Hitched: A Dark Hitchhiker Romance (Ride or Die Romances)

Lex

I wake up in bed, all by myself. I sit up and look for Selena, certain she’s taken off. Apparently, she figured out how to be a quiet little rabbit after all. I relax when I hear the running shower. Good girl. She can clean herself all she wants, but it won’t be the last time I cover her in my come. She may have shed her panties, but I love that she slept—at least for a while—with my come against her skin. I like that she’s so torn between liking it and hating me.

She needs to learn, though. I won’t allow her to have her panties unless she’s wearing me, too.

After her shower, we load our things into the car and set off again. Hours later, she sits beside me, staring out the passenger-side window as the sun sets. She hasn’t spoken to me since we started driving.

“Are you really still mad about your panties?”

She doesn’t look at me. “It’s not about what you did. It’s why.”

Oh, she speaks.

“Tell me why it bothered you, then.”

Her eyes roll and it reminds me how young she is. How naïve and innocent she is. “Because you want to own me. And I’m not someone’s to own.”

“You have no idea what it means to be claimed by me, sweet rabbit.”

Her eyes flash to mine, fear radiating from them. “We aren’t going further. Wishful thinking isn’t going to get you inside me, Lex. There’s absolutely zero chance of that, so let it go.” She wants so badly to believe the words coming out of her mouth. She wants me to believe them, too.

“I don’t need wishful thinking.” I tap the rabbit’s foot. “And I don’t need luck, either. I will bury my cock inside you before this road trip ends. I promise you that.”

Her cheeks flame red at my words. Despite reining in the side of me that would take her against her will, I will unleash that side before we reach my destination. Even if I didn’t have to kill her, I’d make sure I released her back to her husband with my come dripping from her.

We take a turn onto another back road, and then another. That’s all we’ve been doing, and it makes the drive feel like an eternity without enough progress to make our stiff knees and numb asses worth it. I pull into a familiar-to-me parking lot. I could use a chance to stretch my legs, and I need an ID—something I can use to cross the border without suspicion. I’m too big to hide in the damn trunk.

I’d been in prison for a decade before my escape, so I don’t have the connections I used to, but I know a man who makes them. He was a fairly unsavory character, even by my standards, but Rodney has the means to provide what I need. I drag us to his doorstep, hoping he still lives in the rundown apartment complex. Unless he’s in prison, he should be here.

I knock on the heavy metal door, and it opens after several locks unlatch from the other side. Rodney looks at me like he’s seen a ghost, his face paling in front of me. “Lexington Rowe, do my eyes deceive me? I thought you were doing life, man!”

“Don’t call me that, and fuck off about my business,” I snap. I hear the gasp beside me as Selena learns more of the secrets I have yet to reveal. She has to know, on some subconscious level, that I’m running from the law. She probably doesn’t expect my crimes to have earned me life, though. Well, several lifetimes.

I can’t deal with her feelings right now. This isn’t a place to feel and look weak. Rodney will feed off that. I’ll try to explain it to her later when we aren’t in front of another felon. When I can answer some of the questions I’m sure she’ll have. It’s the sort of conversation I would never have in front of fucking Rodney.

I push past him, and he stares at Selena as if she’s a steak laid out in front of him. Maybe even better than a steak. She’s something so mouthwatering that he can’t take his eyes off her. Admittedly, she looks fucking delicious, with her youthful innocence and prim appearance, even when she isn’t dressed all proper.

I’m certain of very few things, but no one is getting a bite out of her before I do. She’s my meal, and I’ll slit a man’s throat if he so much as sniffs her sweet scent before I can take a huge chunk out of her to fill myself with. I grab her arm and pull her into me in a protective gesture. It’s not my usual way, but I feel compelled to do it. That innocence needs protecting.

“Does she need one, too?” Rodney asks, his eyes still crawling over Selena’s body. He’s eyeing my little rabbit like a coyote looking down at his prey. His expression relays his thoughts clearly, and he can fuck right off as far as I’m concerned.

“Just me,” I tell him. “What have you been up to, anyway?” I ask, trying to draw his hungry eyes off Selena, whose cheeks have flushed under his dogged staring. It’s painful for me to witness. It’s like he’s never seen a woman in the flesh before.

“Living the dream,” he says as he wrenches his eyes away from her to finally look at me. “Served three in county for some fraud charges, but I’m back in business. My nephew stayed here and kept shit running while I was locked up.”

