Page 69 of Along for the Ride

“Fuck you, Mickey. You don’t own me anymore. But for the record, I didn’t plan on saying yes to him.” I turn to Gentry. “I planned to say yes, sir.”

“I got an idea,” Gentry says, his eyes lighting up like sadistic Christmas lights. “Bring him to the pole and handcuff him. Just like they had her.”

Karson does as he’s told, dragging a flailing Mickey across the bloody hardwoods. The metallic click of the handcuffs sends an eerie shiver up my spine.

“Keep his legs pinned,” Gentry adds.

Karson holds him by the legs, getting obnoxiously overzealous about whatever he thinks Gentry has planned. He’s a jumping bean of dark excitement. Gentry drags me to Mickey and steps on his right leg, moving Karson’s hand away. Gentry pushes me down on my knees between Mickey’s thrashing legs.

“If he kicks her, slice him from throat to asshole,” Gentry says as he drops to his knees and leans over to replace his hold on Mickey’s leg.

I hope he doesn’t plan for me to suck Mickey’s dick. I’m in the precise position for that, and I’m not fucking interested. I open my mouth to protest, but Gentry hands me his knife.

“Carve something into his fucking gut,” he says.

Karson rips open Mickey’s shirt, and he furiously kicks and bucks in front of me. “Lee, this isn’t you!” he pleads. “Look what they’re making you do!”

My hold tightens around the handle. “They aren’tmakingme do anything.”

“Come on, I love you! Remember all the things I did for you? You wouldn’t even be alive right now if it weren’t for me.”

Gentry growls behind me, and I aim the blade’s tip at Mickey’s skin. He draws his hairy abdomen in, trying to avoid the cold steel. I want to do it. I want to make him hurt like he made me hurt. But just like before, I’m stuck in place. Even after everything he did to me, I can’t do what I want to do. My morals draw swords and charge at the shadows in my soul, and I’m cemented in place as I wait to learn my fate.

Karson puts his hand over mine and depresses the knife into Mickey’s flesh. “The first cut is the hardest. Not for me, but for most.” He draws his hand away to control Mickey’s renewed fight.

Mickey releases a scream, and I can almost hear a violin song woven somewhere in that sound. I kind of like hearing his pain.

Without any more help from Karson, I finish the first letter. The channel fills with blood as his skin spreads, and I move on to the next. As I transfer years of pain into the knife’s handle, Gentry’s free hand rides up my thigh and moves over my ass. He lifts my shirt, bunching it at my hips.

Mickey starts to slip in and out of consciousness from the pain, but I keep carving.

“Stay awake,” Gentry says as he leans forward and smacks Mickey’s cheek. “I want you to see me set free what you thought you could own.”

Gentry’s warm cock presses against me as I begin another letter. He leans me forward, nearly pushing my face into Mickey’s blood so he can spit warm saliva onto my pussy. My eyes meet Mickey’s for the first time—truly meet—and I see anguish on his face. It’s so much more than the physical pain I’m causing.

And I love it.

Gentry pulls my hips toward him and pushes inside me with an unstifled hunger. His hard thrust makes me gasp, and I blow a pleasure-soaked breath across the gouges in Mickey’s skin.

“You are all so fucked up,” Mickey gathers the strength to say.

“Affirmative,” Karson says.

“Cut him while I fuck you, wanderer,” Gentry says. “Keep getting your vengeance.”

I try to do as he tells me, but every thrust pushes me forward and smears the letter I’m working on. But I keep going. Mickey releases pained groans in front of me, Gentry utters pleasurable ones behind me, and I’m swept into a vortex of conflicting emotions around and inside me.

I don’t need Karson’s help with the next letter, but I look over at him. He’s nearly frothing at the mouth over what he’s witnessing: Gentry fucking me while I carve my feelings into my ex’s belly.

“Keep going,” Gentry says. “I won’t last much longer like this. Your pussy needs to be claimed by me again. By someone who will kill anyone who tries to take you away from me.”

“Or me,” Karson whispers in a voice so low I almost don’t hear it. It makes my heart swell until I think it might cut off the next breath to my lungs.

I finish the last letter just as Gentry slams his hips into me a final time. He holds himself inside me, savoring me as he fills me, then he leans over to look at what I wrote. In haphazard chicken scratch, I have scrawled a single word in all caps.

CUNT

Gentry wraps his arm around my chest and squeezes me to his. “Good fucking girl. Welcome to the dark side.”

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