Last Second Chance (29 page)

“Van.”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Next question.”

He ran the tip of his nose between her breasts and down her sternum, tugging her until she stood before him. Completely naked with the exception of stilettos and panties tied around her wrist. His ultimate fantasy come to life. He was pretty sure they could discuss starving orphans in Uganda and his dick still would’ve remained at full attention. He dipped his tongue into her belly button and began suctioning his mouth against her skin lower and lower.

“The tattoo on your back. I know it isn’t just ink. What made you get it?”

Every muscle in his body tensed. He stilled, remaining hard, but his lust-fueled focus waned. Anger rippled just beneath the surface. The air around them thickened, becoming instantly suffocating. He looked up to find her eyes searching his, knowing she’d felt the shift.

Gripping her ass hard, he leaned forward and sank his teeth into her hip. She whimpered but stayed put, seemingly understanding that he needed this. Needed some outlet for the pain before it consumed him and he started breaking things.

Grazing his teeth across to the other side, he gave her another firm bite to match on the opposite hip. She didn’t even whimper this time.

“If I answer this question, delve into something I never discuss, I am going to do unspeakable things to your body afterward.”

Stella only nodded and lowered herself back into his lap.

“Sure you want to play this game, cowgirl?”

Her eyes met his with a desperate yes in them.

The memories, dark demons with the fury of ten hells, tore at his flesh, teeth gnashing and clawing at his throat. His eyes closed involuntarily. He wanted to get high. Fuck this woman on his lap until she screamed for mercy. Then fuck her some more. Destroy the world around him. Burn it to the goddamn ground.

Until an angel kissed him, lightly on the throat. The demons backed down a fraction of an inch, a feat only narcotics had been able to accomplish in the past. She kissed him again. Her warm, wet mouth somehow soothed his tortured mind until he could give her what she wanted.

“Our mother was an addict.” He sucked in a breath as she dragged her mouth across his chest. “Like me, I guess. But she went at it harder. It was a lifestyle for her, not recreation.”

He kept his eyes closed as she nuzzled against his neck. He focused on the vanilla wildflower scent instead of the rotten egg and ammonia fumes from his childhood.

“Some of the...
people
she associated with weren’t exactly kid friendly if you know what I mean.”

He felt the flinch of her body against his. He hated inflicting this on her. No matter how good it felt to let some of it go.

“I was lucky. Most of them paid about as much attention to me as they might have an unwanted pet. I was a nuisance that got kicked on occasion and shoved into closets now and then.”

This time it was a sob, she was trying not to let it go, but he felt it. He swallowed hard and opened his eyes. Tears streamed down hers.

“Stella.”

“Keep going. I want to hear it, Van. I need to…know you. I want to understand.”

He nodded. “Val, my sister, wasn’t as lucky. She was beautiful, even as a kid. Sometimes she got locked in the closet with me.” He almost smiled at the memory. “She’d try to comfort me, make it a game. Pretend we were camping or some shit. Pull out a flashlight and make up stories.”

His fists clenched before he realized he still had her hips in his hands. Pain had her blinking rapidly, but she took it without complaint.

“Other times, she didn’t get put in the closet. She got…” Her cries for help swirled in his mind. The image of her body huddled in a corner flashed behind his eyes.

“I tried,” he choked out. “I tried to save her. I was young. And weak. I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t.”

He tried to stand, to throw her off his lap so he could get out of there, get the fuck away from this place, and get high. He hoped Drake was still somewhere nearby. Then Stella’s mouth descended on his. She kissed him so hard he tasted blood. She was giving him everything she had and he took it, knowing he shouldn’t.

“It wasn’t your fault, Van. You were a kid yourself.” She licked his neck, kissing it tenderly before sucking hard enough to leave a mark.

He shook his head. She didn’t understand. No one really could. Unless they’d lived it. Listened to their sister get violated and beaten nearly to death while they were locked inside a closet and unable to help her. Watched her turn from a comforting angel to a frightened cornered creature incapable of withstanding human touch.

“Our mom overdosed when I was nine. We got taken away. I was put in a boys’ home. There was this Christian do-gooder couple that used to come play music for us. I learned how to play guitar and traveled with them some.”

“And Val?” Stella asked quietly.

“I couldn’t find her. She’d run away from the foster home she’d been put in. I searched. God I searched high and damn low.” He’d found Vanessa instead, a waitress who had worked with her. But that part of the story had pretty much been told already.

Stella ran her face along his. He almost smiled. With both of their emotions raw and so close to the surface, he could practically read her mind. She wanted to hold his face in her hands, but she couldn’t. He still had her tied. Just as his words were binding her, so were her red lace panties.

He remembered thinking that this place was hell when he’d first met her. That she’d been sent here to torture him. But now he knew better.

This was hell and he was the devil. She was the fallen angel he’d eventually destroy. He couldn’t even stop himself.

It was time for this to end. He switched off his emotions and summed up a story he never should’ve begun.

“I found her a few years later. I was too late though. She was dead. She’s the angel in my tattoo. Stand up, cowgirl.”

Her legs trembled atop his. He stood, letting her stumble backward. Her breasts bounced, reminding him what she’d come to him for. Certainly not to hear his fucking sob story.

