Unattainable (18 page)

He stared at her hand, unblinking,
unmoving, until eventually the hand holding the gun to his jaw
slowly lowered.

“
Don’t touch me,” he said,
his voice strained.

Ellie immediately retracted her hand
and placed it in her lap. Dirty turned away from her, but not
before she saw the tears that had slipped from his eyes, joining
and blending with the rivulets of blood still streaming down his
cheeks. Her eyes traveled from his face to his bare chest where she
couldn’t help but stare, horrified by what she found. And then
lower, to his groin and his thighs and, oh my God, he was covered,
literally covered in scars.

He’d been burned repeatedly. There were
small circular burns as well as larger rectangular ones scattered
in between long thin slashes, all spaced evenly apart, some running
diagonal, some horizontal, all apparently methodically
administered.

Releasing a deep breath, she let her
head fall back against the wall.

It was so pitiful and yet
rage-inducing. How could anyone hurt an innocent child? How could a
mother hurt
her
child?

She didn’t feel safe by any means, but
as strange as it was, she felt safer with Dirty than she did
knowing that, if she were anywhere else, Daniel could get to
her.

Was that weird?

Maybe. But she was too damn exhausted,
both physically and emotionally, to really give a damn.

• • •

“
You need stitches,” Ellie
said, both looking and sounding irritated.

From his seat on the windowsill, Dirty
turned to glare at her. “I’m fine,” he muttered and took another
drag off his cigarette. He didn’t have a clue why she’d hadn’t
continued her screaming run for safety but had instead come back
inside and taken a seat beside him, had even gone so far as to
offer him comfort.

What the fuck?

He’d been seconds away from raping and
killing her and she’d offered him comfort?

Jesus, God only fucking knew what she’d
heard come out of his mouth during his nightmare. He could only
imagine.

Fuck, he hadn’t had a nightmare in so
fucking long. Years. It was all this shit with Ellie, seeing her
being attacked, her touching him, seeing her naked.

Then watching her cry while she asked
to stay with him. With him? No one needed him. No one had ever
once, not fucking once, needed him for anything. But she’d needed
him.

And then, hearing her laugh, watching
her laugh, knowing that he had made her laugh despite what she was
going through, the fear, the unknown. He, a fucking worthless,
piece-of-shit scumbag, had made her laugh.

He was so incredibly fucked-up. His
thoughts were going a mile a minute, veering off in directions he
wasn’t familiar with, new territory, dark and confusing roads lined
with guilt and a new sort of pain, one he wasn’t handling well, one
he didn’t know what to do with or how to push away or relieve it,
because, fuck, nothing was working.

Fucking the whore hadn’t worked,
jerking off thinking of Ellie hadn’t worked, no, nothing had
worked. He was still thinking about Ellie, about her body, about
her laughter, and he was feeling guilty, guilty about the way he’d
been handling his thoughts, guilty for the way he’d been living his
life because, FUCK, who was he to save a girl from the same fate
he’d handed to too many women to count. WHO THE MOTHERFUCK WAS
HE?

He was nothing. He was shit. He was a
damaged, deranged, sick motherfucker who deserved to be put the
fuck down. He shouldn’t have lived for as long as he had; he didn’t
deserve to share the same earth with people like Ellie, people who
laughed over burnt popcorn even after they’d been stripped of their
dignity.

And at the same time, he hated her for
all of it. For making these fucking emotions surface, slap him in
the face and fuck up everything he’d worked so hard to repress the
best he could.

No, it wasn’t a life he’d recommend to
anyone, but it was how he’d survived this long and now…

After snapping the fuck out of it,
realizing he’d been about to rape her, probably kill her, he knew
he didn’t deserve another second of air. Because if she knew, if
she fucking knew the man she’d tried to comfort, even after what
he’d done to her, that he was no better than the man he’d saved her
from, she’d run away screaming and she wouldn’t come back. She
wouldn’t laugh over burnt popcorn, she wouldn’t care that he had a
giant gash on his forehead, she wouldn’t give two fucks if he lived
or died.

WHY THE FUCK DID HE CARE IF SHE
CARED?

If he had one iota of intelligence, he
would get Ellie the fuck out of his apartment before she fucked him
up even more and he ended up doing something he absolutely did not
want to do to her, because he needed a fucking place to put all the
bullshit she was stirring up inside him.

“
Dirty,” Ellie said. “You
are bleeding all over the place. If you won’t go to the hospital,
at least let me help you stop the bleeding.”

He glanced up from his smoke and found
her standing way too close to him.

“
Back up,” he growled.
“Back the fuck up right now.”

He watched, stunned, as fear
momentarily twisted her features, but was immediately replaced by
determination.

“
Dirty,” she said quietly.
“I just want to help you.”

He nearly choked on his own tongue.
Help him? Now that was motherfucking priceless. No one could help
him. And he was starting to feel like he could no longer help
himself.

“
You need to wash your
face,” she continued. “You’re…um…you need to…clean the area around
the wound.”

“
I’m dirty,” he said
flatly. “You can say it. It ain’t as if I don’t know.”

Her big blue eyes softened. “You’re
dirty,” she said softly. “And you’re hurt, meaning you can get an
infection.”

He stared at her, at her long, tight
black curls, her caramel skin, bruised but still smooth and clear,
her big blue eyes ringed with heavy dark lashes, her full
lips.

She was so different than what he was
used to. She was like his brothers’ old ladies—clean, good women.
Women who should never be left alone with a man like him; a man who
could, who most likely would, hurt them.

He continued to stare at her, and then
suddenly he found himself thinking about fucking her, her thighs
spread wide open, watching himself disappear inside of her,
watching her belly quiver and her breasts bounce with the force of
his movements, and then lastly, looking up into those big blue
eyes.

