SEVEN
The change clinks as I turn it over in my palm; my fingers tumble the coins over and over. Yet all I can see as I stare down at the metal discs is Dallas’ face as he realized that he hadn’t managed to break me—I still had it in me to walk away.
He followed me to the door and then leaned against the porch rail while Camille sat and smoked in the garage. He didn’t step one foot off that property to even try and stop me as I walked my ass out of suburbia and back into the city.
Three hours is all it took for me to beg for enough change to buy something to eat, but this is only the beginning.
Where do I go to from here? I need a job, but I have no clean clothes to appear respectable if I go door knocking. I need somewhere to sleep, but I haven’t been on the streets for years; I don’t know what turf is claimed, and what is free.
I’ve hit rock fucking bottom. My victory is hollow when there’s no reward for what I’ve done.
But what would staying have achieved? I would have given up the last thing I possess, which is my free will. No matter how poor I am, how destitute, I still have the ability to choose what’s right and what’s wrong.
I have morals, even if they do get set aside from time to time to ensure I survive another day. I mean that’s all it was, right? That’s the only reason why I let Dallas puppet me like he did: I needed to survive.
I wish I could believe my lies.
“You decide what you’re after yet, honey?” The lady behind the counter watches me with a blank expression as I run my eye over the cabinet once more.
I picked this café because it was small, tucked away, and the décor was basic. It had all the signs of a cheap place to eat, but either it’s been that long since I’ve eaten out that I’ve forgotten how much a piece of apple pie can cost, or inflation has been worse than I realized.
“I’ve only got two dollars-fifty,” I admit. “I might need to come back later. I’m sorry.”
She reaches out and places her hand over mine as I make a move to get off the stool. “You wait there.” I look up to find only kindness and quite possibly understanding in her eyes. “We’ve got an hour until closing, and between you and me, most of that there ends up in the skip out back anyways.” She gives a conspiratorial wink. “Stick around, and I might be able to slide a bag your way.”
Seven years have passed since I last cried. I know, because I can remember clear as day how it felt watching my things get thrown in the back of a garbage truck when I’d left my spot for too long my first week on the streets. Seven years since something hit me so hard that I couldn’t hold back, no matter where I was or who I was with.
“Hey. Shush now,” she coos, sliding a paper napkin my way. “You ain’t the first homeless girl we’ve had in here. There’s no shame,” she tells me, “only pride in the fact you’re still fighting.”
“Thank you.” I wipe the tears away best I can when they still leak out with each hiccup of my breath. “I promise it’ll be the first and last time; I won’t make a habit of it.”
“I’d rather it were a habit than you starve,” she says matter-of-factly before sweeping away to serve a suited man who looks at me with nothing short of disgust.
I shift my position to the far end of the counter, jammed up against the wall beside the restrooms. My blood runs cold as I catch the reflection of a familiar vehicle in the window between the counter and kitchen. It’s not him. There have to be a dozen or more cars just like his around here. I’m only noticing because now that make and model means something to me. Possibly.
The café fades away around me as I watch the car creep forward in traffic. I daren’t turn around, but what’s the point of hiding when I wear the same clothes I had on earlier? With my next breath caught in my throat, I slowly swivel on the stool and squint a little to try and make out who’s inside.
The car comes to a grinding halt, and the passenger door flies open. I consider running when Camille’s long legs emerge, but I’ve found food here. Free food.
The things we do …
Dallas obstructs traffic, the car behind honking at him to move as Camille enters the café. The bell over the door chimes, garnering the attention of the kind woman behind the counter as the fox also garners the attention of every red-blooded male in the place.
“Come on,” she calls cheerily, as though I’d been waiting on her for a lift. “He needs to move the car.”
“So let him move it.” My skin tingles with the rush of fear-fuelled adrenalin. How long did I think I could get away with this after the threats Dallas made?
Camille doesn’t flinch, and yet the cool rage that settles over her is as clear as day … well, to me it seems, anyway.
