Never Have I Ever (37 page)

The Sybian was cranked up again, ruthlessly attacking my responsive sex. My jaw slackened; I was panting like a bitch in heat for more.

“Oh, fuck!”

His left hand was at my right breast, massaging the weight of it. His voice, his scent, and the touch of his fingers were a direct line to my core. I adored hearing him talk like that, reminding me I was forever under his control.

“That’s it, pet,
come
for me. I want all of it. It belongs to me and I’m taking it tonight.
Tonight, and every night.
You’re mine.”

He rolled my nipple between his fingers, and that was all it took to make me sail over the edge a second time. I tensed, rocking forward to writhe against the Sybian, to push my forehead against his with a silent scream and a string of pained, moaned calls to God and everybody.

“Good girl,” Noah cooed, “Give me more.”

“It hurts, Sir,” I managed to squeak out between breaths.

“And you love every moment of it. Don’t you, slut?”

I did. I really did. The anguish of pushing through the aftershocks of one orgasm and tumbling into the next in rapid succession pounded against my psyche to elevate me almost to transcendence. Things like this, the forced orgasms, the hard flogging, all of it could have been mistaken for punishment to a normal person—even by others in the lifestyle, I supposed, but Noah discovered rather quickly that I enjoyed the sting of a flogger and a crop too much to use it as punishment on me. Several times prior, he stopped himself before he drew blood, and even then I was still begging for it. When it came to punishment, pain was not usually on the list. He had to get much more creative for me.

But this was not punishment. This was all ache and ecstasy.

“Oh God, it’s too much.”

His hand moved from my breast and I felt the flogger lick my ass and thigh again.

“One more, pet,” he growled, “I want you to keep coming. You radiate and glow when you climax.”

I was so sensitive that I could not tell where the agony ended and the elation began. Wetness from cum and sweat greased the saddle of the Sybian. Its angry roar made me screech and beg. Every muscle in me twitched, rocking me into one continuous, rolling orgasm for nearly a minute straight. Ever so slowly, the intensity of the machine was calmed. My chest heaved. Sweat dripped out of every pore on my body.

A furious tremble raced through me as the Sybian went silent. The only sound in the room came from my attempts to control my breathing and the residual whimpers and groans I was not willingly allowing
to escape
but did anyway. My head lolled forward, spent in totality.

Noah ran his hands over my shoulders several times, calming me down from the journey.

“Holy fucking hell,” I gasped.

“Breathe sweetness.” He encouraged me to slow down by placing the palm of his hand between my breasts and taking deep, gentle breaths with me. When he was sure I was not going to hyperventilate, he added, “I’m so proud of you.”

I gave a breathy laugh and the ghost of a smile—the only thing I could manage.

He pulled the blindfold off my eyes and used it to dab away the sweat on my face and neck while he smoothed over my hair. “Stay still a moment. I’ll be right back.”

I almost toppled over when Noah left the bed. My vision adjusted slowly to the dim light of the room just in time for him to return with a tall glass of water. He sat on the bed in front of me, still fully clothed, and placed the glass to my lips so I could take a drink.

After I swallowed, I asked, “Don’t you want to come tonight too, Sir?”

He smiled with warmth and compassion, his free hand stroking my shivering shoulder and arm gently. “It’s not always about me, my sweet. Tonight was for you.
Drink.”

“Yes, Sir,” I relented.

With his help, I drank half the glass of water. He took a swig from himself and set the glass on the nightstand, then helped me off the Sybian. Once I was off my knees and sitting on the bed, my shaking subsided somewhat. Noah untied my arms and massaged the life back into them with soft circles into the depths of my muscles. The machine was packed up, along with the rope and the flogger, and placed in the living room for easy retrieval in the morning.

I collapsed against the cool comforters of my bed and closed my eyes, awash in amazement and exhaustion. Noah returned to the room. The mattress gave way once more as he climbed on. He hovered over me, placing delicate kisses on the red stripes the flogger left. The feel of his breath against my skin made me shiver once again. He kissed my stomach, my navel, and moved up my torso until his face was right above mine.

“Thank you, Sir,” I said.

“You’re very welcome, my dear. Good girls get rewarded. Ask anything of me.”

I gazed up at him, wanting nothing more than to just feel his skin. “I can’t think of anything else I desire right now, Sir.”

Noah leaned in and brushed his lips against mine.
“Nothing at all?”

Apart from working up the nerve to tell him that Selene was alive, which was a courage I now knew I was required to locate on my own, everything I wanted in life existed in this small space between us. Still, if I was going to find the nerve, I needed to know more about my topic of discussion.

“Information maybe,” I told him.

“About what, sweetness?”

“Would you tell me… about Selene?”

“All right,” he said with reluctance. I watched the fact that he did say ‘anything’ register on his face. “What would you like to know?”

“How did she die?”

Noah adjusted his position to lie on his side next to me. He thought for a long beat, looking past me and towards the window as if he could see the night through closed shades. “About a week after she left me Selene took her own life.”

I turned over to face him, drawing my hands up to my chest in the most comfortable position I could manage to listen intently.

“How did you find out?”

“Ethan told me the morning after it happened,” he explained. He reached out and moved his fingers through my hair as he continued, “Poor bastard. He found her. She filled the tub… and took a straight razor to her wrists. He said there wasn’t a corner of the room not touched by her blood.”

“And was it?” I interjected.

Noah gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. I never saw for myself; I could picture it just fine. Never saw her body afterwards, either. Ethan took care of the cleanup and the cremation. I fought him on it. I wanted the proof for my own peace of mind. I wouldn’t have believed she could do something so selfish had it not been for the note she left. The handwriting was unmistakably Selene’s.”

