Page 20 of Good Girl
Inhaling a dramatic breath, he bundles the cloth in his hand then waltzes to the kitchen. “If he lets things get pent up or I tease him too much, he can lose control.” He returns and sits on the couch, dragging my body into his lap before dropping a bag of chips beside us.
“He had a rough childhood, and then he was taken advantage of by an evil woman, so it’s left him…” He looks out the window with a stoic expression, and my heart lurches.
“Broken,” I whisper. Visions of the scars that decorate his skin bleed into my mind. Recalling the ones on his back—long, like whip marks—has anger bubbling inside me.
Vance’s jaw pulses, his hand tightening on my thigh. “No, I don’t like to think of him as broken, just someone with needs that only some can handle. I can handle Tristan.” Trailing lazy strokes up my spine, he speaks with conviction. I feel a sense of relief, knowing that they have each other.
Regardless, a rock remains lodged in my throat, so I sigh. “How long will you make him stay in there?” My gaze drifts back to the hallway, wanting to check on him.
Following my line of sight, Vance sighs and strokes the pad of his finger over my cupid’s bow. “As long as he needs. If I don’tpunish him, he’ll punish himself. Trust me, this is what’s best for him.”
I’ve only known Vance a couple of days, but oddly, I do trust him.
“He was like a wild animal.” I squirm, feeling the throb between my thighs as I remember how primal he was. So feral, in an animalistic way. I hate that someone made him that way by treating him poorly, yet it turned me on.Heturns me on and makes me want to keep him safe, to love him like he deserves. I shake that notion from my brain. It’s crazy to even think about love, I’m just in a haze of lust.
“He’s my devil, you’re my angel, and I’ll defile you both, staining those wings and fucking that halo with his horns until you start to question which one of you is which.”
He grunts, slapping my thigh. “Now rest and watch the movie.”
Yes, sir.
TEN
Tristan
It’s been a while since I lost all restraint like I did with Vance today.
After taking a cold shower, I pace the room naked, trying to recall the look on Poppy’s face when I fucked Vance. She seemed to enjoy having us both that way, which only fueled my appetite for savagery.
My need to fuck and punish her has had me tilting on the edge for days, weeks. Months, if I’m being honest. I don’t usually deprive myself of the things I desire, but with Poppy, I had refused myself. Not only because she is my employee so I didn’t want gossip or a lawsuit, but I believed her to be too innocent for my depravity. I’m so fucking glad I was wrong. That I gave in to the urges. Now that I’ve had her, things will never be the same again. There’s something different about her. She’s so pure in her desire.
Running a rough hand through my hair, I exhale a sharp breath and look to the closed door. I want to be out there with them but need punishment as much as I needed that release.
Vance entered my life at a time when I desperately needed someone, a time when I felt like I was drowning. We taught each other how to manage our desires, navigate the precariousbalance, and dance on the knife’s edge without sliding off, wounding ourselves on the way down.
He healed parts of me that other people broke, people who were supposed to care for me yet damaged me with their own perversions.
I had a family once, a horrible one, but one all the same. My father was a cruel man who liked to dish out chastisement even if it wasn’t deserved, and my mother was a corrupted soul he found along the way who he molded into his own special kind of abuser before impregnating her with me.
My childhood was one of beatings and sexual abuse, yet my mom’s mistreatment was worse somehow. Unlike my dad, she didn’t abuse me physically. No, she preferred mental abuse, offering me affection and then starving me off it on a whim. Afterward, she’d hand me out to her friends like I was a party favor.
When they both burned up in a fire, I didn’t feel sadness, I felt relief. That was until I was bounced around from one sick bastard to the next, eventually landing in the clutches of a woman who could smell the fucked-up shadow that lived over me like a second skin, using me to feed and sate her own darkness. Sometimes, I still hear her voice, even though she’s long past dead. My hand still curls around the phantom hilt of the blade she would force me to use to slice my penance into my flesh.
It took me years to trust myself with people again, and I’m not that person anymore. But occasionally, I do lose myself to carnal rage, consumed by the hunger to take what I want. When Vance pushes me to the brink of madness, I crave the punishment my fucked-up brain convinces me I deserve.
Collapsing on my bed, I inhale our mixed scents, and my cock twitches. My hands tremble, wanting to take it in my palm, but I don’t.
We’ve never shared a woman in one of our bedrooms before, we always have them sign a contract and fuck in the room we permit them to use while they’re here, then Vance goes to sleep in his room and I go to mine. We don’t move them in either, only allowing them to stay while we fuck and send them on their way as soon as the fucking ends.
Poppy isn’t like the women before her, though… She’s different. There are no rules—which both terrifies and thrills me. She’s like a gift intended for someone else that you accidentally open, realizing you’ve been waiting for it your whole life. Something you’re not willing to return to the rightful recipient.
I’d skin anyone who tried to take her from us. She’s ours.Mine.And I’m keeping her.
The way she called my name, moaned it like it means something, like I’m worthy of someone as pure as her… I’d never tell her this, but I’m grateful her fiancé prefers cock to pussy since, it means I don’t have to kill him to keep her.
This is a new feeling for me. I’ve always been afraid to want, to have someone touch me and say my name the way she did, in case it’s a trick, and she’ll take it all away in the next breath.
I wonder if Vance realizes that he doesn’t go home and marry any of the women his parents pick out for him because he’s already taken, because he’s mine, and I’m his. And just like with him, when I truly claim something, it’s forever. I claimed him a long time ago, and now Poppy will be ours forever too. I refuse to allow anything or anyone to take them from me.
