Use

by CD Reiss

  “Debbie told me you were babbling about taking care of something that night. She described a leather bag you were carrying that she’d never seen before, but I knew was your horse grooming kit.”

  “I don’t—”

  He slapped me across the tits. The sting was delicious.

  “Let me finish.” He grabbed my jaw tightly. “I’ll ask a question when I want one answered.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I whispered.

  “She said you told her you were going to be a grown-up for once. So I went to get you. I was angry.” Whup. Snap. Whup. Snap. “I didn’t want to be manipulated, and Fiona, make no mistake, you can be manipulative.” Whup. Snap. The last bit of shoelace was free. He dropped the shoe and ran the laces through his fingers. “But Debbie was worried which, from her, I take seriously.”

  He looped the laces, knotting them in a way I couldn’t detect, and stepped toward me until I felt his jacket on my skin.

  “Put your hands on the branch above you. Grab it.”

  I did, letting my shirt drop. The branch was just above my reach, making me stand on my tiptoes to grasp the rough winter bark. He twisted the laces around my wrists then around the branch, securing me.

  “And I found you there,” he said, letting the ends of the shoelace drop around my shoulder. “Alone, or so I thought.”

  I knew better than to speak though I wanted his brutal touch on me again. He wrapped the last of the lace under my tits, squeezing them every time I moved. I felt him behind me, doing the last knot. He yanked on the lace as if he was running out of length, then made it and pushed me. I swung. God, it was blissful. I closed my eyes and went outside myself to a place where I was no one, nothing.

  “Look at me.”

  I did. He was backlit against the speckled canopy of leaves, and his gaze on me was like a caress in hard metal and soft flesh.

  He leaned over and whispered, saying the words he always said before he fucked me, sending me to a place where I surrender all anxiety to him.

  “Empty your heart, my kitten. Empty your mind. Open your eyes. Who do you see?” He took my nipple in his fingers and twisted it.

  “You,” I gasped.

  “Are you empty?”

  “I am.”

  “Release your body to me. I have you. Even in the stables, I had you.” He placed my right leg over his hip and said, “Remember.”

  ***

  I smell hay and shaved bone. I’m cramped between the horse and the back wall. There’s no thrush on Snowcone’s frog, and that kind of pisses me off. He’s been taken care of like a favorite child, even with me gone. He kicked me two years ago, and I’d walked out, blaming the horse for what the rider should have known.

  Here I am again, showing up like I belong here, and he looks at me as if he knows good god damn well I abandoned him for doing what horses do. I hate myself. Disappointment. Deserter. I’ve been abandoned for being who I am, and I’d done the same to this poor baby.

  It’s night, which is a stupid time to show up hoping my key still works, but where else was I going to go? Who else would bear me? I had to see if Snowy would take me back. I had to see if even an animal would have me. And I want to do something for him, to repay him for the unrestrained nuzzle. I want to groom and love him. A brush would be fine, but any hand can brush. I want to go an extra mile.

  But his hooves are near perfect. He’s old, and richly indulged, and unloved.

  I need to stop crying. I can’t see the frog and the knife isn’t pointy, but the edge is sharp, and I don’t want to hurt the horse.

  I needed to stop crying. Deacon was whispering to me, ‘remember, remember, remember.’ His cock’s at my opening, and I was sure I would come when he entered me.

  “Fiona? Fiona Drazen?”

  Her voice surprises both me and Snowcone. I leap up with my knife, and the horse shifts and clops.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  She’s in her late teens, and she has long blond hair and muddy eyes. Jeans, zip-front cardigan; she’s average in dress, but she has an intensity that makes me wary.

  “My name is Rachel Demarest. I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  She steps forward. “I’m a friend of your family. Maybe Jonathan talked about me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’re dating so…” She twists the ends of her hair. “Theresa? Did she mention—?”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Rachel. Jeeze, I feel so stupid. I mean, look at the time. You’ve never even heard of me. You must think I’m some sort of stalker.”

