Caged (18 page)

I moaned under him. I squirmed beneath him. My heart galloped alongside his. My breath became his and his mine. And I came alive with the pleasure and agony he promised with every kiss on my lips and every touch on my blistering skin.

He pushed himself into my hand when I snapped open the buttons of his fly and pulled his thick cock free. The smooth, circumcised skin made my breath hitch and I gripped him harder. He groaned, kissing me harder and sliding himself against my palm.

Lowering his mouth from mine, he took my nipple between his teeth and bit down, puncturing the surrounding skin and making me yelp. He flattened his tongue, swiping it over the blood that seeped from the broken skin. His eyes lifted to mine, the darkness staring at me reflected back through my own gaze. In that moment I saw what I had refused to see for so many years. Depravity.

“You want me to fuck you, Kloe?” His voice was raw and breathless, the look in his eyes just as turbulent. “You want me to take you and make you bleed over me?”

I was struggling to breathe, fighting with the crude images racing through my head, and pushing me harder when he saw the question I only asked myself, Anderson forced his hand between my legs and cruelly pinched the swollen flesh. Pleasure burst with the pain and I whimpered.

My mind was exploding with the contradicting thoughts competing against each other. This wasn’t me. This was what I wanted. I couldn’t face the darkness within me. I wanted to free the need that had been buried for so long. I shouldn’t feel this way, not after everything. I wanted to be this way. I wanted to feel alive with pain and euphoric with suffering.

“Choose!” Anderson snapped. “Now!”

My head swam and a sob broke from me.

“I won’t make the choice for you, sweet Kloe. I won’t be the one to force you to see. You have to do that yourself.”

He ran his finger across my cunt, smearing my arousal up to my anus. My eyes fluttered close and my head fell back.

And then I nodded.

Before I could welcome my acceptance, Anderson had spun me around so I was facing the cold, stark white tiles and his finger was inside my backside before I could take a steadying breath. He wasn’t gentle; far from it. He pushed himself in up to his knuckle and started to finger fuck me with a desperation I couldn’t keep up with. Two fingers. Three. And then his cock was stretching my muscles and making me cry out at the burning pain.

His hand fisted my hair and he snapped my neck back. “Accept it. Take it,” he growled before he started to fuck me so hard my eyes rolled back into my head.

The thickness of his cock tore me, making me bleed, but, to my amazement I found that I wanted to coat his cock in my blood. I wanted to give him the very core of me. I craved for his brutality. And I pleaded with him to hurt me.

“Please.” Although that was all I said, Anderson understood.

Tears soaked my cheeks as he mercilessly drove deep and hard, his fingers gripping my hips in a forceful hold that would leave bruises for a long time. His ragged breath in my ear and his animalistic grunts with every thrust had me slamming back to meet him. His balls slapped heavily against my flesh, pushing my orgasm at me with a speed that terrified me.

I chanted his name over and over, my sanity floating somewhere above me as I gave in to the pain and the depravity and received my climax with a torturous scream. My back arched, forcing Anderson deeper inside me, and my muscles wrenched the cum from his balls, the hotness inside my ass making me shudder with ecstasy.

Every fragment of me trembled with overwhelming pleasure, the indulgence thrilling my soul devouring what little energy I had left and leaving me bracing the wall to hold myself up.

Anderson pulled out of me, lifted me against his chest and carried me to the tiny bed in the corner of the room.

I felt his soft kiss press to my temple before the rapture that had sucked my energy pulled me into the depths of the sweetest sleep.

I
DIDN’T SEE
A
NDERSON FOR
another three days. I had a feeling he was punishing me, but what for I had no idea. I had, even if only for a brief few minutes, given in to what he wanted me to consent to – the dark side of me that bubbled in the very pits of my soul.

I had never had sex like that. The passion, the ferocity, the overwhelming pandemonium that he had brought out within me had been simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. After what Brian, my step-father, had done nothing remotely violent should ever stimulate any of my urges. And the fact that I’d kept that part of me hidden for so long gave me many differing internal arguments in the solitude of those few days.

On the third night, however, I woke in the night to find Anderson sitting in the chair, silently watching me. The scent of alcohol was rife and I swallowed when I sensed his sombre mood permeate the air in the small room along with the potent smell of whisky.

“Do you want to leave?” His question came out of the blue and surprised me. The usual gruff, strict pitch to his voice had been replaced with an almost timid quality, and the lack of light gave his silhouette an eerie aspect. Yet I could still sense the power radiating from him, the vice that slithered under his skin fighting for ultimate freedom.

Sitting up, I pulled the sheet around me protectively and drew my knees to my chest. “Can I ask you something?”

I saw the outline of his chin tilt, startled by the fact that I hadn’t answered his question with eagerness, and that I had countered with a question of my own. His breathing was heavy but regular, the soft sound of it rhythmic in the stillness. “Yes.”

Gulping back the nerves I spoke openly and without caution. “The sex you had with Robbie, is that what you like? The violence, the savagery?”

I caught his slight flinch but his head nodded in the darkness. “Yes.”

I nodded in reply. “But.” I bit into my lip, heat flaming my cheeks with my question. “You still came inside me. Without being penetrated, or without the violence?”

