Page 44 of Dance of Thorns

I know how it ends.

It ends with my father’s men kicking in the door, too late. Lark is already dead. The madman who’s kept us here has also beencooking meth in the bathroom, and one of my father’s men’s bullets has ignited the chemicals..

The fire is consuming the building, about to bring the roof down on my head just as the Marchetti soldiers shoot the monster.

Slowly, like morning mist evaporating from a frozen lawn, the dream melts away and another one takes its place.

I’m used to one nightmare rolling into another. Sometimes, after I revisit that house of horrors, I get to live the first few days of heroin detox all over again. Or psychotherapy, relaying my trauma to strangers who study me like a monkey in a zoo. Or any number of hellish nights I stumbled my way through—strung out, drowning in my survivor’s guilt.

All while trying to remember who the fuck I am.

But this time, the next dream is different. There’s no nightmare. No trauma. No doctors or needles or hating myself while I load my next hit.

This time, it’s warm and sensual, sending ripples of heated electricity sizzling across my skin and heat pooling between my legs as my hands grasp the sheets.

My breath catches, my hips rise and fall. My legs spread wider, wantingmore more moreas I feel fingers plunge into my pussy, stroking against my g spot.

Fuck.

Yes.

I moan, not even recognizing the sound as coming from my own lips as I writhe beneath the rough, demanding touch. The fingersstroke in and out, curling deep, a strong palm grinding against my needy clit as I whimper and beg.

“More,” I mewl softly into the dream ether. “Give me more.”

Other fingers drag up my body, sliding over my breasts. They circle and then land on a pebbled, eager nipple, twisting and pulling and roughly pinching in the way my body craves and always responds to.

Pain. Fear. Danger. Domination.

The four fucked-up horsemen of my apocalyptic pleasure. The ones that make me squirm and writhe.

The ones that make me wish I was capable of actually coming.

Maybe I could orgasm in the Before Times. I mean, I had a boyfriend, Scott. I know I was on birth control, because I found a pack of pills tucked behind some books in my room a month or so after I was rescued. So I’d been having sex.

I just don’t remember if Icame.

I certainly haven't ever since my ordeal. I can bring myself close…so close that I cantasteit. But it never happens.

Even in goddamn dreams.

I whimper, feeling my walls squeeze tight around the fingers roughly thrusting into my cunt. The ones pinching my nipple mercilessly drag across to the other side, viciously twisting it too as I cry out a wrenched sob of pleasure.

The hand pushes higher, over my collarbone, up to my neck and jaw. Fingers push into my mouth, thrusting across my tongue. They start to plunge in and out, fucking my mouth in time with the ones fucking my pussy.

Everything is hot. The air brushes over my skin like an erotic touch. The sheets tease against me. The low masculine groan of approval rumbles in my ears.

Wait—

My eyes fly open as lucidity rips me from the half-sleep I was just floating in. Instantly—instantly—my gaze clashes violently with his.

Bane.

He’s looming over my bed, right over me, two fingers ramming into my pussy with loud, wet squelching sounds. His other fingers thrust into my mouth and over my tongue, just shy of gagging me as pleasure ripples through my core.

I try to cry out, but he just keeps finger-fucking my mouth. I squirm and buck and thrash, but he doesn’t budge. He just smiles down at me, a wild, venomous, unhinged look in his dark eyes as he shoves his fingers into me.

“Stop!” I finally scream. “Get off me!”