21. Raegan

Chapter twenty-one

Raegan

My face drops when I stride out of the hallway and into the kitchen, where I can see Aiden sitting alone on the couch in the living area. The kitchen and dining area are clear of others, and I can’t hear anything coming from the training room off to my right.

I debate turning around and searching the firehouse for Kellan, but as soon as Aiden’s face turns and he spots me standing here, my stubborn pride won’t let me leave. It seems too much like running away, and I have no desire to let him feel like he’s won something if I do that.

We haven’t been alone together since he locked me up at the bunker.

I steel myself with a slow, deep breath and clench my hands into fists before stalking over to the couch to face him. “Where are the others?”

It’s only after I’ve stopped behind the U-shaped couch that I notice what he’s wearing. Instead of his usual three-piece suit, he’s dressed in sweatpants and one of the shirts I’ve been wearing to sleep. The shirt is loose over his chest, not tight like Kellan wears his, but there’s a V neckline, offering me a rare glimpse of his smooth and solid chest underneath.

Somehow, that seems like more of a tease.

“Kellan took Dane into the woods for some training.” His eyes take me in from my shoes, up my leggings, to the sports bra tank top, and then my hair pulled back in a tie. It’s almost time for my session with Kell, and I’m wearing the new workout outfit he’d bought me at the store to try out.

He’s been not-so-secretly filling my room and wardrobe with things ever since we moved here and he’d seen the lack of stuff I had at my apartment. At first, I thought it was sweet. Now, my room is filled with clutter, and I’m ready to throw it all out the window.

Aiden’s gaze darkens as it tracks upward, if that’s even possible for brown eyes so shadowy to begin with. I don’t know what to think when he looks at me this way. I can only imagine it as hate. Like he’s picking what I’m wearing apart and is preparing a slew of insults to jab me with. Or he’s trying to remind himself why he thinks it’s better to keep me here rather than letting me go off to do my own thing.

His mouth opens, but I cut him off before I have to hear whatever barb he’s decided on. “Great. I’ll go find them.”

I turn, but his words stop me. “Kell said he’d be in for your session, so just have a seat and wait for him.”

Mm…nope. “And hang out with you?” I ask, vitriol dripping from my tone. “Hard pass.”

There’s a flicker of something across his face before it tightens. “ It’s not my first choice, either. But I’ve been asked to babysit you to make sure you don’t run away again. So, sit down like a good girl and wait patiently for Kellan to collect you.”

Anger swells in my chest like embers bursting into flames.

This motherfucking—

“—serial killer still at large. Everyone is being advised to lock their homes and call the police at any sign of suspicious activity.”

My face snaps over to the news station that Aiden had been watching. Faces fill the screen of the latest victims, and my breath catches in my throat.

I recognize almost all of them from the beach house.

Jack?

“You know them?” Aiden asks darkly, and I nod. He turns the TV off and smacks the remote down on the table, then stands. “We need to find him and get him under control. This isn’t how we do things.”

He storms past me, and I turn and grab his arm. He stops and looks over his shoulder at me with a stern expression. “Wait, what do you plan to do?”

“Whatever it takes to make this bloodbath end.”

My grip on him tightens. “How? By locking him up, too? Is that your answer for everything?”

He seizes my wrist and yanks it from his arm, then turns his back on me and keeps walking. I chase after him, catching the door before it hits me in the face as we move into the truck bays and through the other side to the locker room.

“You can’t just lock people up because they don’t do what you want! Jack’s out there doing something for our cause. At least he’s not sitting around here doing nothing! He’s working on something, I know it, so just let him finish—”

Aiden whirls on me. My face smacks into his chest, and I bounce back. “Do you know it? What he’s working on?”

I frown and rub my face where it impacted with his soft shirt, but firm chest. “No, but—”

“Then how are you so certain he has a plan? That he hasn’t just gone on a killing spree for the fun of it?”

I glare up at him, meeting his eyes with all the conviction in me. “Because I know him. And I trust him.”

Aiden’s eyes shutter and close. “You trust him,” he repeats slowly.

“Yes. I do. I don’t immediately assume the worst of the people I care about when they do something bad or when something doesn’t add up,” I snark at him, thinking of how that’s all he’s done of me, since everything went to shit. “I’ll believe in him first.”

His eyes open, but only to narrow at me when he catches the double meaning in my words. “And what did he do to earn your trust so easily? Your blind belief in him? You don’t know who he became in the last five years. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

“I know him better than you think,” I retort breathily, not needing to use my full voice while we’re sharing the same air between us. His smell of cinnamon is richer than ever now that his body isn’t tucked away behind layers of fabric. It fills my lungs and flushes my skin with heat. I tell myself it’s the anger that’s making my body respond this way, but I’m also all too aware of his proximity.

He’s being an arrogant asshole, and I want to simultaneously strike him and kiss him into submission.

“Do you think fucking him means you know him now?” The shock of him knowing that freezes me in place. The back of his hand strokes down the side of my face, and my breath stalls. His touch is soft, unlike the malevolent undertone of his crooning voice. “Would you know and trust me, then, if we were to fuck?”

