The Dollhouse (Paperdolls #1)

by Nicole Thorn

  “Oh, wow. You girls really had at the champagne, didn’t you?”

  “Yes!” we both squeaked.

  Felicia frowned. “Get home safe, girls.” She walked away, heels stomping on concrete.

  I was all alone soon, waiting for my limo to drive up. Once it did, a very nice man got me inside and handed me my boots. I sat on the soft seat, lying down after ten seconds. The car lurched forward, and I almost fell onto the floor. It caused a giggle fit that even the driver seemed to enjoy.

  There were lots of other little bottles of booze in the car. I’d said no to them earlier, and I couldn’t remember why I did that. I felt so good right now, I didn’t want it to end. So I grabbed something tiny and amber, popping the cap and taking a drink. It burned my chest, but it was only warmth to me.

  When we stopped, I couldn’t believe how fast we were home. I saluted the man up front.

  “Thanksss for the ride.” I giggled. “Have a fabulous evenin’, mista.”

  When I popped the door open, he said, “Wait. Let me help you to your door.”

  “Aww,” I said as he got out. “You’re so nice, mista driver man. I hope you have lots of babies one day.”

  He got to me and smiled. “Thanks, but I already have four.”

  “Four!” I said as he took my hands and pulled me out. I had my boots with me, and I almost threw them. “That’s nice. I can’t, can’t―” I hiccupped. “I can’t be a mommy. Did you hear the interview?”

  He nodded sullenly.

  “Yeah. No one wants to make babies with me. S’okay though. I’m dead anyway.” I started laughing. So, so hard. Dead already. I was dead. A heartbeat didn’t mean anything at all.

  The driver didn’t say anything as we walked. I musta tripped on a rock or something, because I stumbled and fell to the ground. I landed on my knees and fell onto my back when I couldn’t stop giggling. My boots were on the ground, and I was on the ground, and I just couldn’t care less.

  “Miss…” The driver sighed as he held a hand out.

  Another figure came into sight, and he stepped in front of the man. “I’ll get her.”

  The driver arched an eyebrow. “Do you know her?”

  It was Wilson, and he glared at the man. “Yes, I do. I live next door.”

  With that, the driver walked away. He closed my door and went to his seat. I heard his door close before he started driving oh, so slowly.

  Wilson leaned down and looked me over. “You okay?”

  My nose winkled. “You smell like smoke,” I complained.

  He nodded. “I’m a smoker. Side effect.”

  He put his hands on my waist and got me to my feet, and I immediately had to hold onto him for support.

  “Riley,” he said ominously. “Are you wasted right now?”

  I smiled wide. “I am sloshed out of my mind.”

  He sighed. “Christ. I need to get you to bed.”

  Something about the words sparked an idea in me. If pain felt this good, I bet literal pleasure was like a drug. Oh, and I was sure Wilson knew a thing or two about pleasure.

  I stopped Wilson from walking by running my hands up his chest and resting them on his shoulders. “I missed you.”

  He breathed out. “I missed you too, Cookie, but you need to lie down.”

  “I agree.” With a smile and the tightening of my hold on him, I said, “Touch me, please.”

  His hands were on my hips, and he seemed confused. “I am touching you.”

  I shook my head, smiling bigger. “Touch me.”

  Wilson’s eyes widened a little more than I expected. Shocked that I would say such a thing. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  I smirked. “I think I do.”

  I took a step forward, pressing my body to his before I had to move back enough to touch him. My hands went to the bottom of his shirt, greedily seeking out his skin. It was soft but firm. It felt like home against my fingertips. Nothing like Master. He was soft and greasy. Nothing about his skin was appealing. Not like Wilson. I could have touched Wilson for a lifetime.

  “You feel so good.”

  He pulled his hands off of me. “You don’t want this. You wouldn’t be doing this if you were sober.”

  I shrugged. “So?”

  He laughed, but there was nothing happy about it. He sounded sad.

  I wasn’t done. I needed this. Him.