  “You looking for a picture or something?” Maybe if I snap a picture with her, she’ll go away and I can go on swimming in my own shit.

  “No. I’m just… How can I say? Um, I just… I was meeting Theresa at your sister’s. Sheila, I mean. She’s having this Christmas party, and we’re helping set up. It’s right by the water.” She waves vaguely west, to the shore edge of Rancho Palos Verdes. “So Theresa mentioned that you had a horse in these stables, which are, like, just over the hill, and I’ve been thinking of riding again so… God, this sounds just awful.”

  “How is Theresa?”

  She shrugs. “You know, perfect.”

  Her eyes don’t roll, but her tone matches a snarky eye roll, and I feel a little more comfortable with her. Theresa makes me want to roll my eyes too.

  “This is a beautiful horse.” She approaches Snowcone with her hand out and strokes his neck. “He’s a hotblood?”

  Deacon’s cock slid in and out of me while I was tied to a tree, his voice in my ear. He told me over and over that it was all right, that he had me. I felt his arms around my waist, his hips holding me up, the swelling heat between my legs.

  “Arabian.”

  He was so good. So perfect. He took everything away.

  “Gorgeous.”

  “My brother’s girlfriend, huh? Sorry. I haven’t talked to the little fucker in a long time.”

  “I’ll tell the fucker you said hello.”

  I laughed a little, letting go of a slice of my sadness and loneliness. Maybe I needed to spend more time with friends. Maybe that was the way to forget about Deacon.

  “I think you’re amazing,” she whispers so softly I don’t know if she’s talking to me or the horse. “You’re so composed. So confident. Even when they come after you the way they do.”

  “I don’t feel so confident.” I sit and get back to Snowcone’s hoof.

  He huffs and fidgets more than he did before. He doesn’t like two people handling him. Was he always that way? I don’t even know.

  “Hey, Rachel, could you—”

  “I thought I could be someone like you.”

  “Just take a step back while I finish up, okay? He’s skittish.”

  She does, and Snowcone calms a little. I’m in control. I have this. As empty as I feel, I take this as a good sign.

  “I wanted to go to an Ivy,” she says. “I have the grades. Did you know they give a ton of financial aid?”

  “Really?” I let his leg down.

  “But I can’t get any. My parents make too much, but not enough to actually pay the tuition. Isn’t that funny? And here’s my boyfriend, who could pay with his pocket change.”

  I don’t have an answer for her. I already feel like shit. I put the knife on top of the kit while I put away the stool. I slip past her, my back grazing Snowcone’s side in the tight stall. In that second, from the way she looks at me, I know I could have her right there. Why not? What does anything matter anymore? All this pain could go away for a second, cocooned in a silky knot of sex.

  “Master.” He fucked me full, pushing himself against my clit. I was a white swirl of pleasure. “I’m going to come.”

  “Have you remembered?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you may not.”

  I kiss her, because she’s there and I’m an addict. Addicts don’t give a shit. Addicts are only concerned with pa
using their own pain. I put my tongue in her mouth and grab her hair, yanking it. She kisses me back, groaning and pushing her luscious tits on me. I put my hand up her shirt, under her bra, and run a thumb over her nipple. She gasps. Snowcone shuffles.

  “Are we going to fuck or what?” I say.

  “I’ve never—”

  “Gotten your clit sucked by a woman? Oh, honey, you’ve never been licked and fingered until a woman’s done it.” I bend my knee between her legs, pressing against her cunt.

  She grinds against me. “Jonathan… Don’t you care about him?”

  So close to her face, I see a flash of something in her eyes. Something less than innocent. Something more experienced than she’s letting on. I pretend I didn’t see that. I can’t think about her motives, because I have a need and she’s going to satisfy it.

  “He’ll get over it,” I say.

  “Remember, kitten. I have you.” He was so tender.

  I was crying and close. I cried for the careless bitch I was and the fact that I didn’t feel changed at all. Who deserved me? Not even my family deserved such a reckless whore.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, more to everyone I’d ever fucked over than to Deacon.