“How much for a new ID? Or passport. Anything I can use to get my ass out of the states.”

“There’s time to talk business. Come with me to take a picture first.” He dodges the question precisely how I expect him to. He’ll keep dodging until I get too far in the process to back out, forcing me to pay whatever he asks. I push him for a price, but he just keeps avoiding the question like the expert piece of shit he’s always been. He’s a bottom feeder, lower than me, and I thought I was pretty fucking low.

Rodney snaps my picture and leads us into a room where he sits in front of his fancy multi-computer system. The lenses of his old glasses reflect the screens, their joints bent out to accommodate his round, wide head.

Selena and I take a seat on the couch, but she refuses to look at me. Her arms are folded across her chest like a defiant child. Which I deserve, but not here. She can’t look like a child, because that’s precisely what a dude like Rodney would like. When I say he’s unsavory, I mean . . . fucking vile. I’d have left Selena in the car if I wasn’t worried she’d be hunted in the parking lot by one of the many violent sex offenders in this complex. Honestly, if you pull up the predator map, you wouldn’t even know there’s a building here beneath all the red dots. Rodney’s big, stupid mug would be buried somewhere in all those warnings.

I’m being real judgmental of a fellow felon, but at least I have a line I won’t cross.

That reminds me of the questions I’ll have to answer later. I should have let Selena hear my past from my own mouth. That would have been the mature thing to do, but I didn’t want to give her more information to use against me if she somehow got away from me. She’d probably try to run once I told her, because that’s how a normal person would respond. They’d run.

Despite what she thinks, I’m as happy to be in this situation as Selena is. It would be much easier if I killed her and took her car. I wouldn’t have another human being to worry about while on the run. Things would be a lot less complicated if I wasn’t always thinking about finding ways to get inside her.

“Earth to Lex?” Rodney snaps his fingers in front of my face before shoving an ID into my hand. “How’s this?”

It looks and feels legit, and my scowl is pretty accurate.

“You failed to tell me how much,” I say, putting pressure on the card between my thumb and forefinger. Rodney is a sneaky fuck, and I intended to stop him from printing shit before I got the price. I was too busy lost in thoughts of Selena to notice the sound of the printer firing up. This is what I mean. Less complicated.

“I told you, but you were staring off in la la land,” he says with a dry laugh. I missed some of the shit he’d said, sure, but I would have noticed that. “It’s one grand for you.”

My mouth falls open. Sneaky fuck. “Since when has it ever been near that price?”

“Since New York switched their ID format and you became desperate enough to pay for it.” A gross smile crosses his face. Oh, fuck him. Even someone like her wouldn’t have that kind of money on hand. But he’s right. Desperation always costs extra. That’s the way the game is played.

“We don’t have that, Rodney, and you know it,” I say as I stand.

He meets my stance but hardly reaches my chest. He brushes a hand through his balding hair. “You have something I could take as payment.” His hungry gaze drops to Selena.

Her eyes widen as mine narrow. I fucking knew those words would come out of his mouth. As soon as I saw him drooling over her, I knew he’d try to order her off the menu. He knows we have to work off the cost somehow, and he sure as shit wouldn’t want to fuck me.

I’m torn. I don’t want to give her away like that, even for a quick fuck, but I also need that fucking ID. There’s no way around this. I’m not going back to prison. Giving her away for my freedom seems like a small sacrifice. It’s one I have to make.

I cut my gaze and sit on the couch with a harsh exhale. Selena’s eyes fill with betrayal. I can’t look at her, but I feel the desperation as she fights against his grasp when he reaches for her. He finally gets his hands around her wrists and drags her to her feet, pinning them behind her.

“Fuck you, Lex!” she screams. Hatred radiates from her with the heat of a thousand suns.

I deserve it.

He puts his palm around her mouth, muffling her screams, and I drop my head to my hands. Does he have to do it right here? Does he have to dangle her fear and desperation in front of me?

“Shh, honey, I’ll be quick,” he whispers in her ear as his free hand works down his jeans. Once he gets the denim past his ass, he works down hers. My eyes leap to the pale skin of her ass as he pushes her against the wall and pins his weight into her. I swear I see the haze of a bruise on her skin, but it might have been the light from the computer screen.

I force myself to look away from her ass, and my eyes rise to her eyes. They’re swollen and red with fear, the glaze of her tears coating them. I shake my head, trying to keep my hand away from my pistol.

