Riley: Journeys
After regaining consciousness fully the first time, Jack sleeps and wakes for another few days, dipping in and out of things. I change his bandages with Wyatt's help and feed him sips of water and bits of food when he's able to eat. He's feverish and hazy and for a while, I'm worried he's getting worse, but a week after he first woke up, I step into the room and he's sitting up in the bed and looking at me with lucid, dark eyes.
We gaze at each other for a moment in silence. “Looks like you’re my prisoner now,” I say.
He smirks at me, almost mischievously, and I see the muscles go taut in his left arm.
“No! Jack!” I protest. “Let me do it! You’re going to hurt yourself. You’ve lost a lot of muscle. You’ve been in bed for a long time!”
He keeps grinning and flexes harder, and the top of the bedpost snaps off.
“Jack! That was a nice bed. And you still need those! You might still thrash around and hurt yourself when you sleep!”
He reaches over to his other tie and undoes it with a flick of his fingers.
“Jack, you’re not strong enough to get up.”
He smiles back at me. “It seems like I shouldn’t be, right? But maybe I am.”
And slowly but surely, he rises from the bed. He wraps the white sheet around his waist and walks to me.
“Oh, fuck," I breathe, a little cutely.
I back up until my back and bottom are pressed against the wall. He moves to me and takes the plate and glass I’m holding. He takes a sip then sets them aside and presses his body against mine, letting me feel him against me. His cock is rock hard and it presses against my stomach. My heart is racing. There’s a throbbing passion between my legs.
He’s watching me very, very carefully.
“You said you loved me,” he says.
“I do love you. I’m in love with you.”
“I'm in love with you." He's confident and certain, as if he's stating the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t deserve you. You should’ve left me on that rig.”
“I don’t care.” I drape my arms around his neck. “I don’t care, Jack. I love you. I wanted you to come back for me, and you came back for me. You saved me. And I love you.”
He considers me for a long time. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it all up to you.”
I look into his bright eyes. “Take me. Right now.” My heart is hammering in my chest. I want to talk dirty to him. Be dirty for him. “I want you to possess me. I want to be owned by you. I want to be yours—”
He cups my face and cuts me off with a kiss. He tugs the sheet from his waist and tosses it back onto the bed. He’s like something carved out of marble turned to warm, living flesh. He’s perfect, scars and wounds and all. He tugs my little dress down to expose my breasts, then pulls it roughly over my bottom and lets it drop to my feet. I step out of it. All I’m wearing is a tiny pair of lacy white panties. I’d been wearing them for him to see. They barely cover anything.
I’m sweating from the heat and arousal. So is he. His cock is so, so big. I can’t believe I’ve managed to take it before. He’s the biggest man I’ve ever seen. I realize that my body and legs are trembling and I need the wall for support. My chest is heaving, and he smiles with satisfaction looking at my bare, sweaty breasts. He trails a finger down around a nipple, along my stomach and belly button, and then hooks it around the waist of the panties and trails it around one of my hips.
“You’re wearing panties this time. You trying to protect your modesty from me with these little things?” he says in a playful, teasing tone.
“Yeah, I guess I am.” Even though that’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to do. He tugs them up in the back, making them even tighter against my throbbing, needy entrance. He takes his pleasure in examining my naked body, then he puts his hands where he wants. He gropes my breasts, my abdomen, my thighs, and my bottom. I feel like I might orgasm just from him touching me. His hands go to my hips and he pulls me in for another kiss, and then he’s sweeping me into his arms.
“No, Jack! You’ll hurt yourself!” I say in alarm.
He holds me like his princess and kisses me again as if to say, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He sweeps me to the bed and lays me out on it. I’m at his mercy and on display for him; I love it. He takes another moment to take me in and then snaps the waistband of my panties impatiently and tosses them away.
“Jack!" I whine petulantly. "Those were new—" and I'm cut off by my own moan: he wraps his warm, firm mouth around my pussy. My legs spread and my back arches. I haven't been fucked in a week while he drifted in and out, recovering, and I've refused to touch myself. I've been waiting for him. He licks and sucks as if he's feeding on me, a gorgeous incubus.