  “You’re forgiven.”

  I yank her pants down and get my finger on her pussy. She’s soaking wet, a slippery mass of flesh I know how to navigate. When I touch her clit, she squeaks. I’m in control; I have this bitch. I can make her cluck like a god damn chicken or come like a queen.

  I take her hand and put it flat against my belly then push down. “Come on, touch it. It feels just like yours.”

  She bites her lip and timidly touches my clit.

  “That’s right,” I say.

  She runs circles around the hood, making me groan. I hook my fingers in her hole and press the heel of my hand to her clit, sliding it back and forth. She looks at me with her mouth open, eyes hooded.

  “Don’t come,” Deacon said.

  “Don’t come,” I say.

  “I don’t think I can stop.”

  “I can’t stop it.”

  “Stay with me, Fiona.”

  “Stay with me, Rachel.”

  “I—”

  “I—”

  “I have you.”

  “I have you.”

  “Fiona?” It’s Deacon’s voice, and then it all happens very fast.

  Rachel screams in surprise. Enormous pressure on my back as Snowcone bucks. Deacon’s voice. Rachel letting out a war cry as she pushes me away. The horse slams me back toward her. Deacon grabs the bridle. Rachel has the knife, and I hear her scream, “I hate you! I hate all of you!” She thrusts for my face, and I can’t move. The horse and wall are in my way. I move. She misses, but I’m cornered. Deacon shouts something I can’t hear over Snowcone’s bucking and neighing.

  The horse moves.

  I fall.

  She’s on top of me.

  “He’ll kill you. Your brother. Your cunt’s all over my hands.”

  The horse’s feet clop around me. They could crush my head. But Rachel is so mad, and she doesn’t know.

  “You’re all going to pay.” She’s laughing. Crying.

  Where’s Deacon?

  Snowy’s losing it.

  It’s loud.

  The paddock shakes when Snowcone rears.

  The hoof knife falls toward my face, handle first.

  I roll, missing getting my head crushed by an inch.

  Rachel is sucked away, backward, clawing for my face. She grabs the knife.

  I get my feet under me. Snowcone bucks his rear to the right, into Rachel’s knife hand. It drops. I grab it, and I’m confused. Because Rachel is fighting him, and I’m still heavy between my legs. She’s calling him a lowlife pervert. That’s Deacon she’s talking to. He’s trying to wrestle her away without hurting her, but we’re in this tiny space with a bucking horse. My sexual arousal changes to unmitigated fire when she hits him in the face.

  He hurt me. He left me broken and adrift, but he’s mine. She can’t do that. She can’t hit him, because when she does that, she’s threatening me, my life, my love, my world.

  And I have a knife. It’s for scraping not stabbing, but the handle is hard in my hand, and she has to get the fuck away from him. She’s a wildcat. He’s trying to grab her wrists.

  “Fiona!” he calls.

  I don’t know if it’s to help him or to get back, but I’m mid swing. I realize why he called my name, but it’s too late. Snowcone bucks again, making everything nuts. Rachel is pushed away, and the knife finds its way into Deacon’s chest. I yank it out in a reflex. There’s no blood. Not yet. He just looks like a stricken man with a ripped shirt.

  He’s not mine. He’s not my world. He just cut me loose to drift into an endless void.

  I’m a rush of hormones and endorphins, a slave to my anger and pain. “Fuck you!” I punch his chest. But there’s a knife in my hand.

  He deflects. The wound is shallow, but it’s the one made with intention. I scream.

  Though Snowcone seems to calm despite everything, and Deacon at first seems bemused and stunned, Rachel is still pure adrenaline. She pushes me down to get out of the claustrophobic paddock.

  Then the blood appears. Deacon’s mouth and eyes are open, and they’re filled with me. The knife falls. A door slams. Everything goes black.

  I felt as though I was going to die. Not die.

  Cease.

