God, I want to kiss her. I wanna be the one touching her, running my mouth over her skin, sucking on her rosy nipples. Licking a path down her belly to her pussy, stroking her until she comes.
My cock swells in my grip, straining toward her. It’s so wet, so hard it hurts. My balls press up and I moan, my body racing toward release. No way to stop it now.
“Come with me,” I manage, struggling to keep my eyes open, to see her touching herself, her fingers pumping inside her pussy. “Cassie…”
Her body a taut bow, her thumb pressed on her clit, she lets out a keening cry, her hips rolling, and goddammit, she’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Sexier than I imagined. Sexier than anything—
The pleasure hits without warning, the pressure behind my balls snapping, hurtling me into a blinding orgasm that has my body shaking and strangled sounds coming from deep inside me. My cum splashes my chin, my arms, my chest, and I’m still coming in wrenching spasms that seem to go on forever.
Jesus Christ.
Fuck.
Somehow, the black void is still waiting to suck me down. I can feel it teasing the back of my mind. Need something to bring me back before I fall too deep and I knock my head back again, the pain exploding in my skull pushing the void back.
“Shane, stop.” When she leans over me and kisses my mouth, I sigh, my body going limp and heavy. Everything stops when she touches me like this.
The world stops turning.
My eyes are closing, the surge of energy that kept me going since she appeared on my doorstep used up. I’m crashing hard, and the last thing I remember is her face, and her voice telling me to go to sleep before the dark snuffs me out.
***
It always starts with the smell, even in my dreams. Onion-sour sweat, chlorine and the ever-present fucking cinnamon, who the hell knows why.
By then, of course, I’m in too deep to know it’s a dream—as my body hits the tiled floor of the bathrooms with a thud and a sparkle of pain radiates from my spine, as I’m pulled by my hair and the sharp claws of hurt drag a gasp from my throat.
As despair swallows me whole, and every attempt to fight and free myself results in vicious kicks in my ribs and back, and the sound of hooting laughter.
I don’t wanna be here. Why am I here again?
“Miss me, little bitch?” Rotten meat breath, a scar under a pale eye, a sneer. “Thought I wouldn’t come for you again? Thought I’d ever let you go?”
“No.” I shake my head, wince when the hand in my hair tightens, tiny pinpricks of fire. “Please.”
“That’s right. Beg for it.” He’s chewing gum, every single fucking time. He grins. Then he draws his fist back and crashes it into my face. Pain explodes. “This,” he says pleasantly, “is for ratting us out to the nurse. Did you really think anything would happen?”
“What will happen,” says Christoph, twisting his hand in my hair, snapping my head back so that I’m looking up at his inverted face, “is that we’re gonna fuck you that much harder.”
When they stuff the dirty cloth into my mouth, I know what’s coming, I know what came, I’ve lived it, seen it a thousand times over, and my body jerks like a fish on a hook.
No one can save me. This will never end. Seth can’t save me.
I need to end this. End me, so that I get out of this hell. I need—
“ShaneComeOnShaneWakeUpComeOnShane…” The voice is low and urgent, high-pitched with fear and different from the ones still echoing in my head… A woman’s voice, a light pressure on my shoulder. “Shane. Wake up. It’s a dream. You’re okay. Shane!”
My mouth is open in a scream I can’t push out. Breathing isn’t an option, not yet. Pain is shooting through me like a jagged bullet, carving up my insides. I finally manage to suck air into my tight lungs, and it comes out in a hiss.
There’s a dull thud-thud-thud behind the buzzing in my ears and the booming of my heart. Dimly I realize it’s because I’m shaking so hard the headboard is knocking against the wall.
Jesus.
A bed. Not the floor. The bedside lamp is on behind me, throwing long shadows on the wall and a person is crouched there, a dark ghost.
Fuck. I jerk back a moment before I realize it’s Cassie, long blond hair tangled around her face, her eyes round as saucers.
Cassie.