Unreal 2 Cold Illusion - Winter's Chill: (Adult Suspense Thriller) Page 22

  “This is all wrong,” he said.

  As she saw his face darken, Julie shook her head.

  “No, Ethan. It’s not. It can’t be wrong. I shouldn’t have---”

  “Yes it is, Juliet.”

  He struggled to his feet, and Julie just watched him as he circled the room and rubbed his face in his hands.

  “Look, I’m glad I got you out. I will always be glad about that. But it should have ended there. Maybe this… maybe…”

  He finally stopped where he stood and stared down at the place where she sat, waiting.

  “Maybe Kim wouldn’t even have to testify if I hadn’t…”

  Again his voice trailed off, and Julie knew where he was going. It reeked of Vivian Porter’s brand of vitriol, turning everything that they had shared into something ugly. And Julie was shamed by the fact that she had entertained the idea and left him when they needed each other most.

  “Ethan?”

  She was on her feet, stopping him as he tried to turn away.

  “Listen, I don’t care anymore.”

  His eyes were full of confusion as they met hers. Julie thought of the lonely nights in Danielle’s hideaway, the place where she had tried to hate him. But when the scent of flowers wafted towards her lonely room, she remembered the roof, the garden just for her, and the first moment when she felt that there was life beyond the dark woods.

  “What do you---?”

  “I’m free,” she said. “You saved me from them. Kim’s saving me from having to testify. We… we can just…”

  Julie pressed her mouth to his. Ethan’s lips were cold, stiff, but when she wrapped her arm around his waist, he melted into her kiss and lingered. Even as the kiss ended, Julie kept her mouth close to his and drank in the heat of his breath.

  “We can what?” he asked, his voice still unsure.

  It didn’t make sense. No one would ever understand. But they did. Kim did. It was time to stop hurting and cling to the joy in front of her.

  “We can be together,” she whispered.

  In the wake of her statement, his eyes were optimistic. But his hand hesitated just above her scar.

  “You still want that?” he asked.

  I’ve never wanted anything more.

  Julie took his hand and brought him to the bed. She sighed at the sight of the rumpled sheets, and she was struck by all the ways in which she had been harmed.

  But not by Ethan. Never by Ethan.

  “I do,” she said.

  Julie stripped quickly, and when he body was bare, Ethan lovingly looked at her soft flesh. He groaned as she turned, her deformed back meeting his eyes, but when she reached for him, he was close, closer than ever, and he pressed her to his chest.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  She brought his hand between her legs. There was a flash of all the ways in which this touch had been wrong. But his hands weren’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong.

  “I’m sure.”

  Julie fell to the bed and waited, her body bare and open and unafraid. Ethan stared at her, his chest heaving, but when she offered her hand, he started to remove his clothes.

  “No.”

  He stopped at the sound of her voice, but soon she was on her knees and playing with his buttons.

  “Let me.”

  Julie took her time and removed his shirt. His chest was broad, and she kissed him there as he ran his fingers through her hair. Her hands moved to his fly, and when she unzipped, she felt him hard and desperate.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help it.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his ear.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Julie held him close as he touched her scars and sighed into her neck.

  “Because I love you.”

  She lifted her eyes and brushed her fingers across his face.

  “Me, too,” she said. “And it’s right for us to love each other.”

  Without another word, they fell to the bed. Ethan pulsed around her thighs, and Julie parted her legs to help him along.

  “You’re ready?” he asked.

  As she nodded, he entered. She had known him once before, but this time was different. They weren’t bathed in the glow of a wedding’s romance. This time Ethan’s hands were almost clumsy as they desperately moved down her sides, and Julie forgot all the ways in which she was scarred, bruised. Even as he kissed her arms, she knew that it wasn’t a sight that every man would delight in. Men had slipped into two categories. There were those that used her without a care for how or if she was hurt.

  And then there was Ethan.

  Julie wrapped her legs around his and let him fill her with his warmth. She shuddered some at the first point of contact, but when he moved deeper, expanding inside her, his words full of love with every thrust, Julie clung to the moment and didn’t want it to end.

  “I missed you,” Ethan said as he found her lips and kissed her again. She relished his tasted on his tongue and left his mouth only to trail new kisses down his arms. He held her closer with each touch of her lips on his skin, and when their eyes met again, Julie settled into his warm gaze. Ethan’s hand was gentle against her scar, and he relaxed his pursuit, settling his head to her chest.