I have to let it happen.

It needs to happen.

There is no freedom without it.

This has never bothered me before. In fact, I like glimpsing fear on the face of a beautiful girl. I always have. But this is bugging me. Really gnawing at my nerves. The burn beneath my skin is a foreign feeling for me, and I don’t like it.

My muscles twitch and I struggle to keep them still. Her muffled screams wiggle between my ears and gnaw at me like sharp little rabbit teeth. I reach back for my pistol, but I can’t bring myself to grab the grip. It would be too loud and messy, and the cops keep their eyes on this shady complex. They practically live on the premises at this point. Instead, I leap up while he’s too busy prodding between her legs with his tiny dick and panting like he might come before he even gets inside her.

That’d be convenient, actually.

I wrap my arm around his neck, and he releases Selena the moment I grab him, his hard dick softening as I choke him. His hands claw at my wrists, and he flails against me. It’s eerily similar to how she struggled against him. My lips purse as I keep a steadfast grasp on his neck, refusing to let him get half a breath.

Selena pulls up her pants, her chest heaving as she runs for the door.

“Don’t you dare, rabbit. There’d be another one just like him waiting for you.” My words come out strained as I struggle against the weight of a man fighting to live.

She stops, her hand on the doorknob. She has to know that darkness just veils monsters—monsters like me and definitely like him.

I get sick of the struggle. I release Rodney enough to get a grip on his head and snap his neck. The familiar crack rides up my spine, and I lower his body to the ground, wiping at the blood on my arms from him clawing at me. I look at Selena. Her eyes are full of deserved mistrust. I put something up for sale that didn’t belong to me. She snatches open the door and bolts from the apartment. With a shake of my head, I grab the ID off the floor and follow her.

“Rabbit!” I call after her as she races to the car. I quicken my pace to catch up with her. When I’m close enough to grab her, I slam her against the car, turning her to face me. Forcing her to look into my eyes.

“Fuck you,” she cries. Her body trembles, and fear courses through her. She’s still trapped in that moment with him, even away from the apartment. Her hard glare bites at me. I deserve to be bitten like that, but her words still piss me off. I’ll meet her bite with a stronger one, and she knows me enough to know that.

I lean into her, putting a hand to her delicate throat. The whites of her eyes are all I can see in the dark parking lot. She saw what I’d done in one swift motion, and here I am, with my hand around her fragile little neck. “Don’t be so fucking mouthy, rabbit,” I say. I feel the throb of her heartbeat beneath my fingers. Nervous sweat coats her skin.

“You tried to sell me!” she says with a strained voice.

“More like . . . loan you.” I’m trying to rationalize with myself as much as her. What I did was fucked, yes, but sometimes there’s no changing who you are, even in the face of something so different from what has molded you.

Her skin is hot, heated by anger and . . . something else. It courses through her veins. She inhales sharply, looking up at me with an emotion I’ve never seen from a person.

It’s the look of someone who has just cracked.

“Kill me.” Her voice comes out small and weak, but somehow still sure.

I raise my eyebrow, but I doubt she can see it in the darkness. “What?”

She lets another warm breath wash over me. “I said . . . kill me.” Her voice wavers this time.

I lower my hand from her throat and rest it on her clavicle. She’s taken the fun out of preying on her. Her fear has mutated into surrender in front of my eyes, an overwhelming feeling of brokenness that washes over us both. It’s contagious. And I can’t say that I’ve ever felt such sadness, even as I was beaten half to death as a child or when I knew my life was over as I stood before a judge. This feeling is foreign and uncomfortable, and I can’t imagine living in that eternal state like she must. I understand why she wants to die.

If she dies, that emptiness dies with her.

“Is that really what you want, bunny?” I ask, letting my free hand move her sweaty, dark hair from her cheek.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“I’m as good as dead either way. I don’t want to play this game anymore. Take the car. Do whatever. Just . . . I can’t . . . do this.” Her world is collapsing around her, crushing her. And it’s all my fault. Well, not totally my fault. Clearly, her husband is a fucking cunt. He broke her before I took her, but I created the final crack that split her wide open.

I lean into her, putting my forehead against hers as I drop my hand from her chest. “Get in the car, little rabbit,” I whisper. “The backseat.”

