Break My Shell Read online

  Break My Shell

  K.A. Merikan

  Acerbi & Villani Ltd

  Break My Shell

  K.A. Merikan

  --- He was supposed to never leave prison. And then he was in my bedroom. ---

  Dayton is always on time to work, always organized, always ready to do overtime. The perfect receptionist-waiter-cleaner. Employee of the month. But Dayton has a secret side to him. A kinky, filthy side full of dark and dangerous fantasies that should never see the light of day.

  He explores his taste for submission in one way only. For three years, he’s been writing letters about it to Max. Convicted to life in prison for the murder of three men and unlikely to ever be free, Max is the safest outlet for Dayton’s frustrated fantasies.

  Only that he does leave prison. He finds Dayton. And he won’t settle for anything less than what he was promised in the letters. Too bad Dayton is nowhere near ready to indulge Max. Or himself for that matter.

  POSSIBLE SPOILERS:

  Themes: ex-con, sexual fantasy, role-play, bondage, dirty talk, bullying, hotel setting

  Genre: M/M contemporary erotic romance

  Length: ~62,000 words (standalone novel)

  WARNING: Adult content that might be considered taboo. Explicit content, strong language. Reader discretion advised.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, events, places or names is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without a permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Text copyright © 2016 K.A. Merikan

  All Rights Reserved

  http://kamerikan.com

  Cover design by

  Tiferet Design

  http://www.tiferetdesign.com/

  A big thank you to Rita for proofreading and making sure that Cinnamon wasn't forgotten.

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  NEWSLETTER

  About the author

  Chapter 1

  Dayton kicked his shoes off as soon as he went in through the door, and leaned down to greet his Siamese cat, which rubbed itself against his shins in a languid move.

  “Hey baby. Daddy’s home. Yes, he is. Are you hungry? I bet you are,” he tweeted to Cinnamon with a smile, looking forward to sitting down to a new episode of free entertainment provided by the River Inn, where he lived and worked.

  He made his way to the small kitchenette by the window, followed by the meowing of his life partner. “I know. But I couldn’t get out of work earlier. Yes, Vanessa was a bitch to me and wouldn’t let me leave. What? It’s not my job to make the beds for the guests?” He opened the tiny fridge under the counter and pulled out an open can of cat food. “Exactly, but you see, Vanessa wants to only pay Dayton the receptionist, but still wants Dayton the cleaner and Dayton the waiter. She should pay me three times the money, right?” He leaned down to the bowl and stroked his starving cat’s back when he started to devour the meat and jelly. “Well, baby, that’s not gonna happen at River Inn, I can assure you of that.”

  Dayton stretched and curled his toes on the old carpet. The cupboard shifted again and now mocked him in its crooked glory. He cursed beneath his breath, annoyed that nothing worked as it should in this godforsaken room. Granted, Vanessa provided him with one of the worst en-suites in her inn, with a view of the distant trees (which was nice), and the collection of trash cans (which was not). At least the room had locks, and he kept it clean, but some damage left behind by previous occupants and the mold that he was constantly fighting just couldn’t be permanently fixed with budget cleaning products.

  He approached the microwave to heat some water for coffee, but his gaze strayed to the sink, and he stalled when he spotted dirty dishes resting in the middle. He could have sworn he’d washed them all after breakfast, but at the end of the day, he’d been in a hurry after Vanessa asked him to work on his day off after all. He was too tight on money to say no. So yes, maybe he’d just left the dishes in the sink. That could have happened.

  He pulled off the tie with the River Inn logo, and threw it to the armchair by his bed. He couldn’t stand its mustard yellow color, which clashed with his ginger hair so badly he avoided looking into mirrors at the inn. At least the white shirt was simple enough to not make him look like an idiot. The yellow apron he wore when serving customers at the inn’s restaurant was a different story.

  He picked up a few cheap marshmallows that had overstayed their welcome at the inn’s kitchen and padded toward the bathroom as he stuffed them into his mouth. When

  Dayton turned on the light, for a moment all thought evaporated from his head as he looked down and saw fresh droplets of water in the sink.

  Dayton took a deep breath, his mind racing at the thought of someone—Vanessa? Rudy the cleaner?— entering his room without permission. He was the one to keep it clean, so there was no reason for other people to come in uninvited.

  His heart beat furiously at the rudeness of it, freezing when the hooks of the shower curtain rattled behind him. He jumped and took a step back, only to walk into the sink, painfully jabbing his hip against the porcelain.

  A man filled the entire shower stall with his huge form. His neck was twice as thick as Dayton’s, his shoulders and chest meaty and powerful, but the black ski mask covering his face made all coherent thoughts evaporate from Dayton’s brain.

  Blood drained from Dayton’s face, and he took another step back, screaming out even before his legs managed to dash for the door. The invader grabbed him by the back of the neck and closed one meaty palm over his mouth, sealing it with its salty heat. Dayton’s whole body shuddered against the stranger, and he tried to push back, with no effect against the man’s superior strength. Why was this happening to him? He owned nothing of material value.

  Had Greg and his friends gotten bored and said a word too much about Dayton in bad company?

