Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

He’d been burned repeatedly. There were small circular burns as well as larger rectangular ones scattered in between long thin slashes, all spaced evenly apart, some running diagonal, some horizontal, all apparently methodically administered.

Releasing a deep breath, she let her head fall back against the wall.

It was so pitiful and yet rage-inducing. How could anyone hurt an innocent child? How could a mother hurt her child?

She didn’t feel safe by any means, but as strange as it was, she felt safer with Dirty than she did knowing that, if she were anywhere else, Daniel could get to her.

Was that weird?

Maybe. But she was too damn exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to really give a damn.

• • •

“You need stitches,” Ellie said, both looking and sounding irritated.

From his seat on the windowsill, Dirty turned to glare at her. “I’m fine,” he muttered and took another drag off his cigarette. He didn’t have a clue why she’d hadn’t continued her screaming run for safety but had instead come back inside and taken a seat beside him, had even gone so far as to offer him comfort.

What the fuck?

He’d been seconds away from raping and killing her and she’d offered him comfort?

Jesus, God only fucking knew what she’d heard come out of his mouth during his nightmare. He could only imagine.

Fuck, he hadn’t had a nightmare in so fucking long. Years. It was all this shit with Ellie, seeing her being attacked, her touching him, seeing her naked.

Then watching her cry while she asked to stay with him. With him? No one needed him. No one had ever once, not fucking once, needed him for anything. But she’d needed him.

And then, hearing her laugh, watching her laugh, knowing that he had made her laugh despite what she was going through, the fear, the unknown. He, a fucking worthless, piece-of-shit scumbag, had made her laugh.

He was so incredibly fucked-up. His thoughts were going a mile a minute, veering off in directions he wasn’t familiar with, new territory, dark and confusing roads lined with guilt and a new sort of pain, one he wasn’t handling well, one he didn’t know what to do with or how to push away or relieve it, because, fuck, nothing was working.

Fucking the whore hadn’t worked, jerking off thinking of Ellie hadn’t worked, no, nothing had worked. He was still thinking about Ellie, about her body, about her laughter, and he was feeling guilty, guilty about the way he’d been handling his thoughts, guilty for the way he’d been living his life because, FUCK, who was he to save a girl from the same fate he’d handed to too many women to count. WHO THE MOTHERFUCK WAS HE?

He was nothing. He was shit. He was a damaged, deranged, sick motherfucker who deserved to be put the fuck down. He shouldn’t have lived for as long as he had; he didn’t deserve to share the same earth with people like Ellie, people who laughed over burnt popcorn even after they’d been stripped of their dignity.

And at the same time, he hated her for all of it. For making these fucking emotions surface, slap him in the face and fuck up everything he’d worked so hard to repress the best he could.

No, it wasn’t a life he’d recommend to anyone, but it was how he’d survived this long and now…

After snapping the fuck out of it, realizing he’d been about to rape her, probably kill her, he knew he didn’t deserve another second of air. Because if she knew, if she fucking knew the man she’d tried to comfort, even after what he’d done to her, that he was no better than the man he’d saved her from, she’d run away screaming and she wouldn’t come back. She wouldn’t laugh over burnt popcorn, she wouldn’t care that he had a giant gash on his forehead, she wouldn’t give two fucks if he lived or died.

WHY THE FUCK DID HE CARE IF SHE CARED?

If he had one iota of intelligence, he would get Ellie the fuck out of his apartment before she fucked him up even more and he ended up doing something he absolutely did not want to do to her, because he needed a fucking place to put all the bullshit she was stirring up inside him.

“Dirty,” Ellie said. “You are bleeding all over the place. If you won’t go to the hospital, at least let me help you stop the bleeding.”

He glanced up from his smoke and found her standing way too close to him.

“Back up,” he growled. “Back the fuck up right now.”

He watched, stunned, as fear momentarily twisted her features, but was immediately replaced by determination.

“Dirty,” she said quietly. “I just want to help you.”

He nearly choked on his own tongue. Help him? Now that was motherfucking priceless. No one could help him. And he was starting to feel like he could no longer help himself.

“You need to wash your face,” she continued. “You’re…um…you need to…clean the area around the wound.”