  “I was dying without you,” he said.

  Julie started to tense he muscles around his firmest flesh when he shook his head.

  “No. I was dying without you,” he said. “Your hair, your voice.”

  “Listen to me, Ethan.”

  He did, and when her hands moved down his back, Ethan pressed her closer and plunged deeper. Julie forgot Carter McCord and what it was to be raped as he took her gently, and she screamed her pleasure when her body burned around his. After the climax, Julie lifted her body from the bed and clung to him as he stayed inside her. She didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t want this to end.

  “I hear you, Juliet.”

  She moaned as he pressed her body back to the bed and touched her scar.

  “And I won’t lie to you again,” he said as he kissed her injured flesh. Julie took delight in the the feel of his lips on her body, but she still had apologies buried in her brain.

  “And neither will I.”

  Ethan started to pull away when she grabbed his neck and returned his kiss to the space just above her mouth.

  “Juliet?”

  She kissed him quickly before burying her voice in his chest.

  “Kim’s home. And I…”

  A single finger caressed his cheek, and her smile exploded.

  “And so am I.”

  Ethan kissed her again and held her close as they slipped into sleep.

  20

  “Get her up.”

  Carter wiped a small trail of blood from his mouth and hauled Kim’s semi-conscious body to her feet.

  “Move, bitch.”

  Carter pushed her through the dirt, his arms around her middle, his fingers tugging at her nipples when she became so dazed that Kim and had to focus on her injured feet scraping against the dirt, the rocks. Unlike Julie, she had no savior. But Kim would take a pair of shoes if one of these brutes offered her feet some form of protection.

  That wasn’t happening.

  “What’s the plan, Geoff?” Carter asked as he kept pushing Kim forward.

  “I know a guy,” Geoffrey started. “Doesn’t keep the best girls, but he serves a purpose.”

  “Purpose?” Carter asked.

  “What do I have to spell it out for you?” Geoffrey bellowed.

  Kim started to slip to the forest floor when Carter kept her upright, and Kim wasn’t too far gone that she didn’t shudder when Geoffrey pressed his oily fingers under her chin.

  “See this one’s pliable,” Geoffrey said. “Just how I like them.”

  He kissed her battered lip, and when his mouth crushed into her face, Kim proved his point. Even as she tried to struggle away from his kiss, Kim was too weak to leave his breath.

  Where are
you, Jules?

  “Yes, sir,” Geoffrey said as he finally abandoned her mouth and brutally pinched her cheek. His touch became a slither that moved down her cheek and settled at the hollow of her neck. A new wave of adrenaline coursed through Kim’s veins. Escape was out of the question, but she knew what was going to happen next. And she fought until he slammed his fist into her face. Sobbing, Kim ceased her struggles.

  “So we’ll take her there,” Geoffrey continued. “And when the coast is clear, if your whore is subdued, we’ll get rid of Red.”

  Geoffrey played with her hair; Kim was too spent to even cringe as his hand mauled her auburn locks.

  “But if we need her down the line…”

  He burst into laughter and reached between Kim’s legs. Tugging at her swollen cunt, he suppressed Kim’s cries with another brutal kiss and laughed as she whimpered.

  “If the other one gets too mouthy, this one is going to come in handy.”

  The men brought Kim back to the cabin as Pete and Matt raced through the woods. Depositing her body in the backseat with a ratty blanket tossed over her defeated form, Kim slipped in an out of awareness as the car moved farther and farther away from the hell that she had known to a place where she seemed destined to suffer even greater indignities. Geoffrey laughed as he painted the horrible picture.

  “Guy’s called Boone,” Geoffrey said. “His girls are mostly meth mouths, but they’re skinny. We leave her there. If your boys catch the other one, we waste her. If not, we can still play with her, and I bet Boone’ll cut us in on her fees.”

  Peering through the blanket, Kim wept quietly and imagined a worse fate than the space of the summer. Never had she thought that she’d welcome Pete and Matt’s brand of captivity, but crazy as it was, and despite the short time, she knew them before they turned monster. Now she was being led to a darker place, and any hope of escape seemed impossible as she was pulled from the backseat and thrust into the arms of a mountain man reeking of odors she would rather not contemplate. Kim was groped on the spot and quickly placed in a basement among skeletons that still breathed. They and their vacant eyes were shackled to the stone floor. Kim took some comfort in the bed that she was forced to, and she strained to listen as the one they called Boone spoke to the others at the foot of the stairs.

