Prisoner Page 11

  She flinches like I slapped her.

  I touch her gently at her temple—the same place I’d put a gun as a threat. We’re in for the night. She knows what’s coming.

  I trail my finger down, down, down her cheek and across her lips. I follow the line of her profile. She becomes two dimensions to me, a cutout silhouette of a real person. The line of her neck is an edge, something I can cut myself on. When I get to the tops of her breasts, she grabs the towel around her and pushes away.

  “That’s right,” I say approvingly. “Fight me.”

  The back of the neck is a sensitive place. It’s where one animal grabs another to bend them into submission. It’s where I place my hand. I use it like a leash to guide her to the bed. Each step feels forced, and that’s the way I like it.

  “Lay down,” I say.

  She glares at me.

  “Lay down, and I’ll let you keep the towel.”

  She hesitates, then complies, fastening the flimsy towel just over her breasts.

  “Let’s be clear,” I say as I tie her wrists to the headboard. “If I want to fuck you, I’ll fuck you. If I want you to suck my dick, you’ll suck my dick. And if I want you to lie there quietly and go to sleep, you’ll do that too.” But that’s not in the cards, and we both know it.

  Her wrists are tied tight enough to press her hands together as if she’s in prayer, with a cloth connecting them to the bedpost. I move to her feet, fastening one ankle to the metal frame under the mattress. Best if the other one’s free.

  I stand and survey my work as she glares up at me. And that mouth. That pretty pink mouth with the tongue that darts out and wets her lips. Yeah, I could do a lot with that mouth. She’s mine to do what I want with, and it’s hard to know where to start.

  With a huff she turns and curls on her side, away from me—as much as she can be with her hands and one ankle tied, anyway. I run a finger along her arm. Goose bumps rise.

  “You gonna pretend you like it?” I ask.

  Her fists clench, as much as they can, anyway. I don’t really want her to pretend. I like her how she is. Real. I think about the library, when I took off her glasses. How real she felt. Like we were standing on the edge of something.

  I want her to talk, so I goad her. “You gonna pay your way? Maybe if you fuck me good, I’ll let you go.”

  She makes a hissing sound. “Never.”

  “Yeah.” My smile dawns slow. “Maybe you’d rather stay with me.”

  She jerks her head around, and there go her eyes again. Boom boom boom. Suddenly they seem important, those fireworks. Like I have to keep them in her eyes. Can’t let them fade out.

  But then she turns away from me again and goes very, very still. I sit on the bed next to her and run a finger down over the rough, cheap towel that covers her torso until I hit the end of it, skimming the top of her silky thigh. I continue down toward her knee, two fingers now, enjoying her warm, soft skin, enjoying that she’s mine. I’d always known I would fuck her when I got the chance, but being with her in this shitty little room, it already seems better than what I imagined and I’m not even inside her, yet. She gasps when I change directions, back up.

  When I hit the edge of the towel, I slide my hand up under it, finding the curve of her hip, fitting my hand around it, fingers finding her hip bone.

  She sucks in another breath. Like she’s so surprised this is actually happening. As if she’d thought I was somebody different. Somebody better. Did she hope her class broke me of my darkness? People like her want to see the best in people like me, and she’ll probably want to think the best as time goes on, but it’s important that she doesn’t think the best of me or hope for me to be something different. Misery is wanting what you don’t have. Misery is wanting what a rat has, or really, anything different. It’s important to me that she sees what this is and what it’s going to be. Deep down, she already knows exactly how we fit, which was why she was nervous around me in class. Even with my wrists chained up, she knew I’d fuck her someday.

  “Turn over,” I say, pulling at her hip, encouraging her to turn onto her back.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Come on.”

  She doesn’t move.

  “Do it,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “You know why,” I whisper. I tighten my fingers over her hip and pull firmly, guiding her. She kicks backward at me with her free leg, but I’m ready—I catch her leg with my other hand and make her turn over, pressing her leg and her hip down, putting her how and where I want her.

