Cash (The Henchmen MC 2)

I had been a virgin, again... young and idealistic about what that meant. I had learned from my books that it would hurt, I would cry, I would bleed, but my partner would totally be able to make me break apart in ecstasy despite of all of that.

What a bitter disappointment to get back to his, then our, apartment, have him all but rip my pretty white summer dress off of me, leaving me too shell shocked, humiliated, and insecure to ask him to take it slow. So his big hands closed over my breasts, grabbing, pinching my nipples too hard, but I didn't object. He pressed me backward through the apartment until the backs of my legs hit the bed and I fell onto it. His big body climbed over mine, his lips trailing down my neck, taking my nipples into his mouth and sucking.

I started to feel a twinge of desire then, just a strange fluttering of need between my thighs. As if sensing it, his hand moved there and stoked through my lips, sinking a finger inside after a minute. “Wet,” he groaned against my neck and I could feel him reaching between us to undo his pants and free himself.

The desire quickly got replaced with genuine fear as I felt the head of his dick press against me, feeling too big. But before I could even draw a breath to consider that, he was inside me, not slow and gentle, not inch by inch, one thrust and he was buried to the hilt. I let out a scream at the kind of pain I couldn't describe stabbing at the contact of our bodies.

The only bit of relief I got was the fact that after less than a minute or two of rough thrusting (and accompanying pain), he let out a groan and came inside me.

He was breathing into my neck as I tried to blink the tears away.

All I could think was- it was nothing like I had read, like I had fantasized about. If that was what sex was, I couldn't imagine why anyone wanted to do it. Let alone write books about it.

He pushed himself up and looked down at me, giving me a white-toothed smile and the pain felt like a dull ache as I looked at him- my husband, the boy I had known since I was six years old, the man I had entrusted with my future.

“You're mine now,” he said and I felt a flutter in my belly. It sounded like something one of my fictional heroes would say to their women- always alpha and possessive. In that moment, I felt my smile spread to match his and everything felt right in the world.

I had no idea what the reality of belonging to Damian Crane meant. If I had, I would have waited for him to fall into a sex-lulled sleep, slipped back into my clothes, and ran like hell as far and as fast as I could.It was alright at first. He was demanding, at times, even more so than my father had been. But I was a wife, not a daughter. My duties were amplified. I cooked, I cleaned, I did our laundry, I paid the bills. Then at night, I would lay on my back or get onto all fours and he would fuck me. That was what it was too- fucking. We didn't have sex. We damn sure never made love. And to even say “we” was inappropriate. We didn't do anything. He fucked. I laid there. I took it. After the first two or three times, it stopped hurting. The lack of pain, however, didn't help the fact that it did nothing for me. Nothing. I was a newlywed woman who didn't know what an orgasm felt like.

It wasn't long before the name-calling started. At first, I thought it was Damian's version of dirty talk. Bitch. Slut. Cunt. Whore. I should have known that wasn't what it was because each time he said it, I winced because I heard the malice underneath. I heard it, but I refused to acknowledge it.

Besides, having sex that did nothing for you while being called names, well, that wasn't that bad. What was bad was when he was too lazy to fuck me. That was when I learned that the loving, passionate way women went down on their heroes in my books was going to be as far from my reality as the sex itself was. Because when Damian wanted my mouth, he wanted it hard and he wanted it deep. He wanted it so that I was gagging all over him, his cock buried in my throat, my mascara running down my face, his cum coming out of my nose. He wanted it brutal. And that was how I started to feel afterward in the bathroom as I cried silently, wiping my face, brushing my teeth, trying to swallow past the razor-blade sensation of my throat- brutalized.

But he was my husband.

That was my job.

It never even crossed my mind to refuse him.

Then, like some prayer answered, he was deployed. I felt so guilty even thinking that- that I was happy that he was being shipped off to do god-knew what, maybe to never return. But that was what I felt- happiness.

He was gone and while I was still a kept woman, his little barefoot wife, I had more freedom too. I went out with girls I went to school with and had lost touch. I took a couple cheap classes at the night school. If I didn't want to wash the dishes every night, I didn't. If I didn't want to wear makeup the way he liked it (mascara, red lips)... I didn't bother. They were small things, but at twenty years old and having never known even a taste of independence, I reveled in each tiny victory.

Then he was coming home again.

I tried (and failed) to be glad for it, to have my husband back. Granted, he was rough with me in bed and he made a lot of demands on me... but he was still the boy I used to make mud pies with, who I first kissed when I was fifteen, who told me I was the prettiest girl in town. And sometimes, he could still be that sweet. I would catch him watching me as I did something stupid like ironing and ask him what he was thinking and he would say things like... 'the best thing that ever happened to me' or 'I still can't believe you're mine'. They were words that made little flutterings move through my belly. They were things that made the never-ending work tolerable.