by West, Sinden
Aaron took a step toward me, trapping my chin in his hand and wiping a tear away with the other. “Hey, you have me.” A soft kiss was pressed onto my lips. “And you’re not a loser.”
“Because I’m with you?” I tried to tease, although my heart wasn’t really in it.
“In spite of being with me.” He kissed me again, this time it was deeper and I opened my lips to invite in his tongue. My arms came up around him, desperate to hold onto him even though nothing about this was right. I needed him though, I needed someone and he was the best that was on offer. My hands roamed down to grip his ass, pulling him close to grind against me as I rubbed myself desperately against the denim of his jeans. The moment the kiss broke I was taking his hand and pulling him with me toward the table while I yanked my panties down with my free hand and still searched for his mouth with mine.
“I want you here,” I panted between kisses. “Now.” His lips dropped down to my neck, to suck at my skin as he unfastened his jeans. It wasn’t long before his fingers searched in me, making sure that I was wet, before being replaced by his hard cock. He grunted as he thrust in and I gasped at the feeling of being so full. I felt my lips turn upward as he filled me. This was familiar, this was what I knew. It removed the sadness and filled it with fact. My ‘boyfriend’ or whatever he was, was screwing me when I didn’t know which way was up. But I could pretend. I could pretend that he cared about me the way these feelings inside me appeared to care about him.
I live in a pretty house, I have a pretty man, and his pretty money
The mantra played through my mind, over and over, as he thrust into me and I let my nails dig into his back through his t-shirt as my body curved into him. It was easy to forget about what I didn’t know this way. I didn’t cum, but I still felt as if he owned my body, taking what he wanted while I clung to him because there was nothing else.
He stayed inside me for a few minutes, his head resting against my shoulder as he sucked in breaths, before he eased from me gently. A quick kiss was delivered to my lips before he turned away, pulling up his pants. I slid from the table, pulling my panties up and adjusting my skirt. When I was ready, he took my hand and led me to the door. I caught sight of myself in a mirror as we left, my cheeks were flushed and my hair mussed. This was the image of any normal, sex-driven girl, except I wasn’t normal, that was just a mask and I frowned at her before I was tugged along behind Aaron.
He parked his car outside a street that was filled with high-end boutiques.
“Is this where I normally shop?” I asked. I couldn’t ever imagine having the money to belong on a street like this.
“No.” He got out of the car and I followed suit, eyeing up a store front window dressed with stick-thin mannequins wearing sheer outfits. “This way.” He guided me to another store. This one was smaller, with the name Azalea slashed across the front in deep burgundy. Inside was an array of bold outfits and I felt pale and boring in comparison as I salivated to cover my skin with the color that was on display.
“Hello,” beamed the saleswoman, white teeth showing and dollar signs in her eyes. Aaron nodded in her direction but before he could speak, an older woman came out from the back.
“Aaron. How are you? This is a surprise.” She wrapped her arms around him, embracing him tightly. In her stiletto heels, she was nearly as tall as him. “I’ll take care of him, Lisa,” she said to the saleswoman, who pouted briefly before disappearing to the rear of the store. She was tall anyway, even without the heels. Her hair was piled on top of her head in an elegant and complicated do. It was a vibrant red hue that went well with her pale skin. Her mouth was painted to match and I found myself wondering how long it had taken her to find a color that matched her hair perfectly. When she stepped back from the embrace, she lightly rested her hands on his arms as if scared to let him go while her eyes surveyed him. He grinned down at her with an openness that I didn’t think he had ever really displayed with me.
“You remember Rachel?” Aaron asked her, making no move to shrug her touch away. As if just noticing me, she turned her head to include me in her gaze.
“Rachel, of course. I was so sorry to hear about your dreadful accident.” She gave me a smile that should have been sincere, but there was no warmth in her eyes. I didn’t trust her.
“This is Azalea. She owns this store,’ Aaron explained to me.
Great. She was beautiful and successful. She’d be a bitch.
Finally, she released him, clasping her hands together in front of her as if she didn’t know what to do when she wasn’t touching him. I just gave her a nod, too tired to feign friendliness.
“So, what can I do for you today?” she asked, her face still stretched into a wide smile.
“Rachel wants some new clothes. Could you help her out?” Again he gave her a charming grin. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to be so nice to her because this was her fucking job after all. For the first time, she turned fully to look at me. Something made me want to take a step back in the face of her haughty elegance. In her presence, I felt childish and immature. No doubt, she would find me wanting.
“Of course. I’d be happy to help.” She escorted us to the changing rooms that were, like at the lingerie shop, private. Aaron settled in a chair, stretching out his long legs as champagne was brought to him. Azalea returned a short while later, her arms filled with garments and she proceeded to show them to me. I wasn’t really paying attention though, I was more interested in the way that Aaron was watching her as she held up each dress against her own body and I couldn’t help the scowl that came over me.
“Are there any that you want to try on, Rachel?” Azalea asked.
I brought my eyes back to her. “Paige.”
She arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. “Excuse me?”
“My name’s Paige,” I said harshly. In the corner of my eye, I saw Aaron frown.
