Don't Let Go (13 page)

“Samantha, we don’t have to do this.” His voice sounded strained, on a razor thin edge.

I glanced down at the bulge, its shape and girth clearly visible beneath the thin fabric of his pants. “But you want to.”

His eyes flashed. “I’ve always wanted to.”

But he wouldn’t. First because I was his partner. And now? Because I’d been hurt, beaten. Normal men didn’t want to fuck a woman like that. I was too broken for rough sex, wasn’t I? If anything, they could make love or cuddle or… No. I didn’t want some diluted version of him. I might be broken, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to hide the worst of him. I craved the worst of him.

 “Please,” I begged. “Carlos…he took something from me. Let me do this with you. Be normal.”

He sighed. “This isn’t normal, Samantha. It’s messed up.”

“I’m messed up!” I shouted, angry now. “What the hell else am I going to do?”

Silence. His expression was pained.

All I could do was push and push. And all he could do was take it. “Should I go on match.com? Do I mention my recent run-in with torture and rape in the bio section or wait until the first date to tell them?”

“
Jesus.
”

“Well, what do you want me to say? No one wants someone fucked up and broken. You don’t either. So where does that leave me? Should I go find someone like Carlos? At least they’ll still fuck me.”

He looked fit to strangle someone. Me, probably. His expression was molten lava, burning hot and terrifying. Excitement thrummed through me. I wanted this. Pure emotion, unfiltered.

What do you remember?

I wanted to remember this.

“Get on the bed,” he said.

A tremor ran through me. Fear? Desire? I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

“Get on the fucking bed.” His voice sharpened, but even now, I wasn’t sure he would actually go through with it. Maybe he’d tuck me in and leave me here, as if I really had died under Carlos’s hand. As if I’d died when my father should have killed me. All my life, trying to see if I was even still alive.

But I went. I lay down on the bed, and he followed, standing beside me. There was no place to hide, spread out on cool sheets. He stared down at the silvery lash marks on my breasts and swallowed. Did they disgust him? He bent and placed a kiss on my nipple. I shut my eyes. Another kiss landed on a half-healed bruise, and I flinched.

“Does it hurt?” he asked hoarsely.

I shook my head. He licked a cut with barely-formed scar tissue, and despite bracing myself, I whimpered.

He made a sound of regret. “Don’t lie to me.”

 “I don’t…” I opened my eyes. He looked down at me, curious and heartbroken. “It hurts, but I don’t want you to stop.”
I don’t want you to leave me.

His frown was uncertain. He had to know how fucked up all this was, but he’d straddled the world of the criminal and the law-abiding for so long, he knew also how little that mattered in the end. Sane and crazy. Right and wrong. It all whirred together like the tinsel-bright colors of a carousel going round and round. Here. Now. That was all we had.

Slow, so I’d have time to stop him, he bent to kiss another cut. Another bruise. He licked and nuzzled and caressed every point of pain on my breasts. He moved down my belly, which was mostly bare. My thighs were marked more deeply than my breasts had been. It was a testament to Carlos’s care of me that the severity of the wounds depended on the place. He hadn’t been randomly beating me. He’d been careful, giving me only as much as I could take. And my thighs could take a lot, judging from the slash marks I’d seen in the mirror. The ones Hennessey stared at now. What did he feel? Disgust?

He did the same for them, licking and kissing until my hips rolled up in silent invitation.
Please, here.
He did move to my center, licking at my cunt with skill and eagerness. But only on my outer lips. He nudged my hip, and following his tacit instructions, I turned over. He repeated the strange healing process starting at the nape of my neck. He trailed his tongue along a thinly formed scab on a cut, and I gasped. He sucked at a bruise, sending sparks of pain to my core. The sensations were tied up between surface pain and deep, sensual pleasure. They were tied up between natural aversion and a childhood longing.

He worked his way down my body, over the valley of my lower back and the hills of my ass. Lower still, until he reached my ankles and circled them lightly where the chains had been. I jerked when I felt something soft and wet at the bottom of my feet, right on the heel. He kissed and licked there too. It felt strange at first, as if he were abasing himself—and I would never ask that of him. But it was different when given freely, like he did for me now. Where once I’d felt the worst kind of pain imaginable for fleeting, heart-stopping seconds, now he caressed the tender skin with his lips, laved it with his tongue. He found each wound on my body and he loved it—and in that way I found the acceptance I’d been searching for. Carlos had hurt me, but that was only one half of the equation. But this, this was the answer.