  “She’s yours,” Geoffrey said. “Maybe forever. If you don’t have to waste her…”

  Kim registered Geoffrey’s cold stare as it moved back in her direction, and even as she longed to sleep, she kept her eyes wide and listened.

  “We’ll come back to play.”

  As soon as they were gone, Boone moved to Kim’s bed. Some of the other girls whimpered as he past them, and Boone answered their pleas for mercy with kicks to their ribs and slaps to their cheeks. They fell silent, and Boone settled at Kim’s side.

  “Guess I gotta clean you up,” Boone said.

  Kim wanted to believe that she too had a savior. Maybe he wasn’t the man that had Julie, but he was offering a kind of help, and Kim would take whatever he had to offer.

  Boone sighed and cleaned her wounds. Reaching into his pocket, he plucked out a bottle of painkillers and eased the pills down her throat. Kim started to feel better as a softer sleep began to envelop her.

  “That’s a good girl,” he purred. “Now you get some rest.”

  Kim sat on her own bed with a notebook in her hands. She was making a list. It was long and hard. Some names harder to write than others. But it had to be done.

  Boone.

  The mountain man that had held her and turned her into the worst kind of whore. Kim would go back. She would cut him in two at the first chance. Her escape was only granted because it was convenient, and Kim had been disgusted when she rushed into arms because the man looked familiar. She would have fucked him on the spot if it meant a way out.

  Geoffrey Troxel.

  As they drove back towards home, his voice was full of threats.

  “Now you better not make any trouble for us,” he warned. “You can always go right back.”

  “Yeah, Jules too.”

  At the sound of her friend’s name, Kim forgot harm and weakly charged at Julie’s rapist.

  “Where is she?” Kim asked, her voice slurred. “What did you---?”

  Carter McCord captured her wrists with a smirk.

  “Calm down,” he said. “Jules is living it up.”

  She didn’t like him the way he said her name. He didn’t know her. He didn’t deserve to…

  Carter McCord.

  Kim screamed for her friend as Carter pulled her by the hair, and she had no choice but to look at him.

  “She was a fine piece of ass,” he said. “I miss her.”

  Kim clawed at his face, at the idea that he had hurt her, but Carter subdued her and glared into her eyes.

  “She’s fine,” he said. “You’re little friend had been banging a guy, going to weddings, getting flowers. And the whole time it was her stepdad that made this happen.”

  Kim trembled at the sound of his words. Pinned in terror, she could do nothing but listen as they told the tale of Greg Heller. It was a kind of suicide, but Geoffrey Troxel pressed his lips to her ears as they drew close to her house.

  “He goes down,” Geoffrey ordered. “Testify or you’re right back where you were.”

  “Kim? Baby?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  “Are you okay, honey?”

  Kim nodded, and when her door closed, she returned her attention to her notepad. She would do whatever she had to in order to stay safe.

  But why wasn’t she the one that found freedom instead of too many months of misery? Jules? He had picked Jules? Wanted Jules? The way she looked, who could blame him now? But she hadn’t always looked this way. And he should have saved her.

  Ethan Graff.

  She had a special plan in place for him. When she was said and done, Julie would never want him again. Maybe she would even want him dead.

  Time would tell.

  A ring pierced the room, startling Kim from her plans, and she heard her mother’s cold voice as she returned to her room.

  “It’s Julie,” Amanda said.

  Kim took the phone and fought the urge to scream as Julie’s contented voice reached through the receiver.

  “I went to him,” Julie said.

  Kim’s knuckles went white before she spoke.

  “You did?” Kim asked.

  Julie’s laugher was like battery acid, but Kim kept listening.

  “I can’t wait for you to meet him,” Julie said. “He’s so nice. And whatever else happened, I really love him.”

  “That’s good. That’s great. You deserve everything that you have coming.”

  Kim let the phone fall to her bed, and soon her mother’s arm was at her back.

  “What have you got there?” Amanda asked as she looked at the pad in her daughter’s hands. Kim raised her pen and managed a smile.

  “Just a list, saving the best for last.”

  Kim pressed the tip of her pen to the paper.

  Jules.

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  How far will they go…

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