Selling Out (34 page)

He struggled to sit up. No matter how I soothed and
reprimanded him, he insisted on propping himself up against the wall, away from
me. He touched his nose gingerly, then sucked in a breath.

“Broken,” he muttered through swollen lips. “Hope you’re not
too attached to the face. Probably won’t heal right by the time we get outta
here.”

“I appreciate the optimism, but since you’re planning on
living through this, maybe you shouldn’t be sitting up or talking right now.”

He ignored that, using his interrogation voice. “When did he
leave? How long until he comes back?”

“Don’t know and don’t know. Must have left my
glow-in-the-dark watch in my other dress.”

“I’m assuming you don’t have a phone either.”

“Surprisingly, they didn’t give me one. Guess they figured I
would call someone.”

The low sound he made was more frustrated than amused.
“Where’s Major?”

I sobered. “Lost him along the way.“

“So no one knows you’re here?”

“I’m sure your precious cops are on their way to help. It’s
a good thing they don’t have red tape or bureaucracy or anything that would
slow them down when they come rescue us.”

His stern look was overshadowed by the mosaic of blue-green
bruises across his skin. “Laying it on a little thick with the sarcasm today?”

“Well, I’ve been on the run for my life for weeks now.
Abandoned by you. Kidnapped. Forced to become a hooker. Again. It’s either
irreverent sarcasm or a nervous breakdown.”

“Keep on with it, then,” he said gruffly.

So I did. “You’ll be pleased to know I found a wrench, so if
we need any furniture assembled, we’re covered. Speaking of which, there are a
few tables over in that corner. That’s all. A table, a chair. It’s all very
minimalist, very contemporary. The dirt is a nice touch, kind of like tree-hugger
modish.”

He stood with a low moan that raised the hairs on my arms.
Before he’d had time to recover or become steady on his feet, he followed the
walls, feeling for himself. After a minute and some rustling I heard, “Take off
your stockings.”

“Just like that? No dinner date first? No down payment?”

“I’m going to fill them with rocks.”

“Oh, I see. We’re making homegrown weaponry, like prison
inmates. It was only a matter of time, being locked up like this. It’s like
some kind of social experiment. Pretty soon we’ll turn on each other.”

He filled them with the loose nails and crumbled concrete.
“I didn’t abandon you, by the way. Not exactly. I thought you were dead.”

“What?”

“First it just seemed like you were passed out, some kind of
sedative.”

“And then you left.”

“I thought you’d died. I was back in fifteen minutes to get
you, but you were gone. No trace, and Jeff told me…” He paused, his grief
saturating the air around us. “I thought you were dead,” he repeated, and I
heard the uncertainty, as if he still worried it might be true. As if I were
just some beating-inspired hallucination.

“I’m here.”

“I know.” A hollow laugh came from his chest. “I heard what
Henri told you. I knew you must be real then. I couldn’t have made that up even
in my nightmares.”

Was that a denial or confession? “Henri’s a bastard,” I said
quietly. “I don’t care what he said.”

“Don’t you? I sure as hell do. The whole time we’ve been
talking, that’s all I can think of. Why haven’t you asked?”

Tears sprang to my eyes, warm and plump. “If you wanted me
to know something, you’d tell me.” No matter how I tried to placate him, it
only seemed to make him more agitated. More accusatory.

“Ah, so you do believe him.”

“Tell me what you want me to say,” I whispered. “Just tell
me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Right,” he said with a cruel twist, “because you’re whoever
I want you to be, you’ll do whatever I say. God forbid you ask me a goddamn
question. God forbid you care.”

“Why?” I asked thickly. “Would it matter if I did? Would you
actually want to be with me then, or would you keep pushing me away?”

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you. You keep everyone at a
distance. Do you know how hard I had to work to get close to you? It’s a
struggle to get any information from you, even the goddamn time of day.”

“What is there to know? You want me to spell it out for you?
Home life wasn’t so great. Daddy didn’t like me too much, except when he did,
if you know what I mean. But I showed him. I got out of there, and here’s some
good news. The only skill I had was worth a hell of a lot of money per hour.
All I had to sell was my fucking soul, so I guess everything is just peachy.
But you already knew that, didn’t you? I’m a walking cliché. So tell me what
secrets I’ve been keeping.”