“Hey, there,” the dickhead in the suit says, sidling up to her. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“Yeah,” she snaps, her head turning his way with Exorcist-style flair. “And if you don’t back off you won’t have any eyes to see me again.”
He holds both hands up—takeaway coffee in one—and backs away silently.
Camille snaps her attention back my way, right as Dallas lays on the horn. “Now, April.”
“Is this woman bothering you?” the lady behind the counter asks.
I set my change down on the wooden surface and slide it across to her. “I’m sorry I wasted your time. Thank you so much for your kindness.”
She frowns as I stand, evidently unconvinced. Camille marches to the door with a huff as I walk toward her, holding the exit open so I can make my way out to where Dallas now yells over the car from the open driver’s door.
“Come on, already! What the fuck are you doing? Starting a knitting club?”
I weave through the sidewalk traffic and between parked cars, sliding onto the back seat without so much a quick glance in his eyes. If I look at him, I might reconsider, and I don’t know if I can fight the two of them together.
“Took me all goddamn day to find you,” he grumbles as Camille slips onto the passenger seat and shuts her door. “A day I didn’t have to waste.”
“Then why did you?” I ask petulantly as I cross my arms over my chest.
He punches the gas and tears through a red light, leaving me confident I won’t see another sunrise. “Because you’re mine, April,” he snaps, clearly frustrated he has to spell it out. “I own you, and that means you don’t get to just fucking take off when you want.”
“You hardly stopped me.”
“I thought it might be best if I ditched the fucking problem in the trunk first, don’t you?” His firm gaze connects with mine in the rearview.
“You got rid of Terry?”
“Yeah.” He holds an arm out to Camille as we catch up with the rest of the traffic and curls his fingers in a “give me” gesture.
She reaches between her feet and lifts the fucking plastic box I put in the car yesterday, placing it on Dallas’ flat palm. He twists in his seat, eyes on the road still, as he presents me with the gift.
“April, meet Terry version two point oh.”
I take the box from his hand, more so he can use both to drive again rather than because I want to hold Terry in my hands. I don’t know what to say, how to feel … My nightmare of the past six years now resides in my clutches as a pile of harmless ash.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with him?”
“Flush him, throw him over a fucking lake; I don’t care. He’s yours.”
“Let me out up here,” Camille says, pointing to the approaching corner.
I stare down at the one possession I have in this world as Dallas slows and then stops to let his sister out. How fucking ironic is that? After everything Terry put me through, he ends up being the one thing I own when I’m finally free from him. Exactly. Free from Terry, but not Dallas.
“Get in the front, April. I’m not a fucking chauffeur.”
He doesn’t stay still long enough for me to get out and use the car doors to switch seats, so I set Terry down and climb over the center console, aware my ass is right in Dallas’ face as I slip my legs into the footwell.
“Where are we going now?”
“Home,” he says, eyes on the road as he maneuvers the old sedan around the corner, the muscles in his arms banded with the strain to turn the wheel without power steering.
“Nothing’s changed, Dallas.” I look behind his seat and eye Terry as he slides around on the vinyl. “You’ve done all you need to for me.”
“Everything’s changed,” he grumbles.
I wait for him to say more, to explain what he means when as far as I can see he still doesn’t give a shit about my welfare … but he doesn’t. The remainder of the drive back to the house is silent, even as he pulls the car up the driveway and switches the engine off. I stay put, hands jammed between my knees as he leans back and extends his arm over the back of my seat with a sigh.
“What were you going to do?” he asks quietly.
“When?”
“If I hadn’t found you. What would you have done tonight? Tomorrow? For the rest of the week?”
“I don’t know,” I mutter, my head hung in shame.
Years have passed since I last had to fend for myself in the concrete jungle, and back then I at least had a purse full of carefully saved dollars.
“You’re an easy target, April. You get that, right?”
I don’t answer, too mad to admit he’s right; I’m weak. I’d make an easy play for the more seasoned hustlers.
“Maybe it sounds like a real jackass thing to say,” he mutters as his fingers brush my hair behind my shoulder, “but you’re a pretty girl, no match for a guy who wants what he can’t get anywhere else.”
