A small smile tilted his lips, almost like he had a moment of feeling alive. It panged in my heart, a stab, just a little one.
“Cars,” I let out, tears threatening to spill behind my eyes. He stepped closer and I stopped him, needing the distance. No one had touched me in years. Even the partners in my bed were forbidden from touching me with their hands. Hands led to feelings, and that led to breakdowns when I wanted nothing more than to die. I couldn’t deal with that. Not tonight.
“When will you let me back in?” His eyes pleaded; a sorrow I felt inside myself mirrored there.
“When I can no longer feel,” I rasped, walking past him, making sure there was no skin contact. I swallowed down the emotion, wanting to fucking scream until I couldn’t let out another sound.
By the time I made it out the side emergency exit, the need to cut and release the despair warring with nostalgia overwhelmed me.
The mild air hit my lungs; the flush immediately doused the flames with the soft wind. This was supposed to be a good night, one where I didn’t have to stress about others and could focus on getting high and wasted.
I needed a fucking escape.
A breather.
Pulling out my baggie of Molly, I took two. Immediately, a calm washed over me, reminding me of how Memphis said the drugs weren’t actually a release. They were a delusion we used to distract ourselves from the truth.
We were broken.
Drugs wouldn’t fix us.
Healing would.
I pulled out a joint, lighting it, mixing it with Molly never turned out well for me, but I needed an escape, something. Anything.
After taking both substances, I remembered why I’d rushed off stage in the first place. Andy. Closing my eyes from the disappointment, I went back inside, hoping to find her and tell her I needed her.
When the music hit my ears, I didn’t calm, it reminded me of how maddening it was to find someone in a fucking club where everyone went insane.
My body started to feel the spark of the Molly in my system and I knew I’d be ready to escape with someone. And no one made me want that other than Andy. I stared around, looking for my more-than-average-height little demon. When I didn’t see her near the stage, or the bar, I started scanning the crowd. Nothing.
When I was about to call it quits and leave, my eyes rose to the hovering cages. In the center with another woman, Andy swayed, her body fluid with her movements.
She used to dance. My grandma wanted her to become a ballerina, but Andy’s heart wasn’t in it. I loved that about her, she chose what she wanted in the end and that’s what mattered.
She didn’t see me beneath her and I was glad. It was nice seeing her free, it seemed Chad—Brandon—didn’t give her freedom.
When the person she danced with put her arms around Andy’s neck, grinding into her, I growled. As if Andy heard me—which there was no way she could in a crowded club like this—she looked down, right at me.
A smile tilted at her lips, but with the girl’s arms around her, all she received from me was a possessive glare.
Girls touching Andy was just as bad as males. She was mine.
Mine.
I watched as she waved at the conductor of the cages. He pulled them in slowly, their retreat leaving ripples of unease across my body. Finally, Andy got out, heading straight for me.
In this dark but erratic crowd, I was grateful no one approached me or tried touching me. It happened too often. Fans thought they owned parts of me.
They didn’t.
Boundaries were important.
“What are you doing down here?”
“Who is she?” I deflected, flicking my gaze to the woman a few feet behind her, waiting like a vulture.
“My friend.”
“Friend or friend?” I pushed, needing an answer.
“Seriously?” she quipped, but amusement flickered in her gaze.
My fingers trailed up her throat, resolute in their warpath. Temptation escorted me, chains dragging behind me, marking the boundary we were both wanting to cross with a loud clanking. Like a jailer locked up for his sins, I held her, choosing when to give and take oxygen. I was her sustenance. Her solace. Her punisher.
The tiny gasp that escaped her made me ache in ways I didn’t realize were possible. My tongue trailed across her cheek, reaching for her chin as she shook beneath me. Urgency sliced through me as I drug my teeth across the sensitive flesh.
Her body felt warm, tense yet loose. Beneath the press of my hand, it told a story I knew too well. Five years passed, yet her heart thumped beneath my palm as if it still knew its captor’s touch.
Beat, pause. Beat, pause. Beat, pause.
I didn’t touch people. My skin coming into contact with others wasn’t normal, but Andy somehow broke through all conscious thought on that. The itch didn’t exist when her body neared mine or where ours met.
“You’re mine, Andy. I’m just waiting for you to catch up.” I leaned into her throat, licking the sweat there. I relished in it for a moment, needing to absorb the fact that I hadn’t touched a person’s neck this intimately in over five years. “You taste like mine. Bet you’d taste even more mine with my mouth between your thighs.”
She let out a little whimper, baring her neck to me. “We’re in public.”
It wasn’t a reprimand, but a warning. One I didn’t plan to heed. “I will fuck you on this dance floor, little demon. I’ll let the entire world see me sink my cock inside you and show them that you’re mine.”
“We’re family,” she argued, but she sounded subdued, soft, like she was moments from giving in to me. “We can’t do this.”
“There’s very little I wouldn’t do to have you. But until you leave that loser, my cock, my body,” I explained, nipping her carotid, “is off-limits to you.”
“Madden,” she tried, her voice shaky and aroused, much like my stiff erection.
“If you touch him, a kiss, a blowjob, anything... I will walk away. It’s me or him, little demon,” I cautioned, leaving a bereft kiss on the base of her throat before walking away.
I’d give myself blue balls if I didn’t give in and fuck her. Did she want that? For me to fuck her and pretend she didn’t taste like a slice of my very own heaven.
Did she want me to lose all common sense and make the world see how she was made for me and me alone? I’ve been holding this shit in since I was fifteen, maybe even earlier, but I was about to fucking lose it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
You Had Me @ Hello – A Day After Tomorrow
Past
Andy – Eighteen
Madden – Sixteen
Andy
“Come with me, please,” I begged Madden after my afternoon classes at Dupont. He visited often, at least once a summer since his parents always toured. But even more after my parents weren’t around to take care of him.
They were already old—when they adopted me, they weren’t prepared for the mess I’d become.
He was sixteen now, old enough to drink behind their backs, even though he’d been doing it for over a year now.
Madden and I were best friends, kind of have to be when you spent more time together than apart and your friends were all friends too.
“Sounds lame,” Madden replied dryly, sipping a soda. He didn’t pay attention to me, but instead worked on whatever was in that spiral-bound notebook, tapping his fingers in a staccato rhythm. Usually, he was all for a party, but this one would be a bit different. It wasn’t at some club or shit he snuck into; it was at my boyfriend Josh’s house.