7. Breaking the Shackles - Rafe
The next morning, Alex launched a table lamp at my head as soon as I opened the bedroom door. I ducked, and the thing ended up in pieces on the floor in the hall. She stood on the other side of the messy bed, her eyes a deep shade of green I’d come to recognize as dangerous. Sunlight streamed through the curtains, catching the natural highlights in her dark curls from our weeks spent in the summer heat.
“How could you?” The accusation was a snarl from her kissable lips, but underneath the vehemence in her tone, I couldn’t ignore the hurt. She glared at me, her tits heaving underneath the tight material of her tank top. I was tempted to punish her for putting it back on.
“Babe, calm down.”
“Calm down?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “You left me chained to the bed all damn night. Alone.”
It was the alone part that pushed her buttons, just as I anticipated. She was a spitfire of anger and indignation, but behind the facade lived a girl afraid of abandonment. Alex could stand on her own two feet—I had no doubt about that—but her fear of being alone without me was the catalyst for rattling her apart.
She picked up the clock from the nightstand and hurtled it through the air.
Taking cover once more, I rounded the bed and backed her into the wall next to the bedside table. I shoved her hands to the wall and scanned her arms for fresh scratches, but there were none. Despite facing the night alone in this room, chained to the bed, she hadn’t harmed herself, and that was a positive sign.
The bedroom, however, hadn’t escaped unscathed. She’d toppled over the chair in the corner, rifled through the dresser drawers, leaving clothing and kinky shit strewn about, and now that I caught a whiff of the crisp morning breeze, I realized she’d broken a window too.
“Are you done throwing your little tantrum now?”
“Not even close,” she hissed.
“Good.”
Her eyes widened, jaw going slack. “What?”
“That’s right. Good. I’m glad you’re angry. Be angry.” I narrowed the inches between us and pinned her with my stare. “Be so fucking pissed at me that you want to take my head off with flying objects.”
Considering the lamp and clock hadn’t met her wrath during the night, I assumed she’d saved them for me. Or more accurately, my fucking head.
She blinked, and I licked my lips at the sheen of tears collecting in her eyes. “Don’t fuck with my head, Rafe.”
“It’s too late for that.” I laced my fingers with hers. “Our heads are beyond fucked.”
“Why are you doing this? Can’t we…let’s just go back to camp.”
Returning to camp would keep her safer, but letting the past dictate our every move had to stop at some point.
“It’s time to get our lives back, sweetheart, and we can’t do that until you deal with whatever it is you’re avoiding.”
“I don’t want to deal with it!”
“Tough shit, Alex.”
She fought my hold, putting all her weight behind trying to fend me off. I slammed her hands to the wall again and silenced her startled cry with my mouth. As I thrust my tongue past her resistant lips, our fingers flexed, pushed, pulled. Her needy whimper threatened to tow me under.
I broke away before I lost myself in her devious kiss. “Don’t fucking move.” I kept my eyes on hers as I bent and freed her from the shackle. The metal barely clanked on the floor before she took off. I grabbed her by the ankle, and her forward momentum brought her to the floor with a brutal thud. As her shrieks pierced my ears, I escaped the thrashing of her unrestrained leg by an inch. With a rough yank on her ankle, I dragged her closer, her body sliding across the hardwood with little effort despite the way she fought me.
“Let me go!”
Crawling over her, I pinned her lower body to the floor with my thighs and forced her hands to the hardwood on either side of her face, our fingers interlocked. “Yesterday wasn’t enough? You want to play again?”
“Fuck you.” The scorching fire in her gaze rushed through my veins. I found anger in her eyes, but underneath that, her diatribe singed with literal meaning.
“Are you wet, baby?” I pushed against her pelvis, all too aware of how her skirt had gathered around her hips during our fight. “Cause I’m happy to oblige.”
“Fuck you, Rafe.”
A quiver took hold of her lower lip, and she pulled it between her teeth. Then she blinked, her lashes fluttering as fast as a butterfly’s wings, as if holding back the burn of liquid pain.
“Don’t you dare hold back your tears.”
“Don’t you dare chain me to the bed again. Not here.”
“That’s exactly why I did it. And you know what?” I lowered my face until our foreheads touched. “I’ll do it as long as it takes. Tonight. Tomorrow. The day after.”
A quick shutter of her eyes forced the tears out. I watched them slide down her cheeks, entranced for a few moments before I licked up the salt of her despair, of the baggage she couldn’t let go.
“And I will always come back, baby. Just like I did this morning.”
“That’s what you said last time.” Her accusing tone pummeled me square in the chest.
“That’s the thing about second chances.” I closed my eyes and ran my nose alongside hers, breathing her in. “We don’t have to make the same mistakes again.”
“No more chains.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Shit, Alex.” I inched back and met her eyes. “How can I not chain you up? That’s like asking me not to fuck you.”
A quick breath puffed off her lips. “So this isn’t just about punishing me…or getting me to deal with the nightmares?”
“No. This is about me being a fucked up bastard for wanting to chain you to the damn bed. And baby?” I let go of her hands and rose to a kneeling position, settling between her thighs. “I want you naked.” Reaching behind me, I clamped my hand around her ankle, a proxy for the shackle I was tempted to put back on later. “Take off your top.”
Tucking her lower lip between her teeth, she raked her fingers down her ribs and grabbed the hem. As the green tank that matched her eyes exposed her tits, a breeze came through the hole in the window, disrupting the curtains in its wake. Her nipples formed two hardened peaks.
I traced the lines I’d left behind on those mounds yesterday, my fingers gliding over creamy skin marred by the pink remnants of pain. She pulled the tank over her head and flung it across the room.
“Hands above your head.”
She stretched her arms out, gaze never wavering from mine as I tugged the elastic waistband of her skirt down the sexiest legs I’d ever seen. Swimming had strengthened them.
“I’m fucking starved.” I was talking about more than food, but my stomach grumbled, demanding attention. “You must be hungry too.”
“Famished,” she said, licking her lips as she fucked me with her eyes.
“Food before fucking.” I rose to my feet and reached a hand out to her. “But first…” I brought her to the dresser and pulled a drawer open, hoping she hadn’t tossed out what I was looking for.
The clothespins I’d left there over a year ago still waited, their harsh clamps begging to tighten around Alex’s nipples.
“Put your hands behind your head.”
She laced her fingers at the back of her head, her mouth forming an irritable curve. “What am I being punished for this time?”
I cocked a brow at her. “Are you oblivious to the state of this room?”
“No.”
“And you remember throwing shit at my head?”
Nibbling on that lip again, she nodded.
“That should answer your question then.” I took a nipple between my fingers and rolled it until it formed an over-sensitive bud. I applied the clothespin, and my cock throbbed at the way she winced. As she hissed in a breath, I clamped her other nipple, then I ushered her out of the bedroom and toward the kitchen to get brunch going.
Having her naked with her nipples clamped while I waited for company heated my blood. Or maybe we’d just been on our own for so long, no one else around for miles, that I wanted to test how well she’d obey me in the presence of others.
Especially if that other person was Jax.