Stain (17 page)

Taking what I feel may be my last chance, I cautiously touch his face, and when he doesn’t recoil, I allow my fingers to trace his cheek and then his jaw. I pull away an inch. “Do your worst, Maddox.” I know my voice comes out small, but I say it with conviction. He knows I mean it. I’m not sorry. And I’m not taking it back.

“Stupid girl,” he growls. And then
he consumes me. Drinks from me. Slants his beautiful mouth over mine, prying the seam of my lips apart with his tongue, and ruins me for anyone else. “Stupid fucking naïve girl,” he chastises between harsh breaths, between passionate, demanding kisses that blaze through my core and sear me open. “Why the fuck can’t you be like the rest of them? Why can’t you be another damn body? Why do
you
have to matter?”

I close my eyes for a brief moment, taking in what he’s just asked me, before I stare back at him. “Because I see you. I see you, Maddox, more clearly than I’ve ever seen anything or anyone in my entire life. And I know it scares you because you can see me, too.”

Feeling like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, I initiate the kiss this time. It’s nowhere near his level of skill, but I lick at his lips and shyly graze his tongue with mine. His responsive groan emboldens me to do more. But he doesn’t give me control for long, and too soon I’m gasping inside his mouth when he effortlessly lifts me from the stool. The clattering noise of my materials falling to the ground becomes lost in the fog of heady desire. With my arms around his neck and my legs encircling his waist, he holds me to him by my butt, his large hands gripping both cheeks through the layer of my jeans. There’s no break in the kiss as he carries me to the countertop and sets me down with effortless ease. Off in the distance of my muddled mind, I hear tubes and cans of paint roll and tumble off the counter. They’re of no importance.

He leaves my mouth swollen, threading his fingers through my hair as he tilts my head back to trail open-mouth kisses across my jaw and down the side of my neck. They’re hungry kisses, kisses that feel like he’s going to devour me whole. I moan when he sucks hard on the fragile skin of my neck. That shot of pain mingled with the sweet pleasure of his lips and tongue soothing the ache away makes me crave more. He moves down, brushing my cardigan from my shoulders, and it falls down my arms and pools around my waist and wrists.

Through the layers of my bra and camisole, he cups my breasts and with dazed fascination I watch him lower his dark head to bite the thin materials over the nipple of my left breast. Even with the barrier of clothes, I feel the clamp of his teeth, and a whimper tumbles from my open mouth as the sweetest heat licks between my thighs, making me squirm. He finds my mouth again, tangles his hands in my hair to move my head just how he wants it as he plunges his tongue deeper into me.

“Tell me to stop,” he orders thickly, his forehead pressing against mine as he pants. “Tell me to stop, Aylee, because I swear if you don’t, I’m going to pull down your jeans, spread you out on this table, and slide my dick inside your warm pussy.” Who knew words this obscene could be so arousing? Or is it only when they come from this boy’s beautiful mouth? A spectacular explosion of goose bumps spill across my skin as I raise my fingers to his mouth.

Tenderly, he puckers his lips to kiss my fingertips before interlacing them with his. “There won’t be any stopping then.” He continues. “I’m going to fuck you, Aylee. I’m going to fuck you slowly and I’m going to fuck you hard. I’m going to make you scream so loud that whoever is left in this building is going to come running and see how good you can take my dick.” The last bit he whispers against the fragile skin where my neck and ear meet, sending shivers rippling through my body. Heat dances in my belly and trickles down the valley of my thighs to flood my core. I’m pulsating, breathless, and I want more
of
him, more
from
him. Whatever he’s doing now, this dark spell of ardor he’s cast is exactly where I need to be.

Do I want him to stop? No. I do not. But I can’t let him do all these things to me on this table, in the middle of the art room, despite how badly I ache for it. It will eventually make it to Tim’s ears, and he will be out for blood. Both mine and Maddox’s. Me, I’m not highly worried about. But I can’t bear the thought of my actions inadvertently hurting Maddox.

With a sigh, I give into impulse and run my hand through his thick mane. “You say you’re bad for me but you’re always looking out for me.”

He snorts. “Side effect of stupidity, I guess.”

I smile and bring his head close to gently kiss the corner of his mouth. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Every time you’ve been there. Now…”

He sighs heavily. “I can’t promise you anything, Aylee.”

“Good, because I’m not expecting anything. Let’s not define what this is. We’ll just let it take its course.”

He slowly showers me with a different set of kisses from his abundant arsenal of sexual mastery. I live for how he parts my lips, live for the decisive way he dips his tongue inside my mouth and strokes it so softly against mine. He kisses me like I’m the best thing he’s ever had in his mouth and wants nothing more than to savor my taste.

