Brand Me (Imagine Ink Book 2) (5 page)

For now, damn the universe and the sisters of fate and anyone else who had it out for him. All that mattered right now was a steaming hot shower and an ice-cold beer. Michael ascended the steps to his cabin feeling a touch lighter. Once he decided to let the chips fall where they may, it was slightly freeing, no more stressing about it. He grabbed a beer from the fridge, popping the top and taking a healthy swig before he reached for his bag. Clothes in one hand and half-drank bottle in the other, Michael turned and headed back out the door. Sure, his dad had piped small showers in the cabins years ago, but, it didn’t have the oomph or the amount of hot water as the one at the bathhouse. And if any day called for a double dose of oomph, it was today.

He arrived at the bathhouse and tried to enter. The door was locked; it was in use; he’d wait. He plopped down on the step and the cold shocked him as soon as his sweaty shorts made contact. He finished his beer and waited.

And waited.

Geez, what was going on in there? No one took that long to bathe unless they were high maintenance to the extreme, or a teenage boy discovering the joys of shower time. Michael rose to beat a hasty retreat. The possibility it was his brother was pretty good, since he was one of the only four people apparently at the lake. No way in Hell did he want to run into him. The only other possibility was…

A sound, very much like his name drifted on the curls of vanilla mint-scented steam floating through the high, but slightly-opened vent window, on the side of the cabin, interrupting his thoughts.

That voice.

He knew that voice.

Her
. His dream jockey. And, oh, my God, the sounds she was making. Shit, was she having sex with her boyfriend in there? No, wait. There were no grunts or moans, not masculine ones anyway.

No, it couldn’t be, could it? Could she…

R
unners
high only went so far. Now that she was coming down, she was more knotted than ever. She knew she had to end it with Richard. There was nothing there—no future, no shot at love. It took her a long time, and way too many tears to finally say the words to herself, to admit the shame of failure.

Richard did not, and had never, loved her. At first, it had been about sex; they used each other. They had itches that needed scratched, and they fit each other’s bill. Consenting adults engaged in mutual pleasure, but it had never really been that way. Richard always finished first, and would complain and blame her when she didn’t reach orgasm.

Many nights he’d lie on his back panting, disengaged from her, both physically and mentally, and act like it was a chore to even bring her off with his hand while not even looking at her. Ninety nine percent of the time, she faked it because she felt dirty and used by that point.

It hadn’t always been that way. In the beginning, he worshipped her body, acting like simply touching her was enough to set him afire. But that wore off rather quickly. In no time, it was a task, a chore he had to do just to grunt above her until he found his physical release, then he acted like touching her was borderline repulsive.

That’s when the “thick thighs” comments started and escalated to attacks on her ability to even turn him on. Nothing she did was good enough, and he let it be known that she was lucky he’d even touch her.

And to think, I defended this asshole to my friends and family.
They could see it; they all could see how he was slowly and methodically destroying her, tearing her down one comment at a time.

Then came the H-bomb of his marriage. Walker went ballistic and so did everyone else, but, if she was being truthful with herself, she’d somehow always suspected. But he’d programmed her to think she didn’t deserve better. So, she stayed in the relationship. There was a certain level of comfort in the familiarity of it all. The kibosh she’d put on sex months ago didn’t deter him and now she started to wonder why.

Why would a man with a healthy sexual appetite, who said she didn’t even turn him on, stay in a sexless relationship where they saw each other less and less? Then, it hit her. Right there in the spa tub, in a cabin in the middle of nowhere; the money.

Not just cash, which, yes, she gave him cash all the time, but the gifts—expensive gifts, designer gifts. Things most men wouldn’t buy for themselves. She showered him in thousands of dollars in gifts, like the watch. The one she was going to buy him but was sold. The same one the asshole bought for himself.

But did he ever just buy her little gifts? Hell no. Even when they went out, she paid. He was a fucking kept man.
How did I not see this earlier?
He used her for sex, just like she’d used him, but then, he strung her along for money.
Fucking money.

That dick, that total fucking dickhead.
He’d strung her along emotionally to keep her purse open. When she closed her legs, he’d guilted her into opening her purse wider. Now, he wasn’t even pretending, or blowing smoke up her ass. No compliments or sweet kisses to ply her with, Hell why should he, he didn’t need to.

God, she’d been so damned blind. As the realizations poured over her, their entire relationship played out in her mind like a middle school projection of a PSA. So much lucidity was fucking painful.

His ass was probably still married in more than name only. Now that she thought about it, that was almost a certainty. Not to mention the other clues she’d found in his car, the late night texts when he thought she was sleeping, the apartment that didn’t really seemed lived in—one that he’d never left her alone in. She always had to leave before him and he never gave her a key. He had one to her place and he’d slept over, had closet space and his own toothbrush there, but not her.

One night, after he’d taken a sleeping pill and fallen into a deep slumber, she got up to make a snack and got brave enough to snoop just a little, and found some things that didn’t add up at the time. Or at least she didn’t want to do the math. She was blissfully ignorant and tried valiantly to stay that way. There were six condoms missing from a pack she purchased, which he had flat out refused to use with her. Plus, a bag of new toothbrushes hidden away. Plus, feminine scented lotion. Equaled, a cheating asshole.

