Page 4 of Ripple Effect, Vol. 2

A memory of him pouring acid over the man’s body zips behind my eyes while a dozen needles dance across my flesh in a wash of panic, as if my head has finally come up to speed and realized how dangerous this man is. My muscles vibrate beneath my skin and he sees it, his eyes tracking the links of the chain that’s attached to my wrists.

His hulking body wedged between my legs diminishes my size by comparison, and one ambitious twist of those thick hands could easily break something. I mentally will myself to stop staring at his washboard abs and the cords of muscles wrapped around his arms, the veins that feed those muscles poking out from his skin, telling me it’d be so easy for him. Fighting me would be nothing more than amusement for this man. His frame is genetics but his muscles are hard earned, evident in the shadows of every crease and ridge. He trains to be a killer and no doubt, his body is as much a weapon as any that he wields.

My senses are alive, in a state of fear and something else. It tickles my stomach and has my chest rising and falling with quick breaths. I don’t even realize it at first until I stare down at myself in horror, realizing my ass is grinding into the mattress.

He sees it too. His eyes carry a gleam of deviltry as they trail over the dips and valleys of my body. Something like amusement flickers across his face and he licks his lips.

“They say that the hormones released during fear are the same as arousal. I bet you’re wet as fuck right now.” The first sweep of his fingers across my thigh flinch my muscles, and I squeeze my eyes shut, mentally batting his caress. His hands are thick and calloused, but warm, and my breath hitches when he reaches beneath the hem of the T-shirt and pauses there. “Am I right, sweetheart?”

I can’t respond for fear that he’ll hear the truth in my voice.

“Even the threat of pain can enhance arousal, did you know that? It’s a primitive response to fear. Your instinct is to run from danger. But your body? Your body is responding to my touch the same as it would if I pushed my finger up inside you and fucked you to orgasm.”

“Don’t,” I say through clenched teeth. “Don’t touch me.”

“The truth can be the most tormenting of all, can’t it, Bandit?” His hand slides back down to my knees where he leans in and plants a kiss that has me tugging on the chains. A surge of desire hits my core, and within seconds, I can feel it dribbling down my ass, into the mattress.

A deep tug pulls at my womb as if he’s seduced me for hours, and my sex throbs with the need to be touched there.

The foreign sensation brings tears to my eyes and I curse my traitorous body for its response, the uncontrollable reaction to his ministrations.

It’s not arousal that I feel toward him, but the same sensation as when the boys in gym class tackled me to the ground behind the bleachers and tickled me. I laughed as involuntarily as I’m writhing to this man’s gentle touch. He’s right. It’s a survival mechanism that I’ve honed over the years, because knowing how to get off has kept me from suffering the consequences of not doing what I’m told. It’s not lust, but biology and adrenaline. Need my pills. My head scrambles for the haze, the big blurred world that leaves me only vaguely aware when strange men put their hands on me.

He sucks in a deep inhale, the scruff of his face brushing against my inner thigh as he dips his head, and growls. “You smell like a whole lot of lies and guilt.”

“Fuck you!” My body has turned on me, gone rogue, and left me to mentally deal with the confusion this asshole has literally thrown in my lap. I need the fog. The rose-colored cloud that steals me away and constructs a barrier between my brain and body. “You touch me and I’ll … ” The slip of his hand along the bottom of my thigh is a distraction that has me kicking out at him in frustration, but he grabs my ankle before my foot makes contact with his stomach. “Fuck you!”

“You’ll fuck me, huh?” His smirk grates on my spine, and if my hands were loose, I’d have punched him in the face.

I’m eager for diversion, need something to take my mind off the smooth and gentle roaming of his hands. No one has ever touched me this way before, and the soft skim of his fingertips makes my skin crawl. “Why haven’t you killed me?”

“You’re a curiosity to me, Dylan.” He traces the edge of my hip to the sensitive path of my inner thigh, inciting a desperate urge to push away my thoughts of what it’d feel like if he slipped those fingers inside of me. “I don’t know what it is exactly that has me so riveted.” He crawls higher up my body, until his lips are at my ear, his warm breath fanning my neck. “But I’d love to fuck you. Just once. One long night of some really depraved shit. I’d use your body the same way you use those pills.” His lips skim the surface of my skin, down to my collarbone where he inhales deeply. “Your sweet innocence is like a drug. One I want to abuse until there’s nothing left but the painful withdrawals and a craving to fuck you again.”

His words are designed to torment. To scare me into talking. I’ve lived through this my whole life and few things scare me when it comes to sex.

Backing himself down my body, he grips tight to the underside of my thigh and sets another gentle kiss to the top of my knee before he pushes off of me. “I’ll wait, though. I’ll wait until you beg me for it.”

“Beg you for what?” I grit out, the shame and anger mingling together inside my gut.

“Mercy. See, killing, fucking, it doesn’t matter. The moment you surrender to it is so goddamn sweet it almost hurts.”

“You’ll be a dead fucking corpse before that happens!” I fire back at him with tears streaming down my face.

“Maybe.” His knuckles rub up and down the front of my T-shirt, at the apex of my thighs, and while my shuddering body confesses an embarrassing truth, the corner of his lip lifts into another devious grin. “Although in your case, Bandit, something tells me it’d be worth the wait.”

“No matter what you do to me, I will never hand myself over to you.” I feel like an ignorant little girl around him—naïve and immature—but I’m not any of those things. I’m a woman. One who’s been through enough hell already to afford me more good sense than most adults I know.

Perhaps in this sad story, though, I’m too stupid to live.

I grind my teeth as he stands up from the mattress, not looking the least disappointed by my vow.

Fuck him.

I’ll hold out as long as it takes for him to lose interest and let me go or kill me off.

A buzz at his side flinches his eye and he glances down, before answering the phone. “Yeah.”

I can’t make out the voice on the other end, but I let out a scream that’s quickly muffled when he slaps a palm over my mouth. The smell of metal and soap fills my nose while his fingers clamp to my jaw. A second scream razes my throat as I push past the barrier at my mouth.