Sinners On Tour 03 Hot Ticket (28 page)

“Oh God. Put your fingers inside me, Jason. Please don’t tease me anymore.”

She thought he was teasing her? He shifted his hand and slowly inserted one finger into her tight, little pussy. She was so small inside. How would her body accommodate his cock? He wasn’t one of those guys teased in the locker room. He needed to open her so he would fit inside. He rotated his finger in a wide circle, stretching her until he could slide a second finger inside.

Her breath caught. “Put it in, Jason. I’m ready. Put it in now.”

It?
He went still and leaned back slightly, releasing her clit from his mouth.

He swallowed hard. “Now?”

“Yes, yes. Now.”

His trembling hand moved to his fly. He wanted her. Wanted to shove his throbbing cock into that hot pussy, but what if he embarrassed himself? What if he came as soon as he put it in?

“Hurry, Jason.”

He released his fly, and his cock sprang free. He was overexcited, and he knew it. She fumbled under the sofa pillow and pulled out a condom.

“Put this on first.”

He pushed his pants down his thighs and fumbled to get the condom in place.

“Oh God, you’re huge,” Kara said as she watched him. “Go slow, okay?”

“Okay.”

As soon as he had the condom in place, he climbed on top of her and settled between her thighs. He used his hand to guide the head of his cock into her body.

Oh God, it felt so good. He sank deeper. Her body struggled to accept him. He pushed forward. She sucked a pained breath through her teeth.

“Wait,” she gasped. “It hurts.”

How could it hurt? He’d never felt anything so wonderful in his life. He pushed deeper. Her flesh resisted him.

“Ow.”

He was trying to go as slow as he could, but her snug little cunt was pure bliss, and all rational thought left his mind. Unable to control the urge to bury himself deeply, he surged forward. Her flesh tore, finally yielding to his, and she cried out in pain. He gave her no time to recover, but pulled back and thrust into her body again.

“Not so hard,” she complained.

He couldn’t think, could only feel. His urgency building, he fucked her harder. Harder. Faster. Oh God, harder.
Take
it, Kara.
He scarcely comprehended that she was crying. He just needed to possess her. That’s all. He didn’t mean to cause her pain. She hit him in the shoulder with her fist.

“Jason, you’re hurting me. Stop doing it so hard.”

But her second blow only excited him more. “Hit me again, Kara. Hurt me.”

“What?”

“Hit me.” He looked down, finding her cheeks damp with tears. He pounded his cock into her body. “Please, Kara, hurt me. I need… pain.”

By the look on her face, he knew he’d said something wrong, something weird, but he wanted her to hurt him, needed her to do it. This much pleasure couldn’t be right. He wasn’t used to pleasure. Pain he understood.

“You sick bastard, get off me.”

Her elbow hit him in his fractured ribs, and his body convulsed as he came unexpectedly. He stopped moving, his body pumping his seed into her, pooling at the tip of the condom. He reveled in the pain radiating through his side almost as much as the pleasure spasms gripping the base of his cock.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, struggling beneath him to get him off her body.

“I don’t know.” He pressed his forehead into her shoulder, fighting tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. Get off me!”

He pulled out, and she squirmed out from under him, landing on the floor.

“Kara.”

“Don’t come near me,” she said, grabbing her clothes and heading for the door.

He saw blood on her thighs, on his cock, on the sofa cushion. It made him nauseous. Oh God, he really
had
hurt her. “Wait, don’t leave. I’m sorry.”

“There’s something wrong with you. Just stay away from me. I never want to see you again.” She yanked the door open and darted out of the pool house.

His heart twisted. “But I love you.”

He didn’t know if she heard him say it. The whole building shuddered as she slammed the door.

“Don’t leave.” But she was already gone.

The trip home was the longest seven miles he’d ever walked. He wished he could take it all back. Well, not all of it. Just from the moment he’d started taking his pleasure. That’s when everything had taken a turn for the worse. And now Kara hated him, never wanted to see him again. The pain his father inflicted didn’t come close to this crippling agony in his heart. He squeezed his right wrist beneath his cuff bracelet, needing the pain to take another step toward home.

