Chapter 25
Daniel
“Oh fuck,” Daniel moaned.
Colt, probably assuming it was a credit to his tongue, sped up his motions, but she wasn’t praising his sex skills. At least not directly. She’d just realized that she’d been orally serviced by two different men in one night. Which led to the realization that she’d kissed three men in one night. Which lead to the realization that she might end up kissing four men in one night, which, even if one of them was gay, was still kind of cool.
Colt glanced up at her. “You like being tongue fucked?”
“Does the pope wear a big hat?”
He grinned. “Thought you were Jewish?”
Before she could answer his mouth dipped down and he began penetrating her with his warm, rough tongue. She was still sore from her session with Seb and the taboo of it all made her shiver. Clearly Colt didn’t have an issue with…What could she call it? Not ‘sloppy seconds.’ She wasn’t some half eaten meal that was getting progressively more disgusting with the passage of time but—
“Jesus!”
As if sensing her distraction Colt’s tongue plunged deeper, his lips vibrating against her pussy. Daniel’s toes curled against the mattress. John said she was not allowed to come but he wasn’t here. This was more than good enough to get off to. Setting aside her goal to think of a more favorable term for ‘sloppy seconds’ Daniel arched her back and let her mind go blank. God it felt so good…
“Colt.” John’s voice cut through the air like a samurai sword. “I told you to warm her up, not finish her off.”
Colt immediately pulled away, wiping his mouth on his arm. “Sorry, couldn’t help it.”
“You never can,” John said wryly. “Sit back. I wanna look at her.”
Again Colt obliged with casual deference. Daniel pondered the strangeness of this arrangement. Colt was bigger than John, older than John, a proud and authoritative male in his own right, yet John was unquestionably in charge here. In charge everywhere really. That much had been evident from her first day at Castle by the Sea. Had Seb and Colt made a conscious decision to do it, or had they just fallen into line, not really understanding why they deferred to the man who with a cultist’s electric eyes and a sharp commanding voice?
Daniel suspected the former.
John scanned her naked body, hungry but without a trace of affection. In his hands Daniel recognized her satin dressing gown cord.
“Want me to tie her up?” Colt asked.
John threw him the cord. “Just do her arms. I know how you are about having legs wrapped around your ass.”
Daniel shivered as Colt began to weave the cord around her wrists and fasten them to the head of her four-poster.
Daniel knew instinctively she wasn’t supposed to talk but she couldn’t help it. “Bondage huh? Love it.”
Colt shook his head. “You’re a brave little thing, I’ll give you that.”
“She’s not brave. She’s thoughtless.” John studied her like a tiger contemplating swiping a tourist through the bars of its cage. “Aren’t you, Schwartz?”
Daniel’s belly tingled at the sheer threat in John’s eyes. “I don’t try to be.”
“You don’t try not to be either.” John leaned against one of her bedposts, staring idly at her pussy. “Did the kid make you come?”
Daniel recalled Seb’s face between her legs, his lightly fluttering tongue and blissful moans. It felt like an eternity ago. “Yes.”
“With his mouth or with his cock?” John repeated. His voice was coming from across the room now and Daniel could hear him sifting through her things.
“Both. Oh.” Colt had laid down alongside her once again and was rubbing a blunt fingertip across her slit. “Shh,” he murmured. “Our little secret.”
Games within games, Daniel thought.
“You told Colt you didn’t know how to come while you were getting fucked.” John’s voice was muffled, as though he was talking into her closet. “Were you lying?”
“No!” Daniel breathed as Colt stroked her swollen pussy. “I-I touched myself while Seb was inside me, that’s how I came.”
“Interesting…Colt, d’you think you could fuck an orgasm out of her?”
“I know I could. It’s all about…” He sank a slow deliberate finger inside her and pressed hard against a spot she wasn’t entirely aware of herself. “Pressure.”
Daniel’s whole body spasmed. “Fuck me, you’re like some kind of sex drone.”
Colt smirked, pleased with himself.
“Are you fingering her?” John asked, sounding amused.
“So what if I am?”
“Back off, it’s not time.”
Colt straightened up and began laughing at something John was doing out of her line of sight. Whatever it was Daniel wasn’t sure she going to enjoy it. She’d been tied up before but this had an entirely different vibe. For one thing there were multiple guys, for another John wasn’t indulging dominant tendencies he was a dominant, right down to his bones, and now she was his victim. Just like in her dream.
