18. 1994
BUNNY
For once, I thank the windowless room. It makes time feel endless.
"Texas?" I can hear it now that he says it, the subtle twang in his voice. It's masked by the deep timbre and low tone, but it's there. "So, you're a southern boy."
"Born and bred," he states plainly. Arms behind his head, he stares up at the ugly, water-stained popcorn ceiling. Multiple times, as the hours have passed, I've asked if he would prefer the chair he offered to me. It's nowhere near comfortable, but it has to be better than the itchy, crusty, rock-hard floor. But again, he refuses.
"I'm used to it."
"From home or from…" I don't bother finishing. We both know the other option.
"Both," he responds instantly, utterly unfazed. "I was a ranch hand for my uncle back home. He didn't care for me much. Made me sleep in the barn with the animals after I was done. So the floor is nothing new."
"The barn floor?"
"Mhm." He grins, reliving the moment. "It's where I spent my nights and days. I ate, drank, slept, and washed with those creatures. They were the only family I had, or…the only family that wanted me, I should say."
"I know what that's like," I remark quietly, as I think of Missy—the only family I ever really had. The thought of her sends me into a dark mindset. I promised her I'd make it big, that I'd be the model on billboards so I could steal her away from Denise's punishing home.
I promised, and I failed.
I failed her.
"How'd you end up here?" I ask, swiftly wiping away the fallen tear on my cheek before he looks up from the floor. I realize as he looks my way how rude that question is, but he hasn't touched me yet. So, maybe I'll be safe with a little push.
I wait for his answer with my ankle in hand, but instead, I get, "Come here." My pride tells me to disobey his commands, but I find myself sliding off the uncomfortable wood, crawling until I'm sitting gingerly by his side.
Even lying down, he towers over me when rising onto a single elbow. "If I'm going to bear all my secrets to you," he states, gravel pouring down his throat, "then you're going to lay quietly and take all I have to give while I do it."
My breath catches in my chest as he spreads a palm across the length of my jaw, holding it tight enough to drop my back onto the ground slowly. He hovers above me as I settle into the scratchy carpet, trapping my pulse in his grasp while devouring me with a simple look. Any refusal I held on to falls to complete nothingness as I spread my legs apart, making it easier for him to settle between my thighs.
"What did you want to know?" he asks huskily, then stooping low, his lips graze the edge of my jaw.
"Um," I falter, losing my train of thought as his tongue pokes out to taste the flesh of my neck. "Um."
His hands, which were once placed at my sides, bracketing me in place, slide up the length of my torso, brushing against my trembling rib cage. Grazing against the quaking underside of my breast, he moves to trap my hands above my head. "Little, little Bunny. Don't be scared."
I should be. After feeling how both of my wrists fit into his single palm, I should be terrified of the strength he possesses. Unlike Marone or Lakens, Cade's muscle doesn't ooze with malice. I feel no threat in his power, only something solid to hold on to.
I blame it on the need for comfort, a connection. I blame it on the wetness between my thighs and the hole in my heart. I blame it on the fucking world because it's easier to do that than admit I want to sink into his touch.
The blood that hides in the creases of his skin, I want it on me as well. I want to look as dirty as I feel inside. He knows it, too. Cade knows how much I need this when I arch against his lips as he drags them across my skin. I can feel his smirk on my bruised ribs as he crawls down the length of my torso. Still, he keeps my wrists shackled above my head. It's torturous, wanting to touch him and being unable.
"Don't move," he orders in a slow, syrup-filled tone, releasing me one finger at a time. I wait for a second before testing his word, but freeze instantly when the tip of his blade runs up the side of my thigh. "I said," he rasps, bringing it low, "don't move."
Sensing the edge draw closer to my center, I don't think I could move if I tried. I stay deathly still underneath his exploring blade, keeping my breaths trapped in my chest as the tip approaches my core.
I can feel his eyes on me, but I keep mine shut, scared that I'll see my excitement reflecting in his gaze. I don't think I'm strong enough to face that side of me, at least not now. But I pushed him before. Now it's my turn.
"Look at me." I don't, but then his coos come closer, pouring satin into my ears.
"Look at me, pretty girl." That almost gets me, but it's my name on his tongue that rips me open. "Look at me, Bunny. I want to see myself as you do when I push you open."
He steals my gasp the exact moment he steals my sight, inhaling me while gazing into my eyes. The tip of his blade is painless against my clit. It's his fingers that bring on the first sting. Two of them glide effortlessly into me, spreading me wide, exposing my center to the heat radiating between us. My hands are free now, and still, they remain motionless above my head as he pulses two digits against my walls.
The tip of the knife holds the same pressure against my bundle of nerves as he glides my slickness around and around. It adds an extra sensation to the fire burning through me, making my rigid posture unbearable. "C-Cade." My voice trembles as I finally move to touch his shoulder. He freezes the second we connect, the blade's pressure just a bit harder, his fingers halting against my cervix.
"Cade," I mutter again, stronger this time, more sure of what needs to be said. An inferno burns behind his glare as he waits for me to continue, but it's what lurks beneath the surface that I crave.
"More." Pain.
Loneliness.
Power.
He wants a say. "I want more, Cade. Give me more."
It's as if that simple phrase filled his chest with life, as if my desire for him stirred a beat in an empty soul. So much has been taken from me. I can only imagine how much he's lost being here, too.
"More," I repeat, an urgency in my tone as I allow myself to want. "More."
The knife is gone then, clattering somewhere behind his heaving back to grip my hips with both hands. I didn't even feel it when his fingers slipped from my insides, the yearning overtaking my senses, becoming too much to comprehend anything else.
