by Lane Hart
“Because…because I don’t remember much of what happened before I woke up on the baseball field,” she answers. “And even if I did…who would believe me?”
“I believe you,” I tell her adamantly, placing a soft kiss on her lips before Cheryl clears her throat in warning, confirming my suspicions that she knows about us.
Lowering my hand from her face, I take a step back from Riley just before Sara’s voice rings out from the living room, telling the girls she’s ready to go.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Riley.
“We should help you clean up the table,” she says, changing the topic as she goes into motions, stacking up all the dishes.
“It’s fine. I can get them,” I tell her as I watch her, my heart breaking while, at the same time, I’m so angry, I want to find the asshole who hurt her and make him bleed.
Riley doesn’t listen to me, so Cheryl and I both silently help her clean up.
She may have ended the conversation, but I’m not fooled. Even if she doesn’t want to talk about it, or tell Sara the truth about the little shithead, the memories are still there, likely haunting her every minute of the day.
Is that the reason she wasn’t sleeping much those first few nights when she got here?
God, I had no idea Riley was dealing with something this damn awful. And I can’t believe how strong and resilient she is despite whatever nightmares she experienced. I wish I could punch myself in the face for calling her a slut.
Once we’ve dumped all the plates and silverware into the sink, I tell them, “You girls go on and have fun tonight. I’ll see you later.”
“Thanks for dinner,” Riley says, and then she’s out the door with the others.
I’m left behind feeling like a sailboat in the middle of the choppy ocean, trying to survive the hurricane raging on around me.
How could anyone hurt someone so sweet and beautiful like Riley? And even worse, the bastard correctly assumed that she wouldn’t turn him in.
What if he had done that to my daughter and gotten away with it because Sara was too scared to tell anyone?
Riley may not want to go to the police but the motherfucker still deserves to be punished, or he’ll just do it again and again.
And if I have to stay here in this house another second, I’m pretty sure I’ll drown in my rage.
…
Riley
It’s almost midnight before Cheryl and I return back to the beach house. Sara and Allison insisted they wanted to stay with the guys, so we left them behind. They’re big girls who will stick together and have their phones if they need us.
“You gonna sneak up to your man’s room?” Cheryl asks when we step into the quiet, still house.
“Yeah, I can’t wait up for them to come home tonight because they may not even come back here,” I reply.
“Have fun and see you in the morning,” she says, heading for her bedroom while I veer off toward the stairs.
At the top of the landing, I find Brody’s bedroom door wide open. Inside is so dark that I have to flip on the switch to even find my way around. And when I hit it, I find his bed empty and unmade.
Where the hell is he?
I go over and look out on the balcony, jog down the stairs in search of him, and finally check the garage. His SUV is gone, so he obviously went out, but where the heck would he go this late at night?
Could something be wrong? What if he had an accident?
Then I start to wonder if maybe he’s staying away tonight on purpose. After the shit Cheryl blabbed to him about me earlier, it’s very possible that he’s decided he doesn’t want to be with me. And I can’t say I blame him.
What man would want a woman who’s recently been used and discarded by a group of baseball players?
Back in the guest bedroom that I haven’t slept in much this week, I change into my pajamas and then lay in bed, tossing and turning, listening out for when Brody comes home.
Before I finally drift off to sleep around four a.m., neither he or the other girls have returned.
Chapter Fourteen
Riley
I wake up around nine a.m. to the sound of voices laughing and talking, so I give up on sleep even though I’m still tired, and join them in the kitchen, hoping to see if Brody is back.
The kitchen island is full of plates of food. Piles of flaky biscuits, fluffy scrambled eggs, link sausages, a variety of sliced fruit, and a pitcher of orange juice.
I fix myself a plate and join Cheryl, Allison, and Sara in the dining room, where they’re finishing up their breakfast.
“Who cooked?” I ask as I take a seat.
“My dad, of course,” Sara replies with a grin. “Cheryl just woke up, and Allison and I just got home.”
“Oh,” I mutter as I spear my sausage and take a bite. So Brody is back? Where the hell was he last night?
I’m glad to know he finally returned home, but I’m still hurt that he skipped out on me last night. There’s only three nights left before we have to go home, and I can’t help but wonder if I’ll be spending any of those with him or if he’s had enough of me now that he knows what happened.
I eat a few bites of my breakfast and listen without commenting as Sara and Allison talk to Cheryl about their exciting night, and how the guys told them that they want to see them again back at home. It’s on the tip of my tongue to blurt out how they shouldn’t get their hopes up, just like I’ve done. Those boys probably have no intention of calling Sara or Allison again or coming to see them. All men are the same.
Or so I thought.
An hour later, we’re sunbathing out on the beach – with still no sign of Brody, who must be sleeping in – when Cheryl suddenly bursts out laughing. The three of us all turn to look at her and find out the joke.
Holding up her cell phone with a wide smile on her face, she says, “You’ve got to see this!”
Allison jumps up from her chair and goes over to grab Cheryl’s phone from her hand.