“A guy like you?” I ask, turning my head to face him.
He frowns and then swallows hard as he shunts his door open. The car rocks as he exits, the echo of his door as he slams it painful in my head. I watch as he rounds the hood, the sound of my ragged breaths loud in the otherwise quiet vehicle, the muffled thud of his boots on the concrete an ominous beat as he approaches my side. The car protests with a creak as he pulls my door open and steps back.
“Get out.”
“Please, April. Sure, Dallas,” I mock as I rise and look toward the house.
“Inside.” He points to the front door, closing the car behind me.
“No.”
His jaw goes rigid, the set of his shoulders firm as he gives me his full attention. “Inside. Now.”
“No,” I say a little firmer.
“Fucking hell, woman. I don’t have time for childish tantrums. Get your motherfucking ass indoors.”
I watch the vein in his temple pulse with the kind of sick fascination a person would take as they witnessed a firing squad set up for their execution. “Or what?”
He says nothing, his top lip twitching upward as he seems to suppress a snarl. I gasp as Dallas drops a shoulder and rams into me, the air pushed from my lungs as he hefts me over his shoulder and heads for the house.
“Put me down!”
“Make me,” he growls.
My fists pepper his back, my legs pumping furiously to get him to loosen his hold. Yet all he does is jostle me around until my legs tangle in his arms, and he has my head pulled back at an unnatural angle by the grip in my hair.
It burns, the tension on my scalp, and the shame that he’s essentially proved the point he made in the car: I can’t defend myself against the brute strength of a man. I have no chance of surviving on my own.
I really am caught between a rock and a hard place.
“I let you go because I wanted to know how it felt,” he says as we cross over the threshold. “I wanted to know if I would feel anything.” He kicks the door shut behind us with a firm boot, the wood rattling in its enclosure. “You walked down that driveway, and I expected to carry on with what I had to do, get that fuckhead you dated out of my car and be done with it all.” He marches up the hallway, past the kitchen, and to a room I didn’t see the first time I was here.
His room.
My scalp sings at the relief as he lets go of my hair, and yet the pain only shifts focus as he throws me down violently on the bed and then yanks me toward him with a firm grip on my ankles. “You walked away, and you know what I realized?”
“What?” I ask, trying to keep up with his rough movements as he tugs the shoes from my feet.
“I hated you for that. I hated that you thought you could leave me.”
“I’m free to do what I want, Dallas. You say you own me,” I argue as I pull out of his hold, “but you don’t. You don’t own anyone.”
“Bullshit,” he shouts, reaching out and snagging me around one calf. “I fucking own you!”
“No, you don’t!” I kick at his hands, trying to free my leg, yet he succeeds in snagging me by the ankle once more and hauling me down the bed until my legs hang off the side, my feet on the floor, and my spine arched over the edge of the mattress.
With a firm hand on each knee, he jerks my legs apart and steps between, leaning over to pin me in place with his hips. I close my eyes and wince as he punches his hands, one after the other, beside my head with enough force to make my shoulders bounce off the mattress.
“Tell me why I don’t own you, April,” he growls before ducking down to run his nose up the side of my face. “Convince me.”
“Because I owe you nothing,” I grit out, wedging my hands between us, against his chest.
He refuses to budge when I push, instead pressing back harder so that I’m forced to pull my hands out before my wrists get hurt. “I killed him for you,” he says with venom lacing his words. “I fucking took a life to save yours.”
“Why?” I challenge, pushing off the bed as best I can to bring my face close to his.
Our noses brush, and he drops his gaze to my mouth as he rears back. “Because you needed me to.”
“I never asked for your help.”
“You didn’t need to,” he says with a frown.
“So tell me, Dallas. Why did my welfare matter to you then if I never asked? Why did you help me if I never said I needed you to?”
I dare him to say it, to acknowledge what I can see clear as day.
“Because …” He sneers, eyes on my lips still. “Because I wanted to.”
