Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Fawn

Benny’s home is a magical place.

It’s also like walking into the land of giants. All of his furniture is handcrafted and built to accommodate someone of his considerable size. Every inch of the house is clean, organized, and the kitchen is no exception. He carries me into the cozy room and sits me on the counter, his hands reluctant to leave my body. I’m reluctant, too. When he isn’t touching me, my pulse seems to slow down and I’m so much colder.

I thought I knew how deep my infatuation ran with Benny, but now…now that he has been inside of me, now that we have bonded, I realize how naïve I was. This isn’t an infatuation. He is my soul mate. I knew it the first time I stumbled upon him in the forest. Seeing him with the animals, experiencing his worry and care for me, has only turned my fascination with him into a full-blown obsession.

And he returns it. He is going to give up his violence for me. Which is a good thing, because I can’t accept anything less. I’ve lived with anger and vitriol and blood for so long that is almost crushed my spirit. Were it not for my notebooks, I’m not sure how I would have survived. Now I don’t know how I would survive without Benny.

Please don’t let me find out.

That man—Grim—mentioned there might be a problem with Benny’s boss. A man called Frank. As I watch Benny move around the kitchen, his eyes cutting over to me every few seconds, I say a silent prayer that Frank won’t shatter our newfound peace.

Benny feeds me a meatloaf sandwich that stops the growling in my stomach. He kisses my knees while I’m eating, sifts his big fingers through my hair. I’m so famished, the sandwich is gone in a blink and with a satisfied grunt, Benny scoops me off the counter and carries me to the back of the house. We pass his bedroom and I catch a glimpse of his bed. A four-poster the size of backyard, the top of the mattress at least five feet off the ground.

“I’ll build you some stairs for the bed,” he says gruffly, cradling me tight. “Or better yet, I’ll lift you in myself. If you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you will wake me up and I’ll help you down. I’ll…bring you there.”

“Maybe the stairs are a good idea. I don’t want to interrupt your sleep.”

“No.” His jaw flexes. “I want to take care of you.” His swallow is audible. “I don’t know anything about this Daddy stuff, but…it seems like caring for you is something I get to do.” He searches my eyes hopefully. “Isn’t it?”

Feeling weirdly shy all of a sudden, I nod. I’ve always suspected those particular stories were on the naughtier side. The fact that Benny doesn’t even have a passing knowledge of such relationships only confirms it. “D-do you like when I call you that?”

“Yes,” he rasps, steering us into the bathroom. “Although, you could call me shithead and I would love it, Fawn.”

I’m still laughing when Benny settles me onto my feet on the cold marble of the bathroom floor. I salivate over the dramatic flex of his back muscles as he kneels down at the side of the bathtub and turns on the faucet. He plugs the drain and fills the humongous tub with steaming water. Then he stands back up, hesitates in front of me for long moments, before pinching the hem of my dress between his fingers and dragging it up, up and over my head. He drops the garment to the floor and his breath starts to race in and out, a bulge the size of a butternut squash rising swiftly behind his zipper.

“You are so delicate,” Benny says gruffly, tracing my collarbone with his index finger. “I want to slaughter your father for chaining you up.”

I lean down to kiss his wrist. “No killing anymore, remember?”

“How about one more? He really deserves it.”

“No. Not even one more.” I reach up and stroke the bristles on the sides of his face. “Besides, we’re free of him now.”

A flash of something troubling dances across Benny’s features, amplifying my worry about the fallout with Frank, but I don’t want to think about that now. It has been so long since I had a bath and especially in a tub so big and clean and comfortable looking. This morning I was locked in a basement with the cockroaches and now I’m in the care of my giant. I just want to bask in the glow of my new reality for a while.

Leaving a kiss in the center of Benny’s chest, I walk past him to the tub, sling my leg over the side and sink my nude body into the blessed warmth, my eyes tearing at the perfection. I go boneless, my head lolling on the lip of the tub. I’m so overcome with bliss, I’m caught off-guard when Benny begins to clean me. Using his king-sized paws, he scoops water over my hair and lathers the strands with shampoo that smells like him. Burning wood and spice. After he rinses it away, he picks up the bar of basic soap and rubs it between his palms, all the while perusing my body through the water.

When he doesn’t touch me with his sudsy hands, I open my eyes to find him frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

He grunts, setting the bar of soap down with a little too much force. “Those notebooks are important to you. We should have taken them with us.”