“Oh, okay, Paige,” Azalea continued, her forehead creasing. “I think this would look great on you.” She held out the outfit to me with her arms stretched out straight as if she didn’t want to get too close to me.
I snatched it from her and marched into the changing room, the wooden door banging behind me.
“She’s had a head injury,” I heard Aaron explain. “It makes her act strange sometimes. I’m sorry about her behavior.”
I sucked in a painful breath, pissed that he was speaking about me as if I were a child when he’d been screwing me less than an hour ago. I began to angrily pull off my clothes, letting them fall to the floor.
“It’s not a problem. Can I get you more champagne?” she cooed. He must have said yes, because I heard the click clack of her heels on the tiled floor. Once that sound faded away, I opened the door, clad in only my bra and panties. His forehead crinkled when he saw me.
“What are you doing? Try on some clothes.”
I walked over to him. “I don’t want to try on clothes,” I said softly. “I want to fuck again.” My lips curved up in a smile as I reached for the fly of his jeans, but my hand was pushed away and I looked up at him in shock. “What the hell are you doing?” I spat out.
“Not here. What’s wrong with you?” he said in a low voice.
“What’s wrong with you?” My hands formed into fists at my sides. “It wasn’t wrong when you screwed me at the lingerie store? It wasn’t wrong when you fucked me on the table a while ago.” I was trembling, my voice cracking with each word even though I wasn’t sure why I was feeling like this. “It wasn’t wrong the way that you’ve been screwing me this whole time and I’m just a kid, I’m fifteen, and you’re an adult. A fucking adult.”
“You’re not fifteen, you’re nineteen,” he said quietly like he was the calm in the storm of everything that was surging through me.
His words stopped me, but for just a second as I mentally repeated them through my head. “No. I’m a child, and you are every piece of shit who’s ever taken me to his bed.” This last word was a sob, a pathetic wail
that resonated within me. I took a hand that was already bunched into a fist and lunged it toward his face. I struck that perfectly chiseled cheekbone and pain radiated through my knuckles, but it didn’t stop me. I drew my fist back again and aimed for his face as I was blinded by tears. I hit something, and there was more pain, then I hit him again and again as I screamed.
“Oh my god!” A glass crashed and cold liquid reached my feet. “What should I do? Aaron?”
Azalea’s voice snapped me out of my violence. Finally, I could see again. Aaron’s face was bloody — his lips, his nose, his cheek. I looked down at my hand, blood stained my knuckles, obscene against my frail hand. I screwed up my face in horror, lifting my hands up to hold my head that felt like it was about to burst with the amount of blood thumping away in my brain.
“I—” My voice started to croak out, but I didn’t know what to say so I just stopped. I stepped back away from where Aaron was just sitting, staring at me. Something sharp pierced my foot but I kept going, not even acknowledging the pain. “I have to go,” I whispered, spinning on the broken glass and lurching toward the doors in a stumbling and clumsy bid for escape. I made it out of the changing area, through the store with all its color displayed vividly on racks, while my only color was blood. The younger saleswoman gasped and stepped out of my way as I ran past her, pushing the glass doors open and making it out onto the street.
Someone gave a slight scream at the sight of me, and only then did I register that not only was I bloodied, but I was only dressed in underwear. I stopped short in the middle of the street, not knowing where to go.
A heavy leather jacket was thrown over my shoulders and Aaron’s arms wrapped around me as he bundled me toward his car. Limp as a rag doll, I made no struggle as he placed me in the passenger seat and pulled the seatbelt across me as I huddled there.
“It’ll be okay, Rachel,” he muttered as he reversed out of the parking space at speed, someone honked their horn at him but he ignored it. I dared to look at him through my still teary eyes. He looked scary with the blood and I wrapped my arms around myself as I inched closer to the door. I wanted to put space between me and him and not have to face what I was capable of. The drive seemed to take forever, frustratingly held up as we waited for the gates to open and then for the garage door. He drove in and immediately closed it behind us, shutting out the sunlight and leaving us in only the dim light of the single bulb in the garage. He turned off the engine and sat there with his hands gripping the leather of the steering wheel as if thinking. Then he exited the car and rounded it, opening my door and I flinched as he did so. Before I could go anywhere, he leaned down and scooped me up effortlessly in his arms to carry me inside. That weird feeling of comfort came over me again as I was pressed against his hard chest and cradled in his arms. This contrasted with the rage that had made me attack him a short while before. My own hands gently touched his t-shirt, curving in to the material like I wanted to claw at him, although if that was to hurt him more or be closer, I wasn’t sure.
He took us into the downstairs bathroom, planting me down onto the cold vanity before leaving and returning a moment later with a First Aid kit. He saw to my hand first, bending it to make sure that it wasn’t broken. Then, he cleaned away the blood and bandaged my knuckles. Next, he pulled up a stool to sit in front of where my feet dangled. He gently took one and placed it on his lap before using tweezers to search and extract the glass that I had trodden on. I sat there, as docile as a doll while he concentrated on his task.
“Do you hate me for what I did to your face?” I asked finally.
