His grip had loosened on my hands as he stared down at me and I wiggled one free letting it trail slowly between our bodies until I found his cock. I grabbed it roughly, fisting it through the material of his pants. He groaned, his eyes burning with barely contained passion. My heart sped up, my skin feeling too small for my body.
I moved my hand up and down several more times. He didn’t say anything, didn’t move, as if I had trapped him in this moment forever. My pussy clenched ready to be impaled on his dick.
He was all I ever wanted. This fucking monster that hovered over me now, this stranger. He used to be the guy I thought I could love. But now he was just another asshole. Another man too easily controlled by his dick. A guy who let my mother die and didn’t let me say... anything.
He wasn’t expecting it when I released his cock and slammed my fist into his balls.
A whoosh of air left his lips as he keened over next to me, releasing my other hand to cup himself. I scrambled away from him, disentangling myself from his long legs. My back met something hard and I whirled around surprised to find a gravestone. My gaze fluttered around taking in the peaceful cemetery around us. All of the dead people who got to witness…whatever just happened between Rhett and I.
I stood quickly adjusting my purse.
“You fucking bitch.” Rhett still laid on the ground holding himself.
“It doesn’t feel good, does it big brother? To want to kill someone and fuck them all at the same time.” I smirked. “You made a big mistake.”
And I turned leaving him there in the middle of the cemetery hanging on to his crotch for dear life.
THREE
“Why are we stopping here?” Sarah asked when Rhett pulled the car to a stop some forty-five minutes later.
I stayed out by the car for the rest of the funeral festivities, not bothering to walk over to where they lowered my mom into the ground. The bullshit things the preacher had to say about her didn’t interest me, and neither did the hole where her body would rot for eternity.
Now I was in the car with Asshole and his significant other. I personally didn’t care why or where we were stopping. A permanent smile had plastered itself across my face since I left Rhett lying in the cemetery, even the ache under my skin for another bump couldn’t destroy my mood. One would think I would be angry more than anything for what Rhett had done, but that emotion had taken a backseat to the ‘I told you so’ feeling swimming in my veins. Maybe I was delusional; maybe everything that had happened today would crash into me later and destroy my sudden good mood. But for the moment I was happy to accept the feeling of joy.
“Just have to grab something.” He hopped out and slammed the door.
Sarah was silent while we waited for Rhett and I eyed her, wondering if she knew that he kept me from seeing my mom before she died.
I doubt it.
She was too pure for him to let her in on something like that.
A few minutes later Rhett climbed back in the car. He wasn’t limping anymore. I smirked. Next time I would have to punch him harder. He turned around and tossed a small paper sack at me.
“What is this?” I frowned at it.
“It’s your medicine.”
I met his calculating gaze in the rearview mirror. “Medicine? But we already got the hormones the doctor prescribed me.”
“These aren’t hormones. These are to treat your STD.” The glint in his eyes turned down right sinister. “You have chlamydia. And you’re fucking lucky that’s all you have.”
I blanched. “W-what?”
“Did I stutter?”
“Rhett!” Sarah exclaimed covering her mouth.
I shook my head. “But she said we wouldn’t know anything for a few weeks. How could you—”
“I’m a lawyer at one of the best law firms in the state. If I want test results rushed, I get them rushed, no questions asked.”
“Rhett that’s something personal that only her and her doctor should discuss not you—”
“Shut up, Sarah.” He didn’t even look at her, but kept his gaze on me, watching me in the rearview mirror.
Sarah started blubbering in the passenger seat and frantically wiping at her face. I felt strangely touched that she tried to come to my rescue.
I pulled out the little pill bottle and stared at it. There was only one pill inside. I have an STD? I had never really considered it before. Silly, but after I left I didn’t really care, or think past what I was going to do that day, even in the beginning before I started the drugs, I still bent over for those faceless men. Their hard cocks gave me purpose and once the drugs came they gave me an even bigger one.
“Chlamydia doesn’t have symptoms and is curable by taking that pill,” Rhett said.
Sarah gasped for air between sobs, her hands trembling in her lap.
“Thanks for the info doctor asshole.”
“I wouldn’t have to be an asshole if you weren’t a whore,” he snapped.
“Do you really want to do this, Rhett? Right now? Right here in front of Sarah?” I stared daggers at him. If he wanted to play I would. I wasn’t going to sit back and be put down by him anymore. He was the one who nearly creamed his pants in a cemetery while I fondled his cock.
He cut his gaze away and threw the SUV in reverse.
I smiled. That’s what I thought.
The walk up the driveway of my old home, the place where I laid my head from the time I was nine to sixteen didn’t seem as long as the walk down the aisle to see my mother’s body. Walking inside didn’t make me as emotional as I thought it would either. Looking into the house that was practically identical to how it was when I left, I expected there to be more, to feel more about everything, but I supposed I was probably tapped out in the emotion department.
“Oh Rhett, y’all made it!” My mother’s sister, Gina, came running up, wrapping her middle-aged arms around Rhett. She didn’t look much different either. Her hair was still dyed bright red and she hadn’t gotten that front tooth she lost some years ago, replaced. It was hard to remember that my mother came from a family of poor rednecks because of how much she tried to distance herself from them.
