Page 56 of The Vigilant

Was it when I heard the music blasting and, for some unknown reason, decided to barge into the room rather than knock?

Was it when I saw her there, bent in front of the bed, completely naked, like she was just waiting for someone to fucking dominate her from behind?

The lust that rocketed through me was like the thrust of a rocket ship, lasting for a single consuming second until I realized that her show was for someone—someone on her phone.

Did it all go wrong when I didn’t even bother to consider that the video was for someone she knew? A boyfriend? Someone other than a stranger? Because I hadn’t.

As soon as I registered she was fucking filming herself, lust sublimated straight to rage. Not even the sight of her stripped body, inked and pierced for sin, was enough to give me pause before I went for her phone.

Did it all turn to shit when she tried to escape me—again—rather than tell me the truth?

Was it when she dared me to follow through on the threat to punish her? Or when that threat quickly turned into a live fantasy for us both?

All I knew for sure was that things had veered straight down theDo Not Enterpath well fucking before she was spread on the bed beneath me, her body laid out like a feast catered in midnight ink and opalescent velvet skin, and my fingers buried in the warm pink clutch of her cunt.

I revved the engine like I could outrun the memory.

Something came over me tonight. Something I had no excuse for. No reason for. It was more than lust. Lust was an easy beast to control, and I’d certainly been doing just that for long enough.

I’d wanted her truth—her submission with a kind of violent need I hadn’t been able to control. And no matter what it seemed like, it wasn’t because I wanted to dominate her. That was the farthest from what I wanted.

From the moment she landed her boot into my gut that first day in the garage, I saw Sutton for who she was: someone who didn’t let anyone take care of her.

Maybe she didn’t need it, but that wasn’t the point.

That moment was the moment my blood was poisoned with the need to care for her. And the symptoms of that poison had been appearing in small ways ever since. Cooking for her. Sparring with her. Showing her how to clean a bike.

It was a sad fucking fate to be addicted to the poison that would undo me.

The chilled night air whipped against my chest where I hadn’t bothered to zip my jacket, but though I felt the air, I didn’t feel the cold. I tried. I sped faster, trying to catch a speed that would finally start to cool the fire in my blood, but even breaking double the speed limit brought no relief.

My deep space gray Harley chewed through the asphalt like it could grind a new highway straight down to the special hell where I belonged. The one where they put a man who touched his best friend’s daughter. A man who still imagined her bare body underneath me every time I blinked. A man who still felt the ripples of her tight cunt squeezing my fingers and thewetnessof her want on my skin.

The road twisted and curved, turned and dipped, but in the end, it wasn’t hell where I ended up but the familiar looming structure of the garage in front of me. There was no light save for the singular bulb over the small door to enter the garage; it spilled harsh shadows over Creed’s bike parked off to the side next to Rob’s Mercedes.

Normally, I’d open the bay so I could park my bike in its resident spot, but I couldn’t. The man I was now wasn’t the same man who’d left the garage an hour or so ago.

So, I pulled up to the closed door and sat there for a beat before I shut the engine off, lowered the kickstand, and pulled off my helmet, a heavy breath tearing from my chest at the same moment.

Fuck, Jon. You should be here. I wish you were here to beat my fuckin’ ass. I deserve it now more than ever.

I swung my leg over the bike’s hull, cursing in pain as it pinched my swollen cock. I adjusted myself, feeling the damp spot on my jeans that was still there. No way I could focus on anything until I took care of my raging erection.

My brain fritzed, processing the next couple minutes in fragments. The smell of cleaner in the garage. The sound of the elevator doors opening. The low light of the hall that led to my cabin. The feel of the icy cold water hitting my fingertips and then the rest of me.

The tiled shower wall felt just as cold under my palm, and my shoulders heaved a shudder as my fist wrapped around my pierced girth. I was so fucking on edge, so fucking close to release, it only took a couple hard jerks along my length before I was coming. My balls pulled tight, and I let myself gorge on a single memory for one moment to push me over the edge: Sutton’s face screaming into the bed while her hot cunt milked my fingers. And then I was coming, hard and violent, my cock spending what seemed like endless jets of cum against the shower wall.

I didn’t even realize I’d tipped forward to rest my head against the tile until I finally peeled my eyes open, the shower feeling like thousands of tiny ice bullets against my back.

“Fuck.” I beat my fist weakly against the tile and pulled myself straight.

I should’ve felt more relief than I did. More spent than I did. As I finished cleaning up, I pretended like it was enough. It would have to be.

I finished up quickly after that, washing and dressing, and walking straight past my bed. Not a chance I was sleeping tonight. I needed to put some distance between me and my fantasies of Sutton, and shutting my eyes for any length of time would be like letting those beasts off the leash.

I was surprised to see the light on in my office, and the door cracked open. It was equal bets as to which of the other guests at Sherwood it would be: Robyn or Creed.

In the end, it was the hunched hulk rather than the small redhead seated at the table.

---