The first thing I think about is that he must be relatively sober. I don’t remember dad forming such a long sentence in a very long time. The second thing I think about is that I want him to just kill me. To get it over with. I’m done. This life means nothing to me anymore. I work, I take care of Gia and I repeat. This is not a life worth living and all I want is for it to end. I press my neck deeper into the blade and lean into it, and he cringes behind me, groaning, obviously exasperated with my antics.
“You’re crazy. Just like your mother.”
“My mother died,” I say to him. “Because of you. You made her that way, and then you killed her.”
“I had a bad feeling about that one from day one,” he mutters. He didn’t know her, not really. Even after all those years. What an idiot. Whatever, I still don’t care.
“Kill me,” my voice is steady, calm. “Just do it already, because I know what you’re about to ask me and I’m not doing it. The answer was, is, and will always be no. So you better just slit my throat, and if you ever loved me as a daughter, even for a second, then you’d have the mercy of cutting deep so that I die quick.”
“Ugh!” he squeezes the blade to my skin, producing blood from just above my collarbone, before removing the blade from my neck and pushing me against the wall. I slam into the red bricks and feel the familiar sting in my nose.
But I’m not going back.
I’m not doing this anymore.
God, why can’t he just kill me?
“You were a good entertainment girl,” he argues, and I turn around to face him. Still scrawny from “his sickness”, which is actually a severe addiction to crack and alcohol, still with a messy, curly mountain of grey hair and a matching grey beard, dirty skin-maybe it’s tan but maybe just dirty, he’s my father but I still never found out the truth about it-in Levi’s jeans and an ugly Christmas jumper he probably stole from someone’s clothesline.
“You mean a whore,” I retort tiredly, rubbing my eyes with the base of my palms. I sigh and shake my head. “I’m not getting back to that. You tortured and abused me. You tried to pimp me, dad, and I was only sixteen. Do you even get how wrong it is?”
“We needed the money,” he mutters, looking at me in complete shock, like he can’t understand why I’m doing this.
“No, you needed the money,” I correct, turning again to leave. “I’m trying to build something here. Please don’t ruin it. And don’t come here ever again, dad, I mean it. The Savages are dangerous. They take care of their girls. You don’t want to become a statistic in their unfortunate record.”
Just as I’m about to leave, he yanks me back by my hair and throws me against the wall again. His fingers wrap around my throat and his blade is digging to my stomach, and this time he means business. I see the manic twinkle in his eyes is back, and remember that I hate my dad sober more than I hate him when he’s high or drunk.
Because when he is high and drunk, he is annoying and unresponsive.
But when he’s sober? He’s just a sick, violent bastard.
“You’re right, Quinn, I should cut you just for being such a cold little bitch,” he sneers. I feel the blade in my stomach, how it slices through my flesh, hot and searing, and I pray he hits an important organ and just kill me already. “You’re a bitch,” he stabs into my stomach, digging deeper. I feel it. I feel the blood pouring out like a river. I squeeze my eyes shut, a faint smile adorning my lips. I don’t answer him. I need him exactly like this. Manic.
“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he spits into my face, his rotten breath directly against my nose, over and over again.
“Stop,” I hear a steel voice all of a sudden.
Oh, no.
Reluctantly, my eyes flutter open. I feel dizzy, out of focus, probably from the blood loss. But I can still make out his figure. His eyes, so blue. His hair, brown and mussed, messy like a boy’s. His beautiful body. His severe expression on that gorgeous face.
God, his face. The way he looks at me.
Carter.
“Pull the blade out,” Carter instructs coldly, without an ounce of emotion in his voice, “Slowly, or better yet, let me do it, but don’t make any sudden moves.”
I’m so ashamed I shut my eyes again. Who can blame me? My dad is stabbing me in an alleyway because I don’t want to be his whore, because he can’t pimp me to his drug-dealing friends. Hell, no one is supposed to know my story. Why can’t I just die already?
“You her boyfriend?” Dad cocks his head in my direction. “Because you know she’s a whore, right?”
I’m not a whore. I swallow down the shame, but I don’t cry.
