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  “You’re fucking sweet,” he grits out once he releases his first bite. Again, he doesn’t sound happy. Just angry. Just hungry.

  He bites me again. Harder, this time. On my shoulder. My collar. Lower…

  I breathe out sharply when his breath fans my left breast. His fingers come up, cupping it. Squeezing while his thumb brushes the nipple.

  The things I feel…

  It’s all pain. My throat goes dry. Each touch ripples through me like a pulse, jolting all the way down to my pussy. Stronger. Faster. More.

  “You enjoy that?” Maxim wonders as he seizes my nipple between his thumb and his forefinger and pinches again. “My desperate little kotyonok?”

  He does it again. Harder. Punishingly.

  My next inhale turns into a gasp.

  “You do.” He hovers over me, his tongue swiping. Licking. Another bite.

  Oh god.

  My fingers grip the couch, fighting for enough leverage.

  He licks again before sucking a nipple between his teeth. Then he bites down.

  My head flies back, striking the rim of the headrest. My pussy is on fire.

  And he does it again. So hard that I can taste the pain. I see it. Feel it: It’s like steel, thick, immovable. The surface doesn’t have an ounce of give, even as my fingers twitch against it. His chest? If so, the theory of him having a beer gut goes bye-bye: He is solid muscle. At least until I feel something softer underneath, stretched too taut to be skin. Elastic?

  “Don’t.”

  His tone alone warns me to make my hands fall—but not fast enough. My punishment is a bite so deep that it breaks the flesh. I can’t even suck in enough air to scream. I just writhe, choking on agony, trapped at his mercy.

  “Your blood is sweet too,” he muses, capturing a bead with his tongue. “Sweet and greedy like the rest of you.”

  He watches it continue to fall, seeping around my nipple. Several tiny, weeping ridges circle it—the imprint of his teeth.

  I’m on pins and needles when he starts on the right. He’s rougher with his tongue, grinding my nipple into a sensitive, burning point. My body jerks every time he touches it. Looks at it.

  I can’t even stand to feel him breathe.

  I nearly thank God out loud when he finally draws back, but his hands go tightly to my hips, sinking beneath the waistband of my panties. I shiver as he tugs them down, eyeing the ravaged flesh of my pussy underneath.

  His eyes cut up to mine, narrowed, glowing. “You’re fucking weeping for me, kotyonok.” He raises his hand so that I can see his glistening fingers.

  With blood, I tell myself when my eyes don’t bother to focus. Nothing else.

  Nothing else.

  A ragged shudder racks my body, ripping the thought away. His fingers are back, running along my inner thigh, grazing my pussy, slipping inside. He groans. I gasp, struggling to look as he growls the command. But I can’t. My head is too heavy; he’s moving too slowly.

  “You like this?”

  I don’t. I can’t think. I—

  “You like this.”

  A nail grazes the sorest part of me and the reaction resonates like an electric shock. Muscles I didn’t even know I have cramp up and tense. My nerve endings explode. And there’s clarity. Brief. Harsh. It’s like a whisper of calm through the chaos of my mind.

  I see him clearly for a split second. I smell him. Taste him, his breaths fanning the skin of my throat. A muscle in his jaw twitches. What feels like a thumb brushes me open, making way for a longer, thinner finger.

  I say something. Something broken and forbidden that earns me a sharp pinch on my hip. The pain is almost worth it as the fire building in my blood gets a drip of gasoline to feed it.

  “More?” Maxim wonders, his voice harsh, shattering against my skin like broken glass.

  I didn’t ask for it. I know I didn’t. I couldn’t have.

  He gives it to me anyway. His thumb rams in to join the first finger. Thick. Full. But not full enough.

  “I would tear you apart with my cock tonight,” Maxim says as a watery, broken sound trickles out of my throat. He growls in response, swirling the pad of one of the searching fingers along my inner walls, making them shake. “So delicate you are.”

  The pain is still there. Still screaming through my system. He’s right. He’d break me. Rip me apart. Tear me open.

  “And yet the thought of it”—another searing thrust and brutal caress—“seems to make you even wetter.”