So, not only did she fake her own death, she had help. It all became much clearer to me after his explanation. If Ethan was the one who did the cleanup then perhaps he orchestrated the grand falsehood altogether. Maybe she was not good enough for Noah just as I was not in Ethan’s eyes. He was the only common denominator between the two of us, and his blatant disdain—or my insignificance, according to him—of the women in Noah’s life might have something to do with it. He got to Selene, I figured, the same way he was trying to get to me.

Noah’s statement earlier in the night about how much Ethan hated him may have had something to do with that. If, in Noah’s words, he inadvertently screwed Ethan out of his happiness, then perhaps there was a falling out over Selene. The only thing I was unable to piece together was why; if Ethan found a way to convince her to leave Noah a week prior, why would such lie need to be enacted in the end? Why would Ethan whisk her away to Australia in secret instead of taking her for himself if he wanted her as well? I was also really damned curious as to how the cover-up managed to fly with her family and friends.

“Did her family come to town for the funeral?”

Selene’s alive! I all but shouted in my mind, yet couldn’t get my mouth to say it.

“Selene was an orphan. Her parents died when she was little. She ran away from her foster family at sixteen; came out to Los Angeles to get discovered and all that.” Noah paused to smile and shake his head at the all too common direction people go when they move to this city. “But she never did. The competition’s so heavy. Not only was she a talent on stage, she could draw the pants off anyone too. She was amazing with a paintbrush.”

“Is that why she did it? Not being able to follow her dream?”

“No,” he said somberly. “Other demons, demons not entirely her own, were responsible for that.”

“I’m sorry, Sir,” I whispered.

He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Stop apologizing for things that aren’t your fault.”

I pinned my lips together; he did not understand. I was not sorry because I thought it was my fault. I was sorry that I had not told him the truth. Selene was alive and well and living an ocean away. I was sorry I had to lie to protect her, to protect him, even though I did not know why that protection was required. It was a stain on my heart I wanted to rub out.

Someday, I would tell him.

Someday, but not this day.

***

I lay awake in bed for nearly an hour while Noah slept. He had almost fallen asleep completely clothed he was so tired. It was not until I talked him out of his shirt and pants that I felt a little more confident he would be comfortable.

As for me, I was completely exhausted. For the life of me, my brain just would not shut the fuck off. It kept reeling with What Ifs and How Comes. Around eleven thirty, I realized my tossing and turning would eventually wake Noah. I slipped from bed, threw on a thin robe and made my way into the kitchen to brew some Chamomile tea in the hopes of sedating my overactive mind.

I tried not to think of anything in particular. I knew that even if I succeeded in casting out the thoughts in my head, the moment I lay down again they would emerge even louder than before. Still, I had to try. I took the kettle off the stove before it could whistle and let the tea steep for several minutes.

Cocoa made her presence known by hopping up onto the kitchen counter close to the dining room. I gave her the attention she requested, reassuring myself life might not be quite as bad as it could be while I scratched under her chin and let her rub up against me.

Everything would be okay in the end, I tried to convince myself. Everything would slide back into normalcy. With any luck, Ethan would leave me alone to my victory over his hatred and cynicism.

The minute I began to believe I could fight this fight against Ethan while simultaneously keeping the biggest secret in the history of ever from Noah, the silence in the apartment broke.

With the flip of an unseen switch, Noah woke up screaming.

L
uckily, I wasn’t in bed. Hell, I wasn’t even in the bedroom when Noah’s night terror started. It was unavoidable, inevitable even. As many nights as we spent sleeping together in the same bed, one was bound to rear its ugly head sooner or later.

It began with a groan heard from across the expanse of the living room. The bedroom door was cracked, allowing a soft strip of light to spill over the bed in perfect view from the kitchen. I raised my attention from the Chamomile tea and my cat in front of me to see the blankets shift as Noah turned over. At first, I thought he might just be searching for a more comfortable position. But then another, sharper groan snapped into a higher calling out.

A chill of dread ran rampant through me. I hurried across the living room to the door. It was all shadows and darkness inside with my body blocking the light from the kitchen. He was speaking incoherently, his movements quickly becoming violent, thrashing in the dark. Pillows fell from their place, sheets ripped away from a secure position while he begged for whatever thoughts were flashing through his head to end.

Clenching my hand against the door frame, I forced myself to stop mid-stride into the bedroom. Noah warned me, Declan warned me, and Anya warned me that the best thing to do was stay the fuck away while this happened. But how could I let something like this simply run its course when it looked like the unseen demons of Hell itself were clawing at him, trying with all their might, to drag him back down to the Pit with them?

I whipped around the other way and plastered myself against the wall beside the bedroom. If I couldn’t go to him, I couldn’t bear to stand there and watch it. Seconds ticked on the clock in my line of sight like hours as I stared at the opposite side of the apartment, wondering how long the episode would last.

A full
agonizing
minute went by. He cursed in his sleep, his breathing rushed and ragged and full of desperation. I heard the glass of water we left on the nightstand clatter over and crack when it hit the corner before rolling off.

After seeing and hearing it all, I would never wish the experience on anybody in the world. Even the darkest soul on the planet shouldn’t have to endure what Noah did in the night.

With one final cry of, “STOP!” at the top of his lungs, all movement in the bedroom ceased.

All I heard was a series of gasps and heavy breathing. When I peeked around the door, Noah was sitting up, looking around like he didn’t recognize where he was. I came into full view of the room. His attention shot over to me immediately. I held my hands out, palms down, the way one does when trying to calm a frightened dog—how stupid an instinctual that was.