The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan (15 page)

She reached deeper trying to recreate the sensati
on she had experienced when he touched her but quickly returned her fingers to her clit. To touch herself near her opening seemed taboo. Her thoughts centered on the memory of how it felt when he fondled her. Did it make sense for her to be torn between wanting him to do it again and wanting to run away?

Living in such tight quarters, Nyxie was queen of the silent orgasm, but when her mouth opened for the soundless moan to escape, she tilted her head back and bumped the door. She froze for a few seconds, then slowly began the build-up again. Her heels lifted off the ground.

Suddenly, the doorknob rattled. “Goddammit, Nyxie. You better not be doing what I think you’re doing. Open this door.”

“Fuck,” she said under her breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She reached over and flushed the commode then flipped on the water and began washing her hands.

“Open the door or I’m going to break it down.”

With wet hands, she reached over and turned the kno
b, releasing the lock. She stepped to the side as the door swung open, knowing in the confined space, it would hit her if she didn’t get out of the way, even as she continued to casually wash her hands.

She kept her eyes on her task, a small smile on her face.

Declan stepped in, towering over her and inhaled deeply. His eyes met hers in the mirror and narrowed at her. Her slight smile irritated him to no end.

“Did you come?” he demanded.

She shut off the water and turned, pressing her lower back to the sink. Her hips rotated forward and she slowly stretched her hand toward the apex of her legs. Her grin lifted on one side as she stared boldly at him. “Not yet.”

“At least you’re not lying to me about it,” he said clamping his hand around her wrist before her fingers reached the hidden folds again. He pulled her out of the bathroom. “Get dressed.”

Nyxie found a clean pair of underwear in one of the bags she’d already packed and stepped into them. She was thankful she bought new ones recently since the old ones were threadbare. She pulled on the low-rise jeans and squatted down with her back to him so he could see if his handprints showed. “Which shirt?”

“The tank.”

Stretchy by nature, the ribbed tank clung to her every curve and bump. The way the ribs widened across her chest gave the illusion she had larger breasts than she really possessed. She looked sexy with her flat stomach exposed in the two inch gap between the shirt and the low-rise jeans.

“You’re definitely not a twelve-year-old. You look hot like that. Any chance you own a pair of four-inch spiked heels?”

“Not appropriate,
sir
. My brother’s fighting for his life and you want me to slut-it-up. It would look like I’m more interested in my new
relationship
than I am about Cody.”

Declan nodded, a boyish smile of embarrassment flashing across his face. “You’re right, Onyx. And you’re allowed to call me out on things like that if you do it respectfully.”

Nyxie froze when she saw his smile. There was something in the expression that made him seem more approachable, less formidable. Or maybe she just felt less nervous because she was dressed again.

He reached out and took her hand and led her to the bed. “I want to try something. I want us to get into the position we slept in last night.” His shoulders dropped when it looked like she would fight him on it.

“Okay. I usually sleep on the edge.”

“Not today. I want you all the way over by the wall, Nyxie.”

She glanced at him then crawled across the bed and stretched out facing the wall, the air conditioner blowing across her feet. He worked his way over and they resumed the position they had slept in.

“Do you feel safe?”

“I never feel particularly safe between these four walls.”

He hadn’t considered she wouldn’t feel safe in her own home, but how could she when it was a home of unpredictable mayhem and violence and most likely the murder of her mother. He wondered how she could
continue to live there but realized with no transportation, it would be extremely difficult to move.

“Tell me what that was all about earlier.”

Her shoulder lifted slightly. “My way of stress relief works better than yours.”

He tightened his grip on her wrists. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Why were you baiting me? Was that your way of fighting back when your father hit you?”

She exhaled slowly as if she was reluctant to discuss the abuse at her father’s hands. “No, if I talked back to him like that—well, let’s say you showed more restraint than he would have.”

He placed his chin on top of her head. “Tell me, we’re not in a scene right now. Tell me, tell Declan, what’s wrong.”

She stayed quiet, her lungs filling and emptying her only movement.

“Take your time,” he said.

“Let me ask you a question first. What do you want most in this relationship?”

He thought about it for a minute before answering, trying to figure out how much to tell her. He didn’t want to scare her away or lie, but he doubted she was ready to hear how obsessed with her he was in high school. Nor did he want to tell her he had only had short term Dom/sub relationships—mostly when he was on vacation.

“I want a monogamous long-term relationship with someone who can fulfill my sexual needs and desires without making demands on my time. If I don’t call for a week, I don’t want a girlfriend who is texting me every five minutes asking me if I’m mad or if she did something wrong. I’m not looking for a wife and a picket fence either. Considering our relationship is contractual, I see no reason to expect any sort of deep feelings from you.”

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently then she chuckled slightly. “Wow, that was clinical. But that’s not what I
’m referring to. You told me you want trust and control. That’s the problem. One I don’t have to give and the other I don’t want to give.

“My whole childhood,” she continued. “I had no power, no control over anything that happened to me. When I was sixteen and got a job, for the first time in my life, I had some semblance of control. If I paid the water bill, we had water. If I paid the rent, no one threatened to evict us. If I was hungry, I had money to buy food. Now, suddenly, I find my control, my power was an illusion. One careless driver has taken my kids from me. You want to control my job, my home, my food, my clothing and my reproductive
organs. I understand and accept much of it. I would like to get a GED and my driver’s license and I would like to eat enough food so people don’t make rude comments about my weight. I think by fighting you, I was trying to control a situation where I felt powerless.”

