Protege (30 page)

He laughed. “Not until you show me.”

She'd let him get his wish once, and now it was a part of their daily game. Sighing, she said, “Fine, but you're crushing me.”

He eased back, still holding her to the ground with the weight of his hips. She lifted her shirt.

“You have the prettiest titties I ever seen, Collette. Let me suck on them.”

“Ewww, no!” She rolled him off her. Showing was one thing, but she'd never let anyone touch her there before, especially not with their mouth.

“You're no fun.”

She glanced around, disoriented by the endless rows of cherry trees. “Which way is the house?”

“Home's that way, but we can't go until we've eaten some.”

Collette stepped back, looking around for the ribbon that fell from her hair. “That's stealing.”

Jason stood and plucked a plump berry off the branch, snapping some green leaves with it. “Nah. Look at all these. Mr. McElroy ain't gonna find out.” He grinned. “Show me your titties again and I'll let you have one.”

She rolled her eyes and glanced at the trees, snapping a cherry off a branch for herself. “No.”

They gorged themselves on cherries so long she was sure they'd be shitting pink for a week. They were walking back when all of the sudden there was a shout, followed by the bark of what sounded like a rabid dog.

“Run!” Jason shouted, and Collette's knees pumped as fast as they could.

The dogs—there seemed to be a few of them—chased them, barking like a pack of hellhounds out for blood.

“Come on! We're almost there!” he yelled, but she couldn't see him.

Her heart beat in her ears as her breath sawed out of her. Her legs grew tired and clumsy, but the dogs were getting closer. She could hear the snarls and snuffles of the beasts in between their incensed growls.

When she spotted the fence her legs pumped faster. An ugly black mutt came at her, snapping its jaws in the air. She screamed and hurled herself at the fence, her foot coming down on a cracked rail and splitting the beam in two.

She fell to the grass, certain she was about to be eaten, and then Jason's shadow fell over her and he used a voice she'd never heard him use before. “Stop!” The madness stilled and the dogs silenced for a brief moment. “Get up slowly and get behind me, Collette,” he whispered.

Trembling, she crawled up on her knees, now scuffed and stained with grass, and slowly got behind him. Her posture was hunched as she stood, as close to being invisible as she could get.

Jason reached in his pocket and pulled out a baseball, lobbing it into the cherry trees. “Go get it!”

The dogs chased after the ball and disappeared. He turned and looked at her. “You're a wreck.”

She couldn't talk. All she could do was look at him in awe, her hero. In that moment she would have shown him anything, but he didn't seem interested right then.

That night, all through dinner, Collette watched Jason eat. She watched the way he spoke to his mother and how he resembled his father. He wasn't the same person he was that morning, now that he'd saved her. He was different. Stronger.

After dinner there was a knock at the door and a noticeable shift in the atmosphere. When the door closed, she and Jason waited in the den as his father returned.

“What is it, dear?” his mother asked.

His father slowly turned around, a scowl darkening his face. In his hands he held Jason's baseball and her hair ribbon. “Did you trespass on Mr. McElroy's property today, boy?”

Jason was silent, his chest moving with each deep breath.

His father looked at her. “And this belongs to you, I suspect.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“You two trespassed, stole from his crop, and broke his fence. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“It was my fault,” Jason said.

His father's face showed deep disappointment. “On the chair.”

Collette's breathing shifted as her eyes followed Jason's gaze. He looked to his mother, who also looked disappointed. “You heard your father.”

He swallowed and slowly walked to the kitchen, pulling a chair out from the table and turning it. His father came to her and held out the ribbon. “You were a part of this.”

She didn't answer because he didn't form it as a question. Placing the ball and ribbon on the table, he removed his belt. “Pants down.”

She lost sight of Jason's face as he climbed onto the chair, his arms braced on the tall back and his chest against the rungs. She glanced away as he lowered his pants, but her gaze returned to him, hidden by her downcast lashes. His bottom, pale and small, showed under his shirt as his arms rested on the back of the chair.

“This will teach you . . . ”

The belt swung out and cracked over Jason's bottom in a succession of strikes that had Jason's body flinching and Collette's shoulders knotting. “We. Do Not. Steal,” his father snapped, striking his son between each word. “You will fix that man's fence and apologize to him first thing in the morning. And then you will spend the next week helping him for three hours a day to make up for what you stole.”

Her bottom ached without being touched and she feared she was next, her feet slowly backing her closer to the wall. When it was over, Jason's motions were jagged and his face was wet with tears.

His father turned to her and said, “Pack your things. Thieves are not welcome in this house.”

Her heart shattered as his words hit her harder than any strike a belt could deliver. “Please, sir, I can help fix the fence. I'll work too.” She grabbed his arm, terrified that the first home she'd had for more than a month since losing her parents was about to disappear.

His arm yanked away as if her touch disgusted him.

She cried. “Please! You can spank me too. I did it, but I'm sorry. Don't make me go. Please!”

He walked away and Jason didn't look at her as he went to his room. She stared at the chair, no longer seeing it as a place of punishment, but a tool of forgiveness. “Please,” she whimpered, rubbing her eyes. “Don't make me go.”

The missus came to her side. “Come along, Collette, I'll help you pack.”

She gazed up at the woman, her chin trembling. “I'm sorry. Please let me stay.” She'd climb up on that chair and take twice the strikes Jason had if it made them rethink their decision.

Why did he get to stay and she was thrown away? The truth hit her like stones pelting her battered heart. Because they loved him enough to punish him and forgive his misdeed, but they didn't love her. She wasn't worth their effort or forgiveness.

“Collette.”
The sharp tone of Jude's voice cut through her mind, and she focused. He held her face, a look of dark concern tightening his expression. “Say something.”