He didn’t look up as he continued inspecting my foot. “I’m too pretty anyway, it makes it hard for people to take me seriously.”
I stared at him open mouthed, not sure if he were joking or not. When he looked up at me, he had a smirk on his face that told me it were the former. I barked out a laugh, his humor surprising.
“Stay still,” he admonished. “I still need to get the glass out.”
“You must think I’m a freak.”
His eyes were on my foot again, peering at it with intensity.
“I don’t think that you’re a freak, Rachel.”
“The things I said were—”
“True.” He extracted a long, thin piece of glass, holding it carefully trapped within the prongs of the tweezers as he inspected it. The light glinted against it. “They were true. There’s nothing more to say.” He let the glass drop into the basin before returning to examine my foot for any more intrusions. Satisfied that there were no more shards, he took an antiseptic wipe from the First Aid kit and rubbed it against the sole of my foot and then bandaged it like an expert. “All done.”
He stood, taking me by surprise when he held my jaw in a loose grip and kissed me. I imagined his blood smearing on me, and it didn’t gross me out. When his lips had slowly pulled away from mine, I looked him in the eye. “Am I normal? Am I a normal person? Am I just being weird because of my head or…”
He held my gaze, and then looked away for an instant before meeting my eyes again. “I used to think that it was her that broke you; that it was the things she did that fucked you up. But you’re…fun. You like to laugh. You’re soft and sweet. It wasn’t her, it wasn’t him, it was me that broke you and turned you into what you are.”
I looked at him with so many questions running through my head. The ever persistent fog in my screwed up brain stayed heavy and dense, providing no answers. “What does that even mean?”
“It means…” He paused, then let his face break into a smile. “I’m tired and hungry. Let’s just get some food and relax. Watch a movie or something.”
“Okay.” He helped me down before washing his own face. His eye was beginning to swell and I cringed at the fact that I had actually done that.
“I’ll get some ice for your eye, and I should really get dressed.” I winced at the memory of running out onto the street clad only in underwear.
“Don’t.” He examined himself in the mirror. “Don’t get dressed I mean. I like seeing you half naked.”
I paused halfway through the door. “Are you screwing that Azalea woman?”
He didn’t bother to turn toward me. “Would it matter if I was?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so continued on my way to get an ice pack. The weirdness that was in me before had faded to a numb near apathy. I was wrapping frozen peas in a towel when he came up behind me, his hands lightly resting on my hips as I felt his warm breath on my neck.
“I’m not screwing her.”
I turned to face him, offering the ice. “Here. It’s starting to look nasty.”
He pressed it against his eye. “You pack a mean punch when you want to.”
A thought occurred to me. “You said that you’d teach me how to protect myself.”
“I don’t know if that’s in my best interest.”
I gave a small smile. “But it’s in mine. Besides, you could have easily stopped me, why didn’t you? You just sat there and took it.”
It was his turn not to answer me as he grabbed his phone. “I’ll get us something to eat. What do you feel like?”
We ate Thai food as we cuddled together on the couch and watched some German art house movie that I couldn’t quite follow. I sipped on a red wine that I was supposed to like, but at first I thought it tasted like vinegar. The more I drank, however, the better it tasted and a light feeling came over me and it was almost as if I could forget about the day. I fell asleep there against him, all resentment seeping away with wine and sleep.
Chapter Ten
He taught me in the gym. I turned my back to the creepy mural with its disguised faces. It was like those eyes saw right through me and they made me shiver. They appeared to have no such effect on Aaron however. He wore only shorts and his skin was already shiny with sweat from his workout. I felt weak in comparison, my muscle pathetic compared to his.
“Attack me,” he instructed.
“Sure.”
I swung wildly, putting my whole body behind me as I aimed for his face. It took a mere second for my arm to be grabbed and twisted behind my back. That’s how it went on, time and time again until I was sweating and exhausted as I tried to follow his instructions. I wasn’t sure if I were improving at all, but I was enjoying being close to him and pressed up against his hard body half the time.
“I need a break.” I grabbed my bottle of water and gulped it down while he watched me, amused.
“We’ve barely gotten started.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re winning,” I muttered, then I directed my attention to the wall that was covered in old weapons and stepped closer to inspect them. “You really like old swords and stuff, huh?”
The sword I observed was damaged with large chips in the blade and the pommel looked like it could disintegrate at any moment.
“That’s a Viking sword. It’s worth a lot, damaged or not.”
“How do you find this kind of stuff?”
“Every so often, private collections come up for auction. I have a guy who keeps an eye on them and bids on pieces that interest me.” He stood behind me, his hands resting gently on my shoulders.
“It all looks so fragile. Shouldn’t it be in a museum or something?” I leaned back into his touch.
“Probably, but I don’t like to share my things.”
I gave a nod. “Fair enough. How did you get interested in this kind of stuff anyway?”
He cleared his throat. “I had an Uncle who used to bring me comic books about Vikings and crusading knights. I may not have liked reading but I liked the pictures.”
“Aaron?” I turned to face him, wrapping my arms around his waist and leaning my head against his chest. “What do you do? You’re so mysterious. You obviously have a lot of money.”