Delusive (28 page)

His grip on my hair became stronger. “Why did you come here? You had to know this would happen. You wanted it, didn’t you?”
 

Staring at him, my mouth moved in direct opposition of my need to remain strong. “Yes.”

“What happens to disobedient whores?” he asked again, his voice gravelly and soft.

“They get punished,” I answered hoarsely, my voice wavering.

A hand went over my mouth. He pushed his legs forward, separating my thighs farther apart. From his belt covered hand, the hits to my sex came at a constant rhythm with only seconds of reprieve between his cruelty. I grasped for something to take my mind away from his increasing brutality and began to count in my head. At twenty, my mind lost control of my senses, leaving me weak and defenseless.

I screamed through his hand, my pain so acute I could barely function. He pulled my legs down and straddled my upper body. His hand firmly gripped my hair until my head was positioned in an extreme upward angle. With the other, he fisted his cock, sliding the moisture left from my pussy over and around the shaft. He squeezed the thick, swollen head and gritted his teeth. White streams of liquid squirted onto my chin and mouth.
 

“Stay there,” he rasped. “Don’t remove my cum from your face. If you move, I will repeat my prior punishment. Only the next time, I will beat your pussy until my arm grows tired.” He slid off the mattress, leaving me alone on the bed.

He didn’t leave the room, instead he sat in the armchair. My eyes darted across the room, watching him watch me. Slowly closing my legs and feeling every pinch of the pain, I closed my eyes.

SUNSET POURED INTO the window, forcing my dry eyes to finally blink. I stared at the ceiling for so long my eyes had become irritated. My chin and mouth were constricted, covered, and grotesque. When he stirred in the corner of the room, I finally blinked. The taps of his shoes resounded, stepping past the bed. I didn’t move a muscle as they faded away and into the adjoining bathroom. Water in the bath ran before he returned to the bed. A shadow was cast over the sun. When something soft touched my face, I jolted.

He cradled my head and continued to wipe my mouth and chin. He plucked me up and moved with me into the bathroom, gently placing me down in the warm bathwater. In the corner of my eye, I saw him undress. He slipped into the tub opposite me and ducked down, making sure to wet his hair.
 

He bathed me with a soft sponge, being gentle with every part of me, taking the most care with the part he brutalized last night.
 

Leaning forward, his lips grazed against my cheek. With his hands underneath my ass, he pushed me up to stand. The rivulets ran in sheets down my body, raining into the water made milky by the soap. He directed one of my feet up to rest on the edge of the bath and knelt before me.
 

Exhaling sharply, he ran his hand up and down my legs. His head tilted back, just inches from the area between my thighs. The beautiful monster stared up at me, threatening to make me remember what he had tried to make me forget about last night. “Why do you purposely make me so angry? I asked you to stay at my side, not once, but three times. Why couldn’t you just do what I asked?”
 

His words were enough to make me break our eye contact.

He ran his hand down my slit, pressing his fingers down gently and opened me. “When you’re not with me, it feels like a fire is roaring underneath my skin, and it burns me raw.” He placed a gentle kiss on my mound and looked up at me again.

“Would you please look at me?” He clutched my ass, pulling me closer.
 

Staring instead at the black marble shower stall beside the bathtub, I shunned his request.

He brushed his lips against my labia, whispering his apology over and over again. A gentle kiss was placed on my thigh an even gentler lick was placed on my sex. He stated in a near whisper, “I’m going to make you come repeatedly in my mouth until you want me stop,” and proceeded to do just that.

I PUSHED AROUND the pancakes, coating them in syrup and watching them crumble. An eerie quietness hung between us for more minutes than I could count. I’d sat at the long mahogany table for long enough that the syrup began to crystalize and the pancakes had grown stale. Elias’s phone would buzz erratically, vibrating against the table every few seconds. He’d either hit ignore or ignore it completely.
 

He reached across the table and grabbed my hand. He held it gently, as if it were fragile and ran his thumb back and forth across the skin at my wrist. “Are you going to leave me, Ley?” His voice was pained and soft. While it lured me, it also infuriated me.
 

I dropped my fork and withdrew my hand from his, sliding it from the table to rest on my lap. I never hated the woman he transformed me into more than I did last night. It was hard to decipher between what I truly wanted and what he made me crave. “Yes, Elias,” I stated, unleashing the full extent of my anger on him through a low volume. “I am.”

“I really wish you’d stay,” he implored.

“Then, maybe you shouldn’t have done what you promised me you wouldn’t,” I snapped, raising the volume of my voice.

“What do you want me to do?” Leaning forward, he folded his arm across the table. His voice was as weary as his eyes. He’d run his hands through his hair so much it had lost its style.

I hated how attractive he was. I hated how he became more beautiful in his sadness and vulnerability. I hated that his words were tinged with pleas and devoid of the arrogant confidence they usually were. I hated that I felt wretched over him. The thing I hated the most…I didn’t want to leave and it had very little to do with wanting to continue my manipulation of him.

“If there’s anything I can do to make you forgive me, please tell me what it is.”

“Can you rewind time?” I asked frigidly.
 

He walked around the table. I quickly scooted my chair back, ready to leave. I only made it to the supporting wall of the entryway before he caught me. He blocked me in, forcing me to remain pinned between him and the wall. I felt the pain between my thighs and quietly sucked my teeth.

Grimacing as though he felt my pain, he sank against me. His hands moved to find mine, but I yanked them away, holding them out from my body. His touch threatened to make me forget, and I needed to remember.

He clenched his fists tightly on either side of his body, and I could’ve sworn I saw blood pool underneath his nails. His eyes were trained on my hands. “You have no idea how much this kills me.”

