Page 30 of Toxic
A fist twines in my hair, the other clamps down my hip. I’m present in the moment only through where our bodies connect as though my consciousness is dependent on his existence. Hands I’d been using to pull myself away now push into the floor to throw my weight back against him, causing him to fuck me deeper than anyoneeverhas.
The hand in my hair pulls my head back until I come up to all fours, and he gathers me close enough that his lips brush against my ear. “You think you don’t want this?” he asks, and I know he doesn’t mean what he’s doing to me, because I can’t deny that I do. Not when I’m screaming for him to do it harder, faster. “You shouldn’t.” His teeth bite into my shoulder. “You shouldn’t want me. I am not a nice man. I am not a good man. I do bad things for bad people.” He licks the bite, and his mouth skims up my throat. “I want to do bad thingstoyou.”
Oh, God help me, I want him to do those bad things. In fact, I’d beg him to do them. But the hand in my hair tilts me violently back, so far that breathing is a struggle, making speaking impossible. As I’m focusing on drawing in air, I don’t pay attention to his other hand until it bumps against the tight entrance he’d so thoroughly aroused. I make keening noises in the back of my throat as his thumb breeches the taut ring just a little, but it’s enough to make my body seize in the first throes ofrelease.
“Ease uparoundme.”
I think I say I can’t, but it comes out garbled as his thrusts slow, edging me away from the impending orgasm. I reach a hand back for his hip, but there’s no moving him. Frustrated tears spill frommyeyes.
“Open up for me, Tessa, and I’ll give you what you need,” he says, and his words are followed by a long, slow thrust that I feeleverywhere.
My muscles loosen, and I go limp in his arms. I am his to control, but he isn’t just taking it. He’s asking for it, and I submit to itfreely.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he says, and I cry out as his thumb breeches mefully.
His cock drives into me harder, and he releases my hair to cup my throat. I gasp for breath, and his fingers caress my lips. I bite them without thought, without care. Needing to taste him, to have a part of him like he has all of me, I suck one into my mouth. He roars behind me, and I arch back to take him more fully. There isn’t a place on my body left undiscovered, no part he hasn’t conquered, and yet, I want to find moretogive.
It isn’t his cock or his hands or even the violence that takes me over the edge this time. It’s a kiss. He pulls his hand away, and I release his finger from my mouth with an audible pop. With his palm cupping my jaw, he turns me to accept his mouth, and I do, greedily. There shouldn’t be anything right about what I’m letting him do to me, but there isn’t a single brush of lips or thrust that feels wrong. It’s more right than anything I’veeverdone.
As soon as I have that thought, I whimper against his mouth and the orgasm overtakes me, washing away all doubts, all fears, and all common sense. Something in him breaks as I constrict around him, and the tension in his muscles drains away. In one long, slow drag, he removes his thumb, causing my orgasm to double over on itself. He hisses in response and fills me with his own pleasure as he follows me overtheedge.
Sometime later, I come to realize we’re still on the floor. My extremities don’t respond when I tell them to move, but it’s okay. The heavy weight of Gracin on top of me is an anchor securing me to earth. Reality intrudes, along with the cold as he shifts to the side, his arms and legs still entangledwithmine.
“We have to get out of here,” he says eventually. My brain still isn’t quite working, but when he adds, “The police will get here soon, and we don’t want to be here when they do,” it jump-starts.
“We have to go,” he says and stands to pull his pants up andbucklethem.
I look around for my scrubs and underwear, but I can’t see them in the near absolute darkness of the hallway. The darkness is probably a good thing. As the cold steals over my rapidly cooling frame, the memory of Vic’s dead body is enough to clear my thoughts of what just transpired between us. I tuck it away for . . . later. Way, way later when I can’t still feel the aching emptinessinsideme.
Gracin returns with my scrubs in hand, and I dress, my cheeks alternately burning and blanching as I vacillate between embarrassed andhorrified.
“Get dressed. I’ll go get a car.” He kisses me and leaves me with the taste of myself lingering onmylips.
As soon as he leaves,I’m up and getting dressed. I can’t be here when he gets back. Regardless how he made me feel and how much I want to do it again, I can’tlethim.
I thought my marriage to Vic was the definition of abuse, but Gracin has taught me there is something much worse than physicalviolence.
There were times when Vic would leave me broken and bloody at his feet, and I was certain I could never reach a lowerpoint.
I was so very, verywrong.
How I feel now? Knowing that Gracin has thoroughly destroyed everything good in me and made me like it? It’s so much worse than any punch I’ve evertaken.
I get to my feet and get dressed just a room away from where my dead husband’s body still lies, growing colder and colder with each passing second. I take care to keep my eyes diverted. The house is so quiet each sound is magnified, making my ears strain for any sign of the police or Gracincomingback.
But the only sounds are my footsteps and the harsh sound of my laboredbreathing.
I wince at the soreness in my thighs as I bend down to get my duffel bag. I look for the gun but don’t see it and realize Gracin must have taken it with him. The excitement and adrenaline that had been crashing through me, urging me to leave Vic and start over is practically nonexistent now. I feel like I’m just going through the motions because I know getting caught here would be worse than being on the run. Some part of me still recognizes that, at least.I could spin the whole thing on Gracin. He stalked me at work, forced me to help him escape, and then killed my husband and raped me, but even if I could lie my ass off, there’s still Salvatore’s body and Annie’s eye witness testimony. No doubt that the moment she woke up, she told everyone about what happened. If confronted, I’d have a hell of a time explaining how I was complicit in not one but twomurders.
I start to shoulder the bag and then realize I need to change my clothes. The scrubs are spattered with blood from the blowback and are wrinkled and even ripped on the shoulder. If I walk out the door in this outfit, all I’ll do is draw attention to myself. Even though it costs precious time, I go to the bedroom and pick the most nondescript clothes I have left in my closet. A plain pair of worn jeans, an average T-shirt, and a pair of oldsneakers.
My face is streaked with tears and ruddy, so I give it a quick wash with fresh water. While I’m in there, I throw my hair up in a ponytail. Since I don’t have to worry about Vic coming back, I work up the courage to do the one task I’ve been dreading the most. Originally, I was going to leave without it, but now that he’s dead and I’m desperate, I don’t have another choice. He kept a safe he didn’t know I knew about, and the code for the combination lock is stored inside his wallet. I don’t know if I’m in shock or if I’ve seen so much death and horror in the past twenty-four hours that I’ve grown used to it, but once I settle on my course, I’m able to block out his body as I shove him over on one side so I can reach hiswallet.
Once it’s within my grasp, I stumble back on my butt, shivering as I crawl as far away from him as I can get. It might make me a monster, but I don’t feel anything now that he’s gone. Maybe I am every bit as bad as Gracin,afterall.
I spin the combination lock to the numbers listed on the little piece of paper and take the cash he kept stashed there. It isn’t much, maybe a couple grand, but I’ll need anything I can get my hands on if I’m going to disappear. I stuff it into my purse along with the jewelry he gave me when we were dating.I hesitate by the front door but end up taking the drawing against my betterjudgment.
I don’t know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to do next, but I know I have to get as far away from this house and the prison as possible. I don’t dare take my phone or computer in case there is some way to track me from the signal. The car isn’t an option either because the plates are registered in Vic’s name, and that’ll be the first thing the cops look for when they discover his body and my involvement in Gracin’sescape.