by Ava Lohan
What was supposed to be the best vacation of my life had become my worst nightmare. I’d only packed my suitcase a few days ago, and now I couldn’t wait to leave. That same day I’d promised my mom I would start going to church again. I never could’ve imagined my life would come to this.
I rushed at Jenna. Someone tried to stop me but it was no use. My hand delivered a quick, loud slap across her face, leaving an outline of my fingers on her cheek. Her eyes burned with a fiery hate that cut through the darkness. I took off running without saying another word. I ignored the voices calling me and kept running toward the house we’d rented. Luckily, I had a set of the keys in my pocket. I threw myself on my bed and cried into a pillow. I didn’t know if I would ever stop. Thank goodness for the tissues my mother had sent with me.
Sooner or later, everyone came back. I didn’t know if I should try to patch things up with Jenna or consider our friendship over. I knew I was in the wrong, but she never should‘ve said all those things in front of everyone. If she had told me everything in private it wouldn’t have been so traumatic.
I finally found her, but we just ended up fighting again. My best friend, the girl I’d grown up with, had become a stranger. A stranger who was embarrassed to be seen with me, to consider herself my friend. She didn’t care about what had happened with Malcolm, that I'd lost my virginity in the backseat of his car. She didn’t care that I was using the lies to protect myself from him and his friends’ cruelty. Jenna refused to budge. Her judgement was final. Her words were like stones to the face.
I went back to the beach, lighting the way with my cell phone. Our fire had died, leaving me surrounded by darkness. The moon was reflected in the water. If I’d had any more tears to cry I would have let every last one of them flow down my cheeks. With my legs folded into my chest, I looked out at the ocean as the air whipped through my hair, caressing my arms and bare legs. I grabbed fistfuls of pale sand and let it slowly spill between my fingers. My feet were right on the shoreline. I sat there for a long time, gazing out over the natural beauty that surrounded me without really taking it in. I’d just stood up to go back to the house when I saw Paul just feet away from me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I’d never seen him look so serious. I was humiliated. Paul had heard every word—he most definitely knew the game I was playing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jenna had told him everything. If my nails had been longer, I would’ve tried to rip open my chest and tear my heart out. Unfortunately, I had the awful habit of biting my nails when I was agitated, just as I was about to do now, right in front of the guy I liked. I let my hands fall to my sides before my index finger reached my mouth.
“Jenna was too harsh. I think it was the beer talking. She must have downed four cans on her own.”
I tried to laugh, but the best I could muster was a forced chuckle. Neither of us believed what he’d just said. Jenna couldn’t have had more than half a can that night. My friend had been so full of rage for so long and I hadn’t even noticed. Paul came closer and my heartbeat quickened. For the first time ever, he put his hands on my shoulders. Skin to skin. I had never been touched so intimately. It was the only good thing about that night, Paul’s consoling touch.
“I want you to know that I don’t believe any of it. You said you made it all up and I believe you, Rose. Jenna will understand soon, too.”
Then, he did it. He flashed me that sweet smile that made me melt. His dimples were irresistible. That smile that had been driving me mad since he started seeing Jenna. I loved that smile more than anything in the world. Jenna was only with him because he was older than us and he played for the Georgia Bulldogs. I didn’t even know if she really loved him. I didn’t care about how popular he was, or that he played football. I never cared about any of that. I had, however, developed a huge crush on him for who he really was, and spent my entire adolescence turning down any other guy that approached me. And now here I was, eighteen years old without ever having had anything remotely close to a relationship.
Paul kept smiling. I swore I could see stars in his dark eyes. He smiled at me a lot. In the car… when he held hands with Jenna… even when we were all hanging out at the house together. He always smiled at me. Maybe it was his way of saying that he knew I liked him and that he would welcome my advances. I decided to make my move. I grabbed him by the jacket and stood on my tiptoes.
“What are you…?”
He didn’t make it to the end of his question. But it wasn’t difficult to guess, at least for me. I’m about to show you how much I love you, Paul. I wouldn’t tell him, I would show him. I would reassure him with my actions.
I started by licking his neck, then sucking it, like I had done with that guy in the club bathroom the week before, even though that hadn’t led to anything but kissing. With Paul I wanted to go further. I only had to read him to understand how much he wanted it. I didn’t think about Jenna, not for one second. She didn’t cross my mind as I nibbled on his earlobe, nor when he grabbed me by the face to distance himself from me and to look me in the eyes before planting his mouth on mine. We stripped off our clothes and began to kiss. He was my best friend’s boyfriend. But—in that moment—I didn’t care. In that moment, he was mine. All mine. We didn’t speak a single word as we explored each other’s bodies. Our tongues spoke for us. We laid down on the sand and Paul started to explore me from the inside. In my head, it was more than just sex. We loved each other; we were completing one another. This was how I dreamed my first time would be—not with some stranger, but with the guy who had my heart. Once we were finished, we didn’t say a word. Paul was no longer smiling. He just looked at me. I did the same.