“Actually.” I’m definitely flushing to the roots of my hairline. “I was thinking I could try and write my own stories.”

A male eyebrow goes up. “Stories about sex?” Watching closely for his reaction, I nod, my pulse picking up happily when his lips twitch. “Not just sex. Relationships. Suspense. Maybe some humor. But I would be lying if I said I’m not the most excited about writing the intimate parts.”

“Then that’s what you’re going to do.” Benny’s hands move over me, top to bottom, cleaning the layer of dirt from my skin, giving extra attention to my neck, my toes, my inner thighs. His touch is no-nonsense, but there is no hiding his lust from me. Even from my position in the bottom of the tub, I can see the sweat beginning to seep through his shirt, the top button of his pants in a terrible strain, the veins in his neck growing more pronounced. “So not only do I have the most beautiful girl in the world living in my house, she’s also going to write books.” He pauses, looks down. “I want you to do great things, Fawn. I’ll do anything I can to help make them happen. But I worry that over time, you’ll realize…”

Sensing the importance of what he’s telling me, I turn and sit up in the tub. “What?”

“You’ll realize you settled on an ogre.” He clears his throat hurt. “You must have gone to school if you can read and write so well, right?”

“Only until I was sixteen and my mother left. After that, well…my father was convinced I would run off, too, so he pulled me out of school.” I shake my head, a pang catching me in the breastbone. “Worst part of it is…he didn’t keep me home to be protective. He was just worried about having his reputation damaged twice over. A man who can’t keep his women from running off. It wasn’t that he loved me or anything.”

“He smeared his own reputation, baby. And a man who isn’t capable of loving an angel like you isn’t capable of loving anything at all. Except for maybe himself.”

My heart is fluttering with such gratitude by the time he’s done that all I can do is blink and sniffle. Does he realize how impactful his words are? Does he realize no one has ever said anything so kind to me…and truly meant it? As I got older, boys around the bayou would compliment me on my way to the tackle shop or to buy bread. They would say I’m pretty and smart and sweet, but they didn’t mean any of it. They only wanted my body.

With Benny, this man who hides nothing, his sincerity is so obvious.

I will treasure him until the day I die.

“I didn’t finish school, either. But hell, I didn’t even pay attention while I was there. I was too busy fending off attacks from other boys. They wanted to prove their strength. No better way to do that than picking a fight with the biggest kid.” He reaches for a washcloth and dips it into the water, slowly dragging it over my cheeks, behind my ears. “After a while, my mother got tired of being called to the school over fights. No one believed me that I wasn’t the instigator. All they had to do was look at me to see I was built for bullying.” One of his big shoulders rolls back. “Eventually my mother kicked me out. Told me to use what I had to fend for myself. What I have, Fawn, is muscle. And this scary-ass face. You’re going to get sick to death of looking at it and I can’t blame you.”

My heart pumps wildly in my throat.

The tips of his ears are red and he can’t look at me.

“I have to tell you something,” I blurt.

His eyes lift to mine warily. Full of dread. “It’s already happening, isn’t it?”

“What? No!” My body moves on its own, climbing out of the tub drenched and naked, straddling my giant’s lap and clasping his face in my hands. “I need to tell you that…I’ve seen you before. Many times.”

A line forms between his brows. “When?”

“In the forest.” I’m a little embarrassed by the fact that I’m admitting out loud to light stalking, so I duck my head and begin unfastening the buttons of his shirt. “On the days where my dad was in a decent mood, or the nights when he would pass out without chaining me up, I’d go out for walks. Long ones. And I would see you collecting injured animals. Or releasing the healed ones back into the wild. A-and….and…”

“What is it, baby?”

“I fell in love with you. I’ve loved you from afar for a while now and I should have told you, but I was afraid you would be freaked out knowing I spied on you. I couldn’t believe it when you just w-walked into my basement—”

Benny stops me from talking by placing a finger across my lips, his face a mask of disbelief. “Let me get this straight. You’ve been watching me.”

I nod guiltily.

“And you think I’m going to be upset about that?” Benny continues slowly. “About the fact that you—a fucking angel—has been pining for me?”

Confusion clouds my embarrassment. “You’re not upset.”

He surges forward to capture my mouth with a hard kiss, his fingers spearing into my hair. “Hell no, I’m not upset, Fawn,” he says, bringing our foreheads together. “I love you, too. I loved you the second I saw you. But to have you love me back?” His laugh is incredulous. “Don’t you see? I’m the luckiest bastard on the planet.”