I tuck my elbows back, pushing against the bed to rise and ghost my lips over his. “Why?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” His confession is but a whisper against my mouth.
“Yes, you do.” I capture his bottom lip between mine, tugging gently at the flesh. “Say it.” For me.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” I urge before dragging my bottom lip over both of his. “You just don’t want to.”
His chest pushes against mine with his labored breaths, the panic evident as he moves his gaze from my mouth to my eyes, and back again. “Because …” He flinches—the truth seems painful for him to admit.
Good.
“Because?” I twist, tucking my head into the crook of his neck so I can lay a gentle kiss on his throat as he swallows, struggling to get the words out.
“Because I care about you,” he admits on a grumbled whisper.
His entire body goes rigid as I set my head back on the mattress and smile up at him. “Wasn’t so hard to say, was it?”
“I don’t know how to care for something.” He panics, frowning. “What if I accidentally kill you?”
“You won’t.”
“How can you be sure?” His arms shift to cradle my head, his hands in my hair as he carefully regards my face. “I do things without thinking about it, April. I could … fuck, I could make you suffer before I even realized what that meant.”
“You won’t kill me, Dallas,” I say, not as sure he wouldn’t hurt me like he said, though. “If I didn’t mean anything to you, you would have done it already.”
He jerks back to stand, and with strong hands beneath me, lifts me off the edge of the mattress to toss me higher on the bed. I’ve barely had time to catch my breath and settle onto the mattress once more before he’s on me, his weight crushing as he sits astride my legs to roughly tug the sweatshirt from my body.
“Been dying to get this fucking thing off all day,” he grumbles, jerking my arms through the sleeves. “Who would have thought not being able to see what’s mine would drive me so crazy for it?”
The sweatshirt pulls free of my head and I re-open my eyes to find Dallas frozen above me, the clothing clutched in his white-knuckled hands.
“What?” I force myself not to shield my chest with my arms, remembering his earlier promise.
“Are you sure I won’t hurt you?” he asks in a deep throaty tone. “Because right now all I can think about is how much I’d like to mark your untouched flesh with my fucking name.”
A chill ripples across my skin, goosebumps erupting in its wake. “I said you wouldn’t kill me,” I tell him carefully. “I never said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
His nostrils flare as he tosses the sweatshirt aside. The crazed look in his eye sends my heart into overdrive, my flight instinct rearing its head as he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a goddamn flip-knife.
No fucking way. “Dallas …”
He keeps the blade tucked away, using the handle of the knife to trace feather-light lines across my chest, right beneath the bruises on my neck. “Here,” he whispers. “My name, here.” Fire ignites in his gaze as he looks to me expectantly. “Can I?”
“No,” I snap, slamming my hands over the still tingling flesh. “Like fuck I would let you cut me again.” My cheek buzzes where he nicked me with the knife last night, as though to agree.
His chest rises and falls rapidly as he pulls his hands away and flicks the blade out. I wriggle beneath him, trying to work out if it would be possible to flip him off my legs. He merely cinches his thighs tighter and pins me in place as he runs the tip of the knife along his bottom lip: enough to dent the flesh, yet not cut.
“You’re scaring me, Dallas.” My voice shakes with the fear I can’t hide anymore.
Is he about to stab me? Pin me down and cut me anyway? Will he kill me?”
“Uh, uh.” He shakes his head, the tip of the knife pushed against the center of his lip. “Don’t be afraid, baby.” The point punctures his skin, a bright spot of blood bursting forth as he pulls the knife away and leans down, setting his hands either side of my head. “We’ll work up to cutting.” The blood smears across his lips as he talks.
All I can think about is how there’s no way in fucking hell I’d ever be okay with knife play … and how strangely hot he looks with blood on his lips. What the fuck is wrong with me? My tongue peeks out as he eyes my mouth, his chin dipped and the look in his eye positively wild.
“There’s something invigorating about tasting your blood,” he whispers. “You should try it.” His hard chest presses against my bare breasts with each breath he takes. “Or … you could just taste mine.”