“And oh my word!” She pressed a worn hand to her chest. “Is this her?” She looked from me to Rhett to me again.
“What do you think, Aunt Gina?”
“Well, hell I’d remember those eyes anywhere!” She stepped up to me and jerked me against her chest. “Faye Jean I never thought I’d see you again!” I could smell the weed on her skin and for a moment I was tempted to ask her if she would want to head out back and smoke one. If I coupled it with the little bit of coke I had left in my purse, it would probably be enough to get me through this horrid shin-dig.
“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again either,” I said blandly.
She pulled back and raked her dark eyes up and down my body. Eyes that were so much like mine. All of the Turner girls had the same eyes. Some sort of dominant gene that didn’t land on my mom’s only brother.
“Jessica really did a number on you didn’t she?”
I frowned and cocked my head in shock—that being the last thing I ever expected her to say about my mom. I figured she, along with everyone else, would have some damning choice words for me.
Tears pooled in her eyes making them glassy. “But you’re back. You’re here now and I love you just like I did before you left.” She pulled me back into a hug. My chin brushed the top of her ear. She was barely five foot tall, making my five foot five frame seem giant. Tears pressed at the back of my eyelids, a sense of relief filtering through my system.
My mom’s family hadn’t wanted her to marry Taylor Hale, they didn’t believe that money equaled happiness, but she had done it anyway. It was nice to feel like I finally had an ally.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to honey,” Gina said, guiding me toward the couch in the living room, the white leather couch—the one where I had bared my heart to Rhett four years ago and he had turned me down.
“I—”
A cold hand touched the back of my arm. “We’re going to head on into the den, that’s where the rest of the family is,” Sarah said quietly. Her face was puffy and red from the crying in the car, but she had quieted down once Rhett had taken her hand in his. I’d watched with disgust as he swiped his thumb lovingly over her pale flesh.
I nodded and turned back to Gina. “Well, I’ve—”
What I would say would never be known because more people joined us in the living room, people with loud country accents and too much wine in their bellies already. My mother’s other two sisters, Betty and Luna, and her brother, Georgie.
“Gina have you tried some of that wine they got in there? I swear it’s like that thirty year aged shit.” Betty raised her glass sloppily, spilling some on the plush white carpet. If my mom had been alive she would be shrieking at all of them and pushing them out the front door. A bubble of laughter escaped my lips, drawing their attention to me.
“Well, hells bells.” Uncle Georgie stepped over to me, most of his hair balding. “I thought you were gonna kill her all over again.” His blue gaze critiqued me much like Gina’s had. “You okay, Faye? It’s hard losing your momma.”
My heart swelled, making the ache in my bones seem nearly non-existent when he wrapped his arms around me. My other aunts followed suit, gushing about me and how they’d missed me. Not one of them put me down for the things I said in the funeral home. And I hated that I hadn’t given them all more of chance when I was younger. My mom had never completely discarded them as family members, but she didn’t spend a lot of time with them either. Her connection to them was strictly through Facebook and sparse phone calls here and there, even though they all lived in a small town barely an hour away. The times we saw them were just mutual meetings at weddings, or when we went to see my grandparents, which wasn’t often either.
She had written them off so easily once she found Taylor and didn’t need their charity anymore. I was only nine years old and didn’t know better when she told me that they were beneath us. That we were better. What a fucking joke.
Within minutes we were all sitting around on the various plush furniture, my aunts and uncle chattering loudly, trying to talk over one another to tell me about their lives, their kids, grandkids. None of them came today because Taylor had demanded that they not. I assumed he hadn’t wanted her siblings there either, but he couldn’t very well tell them they couldn’t come to her funeral.
I didn’t really feel bad that my cousins didn’t get to come and say goodbye. My mom was the mean aunt no one liked anyway.
“You know my little Bethie has four of her own now, with number five on the way,” Gina gushed.
“Good God, isn’t there a law that you people shouldn’t be able to reproduce?” I jumped at the sound of the cold voice. Laura’s voice, my step-grandmother, Taylor’s mom. She was adorned in a dress that probably cost more money than I made in the last three years fucking strangers. Sparkling black jewels hung from her ears. Her hair was dyed black and done up in an elaborate swirl on her head. Just because she hid the gray hairs didn’t mean she hid her age. Her skin was worn and leathery from too much tanning.
Gina stood up defiantly, her hand clutched around a glass of wine. “You’re lucky today was my sister’s funeral old lady, or I’d punch you in the fuckin’ face.”
Laura smirked. It was a look so familiar to me, so identical to Taylor’s that it made me shiver. Laura had never liked me, never took me in as her own grandchild. She never cared for my mother either. All around she was just a bitchy old bag of bones.
“Well, look who it is.” Her cold hazel gaze met mine. “The little whore came back to make a fool of herself in front of everyone we know.”
I clenched my hand in my lap. “It’s nice to see you too, Laura.”
She narrowed her gaze. “I never said it was nice to see you. Rhett should have left you wherever it is he found you. Where was it? Some run-down shack with the rest of these heathens?”