My vision blurs with tears. He loves me! “Watching you save the animals…it’s how I know you aren’t meant to be a killer.” I scoot closer on Benny’s lap, finding his bulge with my sex and pressing down. “You’re nothing but my sweet giant.”

He groans through his clenched teeth. “The way I want to fuck you ain’t sweet, little girl. Not at all. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You’re so goddamn fragile. I want to carry you around on a pillow and pound you with my cock at the same time.”

I’ve just succeeded in getting all of his buttons undone. Now I push the shirt off his incredibly wide, musclebound shoulders, moaning shameless at the priceless artwork I’m revealing. He’s covered in scars and hair and I love every single inch. “Maybe your body is just listening to mine, Daddy,” I murmur, brushing his ear with my mouth. “And my body is telling yours that I love being pounded.”

“Oh my God,” he says hoarsely, looking down at where my womanhood rides his sex up and back, up and back. “I can’t believe this is my life.”

He isn’t freaked out over my spying activities. No, he loves me. He loves me and everything I do seems to turn him on. Maybe we’re both dreaming. If so, I hope neither one of us ever wakes up. “Benny?”

“Yes,” he pants, cupping my backside and helping me ride him through his pants, his big hips lifting off the floor involuntarily. “Tell me. You need anything, I’ll get it. Anything.”

His vow leaves me breathless. “I was hoping you could help me do some research for the stories I want to write.” I lean up and draw him down into a long, wet, winding kiss. “I don’t know what it’s like to suck on my man. Can you show me?”

“Y-you…” A violent shudder wracks him. “You want to suck my dick?”

“Yes, please,” I purr, laying a lick across his mouth. “Please.”

“Sweet Jesus,” he grunts, reaching between us to hurriedly unfasten his pants, tugging down the zipper with a wince. “You suck it as little or as much as you want. I’m grateful just being able to smell you, look at you, bathe you. I don’t expect that mouth to…oh fuck.”

While he was talking, I’ve scooted down his body and backed up on my knees. Now I’m bending down with my bottom in the air, my lips an inch from his turgid erection. “You should expect it,” I whisper, running the tip of my tongue around the head, making his legs jerk on the floor. “If you don’t hold me down and make rough love to my mouth once in a while, how will I be able to write that scene in a book?” I lick him thoroughly once more, then use the lubrication of my own spit to take half of his thick trunk past my lips. His shudders increase the closer his bulbous tip gets to my throat. “Don’t you want to help me?”

“Yes. Christ. Yes.” Sweat is pouring down the sides of his face now, his chest hair matting with perspiration. And when I wrap both hands around his thick arousal, stroking it lovingly, firmly, while suckling on the head, the loud moans he releases into the bathroom are almost deafening. “Dig your knuckles into my balls, baby, or I’m going to come.”

Now that’s something I’ve never read in my notebooks. Continuing to drag his shaft in and out of my mouth, deeper and deeper, I drop my knuckles to his sac and twist them on the hard, smooth surface, watching his stomach shudder, my own doing the same. To have such control over this man’s powerful body—to know all the tricks—is an honor. And my flesh is honoring him by growing wet. So terribly wet and ready. My knees are restless on the marble floor of the bathroom, my tummy in a tight, rippling squeeze.

“It’s not helping. That little girl mouth is too sweet.” I don’t have a single second to prepare before I find myself down on my back with my knees pried open, Benny’s head between my thighs. “You need this for research, too, don’t you?” He gives me a long lick, his eyes glazing over at the taste. “Might have to write my own book about this juicy little peach.” He slaps at it twice, right on top of my clit, the zing of pleasure arrowing right to my stomach. “All this wet ain’t from the bath. My horny girl likes sucking this big, ugly cock.”

I want to tell him it’s beautiful. Every ruddy, pulsing inch. Every vein. But he’s licking me in earnest now. Lights and color and sounds are flashing in front of my eyes, making my dizzy. Somehow I know, I know, I’ve survived every terrible time in my life for this moment. To have this man’s tongue licking through my folds and polishing that elusive berry hungrily. A rushing screech takes place in my ears and I grip his head, my hips rolling upward, without thought, my screams of pleasure bouncing off the wall of the bathroom.

I’m wild. I’m wild for this.

For him.