His kiss is every bit as brutal as the man. Dallas punches the fingers of his free hand through my hair, the lengths tangled in his grip as he tightens his hold. I cry out against his mouth, yet he doesn’t relent, the urgency of his kiss stealing my thoughts away from the pain and refocusing them on the heat of his tongue as he spears my mouth.
I can taste his blood, the coppery tang alive on my taste buds. He’s right: there is something invigorating in the taste of blood, and I’m horrified to realize I don’t want this to end.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers against my mouth as the cool touch of metal greets my hip. “Trust me.”
My breath catches in my throat as he slides the blade under the strap of my panties, and yet, the feel of his forehead pressed to mine, and the depth of black in his eyes as he holds my gaze and jerks his hand away from my body comforts me.
The elastic gives with a quick sting against my skin. Dallas sucks in a sharp breath, almost as though the action turned him on. Fuck—if he felt how damp the material between my thighs is he’d know it turned me on too: a mix of danger and lust, heady enough to leave me drunk on his warped kind of love.
“Still with me?” he asks as he untangles his hand from my hair to pass the knife over to the other side.
“Yeah.” I nod against his head, anticipating the sting of the elastic as he repeats the process.
The metal slides against my skin, and I shut my eyes while I hold my breath. He grunts as the fabric gives way, sealing his lips over mine immediately after.
I match his intensity this time, desperate for the remnants of copper on his lips, the taste that connects us on a much deeper level than anything else could. Dallas pulls away, panting as he searches my gaze—for what, I don’t know.
“Do you trust me completely?” he asks.
A flash of apprehension settles in my chest at the urgency in his eyes, yet I nod, uttering a simple, “Yes.”
He rears back onto his knees, his free hand placed against my chest between my breasts as he holds me down. I watch with sick fascination as he uses the hand that still holds the knife to jerk what’s left of my panties away, lifting my hips a little to help him. He reaches up quickly with the hand on my chest and tips my chin up with two fingers under my jaw, urging me to watch him, hold his gaze, as he once again pins me down.
“Stay here,” he says, gesturing to his eyes with the hand clutching the knife. “It’s safer.”
My heart thumps so fucking hard in my chest that the stress on the organ is borderline painful. Yet I do as Dallas says and hold his gaze as he lowers the knife-wielding hand to my body and runs the back of his knuckles through my slick folds. A shudder wracks his chest as he sighs, his lips parted ever so slightly as he watches me squirm.
It feels so fucking good. So wrong, and yet so good.
“You’re so fucking wet for me, baby,” he says with a slight sneer on his lips. “Drenched.”
Does he realize what I have to work with here? Of course I’m soaked and ready for him when he looks so damn good, lost in his lust. He still wears his dark T-shirt, the fabric stretched over his strong shoulders and thick arms as he slowly strokes his knuckles back and forth over my quivering center. The fact he’s dressed only adds to the anticipation, only serves to tease me more.
I know what hides beneath, and the longer he keeps it under wraps, the more I want him to show it to me—I completely understand why my sweatshirt drove him nuts now.
“Eyes, April,” he grumbles when my gaze lingers on the straining bulge in his jeans.
I flick my gaze back up to his, and gasp as he tilts his hand to continue stroking me with the end of the knife handle. The smooth tip contrasts with the rough surface of the knife's grip as it slips every so slightly inside on each pass. Dallas’ gaze is pure midnight as he moves the hand on my chest to my breast and roughly kneads the flesh under his palm.
“What do you want?” he asks on strained tones, the muscles in his neck clear as he tips his chin higher. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need something inside me,” I say breathlessly. “Anything.”
“Anything?”
“I need release.” I close my eyes and pinch my brow hard, desperate for him to ease this pressure that threatens to blow me apart.
I’d hoped for the roughness of his fingers inside of me, or maybe the sound of his belt as he released his cock, but not this. The clinical coolness of metal is unmistakable as he slips the handle of the knife into my pussy, moving the hand on my chest to my stomach so he can press his thumb against my clit at the same time.
