Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika #2) (5 page)

I stroked him roughly once, twice, before he stayed my hand.
 
I watched in rapt fascination as one pearly drop of liquid seeped out of his engorged tip.
 

I was out of my seatbelt, leaning over him the second he pulled the car into the parking lot of his apartment, my mouth hungry as I tongued the head of his cock.
 

He pulled me off him by my hair, giving me a pained smile.
 
“Like I said, I’m waiting to fuck you.
 
Get out of the car, boo.”
 

I had a brief urge to sass him for that, but I squelched it, instead hightailing it upstairs.
 
He had plans, and I was on board with them, regardless of what exactly they were.
 
My libido had gone into overdrive with this man, and become a thing beyond my control.

It was like a magic trick in itself, the speed in which he unlocked the apartment door, shut it behind us, and had me pinned against it.
 

My heels dug into his ass as he ground into me.
 
Our kisses were hard and rough, hot and intoxicating, hungry and insatiable.
 

He buried himself inside of me with one sure thrust, and the fever took us as he gave me the rough ride he’d promised, muttering curses and endearments into my ear as he rocked my world.
 

“Gonna fuck you ’til neither of us can walk straight tomorrow,” he growled into my mouth.
 

I melted.
 
Deep waves of rapture took me as he pulled out and shot back in with long, heavy thrusts, fast and hard, my hips moving with him, each thrust slamming me into the door at my back.
 

“Love you,” I gasped as I came.
 

His back bowed, and he came, buried deep inside of me, shouting with his pleasure.

“God, that was intense,” I breathed.

“Oh, we’re not finished.”
 

He pulled out still twitching, no sooner letting my feet touch the ground than he was dragging me straight to his bedroom.
 

He pushed me onto the bed, his expression fierce.
 
And tender.
 

God, I loved him, loved this, adored everything he did to me, every touch, every taste, making me love an act that had terrorized me for most of my adult life.

He flipped me onto my stomach, lifting my hips to just the right angle, the head of his cock pulsing against me, barely pushing inside, instead teasing me relentlessly.
 

“Talk to me, sweetheart,” he rasped into my ear.
 
“I want you to tell me just what you want.
 
Make it dirty.”
 

My hips strained back against him, my back arching as his hand palmed my breast.
 
“Fuck me hard.”
 
I gasped as the first perfect inch of him breached me.
 
“Pull my hair and pound me into this bed.”
 

That startled a rough laugh out of him.
 
The laugh was cut off short, though, as he sank into me, pushing hard and deep, stretching me, filling me until every nerve inside of me vibrated to life.
 

He took my request literally, pounding into me until I thought I’d leave a permanent indent in his bed, my face buried so deep in his soft mattress that I had to push up on my elbows just to take a breath.
   

He didn’t let up, taking me with relentless purpose.
 
It was a sheet clawing kind of fuck, and he had me screaming before he was done.
 

He lay heavy on my back after we finished, panting, his hips still grinding down, pinning me.
 
“You okay?” he panted.
 
“I think I lost all brain function for a bit there.”
 

“Mmmhmm,” I murmured, still breathing hard as I drifted back down to earth.
 

It was a long time before he shifted off me, and even then he draped himself over me.
 
My man was a cuddler, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.

“It’s going to be tough to give this up for five days a week,” he mused, his voice sleepy.
 

That made me stiffen.
 
I’d nearly forgotten about the record deal.
 
Maybe my mind had blocked it out.
 
The entire thing terrified me.
 
I knew it wouldn’t be good for us.
 
Good for Tristan, maybe.
 
At least I hoped so.
 
But certainly not good for the two of us together.
 

His hand tightened on my hip, and I realized that I’d been spacing out while he’d been asking me a question.
 
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?
 
If you don’t like it, I won’t do it.
 
I don’t want to be gone that much anyway.”
 

I patted his hand, shutting my eyes tight.
 
He was hugging my back, and didn’t see the tears slipping past my lids.
 
“Of course I’m okay with it.
 
You can’t pass up this chance, Tristan, and we’ll still see each other on weekends.”
 

“God, that sounds awful.
 
Five days a week is ridiculous.
 
I’ll see if I can’t change their minds about the schedule.”
 

In the end, they stuck to the schedule.
 
Five days away, two days home, week after week.
 
It began to take its toll on us almost right away; Tristan coming home more tired each time, more strung out.
 
I felt him inching further away from me every time he left, and the absences started to stretch into longer lengths of time, days turning into weeks.
 

We were drifting apart.
 
I felt helpless to stop the pattern, but still, I held onto him for dear life.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

MONTHS LATER

DANIKA

The neighborhood was scary, even by trailer park standards.
 
It was just the sort of place I’d pictured her living for all these years apart.
 
In my mind, it had always been either a dump like this or her not living at all.
 
She just led that kind of a life.
 

I knocked on the door, waited a solid minute, then knocked again.
 
I could hear the TV on inside and there was an old, beat-up Nissan Sentra in the carport.
 
This was the place, and somebody was home.
 
I wasn’t leaving until that somebody answered the door.
 

After a solid five minutes of this, I tried the door.
 
It wasn’t locked, and with more than a little trepidation, I opened it.
 