“Shelly.” His voice cracked, and I hoped it was over. I
prayed that he’d gotten whatever anger he had out of his system, that he
realized I wouldn’t judge him. I would, a little, but only as much as I judged
myself, as anyone. How could you do that, just let them touch and use and hurt
you like that? I had to; he had to. A million other jobs in the world, and
somehow it had seemed like the only one.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” I whispered. I put my hand
on his, and he jerked away.

“Don’t touch me.” It was a snarl, an animal sound carved
into words.

I pulled back, frightened. Not of Luke but of the hurt
inside him.

“I don’t…I don’t think of you any differently.” It was a
lie, and we both knew it.

Dirt scuffed into the air as he pushed off the wall. “Of
course. I’m still the noble one, the guy with the best intentions. That’s why
you let me close, isn’t it?” His voice lowered. “That’s why you fell in love
with me, isn’t that right? Because I was just the opposite of you, so much
better than you.”

His words rang with truth. I shook my head. “It was you.
Only you.”

“Stop telling me what you think I want to hear. Just for
once, say something that’s you. Not a trick, just the honest-to-God truth.”

I whirled on him. “Fine. You want to know the truth? I hate
it. I hate that I had to hear it from him instead of you. I hate that you had
to go through that. I hate that the worst part of me, the worst things I ever
felt or thought or had happen to me…they happened to you. I hate that because I
love you. Don’t you get that, you big idiot? It kills me that you went through
that. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, but you? It’s heartbreaking.
You’re breaking my heart.”

He stilled. “What did you say?”

“I said you’re a big idiot.”

He grabbed my arms and backed me up against the wall. My
toes pointed to the ground, barely touching. I felt like a doll. Like a child,
though it didn’t feel as bad as it should—just bad enough.

“Don’t push me right now,” he muttered. “I can’t… It’s not…
I’m not myself.”

No, this was finally him, unfettered and cracked open.
Ironic that it had taken a brutal beating and imprisonment to release him. He
was dark and angry, this man. Tortured and terrified that he wouldn’t be able
to control that darkness, that anger. But he didn’t have to, not with me. That
was the gift I could give him. That was how I’d be worthy.

I pushed at him, but he didn’t release me. I didn’t expect
him too; we were too far in. He was too far gone. This was going to happen
rough and hard and with pain so sweet we’d neither of us forget it, with a
pleasure so cruel it would teach us both a lesson; it would leave marks so deep
that I wouldn’t regret it when it was over.

“Just let it out,” I whispered.

“No,” he said. “It’s too much. I know how that feels. I know
what it means and everything about it. You’ve been hurt so much. Abused and
afraid and angry—so much. How could I hurt you more? How could I cause you any
more pain?”

“Don’t you see? I want it all. Your pleasure, your pain.
Anything you can give me, I crave it.”

The last words shattered in my mouth, pressed there by the
force of his body and his rage. He unleashed it on me. His anger, carefully
boxed and hidden, sprang open. The fear, so neatly caged, splintered all around
us. He lashed at me with hands that forced my wrists against the wall, his
mouth that pried mine open and stole my breath, the painful ridge against my
stomach as he pushed and threatened and warned me away, but with nowhere to go
and no desire to leave him, I yielded. It hadn’t been a lie; the pain he
delivered was sweeter than the gentlest caress of a hundred-dollar bill. It was
honest, and it was him.

I hadn’t lied about that either: I loved him. I had dressed
it up with excuses, with reasons that made it okay to break the cardinal rule.
He was unattainable, like Allie had said. He was unlike me in every way, but
when those drapes were pulled away, they revealed a blinding white-hot wound.
There wasn’t any reason to compel it, any logic to explain it, and that’s how I
knew it was love.

Copper touched my tongue—my blood, his. An anguished sound
disturbed the air around us—my pain, his pleasure. But no one would play the
martyr tonight. Neither of us would pretend we didn’t want this, not anymore.

