“Roman…”

He snaked his inked palm around me and muffled my voice by dipping his middle finger between my lips. I sucked hard, hungry for the sweet taste of his last hashish joint and salty manhood. His lips trailed the shell of my ear from behind. “Shhh.”

My whole body quivered as his hard length dug deeper and deeper between the clothed slit of my ass, and my knees knocked against one another. I was on the brink of the most frustrating orgasm to ever be experienced on earth.

“Fuck me,” my voice shook around his finger, the words falling from my mouth before I could stop them. It wasn’t me. Not the old Jesse, and definitely not the new one. It was a girl who seemed to have been born especially for Bane. Reckless and needy. Desperate and deprived. “Please, just…I feel so empty.” Even that wasn’t true anymore. Alone, I was empty. With Roman, I burst at the seams.

His callused palm left my mouth, tugging at my nipple through my PJ’s, and he was touching me, and I was burning like a witch, alive in the fire, my body screaming as I bit my lip to suppress a hard moan.

I reached for the waistband of my PJ’s, the need for friction tingling between my legs. Bane captured my wrist in his palm and brought it to his lips. I could feel his smile. He whispered, “Bet I can make you come without even touching you.”

I snorted. “Cocky much?”

“Evidently.” He thrust into my clothed ass.

My eyelids dropped on a heavy sigh as he traced his lips along my ear.

“Can you feel me fucking you with my words?”

I rubbed my thighs together, begging for any kind of roughness between them. It was the sweetest torture, and a part of me was enjoying his cruelty.

“I’d rather you fuck me with something else.” Was I really saying those things? I couldn’t tell if my heated face was due to embarrassment or because I was simply sweltering under his touch.

“Everybody got the something-else. You’re getting the never-seen-before version. The one where I actually try to do the right thing. Can you feel me sucking on your swollen pink clit?”

He swirled his cock between my butt cheeks, and I rocked into him, every muscle in my body spasming involuntarily. He was still rubbing against me persistently, in a rhythm I wanted to tattoo into my brain and write into a melody.

Little pants of pleasure began to escape me involuntarily.

“Don’t patronize me, Roman. I know what’s good for me.”

“I’m pinching your clit.”

Groan. “Roman.”

“Your pussy juice is all over my chin.”

Why was he doing this?

The orgasm started at my curling toes, shooting upwards like a bullet and exploding between my legs. I tried to loosen my trapped hands from his grip, but to no avail. I came on nothing, barely touched, just from his words. It took me a few minutes to calm down, my pulse floating down slowly like a feather, before I noticed the warm, damp cum sticking my top to my lower back.

He’d come, too. From rubbing off against me.

“I hate you,” I muttered, my voice shaking. I’d never realized how empty my sex was until I met Roman and realized that I wanted him there. All the time.

“Good night, birthday girl.” He planted a soft kiss on the back of my head, dropping his heavy arm on my waist.

For the first time in years, I didn’t want to put on my Keds and run from the demons that lurked under my bed at night.

For the first time in my life, I let them sleep with us, inside my bed, in my room, knowing that they were just ghosts of my past.

That they couldn’t touch me.

BY THE TIME I CRACKED a reluctant eye open, Bane was gone.

The space where he’d slept was cold and empty. I blinked away the cobwebs of sleep and felt for the cell phone on my nightstand. It was a new move, one I hadn’t practiced in two and a half years. As a teenager, that was the first thing I’d done every morning: check my phone for messages, and Snapchat and Facebook posts. After The Incident, I’d migrated my cell phone to one of my desk’s drawers. That’s until Roman barged into my life.

He’d left me one message, probably a few minutes after he’d climbed his way down my window.

Roman

Let’s talk tonight.

I tried to read it in a casual way. Bane was a casual guy. But I was so pathetically dependent on him that fear trickled into my system. I tried to tell myself no true friend would break a friendship with you the day after your birthday. I replied with a curt ‘sure’ and hopped downstairs, taking two steps at a time.

I was starving. It felt like I hadn’t eaten in years. And in a way, that was sort of the case.