Still, she’d stayed. Now, she felt like a loser. A pathetic, willfully blind loser. No more. No. Fucking. More. Tori Reid was no one’s fool, well, not from this point on.
Fool me once and all that.
Tori waited for the wave of loss to wash over her, the panic she always felt at the thought of breaking it off with Richard, but it never came.

She waited and waited, but only a sense of peace flooded her. No loss, no guilt, no…nothing. Just peace. In that slip of time, she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this was the absolute right decision. The only other times she’d felt this overwhelming rightness were when she met Melanie and Erika for the first time, when she and Mel had decided to go for it and open their business, when she decided to start her own family, and when Wingman Michael made eye contact with her in the plane.

Tori wasn’t sure why that last moment was included, but it was and she was raised not to question the weavings of fate, so it was there for a reason.

That sense of peace remained as she disengaged the hand wand and washed her hair with almost-too-hot water and vanilla mint shampoo. When her hair was squeaky clean, there was another overwhelming sense coursing through her body.

As clarity ruled, so did longing, sexual longing to be exact. Richard had never spoken to her the way John had and he’d sure as shit never made her feel tingly, the way Michael did. That, combined with the lightness in her heart and the heat of the water, well, she had a hand wand, a healthy imagination, and a mental picture of a sexy-as-fuck Michael. What’s a girl to do? No one around within shouting distance and horny as Hell, she let the wand drift below the minty bubbles swirling on the surface from her shampoo.

The shower wand was a girl’s best friend after all. As the pulsing water played her body just so, she let the memory of those silver ice eyes boring into her soul amp her up a notch or two. Michael’s velvety smooth voice came to her mind, as if he was right there speaking into her ear. When she pictured kneeling in front of him and taking his cock into her mouth, she was teetering over the edge. Her other had caressed the back of her head the way she imagined he would while she sucked him off, a little rough with gentle undertones. Intense.

“Michael, Michael.” His name spilled from her lips like an invocation and she felt the familiar tightening that indicated she was ready to fly. Moving the wand with more purpose and focus, she tightened her grip on her hair, pulling her head back further and she leapt into the heavens and exploded into a million birds that soared gently back to Earth.

Wow, one of the most intense orgasms of her life, definitely top five, if not the fucking top, just happened in a cabin, in the woods…alone.

What the fuck is that all about?

S
he was
. She absofuckinglutely was. His fantasy girl, Tori, was masturbating in his fucking bathhouse, and by the sounds of it, she was nearing the end—that ephemeral moment when body and cloud switch actuality. A moment of such intense pleasure it suspends the soul in the sky, while locks the body in a state of euphoria for a sliver in time.

God, he’d always fucking loved witnessing that moment, almost more than when he soared to the clouds himself, almost.
When he’d put that look of sheer bliss on the face of a woman, it was a source of great pride and pleasure. After she came back to her senses, he never lasted long. There was something so primal about a woman who could obey her body’s desire to seek her pleasure and relish the moment. Really let go. A moment he used to live for—until Tonya. Then, just as he thought he would take delight in those moments once again, the waitress happened. He blamed her, and her, and her. Fuck it all to Hell, he was angry with the world; he blamed them all.

Just as his anger was whitening his knuckles and blurring his vision, he heard it again.

Michael.

But it wasn’t like it was before, this was breathless and primitive, ripped from the throat of a woman who just Freaky Friday’d it with the clouds. Fuck, he missed that part of his life. As her voice rose, his grip on the bottle neck tightened until it shattered with her, thrusting shards of glass into his palm.

“Fuck!” He cursed and released the remains of the amber glass to plop softly between the timbers of the porch, letting them land in the snowy slush underneath. Michael snatched up his towel and wrapped his hand. He could handle lots of things, but the sight of his own blood slowly dripping onto the porch boards was making him light-headed. Or maybe it was the sound of her pleasuring herself, coupled with the fact he’d just downed a beer on an empty stomach and all the blood was rushing to his dick after he’d just ran ten miles.

Plopping down heavily on his ass once again, he loosened the towel to peek at his hand; he shouldn’t have. A piece of glass was protruding from his palm like a sharp, sad middle finger, flipping him off.

Shit, he needed to get up and leave, before she found him here—passed out like a pussy or dead from blood loss—or worse, his brother found him. Of course, Richard would love it if he bought the farm. There would be no one standing in his way of making a quick buck off the only thing his family had left. Trying to regain his feet was futile. He swayed and ended up right back on his ass.

“Hello? Is someone out there?”

Shit, when it rains, it fucking pours.
Now she knew he was here. She would think he was creeping on her, and then she’d see the blood, thus confirming his membership into pussyhood. This was going to be humiliating. Well, good thing his pride had been robbed from him already, because he had nothing to lose. It was better for her to know the truth about him. The look of revulsion on her face would go a long way in helping him exorcise her out of his fucking system.

Women like her wanted protectors, real men. He was neither of those things anymore. Better she be with her asshole boyfriend than him any day of the goddamned week. The humiliation of her disappointment would be his just desserts. That agony would bring some sort of salvation, or at least some well-deserved punishment for all the wrongs he must have committed in his life to bring him to this point.