I was almost too shocked to respond. I figured that Rhett had told everyone about my new seedy life. Looks like he didn’t.
“You’re asking for it aren’t you?” Gina charged forward, while my other two aunts started shouting at Laura simultaneously. Uncle Georgie jumped up at the last minute and snatched Gina back forcing her to drop her wine glass, red liquid coated the carpet.
Laura looked absolutely appalled and terrified all at once. I nearly laughed, but then he came into the room. Taylor walked in like he owned the place, which technically he did, but there was air about him that I had never seen in anyone else. It was that cocky I own you air. It made strangers look his way in awe and jealousy and it stilled my aunt’s flailing arms, along with his mother’s snide remarks.
“What’s going on here?” His eyes immediately found mine, just like they used when I lived here, when he fucked me nearly every night of the week. I was suddenly weary, exhausted, ready to just keel over and sleep forever, but the pain that tingled under my skin wouldn’t let me. I needed a bump. I fingered the side of my purse and looked away from Taylor.
“This little whore and her family are destroying your beautiful house!” Laura exclaimed.
Bitter anger swam with the weary achiness. “Three years away and you’re even more of a bitch,” I muttered and stood. My aunts laughed loudly.
“How dare you—”
“Mom, stop.” Taylor’s gaze finally left me, turning to his mother. “We laid Jessica to rest today.” He looked at my mom’s siblings. “There’s no need for a riot. Not today.” He sounded so sure, so confident. So well composed and perfect. I could see Gina’s shoulders visibly relax. Laura stormed back into the other room, placated for the moment.
My hands trembled. It was why I didn’t try telling anyone back then. They wouldn’t have believed me. No one would ever believe that he took my virginity when I was nine years old. Not this caring, successful man.
And then I was back there on my princess bed, his big body looming over mine. His hands petting my braided hair. I liked my new daddy. He was good to me. He bought me what I wanted.
“I want something from you, Faye baby,” he whispered in my ear. And then, there in that moment I knew I would give him anything. I knew he would do anything for me, but then he took my clothes off and I became afraid. So afraid. But he promised he would make it good for me. And I believed him. And I think I hated it more that he told the truth.
It would have been easier to accept if he had taken what he wanted with force. If he had held me down and shoved his big dick inside me while I tried to get away. But that’s not how it happened. I laid there in my pink little bed and let him have my virginity. Let him put his mouth between my legs until my body shook before he entered me. It hurt, but he promised me it would get better. And I hated it even more that he was right.
“Faye, are you all right?” Betty’s voice jerked me back to the present and I glanced at her with what I hoped was a normal expression. But that’s when I felt it. The warm liquid sliding down my face, over my lips. I reached up in horror and pressed my hand to my nose, coming back with dark red blood.
FOUR
I pressed the back of my hand to my nose and hurried to the bathroom just down the hall from the living room. One tug on the door proved it was locked, occupied by someone else. The blood was starting to track down my arm and I spun around, desperate for a bathroom. Not because I didn’t want to stain the carpet, no, I couldn’t give two fucks about the stupid carpet. But the urge to be alone, away from my past seemed to grip at my very bones.
I took the stairs two at time, rushing down the hall to the room I didn’t want to see, but at the same time, needing to see it. I burst through the door of my old bedroom, alarmed to find it identical to the way I left it. I didn’t pause to reminisce but headed straight into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Flicking the lights on I stared at my reflection. It was so weird, so familiar staring at the mirror I had l
ooked into every day for over seven years. Blue towels hung on the wrack behind me. My towels, my favorite color. The sparkly blue electric toothbrush I’d left behind still sat in its charger on the white sink top. I stared at it in wonder for a moment before looking back at myself.
I was me, still me. Just an older, even more fucked up version. I gripped the sink with my hands, sticky blood smearing on the pristine surface. I watched it run out of my nose and drip down my face. I got nosebleeds more often than I liked and supposed it was from all the coke I snorted.
At that thought I immediately rummaged through my bag. My hands made contact with the little pill bottle containing the medicine that would cure my STD. I have a sexually transmitted disease. A burst of laughter escaped my lips. Why am I suddenly laughing at everything that isn’t funny?
But the laughter turned into a sob as I emptied the white pill onto my bloody palm. I considered throwing it in the trash. Maybe Chlamydia can kill me? Maybe I can die and be done with this fucked up mess of a life.
I shoved the pill in my mouth before I could think about it, forcing myself to dry swallow and almost gag. I fumbled around in my purse searching for the little baggie I so desperately needed. It would make it all better. It always did for a little while at least.
The blood still dripped from my nose when I finally pulled the baggie out and opened it revealing the thin white powder I so coveted. But then my fingers slipped on the plastic and the baggie turned on its end spilling into the sink.
“No!” But the cocaine had spilled into the wet blood. “Fuck.” I tried to scrape it up, but my hands were shaking, the powder completely soaked and stuck together in gloopy balls. “Fuck!” I wailed.
This can’t be happening. It can’t be. It can’t be!
The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel Page 6