Chapter 8

eight

Flynt

I thoughtI was a beast before, but compared to who I am now?

I was docile.

The separation from Ayla has driven me mad.

It has been a month and I’ve already inked her name onto my body so many times, the letters have blurred together in an illegible maze of loops and slashes. I’ve needed pain on the outside to distract from the utter misery shredding my insides to ribbons. The guards hate me and I can’t afford a lawyer, so I get no phone calls. I get nothing but darkness. They won’t even give me a pen or pencil to write letters to my Ayla because they’re worried that I’ll stab them. Myself. Others. And I probably would.

I’m starting to hear voices. I want to rip the skin off my bones.

I’m going to die without her. I have no idea how long I’m going to be in here.

But knowing Ayla is on the other side of these bars, unprotected and pregnant, is the worst form of torture imaginable. I damaged my vocal cords on day one by shouting her name. I speak in a permanent rasp now. They allow me into the yard for an hour a day and I hit the weights like a man possessed, pumping iron until my arms and legs have been exhausted. That exertion is the only thing stopped me from going completely insane.

I have to get out of here.

I have to get back to her.

Would I steal those car parts all over again to give her back the gift of her mother’s car? Yes. I would just be more careful. If I’d taken more precautions, I might be inside of her right now at the lake. She’d be milking me with that tight, sexy pussy, titties wet from my mouth. I can’t even fathom how good she’d taste between her legs while carrying my baby. I’d kill for a sample of it right now. One lick and I’d come on the dirty floor of my cell.

Why didn’t I tell her I love her sooner?

I was in the middle of declaring my love, my intention to marry her and raise our baby together as soon as I got released, but they tased me. They tased me and she passed out and I’ve been in hell even since. Pure fucking hell.

I lunge to my feet and wrap my hands around the bars, pressing my face between the metal slats until it hurts. “AYLA.”

* * *

Ayla

My father found the pregnancy test in the trash can three weeks ago.

Ever since then, my home has become a prison.

I won’t allow my daughter to humiliate me by walking around school with a swollen stomach. My daughter, a teen mother? God almighty. No one is going to find out. What would they think of me? Your mother would be humiliated. I can either send you to live with my brother in Montana or, by God, you’ll stay in this house until you’ve delivered the bastard and put it up for adoption. Your choice.

He wouldn’t listen when I told him I wanted to raise the baby.

I could never give this life I created with Flynt to a stranger. I just couldn’t.

I want to bring up this baby, even if I have to do it by myself.

It’s likely that I will have to do it alone. My memory of the afternoon Flynt was arrested has started to take different shapes. My grief and panic over being without Flynt is clouding everything. But I remember his anger and irritation. I remember him shouting this isn’t over. That’s the last thing he said to me. And now I’m starting to wonder if he was referring to our argument not being over, as opposed to our relationship.

Why else hasn’t he called or written even once?

There has been no communication and every day he leaves me in silence is like another brick being piled onto my chest. I force myself to eat for the baby, but it’s like choking down dust. Living without his touch and his voice and scent and presence is an unbearable state of being and I cry. I cry so much, I’ve run out of tears.

I don’t even know when he’s being released from prison. I called the police station, but they only snickered at me, obviously recalling my behavior the day Flynt was arrested. How shamelessly I needed him. How shamelessly I still do. My body is starving.

Does he hate me? Does he wish me dead because I’m the reason he went to prison?

I’m lying on my side in bed, but restlessness forces me up now, passing through the house like a ghost into the backyard—the only outdoor space where my father will allow me to go. When I hear an electronic whir as I step onto the grass, I glance up and spy a camera mounted to the roof. He’s watching me from work, making sure I don’t leave. I’m not sure how he’ll punish me if I disobey him, but I can’t risk being thrown out onto the street when I’m pregnant. When this baby arrives in seven months, they will need a roof over their head.

With a broken sound, I lay down in the center of the perfectly manicured lawn on my side, curling into myself and dreaming of Flynt and those afternoons at the lake.

He’ll never take me there again.

But at least I have the memories.

Maybe in time I’ll learn to be grateful for that.

* * *

Flynt

Three months have passed by the time I’m let out of prison.

