Lost & Bound (8 page)

Callum

“Fuck, Cal, I dunno.” He rakes his fingers
through his overgrown hair as he tilts his head to the side.

“Come on, man. It’s not like you’ve never
done anything like this before,” I plead, my fingers wrapped tightly around the
beer bottle in my hands. I need him to agree to this.

“I’ve never broken a chick out of someone’s
basement, dude.”

“So this will be a first,” I try to reason.
“Something to add to your
repertoire
.”

We both chuckle.
I don’t know if it’s because of the absurdity of my request or if
we’ve had one too many beers. Either way, it helps to lighten the mood.

I just told Eric what I’ve been doing for
the past few days, where my minds been at and why I’ve been so distant. On one
hand he’s happy it has nothing to do with my separation from Sofia, but at the
same time, the situation has him freaked.

“Your dad fucking owns this town. If I go
up against him it’s not
gonna
be good for anyone,” he tells
me.

“He’s fucking sick, Eric,” I say a little
too loudly. I take a deep, steadying breath before I speak again. “He needs to
be stopped.”

I stand and start pacing the length of the
room. A pizza box sits on the coffee table from last night and a half empty
bottle of Jack sits next to it.

“Please, man,” I plead. I hate the way the
words sound coming out of my mouth, but I can’t do this alone. I need Eric. He
has the connections that I need to pull this off.

“Dude, you’re sure the breakup with the
princess hasn’t turned you batshit crazy?”

I scoff. “I wish.”

Breaking up with Sofia was the sanest thing
I’d done in the past four years.

“So this Leila chick is real?” he asks.

He’s still in denial like I was when Leila
told me her story. Having attended the party on Friday night made everything
more real for me.

“She’s real, Eric.” I swallow roughly.
“Since I left, and since my mom died, something has happened to him.”

Eric snorts. “That’s kind of an
understatement.”

He looks
at me, his eyes
wide, and his face
full of pity. He’s my only chance at getting Leila
out of there, he’s the only person I can trust in this town and I need him on
my side.

“Your dad, Cal,” he starts, uncapping the
bottle of Jack and taking a swig straight from the bottle. “Your dad is a scary
man.”

I shrug my shoulders. “You don’t seem like
someone who scares easily.” I raise my eyebrows, challenging him with this one
look.

“I live in this town, Cal. I kind of like
it too.” His face turns serious. “Your dad could have me fired, have my
apartment quarantined and the building destroyed, he can make anything happen.
You know all of these things, right?”

I run my fingers along my chin
thoughtfully. Everything Eric’s saying is true, but setting Leila free is my
number one priority. No risk, no reward.

“He doesn’t need to know you were
involved,” I tell him. “I just need a head start, a push in the right
direction.”

His foot bounces up and down on the floor
nervously. He looks to my face and I stick out my bottom lip in an attempt to
sway his answer.

“Okay,” he concedes. “I know a guy…”

One thing about Eric is that he always
knows a guy
. That’s why I like him. If
you need some weed, he knows a guy. If you need to get out of a speeding
ticket, he knows a guy. If you need to remove a tracking device from some poor
chicks wrist, he knows a guy…

“Okay.” I wait patiently for him to
continue.

“He lives in Richmond. He’s been into some
heavy shit. Robberies, assaults…he’s done jail time.”

I nod my head and let the information sink
in. I was well aware that it would take one criminal to bring down another.

“Cool.”

“He’s done time,” Eric says again as if I
didn’t hear him the first time.

“I don’t care. I need someone who won’t
fuck this up.”

He shakes his head, his hand wrapping
around the neck of the whiskey bottle before downing another mouthful.

“I guess we’re going to Richmond.”

“We?” I question. “I thought you were too
much of a pussy to go up against my father.”

He smirks. “Someone has to introduce you to
Cruz.”

“Cruz?” I question.

“And that’s exactly why. You’re too prim
and proper to approach him. He’ll tell you to fuck off after one look at you.
You need me.”

I smile for the first time all day. “I
always need you, man.”

Leila

Callum hasn’t visited in three days. Today I
was so sure he would visit. I styled my hair, applied my makeup and even
painted my nails with three coats of red polish. I hate the color. It’s cherry
red and reminds me of an old woman from a bad eighties movie, but it’s the only
color Osborne allows me to wear.
Probably because it once
belonged to
her
, his wife and Callum’s mother.

Despite my efforts, there’s still no
Callum. I try not to be upset, after all, Callum has a life of his own, but I
can’t deny the emptiness I feel inside. I haven’t been around a man in a long
time. Osborne doesn’t count and the old men he invites to his parties are
predators, they’re not men.

But Callum…Callum is different. He’s a
gentleman without even trying. He looks away when he sees too much skin and he
takes care of me without expecting anything in return.

I like having him around and I enjoy
talking with him, but sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes I crave his
touch.
 
I want him to wrap his arms
around me and tell me everything will be okay. I want to feel his fingertips
dance across my skin and his lips—how I want to kiss those curved, pink
lips—I let out a sigh when I think of kissing him.

As morning turns to night, I sit in my room
in near darkness and wait for something to happen. That’s when I hear the front
door unlock. The door squeaks as it opens and then slams shut. The rashness of
his movements tells me it’s not Callum. He isn’t so rough, so forceful.

I hear his feet hit each step and his
presence fills the room before I see him. I can smell him too, an overwhelming,
musky scent that I now associate with pain.

I hear his heavy breathing as he approaches
the bed, his shoes making an awful squeaking sound against the hard, concrete
floor. I squeeze my eyes closed and wish myself away to another place.

“Emmy,” he coos.

I’m still here.

“Emmy, are you asleep?”