There were strange sounds behind her, things she didn't want to hear. “I want to go home.”

His obvious relief at hearing her voice was replaced with determination. He nodded and took her hand. “We'll leave now.”

They walked through the house quickly, Jude doing something with his phone as he held her hand tight, not letting go until he was slipping her into the front seat of his car.

The ride home was silent. Her mind was occupied with images she'd forgotten, places she'd once hoped to call home, but only made up glimpses of her past, moments so long ago she'd repressed the details.

She couldn't even remember Jason's last name or the way their faces truly looked. She could only recall minor details: the shape of the braided rug in the hall, the smell of the cherry trees, the way his father removed his belt, and that chair she was never asked to take punishment on.

It was the second or third foster home she'd had after losing her parents, one she'd thought might be permanent. She'd spent half the school year with that family and even had her own room, but none of it was hers. She never belonged to them and they were never planning on adopting her. At twelve years old, she had yet to understand the life of a foster child came without stability and very little genuine affection.

When they reached the house, Jude walked her inside and sat her at the kitchen table. It was strange seeing him help himself in the kitchen, but he efficiently located whatever he was looking for and soon placed a steaming cup of tea in front of her.

He doused it with some sort of liquor, only a splash, and then, as if thinking it over, added a dash more. “Drink that slowly and then we'll talk. Careful. It's hot.”

The trembling of her hands slowly faded as she sipped the tea. Her nerves were raw and jagged as she wondered where all these memories were coming from.

Jude sat across from her, stress wearing on his usually serene face. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it tousled. When she put down the nearly empty cup, he said, “Collette, I need you to talk to me and I need you to be honest.”

She frowned, his words implying she'd been dishonest recently. “I'm always truthful with you, Jude.”

He glanced at the table and licked his lips. “What happened back there?”

Her brow tightened. “I . . . I don't know. I don't remember anything after he took off his belt.” She blinked, unsure if that was the honest-to-God truth as pieces of what they'd witnessed slowly came back to her—as though she were seeing them for the first time. Her mind had been somewhere else.

“But you were there. You were watching. What was happening in your mind? Everything in you changed the minute he started spanking her.”

“I was thinking about something from a long time ago.”

“What?”

She shrugged, lacking the mental strength to put the recollection into words and accurately depict the emotions tied to the memory. “A boy I used to live with.”

“Boy as in child or a man?”

“Boy. We were young. It was right after my dad was sentenced, maybe a little longer. I can't quite recall.”

“And what were you remembering?”

She looked down.

“Collette.”

He wanted honesty. “He used to sit on me and make me show him my breasts.”

“Was this the boy that took your virginity?”

She shook her head. “No. This was before then. I don't think I'd even kissed a boy yet.” She frowned. “I must have been around twelve or thirteen.”

“Did he touch you? Force you?”

Her head shook slowly, her shoulders starting to tense again. It was playing the way she remembered it. Jason never stepped over a line she was uncomfortable crossing. “No. I never minded the attention, and when I was done with the game it was over. He wouldn't have hurt me.” Of that she was certain, recalling how protective he'd been around his father and the dogs.

“Did something at Damien and Sadie's trigger that memory?”

She squirmed. “I didn't like what they were doing. I know that's judgmental and you asked me to keep an open mind, but I don't get it.” Her gaze met his, pleading. “Is that what you want? What they do?”

“No,” he said quickly, without inflection. “That's not what I enjoy. I was showing you to see if it excited you.”

“It didn't.”

“The rope did.”

She considered the rope again. “Yes. I'll admit that got me a little excited, but the rest made me feel scared and not in a way that leads to pleasure.”

He nodded. “Okay. We're not going to do any of that. Maybe some rope play, but only when I feel you're ready.”

His mouth turned down and he frowned. “Collette, I'm struggling to make sense of you. You've asked me to spank you twice; both times have made you cry and I'm positive you took no pleasure from the action, sexual or otherwise. If it isn't for pleasure, I have a hard time not categorizing it as corporal punishment. I understand your trying to navigate a desire for discipline, but I don't always see spanking as suitable penance. When you ask for something so much more severe than what I believe you truly deserve, the teachable moment is lost. Until I understand where this desire to have me hit you comes from, I'm not comfortable with doing it anymore.”

Her chest tightened. “But . . . if I do something wrong, I need it. I need you to do it.”

“Why?” He seemed truly concerned with this.

“I don't know why. I only know that when you do that I like it, not in a pleasant way, but in a cleansing way. I don't enjoy it and it hurts like hell, but afterward I can . . . forgive myself. I'll do anything for you, Jude. Even if you wanted to do something we saw tonight—”

“Stop. I'd never make you do something that makes you feel scared.”

“But the spankings can't go away.”

“For now they do.”

Her breath came quick, a new sort of panic constricting her chest. “No.”

“Collette,” he snapped, warning thick in his voice. “That word has crossed your lips twice tonight and that's more than enough. Take a moment and breathe before you lose yourself and upset me.”

But she couldn't breathe. What if she did something wrong? She'd dwell and get consumed by the guilt. If she didn't make amends he might ask her to leave. “But that's the only way to end it.”

“Nothing's ending.”

“I mean the guilt, the fear. It eats at me and I don't know how to quiet it. When you spank me I feel . . . free of everything evil.”

He frowned, concern creasing his brow. “Sweetheart, there is nothing evil inside you.”

“You don't understand.” She was losing ground. The more she sensed him pulling back, the harder it was to express thoughts. “It's an outlet and you're the only person who has ever offered it to me. Please don't take it away.” She began to cry. “Please don't make me go.”