A cell phone rang in the distance, but he muttered for me to ignore it. As if to ensure his command, he pulled my hips up, so I knelt on the bed face down. It was wholly undignified the way my face and breasts hugged the sheets and my ass pointed at the ceiling. Wholly undignified the way he pressed his face between my legs from behind, licking and sucking at my cunt. He delved deeper this time, lapping at the moisture in my core, drawing it out.

He found my clit and circled it, pressing the flat of his tongue against it in a timeless rhythm until I moaned against the sheets and warm liquid dripped down the inside of my thigh. He made love to me with his mouth, moving over every place that Carlos had touched, that Carlos had
hurt
.

Hennessey’s touch didn’t erase the pain. He made it sharper. Sweeter. I still felt the ache, jerking and crying out at the touch of wet tongue to torn skin. He saw the darkness written on my skin, and he wanted me anyway. The thought spurred me higher, on the roughened currents of hope.

I pushed back against him, shoving my wet cunt against his face, begging him to take more of me, all of it. Fingers slipped inside me, filling me where I needed him. It wasn’t enough though, and I clenched around him with my secret muscles, begging for reprieve only he could give me.

He pushed my hips down flat on the bed and placed his cock at my entrance.

“Tell me it’s okay,” he said.

He had to know I wanted him, from the dampness drenching the crown of his cock to my breathless moans urging him on. He knew, but he wanted me to state it clearly, unequivocally. That was the difference between him and Carlos. Carlos had reveled in my lack of consent, had gotten off on it. This man wanted more than my reluctant participation. He wanted my full-fledged desire, and he had it. I wanted his strong body. His intelligent mind. His unrelenting sense of honor. I wanted all of him.

“Yes. Please. Take me.”

“More,” he said on a groan.

I begged. “God, please. I want to feel you inside me. I need to… Let me…”

My words ended on a gasp and a sudden sense of fullness. I couldn’t breathe. Could only gasp against the bed, sucking the fabric against my lips and muffling the sound of my pain. I was still sore here, something I hadn’t known about before coming here. I didn’t regret it; like his kisses before, his touch on the bruises left behind made everything richer. Layers of pleasure on pain, an indulgence of sensation. I gripped him with my cunt, and he pulsed inside me, a shared and private communion I could feel and observe but not change. Along for the ride as he picked up his pace, pushing inside me faster and deeper, finding a spot that made me gush all over his cock and down my legs.

“Feel me,” he grunted. “Feel me.” It became a chant, muttered under his breath, indistinguishable from his rough, needy sounds.

I knew exactly what he meant. More than touch, more than words. He wanted to leave his mark somewhere deeper, but he’d already done so. Before I’d even been captured, I’d fallen for him. What we did now just retraced those lines on my body, over my heart.

The pressure built and tightened through my body, centering around the invasion of his cock, exploding over me and raining down sparks I felt in every cut, in every bruise. I moaned against the sheets, out of breath and mindless, giving myself over to the utter weightlessness of hope and the breadth of desire. Open, trusting. Finding exactly what I needed around the pulsing hotness of his erection. He stiffened behind me as he rocked against my ass, the sound of his low groan filling me and sinking deep into my core.

There wasn’t any place to hide as his body sank down on mine. Not any way to lie to myself about how much I wanted him like this, sated and spent, bonded and broken. The feeling seemed to be mutual. He let out a quiet sigh, acceptance and need wrapped into one.

* * *

The acceptance was too much, too complete. I couldn’t believe in it, especially when I’d only just admitted the full extent of my father’s abuse to myself. I tried to warn him about the poison inside me—the shame and the guilt. To protect him. From me.

“Do you remember the story,” I whispered in the dark, “of the scorpion and the frog? The frog carried the scorpion on its back as they crossed the river. The scorpion stung the frog, and as they both were drowning, the frog asked the scorpion why he’d done it.”

“Because I’m a scorpion,” he finished.

I stayed silent, my point made.

He made a small sound, a puff of air, incredulous. “
You
are not the scorpion.”

“But—”

“You’re not. Now
shh
. Come here.”

And he proceeded to make me forget I’d ever doubted. We made love countless times over the course of the night. Each time I woke with hands on my body and his cock deep inside me. I’d opened a dam, and he rushed forward, poured forth, unstoppable in his passion. And I received him, made myself a vessel to hold whatever he gave me.