  She stares up at the ceiling. The towel only half covers her. Her pulse pounds in her neck. Frightened. Her eyes are vacant—she’s gone somewhere. I slap her thigh. “Hey.”

  She ignores me, like she’s not there. And she isn’t. With a jolt, I recognize what she’s doing—she’s keeping some little piece of herself away from me. I know all about that.

  “Look at me.”

  She won’t.

  “I know what you’re doing, and it doesn’t work. It never works. In fact, it works against you.”

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  My heart’s pounding like crazy. I care because I care. I need her to listen.

  I touch her hair. “You just can’t do that, okay? We’re together now, and there are a few things you need to learn, like if you keep something away, it just makes it harder on everyone. On you. On me. That’s not something you want.”

  No answer. She looks exhausted, empty. Just how I feel. I keep my hand on the thigh of her kicking leg. I imagine pushing it aside, spreading her apart and pushing into her. And yeah, she’s gone somewhere, but I would fuck her until I find her again, in that place where she’s gone, or maybe until I find some missing part of me, some part that isn’t empty and hollow and wrong.

  And suddenly I’m imagining something else—I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion in her eyes or what, but I realize I could give her the kind of help I never got. It’s crazy, but I’m talking now. “You want to sleep? Is that what you want?”

  She rewards me with a pointed look. The anger. She’s back.

  “Answer.”

  She makes her look go darker. I take it as an answer.

  “You need to give me something real. Like what you wanted from us in class. But I’m not talking about a vignette here. I want something, Abby. I want something from you.”

  She takes a bit to figure out where I’m going with this. “I’ll never touch you, ever. Not ever.”

  “Yes, you will,” I say softly. “You’ll touch me if I want you to.” That’s the real thing, for her to learn this.

  “You can’t make me.”

  “I won’t have to. You’ll make yourself do it.” She looks at me in hate as I stand up, making myself bigger than her, no longer on her level. She’s back, and I’m the devil, breathing in her fire, consuming little bits of her soul. It feels wild and good.

  “Never.”

  But she needs to understand that I’m in charge, and that there’s nothing wrong with that, and I need…what? Something to patch up my wrecked soul. I even make it easy for her, moving up to the bedpost, a position that puts me between her and the bedside lamp. I cast a shadow over her. That seems just about right. I prop a hand on the wall, leaning, just casual, like I’m talking to a friend.

  “Hands only. And I won’t fuck you tonight.”

  “Do your worst, because I said I wasn’t going to touch you.”

  “But you will, because that’s the fastest way we get to sleep. You’re going to take me out, and do me nice—and I mean nice. And then you’re going to thank me.” I can’t believe I’m giving her this option after all that time imagining this opportunity in prison. I’m disgusted with myself, but it’s what I’ve said now.

  She’s breathing hard.

  “No? So I do my worst? That’s what you want?”

  Silence.

  “That’s your choice? This is a limited-time offer, I can tell you that much, Abby.”
I don’t know what’s going on in her mind but…

  She closes her eyes. She looks miserable.

  It’s better this way.

  I make my voice low, as if she’s a wild animal I have to coax to eat from my hand. Like the rat in the basement. He was real, even if his name wasn’t. “It’s okay to lose. You’ve got to understand, you lost a long time ago.”

  “I’m not touching you,” she says, and it pulls at something in me, because I know that she will touch me, and it’ll be better than fucking her.

  “You lost before it started,” I say. “Hands only.”

  She’s the one tied up. She’s the one captive, and I’m hard as a rock. I can have any hole of hers I want, and she can’t do a damn thing. Instead I take the hole of my own creation, the space between her palms. I reach down and show her what I’m looking for, just to show her. First I slide my two fingers inside, as if her clasped hands are a cunt I have to prepare.

  She gasps when I touch her like that. Imagining my cock there. Maybe she’s even thought about it, but probably not quite like this.

  I look down at her, running my fingertips gently between her palms. It’s a sensitive place, her hands and mine. Warm with our shared heat. But nothing compared to how my dick will feel.

  “You’re not just going to touch me, got it? You’re going to take me out and jerk me off,” I tell her. “And then you’ll thank me.”