“If you’re smart, you’ll run while you still can.” His warning was valid. He was losing his grip on humanity. On the line between morally acceptable and hideously reprehensible.

She remained rooted where she stood.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Time to pay the price for that pound of flesh. Bend over the bed, cowgirl.”

She did as he’d said, and the view was enough to ground him momentarily. The heels presented her to him perfectly—her ass peach perfect and on display. Those delicate wrists bound in red sent his heart hammering pure adrenaline through his veins. He exhaled loudly.

“No safe word, remember? I’m invoking that rule now. It’s your fucking problem if you can’t walk out of here upright.”

“Take what you need, Van. I can handle it.”

Fucking hell.

He raked his fingers hard down her arms. “I get tested regularly since I haven’t typically been too discriminatory when it came to blowjobs. And I was tested again when I checked in. I’m clean.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “Me too.”

He chuckled lightly. He wouldn’t have thought for a second that the woman who probably only had the kind of sex that involved multiple contraceptives and the missionary position wasn’t clean.

“I’ll pull out though.”

“I’m on the pill.”

Bonus. “Well, then brace yourself, beautiful.”

Her stance widened slightly and he slid his heavy cock between her ass cheeks.

“What if I fucked you hard in the ass right now? How mad would you be? Scale of one to ten?”

She breathed loudly. “I’m supposed to be the one giving the survey,
Mr. Ransom.
”

He pressed against that tight opening and it flexed against him. She whimpered, and he moved north to her already wet opening.

“Fortunately for you, I don’t have the patience necessary to prepare you. But soon, cowgirl.”

His full length shoving inside of her pushed a sound from her throat. He needed that sound again and again. So he withdrew and plunged inside her clenching walls as hard as he was physically capable of until she was panting beneath him. She was so damn tight he struggled for breath right along with her.

Feeling himself reach the threshold of his orgasm, he pulled out and took a few deep breaths.

Suddenly she stood and turned to face him. Pissed-off green eyes met his amused ones.

“Help you with something, cowgirl?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Un-fucking-tie me.”

He shook his head. “I’m disappointed, Stella Jo. I thought we agreed. No stopping.”

“Oh, we’re not stopping. But if you’re going to hate-fuck me to death, you will damn well let me watch as you do it.”

He smirked. “As you wish.” He untied her wrists and watched her fight the urge to rub them. “Take the pain, Stella. It’s a feeling. Feel it. It will make the pleasure that much better.”

She propped herself against the foot of the bed and dropped her legs open slowly. “All this big talk of yours. I’m still waiting for the pain.”

Every curse and cry of joy he knew flitted across his mind.

“Get on the bed. All the way,” he growled. “Let’s see how far you can get those perfect fucking legs over your head.”

V
an came to in a dark room. He blinked until his eyes adjusted. He was alone in his bed. Panic seized his chest.

He’d told her. Shown her who he really was and what he was capable of. Pulled back his flesh and exposed the garish, gaping wounds in his soul.

Sitting up, he looked around, listening closely for any sign she might still be with him. There was only silence.

He swallowed the thickening knot forming in his throat. He’d fucked her more ways than should’ve been humanly possible. He was pretty sure he’d blacked out during. Exhausted himself right into a loss of consciousness. She was probably never going to even look at him again other than with disgust.

Stretching sore muscles, he stood and switched on the bedroom lamp.

Bright red lipstick decorated his vanity mirror. He moved closer to read what she’d written.

I walked out of here just fine. Guess you’ll have to try harder next time.

Something foreign swelled in his chest.

Next time couldn’t come soon enough.

S
tella sat in a hot bath, the heat simultaneously stinging and soothing her ravished skin. The pain was strangely satisfying. The burning ache she felt between her legs as well as on her wrists, ankles, and back was like nothing she’d ever experienced.

She’d lost her virginity to Nash. It had been quick and mostly painless. Maybe some discomfort, like a gynecological exam, but that’d been about it. She’d stared at herself in a mirror afterward, expecting to feel different. To feel
something.
Anything.

But nothing had changed. She hadn’t changed. She’d felt defective. It was such a monumental event—so she’d been told.

This experience had been totally different. Her shoulders seemed to remain taut, as if her spine had been tightened and screwed into place. Even her teeth-mark-marred breasts were proudly thrusting themselves forward.

She was changed all right. Finger-shaped bruises dotted her upper arms and lower back. Passion marks colored her neck and inner thighs. Merely glimpsing the bite marks on her hips turned her on so hard a breeze could’ve blown between her legs and sent her into the relentless spiral of a heaving orgasm.

She had been fucked. Possibly for the first time in her life. It felt like being switched on. From autopilot to manual.

She groaned as she stood in the tub and reached for a towel. Van Ransom had marked and claimed her. He owned her—mind, body, and soul.

And even more importantly, at some point while he’d been pounding the hell out of her, tearing orgasm after orgasm from her core, she’d been permanently altered. She’d been what he needed, been strong enough to give him everything. His gratitude had come in the form of whispered confessions and professions as he roared to a release and came inside her.

You’re so fucking perfect
, he’d said more times than she could count.
Stay with me, baby. Please. I need you. God, you’re so damn perfect.