  He laughs. It’s too loud. Insane. Each booming chuckle ricochets off the inside of my skull. I try to shake my head. I don’t want it. I’m not…

  His fingers spread and I go silent. Limp. My body starts to rock with the force of each rough, bruising thrust. He won’t use his cock, but he’ll fuck me just as violently with his fingers. And somehow I feel more. Too much. He’s pinching, twisting, touching, taking, tasting.

  Fuck.

  I see lightning as the pain hits me all at once. It’s so sharp, it drowns me. Desolates me. This is all I am. All I know. Fucking and being fucked. Right into oblivion.

  But it doesn’t last. He pulls the fire away just when I’m about to tip over the edge. Lose it all. When I finally blink my vision back, he isn’t laughing. A frown shapes his mouth as if it’d been chiseled there, beaten in with every sound I made.

  “I’ve given you enough for tonight,” he tells me, sliding his fingers free, ripping away my only lifeline to sanity.

  My thoughts cloud over. Can’t think. I’m forbidden to move—but my hand jumps anyway, the fingers grasping at the air.

  “You want more?” His voice… I’ve never heard it so thick. It’s like he’s breaking every word off of stone—hammering humanity out of the monster he really is. “Say it, then. You want more.” He snaps his fingers, shining, bloody. “Beg.”

  I don’t want more. I shake my head, biting my lower lip.

  He steps back, starts to turn.

  I whimper. It’s the only sound I can make. Not words. I can’t say it.

  “Do you want it?” He steps forward, bracing one knee on the cushions of the couch beside me. His fingers come to circle my throat, tilting my head back so that I’m forced to stare into those swirling black holes he has for eyes. “How badly do you want to come?” His fingers sweep down, catching a swollen, bitten nipple between them. “Do you need it?”

  Fire licks through my veins, but it’s nowhere near strong enough. Harsh enough. I need more.

  “Y-yes.”

  When he bears down, I can’t hide the scream that rips from my throat. It’s too soft. Too damn close to a moan.

  “Then fucking ask for it—”

  “P-please.”

  His eyes disappear, narrowed into slits. The next second, he’s on his knees, his hands on my hips, dragging me forward. His mouth catches me.

  And my body does the screaming for me. It explodes. Ignites. Blows up.

  Kaboom! It’s a scramble to reassemble myself in the chaos. Nothing in the world compares to his tongue. It’s soft. Strong. Licking. Sucking. Breaking. Breaking. Breaking.

  This time, I don’t get just a taste of clarity. I get a full fucking dose. My thoughts go so clear that, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel anything. No fear. No pressure. No stress.

  Just nothing.

  The relief is almost enough to soften the blow when I come crashing back down, face-to-face with Maxim. His lips are wet, his eyes glowing. I can’t move, even as his tongue flits out to graze my cheek.

  “What I wouldn’t give to fuck you right now.” His tone is a warning. A threat. “To teach you just what a mistake you’ve made. To make your body regret every ounce of pleasure you stole from me.”

  He grinds his hips into me and I feel his erection, straining and heavy. Fear eats away at the pain. At the same time, it fans the flames higher.

  “But not tonight.” He runs his wet fingers through my hair and then pulls away, rising to his feet. “Tonight, I will have m
ercy on you.”

  He sounds too soft—way too gentle. I’m almost fooled until the moment he reaches into his pocket and draws a knife out. I swallow hard at the realization that it’s a different shape from the one he normally carries. A leather sheath covers a blade that stretches nearly the entire length of his palm. The handle is thicker, almost as if it’d been carved to fit his grip alone. Casually, he tosses it into the air and catches it by the covered tip. The handle gleams, a dark polished wood. My eyes have trouble focusing on it, even as he crouches on one knee and drags it along my inner thigh.

  Mercy? That fucking word taunts me as the cool tip of the handle grazes up and down my flesh, inching closer and closer to my pussy with every stroke. Just like that, my head clears. I’m on the razor-sharp edge of clarity. Literally.

  “I would cause damage if I took you with my cock,” Maxim says in a husky rasp, almost as if to remind himself of that fact while the front of his pants bulges and strains. “But, if I let you rest completely, kotyonok, it would be nearly impossible for you to take all of me again.”

