Trust in Me (14 page)

Sure enough, when I poked at the front door, it creaked open. Dust swam through the air, little bugs illuminated by the bright sunlight—a hypochondriac’s nightmare. I stepped inside.

The same red and green plaid couch slouched in the living room. The same knotty oak table sat in the small dining alcove. The same yellowed refrigerator leaned against the wall in the kitchen, absent of the rattle that indicated it was working.

I walked through the rooms with my hands tightly clasped, the way someone might view the wreckage of some disaster, curious but detached. Neither the furniture nor the years of dust held the answers to my childhood, not any more than the ancient oak trees could explain the wars or the greed of men. I hadn’t come for the inside.

At the screen door, I looked out at the small, unkempt lawn. At that patch of dirt where an eighteen year-old-boy had once stood, making a request for mercy on behalf of a girl who couldn’t speak for herself. That had been over ten years ago, ten years for guilt and frustration and anger to fester. Ten years to silently, privately rage against a monster in plain sight. A man who’d died seven years ago of a heart attack, according to the city records I’d found.

I was grateful that the tire still seemed so big. I crawled inside, not fitting as well as I had before, but still able to squish all my limbs inside. I understood the women who preferred the crushed enclosure of the hold to the freedom and the ocean spray. The world will toss you like the waves, heedless of your pain or your pleasure. Curled into the rubber tire, my whole world narrowed to the distant circle of sky.

No one ever looked for me here. No one ever cared to, except for one man.

I didn’t sleep in that tire. I drifted away to the safe place where nothing could touch me.

Footsteps crunched the brittle weeds and world-worn pebbles, coming closer. I waited with bated breath. My sun was eclipsed by a dark head, shadowed so that I couldn’t see who it was. I knew, though. I just knew.

“Hey, little girl.”

I swallowed against the thickness. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”

I allowed him to pull me out of the hole, and we sat side-by-side on the tire. Both of us were bigger physically. Both of us were stronger mentally. I’d read once about how swords were made in ancient times. They folded the metal over, each time melting it and reforming it into a new, stronger blade. That was me, and though he didn’t see it that way, it was Tyler.

He crouched down before me, trailed a soft caress through my hair.“Tell me what you want.” His eyes softened, as if he already knew.

I shook my head, unseeing. If only it were that simple.

“You thought you could sneak out of the hospital and be done with me?” His finger on my chin turned my gaze to his. “You’re mine.”

I braved a laugh. “Just because Carlos said so. Because he
gave
me to you.”

Tyler regarded me solemnly. “You were always mine. We were both just too young to do anything about it.”

“I’m a whore,” I choked out.

His grip tightened around the back of my neck. “No, Mia. You never were. Never.”

This time my laugh was real and watery.

He shook his head in the face of my disbelief. “I failed you back then. I didn’t know what I had. Didn’t know how to protect you. Never again.”

He sounded so sure. “What if I don’t want you?”

“Don’t you?” he asked, indulgent. “Then tell me what you want.”

You.
I wanted things I’d never have. It was cruel of him to tease me this way.

“You’re wrong. I am a whore.” I had no money, nothing but my body to trade for food. I was back to where I’d been ten years ago in every sense of the phrase.
Tell me what you want,
he’d said. “I want money.”

He shrugged, unsurprised. “No problem.”

I scrutinized him, trying to figure out what was up. “In exchange for my body.”

An easy nod. “Fine.”

Dammit, I couldn’t read him. What was he playing at? He didn’t really want a whore, not in his regular life. That had been the worst of it. If he’d really been like Carlos or like Leo, he could have kept me. He would have kept me locked away. Only when I found out that he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, did I realize that was what I wanted. A regular guy, an honorable one, had no business with me.

“Let’s go,” he said. “You didn’t keep Carlos waiting, did you?”

I frowned, almost positive he was teasing. A light flickered in his brown eyes, warming them, but his lips were flat, deadpan. “I’m serious. We have a deal.”

“Are you sure? You haven’t even set a price yet.” He grinned. “I don’t think you’re very good at this.”

I flushed, the bastard. Definitely teasing.

Even worse, he was right. I knew nothing about the business of whoring. I’d made a few deals on the streets before Carlos, mostly for food. I’d met a few who serviced Carlos’s men, but they didn’t stay long enough to get close. And Carlos himself hadn’t played much with other women when I had been there, maybe never. How had I never realized that before, how odd it was for a man like him? Faithfulness.

I had no idea how much a whore should charge. I thought back to that movie, Pretty Woman. Didn’t she charge $700 for the week? That had included room and board. But that was a long time ago. There was inflation to consider. Or did whores not count for inflation? Damn him for making this difficult.

“A thousand dollars a week,” I finally said.

He didn’t laugh but considered it. “So that’s—what? About fifty thousand a year? Done.”

I blinked. Had he just hired me…full time?

He had me by the hand and was pulling me toward the dark car parked out front, then he stopped and cocked his head toward the house. “Was there anything you wanted from here?”

I looked back at it, peeling paint, sagging porch, broken windows and all. “No.”

His hand tightened, and I looked over. “I own it.”

I sucked in a breath. “Why?”

He shrugged, looking vaguely guilty. “When your dad died, it went up for auction. You were long gone by then, but I guess I thought you might come back someday…or maybe I just didn’t want anyone else to live there.”

His words flooded me with warmth. It was a fucked-up bond we shared, twisted and gnarled like the arteries gripping a heart, but it was real. He knew me.

“I don’t want anyone else to live there either. I want—” It was still hard to do this, to say what I wanted. I swallowed years of training. “I want it to be torn down.”

His eyes shone with something I could have sworn was pride. “Consider it done.”

“Thank you.” The emotions spilled over, threatening to drown out the sense of peace that had embraced me ever since I’d walked out of the hospital a free woman.