His stomach rolled and acid shot up
into his throat.

“
Move,” he gritted out,
sliding off the windowsill, forcing Ellie to back up or get run
over by him.

“
Dirty,” she called after
him. “You really need to clean your—”

“
I’m gonna take a fuckin’
shower!” he yelled as he rounded the corner, hurried down the hall,
and all but fell inside the bathroom in his mad dash to escape the
fucking nagging. Is this how women were? He wouldn’t know; he
hadn’t lived with a woman, hadn’t truly been alone with a woman
since he’d been a child.

He needed away from her, away from all
of it, from everything she represented, but most of all he needed
away from those…those goddamn motherfucking eyes of
hers.

Gripping the sides of the sink, Dirty
bent down and, in an attempt not to throw up, tried to slow his
breathing. Once his heart rate had slowed, he lifted his head and
found himself staring back at him. He gingerly touched the wound on
his forehead.

Fuck. She was right. He probably did
need stitches. Fuck it, he’d sew it up himself; he’d done it
before.

But first he was going to have to wash
the dried blood from his face. Actually, since he’d been naked, he
was covered from head to toe in dried blood. He might not be a big
fan of hygiene but that didn’t mean he wanted to walk around
looking like he’d just stepped off the set of a B-rated horror
film.

He glanced over at the shower and then
back at himself. Fuck it, it was just a shower. He took Mexican
showers all the time. Water, some soap, get all the important
areas.

But when he turned on the water and
stepped inside the tub, why did it feel like it was so much more
than just a shower?

“
Get off me,” I said,
breathing hard and pushing without success against Cage’s chest.
Fuck, was he made of concrete? What the hell?

“
No,” he growled and when
I turned away from his kiss, he took a nose dive into the crook of
my neck. Before I could protest further, his tongue shot out and
then suddenly he was licking and sucking and biting and then his
hand was sliding down the side of my body and he was maneuvering
himself slightly off of me and his hand was between my legs and his
fingers were up inside of me and then I was too busy feeling like I
was queen of the fucking universe to care that his sweaty self was
lying heavily on top of me or that my back was having serious
doubts as to whether it could take another pounding on the uneven
wood plank floor. As it was, I was pretty sure my ass had some
pretty serious friction burns, but like every other coherent
thought in my head, it was quickly flying off to never-never land,
never to be heard from again.

Nothing had gone according to plan. At
least, not by my plan.

First, Jase, the dumbass, had puked all
over my mom’s car, then proceeded to pass out, leaving me unable to
get him out of the car and into his house, forcing me to have to
take him to the club instead. The club where, as my luck would have
it, Cage just so happened to be.

And damn if that man didn’t look as
good as a double bacon cheeseburger, after a week spent camping
with my vegan friends.

Fuck my life.

Fuck it up, down, left, and right, fuck
it straight to heaven and back down to hell, and then fuck it up
the damn ass with Satan’s red-hot spiked tail.

The asshole was playing me. For some
reason, maybe he wasn’t getting enough pussy lately, Cage had
decided he liked fucking me so much since last night that he’d done
everything in his power to get me back to his house just so he
could fuck me some more.

Not that I was complaining, at least
not at the moment. Earlier though, once I realized why he’d
demanded on driving the car, that he had absolutely no intention of
taking me back to my mother’s place, I complained quite a
bit.

And once I realized that he’d taken me
from the club back to his house, I complained even more. Yelled and
screamed too. Called him all sorts of colorful names. I may have
even tried to punch him a few times. But all of that had come
quickly to an end when he dragged me, kicking and screaming, from
the car and forcefully took me inside his house.

The next thing I knew, we were naked.
At least we used a condom this time. Thank fuck.

Oh God. Oh my God. That
felt so damn good.

Everything he did—kissing me, touching
me, fucking me hard or slow—it didn’t matter. It all felt so
perfect.

But now, even as I was grinding myself
against his hand, fucking his fingers as fast as my spent body
could manage, I was back to yelling and screaming.

Only this time, only I could hear
it.

I was silently screaming, berating, and
hating myself for being so incredibly weak. All those years spent
avoiding Cage, all those years spent avoiding my feelings, all
those goddamn motherfucking years.

And here I was again. Being played like
a fucking puppet.

It was if I’d never left Montana, never
made a life for myself somewhere so far removed from the life. Like
no time had passed since I was a sixteen-year-old loser staring up
at Cage, thinking he was my whole fucking world, telling him I
loved him while he stared at me and said, “It ain’t like that for
me, baby.”

No. No. No. Goddamn, no!

How did this happen? How had one
weekend turned my entire life inside out?

“
No,” I whispered, pushing
at the side of Cage’s head, trying to dislodge him from my
neck.

“
Will you shut the fuck
up?” he said, lifting his head. “For two motherfuckin’
seconds?”

“
Get off me,” I demanded,
pushing at his hard stomach.

“
Teg—”

“
Off,” I repeated tightly,
clenching my jaw, trying desperately to build that wall back up.
“You’re even dumber than I thought if you think I’m going to keep
letting you treat me like a fucking club whore.”

Cage’s confusion evaporated, turned
instantly back to anger. His features pulled tight with irritation,
his nostrils flaring.

“
Fuck you, Tegen,” he
growled. “You were right there with me, babe. You’re lyin’ to
yourself if you’re thinkin’ you’re not wantin’ more.”

I glared at him. Sex. Sex, sex, sex.
That’s all he was about; all he’d ever be about.

“
No, I was not!” I
snapped. “Now, get the FUCK off me!”