  “If you scream again, I’ll cut your tongue out,” whispered a raspy, low voice when the man pressed against Dayton’s back, hauling him out of the bathroom. The Southern accent was so alien to Dayton’s ears it made his mind twist for answers.

  Dayton whined into the large hand, curling his shoulders to instinctively protect his head as much as he could. The room spun with colors as he frantically looked for anything that could be used as a weapon. His mind was already rushing with images of his own body turned into a bloodied pulp to be found on the old mattress by his boss. He needed to act fast if he was to get out of this.

  Torn between obeying all commands to appease the stranger, and fighting, his body was gradually going into full-on panic mode. There were no guarantees as to the man’s intentions, and each attempt Dayton made to free himself was so easily absorbed by the man’s arms, it felt like struggling against steel.

  Dayton was about to beg for his life as soon as the assailant removed his hand from his lips, but it was too soon replaced with… a rubber ball? His eyes went wide before the gag even got fastened at the back of his head.

  “Are you gonna be a good boy for me, or do I have to show you there’s no way out?” The man pulled back Dayton’s arms with ease despite Dayton’s struggle against the bruising grip.

  Dayton sobbe
d, but with certain death out of the picture, relief flooded his body all the way to the marrow of his bones. Nodding, he looked in the mirror above the dresser, shuddering at the sight it reflected back at him. Dayton was not willowy-small by any standards, but the stranger’s massive bulk made him lose hope of winning a fight and pulling himself free of those thick, heavily tattooed arms.

  Was this what it was? Had Greg gotten drunk with a traveling stranger and told him about Dayton? There was no other reason for him to be targeted this way. Only a handful of people knew the truth about him.

  He nodded his acquiescence, fearful of what might happen if he didn’t.

  The man encased Dayton’s wrists with leather cuffs, and the metallic clang that followed had an air of finality about it. He still hoped the stranger would simply lock him up in the bathroom and rob him of all his possessions. But there was something unnerving about the way the man had called him a ‘good boy’. It suggested intentions way more intrusive than snooping around Dayton’s room and taking money he didn’t have.

  Dayton took another glance in the mirror and stilled despite being prodded forward, to lean over the desk. His skull was empty even as it itched with recognition. That tattoo. The outline of the state of Texas with its flag inside of it. It was not anything all that original to have on one’s body, but it was in a particular spot, and it looked exactly like the one Dayton had so often seen in photos.

  So, Dayton frantically squinted to see if he could read the letters on the man’s knuckles too, but before he was able to do so, the stranger forced his head down until his temple touched the desktop. One of the man’s hands rested on the back of Dayton’s head, but the other landed right next to his face, and the writing told him all he needed to know.

  The bold black letters on the man’s knuckles read ‘WICH’. One half of the word ‘SANDWICH’.

  Max shouldn’t be here.

  His sentence was so long that he should never leave prison in his lifetime, so why was he here? Throughout the three years Dayton had stayed in touch with Max, he’d never once met the man, even though they’d sent one another emails, letters, and had spoken on the phone a few times. But he’d never thought they would get a chance to touch.

  Max had been Dayton’s guilty pleasure, a dirty fantasy that was never supposed to escalate the way it had, nor enter his life the way it had right now.

  Oh, God. If Max had been in the room all along, he must have seen the dozens of photos of him that Dayton had collected throughout the years. Dayton’s stomach twisted, and he raised his head to look at the huge corkboard filled with pictures of Max, news printouts and articles cut out of magazines. There was also a poem Dayton had written for Max but never dared send to him, for fear of making himself look cheesy. There was even a photo of the prison where Max should still be at.

  What would Max think of him now? Of all those things pinned to the wall, as if Dayton were some crazy, Hannibal-style stalker? He was not. His crush was nothing like that! But there was no denying that the corkboard was a bit like a shrine to Max and the ruthless bravery of his crime.

  Max was the expression of Dayton’s own rage against the world. A secret no one needed to know about when he smiled all day at hotel guests and went out of his way to please them even while faced with disrespect. That secret was supposed to stay hidden in a closet so deep even bullies like Greg could not pull it into the light.

  Dayton tried to calm his breath, but the fact that it was Max holding him down, not a complete stranger did not ease his anxiety. Maybe it made the situation even worse, and Max was indeed the monster some of the press portrayed him as? Had he escaped from prison somehow, intent on indulging his fantasies of Dayton? Had Dayton played with fire and was about to get burned too severely to ever recover? None of the photos he’d seen had ever indicated that Max had such an imposing presence. He was monumentally huge, with biceps the size of melons. How was Dayton to protect himself against someone so unevenly matched to him in strength?

  “You told me you were blond, Day. You know what pretty boys like you get for lying?” Max pushed his hips against Dayton’s ass.

  Dayton’s face burned, as if the flames of hell were already licking it for the dirty things he’d written to Max over the years. Had he meant all those things? Yes, yes he had. Was he ready to confront Max and actually go through with them? No, no he was not. Definitely not.