She didn’t think he’d hurt her; he technically couldn’t if he tried, but she hadn’t forgotten him saying his fantasies would give her nightmares.
So? A small voice whispered. You heard him; this is the first and last time. Why not let it be fucked up and depraved? You’re not their prisoner anymore.
That was true. Thanks to Mikey’s gift the power they held over her was only symbolic. If she wanted to play at being a captive, a slave, a sex object, that was truly her choice.
“Spread your legs,” John commanded. Daniel’s thighs swooshed across the sheets at once. Her body had chosen submission.
John knelt on the edge of the bed and gazed directly between her thighs. “Huh, that is a sweet cunt.”
A warm glow squiggled through Daniel’s insides. As far as compliments went ‘sweet cunt’ was fairly average but coming from John it was like a marriage proposal. She knew he was attracted to her but he seemed to resent it. The nearest he’d come to admiring her so far was when he called her latex dress ‘slutty.’
John bent between her legs and Daniel’s pussy contracted in anticipation. Please lick me with your mean, beautiful mouth, please, please, please?
“Yeah it’s real nice,” he said, pulling away. “All pink and swollen. You want to fuck it, Stone?”
Colt chuckled. “About as much as I want to keep breathing.”
“Why don’t you show her what you’ve got?”
Colt knelt beside her head and began unbuckling his belt. Daniel couldn’t get her head around this dynamic. Was it a military thing that taught him to swiftly and unselfconsciously follow orders this way?
She didn’t have time to contemplate the idea, Colt produced his cock and all sensible thoughts went out the window. She’s felt it, but seeing was believing. She’d never encountered an appendage that big that didn’t have fingers on the end of it. “You like?” Colt asked.
“I’m sort of scared of it to be honest,” she said, giggling a little. “But I’m willing.”
Colt winked at her. “I promise I’ll go easy. At least at first.”
“Enough talking,” John barked. “Stone, put your hands on her if you want but keep ‘em above the waist.”
Colt didn’t need to be told twice. He cupped her breasts massaging them crudely. He was exactly as he was in her dreams, rough and eager, a leashed animal with John holding the strap.
“More,” John demanded. “Rougher.”
Colt pinched her nipples and Daniel bit her tongue so she wouldn’t cry out. They’d always been sensitive and hours of being taunted with Seb’s tongue had left them even more so.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” John’s voice heated her pussy and the flesh tingled as though he had mint on his breath. Maybe he brushed his teeth before he came to see her? Or maybe his blood just ran with spearmint instead of plasma, pale green like his unearthly irises. In the haze of her room it seemed entirely possible.
Colt stroked her nipples. “Think she’d ready to be fucked?”
“She always ready to get fucked. I meant she’s already restraining herself like a good girl.”
“I am not,” Daniel protested.
John laughed. “Yes you are. Do you know why you’re a brat, Schwartz?”
“My brain thing?”
John passed a hand over her body, an inch above her skin, outlining the swells of her breasts, the flat of her stomach.
“You do whatever you please and because you look and act the way you do, no one ever brings you to heel.”
“Wow, compliment number two,” she said, willfully choosing to assume John meant she was too hot and charming to punish.
Colt gave a weary sort of chortle. “Oh Daniel, baby. You really don’t know when to stop do you?”
But Daniel wasn’t paying attention, she was staring up at John whose smirk implied he had her right where he wanted her. “What?” she asked.
John’s upper lip curled higher. “I’m sick of you winding us up. I’m sick of how you always get your way, and most of all I’m sick of you calling me Dead Eyes and Man Pain and—”
“Heathcliff?” Daniel suggested. “I only call you that because you’re so—”
John laid against her thigh something so cold her words were sucked from her mouth. “Know what this is?” he asked.
Daniel’s heart sank. It was her vibrator, the one with enough juice to light up an entire mining town. “Yes.”
John pulled it away from her and examined the blunt spongy head. “We know what it is too, we’ve watched you use it about a dozen times, haven’t we, Colt?”
Colt’s fingers traced her nipples once more. “Feels like a hundred.”
John pressed the start button and a loud low humming filled the air. “It’s the most powerful on the market according to the box. But here’s something I’ve noticed. Whenever you use this you’ve got something inside yourself, your fingers, a toy…”
“Yeah maybe.” Daniel didn’t love the direction this was going in. She tried to rub a hand across her mouth, forgetting that she was bound to the bed.
John eyed her with apparent amusement. “You always start with the setting at medium, then when you’re close you crank it up to high.”