Chapter 19

Maddox

It’s been nonstop these last few days. No fucking free time whatsoever. Dro has me busy working. At the moment, I’ve got both my SIG and Glock in the waistband of my jeans. And another semiautomatic tuck inside my left boot. That one will probably be a little harder to reach but I’m confident in knowing I’ll have my target on the ground long before he can fire back at me. There’s seven of us in the tiny basement of the small Chinese restaurant on Fayette St. Everyone is on edge. It’s hotter than the Devil’s ass down here and there’s not one of us who isn’t sweating balls. But we’re all playing it cool right now because everyone here is a little trigger-happy. I know I sure as hell am. We’re not on our territory. The seedy Chinese restaurant belongs to a good friend of Deacon. It’s supposed to be neutral territory but nonetheless, I’m feeling edgy as fuck. I’m pretty sure Dro is too, that’s why Willkie and I are standing behind him on one side of the green felt poker table. I’m thinking we’re the only ones he trusts enough to have his back if shit goes sideways because neither of us would hesitate to put a bullet in someone. We’re outnumbered by one, but I still like our chances.

On the other side of the table, the buyer Deacon set Dro up with stands with his three muscles flanking him. We’ve been here ten minutes now and so far everything’s gone according to plan. But ever the pessimist, I’m ready for something to go wrong.

It’s a simple gun run. The buyer has brought a tote bag of cash. One hundred large to be precise, enough for the three black duffel bags on the table filled with a wide variety of rifles, semiautomatics, and ammo.

“What do you have for me?” His voice is thick with an accent.

“Why don’t you take a look?” Dro offers.

The buyer, a short, bulldog-looking motherfucker with a receding hairline and the fashion sense of an eighties pimp, gives a signal with his gold ring-adorned left hand. The muscles in three piece suits each step forward to inspect the merchandise. They’re thorough, checking triggers, muzzles, magazine wells, front and rear sights, and the frames of each gun. When they finish, they interact in a language I can only assume to be Russian before finally acknowledging a silent Droski.

“We’ll take this and whatever other shipment you receive in the future,” he says, “pay him.” While one of muscles removes the bags of weapons from the table, another one empties out the black leather tote bag onto the table. The third fucker still stands behind the pudgy buyer, just to his right. “Eighty grand as we agreed on.”

“Hold the fuck up. What do you mean eighty grand? We’re talking hundred large here, man.”

The bulldog scowls, his jowl moving like a pendulum as he speaks, “That’s not what I agreed on with Deacon.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you and he worked out. My price is set. Hundred grand or nothing.”

It happens quickly. Not sure who draws first, but in a blink of an eye everyone has a gun aimed and loaded on one another. I’ve got the Glock in my left hand trained on one of the meatheads, while the SIG in my right hand is aiming at the buyer. It’s a tense few minutes in which we all play a game of chicken. See who will flinch first. The dumbbell I have my Glock on is either dumber than shit or he’s got balls of steel as he boldly reaches down for one of the gun-filled duffel bags he’s set at his side. I say it’s the former. Following my first and only instinct, I squeeze the trigger and shoot. The bullet slices through the air and grazes its mark. He hollers, “Motherfucker,” and immediately hunches over with his hand pressing against his chest. It’s bleeding but that’s nothing considering I could’ve done worse.

“The next one is going between your eyes,” I say, calmly. But now I’ve got a bullet with my name on it as muscle number two aims my way, ready to shoot.

“Enough!” the buyer barks. In rapid-fire Russian he speaks to his men and they lower their guns seconds later. “This was a simple misunderstanding. We will have no more bloodshed. I’m sure you and I can work out some other arrangement, Droski. Perhaps over a few rounds of drinks and some good company?”

“You pay me the rest of my money and we’ll talk further business.”

“Of course, of course.”

The buyer sends muscle number three to his car. He returns shortly after with—what do you know? Exactly the twenty grand that was missing. Everything after goes as smoothly as one would expect a gun run to go.

***

A few hours later, I’m in the shower. I’m bone tired.  For days, Dro’s had me running around the whole damn city collecting money owed to him by his dealers. When I wasn’t doing that, I was working double-duty at his garage. Stripping the parts from stolen cars and putting them in cars that needed to be fixed so we could jack up the total amount of parts and labor on oblivious customers.

I’ve also been purposely fucking as many girls as I can get my hands on, not only because the site is growing faster than I anticipated, but it’s been my futile attempt at getting Aylee out of my head. After what happened with Noah on Monday, I’ve been running as fast as I can from her, from the memories that have become even more persistent since Noah said what he did about Dad and our mother. About how I was going to turn out like that abusive prick.

Thinking about it gets my blood boiling. How the fuck could that self-righteous little shit say that bullshit to me, knowing all too fucking well the mutual hell we grew up in? I’ve made shit decisions but I’m not a shitty person. I’ve protected him, something that bastard never did, so how could he condemn me to being anything like the monster who raped us of our innocence without even a thought as to how it would affect me?

Because I know he might be right.