He taps my foot and I instinctively draw my
legs against my chest.

I’m alone with him and I know this time my
savior won’t be rushing through the door. This time I am alone and I am
his
.

He lets out a long exhale. “Be a good girl
and look at me.”

I sit upright on the bed, my eyes cast low.
I hate looking at his face.

“You’re dressed.” He smiles. “You look
beautiful.”

I’m in the white outfit that I wore to the
party the night Callum saved me.

“What about your lips?” He frowns.

I forgot to paint my lips. What color did
he want, pink or red, pink or red? I meet his eyes. I know I’m about to be
punished. His face is stern, his lips set in a thin line as his icy gaze
focuses on my face.

“Never mind,” he says and I almost choke.

Never mind?
I haven’t played by the rules, I didn’t paint my lips
rosa
or vermelho and he isn’t going to punish me?

“I want to fuck you too badly to worry
about the color of your lips.” He leans forward, grabbing both of my feet in
his hands. His grip is tight around my ankles as he pulls me to the edge of the
bed. My head meets his chest and I squeeze my eyes closed.

He places a long finger underneath my chin
and pulls my face up to look at his. I can see the rapid beat of his heart
through his shirt, his heavy breath coming out of his nostrils and hitting my
face.

“I have been thinking about this moment all
day,” he tells me.

He runs his finger along my lips and then
up my cheek, stopping at the corner of my eye.

“Actually I’ve been thinking about it since
the party.”

My eyes go wide. I try not to react, but
when he mentions the party it startles me.

“The man you spent the night with, he’s my
son,” he says. Our eyes lock together, and although his gaze is intimidating,
I’m too frightened to look away. My chin rests on the slight curve of his
belly,
my nostrils breathing him in with each inhale.

“I wasn’t happy about it at first,” he
says, “but then I thought you may appreciate me more after your time together.
There is no way someone like my son, with such little experience, could please
you in the ways I can.”

I want to sneer, to tell him he’s delirious
and Callum is one hundred times the man he’ll ever be, but he can’t know that I
understand every single word he utters.

He pushes me back on the bed, his eyes
drinking me in as he unbuckles his belt and forces his pants to the floor. He
doesn’t unbutton
his shirt, he hardly ever does. He kneels
on the bed, one knee wedged between my legs as his eyes linger on my breasts.

He runs his finger underneath the fabric of
my top. His fingers stroking my cleavage before he rips the thin piece of
material from my body.

“You’re such a fucking slut,” he seethes.
“You’re a slut, but I want nothing more than to bury myself inside of you.”

He closes the distance between us, his body
over mine,
the
heat from his form suffocating me,
making it impossible to breath.

“Beautiful.” He runs a finger along my
cheekbone. “Just beautiful.”

I fight back a shudder as he slips one
finger inside of me. I’m dry, dry like the desert. He notices and brings his
finger to his mouth, sucks on it and then slips it back inside of me. He pushes
in all the way to his knuckle and then he murmurs his delight.

“So tight.”

The sudden invasion feels uncomfortable,
but I don’t fight it. I learned long ago that reacting only spurred him on
more. A cry from pain would make him fuck me harder. A plea for him to stop
would only make him go longer. So I stopped reacting. Now I’m just a warm body
that lies lifelessly beneath him.

I let my head fall to the side, focusing on
a crack in the wall. It’s getting bigger. It seems to grow in length every
single day. I wonder if the room will eventually cave in. I pray for it, for
the room to crumble and swallow me up.

“Are you ready for me, Emmy?”

You’re disgusting. Get off of me.
I fight the impulse to buck my hips.

His finger slips inside me one last time
before he pulls back and guides his cock to meet my entrance. I feel his head
dip inside my folds. I bite the corner of my lip as I wait for him to thrust all
the way in.

He lets out a long, nauseating grunt as he
fills me up, stretching me wide as he pushes deeper.

I’m not here.

I think of the ocean in
Maceió
. The way the
waves lap against the shore and when the water reaches your toes how it feels
warm and inviting. When he pushes inside of me, I think of home. I float off to
my happy place. When I close my eyes, I see Callum’s face, his gentle blue eyes
the same color as the water and his skin the same shade as the sand. I think of
Callum…

“Oh Emmy,” Osborne groans. “Fuck, you’re so
good.”

His words rip me back to the here and now.
My body remains limp and lifeless beneath him as he pumps into me again…

And again…

And again…

He lets out a familiar groan, his teeth
grinding together as his cock violates my body one last time. The disgusting
sound is always the same when he comes, but it’s what I look forward to. It
lets me know
it’s over.

 
I let my body relax as he rolls off of me
and onto the other side of the bed. He’s still puffing. His breath coming in short
labored gasps. Maybe he’s about to keel over and
have
a heart attack. I fantasize about this, as I lie motionless on my side of the
bed.

“I’ll be out of town on Wednesday night,”
he tells me.

I keep my eyes fixed on the crack in the
wall.

“Tomorrow will be extra special.”

I notice from the corner of my eye that
he’s looking at me, waiting for a reaction, any kind of reaction.

“You know, Emmy, you really need to work on
your manners.”

“Yes, sir,” I say in the best deadpan tone
I can manage. My voice croaks out of me, little and defenseless.
The sound of a dying animal.

“As I was saying, I want the blow job of my
life on Tuesday night, wear something that shows off your tits,” he says.

I want to vomit.

“And wear the red lipstick.”

He stands from the bed and looks back at
me, his limp dick now hanging between his legs.

“What color lipstick did I say, Emmy?”

“Vermelho,” I whisper.

“That’s right, red. Now go to sleep, I need
to get some work done.”

When I hear the door click shut, I finally
let the tears fall.