Page 94 of Manacled Hearts

If he notices how I clench my thighs together, or my quickening breaths, he doesn’t say a thing. I shut my mouth and settle back in the soft suede seat of his SUV, silently thankful that it’s not the normal leather that sticks uncomfortably to my bare skin and wait for this annoying and disturbingly attractive man to take me to his home.

Should I protest more? Probably.

My hands, achy and marked with too much drying blood, tremble, and my legs do the same, for an entirely different reason.

I’m startled when his hand moves from the center console and hovers so close to my thigh. I watch it, silently urging it to drop over my flesh, to clutch it, hold it, anything. Instead, he moves to press a button on the dashboard and warm air blows into the car. I look at him and he steals one short glance at me before occupying himself with the road ahead.

“You looked cold,” he explains himself. When I don’t answer, he continues, “You’re shivering. You should have not worn such a short skirt.”

I’m about to say I’m not cold, but I stop myself.

“It’s not that short.”

Way to make it awkward Evelyn. You could have just said thanks. It’s not like you’re not silently imagining your sister not being in the car, his hand on your thigh, rubbing down until he finds the seam of your skirt, then runs upward until another seam touches his fingers, and then, without no notice at all, he—

“Are we there yet?”

My sister’s excited, high-pitched tone makes me straighten in the seat. This time it doesn’t escape Finnigan’s notice how I squeeze my thighs together, biting my bottom lip to suppress the need from spilling from my mouth.

Christ, we better be there soon, because this car is starting to feel too small, the air too hot, his proximity too much.

“In a minute.”

He takes a familiar turn and there we are, in front of the apartment building where I used to live with Katya. Considering that I was face to face with Frankie B not even an hour ago, it feels like no time has passed at all since I first lived here.

But it has. I’m not the same weak person I was then, and if Frankie B dares to come after me or my sister again, I will be ready.

He will pay.

CHAPTER 21

EVELYN

I wake up with a start, drenched in sweat from the grueling dream I just had. There was nothing violent about it. The nightmare part is waking up from it, unable to feel it any longer, because he was in it.

I blink several times, acknowledging my surroundings through the darkness—I’m in Finnigan’s spare bedroom and it’s still the middle of the night. It doesn’t smell like him though, and I feel a touch of sadness at that. The moment I got out of the car my adrenaline crash was so bad, I could barely stand. If I was in my apartment, I would have stayed up, alert, but here… with him… I crashed in his safety. He showed me the bathroom so I could clean up while he looked after my sister, then took me straight to bed, promising to read Maya to sleep in the bedroom next to mine.

The tiredness struck me to the bones, and I went with everything he told me to do. He gave me a small bag Mamaw June apparently packed for me in the few seconds she had before leaving our apartment, and I crawled in bed after changing into a comfy, oversized T-shirt I found in a thrift store. Sleep took me fast.

I turn to my side, shoving my hand under the pillow, and force my eyes closed, urging myself back to sleep. But in this position my thighs press together and the ache that follows between them pulls a dirty gasp out of my mouth. They’re so slippery, so hot, so unbearable.

Flipping on my belly, I bury my face in the pillow, and close my eyes. I’m back in that dream, filled with ecstasy and decadence, where Finnigan’s hand was clutching my breast, his mouth smothering mine, kissing me deeply, and his cock was sheathed so deep inside me, it ached so good.

I can’t bear it anymore!

I turn once again on my back, cursing myself for taking this man’s word as law. He told me we can’t cross that wretched line of his, he warned me not to try, not to even think about him in that way, even when I touched myself. I didn’t agree with the man, but for some odd reason, I complied with the order.

Christ, I’m an idiot. He would never know if I did it, if I crossed his damn imaginary line, and he has no control over me. It’s not his business what I do between my own sheets.

Only, these are his sheets, not mine. Defying his orders here feels perfect, so much dirtier. My skin turns hotter, the T-shirt too constricting, my drenched cotton panties too tight, and I rip them off and throw them across the room, into the darkness. Now the sheets feel slightly cool against my nakedness, and I sigh at the feel of them.

It feels better. But only for a moment, until I close my eyes and that wretched dream is back, his body over mine, his hands touching me, and I swallow back a moan because now, I’m annoyed. He’s so cruel and smug, forbidding me to think of him when I touch myself. He thinks he’s doing me a favor, forcing me to distance myself from him and his line.

Screw him. There are others out there I can fantasize about as I touch myself, and even if I do choose him, just because he wants to torture himself due to some moral rule he self-imposed, it doesn’t mean I have to follow suit.

The fire hums low in my belly, and I press my thighs together once more, hoping to relieve some of that heat. Of course, it burns brighter, my taught nipples grazing against the sheet enhancing the feel of it further.

“Screw this!” I throw the sheet off of me, reveling in the brush of air over my sensitive skin.

---