  As if my existence was about to be snuffed into a tiny dot as big as the universe and black as the sun. Though I usually dove into the obliteration, I didn’t this time. I feared this orgasm as I’d feared no other, until I heard his voice.

  “Come, darling. I have you.”

  CHAPTER 28.

  FIONA

  He’d untied me and put my shoes back on, kneeling before me as I sat on a tree trunk. It seemed as though hours had passed, but it had only been twenty minutes, plus five for him to take me down and another five for me to tell him my memory.

  “I’m sorry, again. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

  “The second one. I meant that one.”

  “Barely a scratch.”

  “Deacon—”

  He put his fingers on my lips. I needed him to make me suffer, and not within the boundaries of funishment. I needed to writhe from his anger. I needed to feel as though I was dying. That was only fair.

  “When I negotiate with the men holding my people, I have to see past their anger,” he said. “I have to see their suffering. If I can’t see the human inside them who saw their fathers killed or maimed, or if I can’t speak to their slow starvation, I can’t get to them. I stay on the outside. In order for me to find them, I need to be inside.” He put his hand on his heart. “When you took that second stab, I was inside you.”

  “But those guys, when you negotiate with them, and you find them—”

  “They aren’t my reason for living.” He stood and held his hand out to me. “Once my guys are safe, those men are tools for a message.”

  I took his hand, and he pulled me up. “So you’re not going to have me dragged into the square?”

  “Never.” He put his arm around me, and we walked to the fence. “Your father. She was trying to blackmail him?”

  “That’s what Theresa and Margie said.”

  “I think she needed one of you to speak against your father. She needed you to break apart to do that.”

  “We’d never,” I said.

  “Not her, not this time. But you’re only human. All eight of you. One day, you’re going to fall apart. But not because of me. So I didn’t tell anyone about that girl until I had the whole story.”

  “I think Jonathan would break if he knew.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “I know how you feel about the cops anyway. But she’s dead now. It won’t help anything.”

  We walked to the fence, and he pulled it open a little for me. I crawled through a
s a different person, a cleansed one. I was a woman who, if not sinless, had had her gravest sins washed clean.

  The garden was quiet. No one had found us. Mark had kept up his end of the deal. Deacon and I walked back to the garden, then to the front lobby. His time was up.

  “Deacon, I have something to say.”

  “Say it.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know if this is what I want. What we have. I don’t know. I don’t want to lose you, but I can’t string you along if I don’t know.”

  He touched my chin with his thumb. “What we have is exactly what you need. Nothing else will work for you. We fix each other’s brokenness.”

  “I don’t want to be broken.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t get to choose that. You can choose to let me protect you, and I will Fiona. If you stay with me, I’ll stand between you and anything that comes at you. I’ll be your guardian and avenging angel.”

  When he left, I watched him roll away in his black car from the upstairs window, wondering if I could make it without him. He didn’t fix me. He didn’t make me whole. He took my broken pieces and gave the cracks between them a purpose. Who was I without that? I shuddered with fear at the thought. I’d be adrift without him, a dinghy in an ocean, but until I faced that lonely expanse, I’d never find land.

  CHAPTER 29.

  FIONA

  The lights went out.

  My arms ached from being tied, and the abrasions from the shoelaces throbbed a little. I didn’t want to touch myself. My clit had rolled over and gone to sleep finally.

  I’d left the bathroom door open a crack. I thought I should close it or the whoosh of the pipes would keep me up. I’d forgotten to take the Halcion. I thought I should get up and take it. I was meeting with Elliot in the morning to talk about whether or not I was ready to be released, and I wanted to be rested. I closed my eyes and thought about the stables, about Jonathan’s girlfriend, about kissing and fingering a woman I’d never met knowing that she belonged to him.

  That was the old me.

  The new me wouldn’t do stuff like that anymore.

  Someone somewhere flushed a toilet. The pipes whooshed. I considered getting up and closing the bathroom door, but I was asleep before I could.