The Sordid Promise (24 page)

“Sorry I’m late.” I called out as I stepped inside. Maisha met me right away with a wagging tail and licked my hand.

It was almost midnight. The lights were dim. Remnants of a get together were left in the dining room, indicating the dinner went on without me. The scene was a little off-putting. Eric was usually compulsive about cleaning; so, why did he leave a mess?

“How was the dinner with your friends?” I asked as I stepped out on the boat deck. Eric was standing on the dock, looking fixedly out at the water. “Eric?” I moved around to the other side, but he continued to gaze at nothing in particular. I snapped my fingers in his general direction.

He finally looked at me. A look I’d never seen in him; cold, empty, and sharp. He finished what was left in his whiskey glass and set the glass on the edge of the banister. “Where the fuck have you been?” he quizzed through a bridled anger. “I should preface your answer by telling you I’m pretty aware of what you’ve been up to, so don’t you dare fucking lie to me.”

I lightly swallowed, intimidated by a side of him I’d never really seen before. He looked like he wanted to hurt me. He looked like if I gave him the wrong answer, he would. “Did Tamala show up to the dinner? Is that why you’re so upset?”

He abruptly turned, nearly pressing his form against me. “Are you fucking with me right now?” he asked hoarsely. He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at me. “Nikki…do you realize I could drug you to such an extreme extent, the only thing you’re able to do is open your mouth and spread your legs to my cock?”

I stood still for a moment as my apex began to throb in a cry for attention. “I-is that what you want?”

“I want to punish you. I want to make you scream. I want to make you beg. I want to…hurt you. I want to become your living fucking nightmare.”

I rolled my shoulders in reaction to the fire that ripped up my spine.

“Did I just make your cunt wet?” The look in his eyes remained steady on anger as he moistened his bottom lip with his tongue. “I know I did. I know that’s what you want. I know why you cut up your wrist three times. You weren’t trying to commit suicide. You were getting off on the pain. It makes you cream between your thighs.” He stepped forward ensuring his chest pressed against mine as he continued to glare at me.

“S-stop…it.”

“Don’t be ashamed about it, baby. That’s why I’m here. To give you what you want. But you keep trying to fuck it up. Thing is, Nik—” He paused and chewed on the inside of his cheek before clenching his jaw. “—I don’t mind you getting to know my friends where Melonie is concerned; she’s a good one. Howfuckingever, asking her questions about me is a big no-no. Meeting up with the increasingly unstable whore bent on breaking us up is an even bigger no-no. If there is something you want to know about me, from now on, you better fucking ask me.”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “S-she…she said something about your father, stepbrother, and stepmother dying due to a murder-suicide, because your father cheated and got….his assistant pregnant. She didn’t say what happened to your biological mother. Since you said I could ask my questions, can
you
tell me what happened to her?”

His eyes turned colder.

“Well? Are you going to say something, Eric? You said I could ask you anything. Did you just say that to—” The look.
That
look. It was unnerving. It…scared me.

He abruptly removed his T-shirt and walked into me with such haste, I almost fell over. He grabbed my ponytail and jerked my head back so fast, I gasped. He clasped his other hand across my throat. Moving in, he sucked my lip, lightly biting it, and walked me to the exterior wall of the house. He abruptly turned me around and brought my hands behind my back. He wrapped the T-shirt around my wrist and knotted it to bind my wrists tightly together.

“Eric—“

“Keep talking, and I’ll gag you with your panties.” He opened the sliding glass doors. “Walk!”

I slid my feet across the floor, walking across the threshold. I was left powerless. The feeling left a tingle at my sex that elicited moisture that spread to the crux of my thighs, making my panties cling to me. When I reached the dining room table, he grabbed me by the crown, and bent me over it. He roughly pulled up my skirt and tore my panties from my body, allowing them to fall down between my feet. I heard his zipper and felt his erection flop against the bare skin of my round behind. He slid the head up and down my slit, teasing me. He harshly grabbed my cheeks and pulled them open.

