Page 16 of Jack Rabbit (Dark Trails #1)

16

JACK

S o I guess I feel like a bit of a heel. Or a lot of one. I just assumed he was a rich kid who needed to be taught a lesson — somebody with no responsibilities or cares in the world who could take a stroll through the woods on a weekday afternoon and then laugh off the potentially serious consequences of jerking off in a public park. But really, he’s just reckless. I shouldn’t like that as much as I do.

I flat-out didn’t consider that he might work a shift job with early hours. And I know he was telling me the truth about his financial reality. The ramshackle house in the sketchy neighborhood where I dropped him off isn’t the type of place you’d live if you had any other options.

It nags at me, frustrating my attempts to get back to sleep after I wake up at an ungodly hour. I give up lying in my bed and get up to pace outside on the deck, staring up at the cloudless, starry sky. Normally, I’d just rub one out and count on the post-orgasm endorphins to lull me back into unconsciousness, but I’m afraid my frothing, rabid libido will steer my filthy thoughts in the one direction I can’t have them pointed: Straight to a big-eyed, pouty-lipped bookworm with messy dark-blond hair and a nascent masochistic streak nearly as unhinged and uninhibited as the sharpest edges of my sadism.

I don’t just want to hurt him. I want to possess him with a ferocity and totality that I’ve never felt before. So I’ve tried to warn him. I’ve tried to scare him off and make it crystal fucking clear that he shouldn’t be messing with me. I’ve made sure he knows damn well that I can and will break him. The problem is that he thinks he wants that. But he doesn’t have the slightest idea what that really means.

I want his pain and fear and shame to belong to me.

I’m not a nice guy. Not by a long shot. Arguably, I’m not even a good guy. By pushing him away, I’m protecting Bunny the only way I know how. Because he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t have any idea what I’m capable of.

I want to make him cry so hard he pukes. I want to force him to choose where he wants my belt to land next when he doesn’t have an inch of skin between his shoulders and thighs that’s not already red and tender. I want to paddle his ass black and blue so I can listen to him sobbing while I stroke my cock. I want to jerk off on his face and watch as his tears wash it off, then bind his wrists behind him and force him to lick up every drop off the floor.

I meant the threats about tattooing I hissed in his ear that first night. Bruises and welts fade. I want him marked permanently as my property: Something private, depraved and degrading — I want every glimpse of it in the mirror to flood him with shame — meant for my eyes only, and something else that publicly identifies him as my possession, and tells the world that nobody except me will ever hurt him.

I have fantasies about collaring him, locking him into a dog cage and making him whine when he needs to come out and piss. I want to command him to hump my leg, then jolt him with a shock collar when he does, and slap his face if he tries to speak anything other than his safeword. And when I do let him speak, I want the first thing I hear to be pleading — not for me to stop, but for more. I want his only desire in the world to be to surrender to me so I can shatter him, over and over. I want so badly to break him, then embrace all his fragile shards and put him back together, just so I can do it all over again.

He needs to stay the hell away from me. For his own damn good.

F uck. I can’t help it. I’m already hard thinking about exactly what I told myself I wasn’t going to think about. I can’t understand or control the intensity of our inexplicable chemistry, which feels as intoxicating as it does frightening. Bunny’s submission sends me into a flow state, giving me the sensation that I’m following a script that already exists. Every word and action feels both exhilaratingly instinctive and terrifyingly inevitable.

I jerk down my pajama pants and flop into a deck chair. Breathing hard, I squeeze my eyes shut and fist my cock as images tumble through my mind like a kaleidoscope of beautiful fragments: him at my feet, eyes filled with tears, so beautifully and pathetically needy. I can hear him in my mind, begging for me. I imagine shoving my cock down his throat to shut him up, feeling his pleas turn into whimpers that vibrate in his throat as I force my way into it, then unloading a torrent of come inside of him, watching him swallow frantically to get it all down as it dribbles out the sides of his mouth.

Depending on the mood he caught me in, I might slap him across the face, maybe use my cock to wipe up what he spilled and feed it to him. I imagine him moaning in pleasure as I did, whispering a thank you to me after he’d swallowed it all down. It’s the mental image of that sweetly submissive, doe-eyed thank you that sends me over the edge, and the intensity of my orgasm catches me by surprise when it breaks like a wave over me and leaves me gasping.

T en minutes later, I’m back in bed and staring at the ceiling, still wide-awake. I sigh and grab my phone, looking up the local auto-parts stores to see which one opens the earliest. I’ve got a plan to atone for at least one of my screwups. And I’m going to do it in a way that’s not going to give Bunny any false hope or lead him on.

I’m waiting at the door when the store opens, and I’m driving past the big stone sign at the entrance to the park nearly two hours earlier than it officially opens for the day, my tools resting on the passenger seat next to a new car battery.

I make quick work of replacing it, tucking the receipt from the auto-parts place into the glove box after I’m finished. I’d be dead shocked if Bunny is one of those guys who actually keeps track of shit like car maintenance, but I figure he should have it just in case.

I’m about to shut the driver’s side door when a graph-paper sketchbook tucked between the seat and the console catches my eye. Curious, I slide it out and flip through it.

It’s mostly empty except for the first several pages, which are all filled with different versions of the same drawing. It looks like a loyalty-program punch card for the fancy coffee place where he works. The designs all incorporate the motif of an old-school bingo card with the Bean-Go logo in the center square. It’s kind of a dumb pun, I guess, but the designs are clever enough that I smile a little.

I’m a little surprised. I knew Bunny was a reader; I didn’t know he had artistic skills, although now I remember him saying something about studying graphic design when he popped off on me last night. I carefully replace the sketchbook just like I found it and depress the lock toggle on the driver’s side door. The click of the lock engaging sound sends a pang through me.

I squash it down. Because I’m done. I did what I needed to do and now I’m closing the door on this whole thing. I’ll avoid him in the short term and fill out the transfer papers I’ve got sitting on my desk. Once I submit the request, it should be just a few short weeks before it gets approved. So by the time he gets around to opening his glove box and puts two and two together, I’ll be long gone.

After that, I promise myself, I will never even let myself think about Bunny — about Adair Stanton — ever again.