Chapter Ten
Damien
Emma.
Just the sound of her name makes my heart leap into my throat. I can hardly think about her without my cock twitching or my stomach clenching in a knot.
What is about her that makes her so much different from any other woman that I’ve known? It’s more than just her innocence: I had plenty of virgins back when I lived in the world. The real word, that is, with other people as neighbors, friends, enemies, and confidantes.
But none of them had Emma’s charm, sweetness or naïveté.
It’s like she knows something that the rest of us don’t, some arcane knowledge of how to be happy and peaceful in a world that’s so cruel and desperate.
Either way, whatever it is, she’s been haunting my thoughts since I left her on the road for the second time. This time, I didn’t hide and watch her walk away. I was afraid that the sight of her plump ass swinging from side to side would make me leap out of the woods and grab her. As much as I hate to admit it, I can feel myself starting to get attached to this strange little girl.
I want to show her things. Mostly, I want to show her dirty things. I want to show her how to fuck me like a pro, how to take my cock up her beautiful round ass. I want to show her how to deepthroat my cock until her jaw aches.
But there are other things, too. Things that happen to be a little more important than just sex. I want to show her how it’s possible to remove oneself from the world and live remotely. I want to show her that it’s okay to shun those whom we’re supposed to care for just because we happen to share blood.
That’s what scares me. It’s one thing for me to lust after this girl. Who wouldn’t? She’s got insane curves and bashful brown eyes. But the fact that I’m thinking about how it would feel to keep her in my life long-term is frightening. I haven’t had those kinds of thoughts about anyone in so long that it feels alien now.
While she’s never talked about her family, I get the sense that she and her parents aren’t exactly close. After all, she was missing for almost a whole day and she wasn’t even worried about them looking for her. That alone spoke volumes to me. If I had a girl like Emma for a daughter, I’d never let her out of my sight.
God, except there aren’t many girls like Emma. I’ve been with my share of women. Dozens. Hell, probably even hundreds. And not a single one of them has listened to me the way that Emma does.
With a sigh, I get to my feet and swagger into the kitchen. I’ve got a pot of stew on the stove and I take a wooden spoon and stir, leaning in close to inhale the fragrance of version and herbs. I wouldn’t normally eat stew this frequently: as a solitary man alone in the woods, variation in diet is one of the only opportunities I have to entertain myself.
But Emma loves my stew. So now, I always make sure that I have some on hand in case she comes sniffing around my door once again.
God, I feel like a coward. I wish things weren’t like this – I wish that I was a normal man, who lived in town. I wish that I was a normal man who could take Emma out on real dates. She seems like the kind of girl who loves ice cream parlors and movie-theater popcorn. We could go out to the movies, then get dinner and dessert afterwards.
I bet she could eat a whole forty-ounce steak by herself.
The thought of Emma eagerly wolfing down some red meat followed by ice cream and chocolate syrup makes me grin, against my better judgment. I close my eyes as I picture how happy she is when she eats: like she’s found heaven on earth.
She looks almost as happy eating as she does when she’s riding my cock.
My manhood twitches and stiffens in my pants and I groan, opening my eyes and leaning against the counter. The whole cabin is filled with the rich, meaty scent of stew and the smell is only contributing to my building arousal.
For a moment, I slide my hands into my pants and wrap my fingers around my cock. My hands are rough and calloused – they’re nothing like Emma’s soft little mitts – but it feels good, anyway. I start to move my hand up and down, groaning and grunting as my fingers massage my shaft. With my other hand, I cup my balls and begin to knead. I picture Emma’s pink lips open and waiting for me, her pink pout opening as I slide my cock towards her mouth.
I want to fuck her raw. I want to ride Emma so hard that she can’t walk after. She’ll be so sore that I’ll have to carry her to the bathroom and give her a shower as my cum leaks out of her pussy and drips down her plump thighs.
God, I wish the brunette was here. I’d give that curvy young thing the night of her life. And I’d have one hell of a time letting her go in the morning.
But it’s better for her if she stays away. She’s a sweet, innocent girl and I’m nothing but an animal. I’m nothing but a wild beast who lives in the woods.
A wild beast with a rap sheet and a penchant for ruining lives no less. Fuck me.