  For not fucking her. She should be grateful. It was what I’d planned to do. It won’t kill me to fuck her, but it’s this I really want.

  “Take me out. Do it nice.”

  She squeezes her eyes shut. And it’s like that electric line from class is still connecting us because I can feel her caving in to me, now—I recognize it with a rush of emotions I can’t define. She moves her hands down to my pants. I watch as her nimble fingers undo my button, and then my zipper.

  “Nicely,” she says.

  “What?” I ask, heart pounding.

  “Do it nicely. The word is nicely, motherfucker.”

  Oh, Jesus. She’s pulling me out and I almost come right there. Her wrists are flush against each other, but she can still squeeze me in both hands and push down to my root and that’s what she does. A grunt escapes me.

  She closes both fists around me and begins to jerk me off for real. It’s a little too fast, even considering how turned on I am. That’s how much she wants this over with. I understand that—God, I understand that too well. The way she’s moving fast reminds me of other hands. Greedy, grasping hands.

  I grab her wrists. “Take your time.”

  Her gaze meets mine. “I hate you,” she says between clenched teeth, but she’s slowing now, stroking while she watches me. It feels good when I focus on her face, when I stay in the present instead of the past. It helps to hear her voice too.

  “Yeah, give me more of that sweet talk.”

  “Fuck you,” she says, her hands moving in nice, solid strokes. I watch her lips, and I think about leaning down and kissing her, but it would be too much. Too sweet.

  “More,” I grunt. Shadows from my past are constantly stalking me, and never more than when someone else’s hands are on me. I need something to ground me here, in this shitty motel room, with the pretty teacher we all imagined fucking. “Talk more.”

  “Why don’t you go find someone who actually wants you?”

  It’s so fucked up, but her words are doing it for me. I kind of love her being this hard ass, this bitch, while she’s making me feel so fucking good. So I push her. “I think you love how I feel. You love this—admit it.”

  Her hands tighten, and I shudder with pain and pleasure and a sudden reluctance. I want to jackhammer inside her and I want to draw a line in the sand that will keep me from her.

  I want to hurt her and I want to protect her. Break her and shield her.

  Determination fills her eyes, and my dick gets that much harder. “Why do you want me to slow down?” she taunts. “A little desperate from all that time in prison? A little dry?”

  “Fuck,” I say, teeth clenched tight because her hands are moving even faster. “Yeah.” She’s racing me to the finish line, and she’s winning.

  “Or did you get some action after all?” she says, her voice full of venom. “In your cell? In the showers?”

  God, the kitten has claws. She’s using them, and I’m on the edge. She’s cutting me open. I can’t even say the right answer. No, I’ve never fucked a guy. I’ve never been fucked. Because it’s not true, and she’d be able to see that. Though I was never fucked in prison.

  She sees all of me, everything. She sees my weakest points, and she attacks them.

  “Get yours back.” My voice comes out so thick she probably can’t even understand me. “Make me hurt, baby. Get me back.”

  For all the times I hurt her, insulted her. For all the times I’ll do those things in the future.

  And she does, tugging on my cock like there’s no tomorrow. It hurts but it feels too damn good to stop. I watch her little hands work furiously, full of anger and desperation. My balls pull tight into my body. It feels like an explosion at the bottom of my spine, and all the lava comes pouring out of my dick.

  At the last second, I grab the wet towel off her and use it to catch my come. It would have gone in her face, in her hair. It would have gone in her eyes and made a statement about who was in charge here. But by catching it in a towel instead, I’ve made a different statement. The opposite one.

  She doesn’t seem to see the move as weakness though, which is a good thing. I sigh with relief—four fucking years of relief—as I tuck myself away. She looks just as pissed off as when I started, maybe more, but that’s better. At least she’s not wide-eyed and huddled in a shower, staring vacantly into space. I know what that means in a person. As long as she keeps fighting me, she’ll survive.

  I come around the other side and roll into bed. I’m so exhausted, I’m nearly immune to her naked body, stretched out beside me. And we made a deal. My word has to mean something to her. I cover us both up with a blanket.

