Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Through the steam and spray of water, I can see what I’m doing. From outside my body, I watch my hand move, throttling my erection, beating it in a ferocious, mindless frenzy that I can’t stop.
It’s not pleasure. Yes, it is.
It’s not punishment. Yes, it is.
On my knees, I press my forehead to the cold tile, my throat raw from sobbing. Every choking, ruthless stroke of my hand feels like self-harm. Self-destruction.
It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself I’m not built for it, that I don’t want a man ramming into my ass, that I don’t want to fuck his stepsister while she swallows his cock, my body’s a liar. My head’s full of sick, dark cravings. Every second I’m awake, it hums under my skin, a low-level current, always circling, never shutting off.
“Disgusting,” I rasp, the word drowning in a broken cry. “You’re just like him. Spawn of the devil.”
My lungs thrash, gulping at nothing but the sour reek of my own panic. Every drag of air scrapes my throat bloody.
I yank harder on my miserable cock, nails biting into skin, trying to rip the thing off me. Doesn’t work. Never works. My body folds, buckling forward, forehead kissing the shower floor as more memories slide in.
Denver’s hunger-soaked grunts fall across my face as he traps me against the mattress, hips slamming into mine, watching me wheeze through the pain he gouges into me. The more I fight for air, the more he groans.
He used to say I looked like a bird when I gasped for breath.
Poor little broken fledgling, heart fluttering, wings clipped, dying in the corner.
My ribs shrink, crushing the oxygen out of me. It’s not me on the shower floor. It’s that weak, pathetic boy, hugging himself, shaking so hard he can’t stop, while Denver breaks him again and again.
I slam my fist faster, clenching and twisting, hoping to release the ghost in ropey streams and shoot it straight down the drain.
My vision spots white, black, then white again. My howls sound like screaming animals in a mating frenzy, fucking themselves bloody, and I can’t jerk my dick hard enough, can’t reach that climax to quiet them.
The worst part? Deep in the pit of my soul-cage, beneath the panic, I hear him. Not Denver.
Jag.
His hand wraps around my throbbing flesh, and his masculine presence curls over my back, panting with me, mocking me every time I moan.
I’m not gasping for air anymore. I’m gasping for release.
Tears burn hot. My whole body convulses, shame and arousal knotted together until I don’t know what’s what. My mind screams to stop, but my body won’t. I come with a sobbing, unsatisfying agony that leaves me hungrier than before.
I hate this flesh. I hate every nerve that remembers Denver’s touch, every cell he rewired, every scar that confuses pain for desire.
My fist tightens and pumps, moving like a piston along raw skin. I’m still hard. Ready to chase the next release.
So I do, shaking, sobbing, rocking under the spray. And a thought whispers, seductive and venomous.
It’d be easier if I just ended it.
No cliff this time.
A knife.
Let the blood swirl down the drain. Quick and clean. Sounds nice.
But what would happen to Dove? Maybe she doesn’t need me, but she already lost her parents. She has no one left in her life.
Except Jag.
I won’t leave her alone with him. I will never do that to her. She has me for as long as she wants me. And for as long as I need her, which happens to be forever.
Lucky her.
The water hisses louder, masking the sound of my broken gasps and stroking fist as I’m sucked back into the hills of shivers and shadows.
Break time.
If I can call standing in the back room picking grease from my nails a break.
The scent of scorched rubber and motor oil sticks to me. I sniff my armpit and sigh. No wonder Wolf prefers Jag over me. Stray animals smell better than I do.
I wipe my hands on a rag that’ll never come clean, pull my phone out of my back pocket, and thumb the screen awake.
Still no texts from Wolf.
His radio silence chews a hole through my ribs. Because I know where he is and who he’s with.
The thought makes me itch. Not just because Jag is a narcissistic, homicidal manwhore. Not just because he can and will hurt Wolf.
It’s more selfish than that.
Jag has taken everything from me, and I can’t stand the idea of him stealing Wolf, wrenching Wolf’s savage protection away, and hoarding all that wild devotion for himself.
I shut my eyes. Squeeze the phone until it creaks. Open them again. Swipe down, and check my notifications.
One new message.
Carol.
Of all people. Carol-fucking-Samuels. My ex’s mother. The woman who never looked at me without pursing her lips like I was a sour sip of boxed wine. Too cheap. Too dirty. Too rough around the edges. Too much of everything unworthy for her perfect little Gavin.