  I inhale raggedly as the knife handle grazes my outer lips.

  “It’s happened before. I need to make sure that you remain…stretched.”

  Tears burn behind my eyes. I blink them back. They sting even worse. I can’t help it. My knees twitch, aching to slam together and never let him in. As if he can read my mind, one of his hands palms my right thigh.

  “I suggest you don’t resist,” he warns as the wooden edge bats the rim of me once. Twice.

  Air leaves my lungs as it slams in without warning, stretching me apart in ways his fingers could only dream. He doesn’t hold back, thrusting so deep my vision fades. The fullness is second only to his cock. I can’t do anything other than gasp for air, my fingers flailing for leverage. My nails grip the leather couch, digging in, tearing.

  “Let it in,” he growls as he thrusts again. Harder. Slower.

  I don’t have any choice but to relent. Muscle and flesh are battered and stretched into submission. Rather than push the handle out, they tug, pulling it deeper, allowing the invasion.

  The gruff sound Maxim makes at the back of his throat betrays his satisfaction with every awful inch. “That’s it.”

  I’m so damn sore. So raw. I barely hear him. It takes all of my energy just to breathe. My chest heaves, almost as if mimicking every inch of me he claims with the knife handle. In and out.

  I think the violation is the worst of it. Being fucked with a knife—it can’t get any more humiliating than this. But he proves me wrong when the callused, heavy pad of his thumb drifts up to the flesh above the knife. Teasing. Rubbing. One brush and every fucking muscle in my body tenses. The knife feels bigger, impossibly huge inside me. My skin feels hotter. Fuck.

  “Look at you. Even this gets you off,” Maxim remarks, his voice low and gravelly. Angry.

  A part of me tries to react to it and muster up a shred of fear. But my nerves are mush. The motions of the knife churn my insides into a hot, boiling ball of sensation. I can’t focus on anything else, just this. His thumb is too fast. Too slow. I’m floating. The angry, gravelly sound that revs up in his chest when I arch my hips sets everything off. Like a match.

  But right before it hits the nearby puddle of gasoline, he douses everything in a fire extinguisher.

  “No.” The handle twists, its curved edge pressing against my inner walls, driving a howl from my lips. “Remember this lesson, kotyonok.” He withdraws the handle, leaving me gaping and open. But the hazy warmth in my stomach turns to dread when I hear a dangerously soft hiss. My eyes flutter down and I find him sliding the sheath off, revealing the blade. “You come only when I say you can,” he tells me. “Do you understand?”

  I nod. I don’t think I’ll ever fucking stop. Not until he puts that knife away.

  “Do not move.”

  He lowers the blade between my legs. Icy kisses of pain graze the swollen lips of my pussy. Teasing. Prodding. I wish I could say that it feels worse than the handle. I wish. I wish.

  “I don’t think you are ready for this just yet,” Maxim admits before he pulls the knife edge away. His eyes flash a heart-stopping shade of black. “Yet.”

  I try not to let myself dwell on the promise in his tone as he stands, re-sheathing the blade. Weak with relief, I just collapse into a puddle against the cushions, watching Maxim’s features become a blur.

  “Our time is up,” he tells me before retreating down the hallway. “You can go.”

  I want nothing more than to do just that. Leave.

  But despite how hard I try, I can’t summon the strength to even lift my head.

  Chapter 10

  I’m ripped from oblivion by the howls of someone ranting about their decapitated baby.

  “You killed her!” the thin, high-pitched voice accuses. “I’m going to have Frankie beat your ass when she comes back—”

  “She probably won’t come back,” a boy counters. “Maybe she’s glad to be away from your fucking ugly face—”

  “Hey! Knock it off!”

  The trickle of authority sounds out of place in a voice not quite deep enough to have come from a grown man. I blink my eyes open as I hear the staircase tremble a second later. A shadow flickers along the wall. Tall. One of the older kids. They reach the bottom step before they find me. Going off the scent of stale corn chips, I think I’m on the couch. Ainsley always left crumbs between the cushions.