  Just in case she has any ideas about trying to get out of her binds, I slide one arm underneath her head. The other one I fling over her waist. And last, I slide my foot over her tied-up leg, tangling us together. If she so much as coughs, I’ll feel it. There’s no way she can escape.

  Her skin is soft. I listen to the sound of her breath, hoping she’ll sleep now, and wanting her like crazy.

  “Thank you,” she whispers into the dark.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ~Abigail~

  I lie in his arms, thinking about all the ways I’ll hurt him once he’s asleep, once I get my hands free. Scratch out his eyes, maybe punch my knuckles into his windpipe. I don’t need to beat him up, just disable him enough to get away.

  So I wait, lightly pinned under his arm, his leg. He thinks he can keep me. He doesn’t know how small I can be, how quiet. The way I’d huddle in my room with my mangy cat, listening to the sound of fists on the other side of the door. That’s a form of weaponry, being small and quiet. He’ll never know what hit him.

  The AC here has two settings—freezing and nothing, and it’s on freezing. But the parts of me he’s touching are warm, and his breath is warm on the nape of my neck.

  My toes feel like little blocks of ice, and I shift my foot so that it’s under his huge calf, and then I tuck my other foot under that one. He stirs, pulling me closer, warming me, and it feels good, like somebody on this wasteland of a planet is saying, Let me keep you warm.

  I never had anyone rock me to sleep before—my mother was too beaten up or strung out on coke to even recognize me most nights, but maybe this is how it would’ve felt. Calming. Soothing. Like somebody saying, I’m here.

  For a split second, I imagine giving in to the comforting weight and warmth of his limbs on my body like I did in the woods, but I don’t—I’m not stupid. I keep myself as stiff and distant as possible. Except for my toes. He’s just so warm.
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br />   I wonder if that’s how it was for my mother. Hating and wanting the drugs at the same time.

  Until it killed her.

  It’s maybe a second later or hours later that I jerk awake—all I know is that I’m losing my battle with sleep. And my eyes are wet with tears. But he’s still holding me, and his heartbeat is steady as sunshine, and he has sandwiched my toes between his heavy legs and they’re finally warm. It’s like I’m tumbling. Falling.

  How could I have softened toward Grayson for even a second?

  Carefully, slowly, I extract myself from his hold. It’s like a real-life version of the game Pick Up Sticks, where I have to remove my limbs, one by one, without disturbing him at all. I untie my ankle with my toes.

  It feels like a ten-foot drop out of the bed. My feet land too hard on the thin carpet. Pain shoots up my shins, a burst of white in the red streak of my thoughts. Escape. Get away.

  Only my hands are attached to the bed, tied up with cloth. The bonds are tight but not cutting off circulation. I made my wrists clench, pumping extra blood through them, tensing the muscles without looking like I was doing it, when he tied me up. That way I’d have a better chance of getting out. Now I relax myself, willing my wrists to grow slimmer. I pull at them hard, trying not to yank and wake him, but I’m frantic to get free. He left enough room in the knots that I wouldn’t wake up with bruises, but I’ll have them now.

  I twist against the fabric, trying not to think about the way he washed my cut. The way he carried me in the stream. How he could have demanded a lot worse than a hand job. There’s some kind of code he’s following, a twisted form of honor that I find almost endearing.

  Except I can’t find him endearing. I can’t think he looks almost vulnerable, sleeping in the dark like a dangerous prince waiting to be woken with a kiss.

  I lean in and try to loosen the tie with my teeth, then I pull and twist some more, wincing as the cloth cuts into my flesh. Little by little, I’m getting free.

  I almost can’t believe my careful movements aren’t waking him, but I bet he didn’t sleep last night in the prison, all pumped for his escape today. And he fought in that riot. He carried me through the stream, and I may be small, but I’m not light. Then he drove for hours without stopping. He’s been on an adrenaline high for twenty hours, capped off by a hit of endorphins from the orgasm. He sleeps on.