Mutual Release (14 page)

He tried to hide in a scrum of fellow students when she dismissed the class.

“Mr. Adams.” He sucked in a breath and stopped at the sound of her voice. “I would have a word with you.”

She was sitting at the table, looking down at some papers. But she slid her glasses off and pinned him with her shining brown gaze as he turned, not bothering to hide the now truly painful erection barely contained by his jeans.

“Shut the door.”

He did, without taking his eyes from hers.

“Turn the lock.”

* * * *

Evan blinked, thinking he was dreaming, rolled over, scooped Felicia close, and curved his naked body around hers. She shifted, muttered something, and pressed against him. He smiled, kissed her shoulder, and settled back into a few more minutes of sleep. He’d spent the last six months living in her penthouse condo after the first agonizing nights of learning how much he depended on her, and she on him. He was no sap, and did not expect much if anything to result in the way of permanence with her. But the more he stayed, the more they experimented with each other, the more he dreaded the inevitable end.

She kicked him out every morning to go to class, usually with some new part of his body stinging or tingling or in outright pain. Just last night she’d utterly turned the tables on him at
Piquant
, strapped him to the Cross, and fucked him in the ass with a strap-on. He’d loved it, coming so hard when she hit his prostate with that damn thing he’d cried out her name, shocking the crowd and pissing her off to no end. She’d made him sit, bound at wrists and ankles, for a couple of hours afterward before she’d even talk to him. But when she released him, he had leapt at her, tied her to the spanking bench, and smacked her until the skin of her gorgeous ass shone and she’d begged him to fuck her, hard, the same way she had him.

A giant buzz was what he inhabited now, and he never wanted it to end. He never knew when she’d “detain him” after class. Sometimes she ignored him completely, and heaven help him if he had not done the reading and came to the class unprepared. She reamed him out more than once in front of the group. But nothing ever affected the erection he sported for the duration of her class, no matter what.

When she found out he was half-assing his other classes again because he was either exhausted from sleep deprivation or aching sore in places he could never admit to anyone, she lit into him and banned him from the club and her bed for three weeks until he got his shit together. But now he was back on track, and just that day had shown up at her office to prove it. He had her on her desk and gasping through an orgasm within minutes of locking the door.

Jack spent about twenty minutes berating him for fucking a professor, then another hour bragging about him to Jenna, who had merely observed him, reserving comment. But that night, before he’d decamped to Felicia’s for the weekend, Jenna had cornered him in the kitchen, pressed against him, and run her fingers through his hair.

“That little show was… lovely.” She tried to press her lips to his neck, but he ducked out of her reach. “Seriously, Evan. You must really have some skills.” To his utter shock she put her hand right on his crotch, making his penis react in a fairly normal way for a healthy twenty-something male. “I thought you might want some of this.” She ran her finger along the tops of her breasts.

“Jenna…” He stepped away from her, angry and confused. “Cut it out. You know we don’t… mix it up in this house.”

“C’mon, Evan,” she purred, putting her admittedly very full and tempting lips close to his. “Jack said it was okay, if I wanted you…” She cupped his crotch again, making him wince.

“Well, I assume I have some say in the matter. So back the fuck off.” He shoved her away and grabbed his backpack and duffel bag of basics, escaping to Felicia’s before he made a very grievous mistake with his good friend’s girl.

* * * *

Evan snuggled closer, pulling Felicia against him and sucking in giant breaths of her amazing, sultry spiciness. Then he heard it again. A light buzzing came from the foyer that meant someone was at her front door. “Shit.” He got up, found clothes, wincing at the myriad sore spots where she’d dropped hot wax on him just a few hours before. She rolled over, exposing one perfect breast in the moonlight.

“What is it?”

“I’ll get it, go back to sleep.” He kissed her forehead and stumbled out into the huge main room of the expensive penthouse left to her by her late husband. The buzzing continued. He grabbed his phone, cursed when he saw that he’d let the damn thing go dead, ran a hand through his hair, then hit the button on the intercom. “Yeah? This had better be important.”