  I brought him against me again, and his hands found my hips once more. He liked it, even if he wouldn’t admit it. I had his face in my hands, and then my mouth was on his earlobe. I tasted him, and it was perfect. My teeth teased his skin just before my tongue did. He made a sound. A good sound. And it made me want to go on.

  I tugged at him as my hands went back to his chest. I dragged my lips down his earlobe, maybe getting more out of it than he did. When I put my lips a little higher up, I whispered, “I love how you taste.”

  He groaned. “Please don’t do this to me, baby.”

  I smiled again, looking down as my hand went to the front of his jeans. He was hard, so I knew he liked what I was doing. I wasn’t sure why he wouldn’t admit it. I looked up at him again and I kept rubbing him. “Take me to bed.”

  With a sigh, he pulled my hand away, catching my wrist a little too hard. But I reveled in the pain. “I’m not doing this with you,” he said, almost in a growl.

  “Please. I need to feel something that isn’t this.” I hissed the word, voice cracking. “I need something to feel good.”

  With a look of pain, Wilson pulled me against him, holding onto me. He was quiet, and I might have needed that. Then he picked me up, cradling me in his arms as he walked me into my house.

  My parents were both on the couch, tense as can be. Then jumped up to their feet, shouting and asking what happened. They must have been waiting up for me, thinking there was a chance I wasn’t coming home. It was late, and they had to have been worrying for hours.

  Wilson was calm, and I was falling asleep against him. “She’s fine,” he said. “Those dicks at the news place must have given her too much to drink.”

  “She’s drunk!” my father yelled, moving to us. “Give her to me.”

  Wilson stepped back. “I have her.”

  “Wilson,” Dad warned.

  “Please.” He was still calm. “Please let me put her to bed.”

  I watched my father go from furious to calm with one touch from my mother. Her hand went to his arm, and she looked up at him. He sighed and rubbed his hands down his face.

  “You better take care of my girl, Wilson.”

  With a nod, we went upstairs. I barely noticed Wilson having to step over Abraham to do it. Everything was starting to spin, and my eyes wouldn’t stick on anything. It was all just sounds when he opened my door and brought me into my bedroom. It was dark, only being lit by moonlight from my window. Wilson closed the door before he laid me in my bed.

  I sat up and had to let the room come back into focus. “Wait!” I said, shoving Wilson aside so I could get up. I stumbled to my dresser and held onto it for balance. “I can’t sleep in this.”

  I looked down at the dress. They let me keep it, along with my bat necklace. I ripped the thing off and dropped it onto my dresser, then my phone joined it.

  “Um, Riley…”

  I ignored him as I unzipped my dress and let it fall to the floor in a pool around me.

  “Whoa,” Wilson said.

  When I turned, his eyes were wide and on the ceiling.

  “Why do you hate me, God?” he said.

  I laughed until I snorted, and then I went to get my bra off.

  “Riley!” He was more frantic this time. His hand covered his eyes as my bra joined the dress on the floor. “You can’t just do that.”

  “Why?” I slurred with irritation. “Everyone else has already seen me naked. Beaten… crying,”

  I turned back around, grabbing a nightie from my dresser. It was gray, and it went to my knees.

  Wilson looked at me
again when I got into bed. He pulled the blankets over me. “Fuck absolutely everyone’s opinion of you, Riley. Seeing you when you’re down doesn’t give anyone power over you. Go to sleep, and you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  He was leaving when I grabbed his hand. “Can I ask you something?”

  Wilson sat beside me, holding my hand. “Sure. If you promise not to attack me again.”

  “If we had…” I said it in a way he would understand. “Would you have stayed with me after?”

  The expression in his eyes darkened with grief. “Of course I would have. If this were a different life, I wouldn’t ever leave your side, Riley. And I can tell you this because I know you won’t remember.” He brushed hair out of my face. “I know this life has been nothing but pain for you, but I want you to know, right now, that the little bit of time you’ve given me has meant a lot to me.”

  I smiled then. “Did you like when I touched you?”

  He laughed. “Enough to secure my place in hell.”

  “Save me a seat.”