I slap him across the face. He grabs me by the throat and shoves me back against the lockers, the empty metal boxes clanging and echoing through the room.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” I spit at him.

“And you’re the most difficult, infuriating woman I’ve ever met,” he counters, his lips hovering over mine.

We stare at each other in a charged silence, with nothing but the sound of our breathing between us. His hand and body keep me pinned to the lockers, but it’s not tight enough to block my airflow. It is enough to feel the rush of my pulse beneath his fingers as I watch him with a heady mixture of hate and lust that clouds rational thought.

He doesn’t say anything more, but he doesn’t move either, as if he’s waiting for me to decide what happens next. The mere idea that he’s relinquishing control to me for something that could be catastrophic to both of us makes me dizzy.

My hands dive into his hair, sliding my fingers between his short cut, before yanking his lips down on mine. His mouth opens without hesitation, both of us fighting for control of the other in a tangled tango of tongues.

A part of me is yelling at me to stop this. That I shouldn’t be giving in to him like this, but I shove her away. I’m not giving in to him. I’m taking control of what I’ve wanted for a long time.

Aiden was my first kiss. The first boy I’d fallen for back on the island, and I’ve never stopped wanting him. Even as much as I hate him today, I can’t deny the bottled-up desire that only stokes my irritation toward him, just waiting for the passion of anger to turn into this.

I kiss him with all my fury, hate, bitterness, and craving bundled up as one. I’m ready to drown in this feeling and let it consume us.

He rips away from me, using his hand on my throat to keep me still while he pants and eyes me warily. “You make no fucking sense.”

“Good,” I retort haughtily. “I’d hate to bore anyone.” My hands drag him back down to me, and he caves into our kiss again. He tastes like mint and a bit of bourbon, and I wonder idly if he’d been drinking when I first walked in on him in the living room. My hands slide down to his shirt, rubbing against the soft fabric, and then sliding up his chest underneath it. They pause over his pounding heart. It’s echoing the pace of my own as if they’re connected or one and the same.

His fingers twitch around my throat, and my hips grind into him instinctively, as if urging him on. I push my body further against him, straining against his hold on me until he does exactly as I’d hoped and slams me back against the lockers for my defiance.

Aiden pulls away again, but before I can protest, he spins me around and shoves me back against the lockers with an arm pressed firmly across my shoulders. He yanks my leggings and underwear down roughly, and then his palm cracks across my right ass cheek .

I jerk from the sting and inhale sharply. Then he’s rubbing the pain away, and all that’s left is a heated tingle beneath my skin.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to do that,” he whispers. The tingle spreads between my thighs, and I squeeze my eyes shut. There was a second when it hurt, but then it softened to an almost pleasurable ache. Fuck. Me.

He just spanked me like some errant child. I’m furious but also confused as fuck by how much I liked it.

Aiden’s hand is now brushing against the other cheek, and my thighs clench. I can’t tell if it’s because of his nearness or to prepare for another strike.

“I hate you,” I muster from my lips.

He pauses his movements. “What was that?”

“I hate you!” I shout at him.

Another smack rings down on my ass, followed by a caress that makes my blood sing. “I hate you too,” he growls back at me. “You’re such a brat. You can never do anything the right way or just follow directions. You have no patience.”

His words breathe fire into my soul, and I struggle against him. The sound of his palm on my flesh is almost as embarrassing as the way my body is lighting up for him. I can feel my thighs getting damp and the delicious ache for more there. My chest constricts, and anger bubbles to the surface as if each slap is drawing it out like poison from a wound.

“You’re a sadistic bastard,” I pant. The cool metal of the locker numbs my cheek while the rest of my body is on fire. “An egotistical dick who’s addicted to his phone and cares more about a building full of strangers than a girl who’d depended on him to keep her safe.”

The hand stroking my backside pauses, and I take that opportunity while his defenses are down to duck out of his hold and spin around. I shuck my leggings and underwear all the way off and jump up on the bench in between the row of lockers. Aiden turns around to follow me, so I easily hop on board, wrapping my arms and legs around him before he catches me.

I grab the longer hair at the top of his head and pull it back, so he’s forced to look up at me for a change. “Are you going to fuck me this time, or am I going to someone else?” I snarl at him.

Aiden scowls. “Jackson isn’t here.”

“I’ve had sex with Kellan, too.”

His nostrils flare, and his eyes darken to pitch black.

Yeah. Didn’t expect that, did ya, buddy?

His lips crash into mine, and I moan at his sudden avarice. I try keeping control, but he sweeps it out from under me like he’d only been playing with me before. The lockers bang again when he charges me into them, using them to keep me from falling as his hands work his clothes down and out of the way. I hardly feel any of it, though, too consumed by the slashing heat of his tongue and the feel of his body against mine.