“Oh, my God!” the redhead exclaims. “Sara, you better be glad Dalton didn’t ask you out.” She shoves the phone’s screen in Sara’s face. After a second, Sara’s jaw drops and then she lifts her sunglasses to the top of her head.
“Oh. My. God,” Sara echoes. “And wow, he does have a teeny weeny.”
“Let Riley see,” Cheryl instructs. Sara passes the phone back to her so Cheryl can hand it to me. “Vigilante justice,” she says as I take the phone to see what all the fuss is about. If it has to do with Dalton, I would rather not see…
“Holy shit!” I exclaim when my eyes eventually land on the photo.
“If you ask me, it looks like a professional photographer took that picture. Don’t you think?” Cheryl asks.
It takes several long moments before her words seep in because I’m too busy taking in every aspect of the image. There sits Dalton Michaels, baseball god, completely naked, on the front steps of the University with the words, “I’m a date rapist with a tiny dick” written in large letters over his chest and stomach in bold, black, permanent marker. Under those words is, in fact, his small pecker for the whole world to see.
“Wow,” I say in awe, while shaking my head. “If I knew who did this to him, I would kiss him or her–”
My words trail off as Cheryl’s comment begins to sink in. It is a well-taken photo…and Brody was gone all night…
“Son of a bitch!” I shout, before I jump up out of my lounger and start into the house.
“Riley!” Cheryl calls out, bringing my bare feet to a stop when I realize I still have her phone in my hand. Turning around, I jog over and give it back to her.
“Thanks. I want to go…go in and see it on my own phone,” I hedge in front of Sara and Allison.
“Right, well, it’s all over Facebook,” she informs me with a smile. “Dalton posted the picture on his own page very early this morning, and from there it’s gone viral. Shared over a thousand times already.”
“Looks like he’s getting what
he deserves,” I reply with a grin.
“Yeah, I’m glad someone decided to make him pay.”
“Me too,” I agree. “You all should go share this with the guys down the beach. I bet they would get a laugh out of it,” I suggest, wanting them to stay out of the house for a while.
“Good idea!” Allison agrees. “Now we have a reason to pop over and see them today,” she says, getting to her feet. Even Sara is in too good of a mood to argue.
“I’ll catch up with you later,” I tell them.
“Take your time,” Sara sasses.
“Oh, I will,” I assure her as I head inside to find Brody.
…
Brody
“Mmm,” I moan happily when a hand strokes over my bare stomach and starts easing into my boxer briefs, the only thing that I’m sleeping in this morning. My cock gives a twitch of keen interest at the soft, sensual touch.
“Morning,” Riley whispers into my ear, chin on my shoulder, and I wake up enough to realize that her body is currently pressed against my backside.
“Morning,” I reply groggily, covering her hand with mine and giving it a squeeze of encouragement rather than removing it.
“Where were you last night?” she asks.
“Had some work to catch up on at the studio,” I mutter. Her hand suddenly begins to retreat from my underwear, which makes my eyes fly open. “Don’t stop.”
“If you want me to keep going, then tell me the truth,” she says, smoothing her fingertips up and over the lines separating my abdominal muscles.
“I had some work…out of town,” I say honestly, and am rewarded with her small hand slipping underneath my elastic waistband again.
“How did you find him?” she asks while fisting my cock and stroking it from root to tip. She’s already seen the photo and figured it out. That didn’t take long. “Tell me everything and I’ll keep doing this.”
Needing her hand on my cock more than oxygen in my lungs at the moment, I tell her.
“You said his name…that he was a baseball player. Finding him on Facebook was easy and his profile was public.”
“And?” she asks, brushing her thumb back and forth over the head of my cock to spread the leaking moisture around.
“I was almost to Greensboro, when he stupidly checked in at a bar. When I got there, he was about to leave with a girl.”
“Then what happened?”
“I knocked him out with one punch to his jaw, told the girl to go back inside and call a cab. He had the Rohypnol in his pockets with his cell phone. There were messages to people, saying he was on his way with the girl to the field…”
Riley’s hand stills with the understanding that another girl almost ended up like her. And I should be given an award of self-restraint for not killing him right then and there with my bare hands.
“Go on,” she eventually urges.
“After I loaded him in my car, I stuffed the other four pills he had on him into his mouth. While he was out of it, I stripped him, posed him, and took the photo with his phone.”
“You posted it online as him?” Riley asks.
“Yeah, and I changed his account password so that he wouldn’t be able to take it down,” I reply with a grin as she resumes stroking my dick.
“That’s all it took, huh? Sounds like it was almost too easy for you to fuck him over,” she says with a kiss to my ear.
“There’s one other thing,” I add, hesitant about what she’ll think about this part.
“Oh?” Her hand stills again and I really want it to keep going. After what I tell her, she may think I went too far and stop touching me. “Tell me, Brody,” she demands.
“While he was…sleeping, I went to one of the adult stores that’s open late and bought a…toy for him, one he’ll remember every time he sits down for a few days…”
Riley gasps next to my ear and I wait for her reaction.
“You didn’t?” she mutters before she giggles.