So yeah, Emma has to stay away. Every time she comes here and leaves, it’s harder for me. It’s harder for me to say goodbye and watch her disappear into the town that ruined my life.
But when I hear the knock at the door, I practically shit myself. Yanking my hand free from my pants, I wipe my fingers on my thigh and cross the room. My heart is thudding as I wrap my hand around the door handle and yank it open, expecting to see Emma standing there with a sweet smile on her angelic face.
Except Emma’s not standing there. There’s no sight of her luscious curves or shy brown gaze. Instead, there’s a man standing there in an Armani suit with a briefcase tucked under his arm. The sight of him makes me scowl.
I haven’t seen him in years.
“Damien, I need to talk to you,” he says in a high, nasally voice. “It’s important.”
My arousal vanishes completely and I’m left with an acrid, bitter taste in my mouth that reminds me of vomit. My stomach turns and twists and suddenly, I’m nauseous. Pushing past the man, I stumble out onto the porch and vomit.
“Hey man,” the suit wheezes. “Nice to see you, too!”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and turn to face the man with a glower. He’s standing there with an amused smile on his wide face. In the years since I’ve seen him, his brown beard has gone almost completely grey, and his hair is streaked with white at the temples. He still looks as foppish as ever though, with shiny shoes covered in mud and a gold Rolex glinting at his wrist.
“Jed,” I say in a tired voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I step back into the doorway, closing it around me so that Jed can’t come inside my domain. “I thought we agreed – no surprise visits.”
“Well, it’s hard to get in touch with a man who doesn’t have a phone,” Jed jokes. When I don’t laugh, his grin fades and he shakes his head. “Come on, Damien. I’ve got news. Good news,” he adds. “News that you’re definitely going to be interested in.”
I start to close the door in his face but Jed sticks his foot in the door so it catches his Gucci loafer. He howls in pain but I don’t ease up, staring at him and wondering what he could possibly have to say to me.
“Ouch!” Jed squeaks. “Damien, come on! Don’t be such an ass! Let me in!”
I sigh and step back to open the door. Jed limps inside, glaring at me as his wounded foot drags across the ground. What a pussy. I roll my eyes. Even when Emma had her sprained ankle, she was still up moving around. I didn’t do anything more than bruise Jed and he’s acting like I cut off his damned foot.
All I can do now is hope that wherever she is, Emma’s not about to show up and make an appearance. Jed is the last person I want her to meet. I’m still not ready for her to find out about my past.
And I’m not sure that I ever will be.
“Why are you here?” I ask warily as Jed drops down into a leather armchair by the fireplace. He doesn’t answer, instead cradling his wounded foot and letting out a pitiful whimper.
“You got a first aid kit around here?”
I groan under my breath and stomp into the kitchen where I grab the meager kit from under the sink. I bought it back when I first moved out to the woods, anticipating lots of cuts and scrapes. But after the first couple of weeks out here, I was so used to being banged up that I didn’t even notice. And now my skin has practically hardened like some kind of reptilian hide.
The price I pay for being an animal instead of a man.
“Yeah. Here.” I walk back into the living room and pass Jed the kit. He takes his shoes off, wincing again at the mud caking the expensive patent leather, and puts his feet to the fire. I see blood covering his right foot and I realize that the door must have scraped his toes.
Oh, well. He’s always been the world’s biggest pussy.
We sit in silence punctuated with Jed’s little cries of pain as he dabs hydrogen peroxide on his cuts and covers them with all of the band-aids in the kit. When he hands the box back to me, I smirk.
“You want a kiss and some orange juice, too?”
Jed glares at me. “Fuck off,” he mutters under his breath. “I come all the way out here to the middle of nowhere, just to give you good news, and you repay me with a fucking bang on my foot. Thanks for that.”
I snicker. “Next time I’ll make sure there’s a real candy striper here, okay?”
“Very funny,” Jed says drily. He sighs and leans back in the chair. He looks fatigued, like he’s been working long hours with little sleep. “Now about the case.”
My heart sinks in my chest like a lead balloon.
“If I’d known you were coming here to talk about that, I never would have let you inside,” I say gruffly. “That’s not fucking funny, Jed. That case is long over and it should stay buried, where it belongs.”