I gasp again. It all feels so overwhelmingly good. Pleasure radiates through me. He licks up and down and side to side across my swollen, wet folds. I buck my hips up and he wraps his hands around my pelvis and presses me back down. It feels good, straining against his firm grip.
I get right to the edge of ecstasy and he pulls away and then presses into me. I gasp and arch my back. I can’t think or speak coherently. All I can do is gasp a dirty little, “Oh, fuck.” He slowly sinks his cock into my wetness, inch after inch. It feels just as overwhelming as the first time.
He rolls over, laying me on top of him, then twists my arms behind me, pins them there, and holds me close and tight to him. Our warm, sweaty bodies are pressed as close together as they can be. He begins to roll his hips, tugging his cock out of me then pressing it back in. He fucks me with long, full strokes and slowly starts to increase his tempo. My ample, wet bottom starts to jiggle and shake as he pounds into my needy passion.
I’m completely immobilized and under his control. I have no chance of resisting him and I don’t want to. I strain against his grip, loving how firmly he holds me in place. That enormous cock is hitting every perfect spot. Warmth radiates up and through my body. The tension builds and builds.
“Fuck me. Take me. Own me,” I gasp.
“You’re mine. I love you. I’m never letting you go.” He plunges into me again and again.
I explode on his thick cock. Passion ravishes through my body, warm and full and pulsating. "Oh, Jack!" I sob in perfect ecstasy.
“I love you,” he says and kisses my hot lips again and again and again. His cock swells and spasms and I feel his warm seed erupt deep inside of me. Our bodies tense and then relax against each other as we climax together.
I collapse against him, trembling and completely spent. Eventually, he releases my arms. I wrap myself around him, and he holds me firmly to his chest. It feels like we could lie in that warm, bright room forever. It's morning and the sun is just rising into the sky. Jack takes the plate from where he had set it down and feeds me pomegranates and sips of water. I curl up at his side.
We lay in peaceful, perfect silence for a long, long time.
Finally, I say, "I don't care, you know. I don't care if you're hurt. Or if you don't have any money anymore. Or if there are men after you. Or if you're not in control of a criminal empire anymore, or anything else. I just want you. I want the funny things you say about books and your dark eyes and your wit and heart and passion…"
Jack’s grinning at me now.
“What? I mean it.”
“I don't deserve you, Riley. I don't deserve any of this. But I'll be stronger than I ever was in a few weeks. And…I'm not without money. And I’m going to kill anyone who ever tries to come after us. But I don’t think they will.”
I don't know how to break it to him. "Jack, I sent copies of that flash drive to Ariadne and to Monty. The Amontillados’ bribes, accounts—all their secrets were out in the Times a week ago. All of them. The government is opening a huge investigation. It’s taking down senators and everything. The power structure of the city is being broken apart and rebuilt. I mean…the point is, all your money is gone.”
“That was the Amontillados’ operational money, which was admittedly a few billion dollars.” He looks almost smug for a moment, instead of miserable and guilty as he has for the last week.
“My private accounts have no connection to them. It’s why I gave you back the second ring. I didn’t want to carve anything into yours.”
The rings are sitting on the bedside table and he picks up the man’s and guides my finger along the inner surface. “I had account numbers etched into it when I was setting everything in place, right before I left for the rig.” I can feel a tiny, tiny engraving on the ring. I peer at it and can just make out several lines of numbers. I hadn’t even realized they were there.
“You would’ve noticed it eventually,” Jack says. “You need to read it under a microscope. I know an engraver down south where we were. He let me use his stuff. I figured I wasn’t going to make it off the rig. I wanted to leave you with something. I know it doesn’t…it doesn’t atone for anything. That’s not what I’m saying. I just wanted to leave you with something so you’d be okay.”
“Jack, how much money is in these accounts?”
“Do you have a phone with you?” He’s grinning at the shock on my face. I hand him the burner phone I’d left in the bedside table.