“Fine, I’ll take it out. You just stand there and don’t move,” Carter mutters, still blasé. I suck in a deep breath, praying my sorry excuse for a father won’t listen, and this time stab my heart, when I feel his rancid laugh dancing in my face again.
“No. I think I’ll kill her. She’s no good to me anymore.”
Before I know what’s happening, he is yanking out the blade from my stomach-it’s much more painful than when it was when he dug it in, I note-and I feel the blade making its way again to another part of my stomach, but the knife never does more than scratch me on the surface. Suddenly, my father is yanked back, thrown on the door against me, and Carter is beating him up. His fists connect with my father’s jaw, nose and neck over and over again until my dad collapses down to a fetal position, which doesn’t make much more than fifteen seconds. Carter is ripped, huge and strong. He is a bouncer, and a good one. Now Carter is on top of him, straddling him, beating him up so methodically, and all throughout, his face is completely relaxed and composed.
As if nothing’s happening inside of him.
A psychopath.
It’s clear to me now.
Carter is a psychopath.
I slap a hand over my mouth as I watch Carter beating the life out of my father. First, my dad struggles. Not exactly fighting back, he is too weak and old, but definitely crying and yelling and begging. I clutch my waist where he stabbed me and bend down. It’s painful and I want the pain to go away.
When my dad stops screaming and begging, Carter lets him go. His whole face is just blood, really. He’s completely unrecognizable. And dead. So very dead.
I should feel relieved, or maybe even happy or satisfied, but I still feel nothing. Nothing, at all.
Carter wipes his bloody hands with his shirt and pulls him out, tucking it into his back pocket. I shouldn’t admire his six pack, so I don’t. I just note that his body is very big and very strong, and it makes me feel very little, but not in a bad way.
Definitely not in a bad way.
“I’ll need to get rid of him,” he tells me, still detached. “But first we need to make sure you’re stitched and wrapped. Where do you live?”
I tell him where I live. He approaches me and without a warning, tosses me up so he is carrying me honeymoon style. “It’s a short walk. Let’s go.”
When we get to my apartment, he puts towels over my bed, lays me inside it and plucks a bottle of whiskey from the counter in my kitchen. He opens the bottle and gives it to me silently. I take a swig, not because I want to, but because he asked. Sort of. The alcohol makes me feel somewhat numb. Carter pours some of the whiskey into one of the clean towels and wipes my injury after rolling my shirt all the way up until my bra is completely exposed. My head against the pillow, I inspect him as he cleans my wound meticulously and quietly.
I wish I could thank him.
Hell, I wish I could love him.
He looks like such a good man.
After he’s done cleaning me, he motions for me to drink some more. I take another sip, but this time he shakes his head. “The whole thing.”
“Are you serious?” I choke on my saliva. He nods, his face void of emotion.
“I’m going to stitch you up. You might not wanna be completely present when that happens, if you know what I mean.”
Reluctantly, I drink the rest of the alco
hol. He asks me where my sawing kit is, and I tell him. Despite his best efforts to numb the pain, I feel it. Every time he inserts the needle, which he burnt beforehand with his zippo, I let out a soft cry and he strokes my hair with his free hand. After he stitches me up, he tears one of my shirts and wraps it around my stomach tightly. I feel myself tear up because even through the pain, I note that I’ve never felt so… cared for before. I pretend for a while that I’m normal, and that Carter is mine and I am his. What would it be like to be cherished by someone like him?
“I’ll ask Graham to send someone to watch over you while I go clean up the mess,” he tells me without looking into my eyes. I nod.
“They’ll have to break into your apartment because I’m going to lock it behind me.”
I nod again.
“You can keep the key,” I say.
“I intend to, from now on,” he cocks an eyebrow, but there’s nothing flirty and playful about what he says. It occurs to me that it’s the most we’ve ever spoken to each other.
“Thank you, Carter,” I tell him before he leaves. I can’t pretend to be that girl he sees in the club. The flirty and careless and crazy, sexy bitch everyone likes. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but can you please not tell anyone about it?”
“Not a soul,” he promises, then I hear my door slamming shut and I fall into hard, well-deserved sleep.
I hope I never wake up.
CHARLEIGH
I’d like to thank the following people:
Rose from Charleigh Rose for putting up with my crappy ways and with my PMS moments. Every time we throw spaghetti on the wall I get bitchy and over-the-top and she totally gets me. Thank you.
