Page 65 of Hurt for Me

The sex was rougher than how she remembered it. In the moment, it had felt like they were in their own two-person orchestra, each an instrument they knew how to play together in perfect accord. Watching now, it was much more primal, like two animals wanting to devour eachother. She couldn’t look away, not until the video abruptly ended while she and Dayton were still going at it nearly two hours later.

She checked the time. It was almost midnight. She didn’t know how she could fall asleep after what she’d just watched, her body incongruently needful when she knew she should be scared. She knew the white-haired fucker had sent the video as a threat, but she didn’t want to think about it yet. Her edibles were kicking in hard, but her mind, however, was wide awake.

Just as she thought about calling Dayton, her cell phone rang, startling the crap out of her. It was him.

“Did you get the link too?” he asked.

“Yeah.” He was so quiet she could hear an ambulance’s siren in the background. When the siren passed by her neighborhood, she heard it on his end too. “Where are you?”

“Outside your house.”

Rae sat up, her head swimming in the edible fog. “I’m coming to the door,” she said and hung up her phone.

Dayton was standing on her porch wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his face full of wonder as if he didn’t know how he’d arrived there on his own.

“Come in.”

They stood in her entryway, a pregnant silence heavy between them as they stared at each other. She realized she was wearing her old, oversize Betty Boop nightshirt, possibly the most unattractive piece of clothing she owned, and she cringed internally.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he finally said, his voice low. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come over like this.”

An image from the video flashed through her mind, his hands roughly squeezing her breasts as he took her from behind on the grass, and her stomach tightened. “No, I’m glad you did.”

His eyes wandered down past her collarbone to where Betty Boop’s Cupid’s bow lips blew a kiss to him. “The video they took, it’s a warning.” He looked back up. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I know I should be freaking out about it, but right now ...” She wanted him. She wanted to know what it would be like with him, to breathe in the woodsy scent of his skin without being drugged against her will. He seemed to be thinking the same because he wouldn’t stop charting the lines of her breasts with his gaze. “How much of it did you watch?”

He didn’t answer her; he didn’t have to. She knew he’d watched all of it, too, when he held her face and kissed her lips like he was hungry for them. He pressed her against her coat closet, his hands cupping her breasts as she grabbed a handful of his ass.

It was crazy—she knew it—but it felt too good to question the timing of what they were doing. She was tired of feeling untethered, like she’d float away if she allowed the what ifs to take over. She wanted to escape into the pleasure she knew he could give her, and she wanted him to find escape with her too.

He slid his hand up her nightshirt and groaned when he discovered she didn’t have underwear on, his fingers finding her slick and ready. Her mind and body were too overwhelmed by the sensations of his fingers on and inside her, mixed with the effects of the cannabis, and she stopped him before her light-headedness could make her pass out.

“You okay?” he whispered. “Do you want to do this?”

“Yes.” She paused, her heart racing. “Just give me a minute. I’m really high from my edibles.”

“Seriously?”

She grinned. “I’ve got a card.”

“Lucky.” He caressed her face, his thumb grazing her lower lip, and began kissing her again, slower and more deliberately. He paused, seeing if she was okay, and she nodded.

Then she thought of Lily upstairs. “Let’s go to my bedroom.”

Quietly, they crept to her room on the first floor. As soon as she shut and locked her door, Dayton pulled off her nightshirt and stood a moment taking in her nakedness in the lamplight.

“I could look at you forever,” he said and paused. “This is a bad idea, what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

She helped him remove his clothes, running her hands over his well-toned body and pausing at the bite mark she had made on his upper arm. She pressed her fingers into the bruising it had caused, gently at first and then harder, and Dayton sucked in a sharp breath, one of her favorite sounds. He captured her hand in his, surprise in his expression.

Then he smirked. “You really do like it, don’t you? Giving pain.”

“You have no idea how much.”

He moved her hand back to the bite mark. “You didn’t ask first. Do you want to hurt me?”

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