He types into it. “There. I just set up a new bank account for you—you shouldn’t use your old account or your own name, obviously—they’ll be tracking those now. I made the password the same as your old account.”
“You know my bank account password?”
“Yeah.”
He switches to another page on the phone and types in a few more things.
“How can you read these numbers?” I ask, peering at the ring.
He taps his head. "There are copies of them up here."
He hands the phone back to me. “Would you like to hit the button?”
My new bank account is asking if I’d like to accept a transfer. I hit the big green “Accept” button in the middle of the screen. It bings and the screen reloads. I have to read the line a few times, then count the zeros to make sure I’m right. There’s two million dollars sitting in an account that I own. Caleb always just bought things for me. He gave me a credit card with a limit of a few thousand dollars on it for day-to-day things.
I’ve never had this much money in my entire life. I’ve never had anywhere close to anything like this. Money for me was always the thing that I had to get in order to just barely make car payments, or get groceries for the week. Later it became a source of guilt whenever I had to ask my shitty ex for it. Now, I’m holding two million dollars in my hand. And it’s mine.
“You can transfer that much money at a time?”
“With my accounts, you can."
“Jack, we could live for years on this.”
He grins again. Amusement. “There’s much more than that. I’m just transferring a little spending money to get us started.” He reaches over and flicks my account off the screen. A long string of pages is collapsed behind it. I open the first one and try to process the numbers I’m seeing. I have to read the zeros over and over again. I’m sure I’m counting them up wrong. I flip through page after page, my eyes going wide. I go back to the first two pages. If you have nine hundred million dollars and add another nine hundred million dollars…that's not millions anymore…that's billions of dollars. That’s just two of a dozen pages.
“Jack, how the fuck?”
He smiles and kisses me.
“The Amontillados were paying me very well. But I started skimming Daemon’s books a little after I got to New York. He kept a pretty close eye on the numbers once they came to him, but he didn’t realize I was selling off product on my own before they registered it. And really, more people should read a damn book about investing. Once you have money it’s damn easy to make more of it.”
“For you, maybe.” I’m still in shock. “Jack, you’re a billionaire. You just gave away your whole empire, and you’re still a billionaire.”
He shrugs. "We should probably donate some of it. It wasn't exactly gained by decent means. Although, I suppose it was stolen out of Daemon's pockets, so maybe it wasn't gotten completely indecently, either. But after we buy some new identities, make some donations — maybe a set up a few charities—what would you like? Shall I buy you an island? A few islands? A plane or a boat? All of those things? Any dress or jewel or anything in the world that you want? I can give it to you. I could buy you a planet if they sold those."
“Shut up! Shut up, Jack!” I should feel bad about this, I think, but I don’t. All I wanted for the last weeks was Jack, and I got him, then I got the entire world, too. I laugh and press my lips to his, and as he holds me close to his warm, strong body, I get ready to spend the day lying with him and luxuriating in the warm, strong sun.
I walk up to the security checkpoint with Caleb. Wyatt and Benjy brought him with them when they flew out from New York to rescue Jack. They figured he’d get offed by one of the other guards if, or when, the Amontillado’s empire collapsed, and they figured that would make me slightly unhappy, which would make Jack unhappy, which they were used to trying to avoid. So my idiot ex-fiancé’s been kept tied up in a room in Cuba for the last three weeks under Wyatt’s watchful, annoyed eye.
We’ve all gotten fake passports in order to get back into the United States, or wherever we’re going. Caleb’s using a video call on a cheap new smartphone to talk to his dad. I can hear my family in the background. I stop walking. He turns to me, exasperated.
“Babe, come on!”
“Caleb, I’m not going with you.” He hasn’t managed to notice that I don’t have a bag or ticket with me.
He sighs. “This is the only flight for like two days.”
“No, Caleb,” you thick moron, “I’m permanently not coming with you.”
The voices on the phone chatter in the background. Caleb’s mouth is hanging open. I take the phone from him and look at my tiny family and his own shitty parents, trapped in the screen.
“Sorry, Dad,” I say, and he nods. I look at the rest of them.