John turned the wand down until only a tiny purring sound remained. “What do you think would happen if I strapped this to your pussy and just let it tickle you for hours and hours and hours?”
“No,” she said at once. “Don’t do that.”
John smirked down at her, baring his unnaturally white teeth. “I mean it won’t feel bad, will it, Schwartz? Who knows, maybe the delayed gratification’ll make it easier for you when I let Colt fuck you in the ass.”
Daniel felt her lower half clench at the idea, which was both intriguing and a little scary. She’d never done anal and Colt’s monster cock didn’t seem like a great starting point. “He’ll destroy me.”
John tossed the vibrator into the air, he watched it perform a lazy twirl then caught it again. “You think that now but wait ‘til you’ve been strung out for a couple of hours. You’ll be begging for it. Gush the second he slides inside your tight little virgin hole.”
Her whole body tightened up. “I’m not a—
“Yes you are.” John’s voice was absolute. “You’ve never had it in your ass, just like you’ve never had two men at once. You’re not half the fucking mystery you’d like to think you are, girl.”
Daniel felt her face and neck prickle. “I don’t like to think of myself as a mystery.” I am a fucking mystery.
John sneered like he could hear her unspoken words. “We’ll see.”
He lowered the vibrator a couple of centimeters above her nipples and she swore she could feel the tremors running through the air to her sensitive flesh.
“What do you think would be worse for her?” John asked Colt. “Not being able to come, or coming over and over and over again and never getting any satisfaction?”
Daniel’s traitorous pussy pulsed, as though eager for a stint in orgasmic purgatory.
“Not sure,” Colt said, tracing a thumb over her swollen lower lip. “But you let me fuck that mouth you can do whatever you like.”
John laughed. “If you’re willing to risk her teeth, go ahead. So how about it, Daniel? A couple of hours of torture then you hand over your ass cherry?”
“Are you saying I have options now or…?”
John pressed the wand to her nipple and Daniel cried out at the sharp-sweet buzz. “You wanna play it rough, we can play it rough. I give you ten minutes before you’re whimpering for me to stop.”
John began twirling her vibrator through the air like a baton his long fingers moving deftly. In any other circumstances, Daniel would have asked if he had done gymnastics as a child but she didn’t see that working out so well for her right now. “I won’t beg.”
“You will,” John said without a hint of ego. “Come to think of it, Colt, you might wanna get her sucking now so we don’t have to listen to it.”
Daniel’s body trembled as though instead of demeaning bullshit John was comparing her to a summer’s day. Was this normal? It was normal in her dreams but this was real life. She felt like she should have been finding this degrading and rude instead of dripping in anticipation of more cruelty.
“Fuck yeah.” Colt began shoving off his pants as John turned to her. “Any last words, Schwartz?”
Daniel decided on one last stab at defiance. “Fuck the pair of you?”
John grinned wolfishly at her. “You would fuck the pair of us, wouldn’t you? That’s what you were hoping for when we tied you down. You wanted us to share your tight little pussy; take turns one after the other. Give you everything you wanted like your sweet little prince Sebastian.”
Daniel glanced up at the camera, conscious that Seb was watching. “He was the best sex of my life.”
Colt scoffed. “Sure.”
“He was!”
“The best sex of your life hasn’t started yet,” John corrected. “You can be sure of that, princess.”“Don’t call me that,” Daniel said without thinking.
Both John and Colt froze, acutely aware of the significance of what they’d just stumbled upon. “What did you say, princess?” John asked.
“Nothing,” Daniel replied through gritted teeth.
“How about that, Colt? A nickname she doesn’t like.”
Colt chuckled, the damp head of his cock swiping her cheek. “C’mon, princess, open wide.”
Daniel’s chest grew hot with anger, her body buzzing to compensate the surge. “Let me go.”
Colt drew back but John pressed a hand into his shoulder, moving him closer again. “That’s not what you say if you want to be let go, is it, princess? Unless you say it, I’m gonna assume you’re happy right where you are.”
Daniel tensed. A part of her wanted her to say passionfruit; but a much larger part knew that if she called this off she’d never have the opportunity again. She could explain that princess was what her dearly beloved, dearly departed dad used to call her but she’d rather keep that knowledge tucked up in a tight, heavy box. The place where she kept all memories of her family.
“Daniel,” Colt said suddenly, somehow managing to look warm and sincere despite the erect penis he was holding an inch from her face. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, baby.”