  He left a kiss on my forehead, lingering until calm soaked through me. I received a long and sorrowful look before Wilson left me.

  

  Something shoved my shoulders hard, and I opened my eyes. Light made me groan as pain throbbed in my head. I pressed my palms into my eyes.

  “What the heck…”

  It was my mother’s angry voice. “Get your ass up.”

  I stared at her, sitting up. “Why?”

  She had a mug in her hands. “Because you’re in trouble.”

  I would have said something if a wave of sickness hadn’t swept through me. Like I was on fire, I ran out of my room and barely made it to the bathroom before I emptied my body of vomit into the toilet. My head pounded, and my muscles ached by the time it was over. I hung limply against the toilet after I flushed.

  Mom stood in the doorway with an arched brow. “Feel better, dummy?”

  I groaned.

  “Yeah… Thought so.” She sat beside me and handed me the mug. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”

  I did as she said, and I almost threw up again. “What is this?”

  “Black coffee.” She grinned. “Awful, right?”

  I nodded and drank more.

  “Good.”

  Feeling as miserable as I was, I still smiled as I put the mug on the floor and leaned against the cool tub.

  Mom frowned. “What are you smiling at?”

  “This,” I said. “You. You’re treating me like a stupid teenager that went out and got drunk.”

  Her eyebrow went back up. “You are a stupid teenager who went out and got drunk.”

  “Yeah, I am. But you’re treating me like that’s all I am. Not a kid, or a girl who’s been traumatized. I’m just your stupid daughter right now.”

  “Well, there’s that. Drink.” She pointed to the mug, and I obeyed. She sighed. “Now, I’m not going to lie. I’ve done my fair share of stupid things in my life. Hell, I was wasted when I met your dad.”

  “Huh?” I said against my mug.

  She waved it off. “A story for another day. The point is that I get that sometimes you need to just go off. But what I don’t understand is how you can tell thousands of strangers all of those horrible things that happened to you, but you couldn’t tell your parents.”

  I brushed damp hair out of my face. “You’re answering your own question right now. Those strangers won’t look at me the way you do. With all of that guilt, like they did themselves.”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t watch?”

  I shrugged. “I hoped that you wouldn’t.”

  “You should have known better.” She tucked her knees up to her chest and refused to look at me, but her smile softened. “He had you call him ‘Master?’”

  I winced. “Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

  When my mother looked back to me, she was already crying. “I want you to tell me the truth, and don’t try and spare me, because I don’t want that. Did you girls lie when you said he didn’t…”

  I shook my head. “We didn’t lie. Not about anything. He didn’t do that to us.”

  It was the bitterest comfort, but I saw the weight leave her shoulders.

  “All that other stuff…” She bit her lip. “You’re so brave. All of you girls. I can’t imagine living through that.”

  I held my hands up, facing my wrists to her. “I tried not to.”

  She blinked, and tears poured. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I haven’t seen your father cry in almost seven and a half years, but he crumbled when you talked about that last night. Will you tell me what happened?”

  I touched the long scar on my left wrist. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.” No thickness from tears. No doubt. Just a yes.

  I told her the story. How a nail was to be our deliverance. And how we dug it into each of our wrists and bled together, holding hands and making sure every last thing we said was an “I love you.” How bitter a loss it was when we woke up with bandages on.

  She was soundlessly crying by the time it was over. “Are you going to try again?”

  I didn’t lie. “I don’t know. I’d like to try and be alive before I die.”

  Mom wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “God, I can’t believe this happened to you. You can’t ever imagine that kind of thing when you’re holding your baby. You look at them, and you want nothing but peace and an easy life. You know it won’t work out like that, but I never thought something like this would happen to you.”

  “You’re tellin’ me.” I asked because I had to. “You got an honest answer. Now, can I?”

  She nodded, but I saw the fear.

  “You didn’t know where I was for seven years. Did you ever wish you’d get the call saying they found my body?”