Our time is running out. Somehow, we both know it. It makes us clumsy—sloppy. Yet, this is the most fun I've had in ages. His fumbling hands bring about a painful smile on my face, and my full-body blush is bleeding into him. By the time I'm naked beneath him, we're laughing, real laughter that turns our guts into knots.
What the fuck are we doing? I stop and think about it for barely a second before I rise on both elbows to meet his open lips. He inhales me the second our mouths connect, swallowing the moan that passes through my lips as he presses his tip against my opening.
A tear slips from my eye as he fully enters me, not from pain but from finally having a choice. I picked Cade. He picked me. We wanted this, and having a choice is something neither of us has had the privilege of before.
Agony rips through my veins as Cade fills me with aching slowness, almost as if he's memorizing the scarred, silken texture of my walls with the head of his cock. Grasping the corded muscles in his biceps, I release a rumbled groan, sensing him deeper than all the men who came before—all the men who have forced their way past my barriers to leave their indents on my insides. In this moment, as Cade touches me, as I touch him, I'm blinded by the light bursting between us, caving under the flame that splits my soul in two.
As the weeks have gone by, I've experienced a hell like no other, a darkness that can only be home to demons. I thought I was going to be in the presence of one tonight, handed to a wolf who wields a blade. Instead, I find myself caged beneath a man who drives in and out of me gracefully. He sucks my pebbled nipple between full lips, pulling with just enough force to have my nails digging moons into his carved back. I moan a name I only learned hours ago while he whispers mine against the trembling, sweating skin of my clavicle.
The speed of his thrusts increases with every groan of his name, plunging into me until all I can muster is unintelligible sounds. My back is burned raw from scraping against the coarse and filthy carpet, but it adds to the friction of our bodies. With a rapid need, we paw at each other, fumble, and roll with unmatched desperation, clawing until we're bruised, and I take my place on top.
"Well?" Cade huffs as I freeze, running his hands from my swollen chest to take my ass in a bruising grip. "Fuck me, Bunny. Show me what makes you so fucking special to the devil." It's the first time Marone's name has been mentioned tonight. Not entirely, but we both know who the devil really is. The mere mention of him does something to the both of us. There's a fury on his face that must match my own. The heat of it drips into his chest, where I place my hands before lifting onto his cock.
It feels so much larger from this position, almost impossible to fully fit inside me, but I do it because I crave his length almost as much as I wish to forget the others. I ride him until he replaces the strangers…
He meets me halfway.
With every drop of my ass, he rises to slam back into me, colliding into a wave of bliss. We beat our bodies, punish each other for the horrors we've faced. We fuck out our guilt, hate, and shame. We fuck until our throats grow hoarse, our muscles burn, and my ecstasy running down his shaft melds with opaque, warm come.
He finishes in me with no concern, but I climb off him quickly, panic seizing my throat.
"I can't be pregnant. I can't have a baby." Not here. Not like this.
Running his fingers through my damp, coppery curls, Cade stares emptily at the ceiling, all life drained from his face and spilling out of me. "You won't. They won't allow it."
Somehow, that almost feels worse.
In a flash, that comfort we finally caught flees, leaving us once again with bleeding wounds and raw hearts. I sit naked at his feet, leaking onto the flooring while he remains in a supine position. Our thoughts are so loud, yet I know there's not a sound in the room.
It's defeating.
"I wanted to fight." Cade"s sudden statement frightens me out of my huddled arrangement, piquing my interest enough to sit straight.
"What?"
"I wanted to fight," he states again, eyes unmoving. "I wanted to become the greatest boxer of all time…be the next Ali. My parents couldn't stand to hear me speak of it, so they shipped me off to my uncle's. He was worse. Never even bothered to ask before sticking me in the pen with the animals."
I feel a diluted sense of agony when he speaks of his previous life. His voice carries no note of the pain of being abandoned, but it's his eyes that expose the truth. They darken with unshed tears when describing sleeping among the sheep and manure, flickering faintly when he says he"s never been wanted. I want to break for him but choke everything back when he continues.
"Texas has a lot of land. A lot of empty buildings to find trouble."
I fight to keep the emotion out of my throat, asking, "And did you?"
He smirks. "A fuck-ton of it." Before continuing, Cade pulls up his sweats, covering his softened, still impressive length, and hands me the beat-up blanket. He waits for me to drape it across my shoulders, watching with heavy eyes as I conceal my nakedness.
"There was an empty barn in the field just past Friedrich's Bait Shop. I didn't know much of it, only that a few of the guys from town would gather there every Friday at two in the morning. I never had the courage to go. Too worried about the beating my uncle would give me if he found out. But…"
I wait. "But one night, after a violent, fucking brutal beating, I realized he was always going to find a reason to whip me, so…why not go? What was the worst thing that could happen?"
We end up here.
"It was a fight club—something for the men around town to work off and release their stress from work and home. It was fucking incredible, Bunny." He says my name with the ease of a lover, lightening with joy once again. "It wasn't anything to brag about, just a dirt floor with a makeshift ring, but I had enough adrenaline to kill a bear. I fought six matches that night, and I won them all." And just like that, the light fades to nothing.
Cade springs forward, sitting straight with his lips inches from mine. "I was on top of the fucking world that night, and then I met him."
"Who?" I ask, compelled to fall closer. We breathe each other in.
"He goes by a few names, I learned, but I knew him as Bruno. He said I had great talent and had a friend in New York who could get me where I needed to go."
Cade goes on, explaining how this strange man laid out his dreams in gold. In a flash, this eighteen-year-old boy saw the life he had always wanted, the goals he set, accomplished. This Bruno assured his friend would get him to high places. So, Cade left, with nothing but the air of a promise and the word of a stranger.