Daniel opened her mouth and swallowed the head of Colt’s cock, sucking it as far as she could take it.
“Fuck,” Colt moaned, his palm closing around her head like a helmet.
“I guess that’s a yes,” John said dryly. He pressed the blunt round head of the toy directly on her clit. “Hold on, Schwartz.”
The first few minutes weren’t so bad. The light vibrations were like electric shocks with butter smeared on them, startling yet slippery. She found she could ride the sensation like a wave, breathing fast and keeping most of her attention on Colt, his salty-sweet taste, the feel of his hands in her hair.
She was sure John was going to crank up the toy but he merely knelt between her legs, content to cruise along. Ten minutes into their adventure, Daniel knew why he’d left the vibrator at the lowest speed. When the massaging buzz didn’t stop it became an exercise in willpower not to push for more. The gentle thrums played with her, flirted with her, tickled her most sensitive tissues until they were flushed and angry.
She sucked Colt with loud sloppy pulls trying to distract herself but within another ten minutes she was lying limply back as he worked himself between her lips unable to focus on anything other than her own sodden flesh. Her pussy felt like a huge pink flower, burst wide and drenched in nectar. Bees buzzed around her, making sweet promises that went entirely unfilled. She was beginning to ache, ache the way she did when she was mid-cycle and needed a man inside her more than air.
That was when she first thought it—please.
Colt withdrew from her mouth, panting that he was too close. John put him to work playing with her tits, drawing on her nipples with his mouth and hands until they were cherry red and hard as stones. The throbbing between her thighs had become surreal. She had to bite her lips to keep herself from saying what she’d began repeatedly chanting in her mind, ‘please.’
She chewed her lips so hard her mouth started to bleed and John shoved her panties between her lips. “Beg,” he said. “Beg and I’ll take it all away.”
“No,” she mumbled through her underwear. “Never.”
When time became meaningless, when she forgot what it was like to breathe without needing to be fucked Daniel found herself wriggling back against the wand, trying to get more stimulation on her overheated pussy. Colt laughed. “She can’t help it, can she?”
“No.” John’s cold, almost disinterested gaze like a magnifying glass on her skin. “And if I turn it off…”
The vibrations stopped dead and Daniel screamed. Even through her panties she was loud enough to wake the dead. She thrashed against her bonds in agony, back arching, throat burning…
The vibrations resumed.
“There you go,” John said, rubbing the toy in circles. “That’s better, huh?”
Daniel resumed humping the now-soaked head of her vibrator, hating John. Both he and Colt laughed but she couldn’t stop. Her cunt didn’t give a fuck about her pride; it wanted to come with those two gorgeous men watching her. Please, please, please.
“Colt,” John said lazily raising the vibrator a little. “Give her a feel.”
The finger pressed against her pussy felt supernaturally huge. Like Excalibur, braced at the tip of the stone that sheathed it. Colt lightly breached her hole and Daniel screamed into her panties. “Fuck. She’s so tight. She’s so fucking sensitive.”
“Imagine burying yourself in that. She’ll come before you’re halfway inside.”
Both she and Colt moaned, puppets dancing dutifully as John pulled at their strings.
Daniel could feel defeat coming, smell it like rain before a storm but she waited. Maybe they’d die first. Maybe both of them would keel over of a simultaneous heart attack and she’d win. The vibrator buzzed slow and steady against her tortured pussy; too much and not enough at once.
She couldn’t say it. She had to say it. She wanted to say it.
“Come on.” John tugged the panties from between her teeth. “Beg. Beg, and you’ll get the dick you’re dying for. Can’t you just feel Colt sliding deep between your legs, stretching you wide, filling you up?”
Daniel gave a tiny pained whimper.
“Never had a man as big as him before, have you?” John whispered, his breath cool on her overheated cheeks. “Big as a house, fast and greedy. He’ll take you like a battering ram, leave you so you won’t be able to walk. What’s a little begging compared to that?”
“I…”
“You want to say yes,” he informed her. “I already know, even if you won’t say the words. Your little standoff doesn’t mean shit. Either speak up and get fucked or I’m gonna turn this thing off and leave you here.”
And it was that, the knowledge that she was now suffering in vain which broke her open. She closed her eyes and said the word.
“What was that?” John asked because he was a bastard.
“Please!” She screamed, every letter like broken glass, hating him.
John lifted the wand so that her body burned and bucked. “One more thing, Schwartz. What’s my name?”