Deep inside I’m alarmed, slightly frightened, but what wins over is unhinged arousal. I’m dancing a fine line with the devil letting a man as unpredictable as Dallas fuck me with the handle of a knife, but there’s no denying I like it. Not when my arousal allows it to slip so easily in and out, working me to the point of no return with his thumb as he rubs tight circles over my sensitive clit.
“You have no idea how good that looks,” he mumbles. “Open your eyes, April. Fucking look at me. Look at this.”
I force myself to do as he says, only spurred on by the sight of him as he stares at where the knife slides in and out of me, transfixed. His breaths come short and fast, the muscles in his forearm twisting and bulging.
He wants me to come, and as close as I am, I don’t want to yet.
Dallas’ gaze shifts, his mad desire locked onto mine as he instructs me. “Push up on your elbows, baby, and look at this.”
I tuck one arm under myself and then pause to moan as he changes the angle of the penetration just enough to tickle my most sensitive spot. It takes everything in me to find the strength to tuck my second arm under and crunch up far enough to see how he fucks me hard and unrelenting with the lethal weapon.
His hand bleeds where the blade digs into his palm; the fine trickles of red webbed across his wrist.
“Doesn’t that look amazing?” he marvels, reaching out to place his wet thumb against my lips. “Taste how much you like it.”
I lick his thumb clean, swirling my tongue around it before I suck hard and finish with a pop.
“Such a dirty little whore,” he growls. “I told you I own you, April, but fuck …” He hesitates to watch the knife again. “You’re perfect for me. Perfect.”
“Dallas …” I moan as I drop back onto the bed. “I can’t …”
He pulls the knife from me on the next stroke, uttering a “Nuh-uh” as he lifts the wet handle to his mouth. His lips part and he slides the slick metal into his mouth, never once looking away from me as he sucks it clean. “So good.”
He tosses the blade aside and backs off the bed, wrenching his T-shirt off in one sharp movement. I feel a pulse straight to my core as he doubles over to push his jeans down, all the muscles in his side and back on glorious display as he kicks the denim aside.
Dallas straightens, palming his cock as he grins lazily down at me. “You want me to fuck you now?”
“Of course.” I roll over and crawl across the mattress to him, rising to my knees so I can set my hands on his shoulders.
His muscles roll and bunch under my left hand as he continues to stroke his dick. “Swallow my cum, and I might think about it.” His eyes flare, the challenge clear in his gaze as he waits for my response.
He doesn’t get one—at least, anything verbal. I drop to all fours, my ass in the air as I wrap my right hand over his and take control.
“Fuck yes.” He takes hold of my hair in two fistfuls and groans as I slide my mouth over his cock, taking him to the back of my throat. “All the way.”
His moans and the way he sucks his breath in between his teeth as I set a steady pace make my pussy pulse with need. I want to feel as full as my mouth does. I want to be satisfied everywhere, all at once.
He tightens his hold on my head, pulling me to him on each down stroke. So hard that his cock bottoms out on the back of my throat, making me gag. “Get it now, baby?” he asks, holding my head in place a second too long. “I got plenty of ways I can choke you until you can’t breathe.”
Tears crest my cheeks as I break away and suck in a much-needed pull of air. And yet, I go back for more, addicted to the feel of his silky shaft across my tongue. Dallas matches my pace, rocking his hips to fuck my mouth as I suck and pull at the taut flesh with my lips. His groans grow deeper, throatier, and louder as he increases his speed. The man has lost control, and the thought that I’m the reason for that has my pussy so wet that my arousal runs down the inside of my thighs.
Enough—I want him to show me what damage he can do with that cock of his in my greedy pussy.
I pull back, my hand still closed tight around the base of his cock, and rise to meet Dallas face-to-face. He darts forward, licking the wetness from my chin. I wait until he’s satisfied, and then lean forward to whisper in his ear, “I want you to hurt me now.”
“Baby …” His pupils dilate to the point where I can’t pick the color of his irises anymore.
“I want you to fuck me so hard I’m feeling it for days.”
“As if I’d do anything else,” he says with a cocky sneer.