As he drew closer to his house and his sure-to-be-livid father, Jason noticed something bright on the horizon. Smoke billowed into the night sky. Fire. A fire truck blared as it rounded a corner and headed up the street. An ambulance followed a moment later.

It looked like the fire was near Jason’s house. The closer he got to its source, the faster his heart thudded, until he couldn’t deny the reality. The fire was
at
his house. He ran the last two blocks. Firefighters were racing down the street, hooking up a fire hose to the nearest hydrant. Neighbors were coming out of their houses in their pajamas, holding each other, watching the destruction in awe. Jason stared at his burning house in disbelief, walking into the yard in a trance. Huge flames were licking from his broken bedroom window. He could hear his father in the house screaming his name. “Jason! Son, where are you?”

“Dad, I’m here!”

There was a loud splintering sound, and the roof over his room collapsed in a spray of sparks. The first jets of water from the hoses blasted into the flames, hissing as water evaporated into steam.

“Dad!”

He darted toward the house and made it as far as the porch before someone grabbed him around the waist. “Let me go,” he demanded, struggling with all his strength. “He’s still inside. My dad. I think he’s upstairs. I heard him calling for me. But…”

A pair of firemen busted down the front door. He could hear them yelling to each other inside the house. “Give me a hand. Someone’s trapped under this beam.” Eventually one of them emerged, carrying a limp body over one shoulder. “Medic! We need a medic over here.”

The charred body he laid on the ground was Jason’s father. “My son,” he murmured, clinging to the firefighter’s boot. Coherent sentences were garbled with indistinguishable syllables. “Save my son. I locked him in his room. I couldn’t get to the door. The roof collapsed.” He coughed, his eyes glazed with pain. “He’s still in there.” If it weren’t for his familiar voice, Jason wouldn’t have recognized him. His skin was so severely burned he was unidentifiable.

Jason stood over him, trembling. “I’m here, Dad. I’m okay.”

“Chopper’s on its way,” a paramedic said. “We’ll get him to the burn center as soon as we can.”

“How did you get out?” his father murmured. “Did you set the house on fire? Did you? I wouldn’t put it past you, you little punk. You did, didn’t you? To get back at me for grounding you. For tossing your stupid bass guitar in the garbage.”

Jason shook his head. “No. I didn’t do it.” He glanced up at his room. There was no doubt that the fire had started there. It’s where the damage was centered. As Jason watched, the tattered remains of a blanket fluttered from the porch roof as a blast of water unsettled it from its perch. He recognized his bedspread, half burnt. The bedspread he’d placed over the broken glass in the windowsill. And his space heater. The heater he’d forgotten to turn off after he’d burnt his wrist.

Then he realized. He
had
started the fire.

Jason gripped his right wrist with punishing strength, pressing the leather bracelet into his blistered flesh until his vision tunneled.

They let Jason ride in the helicopter when they learned he had no other way to the hospital. No other family. No one who cared about him. Jason couldn’t stand their looks of pity. Or his father’s nonsensical jabbering. Dad was delirious with pain and kept repeating, “It’s all your fault. All your fault.”

Jason huddled in the corner, his hands over his ears, no longer a young man of fifteen, but a scared little boy. With nothing. No one. He was alone. Alone. With no one to hurt him. Hurt him when he needed it.

They’d taken his father into the treatment center as soon as the helicopter landed. Asked Jason if he wanted to be with him. Warned him that his dad probably wouldn’t make it through the night. “You might want to say good-bye to him, son,” some doctor had said at one point.

But he hadn’t. He’d been too afraid, just like with his mother. His last memory of his father was lidless eyes staring at him blankly as they wheeled the gurney into the treatment center.

Jace started awake, his heart thudding in his chest, the image of his hideously burned father circulating in his mind. The room was entirely dark, but he could hear her breathing, feel the gentle motion of the bus. Both brought him comfort. He loved being on the road. And he loved her. His Aggie.

His hand sought Aggie’s under the covers. He clung to her fingers, feeling stupid for needing her so much, for seeking her support, while she slept unaware of his turmoil. It wasn’t as if she could do anything about the ghosts that haunted him. About the pain of his father’s memory. The guilt Jace felt. The fear.