I could tell my candidness surprised him and he leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees. I wanted him to switch on the light so I could see his face, watch the sincerity of his answers portrayed in his eyes. I wanted to sink into the deep chasm of those eyes and lose my existence in there. However, I believed we both needed the blackness to hide in.

“Yes, I did. And hard.”

“But how?” I breathed when his answer made my belly flutter excitedly.

“You surprise me with that question, Kloe. You have just said ‘without violence’ yet I fucked you harder than you’ve ever probably been fucked before. My cock was covered in the virginal blood of your arse. My fingers left bruises on your delicate skin.” He leaned back again and crossed his arms over his chest. “You didn’t think our fucking was violent?”

I stilled with his reply. He was right. But I hadn’t seen it that way. I hadn’t remotely felt the violence, only the pleasure that came from his hard taking.

I nodded vaguely, the restriction in my chest with the truth making me wince. “So, tell me if I’m wrong, but the way I see it, you took something that hurt you and turned it into something that pleasures you?”

He drew a deep breath. “Is anything ever that simple? Yes, Hank fucked me as hard as Robbie fucks me. Both him and Mary tore up my skin as much as Robbie does. However, acceptance is a powerful thing. In retrospect, I think that by accepting the same from someone else, but on my terms, I have refused to let them rule the rest of my life. I took the thing they hurt me with and created something good with it.”

I paused, reflecting on his answer. “Have you ever had soft, slow sex? Do you even have experience with loving sex to doubt your statement?”

I give him his due, he contemplated my argument instead of just brushing it off, and his frank answer surprised me. “No.”

My mouth dried and I sighed. “When we first… kissed, in Seven Oaks, you told me you were a virgin. Wasn’t your first time even…” I couldn’t think how to phrase the query so I just blurted out, “Vanilla?”

“Vanilla?” His soft chuckle made me smile and I laughed with him.

“I’ve never been good at expressing what I need to say.”

“It’s fine.” He laughed softly, the entrancing sound making something shift inside my chest. “I know what you’re getting at. My virginity wasn’t that much of a deal to me. I went out, hired a hooker and fucked her. That was it.”

Sadness filled me. Life had been hard for Anderson and yet he took what it threw at him and tried to turn it into something that worked for him. The fighting, the brutal fucking he took and gave, the basement he had made just to make himself feel at home. I wanted so much to take his hand and show him that the world did have some stunning corners, that the light did shine in many areas of life if only you allowed it.

Silence took over for a while as we both reflected on what he had just divulged.

When Anderson leaned forward again I turned my face his way. “And what about your scars, Kloe? Do they still ache?”

I didn’t like that the spotlight had shifted to me but repaying his candour, I nodded. “Yes. They do.”

“But why? It’s over. You’re not that little girl anymore.”

“It doesn’t mean that my soul has healed. My heart still beats the same as it did when I was seven. My nightmares are still the same ones that have plagued me for twenty years.”

He nodded. “Did he rape you?” His question was so blunt that I physically winced.

He patiently waited for me to answer, remaining relaxed but still and giving me comfort. The difference in him since he had first taken me was astounding, but I was becoming used to his split personality.

Remembering what he had said about being honest and him letting me go, I swallowed the nausea that twisted in my stomach and cleared my throat. “No, he didn’t.”

I heard his quiet exhalation.

“But… before he killed my mother he raped her many times and I was made to watch.”

“At such a young age? I’m surprised you knew what was happening.”

“Oh, I knew.”

“And I gather he starved you?”

“Yes, for over two years he held me and my mother in the attic of our house. My mother had to… do things to earn us food.”

The severe pull of air through his clenched teeth whistled and I closed my eyes. “That’s why you make lists. You need to know that there is food available.”

I nodded, the words dying in my throat before they made it out.

He suddenly stood up, making me jump, and turned away from me, walking in the darkness across the room. “Tell me about your mother.”

Sorrow and happiness filled my heart and I smiled. “She was so very beautiful. Flame red hair that curved past her waist. She had the longest eyelashes ever and they would sweep over her cheekbones when she blinked. Her laugh made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, her smile so devastatingly beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. I remember how cuddly she was. Her hugs would take away the pain.” Grief ached my throat and I looked down. “Every morning and every night without fail she would say, ‘I love you, honey cup.”

“Honey cup?”

Tears stung my cheeks, the pain in my heart making my soul sob alongside. “We would make these little biscuits, before she married Brian. They were buttery and crumbly but in the middle was a little dip and Mum would always fill it with honey. Hence, honey cup.”

I quietened for a time but then, stupidly, I asked, “Do you remember your parents?”

Tension poured from him, suffocating me in its potency. It swallowed the air in the room, so caustic that it ate at my breath like acid and I shrank back into the bed when he sharply spun around.

“Get some sleep,” he barked before he took off up the stairs at a velocity that left me swaying.

Closing my eyes, I groaned to myself and curled back into the soft mattress. Why couldn’t I ever stop pushing? Why did I always go too far and ruin things?

I knew solitude would be my punishment yet again, the loneliness that came with it making my head fill with horrors and terrors of my past. I had never allowed myself to think of my mother, it always hurt too much. Yet talking about her with Anderson brought furious dreams and horrifying nightmares to plague me in the next three days.

And on the fourth day, the craziness swept in and took me under.