  “Shit!” I startle at the voice and my vision returns in bits and pieces as Mikie comes closer, a backpack slung over his arm. “Frankie? You scared the shit out of me! Hey, you okay?”

  “Fine.” I turn my face toward the musty cushions, curling the rest of my body into a ball. I’m not wearing the dress. I know that even before I look down and find that someone dressed me in my sweatpants and one of Melanie’s tee shirts. The word juicy is written in pink glitter across my chest. Considering how much effort it takes to suck in air, I doubt I was the one who did this. Which brings up another interesting question: I can’t remember how I got home. Or how I even left Maxim’s suite.

  “Where the hell did you even go anyway?” Mikie asks.

  I force myself to turn in order to watch him cross over to the front door. My suitcase is beside it. Even from the distance between it and the couch, I can still make out the thick, black envelope sticking out from the front pocket.

  “What’s this?”

  “Don’t touch it!” I croak, flinging my hand out as if to physically shove him back.

  “Damn, Frankie.” Mikie lowers his hand and backs away. “Okay, okay I won’t. By the way, I tried calling you when you were gone.”

  I flinch. The phone. I left it in my bag. By accident. Maybe…

  I’m lying. Deep down, a part of me knows the truth I don’t want to face: I wasn’t given permission to use one. So I didn’t.

  Guilt hurts worse than whatever my body feels.

  “I’m sorry,” I force myself to blurt out. “I was…busy.”

  “You sound like shit.” He opens the fridge and grabs a bottle from the very back, holding it up to the light. “I replaced your stash,” he says before dropping the bottle onto the sliver of cushion beside me. “Here.”

  I’m too tired to ask or care how he got the booze or how he knew about my stash—let alone what happened to the bottles already there. I lift the bottle and let him rip the cap off for me, but I’m so fucking tired that he has to lower the rim of the bottle to my mouth before I can even take a sip. I manage to gulp down three times before he pulls it away and sets it on the floor.

  In the cool, gray light wafting in from the window, he looks more like Melanie than ever—the only one of us who really does. He has her eyes, which are known to shift from blue to green. Her chin. Her laugh. Her dimpled smile. He doesn’t wear it as much as she does though. Not now, at least.

  “Frankie…you’re bleeding,” he whispers as the staircase trembles again beneath several different footsteps.r />
  Shit. I cut my eyes over to the busted armchair in the corner of the room. There’s a blanket draped over it, the remains of someone’s toy fort. Mikie races over to grab it and barely has me covered by the time the rest of the kids make it downstairs.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he hisses when Ainsley cries out my name. “She’s sleeping. Everyone get your shit and let’s go.”

  He sounds so stern. So damn mature. And no one argues as they march across the living room, fishing backpacks and homework from under chairs and on top of tables. The front door opens, the screen door slamming against the outer siding like usual.

  One by one, the kids stream out. The only argument is put up by Ainsley, but Mikie silences her with a hissed, “You can talk to her after school.” When the very last kid has jumped off the porch, he says to me through the open doorway, “I’ll try to stall them after school. Long enough for you to put makeup on or something. I don’t want Ains seeing your face like that…”

  I reach up, feeling along my lower lip. It’s sore. Pulsating. Swollen. When I peel my eyes open again, Mikie is gone and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle blanket is covering the worst of me. My toes stick out from under it though, crusted in dried blood.

  It takes me hours to crawl upstairs and into the bathroom. I shower. I scream. I drag a brush through my hair and even steal Daisy’s makeup from under the sink to do what I can to minimize the dark circles under my eyes.

  My bitten, cracked lips are a hopeless cause though, so I come up with a lie. I tripped and bit myself there. Once. Twice. Oh, and I fell onto glass and cut my hands. And my back. I smoked too many cigarettes and burned my throat. I’m limping because…

  The lie loses water after that.

  It’s not like I have the time to put it into practice anyway. Somewhere between searching Daisy and Ainsley’s room for spare clothing, I wind up on a bed. So I sleep. For hours. Ages. I’m barely conscious when they come home, screaming and shouting and racing up the stairs. Someone shakes me. Tries to talk.