K Webster, for helping us out with our covers. Your talent is mind-blowing. Everything you touch turns to gold. Yeah, you’re that good.
To the amazing bloggers who always have our backs. We’re running the brand of Charleigh Rose on a one-ingredient fuel: our writing. No PR. No Facebook Ads. No promotion companies. Zero marketing. Just our books. And you? You do the rest. You push us forward. You spread the word. You. Fucking. Matter. And you rule. Thank you so much.
Julie and Clarissa, our main girls. We know people ask you who we are all the time because you’re our besties, but trust you enough to know you’ll never let our secret out. Thanks for supporting us all throughout our journey.
To our gorgeous families for putting up with us. We have our separate careers, and they keep us busy as hell, so Charleigh Rose often bites into our down time with our loved ones. But they always understand. Which is so super cool. For realzies.
To Emma, a woman I literally just invented because I ran out of people to thank. Thank you for being you, even though you don’t exist.
Oh, and to the hot male models who keep our (artistic) juices flowing. I’m lucky enough to work in a job in which ‘research’ is when you watch porn half the day and then write about it. But plastering your pretty faces on the actors is so much more fun.
Thanks everyone who talk to us on Facebook and IG. We love hearing your thoughts about our work. Love yours faces. Keep rocking. Living La Vida Loca. Mambo number five. Okay now I’m just making shit up.
Love you, okay, bye. xoxo
ROSE
First and foremost, thank you to my other half. No, not my husband, I’m talkin’ about Charles over there. The literal other half of Charleigh Rose. You’re kind of psychotic and one of the biggest assholes I know (myself included), but without your bossy ways, I probably would’ve never committed to publishing a damn thing. I might call you names and threaten to punch you in the face like every other healthy relationship based on love and mutual respect, but I’ve known you were BFF material since the moment you went all “Fatal Attraction’ on me. You’re so crazy talented, and there’s no better way to dip my toes into the world of self-publishing than writing porn with you. Love you!
Thanks to my husband who cooks and cleans and lets me use Charleigh Rose as an excuse to neglect the housework. My laziness knows no bounds, just like my love for you. “I fucking love you”.
Thank you to K. Web for our awesome covers. You’re one of the most selfless people I know. Thank you for being my biggest cheerleader in all aspects of my life. I’m lucky to have you as a friend, you creepy bitch. Love you!
Clarissa, my gorgeous friend. I love you. Thank you being such an amazing friend to me. I know you hate it when I get sappy, but I appreciate you and everything you do for me. Your friendship is invaluable. I can’t wait to do drunken karaoke with you!
Julie, AKA the best PA in the world (inside joke), You make me a better person just by being in my life. You’re always there to talk me out of stabbing people (while Clarissa encourages it). Everyone needs a Julie in their life.
Serena, Melissa, & Peggy, I love you crazy bitches. Thank you so much for your endless support and dick pics.
Mary Elizabeth, Bebe Reid, BB Easton, and all of our author friends who always share and support us, even though we probably embarrass them with our filthy ways… we love you.
OUR IG SQUAD. There are way too many to name and we love your fucking guts. Thank you so much for your amazing teasers, for spreading the word about us, and for loving our men. #SquadGoals. For real.
To Di Covey and the Twisted Sisters (errr, Twisted Book Club, now), thank you for embracing us, even though no one gets raped with a vegetable (I’m lookin’ at you, Webster). Yet.
Thank you to Stylo Fantóme for always being awake at midnight to answer all my random questions.
Ratula, I love you. Thanks for encouraging me even when I gross you out with my love for daddies.
Paige, our editor, thank you so much for taking this hot ass mess on relatively last minute. Some day we will get our shit together. Probably not anytime soon, though, so don’t hold your breath.
Lastly, the biggest thanks goes to all of the readers and bloggers who took a chance on this new duo. We never expected Stepdaddy Savage to do so well, and we are forever grateful to you guys. Hope you all loved Savage Beast just as much, or even more. Stay tuned, because this shit is just getting started.
Kisses, hugs, and butt plugs,
Rose
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Savage Beast (Savage People Book 2) Page 13