Or maybe she could. She’d helped him deal with the pain of losing his mother. Her memory was still in the shadows, but no longer threatening. He’d found solace. Aggie had given that to him. She managed to give him everything he needed. Even things he hadn’t realized were important. When the sun came up, he watched her sleep, wondering how he’d survive if he lost her too.

***

Aggie opened her eyes to find Jace staring at her. She smiled, stretching lethargically.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she murmured. “What are you doing awake so early?”

“I’m ready,” he said.

She grinned, wrapped an arm around his neck, and shifted closer to his warm body. “I figured after last night you’d be satisfied for a couple days at least.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said seriously. “I’m ready to tell you.”

Her heart skipped a beat, and her smile faded. “About your dad?”

“Yeah.”

She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to tell her. He’d said that he’d killed him. What if he had done something truly unforgivable? Would her feelings for him change? She didn’t want that. She was incredibly happy with Jace. She’d never felt this way about a man for long, and she wasn’t ready for this to end. She knew he was taking a huge step in confiding in her, however, so it wasn’t as if she could refuse to listen. She had to be strong. She knew his burden was too great for one set of shoulders.

Aggie struggled to free her arm from the tangled sheet then lifted her hand to stroke his brow tenderly. “I’m listening.”

He closed his eyes. “Where do I start?”

She didn’t think he was really addressing the question to her, so she waited for him to proceed.

“I wasn’t an easy teenager. I got into a lot of trouble. At home. At school. With the law. The more Dad tried to straighten me out, the more I acted out. Yelling at me didn’t work. Physical punishment didn’t work. Grounding. Taking away my possessions. Nothing worked. At the time I hated him, but not nearly as much as he hated me. For five years we lived like that—in constant opposition.”

“Rebellion isn’t unusual, baby. Many teenagers grow that way,” Aggie said and touched his face. “Did he beat you?”

Jace shrugged. “I preferred that to the yelling. The bruises faded, but the words, they’re still with me.”

He ducked his head, his eyes closed. She waited for him to get himself together. After a moment, he looked into her eyes. “The day he died.” He took a deep breath. “The day I
killed
him, I was supposed to be grounded in my room. I snuck out to be with a girl. Kara Sinclair.”

“Sinclair?”

“Brian’s little sister.”

“I didn’t know you knew the guys back then. How old were you?”

“Fifteen. I knew the band, but they didn’t know me. I dated Kara to get close to them, but… and then a few months later, she…” He shook his head. “That’s a story for a different day. While I was out…” His eyes drifted to her forehead. “Losing my virginity actually.” When he flushed, she couldn’t help but grin. He looked sort of sick to his stomach for a few seconds, but it passed. “While I was out with Kara, the house caught fire. It started in my room. Dad thought I was locked inside, so he went upstairs to get me. I wasn’t there. He’d grounded me, locked me in my room. I was supposed to be there, but I wasn’t, Aggie. If I hadn’t disobeyed… if I hadn’t broken a window and snuck out to have a good time… if I hadn’t turned that heater on, or remembered to turn it off.” He unfastened the cuff he always wore on his right wrist and showed her the skin beneath—burn scars too numerous to count. “I turned the heater on to do this to myself, and later I put the blanket over it without thinking. That started the fire. The curtains caught. Then the furniture. If I’d listened to him, my Dad would never have gotten trapped in the flames. He wouldn’t have suffered third-degree burns on ninety percent of his body. He wouldn’t have died hours later.” He stared into her eyes, daring her to deny his involvement. The pain he worked so hard to conceal was right there on the surface, so tangible she believed she could touch it. “It should have been me. I should have been the one to die. I killed him, Aggie. I might as well have shot him in the head.”

She knew he must feel that way, and she wasn’t sure how to make him see that his father’s death was a horrible, tragic accident, but it wasn’t his fault. His father shouldn’t have locked him in the room. And Jace hadn’t purposely set the fire. He’d been a careless kid. In so much pain.

“It’s in the past, baby. I love you today. Right now,” she murmured, touching his face. “That’s what’s important.” He gazed at her in the dim light filtering through the blinds. He looked miserable to the depths of his soul.

“You still love me?” he said breathlessly.

“I do.”

“Even knowing…” He swallowed.