Something warm and wet slid down the crease and stopped just short of the pucker. I felt his fingers dally with it, moistening the open.

“Have you ever been fucked here before, Nikki?”

“No,” my response quavered with reluctance.

“Tonight, you are.” I felt his finger probe inside, forcing me to clench down. I was met with a neat, hard smack on my behind. It stung. It surprised me. It made me quiver with want. He did it again, harder. So hard, the pain reverberated up my spine. Relenting, I tried to relax. His finger successfully slid inside, and another slid into my moistness while another rotated around my clit.

I cursed as he rocked his fingers in a motion that left me spellbound. He took it away before I could really feel it and abruptly pushed the head of his hardness into the virgin spot. I winced and cried out. “Push down on me, baby,” he ordered without any of the gentleness he normally reserved for me.

I did as told, and he pushed harder, furthering his reach as he reached up and clutched the back of my head. I whimpered my pain through clenched teeth. He rocked shallowly inside my tight hole. Another glob of saliva slid down the middle of my stretched open cheeks.

The pain threw me. I wanted it. I craved it. It felt like cutting. It felt better than cutting. He pushed in further, and I howled. “Hard parts done. I’m all the way in, baby.” He started to ride me as he clutched the back of my head, holding me down with one hand as the other reached around between my thighs to finger my soft, moist clit.

I tossed my head so my forehead met the table. The pleasure began to level the pain, but I wanted to be left in confusion. The confusion was getting me there…in a different way. He began to stroke in hard fast slams. His naked groin, slapping against my behind made a loud sound that echoed off the walls. His pain inducing thrusts threw my mind back into confusion. My body quaked and ached as I felt on the verge of a different kind of orgasm.

He rode me harder and deeper, thrusting inside me so hard the table began to burn against my hips. He slapped my behind in rapid succession on either of cheeks as he began to sensuously groan. I jerked with every movement, clamping down against his girth. The gesture threw me fully into pain. His pelvis slammed into me, forcing my backside into a permanent soreness.

My body pulsed with an erratic heat, bringing my nervous system to a strong set of convulsions.

“Goddamn, Nikki. I’m gonna come.” His thrusts became vicious and untempered. The strong force began to burn me from the inside out. His hands desperately strummed at my clit, moving my senses in a disorganized way.

I quivered as my orgasm took hold. I cried into the table as it peaked and exploded from within.

“Awe, Nikki,” he throatily moaned as he withdrew. The head of his erection throbbed in between the crease of my behind as it ejected hot warmth across the small of my back and onto my skirt. He sank against me for a moment, before disappearing in the kitchen. He wiped me clean with paper towel and removed the T-shirt from my hands. I slowly slid up, feeling exquisitely sore. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he lifted my thighs to rest on either side of his waist. His kisses were impassioned as he took me upstairs to my bedroom.

I couldn’t sleep. I felt jittery and clammy again. I rolled over to observe Eric, but he wasn’t sleeping either. I slipped down, resting my head on his firm torso. I fingered the peaks and valleys of the muscles in his chest while vacuous thoughts and insecurities consumed me.

He propped an arm behind his head, watching me. “It doesn’t bring about the greatest of feelings to talk about it. I don’t dwell on it. I don’t…think about it. I’m not going to talk about it.”

“You can’t pretend that it doesn’t affect you,” I whispered. “Sometimes you can’t help it. You don’t deal with it. You do deal with it. It worms its way in there somehow. Sometimes you don’t even know that it does.” I fell solemn as I thought about my demons and my transgressions.

He sat up, forcing me to sit up with him. Grabbing my thighs, he pulled me to sit across his lap with my legs swung off to the side. I tried not to grimace, but the motion made me remember the pain. Removing the sheet from my naked legs, he fingered the jagged scars on my thighs. “Some of these are very old. Did you start this up when you were a kid?”

