame you for doing what you did.
I had nothing to offer you. Only my heart, and what’s a rich girl going to do with some young gun’s heart on a plate?
I couldn’t offer you shit, Kat. I had nothing.
Sandcastles in the fucking sky when you could get a real palace just down the street. ”
“That would have been enough. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“I would have vowed to spend the rest of my fucking life loving you.”
She searches my eyes with so much emotion and pain that it makes my blood roar in my veins.
My eyes focus on the pulse of her neck, the blue veins in the swell of her pale chest. She swallows the words she wants to say to me.
I know she’ll offer me nothing but more lies that will spill effortlessly from her full, rose-tinted lips.
I gaze into the cornflower blue of her bright eyes that used to twinkle with joy.
She holds so much ice around her heart that I know, deep down, I’ll never excavate the truth.
A decade ago, I would have given anything to hear her say those words.
To have her run after me, say it was all a lie, and welcome me back into her arms. But maybe her rejection was a blessing in disguise.
Maybe it saved me from the eventual pain and humiliation I’d inevitably encounter down the line when she realized wealth and power were what made her world go round, and that our idealistic fantasy of true love wasn’t all it was chalked up to be.
Money doesn’t buy you happiness but love sure as hell isn’t free either.
I finger the locket around her neck, the one that belonged to my mother. “You put this on for me?”
“I never take it off.”
“You playing fucking games with me, Kat?” My voice shakes with the pure force of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I grab her face and squeeze her cheeks hard, yanking her to look right at me.
“I never stopped loving you—”
“LIES!”
I grasp her throat with one hand while I tug down my wet pants with the other to unleash my cock.
I’ve been hard as steel for her from the moment my fingers brushed hers on the beach.
The weight of her body in my arms was like an element, the most necessary matter to hold onto in this world—like my very survival depended on it.
“Why don’t you put that smart mouth of yours to use for something other than spewing bullshit?”
Her eyes round, and when she opens her mouth to speak, I spit in it.
“Whores don’t get to talk. You pay them for their silence.
Isn’t that what you are, Kat, a whore? Selling yourself to the highest bidder.
You’ll switch cocks and bounce that sweet pussy on the fattest wallet.
How much does a fuck go for out here these days? ”
I push harder on her throat, letting her know I’m the one with control now. I want her to know she’s nothing to me. It doesn't matter if it’s a lie. I want her to feel what I felt—that her life is in my hands, and if I squeeze a little more, she’ll be dead by those same hands.
I reach over to the nightstand and grab my black leather wallet, pull out five hundred dollars and toss it toward her face while I straddle her.
“This is enough for a blow job? I assume the rates around here are steeper than the Bronx. Or maybe not, you tell me.”
“Fuck you,” she squeaks, her voice strained under the force of my hand.
“Nah, baby doll. You’ve fucked me enough in my life. It’s time, I fuck you.”
Kat vexes me and consumes me, and while I’d take a bullet for her, I’d also cut out and eat her still-beating heart. I oscillate between two extremes with this woman, love and hate, violence and peace, like it’s a matter of life and death.
“Why don’t you show me what a good little cocksucker you’ve grown up to be?”
I move up her body, my massive erection gripped in my hand. When I reach her neck, I yank her head forward with my free hand and trace her mouth with the head of my dick so precum wets her full lips like a gloss. “Good little rich slut. Show me what you can do for me.”
“Heath,” she croaks before I shove my cock into her mouth.
I don’t know if I expect a fight, but what I don’t expect is an incredible fucking blow job.
Kat sucks with a hunger unlike anything I’ve ever known, swallowing the length of me down like a pornstar pro, both hands gripping my shaft, tugging my balls.
She gags on my length but doesn’t back up, bobbing up and down until strings of saliva slide down her chin.
I could bust a nut from a single touch, and I did not expect this level of expertise. Fuck.
Hell, I don’t know what Kat has been up to, but Jesus, I’ll come faster than I did the first time she let me put my hand in her panties.
Her eyes squeeze shut, and I yank her hair, forcing her to open them and look at me. “Eyes on me. You don’t look at or think of anything but me, Kat. It’s my cock fucking your mouth. Mine. I know you’re a cock-slut, but I need you to focus on me.”
She nods her head on my dick and looks up at me. I surge with power and control, but at the same time worry if I’m doing the wrong thing. I don’t want to scare her or hurt her in any way.
“I’ll make you feel good, baby, don’t worry. But first, I need to own you. Make sure you know who the fuck has always owned you. I can treat you nice, Princess, or like a dirty whore. Either way, I’ll make you mine. MINE. Understood?”
Kat tries to lift her head, but I hold her down by the throat.
She doesn’t get to come up for air. If she wants to drown so badly, I’ll suffocate her on my cock, so she can understand a bit of the misery I’ve felt during our separation.
So she gets an idea of the desperation you go through when you’ve got no place to run.
I went to hell because of Kat. and now I want to give her a spoonful of her own medicine.
Her hands move to my chest in desperation. She tries to push me off her, but she’s not with the man she knew; she’s now facing the monster she made. The beast who doesn’t care what she wants, the dark side of me that wants to punish her, hurt, and humiliate her the way she did me.
“You sound so good when you struggle with my cock in your mouth. Finally, you’re worth something, Kat. That’s all you were ever good for, a wet hole to fuck.”
My cock jerks in her mouth with my dirty talk, and she moans in protest. Maybe she can’t breathe, but I don’t care.
You care, you liar.
The rational part of my brain whispers to me, but it’s quieted by the roar of the beast. Kat can’t be mine if I hold her on a pedestal. She has to drop to my level first, fall to pieces before I pick her up and make her whole again.
She tries to talk, and I take the opportunity to shove my balls in her mouth. “Smart mouths always have more room than you think.”
Her coughing and gagging don’t make me stop. I’m not sure anything would at this point. But I know Kat, if she truly wanted me off her, she’d have bitten my dick.
Would she? You don’t know what she’s been through.
A voice in the back of my mind speaks, and I’m transported to the scene of her splayed on the beach, that animal on top of her, and her painfully quiet pleas for him to stop.
“Fuck,” I roar. I scramble off her so quickly that I almost fall off the bed. I pull my pants up over my erection and turn away from her. “Get the fuck out.”
“Why?” she asks, her voice low, barely a whisper.
“I don’t want to be like them. Get the fuck out before I change my mind.”
My eyes shut, and all I can focus on is the sound of her ragged breathing.
A soft lament that falls from her lips, a cry that sounds like a low fog horn, a ship wanting safety in the turbulent night.
A sound is so haunting, so desolate, that if it doesn’t stop soon, I’ll lose my mind and tear my fucking hair out.
“GET-THE-FUCK-OUT!” I rage.
My raised voice has the effect I want. Her footsteps move rapidly on the hardwood floor, and she opens the bedroom door.
Her plea comes raspy and laced with hurt. “You could tie me up and set me on fire, and you’d never be like them. You’re not evil, Heath.”
Two strides, and I’m in front of her. My hand grips her chin, and she winces from the force of my fingers. Good, because I want it to hurt. I want her to know the sad, pathetic boy is gone, and this man in front of her is capable of all kinds of surprises.
“Sweet Katelyn, I’m the monster the strong men in your life run from.”
With those words, I shove her and watch her ass hit the floor and her eyes well with tears.
“I know you, Heath. You may have changed, that might be true, but you’re not a rapist. Not like my husband or Henry.”