Devil's Angels Boxed Set: Bikers and Alpha Bad Boy Erotic Romance (50 page)

I am caged.
I am not a bird.

Bellamy is naked, too. His cock dangles between his legs, veiny and blunt. His hands trace up my body, tap-dancing along the surface of my skin. They are icy cold. With a savage wrench, he wraps his fingers around the collar and yanks me to my knees. I fall, hardly resisting. I can’t remember how to move my muscles on my own. I am rooted to the spot, as weak and malleable as a rag doll. I hit the ground with a thump.

He pushes on the back of my head, willing me forward. I incline my upper body and my mouth approaches his stiffening manhood.

I think of the cat.
Boom.
Rat gone.

His erection now points at me, straining and engorged. I open my mouth and stick out my tongue. Slowly, slowly, I keep leaning forward. The approach is endless.

Once I bridge the gap, that is it – I am fully submitted. There is no resistance left in me. Everything has been locked down, chained away. He holds me utterly and completely. I have no warmth, no fire with which to rally. I am cold.

The threatening head of Bellamy’s cock stares in my face. I swallow the saliva pooling in my mouth. The collar is tight. Closing my eyes, I lean forward the last half-inch and begin to suck him.

My head slides down the length of his erection until he thrusts into the back of my throat. He mutters soft encouragement as I retreat then double back. My spit slicks over the rippling surface; my tongue lashes around and around.

I keep my eyes wrenched shut. I don’t want to see anything, nothing at all – just darkness. I want this all to be a nightmare, but the rough scratch of the rug against my knees and the chilly metal on my wrists are all too real.

Bellamy lets me suck him for a few minutes longer. I move slowly, travelling up and down his length with patience. After a while, I can feel him tense. He steps back, emerging from my mouth with a wet pop.

“Stand up,” he orders, the edge of his voice sharpened with authority. “Turn around.”

I listen and do as he says. I can feel the red imprint where my heels have jabbed into my soft expanse of my ass. My knees throb.

To my right, I see his hand extend past me and grab a dark mass off of the desk. Before I can fathom what is happening, he drops a black bag over my head. Everything vanishes. Sound is muffled, except for the hot, labored panic of my own breathing.

I hear him lunge from behind me. The sensations come in rapid succession: he shoves a hand between my legs and knocks them apart, then pushes hard against the middle of my back so that I fall forward. My outstretched hands catch on the edge of the desk just barely, my whole body now inclined horizontally. I hear a series of beeps that grab my attention.

“What is that?” I try to scream. He hears my panic and sticks a hand under the hood to briefly loosen the gag.

“I’m sorry, Jodie, I didn’t quite catch that,” he says sardonically. “What did you say?”

“What is that? What are you doing?” I wail. “Is that a camera?”

He laughs. “Yes it is. I want to make sure you don’t ever try to pull a stunt like that again, Jodie. If you should ever try to quit, the whole world will see this video. I will make sure of it.” The last sentence comes out with a ruthless hiss.

“That’s illegal! That’s illegal!” I cry over and over. He lets my cries subside.

“Not for me,” Bellamy says. “Not for me.” He yanks the gag tight again, cutting me off mid-scream, then pulls the hood down low. I can’t see or hear much other than a few grunts as he lines up behind me. My legs are spread wide. Every nerve quakes with fear.

Bellamy roars and slams the full length of his long cock into me.

I chose this. I had to. I didn’t have any other option.

I am not a bird.

He thrusts over and over at a blinding speed. His hands squeeze and fondle my breasts, pinching hard at the nipple. Every fourth or fifth stroke, he slaps my ass, hard, raising maroon welts on the pale skin. I whimper, but I cannot fight back. I wouldn’t even if I could. I need this. I need him.

His hips buck ferociously. My entire frame jiggles as he fucks, every roll of skin bouncing with the motion. My breathing has calmed, my panic has cooled. All that is left in me is cold.

He is pumping as fast as possible now, dipping in and out of me with his hard cock. I want to hate my body for accepting him into me, for offering the moisture to make his entry slick, but I don’t even have the energy for hate. The only thing I am capable of doing is clinging to the edge of the desktop.

Bellamy grabs the back of the collar and crashes into me once, twice, three times, before he cums with a wild exclamation. He is cutting off my air flow – stars begin to dance behind my closed eyelids. My head feels light.