We spent the next two days kissing each other in secret and having sex when the others were at the beach. After what seemed like the thousandth orgasm, he’d even said he loved me. We were powerless against the urge to meet between the sheets. He was my drug and I thought I was his. It was all perfect, until I tried to give him a blowjob. It all went terribly wrong, but I made up for it with more sex.
“So, are we together now?” I asked, running my hands through his hair as he stared at the ceiling.
I’d taken it for granted, but I needed to hear him say it. It was late, almost two in the morning. I had pretended I didn’t feel well so I could stay at the beach house, and he’d left the group early to join me. Nobody suspected a thing.
“I think you should talk to Jenna. She won’t take it well. But I don’t want to hide anymore. I’m tired of sneaking around. I think…”
“I’m not leaving Jenna,” Paul blurted out, knocking the wind out of me.
My hand froze in his hair. I brought it to my mouth and bit down on my knuckles to stop myself from screaming. Maybe I was just dreaming. Maybe I misunderstood. “You said you loved me this afternoon. And you said it again just a little bit ago.”
“Rose, I’m sorry. We’re making a huge mistake. I got carried away. You’re just so beautiful. But I’m not going to leave my girlfriend.” He pulled himself up, leaving me in the bed. “It was just sex.”
I thought I could die. A pain hit me that I had never felt before: my heart was broken. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything. Paul kept on talking as he got dressed. I couldn’t have told him that I loved him, that for me it was more than just sex. I couldn’t have told him I’d been in love with him since he’d come to pick us up from school in his truck, before I'd turned sixteen and had my own car.
“I feel awful. I don’t know if I can keep this from Jenna.”
I snapped out of my catatonic state. I wanted to cry, but not in front of him. I got dressed in a hurry, grabbed my cell phone from the side table, and got out of there as fast as I could. Paul just kept babbling, but I couldn’t stand his bullshit anymore. Just a bunch of excuses. He wasn’t using me; he thought we were just having fun—and he wanted to tell his girlfriend everything as soon as possible.
“It’s that… I’ve never cheat
ed on a girlfriend, I don’t know what the fuck I should do. Should I wait until we get home or should I tell her as soon as she comes back tonight?”
Those last words hit me as I was rushing down the hall. I squinted my eyes and stopped for a moment. I had to cover my mouth, now wide open, to keep from laughing hysterically. Did he really have the balls to ask me that? He did. I felt nauseated. I started running again, stubbing my toe on an end table. It hurt enough to make me swear, but not as much as the disappointment in seeing this new side of Paul. What a coward. I didn’t like this side of him at all.
“Rose, it’s two o’clock in the morning, where are you going? Come back here. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He ran down the stairs to catch up with me but I was too fast.
“Go to hell,” I yelled back at him.
I threw open the door and ran outside. He stopped trying to catch up, proving that he didn’t really care at all. It was all just an act to clear his conscience. And now that idiot was off to tell Jenna everything! I grabbed my head and screamed. This was not the same guy that had made my heart beat for years; this Paul was pathetic. How could I have been so blind to this part of him?
I just wanted to go home. I took a deep breath and called my parents. It took all my strength to stop myself from bawling into the phone as I begged my dad to come get me immediately, even though it was late at night and he was tired. I hid in a diner and waited, but my parents never made it. They died coming to get me.
I opened my eyes and fumbled around for the light switch without any luck. I was covered in sweat. I threw the blanket off of myself and tried to force my eyes to adjust to the dark. It was just my recurring nightmare, back to torment me again. I always prayed for a different ending. That I would open the door to my room and smell the pancakes my mom used to make in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. But, as always, the light switch wasn’t in the right place—this wasn’t my bedroom, nor was it the convent. I was a prisoner in Kegan Anderson’s lavish castle of corruption. My parents really were dead. In the back of my mind, I saw the whole funeral. Jenna and the others were there to give me their condolences before disappearing from my life forever. I would never again hear my mom’s voice. I would never again argue with my dad on a Sunday morning about which of us deserved the bigger piece of cheesecake. I buried my face in the pillow to hide my sobbing.
Chapter Twelve
“Lie down on the bed.”
I obeyed, propping myself up on my elbows to watch him. Kegan had opened a drawer on the other side of the room. His body was illuminated by the morning light. As he rummaged through the drawer, I listened to the contents clinking together and frowned. I could only imagine what was in there, as I couldn’t see a thing. I had no idea what he was planning and it worried me.
I focused my attention elsewhere. The room had red walls that matched the sheets I was stretched out on. The room was a physical representation of lust itself. I caressed the silk, as soft as Kegan’s hair glistening gold in the sunlight, as smooth as his lips haunting my dreams.
Room 424. Hell. We were surrounded by red. The color of passion, of blood, of physical pain that I hoped he wouldn’t inflict on me. An alarm went off in my mind at the thought of whips, ropes and other toys that I had no interest in trying. Even the short dress I was wearing was red, matching the furnishings and the name of the room. I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d been thinking when I had picked out the only red dress from my wardrobe. Maybe God himself had suggested it, just like he'd suggested this room to Kegan. Maybe it was His way of telling me where I’d be headed when I died: Rose Davis, straight to Hell to pay for her sins. Mother Superior would have undoubtedly interpreted it all as a divine message. I took in a deep breath to try to calm my nerves. It was useless.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, my voice betraying my panic.