Daniel waited. She managed a full ten seconds and then, “John!”
“And what are you gonna call me from now on?”
“JOHN!”
“That’s right, princess,” he said with calm satisfaction. “Don’t you fucking forget it.”
He stood up and handed Colt a condom from his pocket. “She’s all yours.”
Colt was on her before she could think, before she could breathe gripping her hips and easing himself inside her. Daniel moaned piteously and until her dying day she’d never be able to describe how it felt to be taken after such a protracted and painful buildup. It was Heaven to be able to pulse and grip something other than herself, and it was hell as her sopping flesh spread with agonizing slowness, burning like greedy flames.
“Fuck,” Colt panted. “I feel like I’m gonna split her in half.”
“Don’t worry about that,” John said. “Feed it to her, she’s about to come.”
She was. She was, she was, she was. She’d seen diagrams of clitoral tissue extending deep inside a woman’s body but it was only now that Colt was inching inside her she knew it was true. Her whole body was shaking, thrumming, alive. “More,” she panted. “More.”
Colt gave her more, slowly, steadily. As John predicted she came with him still struggling to penetrate her, pumping shallowly between her legs. It was sharp and agonizingly short, like an atom bomb detonating between her legs.
“Oh my god,” she breathed jerking against her restraints. “Oh my fucking god.”
Colt buried his face in her hair and gave the strangest, most joyful laugh she’d ever heard. “I can’t believe I’m inside you.”
Daniel longed to throw her arms around him but couldn’t. Instead she settled for wrapping her legs tighter around his powerful hips. “I can’t believe it either, you’re like a centaur.”
She looked at John and found him staring stonily at her. So levity wasn’t what he enjoyed in these situations. Unsurprising. She tamped down her smile as Colt began to move again. “Sorry if I’m rough,” he grunted. “I don’t wanna hurt you but I need to come so fucking bad.”
“I like it,” she promised. “Do it however you need to.”
Colt hammered faster between her thighs and Daniel gasped as the pressure mounted. Out of the corner of her eye she saw John run a palm across the front of his jeans.
Interesting.
Daniel tugged at her restraints and chewed on her well-abused lips like she was in pain. John exhaled sharply.
Yeah, you like that? You like watching me get fucked by a big hairy man? You like thinking he’s hurting me as much as he’s pleasuring me? Fine, enjoy the show, you gorgeous freak.
She began whimpering, jerking her body against Colt’s like it was just too much to absorb. She refused to look at John but she could feel him watching her and knew he didn’t have the restraint he had before. He’d wanted this all along, to be watching her get taken this way.
“Colt,” Daniel whimpered. “You’re so big.”
Colt gave a muffled groan into her shoulder, he’d gone mostly silent, honing in on his own orgasm.
“Look at me,” John demanded out of the near darkness. “Tell me what it feels like to have him inside you.”
“Heavy.” Daniel panted, her head turned to the side. “Hard.”
“Does it hurt?”
No, it felt like crack cocaine and rainbows but she knew what John wanted to hear. “Yes, it hurts.”
“That’s because you’re fucking tiny compared to him,” John said in a strained voice. “He’s twice your fucking size.”
John unzipped the front of his jeans and Daniel’s mouth went dry. Was this it? Was this when she finally got to touch John without needing to run away first?
He reached inside his jeans and there it was. Not as long as Colt’s, not as symmetrical and perfect as Seb’s but thick and fat and scarlet at the tip. Kind of mean looking, like its owner. Was that a thing? Dicks resembling their owners? Owners resembling their dicks? “You like it?” John asked, stroking himself.
“Yes,” she said in what she hoped was a sufficiently piteous tone.
“You want to taste me while Colt drills your pussy?”
Daniel’s mouth instantly filled with saliva. “So bad.”
“Beg.”
“John please? Please?”
Her not-quite-lover smirked. “I want you to come first, come all over that big cock.”
Daniel had been tuning out of her own body, scared of what reaching her peak without John’s approval would mean, but with his orders she refocused on the man between her legs. Her pussy instantly began contracting around Colt’s heavy flesh beyond ready for another go around.
“That’s it,” Colt panted, slowing his hips so his pubic bone pressed hard against her clit. “That’s it, baby, do it while I do it.”
She did, she came in a great wet rush, her toes curling, her head full of fire. Colt fucked her through it, forcing her spasming walls apart until he finished bucking and growling like a bear. He withdrew almost instantly, rolling onto his back with a groan. “You’re fucking amazing, Daniel.”
