“They aren’t mine.” I feel a little smaller every time he reacts to something he sees. The sagging sofa. The scarred coffee table. The faded curtains over the windows.
I don’t have any reason to be embarrassed. He should be embarrassed for bursting in here uninvited. This place isn’t much, but I pay for it, and it’s my home. “My roommate’s going to be home any minute,” I tell him. When I hear the little tremor in my voice, I tighten my jaw and grit my teeth because, dammit, I can’t let him have that power over me. “You better get out of here. He’s gonna be pissed.”
“You’re not allowed to have visitors? That doesn’t sound like a roommate. It sounds like a jailer.” He doesn’t bother waiting for a response, and my heart sinks further when he crosses the room, throwing a single disgusted look toward the tiny kitchen before going down the hall.
“You have to leave! I didn’t ask you to come up here. I don’t want you here. And since you hate me so damn much, you should be in a hurry to get away from me, right?” I’m babbling, desperate. Alone. The truth is, I don’t know when Buck will come back—or whether it will be Brandon, instead. Either way, when that happens, I need to be in my room, behind a locked door.
“Oh, fuck. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse.” Briggs walks into my room and flops down on the foot of the bed, laughing by the time I join him. “When I was a kid, I had a dog with a little house in the backyard. I’m pretty sure it was bigger than this.”
Somebody trusted this psychopath with a dog? “That’s a great story. Now really, I have to ask you to leave. Or…”
I would swear the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. He arches an eyebrow, and that tiny gesture is worth a thousand words. The disdain and hatred in his eyes turns to something else. Something that makes my skin crawl.
“You know, little bird, there is nothing I would like better than to get out of here and pretend I never saw this sad place.” He waves a hand, scoffing, making me cringe a little. “Just one problem.”
“What problem?”
“I need payment. I mean, I went out of my way to drive you home. I had to look at this shithole and breathe the air. Do you realize how bad it smells in here?” he adds with something like genuine curiosity.
“Did you stop to think it’s because you’re in here?” I retort. His eyes narrow and now I’ve done it. I had to go and open my mouth. He deserves it—he deserves so much worse—but I can’t mouth off like that. Not when we’re here, alone.
“I already wanted payment, but now I’m going to need a little extra as interest for that smartass remark.” Slowly, he stands, unfolding his body until he towers over me. Everything in me tells me to run, but there’s nowhere to go. I couldn’t run fast enough or far enough to outrun him.
“What do you want? You have to know I don’t have a lot of money, but I can?—”
“Who said anything about money?” he asks with a soft laugh.
“So what do you want?” I ask, shaking inside, fighting to hide it.
He pretends to think about it. “All things considered, I’m owed at least a hand job.”
Here’s the thing about me. Sometimes, when I’m shocked—the way his sudden announcement shocks me—my immediate reaction is to laugh. Not that anything is funny. More like my brain doesn’t know how to process the surprise. So my confusion comes out as a laugh.
And of course, he takes it the wrong way. I barely have time to gasp when he takes a hold of my arms and throws me onto the bed hard enough that I almost bounce back onto the floor. I’m still trying to catch my breath when he looms over me, bending at the waist to pin me in place with a hand on either side of my head. “You think this is a joke? You don’t know better than that by now? I guess being a stupid slut runs in your family.”
His breathing gets faster when he leans closer. There’s nowhere for me to go, no way to avoid the hot breath fanning across my face. “Here’s how this is going to work, little bird. Either you’re going to jerk me off, or I’m going to fuck you. But either way, before I leave this apartment, my cum will be on your skin. It’s up to you how it gets there.”
His eyes flash dangerously before his hands start to move. He takes one of my ankles and pulls off my sneaker. He’s serious. He really means this. Panic flares to life in my gut, boiling hot, filling me with a rush of strength that makes me kick out instinctively. I hit him with my foot, but he doesn’t seem to notice, stripping off my other shoe before he reaches for my waist.
“Stop! What the hell is wrong with you? Please, don’t!” I’m talking to myself. It’s as useless as kicking and slapping. It makes no difference. By the time I’m sweating and breathless, he’s pulled my jeans down around my ankles and is tossing them aside. There’s something wild in his eyes, brutal, chilling.
“What’s it going to be?” He runs a hand over his crotch, and my stomach drops when I see how it bulges. “We can do this the easy way, or I can fuck you. The choice is yours.”
As if there’s any choice. As if I’ve ever had a choice. “Fine,” I blurt out, hating myself but knowing there’s no other option. “I’ll give you a hand job.”
“See? That wasn’t so difficult.”
I wish he wouldn’t stare at me the way he does while sitting next to me on the bed. I don’t want him to look at me at all. My throat is so tight, and my chest hurts from the way my heart pounds, but it’s the skin-crawling disgust that’s worst of all. Disgust with him, with myself for knowing I can’t avoid this. I wish I was stronger, but wishing never got me anywhere.
I can barely breathe in the last seconds before he unzips his fly. “Take it out,” he grunts, and even though I’ve never done anything like this before and sure as hell wouldn’t ever choose him as a partner, I close my eyes and grit my teeth before sliding a hand into his open fly, feeling my way around until I can dip inside his shorts. My fingers close around something hard and soft at the same time, like silk over steel.
“Take it out,” he grunts again, leaning back until he’s on hiselbows, watching me as I carefully take his dick out. I feel so clumsy, but it’s the embarrassment that’s worse. Not having the first clue, wanting to cry while my stomach churns.
It’s big. That’s the first thought that goes through my head. Big, thick, and veiny. Once he’s out in the open, swaying a little, I don’t know what to do. When I look at him, his half-closed eyes tell me how much he’s liking this. I can’t imagine why. I’m not really doing anything.
“Well?” he asks, taking my hand and moving it up and down. “I swear, you’re fucking useless.” I have to bite my tongue to keep my thoughts inside, rubbing him up and down the way he wants.
Still, he grunts like he’s dissatisfied. “Don’t you have any lotion or something?” He finds a small tube on the table next to the bed and squirts some on my palm. Now it’s easier, now he seems to like it more. Instead of looking at his face, I stare at his dick, almost hypnotized, as my hand moves up and down, up and down. The quicker I get this over with, the better. The less I think about it, the easier it will be to look at myself in the mirror later. I just have to get through it. It will be over soon… Right?