I’m released on a Wednesday morning, and I tear through the gate like a madman, my bones rattling with desperation. She’ll be in school at this hour, so that’s where I’m going. There is no way in hell I’ll bother stopping at home or tracking down my first decent meal in ninety days. No. Fuck that. She’s the only fuel I need.

There is no one to give me a ride back to town, so I take the bus. Passengers eye me warily, some of the women even disembarking the bus at the sight of me. I find my reflection in one of the windows and acknowledge that I’ve changed. Endless, scorching misery will do that to a man. I’ve packed on about ten pounds of muscle, my tattoos have climbed up my neck to the underside of my chin. There is a look in my eye that promises death to anyone who tries to stand between me and Ayla.

After an hour, the bus lets me off at the stop in town and I march through town, heading straight for the school, ignoring the expressions of alarm on the faces of people that I pass. Ayla won’t be alarmed and that’s all I care about. I exist solely to see her again.

I’m worried about one thing and one thing only. Going back to prison. Because that’s what would happen if anyone laid a finger on her while I was gone. They’ll have to throw me back behind bars covered in blood.

I reach the campus. Students scatter when they see me.

The principal steps into my path, as if to stop me from entering the school, but one look at my face and he steps aside with an audible gulp. It’s almost lunch time. She’ll be in health class. I’m going to carry her straight out of here, drive us to the lake and fuck her until we forget the last three months of hell. Then I’m going to marry her. Today. Tomorrow. As soon as possible. I’ve had a taste of living without her and I realize now how foolish I was all those years, thinking I’d be able to let her go when we graduated high school.

I’d have followed her wherever she went. Stalked her.

Eventually given in and taken her to bed without a rubber.

It has been inevitable since the first time I saw her.

Ayla is my forever. And I desperately need to hold her and tell her that.

I’m inside the school now, right outside the door where we would have been spending third period, if everything hadn’t gone to hell. It takes my whole reserve of willpower not to kick the door down. Instead, I wrench it open and step inside.

“Ayla!”

Several students drop to the floor to hide behind their desks. Shrieks fill my ears.

I don’t see her. I don’t fucking see her anywhere.

“Where is Ayla Barnes?” I slam my first down on the closest desk. “Where is she?”

The teacher steps forward hesitantly. “Ayla hasn’t been in school for several months.”

“Nobody has seen her in so long,” a girl whispers near the back row.

My world slides sideways, like fried eggs off a hot frying pan.

I hear nothing else that’s said because there is a deafening siren going off in my ears. Nausea roils in my stomach and rises in my throat. I stumble from the classroom and start to run. I see and hear nothing as I run to Ayla’s house, my leg muscles on fire, lungs in a permanent seize. I won’t speculate on where she’s been or if something happened to her, because I’ll go even madder than I am now. I’ll go berserk.

My heart is pumping wildly as I reach the end of her driveway and sprint to the door, pounding on it while shouting her name hoarsely, prepared to rip it off the hinges, if necessary.

“Mister Porter,” says an older male. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”

I turn in a circle but see no one. Where is the voice coming from?

There’s a mechanical buzz and a small movement just above the door. A camera.

Someone is watching me and speaking to me through a camera.

And that somebody must be Ayla’s father. But I don’t remember these cameras from before. I don’t remember the extra locks on the door, either.

“What the fuck is going on?” I roar at the device. “Is she in here?” The possibility that occurs to me next sends my blood into a boil. “Are you keeping her in here?”

“It’s for the good of our family, Mister Porter. You are not to have any contact with her, do you understand? You have done more than enough already.”

“More than enough…” My heart is crumbling in my chest. I’m still not one hundred percent sure what is going on here, but it’s becoming unbearably obvious that my girl has been suffering in my absence. She’s been suffering because of me.

A sound rips up my throat, raw and pitiful, and I reach up, ripping the camera from its perch, throwing it clear across the yard.

“Ayla, if you’re in there, stand back.” I’m just about kick in the door when I sense movement to my left. The curtain moved. I’m positive. She’s in there. But she won’t let me in. Oh God, she hates me. I got her pregnant and left her alone. Left her helpless to the whims of a controlling father. She is never going to love me now.