“That’s just it, though,” my lawyer says. He clears his throat and passes me a sheaf of paperwork printed with tiny letters. I frown as I hold the papers in front of me and squint. “It’s not over.”
“I’m a convicted felon,” I snort rudely. “Somehow, I don’t think anything is going to change that.”
“Will you listen to me for a fucking minute, Damien? I found something big and it’s going to help you.”
I stare at him, more in disgust than disbelief. A tidal wave of emotions crashes through my body but I do my best to ignore them as Jed rambles on.
“I don’t see how anything could possibly help me at this point,” I say in a low growl. “I spent years in prison, Jed. I did hard time. Nothing is going to erase that. Nothing can make those memories go away.”
Jed raises an eyebrow at me. “I get it. I get that you suffered in that hellhole called Rikers. But we’ve caught a break,” he says. “I finally found evidence that Jason Hadley was plotting against you from the beginning. Or do you not want to hear about it?”
I sigh. For a long time after I was convicted and sent to prison, I dreamed of hearing those exact words. I dreamed that Jed would come to visit me with hopeful papers tucked in a briefcase. I hoped that something would happen – anything! – to uncover the truth and I’d be able to walk out of prison the very next day, a free man.
But my hope began to dwindle after years of being locked up with no end in sight. I’d been sentenced to ten years and I’d served eight. Getting released early for good behavior wasn’t the same kind of thing as getting released on my own merit. Everyone in the world still thought I was a criminal, and at this point, I’m not sure anything’s going to change that.
I wasn’t even sure if Jed himself cares, to be honest. More like this is a way for him to rack up additional legal fees. Because whenever he looks at me, I’m sure all he sees is a money tree that sheds dollar bills. In fact, if it weren’t for my massive bank account, there’s no way he would have taken this case.
But maybe the years under lockdown have made me hard and cynical. Maybe my lawyer did believe in me and my case, and things just went awry. Can I afford to take that risk and trust another human? I take a deep breath, trying to assess the situation.
“What did you find?” I ask warily. “And why did it take so long?”
Jed clears his throat. “It’s all there,” he says. “It looks like Jason was planning ahead of time to trick you. If you look at the bank statements for his offshore accounts, he did a lot of transfers in the two months before he had you arrested and convicted for embezzlement. It looks like he was trying to make sure that his own part of the fortune was secured before turning on his partner.”
Jed’s words should bring me hope, but instead they make me sick. I get to my feet and rush to the bathroom, vomiting a gush of brown stew into the toilet. My head is throbbing by the time I stand up and wipe my mouth at the sink.
Betrayed by my own goddamn partner.
It’s like something out of a bad film noir, except it’s real life, and it happened to me.
“We can appeal your conviction,” Jed said. “Clear your record. It would be good for you, Damien. You could start to think about returning to the world, you know?”
I glare at him. “You think that I haven’t ever thought about that?”
Jed crosses his arms over his chest. “Damien, be reasonable. I know it’s been a long time, but you’re a good man. You didn’t do anything wrong. You can go out into the world and take your life back. Build a house, you know, get out of these woods and start living.”
It slowly dawns on me that Jed does believe me. He must, after all. Why would he be here?
“Do you really think that Jason framed me?” I ask in a low voice. “Do you really think I’m innocent?”
Jed chuckles. “You know I only signed on at first because of your money,” he replies. “After all, that’s what lawyers do. But do you really think I would have stuck around this long if I didn’t believe that you’re innocent? It’s been years, Damien. I could have deserted you and let this turn into a cold case. So why do you think I’m here, if not for the truth?”
I don’t reply. His words have given me a lot to think about.
“I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been out in the world,” Jed says. This time, his voice is gentler. “But Damien, it’s time you took your life back. We’ve been searching for this for years and I wasn’t ever sure that we’d find anything. This is huge, though.”
“And you really think a judge would overturn my conviction? How can you be so sure?”
Jed shrugs and gives me his trademark shit-eating lawyer grin. “I’m not sure at all,” he replies. “But we won’t know until we try, and why not? You’re wasting away out here.”
A dangerous ray of hope fills my chest and for a moment, I can’t breathe. I wonder what it would be like to go back into the world. I could do anything. Like Jed says, I could build a big house and resume my normal life. Vindicate my name and hold my head up high among the crowd.