He withdraws from me and lashes spurts of hot cum on my ass and back, clenching the collar the whole time. I can’t breathe. I am going to pass out. I am going. I am going.

Black.

***

I dress quietly and head for the door. Bellamy’s semen is sticky against the fabric of my clothing. As I grasp the door handle, I hear his voice. I pause, but don’t turn around.

“I’ll see you on Monday, Jodie.”

I am cold.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I spy fliers littering the ground and tacked onto every streetlight encircling the block. The papers are a familiar shade of obnoxious neon and I am well-acquainted with the cocky smile gracing the middle third of the page. “The Lying Lyons” is splashed across the top in a sprawling cursive hand. Below it is a description of the band’s upcoming shows, an extensive schedule with shows every week in bars all across the city.

I have been to about half of them, so far, slipping quietly in the back and watching the crowd pulse before me in time with the rhythm of the music flowing from the stage. I told a co-worker the other day about them, about how when Garret strutted to the microphone stand, people really
felt
something special; they really came alive. The air changes when he sings, I had said. The co-worker had laughed and told me that I sounded like a fan-girl, obsessively imagining a life with a rock star I had never and would never meet. I blushed and shied away without another word, but the laughter stung. Lately, I am finding it harder and harder to believe that I was ever with Garret.

We have made eye contact a few times at these shows. Every time he sees me, a glassy indifference slides over his pupils, clouding the vibrant green. There is a tiny moment of familiarity – the briefest flicker of recognition – and then dead, stone-faced apathy. He sees right through me, as if I weren’t even there. To be honest, I don’t feel like I am there. I don’t feel real.

I am immaterial, strangely absent, floating through my days like a wisp of something that could easily be swallowed by the next stiff breeze, a person to be ignored – not rudely, not cruelly, just indifferently. People look past me and who am I to correct them?

I fold one of the fliers into thirds and tuck it into the envelope that is clutched in my hands. The pale green corner of a paycheck sticks out. I rub my thumb across its edge and listen to the paper crinkle.

Slowly but surely, I have been pulling things together. My apartment is secure for another month. I have groceries in the refrigerator, by which I mean boxes of stale cereal and lumpy bags of rice, but nevertheless it is food in my stomach. I am scraping together the funds to re-enroll in school for the spring semester so I can finish my degree.

The security isn’t comforting, though. I can’t sleep at night. Every time I lie down, I shiver uncontrollably, slicked with cold sweat, feeling so heavy and so thick that it is a wonder I don’t collapse inward like a black hole. I feel both rooted and frail at the same time. I am a rock; I am dust. Tucking my hands under my arms, I bury my mouth into the fabric of the thick scarf draped around me and hustle deeper into the dying afternoon.

The next morning, my alarm blares shrilly in my ear. I fumble for it, knocking it off the nightstand with a clumsy arm. A radio host starts to snarl, but I cut him off mid-sentence. The city seeps through my windows, between the blinds. Filtered light and distant sirens wind around the corners of my decrepit apartment.

I rub the sleep from my eyes. My body aches, as if I spent the night wrestling and clenching every joint tightly against myself. I suppose I had. Running a finger down my arm, I feel a veneer of salty sweat lying closely against my skin.

I stumble into the shower. Lukewarm rivulets stream over every curve in my flesh and drip from my fingertips onto the peeling plastic below. My thoughts are numb and coated in thick fog.

Stepping out to towel off, I dumbly survey my meager closet. One sluggish hand pulls a dress from its hanger, drags it overhead. I pivot to look in the cracked mirror.

The woman greeting me from the shimmery reflection looks haggard and gray. Bags pool under her eyes and wrinkles tug at the corner of her mouth. She is slumping forward as if unable to fight gravity anymore. There is no life in her, no fight, no intensity. There isn’t much of anything, other than a thin, angry scar winding around her neck. It matches the red circle around her wrists.

I am not a bird.

I gather the things I need for work: a purse, shoes on my feet, the keys to my apartment. I shrug a threadbare coat onto my shoulders and leave.

Outside, the world is blinding. I raise a hand to shield my eyes from the peaking sun as cars whiz across the street in front of me. Sighing, I turn to my left to start the walk towards Bellamy’s building.

Head down and gaze rooted firmly on the pavement, I watch my feet traverse over cracks in the concrete and gum plastered underfoot. I feel my way through the crowd.