  Dayton’s sense of self-preservation rang in alarm. Had he been wrong about Max’s character all along and had invited a murderer into his house with all the saucy letters? Then again, Max wasn’t just some anonymous serial killer who cut people up for pleasure. He was… Max, an ex-boxer with a mind dirty enough to match Dayton’s.

  The problem was that Dayton had never intended for any of his fantasies to come to life. Never in a thousand years would he have dared to communicate them had he believed Max would be soon free to visit him. And to come prepared at that, with a gag and... the leather cuffs.

  Dayton shook his head, whining into the rubber ball as he tried to get out of Max’s arms, to reason with him, but a push on his back sent him flat against the desktop. The waxy wood cooled his cheek, smelling of the lemon-scented polish Dayton used to keep it looking decent, but it did nothing to soothe the frantic beating of his heart.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Max’s voice was getting raspy, and when he pressed his body against Dayton’s ass again, the erection in his pants was so prominent Dayton’s face flushed with a heat so severe he didn’t dare look into the mirror. “I saved myself for this. I wasn’t gonna risk catching some dirty disease in prison, so all I did for years was dream about your sweet tight hole.” The whisper carried dirty words that mixed reality with fiction and drove blood down Dayton’s body despite the fear clawing its way throughout his brain.

  Dayton’s toes curled in unwanted arousal, and he gasped, unable to voice his thoughts. So, all the sweet things Max had written to him, along with the promises of rough encounters and spunk drizzling down Dayton’s face had been just a hook so that one day Max could fuck him? Oh, God, he’d been so stupid to believe a man capable of killing three people could ever be a suitable romantic interest.

  And yet, he could not help his body getting hotter by the second.

  “I guess you know who I am, right?” Max squeezed his fingers over Dayton’s face and forced him to look up at the corkboard filled with photos from the trial, a mugshot, as well as a few taken years ago, when Max was still a boxer climbing his way to fame. “I wonder if you’re as tight as you promised me…” His other hand went between their bodies and squeezed Dayton’s ass, as if Max owned him.

  And maybe he did. He’d staked his claim the moment he invaded Dayton’s space and took his voice away.

  Dayton moaned, sweating into his work clothes, he didn’t know whether out of fear or embarrassment over the altar-like corkboard and the dirty, disgusting fantasies he’d opened up to Max about. He made one last attempt to gingerly get up and then maybe laugh the whole thing off with as much grace as he could, but Max only pressed on his back with more force.

  “Oh, you like to put up a fight, don’t you?” Max gave a raspy laugh, but Dayton’s eyes were drawn to the mirror close by, where he saw Max taking off the balaclava to reveal a handsome, flushed face. Even his dark beard was a bit ruffled. “Struggle all you want. I’ll be nailing your ass so hard you’ll need a day off work tomorrow.” The big, hot hand trailed under Dayton’s shirt like a lick of hellfire itself. The fabric slid out of Dayton’s slacks, teasing his sensitive groin area, and giving Max complete access to Dayton’s chest. Max fumbled with the buttons at first, but with their holes tight, he gave a groan of frustration, rolling his hips against Dayton’s ass.

  Sensation crawled all over Dayton’s skin, honest fear entwining with lust that he had not allowed himself to satisfy for so long.

  Max hissed. “Fuck this bullshit.” He ripped off the last few buttons and pulled the shirt open, making Dayton’s skin break
out in goose bumps. “That’s more like it. I bet you’ve jerked off to me so many times, dirty boy. I deserve this.” He emphasized his words with a squeeze of fingers on Dayton’s nipple.

  Waves of heat washed over Dayton’s back when Max tugged the shirt off him as efficiently as he could, gathering the fabric around the cuffed hands, so that as much of Dayton’s body as possible would be left uncovered.

  Dayton whined and rolled his burning face against the citrus-smelling wood. It was only now hitting him that whatever he’d do, Max would go through with his plan. Any and all resistance would be met with the same pushback and cocksure attitude, and end with a cock up Dayton’s ass. But the worst part was that this wasn’t really ‘Max’s plan’. Everything that had happened so far was a rendition of the home invasion fantasy Dayton had written about to Max in extensive detail. Even some of the word choices had been taken straight out of Dayton’s fantasy.

  Oh, God, did Max even intend on giving Dayton the mercy of condoms, or would he fuck Dayton bare, like he’d always promised in his letters? Even with the fear of STDs and the humiliation of being fucked without that barrier that kept everything clean, he could not stop his body from accepting the notion with even greater excitement.

  He hadn’t had sex in over two years, and even back then, the sex he’d had with his last boyfriend had been nothing like his darkest desires. Those were only known to Max.

  “Oh, yes,” Max muttered, still holding Dayton’s short hair in his grasp while he lazily trailed circles all over Dayton’s chest with his other hand. “I’m gonna see my cum dripping down your legs, Day. You’ll be my bitch for as long as I like. Feel my cock?” He pressed his hips against Dayton’s ass again.

  Was it as big as Max told him it was? It sure felt so, and Dayton squirmed, unsure whether he wanted to escape the touch or push back against it. The smooth surface of the desk steamed up from the heat of his breath, and he looked back at the mountain of thick muscle standing behind him, about to violate his undecided body.