He shoved me to the floor, and I tumbled there, a flurry of
dust and limbs, of bruises on my knees and a self-satisfied grunt in my throat.
With fingers digging into my arm, he turned me over. I sank gratefully onto the
concrete, my legs spread, body eager.

Harsh hands pushed the cloth of my panties aside. Two
fingers shoved inside, dry until he added his spit to ease their way.

“Oh God,” I cried. He was more than I’d thought he could
be—worse and so much better.

“Take it,” he muttered. “Just once, just now. Just like
this.”

Did he think I would refuse him? It was bliss, this pain.
Did he think it was too much? It would never be. I wanted him to beat me, to
transfer each blow from his body to mine so that my scars matched his, inside
and out.

“Let me see it,” I begged. The real him, the real me. “Let
me feel it.”

He knew exactly what I meant, and he was far enough gone to
give it to me. His palm landed on my cheek, a slap too light to be cruel, the
force of it turning my face to the floor. I groaned at the sting, at the
relief. “More,” I whispered.

“No. That’s enough.” But the words weren’t meant to protect
me or to soothe me. They were a denial. He wanted me to beg.

“Luke, Luke.” I was helpless for anything more coherent.

“Shelly,” he answered me, mournful. “I never wanted this for
you.”

“Me neither,” I whispered, not knowing whether we were
talking about me or him, but it didn’t matter anyway. We couldn’t change the
past, only live in the present. We couldn’t heal the hurts; only fill the
hollows of memory with the jolt of my hips as he yanked me closer, with the
softening of my body as I let him. His force and my acceptance, they were a
bargain between us, a language we both understood.

The rasp of his zipper met my ears, and then he was pushing,
pulsing, already inside me before I realized we didn’t have a condom. I
clenched around a warm length, rippled against velvety skin, no barriers
between us, but that didn’t matter now, couldn’t matter here in the aftermath
of torture, at the fringes of death. I wanted to be taken over, to be ripped
and torn to shreds by him, and I was. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t do anything
but writhe and moan and coat his cock with the fluid I had denied him before.

Tilting my hips, I let him in deeper. It hurt that way. It
pressed and pushed and stabbed that way, but it was the perfect counterpoint to
the pleasure I felt spreading like a fever over my body. I was going to come;
it had already started, like the first gentle curve on the horizon. It grew
closer to the shore, gathering strength until it was a wave crashing over me and
I gasped for breath at the surface. He never stopped, never slowed his thrusts.

I fought for air, for acknowledgment, pounding on his chest
with my fists. He grunted in pain but didn’t relent. He trapped my arms,
holding his weight on the soft inner flesh. It was agony, and my body wrenched
in response, but none of it could compare to the pain he must have felt. With
those bruises, those injuries, even holding himself up would be torture; even
moving inside me, against me would be pain. We rocked in it, reveled in it like
hedonists who had just discovered that pain spilled over became pleasure.

My hips rode the air, reaching up for his. He slammed me
back down on each thrust, an ache reverberating through my limbs.

I couldn’t find an end or a beginning. “Help me.”

“Stop?”

“More, more.”

He released my arms and reared back. He wrapped both his
hands around my neck, not squeezing or pressing. Just holding me there by my
most vulnerable place. It felt like worship.

With the slightest constriction, I felt the flesh of his
palm as I breathed, as I swallowed. Like a dam torn apart, tears ran down my
cheeks. Heartbroken. My heart was breaking for him.

He didn’t want my pity. I gave him something else,
everything else. I sobbed out a release, his every entry brought a new surge of
heat, relaxing as the last of the pleasure lapped at my heels. When I had
finished, he covered me with his body, filling me until it was too much before
letting me breathe once again. Each thrust was marked by a small expulsion of
air.
Ah, ah, ah
. And it drew out,
melting together into a masculine sound, the horizon between power and
helplessness.

He collapsed on top of me, a slippery weight of sweat and
sex and probably blood from one of us, maybe both. It was the cleanest I had
ever felt, not marred by shame or misuse. The oils of his body were like a
baptism, washing away my sins and leaving me reborn. He panted there, shudders
gripping his body as he caught his breath. His stillness worried me.
Don’t let him regret this. Don’t let him
withdraw.