My head whips to the side, his renewed grip in my hair directing my body to where he wants it. He twists and pushes, tugging my neck around as he makes me turn and bend over; my face buried in the bedspread, my ass high in the air. The slap of his erection against my butt cheek sends a jolt straight through to my core, the buzz yet to die off when he drags the tip through my slick folds.
There’s no slow and gentle with Dallas, only the violent truth as he takes what he wants, how he wants it.
I cry out into the bedding as he slams into me hard, his cock filling and stretching me until his balls press against my mound. It’s exactly what I wanted, and yet I can’t help but hope he has more, does more. I want to be shocked still; surprised at how badly I crave the punishment he gives.
Dallas’ hands clamp down on my hips, his fingers bruising in my flesh as he pummels me over and over. My shoulders slide up the bed, forcing him to put a knee on the mattress between mine to stay with me. And yet he doesn’t stop. He never stops, even as I bury my fists in the bedding to stop myself moving under his assault.
I ache, I shiver, and I soar on the high the onslaught on my body has me under.
I want more. Always more with him.
“Fuck, April,” Dallas moans as he doubles over my back, slowing his pace. “You look so good on the end of my dick.” He places a soft kiss between my shoulders, taking the edge away from the hand he slips around my throat. “I can’t last tonight. I want you too much,” he murmurs against my skin. “Come when I tell you to.”
The loss of his heat against my back disappoints me, and yet the hand at my throat pulling me hard against his erection as he restarts his brutal attack more than makes up for it. My muscles clench and pulse, my climax close. I brace myself on one arm, moving the other underneath me to reach between my legs and rub my clit, yet Dallas tears my hand away, pinning it to the bed beside me under his palm.
“Not … your … job,” he grinds out, punctuating each word with a bruising thrust of his hips. “You come when I want you to.” As though to prove his point, he pulls out, teasing me with the tip of his cock, edging me, testing me.
“Please,” I moan, all out of fucks to give about how needy I sound.
How owned.
“Please, Dallas,” I beg. I don’t want the high to end, to lose how it feels to be on the brink, to lose what comes after.
“Please what, bitch?”
My walls pulse at his insult. “Please, let me come.”
He moves the hand from my throat to my back, sliding it down until his palm rests over my tailbone, and then presses his thumb against the rose of my ass. A rush of adrenaline leaves my head spinning as I suck in a sharp breath, surprised at how much I love the feel of his thumb tracing a lazy circle around the tight hole.
“He ever do this to you?” Dallas asks as he rocks his hips, pushing his thick cock deep inside of me as he applies light pressure to my ass. “Did he ever know how good it feels to have your tight hole strangle his dick?”
I’m such a perverted whore. “I’m happy he didn’t.”
“Why?” he asks, throaty and raw.
“Because I want you to show me.”
“Fuck, April.” He slides his thumb lower, pushing around where his cock enters my pussy to cover it in my arousal. “You mean that?”
No turning back now. “I do.”
“Another night,” he mumbles as his wet thumb returns to my rear. “As much as I’d love to fuck you in the ass tonight, baby, I don’t want to put you off.” He hums as he circles the tight hole, pressing against it every so often. “My cock is pretty damn big, and your ass is fucking tight. I need to ease you into it.”
I gasp as he pushes his thumb inside, picking up pace with his hips at the same time to soothe the ache with his cock in my cunt. My nerves all spark to life as he slowly pulses his thumb, tingles sprinting along my spine to bring another heady rush to my already jumbled mind.
“Now you can come.”
Dallas plays me like a damn fiddle, knowing just how to hold me and where to press to make beautiful music with his unconventional methods.
I come apart under his touch, collapsing to the bed as he pulls his thumb free and finishes with a grunt, pounding his release into my bruised pussy. I’m sore, spent, and used up in all the best ways.
“I could pound into that greedy hole of yours all day,” Dallas says as he pulls out and rolls away. “In fact,”—he lies on his side, head propped on one hand—“I might do exactly that.”