I am smug and self-centered, and have violent tendencies just like he did. But I accepted my fate a long time ago. These thoughts are like a bucket of ice water down my back. The realization that Noah could be right, even in the smallest degree, makes me feel like I’m going to be fucking ill. I’m a caged, beat-up animal that no one wants. So I attack. But it wasn’t always that way. I wasn’t always such a miserable rejectee. Our mom loved me, and she was the sweetest woman anyone could ever meet. Years of battling her own depression had made her reserved and so she’d kept mostly to herself. But she’d loved big and she loved hard and that inevitably had been her downfall. She’d fallen for a waste of human skin who’d exploited her kind heart, fed her pills, took advantage of her lack of close friendships, and manipulated her until he became her entire world. He killed her spirit. Robbed her of life years before she blasted that bullet through her head.

Aylee… Damn it. Aylee is a lot like my mother. And I don’t want to taint her like my piece of shit father tainted my mother. She’s beautiful. She trusts so easily. She leaks emotions everywhere she goes. Her expressive eyes reveal everything,
all
the time. And what I see there are things I shouldn’t want but strangely finding myself needing. Like a flash of her smile or that weird sense of humor that shouldn’t make a damn bit of sense but it does to me. I don’t want to spend time with her and yet her time is something I’m craving. Just these last few days alone I’ve been champing at the bit to go see her. Stalk her if need be. And that right there is what I can’t have. I don’t do things like this. I’ve never, ever fucking thought about doing shit like this. That’s not the type of guy I am. I don’t chase females. I don’t fucking pine after women. I don’t
need
to. And when I do, it’s my dick briefly needing inside some pussy. Plain and fucking simple. It should be plain and fucking simple with Aylee. 

But then, who the fuck am I kidding? I do something as simple as close my eyes and there she is. She’s become my first, second, and last thought. I’m not even sure how or when the fuck it happened either. But I can’t stop thinking about her. Beautiful, sensual, and so damn innocent. I’m torn between wanting to fuck her, protect her, and locking her away somewhere like some deranged psychopath and never letting her out of my sight. Right now though, with my dick in hand, growing harder at the thought of her plump little mouth and her tight little cunt, the urge to fuck her is stronger than anything.

I’m thinking about the art room, imagining how hot and willing she’d been. If I hadn’t stopped, I know she would’ve let me climb on top of her on that table and spread her beautiful golden thighs for me. She would’ve begged for it, and I would’ve given it to her exactly how she wanted it.

I work my hand around my dick, use a little soap to ease my strokes, and with her name dragging from the deepest, most possessive part of me, I come in long, milky spurts that leave me drained but not nearly satisfied. It’s pent up frustration swirling down the drain. But I can still feel its grip around my throat. I’m barely breathing when all I want to do right now is have her here in front of me so I can claim her. But she’s not here. And I’m the pathetic prick standing here alone pining for her. What the fuck is she doing to me?

“God damn it!” I scream, punching the already loose tile of the shower wall. This bullshit has to stop.

In my room, I grab a pair of clean jeans and a shirt and put them on. The bag of salt and vinegar chips I left on my dresser yesterday makes for an adequate afternoon lunch. I take a seat at my desk in front of my laptop thinking I’ll get some work done to distract myself. Edit some porn. Make my white ass look good. Not even three minutes into one of my scenes with a blond-haired chic and my mind drifts to Aylee. I want to feel her, taste her. She doesn’t make fake noises for an audience, instead, she moans just for me. I want my dirty mouth on every fucking part of her. I want her face in front of me so I can see when I make her come. But her eyes scare the shit out of me. They see right through me. Through my bullshit. Make me want to sink so deep inside of her that I forget what it is to be alone. Fuck.

I’m on my feet in a flash. I look down and as hard as I am right now, my dick could probably hammer a nail into a two-by-four. Damn it, it’s like I’ve never been inside pussy before. As if I think about her for a second and in turn feel like I’m popping back an entire bottle of Viagra. It’s not even just about fucking her either. My dick is not the only part reacting to her.

I’m worried about her and it’s been eating me up wondering if her old man hit her again. I’ll confess I’ve taken a drive or two out to her neighborhood. The first time was the day after the rave, after dropping her off at her friend’s house. I drove out that Saturday night and sat about a block away from her house for a good hour before I realized how much of a creeper I was being and drove my ass back home.

I thought it’d been a onetime thing. I gave into the impulse to check on her Sunday night, too, and I thought
that
would’ve taken care of whatever it was I’d been feeling. But that feeling is back again, and it’s a screaming urge right in the middle of my chest, an open wound that seems to only be getting bigger every second I remain away from her. It’s not going away either. I’ve been fucking lying to myself. I’m already in motion before I even register my next thought fully. Keys, watch, wallet, jacket, socks, and boots, I grab them all as I move with purpose, getting dressed as I rush to the damn door. I’m out the door and downstairs in a flash. School’s going to end soon. I’m hoping to catch her before she leaves for the day.