A few pedestrians bump into me, but I say nothing and do nothing.

I feel nothing.

Vendors screech from hot dog stands. A comedian outside a night club presses a bulletin into my chest. I accept it without a word.

Nothing.

A few blocks away from the building, I am mid-stride when my head smacks into the broad back of a man struggling with loading boxes into the open trunk of his car. Surprised by the contact, I stagger backwards.

A scent I recognize filters into my nostrils. I raise my head and see blond hair, white teeth, and green eyes.

Garret.

He looks bemused at my clumsiness. Dropping the cardboard box in the back of the car parked next to us, he turns back around to face me.

“Well, fancy running into you,” he quips.

I don’t know what to say. My lips open and close fruitlessly.

“You… you, too, Garret,” I finally manage. I should keep walking, but I can’t make my feet work.

I feel a manic energy rolling off Garret in waves. It slices through the fog, sends sparks rippling down my spine. I stand up a little straighter.

“It’s good to see you,” I say. “We haven’t talked in a while.”

Garret arches a curious eyebrow. “No,” he says, “You’re right. We haven’t.” My heartbeat starts to pick up in a way that it hasn’t in weeks – not fear, not disgust, but an up-tempo staccato that pushes blood to my extremities.

Cars honk on either side of us as taxi drivers lean out of their windows to scream obscenities. A silence passes between us. We stand still, looking in each others’ eyes.

A sudden urge to speak overwhelms me. “I’ve been to a few of your shows,” I confess. The boldness and crispness of my words is shocking. “They were great.”

He considers my expression before replying soberly. “Thanks very much. I appreciate that,” he says. Another awkward silence swells, but neither of us budges.

I am at a loss. A wordless yearning is building up inside me, a warmth, an impulse, a longing for motion and music and sex. Like a drug through my veins, it suffuses every nerve, bathing me in a sensation I haven’t experienced since the night on the tour bus. I look up at him.

“Look, Jodie…” he says hesitantly. “We’re going on tour. Out west. We landed a huge gig. We’re leaving right now, actually.”

Inside, my stomach is contorting with alien emotions and my head is roaring with empty sound. Outwardly, I hear myself say, “Congratulations, Garret. That’s incredible. You guys deserve it.” My feet still won’t move.

Garret’s bandmate in the car honks the horn and hollers out the window. “Let’s go, dude!” he yells. Garret turns and tells him to wait just a moment. He spins back to me.

“Listen,” he says. “I have to go; we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. But…” He runs a hand through his hair, then swoops forward and kisses me. The taste is exactly what I remember. His lips have the same pressure, the same texture. I raise a hand to touch my mouth as if locking it in.

“I’ll see you, okay, Jodie?”

A rare tinge of concern floats along the undercurrent of his voice. He squeezes my hand once, then steps away and off the sidewalk to the other side of the car. He opens the door, but just before he gets in, he looks at me one more time and smiles. The smile is exactly the same.

Then, he jumps in, slams the door shut behind him, and the vehicle peels off down the block. I stay there, watching it retreat into the distance, until it makes a turn and vanishes from sight.

My head is spinning. Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Maybe I need him. Maybe I need what he is to me – heat, flight, freedom. Maybe I need his “So what?” and his smile and the cigarette clasped between his soft lips.

Maybe I am dying here. Maybe I can’t keep “surviving.” Maybe I need to say fuck my priorities and leave.

I am not a bird.

Fuck that. Fuck Sarah. Fuck Mother. Fuck Bellamy. Fuck the scars on my neck and the marks on my wrist. Fuck that desk, that building. Fuck my apartment. Fuck caution. Fuck safety.

I can’t stay here, chained by my obligations and my fear of the fall. I can’t shiver to death in this uncaring city, not when Garret is out there, not when I have already found something that keeps me warm and makes the blood rush through my veins.

How can I let that go? How can I possibly confine myself to the bleak, to the fog?

No.

No.

No.

I spin away from Bellamy’s building and back towards my apartment. At first I walk, but soon I am sprinting, legs rubbing together, sweating and panting and savoring the sensation of the air on my face. I push through crowds, knocking people out of my way or weaving between them, anything to get away from here and away from now.

I am going to follow him. I am going to get him back.

I am going to fly.

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