The emptiness tries to knock me to my knees, but my excruciating need to see her again keeps me standing. It takes three kicks to break the door down and then I’m inside, hooking a left at the end of the entryway, going toward her bedroom. Of course, I know which one is hers. I’ve lost track of how many times I came here to watch her sleep over the last four years. Just to make sure she was okay.

“Ayla.” I kneel outside of her bedroom door, dropping my head into my hands. “Open the door. Please.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” comes her murmur from the other side of the barrier—and I nearly come in my pants at the sound of her voice. “H-he’ll call the police—”

Denial rips at my insides. “Don’t tell me you’ve been in here for three months, baby. I’ll die.”

Several seconds tick past, giving me my answer and I slam my head into the door.

“He means well,” she says. “Sometimes it’s hard to see that he loves me, but…”

“This isn’t love. This is captivity.”

“I know,” she whispers. “But I just keep thinking about the time he gave me my mother’s car for my sixteenth birthday. He does care sometimes, doesn’t he?”

My chest twists viciously. “Open the door.”

Her breath quickens. “No.”

Pain cuts through me like a freshly sharpened blade. I’m itching to kick this door open, too, but the bedroom is small. There’s too much of a chance I could hurt her. If a single splinter touched her skin, I’d be inconsolable. “I think you might have a little bit of Stockholm syndrome, Ayla.”

God, I want to hold her. Rock her. Tell her everything will be all right. If she would just open the door. Maybe there is only one way to break through to her.

“I have to tell you something. I was never going to…tell you the truth, because I wanted you to believe your father was a good man. You deserve a good father. But…” I rub at the dryness in my throat. “I’m the one who left your mother’s car for you in the driveway on your sixteenth birthday. With the big red bow. That was me. I spent months fixing it up.”

Silence.

I squeeze my eyes closed.

“You did a presentation on it during freshman year. An object that has special significance to you. Remember? You spoke about your mother’s car. And it was just rotting away in the shed. When I took it to the garage to work on it, your father didn’t notice it was gone.”

“No.” Her voice is faint. “He told me he’d done it—”

“There was a honeysuckle air freshener hanging from the rearview and three spares in the glove compartment. How would I know that?”

I get no satisfaction from the gasp on the other side of the door. A quiet sob.

“Ayla, please. Don’t cry.” I grind my forehead against the wood. “I did it because I love you. I’ve loved you since you were fourteen and I’ll fucking love you until you’re a hundred and fourteen. Open the door and let me touch you. I’m so fucked up. I need you.”

The knob remains still. “I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of me? No.” I slam my head off the door again. “I am your safest place.”

“Will you still feel that way when you find out I lied?”

Confusion breaks through my desperation. “Lied about what?”

“Being on the pill,” she whispers.

It takes me several moments to figure out what’s happening here. And I realize I’m the biggest dummy alive. We never cleared up the mistruths between us. I was on the verge of getting her to confess her pregnancy when I was arrested. I’ve been too overwrought and crazed for the last three months to acknowledge the fact that Ayla doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that I was aware of her lie from the beginning. She has no idea that I’ve been dying to get her pregnant since I first laid eyes on her.

“Ayla. Baby.” I kiss the door, pretending it’s her, pressing my stiffness into the wood and wishing it was her pretty flesh. “I knew. I knew all along you weren’t on the pill.” My cock is getting harder by the second just talking about this. “Are you pregnant with our first child on the other side of this door?”

Instead of answering out loud, Ayla unlocks the door and slowly lets it open, revealing herself. Oh, sweet mother of God. She’s the most delicate, exquisite vision I’ve ever seen in my life. In a tank top and panties, her soft skin glows in the sunlight. Seeing the slight swell of her tummy sends my pulse spiking, hammering. A hot shiver goes through my dick and balls.

And her face.

Those tear-stained cheeks and big eyes. I would welcome the chance to die for this girl.

“How did you become even more of an angel?” I say gruffly, walking forward on my knees and wrapping my arms around her waist, kissing her belly over and over. This is all I’ve been dreaming about for four years. My deepest wish has been granted and a sense of rightness is locking into place. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine…

“I could say the opposite about you,” she breathes, hesitantly combing her fingers through my hair, her tears splashing onto my shoulders. “You look like the devil.”