“Adams!” Jack’s voice was firm. “Your parents are frantic. They’ve been trying to reach you for hours. What the fuck, man?”

“Hang on, hang on. I’m buzzing you up. It’s the top floor.” Panic hit him square in the chest. He had not communicated in any meaningful way with his parents since, well, since he met Felicia. He’d let her and this new way of hard core BDSM play, switching nearly nightly even at the club, consume him. Between that and her dogged insistence he get his grades up, he had let his anger at his parents and worry about his sister fade. His face flamed red.

Jack burst in when the elevator doors parted into the condo. “Here. Fucking call your folks. Jesus.” Jack shoved his phone in Evan’s face and glared at him. “You are such a one-trick pony, Adams. You have got to learn that it is not all or nothing. You can’t just leave the world behind because you’re getting off between the thighs of a bossy older woman every night.”

“Fuck you, Gordon. If you aren’t gonna tell me what’s wrong before I talk to them, you can leave and I’ll charge my own phone to call.” The truth of his friend’s words made his head pound. All the doubt, misgiving, and guilt flooded him then, drowning out everything, including the fact that he lived in this goddamn condo, kept like a pet in an expensive cage.

Jack’s face softened. He put a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “It’s your sister. She…”

“Shit!” Evan ripped away from Jack, frantically dialed his parents’ number and waited, hollowed out with terror. “Mom!” he yelped when she answered, her voice sounding weak, breathy, and very far away.

“Evan, thank heaven you’re all right. Jack said…”

“Mom, what the hell is it? Olivia, is… she…?” He couldn’t choke out any more words.

“She’s gone, Evan. We don’t know where, but she and Damian have been drifting apart, at least according to him. She wanted some space, he claimed. And last night she came home because she wanted to sleep in her old bed, but when I went to wake her up this morning, the bed was made, and she was just gone. She won’t answer her phone, her roommates have no idea where she could be but did say she and Damian have been fighting a lot lately.”

“I don’t give a shit about him, Mom, what about…” He wracked his brain, ran shaking fingers through his hair, the panic now blooming in his chest like an evil flower. He didn’t know his sister anymore. His twin whose entire life was part of his had gone, and he had one man to thank. “Give me that asshole’s phone number, Mom.”

“Now, honey, Olivia could be difficult too. She was… had gotten a lot thinner, and her graduate advisor had told her she had to stop missing classes. But I’m sure it’s just a little lovers’ quarrel.”

“Mom…, put Dad on the phone.” Evan paced, watched as Felicia walked out and got him a glass of water. She put a hand on his shoulder, which usually calmed him, but today it fueled a smoldering fury – at himself for being such a blind dumbass and letting his sister be manipulated by – “Dad? Oh God, Dad, please tell me she’s okay.” He sat staring out into the dark Chicago night, utterly and completely alone.

Chapter Thirteen

“No, I told you, Felicia, I have to go. I need to pack and get back home.”

“Evan, your parents are there. If she shows up, they’ll let you know. You have exams next week. You can’t just bolt.” She sat, dressed for work and oh-so-logical.

“You don’t get to decide this,” he muttered. “I’m going.”

“Fine,” she said, standing and putting her purse on her shoulder. “Keep me posted.” She stepped over to him, cradled his cheek with her hand. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. “It will be okay, my love. I understand. Go, and sort this out your way.”

He left after her, and as he was pulling away from the underground parking garage, he glanced back and up, just when the sun caught the window of her place. He smiled, realizing Felicia had become important enough to him he couldn’t wait to get back to her once he found his sister and sorted this steaming pile of shit out.