His dick glides along my folds, taking up the moisture that has accumulated there for himself. I grind into it, desperate to fill the ache inside. The head of his cock pushes at my entrance in a split second of warning before I’m impaled against the lockers. I cry out from the sudden stretch, but it quickly changes to a groan of pleasure as he rocks and grinds his hips .

I clamp down on his shoulder at the rush of pleasure that has my head spinning.

He slams into me again and again, clearly furious over something, though I can’t tell if he’s punishing me or himself.

But I’m not here just for the ride, so I use my elbows to push off of the lockers and throw my body into him, and he falls a few steps back. It’s close enough to the lockers on the other side that I plant my feet against them, grip his shoulders with both hands, and start fucking him right back. I throw my body up and down his shaft, my breathing hard and labored with the effort, but fuck yes . Now it’s his turn.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he groans, clearly still enjoying it as much as he may be pissed about it.

“Yup. Fuck you,” I rasp.

Aiden growls and uses the momentum from me shoving off the lockers to send us backward, then he drops me down against the bench and picks up where he left off. “No. Fuck you ,” he growls. I try to sit up, ready to try flipping the tables again, but his hand goes for my throat and squeezes tight, pushing my head back against the bench. My hands grab his arm on instinct when my air supply cuts off.

Panic rises in my chest, but the lack of air gives me a head rush. Then his slick fingers are massaging and playing with my clit, and my entire body tightens with need. He rubs it furiously, and it feels like my body is being stretched and bowed inch by inch on a pulley until his hand slaps down on it, and I snap at his command.

His hand loosens on my throat at the same time, and I feel like I’m free falling off a cliff as my orgasm explodes through me. Aiden groans above me, but he sounds far off in the distance while I’m still falling apart to pieces. My body collapses back onto the bench as I gasp for air and blink to clear the black spots from my vision.

He has removed his shirt and is wiping my stomach clean. I look down and see that he pulled out and came on me, then drop my head back on the bench to focus on my breathing.

Now that I’m coming down from my high, reality sets back in. Like it always does.

I remember the words we’d been throwing at each other. How he’d spanked me. I’d liked it, but that’s not the point. He even won who was fucking who in the end, as much as I’d tried to prove to him I can’t be tamed.

“Would you know and trust me, then, if we were to fuck?”

Losing isn’t an option for me. I need to come out on top of this so he doesn’t think he’s won something.

“There,” I murmur, my chest still heaving while I work to recapture the oxygen I’d missed. “I fucked you, and I still don’t know and trust you. So, that’s not why I trust or believe in Jackson.”

Aiden stills. A tiny part of me panics, wanting to backpedal and fix it, but I press my lips together to keep quiet. I push myself upright to sit, straddling the bench while watching him.

“Excuse me?” he asks slowly, his voice soft but terrifying.

“You heard me.” I double down, even as my heart gallops.

His eyes close. When they open again, there’s nothing but contempt in his expression as he looks at me. “Is that all that was? You fuck people to prove a point? ”

I bristle at the implication, even if he’s not entirely wrong. It’s not why I wanted that. But it was the only way to protect myself from him if he were to think it was anything else. We both hate each other. How could I pretend it was anything more? “No, just you ,” I snap. “I apparently can’t find any way to make you trust me other than proving you wrong.”

“And you thought having sex was the answer?”

He’s making me sound more and more like an idiot, even though I was lying about why we just did that, which just pisses me off further. I snatch my clothes from the floor, tugging them on angrily. “Of course not!”

“If you want me to trust you, then just tell me what you’ve been hiding. It’s not that difficult.”

“Yes, it is,” I grind out. “You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through!”

“I would if you’d just tell me!”

“It’s none of your business! It has nothing to do with you. You stopped deserving any explanation the second you knocked me out on that island and left me for dead. You want to know why I almost left the other night? Because I know the moment you all learn anything more about my past, you’ll do the same thing you did last time. You’ll turn your backs on me. You’ll call me all the words that hurt me.” Tears threaten to spill from my eyes, but through sheer force of will, I hold them back. “You’ll go out of your way to give everything you have to complete strangers at your Guild, but when I needed help, you abandoned me!”

My throat constricts, and I swallow past a lump. “You want my trust enough to tell you my secrets? You have to earn it. Because as far as I’m concerned, you’re the one who can’t be trusted. You didn’t believe in me or ask questions when you found out about Vera. You are the one who left me defenseless and alone on the island while lying to everyone else that you didn’t find me. You threw me into a hole in the floor while letting me believe you were trying to imprison me. And you used the smallest trust I had left in you to trick me into putting those handcuffs on, only to lock me up because I didn’t do what you wanted.”

Liquid brims my eyes, and my hands shake at my sides. I fist them to get control, even as my soul cracks while I list out every time Aiden has failed me.

His eyes are wide as he stares at me. I don’t know if I’ve finally gotten through to him, if he’s just taken aback by me finally opening up this much to him, or what, but I don’t give him the chance to respond.

I’ve opened up my heart to him, and I can’t bear to let him cut it again. He’s already proven to me he can’t be trusted with it. I take the scraps of myself that remain, bundling them close to my chest, and walk out.