She hesitates before she grips the handle and crawls into the backseat. I scoot her over and sit beside her. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” I ask as I lean into her and rest my hand on the curve of her neck. She has such a fragile throat. I hardly noticed that before tonight, and suddenly it’s all I can think about. How she’s like glass in my grasp. But if she really wants this, she picked the right person to ask. I’m the only one who can do it without thinking twice. Without losing sleep. It is and always has been too easy for me to take a life.

The dome light cuts off, blanketing us in darkness, and I feel the warmth of a tear trail over my hand. Except for some soft sniffles, it’s sickeningly silent. She nods her head, and I feel the motion within my grasp. She seems so certain, leaving me to think about it. My muscles twitch, and I yearn to give her the release she wants.

I lean in and whisper, “If it’s what you want, I’ll do it for you.” My voice wavers, which is uncharacteristic of me. I feel doubt in my gut, some nagging discomfort I’ve never felt with any murder I’ve committed. And it is murder, even if she wants to die.

My hands ride higher to grip both sides of her head. She relaxes into my touch, as if I’m giving her a gift. To her it is. To me, it feels like a burden I don’t want to bear. But I will.

I take a deep breath.

It’s what she wants. It’s for her. It’s all for her.

Selena

I feel the heat of his hands on either side of my head, but his touch doesn’t burn me like it should. I don’t dare take a breath as I wait for the sharp twitch of his muscles before nothingness. It isn’t that I want to die, but I’m just so fucking done. So tired from it all. Bryce will kill me when I get home. He’ll end me in the worst, most painful way he can muster in his sadistic mind. It seems better this way.

As crazy as it sounds, it feels safer.

With closed eyes, I bathe in the blackness behind my eyelids. I need to sleep. I need to rest. And I’ll never get that from the life I have, even before Lex took me. There’s only one ending for me. There has always only been one way it could end, and it’s this way: death at the hands of a man. I’m just choosing whose hands it will be.

His hands fall from my face, and he leans in to kiss me. I draw away from him, catching his breath on my inhale. He tastes like sin.

“Lex,” I whisper as I push at his chest.

“If you still want to die after I fuck you, I’ll do it for you.” His voice is low and desperate. “Let me inside you, rabbit.”

How much lower can I go? Past the six feet under I hoped for? Sleeping with him will send me on a free fall to hell, but does it really matter at this point? How important is the sanctity of a marriage that leaves me covered in bruises?

I drop my shoulders as he leans in again. The moon peeks through the windshield, offering mere glimpses of weak light. He won’t be able to see my marks. He can’t pity me. I can pretend to be an unmarked woman for once in my life. I can pretend I’m a normal twenty-two-year-old. I might even find a few moments of happiness.

His lips meet mine again, and I accept his kiss. I spread my mouth to let him inside. His chest rises heavily as he leans over me, pushing me against the door as he crawls between my legs. His hand wraps around my neck and rises to grip my hair. He tugs my shirt off, letting a heavy hand slip over the swells of my bare breasts. I fight the flinch of pain as his touch runs over the bruises near my waistband. I’d never let him do this if he could see me. I don’t want anyone to see just how damaged I am. He tugs down my pants with the hunger of an animal at the end of its leash, and it’s about to break.

I hear his zipper fall.

It’s becoming real.

It is real.

I gasp as I feel the warmth of his cock against my pussy. I want to stop him. I reach out and push against his broad chest, but he’s so strong. So much stronger when he’s above me. “Lex,” I pant, the hesitation woven through the word. It feels like it’s too late. The leash is hardly holding him back now, especially when he’s so close to slipping inside me.

“Shh, sweet bunny,” he whispers before kissing me again. “Let me in.” He growls and deepens the kiss. His firm hand explores between my legs, and I lurch into him as the touch sends electricity through my body and awakens things that have long been asleep. Maybe these parts of me had never been awakened at all.

His fingers push inside me, a touch that my body remembers. I curl my hips against his hand. He draws his hand away, and I hear him spit. He touches me again, sinking his fingers inside me. I can’t see his cock, but I feel its heat against my skin. I remember how it looked at the motel. Like the rest of Lex, it’s huge. I wish it wasn’t so damn dark so I could see him. But if I could see him, he could see me, too.

And that can’t happen.

When he pushes inside me, stretching me in ways I’ve never felt, I scream out, partly from the shock, but also from the realization that someone besides my husband is inside me. Ripping through me. Making me everything my husband says I am.