“You’ve got to trust me, Nyxie,” he said after a moment’s contemplation. He tightened his vice-like grip and pulled her more firmly against his body. “That’s a huge part of Domination/submission. I don’t expect you to trust me to the nth degree just yet, but before our relationship is over, I would hope you would trust me enough that if I put my hands on your throat, you would know, I wasn’t going to harm you.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“Maybe not—and I’m not going to touch your throat either—I just want you to learn to trust me that much.”

She shook her head. “You might as well be asking me to speak Chinese without lessons. I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

He sighed and kissed the back of her head. “I’m going to teach you. It’s a
Catch-22
. You have to trust me enough to submit and you have to submit to truly learn to trust me.” When she didn’t say anything, he knew she was struggling internally. “You’re going to have to take a leap of faith.”

Suddenly, her phone began to ring inside his pants pocket. He pulled it out and slid his finger across the display and turned on the speaker so he could hear the conversation.

“Hello?” Nyxie said struggling to sit up.

“Nyxie!” the girl’s voice squealed excitedly.

“Lotus, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been so worried. Is Reina with you?”

“She’s standing right here. Wait your turn, Reina, I wanna talk first.”

“Ow! I’m gonna tell,” the second voice yelled.

“Stop it,” Nyxie said firmly. “No fighting.”

Nyxie looked at Declan, a slight blush on her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she wasn’t a good parent.

“Girls,” he said. “Put the phone on speaker so we can talk to both of you.”

“Who’s that?” Lotus asked.

“That’s Dr. Stryker. He’s the one who bought the phones for us. Do you know how to put the phone on speaker?”

“I’m not stupid,” the girl said impatiently.

Declan gave Nyxie a told-you-so look.

“Lotus, that was rude. All you had to say was, ‘Yes, I know how.’”

“Sorry, Aunt Nyxie. Hold on a sec,” Lotus said. “Okay, it’s on speaker. Say hi, Reina.”

“Hi.”

Nyxie smiled widely and her voice had a bit of a sigh when she greeted the younger child, her relief evident. “And what do you say to Dr. Stryker for buying us all such nice phones.”

“Thank you, Dr. Stryker,” the girls said in unison.

“You’re welcome.”

“Dr. Stryker, you’re Cody’s doctor, right?”

“I’m one of them. It took a whole team of doctors to patch him up and early next week, he’s going to have another operation.”

Nyxie looked at him in disbelief. This was the first she’d heard of it.

“We had to remove part of his skull because his brain was swelling. When we did, we took the part we removed and put it in the freezer and when the swelling has gone down, we will put it back.”

“Does that hurt?” Reina asked.

“It may hurt after he wakes up, but for now we’re giving him medicine to make sure he doesn’t wake up.”

“Will it give him brain freeze when you put it back on?” Lotus asked. “I hate brain freeze.”

Declan and Nyxie’s eyes met and he smiled widely. “No, I don’t think it will. If you can keep a secret, I really don’
t know. This was my first craniotomy.”

“Lotus, Reina, tell me about where you’re living. Are you still together?”

“Sort of. We don’t live with a family. We live in a place with lots of other kids. Reina’s in a house for five to eight-year-olds and I’m in the house for nine to twelve-year-olds.”

“I don’t like it there, Aunt Nyxie. They won’t let me sleep with Lotus and the other kids call me a crybaby.”

“Nyxie, she tried to sneak in to our house last night, but she set off an alarm.”

“Reina, don’t do that again. Listen to me, both of you. You have to be good a
nd you have to be polite and call your house parents
ma’am
and
sir
. I guarantee they are watching your behavior and it reflects on how well I’ve been raising you. Promise me.”

“We promise, Aunt Nyxie.”

One of the girls suddenly gasped. A faint voice could be heard in the distance. “Where did y’all get that phone?” a woman said.

Declan used his most authoritative voice when he answered for the girls. “I’m Dr. Declan Stryker. These girls are suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. We want Lotus and Reina to have twenty-four-hour access to the counseling they need. These are what are being called ‘therapy phones’,” he said with a wink to Nyxie. “If you don’t mind, we aren’t finished with our session. I’m here with their Aunt Nyxie for their family counseling session. Girls, I want you to tell me what you remember about Cody’s accident. Were you both there? Did you both see what happened?”

“Yes, sir, Dr. Stryker.”

Nyxie waved her hands back and forth, furiously shaking h
er head and mouthing the word, “No.”

“Lotus, Nyxie doesn’t think you want to talk about it
. Do you feel like telling us what happened?”

“It’s okay,
Aunt Nyxie.”

Declan grabbed his phone and turned on the digital voice recorder as Lotus began to speak.

“Tell me what Cody was doing before the accident.”

“He was poppin’ curbs.”

His eyebrows lowered making little lines appear between his eyes. “What do you mean?” Declan asked.

Nyxie touched his arm. “He uses the part of the driveway where it slopes sharply at the curb as little ramp to jump,” she explained.

“Oh, okay, I get it. Was he riding from across the street so he could get up his speed?”

“Nuh uh
. He came out of the driveway next door and was almost to Levi’s driveway when that truck came tearin’ around the corner. He was going so fast, he went over to the wrong side of the road and hit Cody.”

“I don’t think he could steer very good with just one hand,” Reina said.

“The kid only had one hand?” He looked at the phone wondering if an eight and ten-year-old were reliable witnesses.

“No, silly. He had two hands. How else could he talk on his phone and drive?”

“Reina, are you sure?”

“Yeah,” came the small girl’s voice.