Page 37 of Depraved

His thumb was on my lips again, and I opened my eyes to look straight into his. Deep down, I knew exactly which question he was referring to. It was a question I was too afraid to ask, but while I slowly lost myself in his gaze, something told me his answer might change everything.

My lips parted while his thumb remained. “Why did you take me?”

His finger dipped inside my mouth, and I exhaled sharply, air rushing past my lips in a huff.

“Because you asked me to.” His palm flattened against my jaw, fingers softly caressing my skin, pushing my body toward an edge it had never even been close to. My eyes closed, and I relished the way his skin felt against mine. So many conflicting emotions, but only one dominant one. Desire.

A whimper left me when his lips brushed my chin, his beard gently grazing against my flesh. “Every time you stared at me from your bedroom window, you asked me to take you.” With his hand against my cheek, he forced me to lean my head to the side. “You practically begged me to.”

“That’s a lie.” It was a feeble attempt to fight him. My voice lacked conviction. It lacked strength because my body was slowly succumbing to his touch, only wanting more and more.

“It’s not. You’ve waited for me all this time. Silently hoping I’d come for you. Well, now I have. And guess what?” The tip of his tongue dragged up my neck, and I tried to squirm in my seat, lust pooling between my legs. God, it felt dirty, the way my sex throbbed as he licked across my skin. It made me wonder what his tongue would feel like against my sensitive folds, licking, sucking, tasting.

With rapid breaths, I whispered, “What?”

His hand wrapped around the back of my neck, gripping my hair in his fist. Pulling my head back, he moved up, his lips brushing against my ear. “I’m not giving you back. Not until I’ve had my fill of you.”

Abruptly, he let go of me, and I gasped, taking a deep breath. My body was still on fire, my skin sizzling with desire. Not even the threat in his last words could smother it.

Granite straightened, looking down at me with hooded eyes. “I bet you regret making a bargain with the devil now, don’t you?”

There were too many feelings, too many emotions for me to form a coherent thought. All I was capable of at that moment was staring back at him. I had lost control of my body. I had lost control of my thoughts. I had lost control of everything…all because of the way his touch corrupted me.

“If I come back and find you’ve made yourself sick, I will force-feed you again. And this time there will be no deal.”

I was still dazed, caught up in the moment, when I heard his heavy footsteps and the door.

I sat there tied to a motherfucking chair, and I couldn’t wrap my head around what Granite had just said.

Was I not part of a blackmailing scheme? Was I not here for ransom purposes? Did all of this have nothing to do with my father, but everything to do with…me?

Not caring that my mind was still spinning, my body all riled up, fatigue started to set in. I was exhausted. The pain meds Neon gave me were wearing off, and my stomach felt like I had swallowed lead. As my body gradually stopped humming, my sex no longer throbbing, I could feel the aftereffect of eating too much. The gluten was poisoning me from the inside, and the carbs and calorie overload from the beer were making me feel horrid. The mac and cheese alone was probably five hundred calories, not to mention the hundred and fifty calories with the beer. That was more calories than I had consumed during the last three days.

After my body finally settled, the fire in my belly extinguished with his absence, my first reaction was to make myself sick, to purge myself of the poison in my stomach. But Granite’s threat rang like a warning bell in my head, which meant my body had to endure it. For anyone else, this would have seemed futile, meaningless, and practically not that bad. But for fifteen years, my mom controlled what I ate, how I ate, and when I ate. It only took a year or two for my body to adjust, to get accustomed to what I put in it. It had grown used to a calorie-controlled, no-fat diet. It wasn’t something I could control anymore. My body controlled it.

My mother controlled it.

I closed my eyes, willing my body to keep the food down. I didn’t have the strength to throw up again. And, frankly, my ribs and back still hurt from the last vomiting spell I had—which was still on the floor, covered with a sheet. God, I hoped someone would clean that shit up, or it would start smelling like a dumping site in here soon.

I sighed and let my head hang back, staring up at the ceiling. What was happening to me? Why would I still want Granite after seeing what a wretched human being he really was? A kidnapper. A killer. Maybe he wasn’t the psycho in this equation. Maybe I was. It was the only explanation as to why I let myself lose control under his touch. If I was completely honest with myself, I probably wouldn’t have stopped him if he tried to go further. In fact, if my legs weren’t tied to the goddamn chair, I would have tried to push my thighs together to get rid of the ache and the need to be touched there.

A sudden cramp spread across my abdomen, and I groaned. It was too much food. Too much beer. My body was protesting. Why couldn’t it have acted up when Granite had his hands on me? At least then I’d be able to show him he was wrong. That me staring at him from my window wasn’t a silent plea to be taken.

But then again…maybe it was.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

GRANITE

It wasn’t our usual spot. But this wasn’t our usual meeting. The PC was looking for his recently disappeared daughter and needed our help. In fact, he pleaded for our help. I had been working with this man for years, long before I became president. The man never sounded as helpless and pathetic as he did when he called this morning.

We agreed to meet a few miles out of town, on a dirt road leading to what used to be a mountain area. No one came here during the day anymore. But at night it was the local hump yard where every goddamn teenager came to get laid.

Ink nodded in the direction of an approaching SUV. “Incoming.”

I got off my motorcycle, placing my lid on the seat. “Put on your best game faces, boys.” Both Ink and Dutch flanked me, and I lit a cigarette as the black SUV came to a stop a few feet from us, greeting us with a cloud of red dust as the wheels screeched across the dirt road.

I inhaled deep, feeling the smoke cling to my throat and lungs before tossing the cigarette to the ground and stomping on it. “Here goes nothing.”