“Oh, I did. Bought the biggest dildo for him that they had in the store. It only seemed fair…”
“You’re a freaking evil genius and I love it,” Riley says before she rolls me over and climbs on top of me.
When she kisses me hard and grinds down on me, I know the time for talking is coming to an end, and that she’s not angry at me for what I did. In fact, I’m pretty sure she approves.
I didn’t want or need her approval. The asshole deserved everything I did to him and more for hurting her, and who knows how many other girls. Someone had to punish him and make him feel the same humiliation as he made Riley feel.
“Take my clothes off,” Riley demands, so I quickly remove her skimpy swimsuit with the pull of a few strings, then shove my boxer briefs down my legs and off.
When Riley sits back, her long dark waves trailing over her perfect tits, she looks down at me as she starts to guide my cock inside of her. “I can’t believe you did that for me.”
“I would do anything for you,” I tell her before I even consider the words. They’re true, I realize after I say them. “I wanted to kill him.”
“No,” she gasps, sinking even further on my cock. “Public humiliation…will make him suffer…even longer.”
“Fuck, I missed you last night,” I tell her when she starts riding my cock slowly, as I reach for two handfuls of her bouncing breasts.
“I missed you too,” she says, big blue eyes locked with mine.
“I’ll make it up to you tonight, sweetheart,” I promise her.
“You already have,” she says.
Falling forward, Riley kisses me while our bodies become slick and melded as one, neither of us able to get close enough to the other.
Chapter Fifteen
Riley
Brody is…freaking amazing.
By the end of our week, Sara is no longer running from him every time he comes around. She’s even speaking to him occasionally, although she continues to glare at me. And while I’m happy that he and his daughter are getting along better, their time together means that there’s less and less for Brody and me.
Each and every night after Brody sought his own unique and perfect justice for me, I’ve snuck up to his room as early as possible and stayed until sunrise, when he wakes me up to send me on my way. During those few hours, we always have sex at least once, but usually it’s more than that. And it’s still just as hot.
Sometimes Brody fucks me like an animal while other times he takes his time and “makes love to me” as he refers to it. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the whole slow and sweet style, but it’s been growing on me.
Unfortunately, our time together is coming to an end.
Tonight’s my last night here, so after one of our rolling, frantic, “need you now” romps, both of us are flat on our backs, staring up at the ceiling while the sweat on our skin dries and we try to remember how to breathe again.
“Fucking…amazing,” Brody says, rolling his head to the side to look at me. “You’re gonna give this old man a heart attack one of these times.”
“You’re in better shape than me, old man,” I tell him sincerely with a satisfied smile before I realize that was likely the last time we’ll be together.
“I hate that the week is ending,” Brody says, addressing the elephant in the room with us, one currently squeezing my throat and causing my eyes to burn.
“Me too,” I agree, because this has been the absolute best week of my entire life.
“Can’t you talk the girls into staying another week? A few more days?” he asks, rolling to his side to reach over and run his fingertips down my stomach.
“I wish, but Sara has told us to all have our shit ready by ten a.m. tomorrow, so convincing her to change her mind is very doubtful.”
“Dammit,” he grumbles.
This is the moment where I want him to ask me to stay, or to at least come back and see him. Something, anything!
But those words never come. Just like I knew they wouldn’t.
>
Call it what you want, but despite how sweet and tender the nights have been, it doesn’t change the fact that we were just fucking. Nothing more.
Why did I even get my hopes up, when I knew from day one how this would end?
When my vision goes blurry, I know I need to hurry up and bail. With a deep breath, I roll over and get to my feet to start putting my pajamas back on.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“I better, um, get back downstairs,” I say, gathering my clothes from the floor.
“Riley…” he starts, but I don’t need him to give me any excuses.
“It’s okay, Brody,” I tell him, even if it’s not. Keeping my back to him because it’s too hard to look at his face, I put on my shorts. “We had one hot week and it was fun, but now it’s over.”
“I don’t want this to end,” he says, the proverbial “but” hanging thick in the air. “It’s just, you know I can’t do anything to drive Sara away when we’re finally making progress. And I’m certain she wouldn’t approve of this…”
“No, she wouldn’t,” I agree, slipping my top back over my head and pulling my arms through.
Sara hates me so much that she probably still thinks I’m a huge slut, even after Brody called out Dalton with the truth. Even if Brody wanted to be with me, she would flip out and tell him all the stories. He may say that my past doesn’t matter to him but once she starts laying it all out, he’ll change his mind. She’ll convince him that I’m a waste of his time. And I probably am.
“See you in the morning,” I say over my shoulder as I head for the door.
“Riley, wait,” Brody calls out, but I don’t stop for him.
I jog down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible, and then seal myself into my dark room. Tears are already falling down my cheeks before I feel around and find the bed, to crawl underneath the sheets. When a stupid sob escapes from my throat, I want to kick myself. God, I sound like a silly little girl, crying over the boy who broke her heart.
I’m twenty-two years old, just graduated college, and have my whole life before me. It may not look all that great now while my heart crumbles to ashes in my chest, but I’ll get over it. I always do.