“I’m dirty,” he said flatly. “You can say it. It ain’t as if I don’t know.”

Her big blue eyes softened. “You’re dirty,” she said softly. “And you’re hurt, meaning you can get an infection.”

He stared at her, at her long, tight black curls, her caramel skin, bruised but still smooth and clear, her big blue eyes ringed with heavy dark lashes, her full lips.

She was so different than what he was used to. She was like his brothers’ old ladies—clean, good women. Women who should never be left alone with a man like him; a man who could, who most likely would, hurt them.

He continued to stare at her, and then suddenly he found himself thinking about fucking her, her thighs spread wide open, watching himself disappear inside of her, watching her belly quiver and her breasts bounce with the force of his movements, and then lastly, looking up into those big blue eyes.

His stomach rolled and acid shot up into his throat.

“Move,” he gritted out, sliding off the windowsill, forcing Ellie to back up or get run over by him.

“Dirty,” she called after him. “You really need to clean your—”

“I’m gonna take a fuckin’ shower!” he yelled as he rounded the corner, hurried down the hall, and all but fell inside the bathroom in his mad dash to escape the fucking nagging. Is this how women were? He wouldn’t know; he hadn’t lived with a woman, hadn’t truly been alone with a woman since he’d been a child.

He needed away from her, away from all of it, from everything she represented, but most of all he needed away from those…those goddamn motherfucking eyes of hers.

Gripping the sides of the sink, Dirty bent down and, in an attempt not to throw up, tried to slow his breathing. Once his heart rate had slowed, he lifted his head and found himself staring back at him. He gingerly touched the wound on his forehead.

Fuck. She was right. He probably did need stitches. Fuck it, he’d sew it up himself; he’d done it before.

But first he was going to have to wash the dried blood from his face. Actually, since he’d been naked, he was covered from head to toe in dried blood. He might not be a big fan of hygiene but that didn’t mean he wanted to walk around looking like he’d just stepped off the set of a B-rated horror film.

He glanced over at the shower and then back at himself. Fuck it, it was just a shower. He took Mexican showers all the time. Water, some soap, get all the important areas.

But when he turned on the water and stepped inside the tub, why did it feel like it was so much more than just a shower?

“Get off me,” I said, breathing hard and pushing without success against Cage’s chest. Fuck, was he made of concrete? What the hell?

“No,” he growled and when I turned away from his kiss, he took a nose dive into the crook of my neck. Before I could protest further, his tongue shot out and then suddenly he was licking and sucking and biting and then his hand was sliding down the side of my body and he was maneuvering himself slightly off of me and his hand was between my legs and his fingers were up inside of me and then I was too busy feeling like I was queen of the fucking universe to care that his sweaty self was lying heavily on top of me or that my back was having serious doubts as to whether it could take another pounding on the uneven wood plank floor. As it was, I was pretty sure my ass had some pretty serious friction burns, but like every other coherent thought in my head, it was quickly flying off to never-never land, never to be heard from again.

Nothing had gone according to plan. At least, not by my plan.

First, Jase, the dumbass, had puked all over my mom’s car, then proceeded to pass out, leaving me unable to get him out of the car and into his house, forcing me to have to take him to the club instead. The club where, as my luck would have it, Cage just so happened to be.

And damn if that man didn’t look as good as a double bacon cheeseburger, after a week spent camping with my vegan friends.

Fuck my life.

Fuck it up, down, left, and right, fuck it straight to heaven and back down to hell, and then fuck it up the damn ass with Satan’s red-hot spiked tail.

The asshole was playing me. For some reason, maybe he wasn’t getting enough pussy lately, Cage had decided he liked fucking me so much since last night that he’d done everything in his power to get me back to his house just so he could fuck me some more.

Not that I was complaining, at least not at the moment. Earlier though, once I realized why he’d demanded on driving the car, that he had absolutely no intention of taking me back to my mother’s place, I complained quite a bit.

And once I realized that he’d taken me from the club back to his house, I complained even more. Yelled and screamed too. Called him all sorts of colorful names. I may have even tried to punch him a few times. But all of that had come quickly to an end when he dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the car and forcefully took me inside his house.