But the bubble of hope bursts before I can even start to taste it. There’s no way I can return to the world. Not now. When I was first released from prison, I tried it. I thought that I’d be able to get right back out there and resume being Damien Evercore, billionaire playboy extraordinaire. But nothing works out like you plan.
“Damien? What do you think?” Jed asks cautiously. “Do you think it’s something you want me to pursue? Because if so, I can file the appeal paperwork on Monday and get this whole thing started. It shouldn’t take longer than a month or two at the most.”
I swallow bitterly. “You know, the first day I was released from prison, I had a cab take me to the Four Seasons. I booked the penthouse for myself, and ordered room service.”
“That sounds like it was a fun night,” Jed replies. “Did you order a call girl?”
Ignoring him, I turn so that I’m staring into the fire. “No. I ordered everything on the hotel menu, though. Steak tartare, a cheese platter the size of the bed, even a couple bottles of champagne. I was going to get blackout drunk and celebrate in style.”
Jed is silent and I shift in my chair, crossing my legs at the knee.
“And I had a great time,” I continue on. “I drank all the liquor until I felt like my head was bursting with the alcohol. I gorged myself on steak until I was sick.”
“And then what?” Jed frowns.
I swallow hard. “In the morning, as you can well imagine, I had the hangover of a lifetime. I got up and walked outside with my sunglasses on and my head thumping. Hell, I think I was probably still drunk. But I felt great. I was going to walk to a real estate broker and have someone pick out a fully furnished penthouse for me. It didn’t matter that I no longer had assets. I was going to get everything on credit, and get my life back together.”
“And you settled for this?” Jed jokes as he gestures around my log cabin. “I can’t say I see the appeal, man, but you do you.”
“No,” I say firmly. “That’s not what happened. I was standing outside the real estate office when I saw someone point their finger right at me and scream, ‘That’s Damien Evercore! He was in prison!’”
“Jesus, man,” Jed says. He shakes his head. “What the fuck are the odds of that even happening?”
“I don’t know, but they did,” I growl. “And that ruined it for me. I knew that I’d never be able to go anywhere in town again without someone recognizing me. They might not point at me and laugh or stare, but they’d know. Every time, someone would point and laugh with disgust, thinking that I’d betrayed my best friend and embezzled money from our company.”
“Except that’s not what happened,” Jed replies. “You’re innocent, Damien. I know that you are.”
“Yeah. You and who else?”
Jed is silent. He gets to his feet and shakes his head before collecting his sheaf of paperwork from my lap. “Look,” he says. “I know it’s rough. And you’ve done a really good job of dealing with this. But things will be different now – no one is going to look at you and think you’re a criminal.”
“No one ever believes it when a convict has a felony overturned,” I say bitterly. “They’re just going to think I have a hotshot lawyer who got me off the hook by making a deal somehow.”
Jed puffs his chest out. “And you do,” he says. “I am that hotshot lawyer. But they’re not going to keep thinking that way. You can get back into the business world, Damien. And I encourage you to do so. You were a brilliant businessman, and I don’t think that part of your life is over yet. You’re young yet – you’re what, forty-three?”
“Forty-five,” I growl. “And that part of my life has been over for a long time.”
Jed is silent as he puts his muddy Gucci loafers back on his feet and stands up. He brushes his hands off on his thighs and shakes his head. I can tell he’s holding back, but I’m fine with that. I don’t need my fancy lawyer trying to convince me of anything at the moment – especially the idea of returning to the cruel world which so bitterly betrayed me.
“Okay,” Jed says with resignation. He tucks his briefcase under his arm. “I can see your mind is made up. But let me file that appeal anyway, okay? I just want to see how it will go.”
The bitter taste seeps into my mouth again and I’m glad my stomach is empty so there’s nothing left to vomit.
“Yeah. Whatever,” I say. “Do what you want.”
I watch Jed leave from my chair. As the sound of his Mercedes fades into the distance, I close my eyes and think of Emma. Thoughts of her have become a sanctuary for me, a place where the real world with all of its troubles doesn’t exist.
God, Emma.
She can never know about this.
No matter what.
Because if my sweet girl knows that I’m a convicted felon, she’ll run screaming … and I’ll only have myself to blame.