She smiled, a little punch drunk from all the stimulation, sweat cooling on her breasts and belly. Then she realized what was happening beside her. John standing over her, stroking his angry looking cock. His breath coming out in tightly controlled bursts, his chest heaving as he stood over her and stroked. The sight of him, body tense, eyes black make her shiver. “John…”
He tugged harder, his eyes fixed on her face. “You want me, don’t you? Even after all that dick you want me.”
“Yes,” she said, drawing out the word like it was saltwater taffy.
“Tell me.” John’s teeth were bared. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to fuck my pussy. To make you come. Can I, John, please?”
There was nothing playful about her begging now. It was so genuine, so pathetic it hurt her ears to hear it. She wanted to make him want her. No, she wanted to make him love her.
“If I fucked you it’d have to be raw.” John’s eyes glittered. “I’d fill you up with my come, make you remember who you really belong to, Schwartz.”
Daniel thought about the end of the world, the mean glow in John’s eyes, her near-infallible IUD. “Do it,” she said suddenly. “Take me, fill me up.”
For a second John’s eyes widened with something like angry joy. “You’re greedier than a fucking piglet, Schwartz. Now close your eyes.”
She could have refused but she sensed that if she did John would take all of himself away from her so she obeyed, falling backward into darkness.
A minute of slick pumping sounds, a strangled moan and then warm splatter of salt and copper rained down on her breasts and throat. Daniel was surprised by its warmth. Nothing that came from John was ever warm, she’d innately expected his ejaculate to be cold as spearmint.
She risked his wrath to open her eyes, just a little. In the wake of orgasm his hard expression was, robbed of all its natural aggression. He looked young and dizzyingly handsome. Their gaze met and for a moment it seemed to Daniel she was seeing him for the first time. She smiled and John turned away, moving quickly toward her en suite.
“Fucking hell,” she muttered and looked to her right to find Colt fast asleep. Just like that all the energy of the moment fizzled out like a dead firework. The clock had struck midnight on her fun. The princess was just a girl with an aching pussy covered in rapidly cooling jizz and the man who deposited it hadn’t even stooped to kiss her first. And who, right before he came, compared her to a pig.
She scowled up at the ceiling.
John reappeared suddenly. “Everything okay?”
He was holding a facecloth and Daniel’s first thought was that he was going to smother her and erase all record of his ever having ever orgasmed on tits. “Yeah,” she lied. “Can you untie me?”
“I will,” he said gruffly. “Just lemme do this first.”
He began wiping himself off her skin with a cloth, wet and rough like the tongue of a giant wolf. Until he started doing it Daniel didn’t realize how much she needed to be touched. Every stroke made her body hum with happiness and even though John was careful not to so much as brush her bare skin, at least he was gentle. Beside her Colt began to snore.
“Sorry about him,” John said. “He has sex-narcolepsy.”
“It’s okay. You’re here.”
John didn’t reply. He leaned over her, his body smelling like warm, smoky wood and began untying her wrists.
“Did you have fun?” Daniel asked. “Doing what we did?”
“It was all right,” John said, avoiding her eyes.
“But it was good?”
Again John didn’t answer. Daniel closed her eyes, her chest light and hollow like a fortune cookie. She remembered this feeling. It was the day after Christmas, the sense of a good time gone by and an unknown future stretching blankly ahead. She was alone. It was all over. She was going to have to leave.
“You’re shaken up, aren’t you?” John said from somewhere above her. “You should hug Colt. It’s important to be touched after you do something like this.”
“I’m all right, Man Pain.”
The insult was clumsy, a pebble thrown at a dragon, but it did what she intended; John withdrew and she was alone, curled on her side, playing dead as she willed her cookie shell to harden into something stronger. Despite everything she’d had inside herself tonight, she felt empty and it was all John fucking Blackwood’s fault. She thought she’d never be able to sleep with all these thoughts turning in her head but she must have dozed off because the next thing she knew people were arguing outside her door.
“The hell do you think you’re doing, Rhodes?”
“Creepy for you to be in there, starin’ at her…”
“You said…”
“I didn’t mean…”
Daniel was contemplating getting up when someone clambered into bed beside her. A man who smelt like new cut grass and fresh air. Whose skin, as he tucked her into his side, was warm as summer.
“Seb?” she whispered.
“Yeah, darlin’,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. Everything’s okay.”
As she fell back to sleep Daniel found she could almost believe him.