The inside of the trailer was even smaller than it appeared outside, and I could make out most of the inside of the place with just a glance.
 

My mother, rail thin and haggard, sat slumped on a sofa that looked like it had been through hell.
 
Knowing her, and remembering my childhood, it probably had.
 
The woman was a bundle of apathetic chaos.
   

She was aimed at a TV that was running an episode of some reality show, but I didn’t think she was actually watching it.
 
She was zoning out, and even at the entrance of a daughter she hadn’t seen in years, her gaze barely shifted, and her face didn’t so much as twitch.
 

The bedroom didn’t have its own wall to separate it from the living quarters, and so I saw some man’s feet sticking out of the bottom of the bed across the room.
 
I hadn’t expected anything different.
 
Even ravaged by her addiction, I could see the beauty in my mother’s face.
 
That, paired with the fact that she wasn’t at all picky, meant that she’d never had a second’s trouble finding a man.
 

Keeping one around for long, well now, that was another story.
 

“Hi,” I said to her quietly, mindful of the strange man just a few feet away.
 

“Hey,” she said tonelessly.
 
Nothing else.

I wasn’t certain it had ever been said aloud, but I’d always had the acute sense that my sister and I had been nothing but a burden to my mother.
 
I was grown now and hadn’t seen her in years, and still, I saw the same look in her eyes that I always had.
 

I wasn’t wanted here.
 

I never had been.
 

I grabbed a short stool near the door, carrying it with me to sit down eye level to her.
 
I made sure not to block her view of the TV.
 
I wasn’t here to rile her.
 

“The man and woman that came to see you a few years ago, Jerry and Bev,” I began, having rehearsed the words like a nervous child, “they are very good people.
 
They’ve been wonderful to me.
 
They’re very dependable employers and close friends of mine.
 
They take care of me, provide a good home for me.”
 

There was no change in her expression, no recognition in her eyes that I’d said anything that should affect her.
 

“I’m doing well.
 
I’m a full-time student, and I work part-time during the semester.”
 

Nothing.
 

“I’m still taking dance classes.
 
I don’t have a lot of time for dancing, with school and work, but I haven’t given up.
 
When things calm down, I fully plan to pursue that.”
 

“Do you have any cash?” she asked, as though it was the most reasonable question in the world, and I hadn’t been talking about something entirely different.
 

I swallowed, stung when I shouldn’t have been, further disillusioned when I had no right to it.
 

“There’s a man asleep in the other room.
 
If I don’t pay him what I owe him, he’s going to hurt me.”

“Should I call the police?”
 

“That won’t help me.
 
It’s…complicated.
 
Do you have any cash?”
 

Even when she talked about him hurting her, there was no expression on her face.
 
She’d been dead inside for a very long time.
 

I pulled out my wallet, fishing out what little cash I had.
 
I knew I wasn’t really helping her, but being an enabler was deeply ingrained in me, thanks to her, and the thought of the creep in the bedroom hurting her was something I’d prevent, if I could.
 

I handed her forty dollars, and she took it without a qualm.
 

“That all you have?” she asked blankly.
 
She was a shell of a person.
 
A zombie.
 

I nodded.
 
“I don’t keep much cash on me.
 
It’s not convenient.”
 

“What about a debit card?
 
I won’t take much, and I’ll send it back to you.”
 

My mouth hardened.
 
I’d heard that before.
 
“I’m not comfortable with that.”
 

Finally, that got a reaction from her, even if only a slight one.
 
Her face formed into a ghost of a sneer.
 
“I’m just trying to survive here, same as you, same as anyone.”
 

I didn’t think she was the same as me.
 
I knew that her demons had won a long time ago.
 
I still planned to put up a hell of a fight with mine.
 

“I’m working my way through school, and I don’t have any more money to spare.
 
That’s how
I
survive.”

“You got my looks, but that’s it.
 
Where you got that attitude of yours, I’ll never know.
 
Dahlia didn’t get our looks, but at least when I talk to her, I know I’m talking to my daughter.”
 

I latched onto that.
 
It was the entire reason I’d come.
 
Whatever digs she’d been trying to get in, I ignored completely.
 
“Have you talked to Dahlia?
 
Has she come to see you?”
 

Her sneer was back.
 
“Saw her a few months ago.
 
That one doesn’t think she’s too good for her mother.”
 

I processed that.
 

I’d begun to look for my sister about a month prior.
 
Just telling Jerry about my search had unearthed some clues.
 
Unbeknownst to me, he’d found my mother years ago, at the beginning of my employment, and paid her a visit.
 
I’d been very young, and he’d just wanted to be sure that my mother was okay with her daughter, who was barely out of high school, working as a live-in nanny.
 
He had found what I found today, a woman that cared about nothing.
   

The casual observer might have mistaken it all for apathy, but I was not the casual observer.
 
I’d been watching this indifference all my life, and it was a step beyond even that.
 

Any soul she’d had she’d lost before I had memories.

It had been a last resort, but having her address was a lead I couldn’t ignore.
 

“Do you have her address or even her phone number?
 
I’d like to find her.
 
She and I have been out of touch for a while.”
 

“She told me all about what happened with you and that old man.
 
I doubt she’ll want to talk to you.”