Usually uncomfortable with anyone touching me there, his touch served as a welcome calming agent. “When I hit puberty, it started to feel different. It started to feel…” My eyes drifted off into space.

He nodded, because there was no need to say anything; he knew. He dropped his head, finding my hands and warmly slipped his fingers between the spaces of my hand. As he closed his hand tightly, he erected the sensation I’d grown to need; the feeling that pulled me out of my foreboding state. “What really happened to your father, Nikki?”

And just that quickly, the feeling was gone. I slipped out of bed, taking the sheet with me as I wrapped it around my body. Although he saw me naked in very intimate pieces, I couldn’t yet find the comfort in being completely nude. I never could. The scars were my escape, but they were also my shame.

“Damn, think I might turn the heat on. It just became frigid in here.”

“You don’t talk about some things.”

He sighed and slipped out of bed, standing confidently naked in front of me. “I don’t talk about a lot of things.”

I lost all train of thought as I grazed over his naked form. His defined upper half, his elongated torso, his long muscular legs—

“Why
that
picture, Nik?”

Alerted, I gave him the full extent of my eye contact.

“Mel brought it to the dinner last night. Said you wanted it.”

“Where is it?”

He walked over to my walk-in closet and pulled out the framed photograph. I couldn’t help but smile at it. Melonie did a great job with the frame and the mat. I gently sat down on the floor, grimacing as I fingered the glass. “I thought I didn’t understand people, but I was wrong. I just…didn’t want to think about other people’s thoughts and feelings. They still confuse me sometimes, but…I feel like I understand you the most. Not completely, though. You still leave me mystified at times. But, when I saw this…it’s when I knew.”

“Knew what?” He crouched down, eyeing me with question.

“I doubt you when you say you love me.”

“I know you do,” he sighed.

“It’s because of this picture. Because, the man in this picture has something in his eyes that the one in front of me doesn’t. If this man looked me in the eye and told me that he loved me, I would believe him. Because I can see everything in those eyes. Tragedy. Pain. Longing. Everything the live-action version keeps hidden away from me. I used to not care. I used to be selfish. You did something to me, Eric. I just…wish you would help me to feel good about what you make me feel—what I feel for you. You can do that by letting me in.”

He stood strong and seemed lost for a moment as he contemplated the ceiling. “I get that you want me to open up…but I don’t see the point of doing that right now.”

Disappointed, more than I could show, I stood strong and walked over to the window that faced his house. A familiar Ashton Martin was parked in the driveway.

Eric slipped behind me, pressing his nude form against me. He slipped down, giving me a kiss on the crux of my neck that made me close my eyes. He unexpectedly stopped his seduction. From his reflection in the window, tension reappeared in his face and was downright crushing.

“Stay in the house. I have to take care of something.” He methodically moved around the bedroom and replaced his clothes.

“Why? Is something—“

“Nikki. Stay in the fucking house. I mean it this time. Are we clear?”

I sheepishly nodded as I felt the strength of his command.

As I watched him march to the house, Maisha began to frantically bark. I tried to stay, and not let my other nature get the best of me. But when I heard the erratic screaming and destruction from inside the house, I couldn’t be still for much longer. I threw on Eric’s T-shirt, which was way too big for me, and ventured outside.

Once I was out the door, I was met with Mrs. Hobbins standing on the street with a furrowed brow and her dog in her arms. She was in a house coat with pink sponge rollers hidden underneath her floral bonnet. “I’m calling the cops! I’ve had just about enough of that family.”

I ignored her and moved inside Eric’s house.

Estelle screamed, “No, Eric. Please. You’re hurting him. You’re going to kill him. Stop.” She sported a new series of bruises on her arms and a recovering black-eye.

Eric strongly tossed Preston around the living room. Preston was defenseless, never fighting Eric back. Eric drew back a punch and landed it squarely on Preston’s nose. It began to pulsate with blood.