I groan as I roll over, stretched out on this madman’s bed as I marvel at how he made me come harder than I have in … ever? “I’ve got nowhere better to be.”
“Come have a shower first,” he says, stepping off the bed. “And then we can get something to eat so you don’t pass out when I fuck you again.”
“I can’t move,” I whine, my body jelly after his onslaught.
“Don’t then,” he says, reaching out and grabbing me by the hand. “Let me take care of you.”
I swoon at his words as he jerks me upright into a seated position, and then heaves me over his shoulder. His cum leaks from my still swollen pussy while we head to the bathroom, yet he doesn’t seem to care as it rubs off on the arm he has pinned over the back of my thighs. He keeps me in place, slung in his hold like a ragdoll as he leans in and turns the shower on.
I could go to sleep like this; safe and secure, knowing I’m in the arms of a man who would kill to protect me … who already has.
“Thank you,” I murmur as he gently sets me down on the closed toilet. “For what you did last night, today.”
Dallas stands before me, seemingly lost on what to do. Has nobody thanked him before me? “I’d do it again,” he says with a frown.
“I know.”
He tests the water, and then reaches out for my hand. “Tell me, April. How did it feel to see me take his life?” He guides me under the warm spray as he waits for my answer.
How did it feel? Fuck, is he serious? “Terrifying,” I answer as my eyes slip closed. The water on my exhausted body is heaven enough, but when he puts his soapy hands on me and starts to massage … how can I love a man so much, and yet fear him as well?
“Did you enjoy it?”
I suck in a sharp breath as he runs one hand between my legs, carefully cleaning my folds. “Not particularly.”
“Why?” His hand slides up my stomach to my breasts, massaging first one and then the other.
“Because I didn’t know if I’d be next.” I steady myself by placing my hands on the wall.
“Are you afraid of dying?” he whispers as he presses his front hard up against my back. The man has a goddamn erection again already.
“Not dying,” I admit. “Afraid of missing out.”
Death doesn’t scare me—the thought of being forced off the ride early does. I might not feel as though I have any purpose in this world most of the time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see where the twists and turns life throw my way will take me next.
I want to know if I will eventually find a reason, a point for my life.
My lips part on a sigh as Dallas rocks himself into me, his fingers working magic on my nipples. How can he fuck me so hard, and be ready to go again so soon after? I’m spent, my mind willing but my body screaming “Hell no!”
“Would you kill for me, April?” Dallas asks out of the blue. The pressure disappears from my back as he steps away.
I turn to face him, feeling strangely free yet also hollow at the loss of his touch, and frown. “I don’t know.”
“If somebody had my life in the balance, I want to know, would you take theirs?”
“Perhaps.” What a strange question to ask. It's as though he knows something I don’t. “I guess I’d hope that I would have the guts to if that were the only option.”
His left eye twitches as he lifts his hands to the wall to cage me inside his arms. “If you love me, you would.”
Love? I’ve known him barely a day, and yet, “Of course I love you.” How could I not love the man who saved me from hell and then took me on as his with such fierce conviction?
Dallas sighs as though awestruck I’d feel this way, and then closes the gap between us to press my body up against the wall while he takes my mouth with savage appreciation. My hands roam the hard planes of his chest, feeling the rough scars that I never noticed before—each one a testament to how fearless and strong this man is. He walks through hell with his head held high, knowing that if he can look the devil in the eye, then nothing can touch him.
“How sore are you?” His question warms my heart; a cue that he does care about my well being, even if he doesn’t realize it himself yet.
“Never too sore for you.”
“Right answer,” he says with a smile as he hitches my leg higher and enters me on one forceful thrust.
Stockholm syndrome, a result of posttraumatic stress—I don’t care what it is that brings me back to this man, that pulls me in and makes him my world. I do love him.
I’ve never been so consumed by a man. But if this is what it’s like to dance with a demon borne straight from hell, then I’ll gladly endure the burn of the fire to stay by his side.
I’m his, caught under his spell. And what’s worse is now I totally agree with everything he said.
He owns me.
Body and soul.