As yellow light filtered through the waffle-patterned curtains, I grew to trust in what he offered me. It wasn’t forever. Even better, it was now. He was used to dealing with some of the toughest criminals in the world. And sure, he wasn’t trying to date them. But the point was, he didn’t fear me. Not what had happened to me as a child or what had happened with Carlos. I didn’t need to warn him away any longer. He understood. He stayed.

At least until I woke the final time. I stretched and felt…nothing. Just a warm spot where he had been. I could hear the shower running. I could imagine him naked with water running down his body, winding its way over his skin like a liquid web, catching him for me. That made me the spider. I was the cautionary tale, but he’d always been a risk taker. Tackling the toughest cases at the FBI. He didn’t feel fear like normal people, which made him perfect for a girl who’d been afraid her whole life.

In the bright morning light, I couldn’t quite believe I’d confessed to him about my father. It felt like a dream, but then everything related to my father felt that way. The memories of him coming into my room. Repressed memories. I sighed. A psychologist would have a field day with that one, but I was done with that. It hadn’t fixed me. Nothing could.

I’d seen a tree once with an indent running all the way around the trunk. Something had been there and the tree had grown around it, damaged but still alive. That was me. I was as healthy as I could be all on my own. As for the Bureau, I’d see one of their psychologists to get cleared for duty, but I wasn’t going to bare my soul. I had a meeting with Brody today. I wondered if he’d give me the results of the psych exam. There were mandatory minimums for things like this, but as long as no red flags came up in the therapy sessions, Brody would have to reinstate me. I just had to wait them out, and with Hennessey in my home, it was no hardship.

Water rushed in a soothing rhythm. His golden skin would glisten. His hands would roam over himself, soapy and brisk. He would clean that lovely cock, wash our scent from the roll of skin. I wanted to taste him freshly washed. To feel the satiny head of his cock against my tongue, tasteless and wet. It would be a morning gift to him and to myself. I pressed my face against his pillow and breathed in deep. Musk. Man. And so familiar. Only one night and I could scent him like an animal. Like a mate.

I slipped from the bed, feeling twinges from my body. I felt deliciously sore, aching in the places well-used and throbbing for more in another. I padded across the thin carpet to the bathroom door and stopped.

Humming.

That was what I noticed first, the humming from inside. I thought it was sweet and endearing. Then why did my blood chill? But it did. I tried to place the song but my mind eluded me, running away before I could be sure.
You don’t want to know,
it promised. But too late, too late I realized what it was. The haunting refrains of
La Bohème
. A chill raced over my bare skin.

I stood outside the door clutching my stomach. It had to be a coincidence. A famous classical opera with iconic music. Anyone could know the piece. Anyone could hum in the shower, without realizing it would trigger hateful memories. Though did I really hate what had happened to me? Or did I just think that was the right response? Always pretending, always lying, so much I hardly knew which way was up.

Remembrance sliced through my wounds. The pain of the whip. The humiliation of being fucked with leather and with glass.

The hopelessness of being captive to a stranger.

Except he hadn’t been a stranger, had he? A laugh escaped me, and it sounded maniacal. Last night, Hennessey had flicked at my clit in time with the music. It had soothed me, so much warmer than when the leather flogger had done the same. Except how had Hennessey known to do it? He’d kissed the soles of my feet, except they’d had no bruises in the hospital. I’d never shared that detail in the debriefings afterward. So how had he known I’d been hurt there?

Because he is Carlos.

No. That’s crazy.
You’re crazy,
I told myself. But the truth of the statement remained. I knew it because he sang
La Bohème
in the shower. I knew it because he made love to me with his mouth the same way he’d once done with leather. And most of all, I knew it because I recognized the darkness in him. I’d always feared that part of him, from that first interview in prison when I’d suspected Hennessey was capable of worse things than I knew. Had I known all along? Had I suspected?

I wasn’t sure, but I knew now. I felt scared, suddenly. I felt cold, deep inside. I felt as hollow as a drum, and he just beat and beat and beat me.

The room closed in on me, shrinking. I dressed quickly. Easy, considering all I had were my heels and a trench coat. My hair and face were a mess, but I couldn’t care about that. Outside the hotel room door, I walked quickly to my car, half expecting Hennessey to come running out, demanding to know where I was going. Or would it be Carlos who emerged from the shower, ready to take over where the kinder man had left off? Dr. Jekyll. Mr. Hyde. They could both go fuck themselves.