As the world around me goes fuzzy, one thought comes to mind.
Not a single fucking person will care when I’m dead.
An image of a naked woman below me takes shape. She’s writhing and begging for my cock, but I’m struck with images of the past. Images from my subconscious that hits me just as I’m about to push inside of her. The touching. The pain. The helplessness I feel when I try to move away but can’t.
I roll off the woman, but I’m assaulted with more and more images until I’m pounding on my head and screaming at them to go away.
* * *
LENNY
I’m familiar with nightmares. In fact, I just woke up from one of my own. One where I was falling. Facing death while looking up at the boy and the future I was never going to have.
I quickly realize that it wasn’t my nightmare that woke me.
It’s Nine.
He’s covered in sweat and writhing around violently. I try to wake him, by shouting his name, but it’s no use. His eyes are pinched shut, his forehead lined with confusion. He’s shouting, “No! Go away! No! No more! Leave me alone! I’ll fucking kill you!”
I leap on top of him and shake him hard. When that doesn’t work, I try a less conventional tactic.
I slap him across the face.
Hard,
His eyes fly open and I’m flipped onto my back and pressed into the bed.
I gasp as his hands wrap around my throat and squeeze.
“It’s you,” he says, his eyes focusing on me. The tension leaves his hand on my throat, but the hand remains. “It’s really you.”
“It’s just me.”
Nine blinks rapidly like for a moment he might have thought I was someone else, but his weight remains on top of me.
I shiver. Not because I’m afraid, but because close to him like this is like standing close to an electric current. My entire body is humming with either anticipation or the fear of being electrocuted.
“Do you feel that?” I ask, breathlessly. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Nine says, splaying his fingers on my throat then moving down to my collar bone and shoulder. “Never felt it before.”
“Me either,” I admit.
“Not even with…?” he asks.
“Not even with him,” I admit. I’m hyper focus on his lips. Lips that I want on mine. On my body. Everywhere.
“Why were you with him? Of all people, why him?” he dips his fingertips inside the neckline of my t-shirt.
I’m almost giddy at the compliment in his question.
He means that Jared was such a shit that he can’t believe anyone would actually be with him, not that you’re so amazing you can have anyone you want so why did you pick Jared.
Ego much?
“I don’t know. It just happened.” I look away, rolling my head to the side. “My parents died, and he was there for me, and that was it. He was the only man I’ve ever been with. I didn’t love him, but I stayed because it was just easier to stay.” I’m embarrassed by my own admission. Hearing it out loud sounds ridiculous, even to me.
Apparently, it sounds ridiculous to Nine as well.
“You don’t know why you were with him, except that he was the first man to make you cum?” He’s not mocking me. He’s just asking a valid question while his hands explore pulling the large collar down in the front to trail his hand between my breasts while the other traces my outer thigh, leaving a heat trail on my skin everywhere he touches.
“I…” I stutter, not knowing how to correct him without saying the actual words, but finding it hard to come up with the right ones. “He never…”
“He never made you come?” he finishes for me.
I take a deep breath through my nose. “Never.”
Nine’s eyes widen. His lips part. He licks the silver lip ring hooped through his right side of his bottom lip. “So, no man has ever made you…”
I simply shake my head.
Nine sucks in a breath, his eyes gleam, darkening with each passing second. He smirks and my stomach flips. “Oh, little bird, this is going to be fun.”
“What is?” I ask, wondering if he’s decided to finally begin the torture.
And in a way, I’m right.
“This.” He presses his lips to mine again. They’re soft, yet the kiss is hard. Demanding. Seeking.
I pull back. My words come out breathless. “This is a dangerous game of cat and mouse we’re playing.”
A devilish smirk plays on his handsome face. I hold his jaw in my hands. “More like a game of cat and bird.”
My nipples graze his warm chest, hardening on contact. “And we all know how that turns out in the end,” I reply, lifting my hips to his. “The cat eats the bird.”
Nine groans, then lightly scrapes his nails over my bare arms before pressing them firmly into my skin. I gasp at the bite of pain. “That’s not what happens,” he says. “The pretty bird swoops down from nowhere and sinks her sharp talons into the cat, marking him for life.”