Maybe he knew how much this meant to me, how close I was to the edge, because he added, “But I’m taking it out of your wages.”

A smile tugged at my lips, but I hid it with my hand. He really was a bastard.

He took me by surprise, pulling my hand away and pressing a kiss to my lips. Just as quickly, he straightened. His eyes smiled, even if he didn’t.

“Come on,” he said. “We have a busy day.”

Then he proceeded to make good on his threat by taking me to store after store. I’d never shopped much at all, not with my dad, certainly. And Carlos had usually bought my clothes for me, ordering what he wanted me to wear. Dressing me like a doll. Tyler was the same way, insisting I buy clothes and lots of them. Except I had to pick out everything. I wanted freedom, but this overwhelmed me. Just when I was sure I’d had enough, Tyler took me to his house.

A little cottage-style home beamed at me from its small lot. I didn’t belong here.

I flashed guilty glances at the rows of oak trees as we went up the sidewalk. I knew Tyler noticed, but thankfully, he didn’t comment.

He ordered pizza, saying he only cooked mac and cheese and I was too worn out to do it. Then he turned on a movie, some romantic comedy rental that I stared at in utter shock and awe. The whole evening left me dazed, like I’d stepped into a fantasy land. Almost like I was a regular person.

I took a long shower. Well, not that long. I’d found one thing I missed from my life with Carlos—God, had it only been a week ago that I’d lived in his compound?—the endless supply of hot water. Even the hospital, where I’d had to stay the past week, had a good supply. In this small house, with only a bachelor to break it in, the water heater tapped out in ten minutes.

It was comforting to find something wrong with this picture, as if it might not be a dream after all. When I came out of the bathroom, Tyler was leaning in the corner, watching me.

I wanted things back on solid ground, so I dropped my towel. I heard his quick inhale, but he didn’t move. He’d watched before at Carlos’s place, so I went to the dresser and brushed out my hair.

I knew he was trying to do some kind of savior shit with all this. Like maybe I’d go to sleep a whore and wake up tomorrow a normal woman. The mirror reflected my naked body, with pink scars and yellowish bruises blooming across my skin. I looked like an unfinished art project, painted with fists. The abuse was etched into my skin, branding me forever as a whore. It was better that he see this, that he not forget.

When I’d pulled the brush through the wet strands enough times, I put down the brush, watching the man approach me through the mirror. His eyes were on mine, but of course he could see me in all my lack of glory. That probably explained the lust in his eyes. If he’d thought I was that little girl back at the house, I’d reminded him what I was now.

He didn’t disappoint. With his hands on my hips and his mouth on my neck, he pulled me flush against him. And just to dispel any doubt, a hard bulge pressed into my lower back. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back, knowing his body would be there to catch me.

“I thought you might hold off,” I murmured.

His breath blew hot against my skin, damp from his tongue. “Hold off why?”

“You know.” I wiggled my backside against his erection, earning a groan for my trouble. “Trying to be honorable or something.”

He nipped my earlobe. “I’m not honorable.”

My eyes opened and met his in the mirror. “I think you are.”

His brown eyes flashed, light reflecting his denial. “Like you think you’re a whore?”

“You’re going to pay me, aren’t you? And you’re going to fuck me, won’t you?”

His cock prodded me intimately. “I’ll give you my money.” He plunged inside, I gasped. “I’ll give you everything I have.” And again, deeper. “Everything I am.” His lips touched my ear as he whispered, “And yes, I’m going to fuck you. All the time.”

Then he was pulling out and thrusting back inside, filling me and turning me inside out. I held onto the dresser, fingers gripping tight like at the edge of a cliff, but it was too late, I was already falling. I’d fallen for him years ago.

 He straightened his body, angling his cock higher on every thrust. Pleasure built, spiraling higher. The dresser melted away and my shame faded to nothing. There were only his labored breaths against my nape and his cock inside me. I crashed into my orgasm with violent shudders and an ache where my cold heart used to be.

He deepened his thrusts, working my body for his own release. I watched his face in the mirror, fierce with intention and slack with arousal. I knew when he came, not just from the fingers tight on my hips, grinding me down, or the hot pulse inside me, but from the glimpse of ecstasy on his face.

We stumbled together to the bed, collapsing in a sated heap of cotton sheets and cooling sweat. My eyes were closed, but I could feel him, unmoving. His hand found mine, and I latched onto him.

“There’s a different name for that, Mia. When a man gives a woman everything he has. When a man fucks a woman. All the time.”

My breath caught. “Marriage?”

“You’re a greedy little one,” he said on a laugh. “I was going to say love.”

I jabbed him in the side. “And you’re a sap.”

He pushed up onto his elbow. “So marry me.”

I hid my wide smile in his chest, trying to contain the elation that threatened to burst me into tears.

“Don’t tease me,” he warned. “Tell me your answer.”

I did him one better. I showed him.

If you haven
’
t yet read the first in the Erotic Nonconsent series:

When Rachel is abducted by a group of thugs, one man steps in. Zachary wants her for himself, and she has no choice but to trust this stranger to keep her safe. When danger strikes again, Rachel’s body may endure the pain, but will their tenuous bond survive the abuse?

WARNING:
This book contains explicit scenes of dubious consent, graphic violence and sex. Also depicts abuse and captivity situations. Not appropriate for anyone uncomfortable with these situations or anyone under the age of eighteen. This is a work of fiction.

Skye Warren

http://www.skyewarren.com

ISBN: 9781620500644

TRUST IN ME

Copyright
©
2012 by Skye Warren

All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or use of this work in any part is forbidden without the express written permission of the author. Contact the author at [email protected].

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The author does not condone sexual acts without consent on any person.

For questions and comments contact the author at [email protected].