The blame game. Playing the victim. I knew the strategies well. I was taught to do the same, and it worked for a while with Roth. Being on the other side of a scene I’d usually create, a scene I witnessed my mother endure with her first husband, made me sick to my stomach.
 

A battle was waged between the parts of me Elias had. Before I could determine the winner, I dropped my arms and upturned my palm, allowing him to clutch my hand.

Caressing my hand, he relaxed, closing his eyes. “If you leave, Ley, I will hurt someone.” His eyes lifted, his chin remained slanted down. “Don’t force me to do that.”

“You’re just making it worse for yourself.”
 

“Then, tell me what to do. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, so tell me,” he said, his voice trembling.

“You need help.” I became choked up. Every word wavered from the quiver of my lips. Everything inside of me that was so easily held together, threatened to fall apart in front of him and give into what he wanted. It was a struggle between my duty, my emotions, and my self-respect. The last part of me slowly began to die, making way for the things Elias made me want.

I removed my hand from his grip, making him exhale sharply, as though I’d put him through the worst agony possible.
 

With balled fists, I clutched my tormented stomach, feeling ill over the fight for what I truly wanted. “Elias, if you get help—maybe, just maybe—I’ll think about speaking to you again.” I thrust myself forward to make him step backward. With enough space to leave, I headed for the door, but stopped at the doorway between the dining room and the hall. “Are you going to take me home?”

“You can’t do this,” he boomed, wildly searching my brown hued eyes. "You can’t make me feel things I didn’t intend to feel and leave me this way. What the fuck am I supposed do? How do you think a man like me is supposed to react? Did you think I’d deal with what’s between us logically? I can’t. You drive me past the fucking edge of insanity. Only you can keep me from going too far. If you walk out that door, nothing will stop me from plummeting into a place I’d rather not go.”

Sighing, he ran his hands down his face. “I wish I could tell you that things will be different, and I’ll never react the way I did last night again. But I know you. I
know
you. And I know you won’t stop doing whatever it is you’re doing to me.
 

“This is who I am, who I will always be. It will be the worst part, but I will give you the best. I will show you the best parts as long as you give me the real you.” His steps fell deliberately and quietly on the floor. His eyes held me, staring at me with a look that almost broke me. “I’m begging you, Hanley”—he swallowed hard, having difficultly continuing—“please stay.”

“Are you going to take me home?” I asked as coldly as my voice would allow.
 

His chin dropped to his chest, a shadow obscured his face. “Your car is in the driveway,” he stated in a low voice that didn’t sound like his own. “The keys are on the dash.”

I heard him from the moment I closed the door. The shouting and the wreckage that followed my exit. I looked at my right palm, dotted with his blood. The numbness slipped away from me, the torturous feeling of the loss flowed through every part of me.

Elias had gotten to a place inside me I never should’ve allowed him to. He was so deeply implanted there I felt like I couldn’t breathe without him. I fought it and remembered the woman who came to town with only one thing on her mind. She felt different when I readopted her, but at the very least, she allowed me to function enough to pull the car out of Elias’s driveway.

NINETEEN

CURLED UP IN MY bed while my father looked on helplessly, I couldn’t stop feeling the weight of loss and anguish paired with the hurt. I shouldn't have missed someone so much. I shouldn't have missed someone whose affection was diseased and poisoned. I felt physically and mentally gutted. Whether I was awake or asleep I could feel him—I could see him. It was a pain which throbbed deep inside my core. I kept it together for my father, but when I was alone in my bedroom, tears I’d never shed for anyone expelled at an unfettered rate.

“What are we going to do for money?" I asked sullenly. “I failed and now we’ll have nothing.”

"We'll figure out something, Hanley,” he assured me. “I don’t want to rush you, but you need to start packing soon. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

"I failed you." I whispered, my words barely intelligible.

"It was silly to think we could do this."

"Not when there were things you didn't tell me.” I sat up in bed and tucked my legs underneath me. “There is more to the Caris than it seems."

"How so?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

"It wasn't just the night at the gallery that made me question things. His father—Natanael…threatened me.”

“He did what?” My father straightened his spine, his eyes full or fire. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Because it wasn't a threat to me personally, and I thought, stupidly, Elias would never let his father to do what he’d threatened.” I took a second to breathe deeply. “I haven’t been around a lot of criminals, but Elias’s behavior? The way he commands people?” I shook my head. “I feel like there is more to all of it. Like Mom’s death wasn’t just revenge. It could’ve been she knew something she shouldn’t have and it was easy to cover it up that way.”

“Get some sleep.” He smiled sadly. “I really hope you reconsider going back to work tomorrow.”

“Any money we can get coming in before we leave is better than nothing.”

IN THE MORNING, as I dressed, a persistent feeling wouldn’t leave me. I paced around my room dozens of times, looking for whatever it was that made me feel out of kilter. Despite the odd, strong smell of flowers suffusing from the main area of the house, nothing seemed out of place. When I looked at my bed and fingered the left side, I realized what I had missed: Elias.

Dressed and ready in a manner that would make Claudia proud, I met my father in the kitchen. Except, there was no father easily found. At least twenty dozen variants of vases of flowers covered the tables, counters, and floors. In the living room, boxes, shopping bags, and shoe boxes from stores I coveted—but couldn’t afford to shop in—filled the seats of furniture and covered the floors.

My father raised his cup of coffee, indicating that he was in the kitchen amongst the sea of gifts. “They just kept coming and coming this morning. I didn’t want to disturb you with the doorbell, so I left the door open.”

“He’s…over the top, isn’t he?” I asked in awe while looking around.

“He will be at your job. A man who would do this won’t give up easily.”

IN THE MIDST of attending to a customer in the beauty section, and bringing her to the lingerie side to ring her up, I couldn’t help but notice the way she continuously glanced at my face. “Are you a makeup artist?”