A whore.

A slut.

“God,” he groans as he pushes deeper. “Your husband is so fucking stupid.” He whispers these words before drawing back to the tip and pushing into me again. My nails dig into his sides as he fucks me, slow and sweet, in ways I don’t expect. It doesn’t seem like he’d fuck me this way. “Don’t worry, sweet bunny. If you let me keep you alive, I’ll show you how I truly fuck. I’ll give you a reason to take that next breath for me,” he growls, as if he senses what I’m thinking.

I melt against the door, the armrest stabbing my back in the cramped space. It doesn’t matter, though. I close my eyes and allow myself to focus on the friction between my legs as he thrusts in and out of me. I listen to his deep, desperate breaths as his hips drive into mine. He shows me only a fraction of his strength, and it frightens me as much as it excites me.

He pulls out and sits down, pushing my legs out of the way. “Get on my lap,” he commands in a breathy voice that makes my legs weak for a moment. I feel for him in the darkness and straddle his waist, my head nearly hitting the roof of the car. He twitches against my pussy. “I want to see you,” he whispers.

His hand moves toward the dome light, but I grab his wrist and place his palm on my ass instead.

“Leave it off,” I say as I put him inside me. I don’t want him to see the bruises now, after his hands have raced over every sore part of me.

“I’m going to get my eyes on your body, little rabbit,” he growls against my mouth as I lower myself on his cock. My heat rides down to his pelvis, and the groan that leaves his lips makes me throb. My moan breaks through the static silence.

“Not now,” I whisper, my lips hovering in front of his.

“What are you hiding from me?” He bucks his hips into mine, and his huge arms wrap around my body. I feel so small in his grasp. “What don’t you want me to see?”

“Leave it alone, Lex,” I say as I slow my movement on his lap, nearly stopping as he forces me to confront what I refuse to. Not now. Not when this moment is so perfect.

“It’s going to piss me off, isn’t it?” He pulls me into him until my naked, sweaty chest presses against his. My hips stall their motion, the weight of his questions bearing down on me. “Don’t think about it right now,” he says. “It’s something for another day.” He kisses me, and it’s sweet. I’m surprised he’s capable of that. Being sweet.

The recently formed memory of him giving me away to that man—and then killing him—rushes to the front of my mind and contradicts every bit of this sweetness.

“You were going to let him fuck me,” I whisper as I drop my head into the crook of his neck.

“I know, rabbit.” He lifts his hips to meet mine. “When I saw him about to take what I’ve wanted . . .” He releases a frustrated growl. “There was no way I could leave him breathing. No way I could let him feel you around his dick before I felt you around mine.” He kisses me so hard that it makes me whimper. “But now that I’ve been inside you, no one else will ever be, including your fucking husband.”

With his possessive words in my ears, I ride his cock and inch toward an orgasm. It’s been so long since I came during sex. Before he made me come with his hand, it’d been so long since I felt that kind of pleasure at all.

“You’re tightening around me,” he says, and I know. My entire body is tight and tense. My moans lengthen, becoming longer the closer I get. “Where does your husband come?”

“On my belly,” I whisper.

“Have you ever been filled up?” he asks.

I swallow hard and shake my head. When Bryce fucked me, he didn’t seem to savor being inside me. It was a place to push his frustration before dumping it onto my skin.

As Lex’s pelvis grinds against my clit, with his cock deep inside me, I come. His hands travel down the curve of my spine and grip my ass.

“You’re going to make me come, bunny.” He fists my hair and cranes my neck so he can bite the skin of my throat. “I’m going to fill your pussy and then you’re going to tell me if you want to live or die as my come drips from you.”

I throb at his words, and it forces the pleasure from his cock. He comes inside me, the twitch of him deep in my gut. He stays within me instead of rushing away like Bryce. He basks in the pleasure I released from him, the pleasure he drew from me.

His hands ride up my sweaty body and grab both sides of my head once more. His touch makes me shiver. “What do you want?” he asks, his voice still laced with pleasure.

I had wanted to die, and even though that part of me still calls, another part has woken up and muffled its voice. I grab his hands and drag them away from my head. I wrap them within mine as I drop my chest into him, suddenly feeling twice as heavy. An exhausted pleasure weighs me down, but the weight of my sins also crushes me.

“Tell me what you want,” he says.

“You,” I whisper, accepting my sin.

And wanting more of it.