He pulled up to the house Jack had indeed purchased and renovated, including their crappy fire-trap kitchen, turning the upstairs into a nice two-bedroom rental. The guys up there were upperclassmen at Northwestern, pre-med, hard studiers, but cool and mostly quiet. Unlocking the front door, he pulled his phone out and hit redial for the millionth time, just to hear Olivia’s voice on the message. He dropped his duffel bag and backpack in the front hall and glanced at some of the mail he had ignored. He cranked up the heat and took a shower, trying to sort through all the ways he could do little or nothing to find her. After finding some cereal and milk and sitting for an hour staring out the window, he succumbed to the exhaustion that still haunted him, set his phone to wake him in two hours, and dropped off to sleep.

He bolted straight up at the sound of his name being yelled over and over. Jack burst into the room, his eyes wild. “Evan, get the hell up and come out here. Now. I’ve already called 9-1-1, but…”

Evan fell out of the bed in his haste to see what disaster now lay in his life’s path. “Jesus, Gordon, why are you…?” He stopped, frozen in place by the vision on his couch.

It was a skeletal ghost of his sister. Her once long vibrant dark brown hair lay in thin, greasy strands; her emaciated chest moved up and down. The black sweat pants and sweatshirt engulfed her, as if designed by a tent maker for the tiniest woman on the planet.

“Olivia,” he exhaled. He ran to her, startling her out of a light sleep, and gathered her in his arms. When the ambulance arrived, Jack had to pry the girl out of his embrace.

“Don’t leave me, Evan,” she begged, breathy, her face pale with ugly pink splotches. “Please… don’t.”

He grabbed her hand. “I won’t. Let’s get you to the hospital. I’m here. I’ll be here even while you’re sleeping. I promise.”

* * * *

Later, as he sat by her side while she struggled to maintain a normal body temperature, he let fury boil through his brain. By the time his parents showed up he refused to see them, to let them near her. Jack had to talk him off that homicidal ledge.

“They saw her like this, Gordon. This horrible, sick thing was their daughter, and they ignored it. They are not fit to be parents.”

“Dude, I get you. But they are her parents, and they have rights. So just come out of the room if you have to, but give them some time with her.”

“No. I’m not leaving. I told her I wouldn’t.” He glanced down at the girl, who now looked like she could be ten years old and not a normal nearly twenty-five-year-old woman. There were heart monitors, a feeding tube, all sorts of beeping, blipping shit. It was maddening. But he would not leave her side.

They looked up when a doctor, carrying a file and wearing a serious expression, knocked on the half-open door. His parents were over the man’s shoulder, eyes frantic, taking in the scene. Evan frowned at them.

“Mr. Adams?” the doctor asked, looking at him. Evan’s father cleared his throat, making the doctor glance around in confusion.

“We are both Mr. Adams. I’m her brother. I’m the one who admitted her. You can talk to me.” He knew he sound pompous, but he did not care.

The doctor seemed even more puzzled, but looked at Evan when he spoke. “I have some distressing news for you. We need to discuss it in private. Can I shut the door?”

“We are her parents, doctor.” Evan’s mother shoved past him and into the room. “Tell all of us.”

“Well, as you know, when you brought her in, Olivia’s kidneys and heart were already shutting down. This is what happens in extreme cases of anorexia. We have stabilized her body temp, and her heartbeat is getting slightly stronger, but she is still showing signs of various organ failures. The feeding tube helps, but we may be too late. However,” the doctor looked at the chart again then back at Evan, “I need you to know that upon examination, we discovered that Olivia had odd bruises and lesions around her stomach and groin which led us to examine further.” The man cleared his throat as Evan’s heart dropped to his knees. “Olivia has been sexually assaulted, multiple times we think, based on the scar tissue and damage to her vagina and cervix.”

“How did she get to you, Evan? Her car was in the driveway, she… must have hitchhiked and been raped by… Oh my God!” Evan’s mother sobbed, sinking into a chair.

“No, Mrs. Adams, we think this has been going on for some time. The scarring is too old, although she does show signs of fresh wounds, perhaps as recently as three days ago. How long has she been missing?”