The orgasm that crests over me is miraculous. An ascension to the pearly gates. I suck down air, body writhing, mouth unable to form words or comprehend the magnitude of the bliss roaring through me. I’m immortalized in that moment with my wetness sputtering out all over his mouth. And then I’m moving. I’m frantic.

Benny lets me push him back into a sitting position and climb onto his lap in a straddle, my right hand guiding his hard sex to my damp hole and cramming it inside, desperate for an anchor that only he can provide. A tether in the storm. And I sink down with a guttural sound, riding his stiffness with frenzied hips, my teeth sinking into the side of his neck, nails scraping down his broad, hairy chest, making him call my name hoarsely.

“Daddy licked my pussy so good,” I whine against his shoulder. “I want it all the time. Please. Please. I’ll be a good girl.”

His chest is heaving beneath me, his erection so stiff and swollen, I can barely slide it out of my flesh and sink it back inside. I’m practically stuck. But Benny grabs my hips in a punishing grip and helps me, his eyes almost black with lust. “You don’t have to be a good girl to earn this tongue. It serves you, baby. Only Fawn.” His big hand slaps my right buttock sharply, blowing sparks across my vision. “You better demand it.”

I nod dutifully, my hips picking up the pace. And when I find an angle where his steel flesh rubs against my clit, I go faster, faster, moisture coursing down my thighs, that telltale fluttering of oncoming relief back in my tummy, making me crazy. “Lick me every day, every hour,” I whine against his mouth. “Wherever we are, pull my panties down and lick me.”

“I’m coming for that asshole next,” he bites off, flipping me over onto my back and ramming himself deeper than ever before, so deep I feel his presence everywhere. I’m consumed by him. I’m beneath my giant, slipping up and back on the marble floor, his chest chafing my skin, my legs pushed open by insistent hands and I never want to stop. Never. “I’m coming, little girl. All up in that tight fuck hole. You wrecked me. Goddamn.”

When he stiffens on top of me, groaning brokenly, his body shaking uncontrollably, I find my paradise, too. I gasp at the intensity of it, how the pleasure wraps around me and squeezes, turning my thighs to jelly, my femininity constricting around him as he spurts, unloading inside of me in an endless, violent rampage. All I can do is lay there and take those final, desperate drives of his body into mine, legs limp, conquered.

Benny has only pulled me into his arms, cradled me and started to rock me…

When we hear a sound out in the house. Outside of the bathroom.

His muscles stiffen, lips peeling back in a snarl.

“Maybe it’s one of the animals?” I ask, somehow knowing it isn’t.

Benny stands and crosses the bathroom quickly to the shower stall, setting me down inside, behind a partial tile wall. “Stay here. Don’t come out for any reason.”

He kisses me hard while fastening his pants. And then he reaches above my head, toward a shelf holding a stack of folded towels—and he takes out a gun.

“Who’s there?” Benny barks, moving toward the door with the gun raised, in a stance that leaves no room for doubt that he is well versed in carrying a weapon. Using it.

“It’s just me, Benny,” calls back a voice I don’t recognize. “It’s Frank. We’re due a talk, it seems. Boss to employee. I took the liberty of making us some coffee.”

Benny’s shoulders stiffen and his eyes find me in the bathroom mirror. There is fear there. Frank has been in the house long enough to know Benny isn’t alone. He’s heard my voice. Heard a lot more than that, really. There’s no point in hiding me.

“Go ahead and bring the girl out with you,” drawls Frank. “If you took her as collateral—which is against the rules, as you well know—then she technically belongs to me. And ooh boy, does she sound like a feisty one. I’ll be taking her with me.” He chuckles. “Think I can get her to call me Daddy, too?”

I’ve never seen a man transform so quickly.

My sweet giant turns into berserker in the blink of an eye. So much violence floods into his expression that the whites of his eyes turn red.

Sensing he’s about to break his promise to me, I shake my head. “No. Benny—”

But it’s too late. He kicks open the door and aims the gun, firing a shot straight into the chest of the man standing on the other side. The blast echoes in my ears, making them ring. I stand in a daze for a slow-motion moment, watching the blood pour from the man’s chest. He coughs and another spray of blood paints his chin in a fine mist—and that’s when my trance is broken. That’s when I wrap myself in a towel with shaking hands, throw open the bathroom window, climb out and run. Away from the violence.

Away from the man whose life is so intertwined with murder that I was an idiot to think he could ever truly give it up.