  I think she knew I was going to ask, because she didn’t flinch. “Never for a second did I want you dead. And for the most part, that little sliver of hope was better than knowing for sure that you were really dead. But those other times… it almost killed me. Not knowing. I can’t explain it to you. When I got the call the night you got out… I was so sure that man was going to tell me you were dead.” She choked on a sob before she finished. “And everything felt different. It was peaceful, but it was profoundly miserable. Then the man said that you were safe and shoving donuts into your face. And I could see colors again. I don’t really know if that answers your question.”

  I couldn’t say anything, so I just nodded. It answered everything, and I didn’t begrudge her the need to have closure. How could I judge when I tried to check out so many times?

  Mom moved beside me. She cradled my wounded hand. “What happened here?”

  “Broken glass,” I said. “I fell, and my glass shattered.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “Not really. Doesn’t even hurt.” Sadly.

  When it was quiet, I heard the phone in the distance. It rang out, and only three seconds passed before it started up again. I looked to my mother for an answer.

  She looked put out. “A lot of people are dying for a chance to talk to the hero.”

  I flinched at the word. “Hero. They think I’m a hero for killing someone. It’s disgusting.”

  Her arm went around me. “I don’t think they see it that way. They see you as brave, and they see that without you, those girls might not be alive right now.”

  I was grateful for that fact. My sisters meant more to me than what I thought of myself. This was a sacrifice I could make for them. Such a small thing in the end.

  “Have you gotten a lot of calls?” I asked.

  She answered by laughing. “Well, you’ll probably be hearing that phone until your dad rips it off of the wall. He had a hard time getting out of the driveway this morning. News vans looking to talk to us.”

  I groaned. “Oh, no.”

  “Yup. Are you going to call Wilson today?”

  My eyebrows knit. “Why would I do that?”

  �
��Um, because he’s the one who dragged your ass inside while you were wasted. He tucked you in.”

  Oh, God. I didn’t remember that at all.

  Mom patted my shoulder. “How about you head into your room while I make you something to eat? Trust me, you’ll want it.”

  I listened to what she said, moving to my bedroom and crawling into bed.

  I chose not to close the blinds or to try and ease the hurt in my head. Not when it felt so good to hurt. I put my earbuds in and turned up the music on my phone until there was nothing but a profound pounding in my head. It was peaceful, being in pain. I could hurt somewhere else for once.

  It was a random line in a song, but with it came a rush of fuzzy memories. My hands on Wilson. The taste of him on my tongue. I told him how much I liked it. Oh, no… oh, I did so many things… He turned me down flat, which was probably a good thing. I could remember wanting to feel something other than pain. He wouldn’t do it, and I wished I knew why just as much as I was grateful for not knowing. I didn’t need to hear him say I repulsed him.

  My head hit the pillow, and I stared at the ceiling. There was no way out of this one. He’d been stone cold sober, and I’m sure he remembered more than I did. What I could remember was his audible reaction when my mouth was on him. It made me think he might have liked it more than I did.

  I didn’t know where it came from, and I can’t figure out why I wanted him over anyone else. He was there, but I knew it was more than that. I liked the feel of him, and I liked how it had felt when he was touching me.

  I think that my source of danger, my escape from this, was becoming more than I intended.

  Wilson

  ’m stupid. And I hate these flowers. It was a dumb idea, and I deserved to be punched for something as lame as this. Daisies. Daisies are stupid. I should have gotten roses or something. How do you say you’re sorry for letting someone drunkenly feel you up? Christ, thinking about her touching me was sending blood to inappropriate places. Her soft mouth holding my earlobe. Being between her teeth. All right, I had to stop now. I would get myself in trouble.

  It was all my fault. I had done what I did on Halloween, and it might have put ideas in her head. I shouldn’t have done it, but it felt amazing. Forbidden fruit, I guess. Not being allowed to have her made me want her all the more. I’d had more than my fair share of dreams starring her. The most disturbing part was that we weren’t even having sex in all of them. Most of them were just her and I hanging out. I relived the night I fed her candy and we played games together. I think it was my brain telling me that I had to keep her at arm’s length. We could be friends. If she would have me.