“Riley, I swear if you put us through this again—” my mom starts in.
“You’ve all been terrible to me.”
My mom’s vicious defenses are up immediately. “You fucking dare, after these last few weeks—”
“I spent so long trying to live up to your awful, boring plans for me and I never realized that you didn’t deserve me—that I deserved better.” My mom’s eyes go wide. “Maybe I’ll see you around some time.”
I hang up the call as my mom, siblings, and Hector Montcrest all start talking at once.
“Babe, what the fuck?”
“Caleb, you were an awful fiancé. And you would've made a terrible husband. And we both would've been miserable eventually. I already was miserable." He doesn't know what to say to that. I hold up the engagement ring. It's not particularly expensive, but I agonized over picking it out.
“Do you mind if I keep this?” I pocket it before he can decide what his answer is. I chose it for my husband, after all. “Get out of here, Caleb; you’re going to miss your plane.”
“You’re fucking crazy!” he finally manages. I shrug. They call first boarding for his flight.
“You're welcome for the passport." I walk away. Caleb doesn't know what to make of it. He follows after me for a few steps—before this last month, he's never not gotten what he wants. How embarrassing to lose his little bride. But he’s too scared to wander back into dangerous Cuba and miss his flight back home to daddy. He turns and heads through security.
Jack's standing with Wyatt and Benjy a little ways back. He's still pale and a little shaky, but he's getting stronger again. He takes out my own engagement ring and slides it back onto my finger. I'd wanted him to hold onto it for me for a little while. I smile and take out its counterpart, and he offers his finger. I slide it on. Neither of us says anything. It's the simplest event possible in the corner of a little airport on what feels like the other side of the world. But my heart feels full.
“What will you do?” I ask Wyatt and Benjy.
“Well, New York’s a mess,” Wyatt says. “Although probably not in a bad way. Since Jack took out every other criminal organization in the damn tri-state area, Ariadne and her government boys are going to have the remnants of the Amontillado empire between the hammer and anvil, thanks to what you two decided to share with her. They’re going to have her undivided attention.”
“You’re still going back, though?”
Wyatt shrugs and nods at Benjy. “This asshole needs my help.”
Benjy's dressed in a powerful-looking suit and his long hair has been shorn into a short, sharp cut. He's been in the city for the last two weeks but came back to Cuba to see Jack a final time. "I guess I'm following him," Benjy says. "Or, I mean, yeah—he's following me. Darien got us that plane that we found you in. Now he and that Lyra girl from New Dawn are both missing. I guess he still has her? And the rest of the Amontillado family are all trying to grab power as it all, you know, goes up in flames. Talia's still out there—she's going to be wanted for a lot of shit. It's going to be chaos in the city for a while—government boys cracking down, different factions trying to grab at power—I dunno, it's either going to be really boring and locked down, or it's going to be the wild west. Maybe I'll look up Darien and see if he needs a hand, too. You know, if I can find him."
“Sorry to give you a crumbling empire, buddy,” Jack offers.
Benjy shrugs, trying to look cool and kind of succeeding. “It keeps things interesting.”
“Have you heard from Christie?” I ask.
“She went to ground with a few million dollars at least. She’ll be alright,” Wyatt says. “What about you two?”
Jack looks to me, eyes dark and placid. I smile back at him, just for a moment.
“We’ll be around,” he says. “Eventually, we’ll be around.”
“And before that?”
“I think we’ll go someplace quiet, and warm, and far, far away. Strange to think about a place like that.”
Wyatt and Benjy clasp our hands.
“See you around," Wyatt says, and he and Benjy turn and head for their plane, parked on a back runway.
Jack holds out his hand to me and I take it. We walk out into the bright, warm sun and toward a little silver sports car with the top down. It roars out of the airport and the wind blows in my hair.
“I think we should buy a boat and sail away somewhere on our own,” I say.
“I agree. Where should we go?”
I think for a moment. “Why not Casablanca, to start?”
He nods and smiles and hits the gas, and we soar away into the sunset.
END