“That’s who I turn into without you. The fucking devil.” I gain my feet slowly, dragging my open mouth up the center of her ripe body, my fingers working my zipper down. “But to you, Ayla? Right now, I’m God.”

I scoop her up so fast that she gasps—and then, oh Christ, I’m finally back in heaven. I’ve got Ayla’s legs around my waist, her pussy rubbing around on my hard cock. Tears are running down her cheeks and she’s searching my eyes, her lips trembling. “You’re really not mad that I lied? That I got pregnant on purpose?”

“Sweet, innocent girl.” I sit down on the edge of her bed and lean back, watching my right hand massage the pussy I’ve been obsessing about every second of the last three months. “I’ve been wanting you pregnant so bad, most days I think of nothing else. I was going to do the one good deed of my life and let you escape me, escape this town. I didn’t want to saddle you with a baby like my father did to my mother. Like my grandfather did to my grandmother. The women in my family always wished for more, outside of this place. I didn’t want to make you a prisoner here and make you hate me. Then you had to go and show up at my garage looking so beautiful…and God help me, fertile as fuck.” I twist her panties in my fist and rip them clean off, baring her tight, glistening pussy to the sunlight. “I sensed you were lying about being on the pill. And I fucked you even harder knowing you weren’t protected.”

The doubt finally flees from her eyes. “I don’t want to go anywhere where you aren’t. I only wanted to leave this town to find happiness, but here it is. With you.”

Our restraint vanishes. She scoots forward on my lap and wiggles around on my cock. Starved for a look at her tits, I yank down her tank top and bounce her on my knees, watching them dance for me.

“I’m warning you now, Ayla, I’ve been too miserable to beat off.” Pain and pressure build between my legs, making me groan. “My plumbing is so backed up, I won’t be able to tear myself off you for a week. If you weren’t already pregnant, we’d fix that real fast.”

Her eyes turn a sultry shade of blue that I recognize well. It means she’s horny.

“Maybe I won’t be able to tear myself off of you,” she teases, reaching down and fisting my dick, dragging it through her wetness. We take a few seconds to moan, to kiss and reunite with each other, then her expression turns serious. “You told me you loved me, Flynt.”

“There is nothing truer in this world, Ayla.”

“I love you, too,” she whispers against my lips, tears making her eyes shine.

Then, because she’s utter perfection, she sinks her tongue into my mouth and lowers herself onto my cock at the same time. Twisting her hips as she kisses me.

“Ayla,” I groan, breaking free of the kiss, already panting. “I wasn’t kidding. I’m already about to flood you.”

She shakes her tits at me. “Do it, Daddy.”

I almost black out. “Oh. Fuck!”

Outside in the front yard, a car door slams and I know it’s her father.

The knowledge in her eyes says she knows it, too.

“Do it. Come inside me,” she repeats, starting to buck her hips frantically. “And then take me away from here and never let me go.”

I’d promise her the moon, the sun and the stars any time she asked, but especially right now when she rides my cock like she’s trying to win a contest. My balls are in my fucking throat. Jesus Jesus Jesus. I hear the front door of the house open and surge to my feet, slamming her bedroom door closed and keeping it shut with my left hand, using my right to ride her up and down, faster, faster, biting down on my lip to keep my grunts from turning into bellows of pleasure.

“Ayla!” He pounds on the door. “That convict better not be in there with you.”

Her head falls back and she exhales shakily, tightening her pussy muscles until I can do nothing but grind her up against the door roughly and ejaculate, gripping her ass in my hands. Somehow, I manage to stay silent during the best climax of my life, even while I’m shaking and my eyes roll back in my head. I don’t stop thrusting until the insides of her legs are dripping with my spend. And I’m still hard as a rock for her.

“You trust me to take you away from here, baby?” I ask in between deep breaths. “You trust me to take care of you and this child?”

Her eyes shimmer with love. “I trust you, period.”

My throat cinches up so tight I can hardly speak. “I’ll never let you down.”

We keep the door locked long enough to pack Ayla’s most important things and clean myself off of her thighs. Then we walk straight past her father out the front door, the knowledge that Ayla is eighteen and he can do nothing to stop us plain on his face.

We walk out the door a little uncertain of our future…

But totally confident in each other and our love.

And I know it’s going to be a beautiful ride.