But Kegan just ignored me as he bit his lip and pulled something out from the drawer.
“Oh yeah, these are perfect.” His voice was deep, sexy, and satisfied. “Lie down, Rose,” he repeated, shooting me a mysterious glance.
Whatever he had taken from the drawer was now carefully hidden out of my sight.
“Stretch out your arms and grab onto the bars.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I reluctantly obeyed.
Kegan turned toward me and the rest of the room disappeared, along with my fears. Everything was replaced by him, the effect he had over me, and the way he looked at me. His eyes were so intense that he made me feel like the most interesting person he had ever seen. I was the only object of his attention. My heart started beating like a jackhammer, demolishing my resistance. Kegan didn’t move a muscle as his green eyes burned holes through me. He was nicotine, a vice that I couldn’t free myself from. He could have stood there next to the window forever, analyzing every inch of my body, and I would have allowed it until my dying day. I was no longer human, I was a robot—his robot—and I would never grow tired of it.
The bubble I’d been hiding in for the past few days had just popped. I was falling back to Earth, back to reality. I couldn’t hide it anymore, not even to myself; every day that passed, every time that our bodies came together, I became more and more emotionally involved. And this was bad news because Kegan didn’t care about me or my feelings. But being aware of that and repeating it to myself every day was of little use. He was cold, perfectly safe from the emotions that I couldn’t help but feel. I tried to sweep everything under the rug and carry on, but it was hopeless. Hate, love, attraction, fear, repulsion for who he was and what he did, and so many other things ran through my veins and mixed with my blood. I was infected.
He raised an eyebrow. He hair was messy, a sign that he had run his hands through it several times before our encounter. He was wearing a black tee and gray track pants. I could have ripped it all off in seconds. His hands were behind his back, carefully hiding the mystery item from the drawer. I concentrated my attention on his tightly sealed lips. I was desperate to see them move, to hear words come from them, to feel them against my own. I knew that the last part was out of the question, but the idea of it still drove me mad.
“I’m going to handcuff you.”
A few seconds passed before what he said finally registered. My brain was like a computer that had momentarily frozen. One, two, four blinks and it rebooted. I’m. Going. To. Handcuff. You. For a second, I thought he might’ve been joking, but he was dead serious. I watched his face as I heard a clinking: two sets of shiny handcuffs in his perfect hands.
Kegan smiled. I was horrified, as if he had just shown me the kitchen knife he was planning to use to cut me in two. I shot up.
“Lie down. You’ll like it.”
I wondered if I could believe him. I considered running away, but his gaze nailed me down to the bed. The expression on his face was clear: if I got up, my home would be razed to the ground. After a few moments of hesitation, I decided to obey.
He walked toward me with a predatory gait, the handcuffs dangling from his finger. I held my breath and—in just seconds—he was straddling me. Kegan took my hands in his and held them against the headboard, imprisoning me with the cold metal and making my skin boil with his touch. He stopped for a moment to admire his work. My voice was prisoner to my throat, just as I was prisoner to his whims.
It was the first time that we—that I—had ever done something like that. I had no idea what to expect. For the past few days, Kegan had seemed more relaxed. But now, his eyes were telling me that something was on his mind. What I would have given to be one of the neurons in his head. Any attempt to study his face as he concentrated on my wrists was in vain. He took his eyes off the headboard to fix his gaze lower and lower until he had examined every inch of my body. His fingers lingered on my exposed knee, causing me to jolt.
“I like this dress.”
These words were paired with a fiery stare that made my heart skip a beat. Kegan rested his ey
es on my mouth as his thumb drew little circles on my knee. He then pushed it aside and planted his own knee between my legs.
I didn’t know what drove me crazier, my awareness of his burning touch, the feeling of his pants against my naked skin, or being completely dominated by him, and not just because of the handcuffs. He had total control over me even without the use of physical restraints, and that was the most worrisome part.
Kegan brought out the worst in me and broke me down like no other.
He looked at me. He was as enchanting as he was dangerous. “I like it, but it’s not my favorite.”
I mustered up the most malicious smile possible. “You know, you could just tell me which one you like best.”
He immediately caught onto the challenge in my eyes, but it had no effect on him.
“But if I did that, it wouldn’t be fun anymore, and you wouldn’t win your prize.”
I took in the feeling of his fingers on my skin without giving him any reaction. My face was now a mask on par with his—the only thing that could betray me were my flushing cheeks. And judging by the corners of his mouth, now slightly upturned, they had indeed betrayed me. My cheeks flared up even more in irritation. Oh, how I wanted to smack that smug look off his face.
“This isn’t my idea of fun. I don’t care about this guessing game.”
His expression remained the same.
The whole thing had started two days ago. Kegan had invented some sort of game to make me guess which of the dresses in my wardrobe he liked best. I tried two black dresses, then the red one. None of them were the one. If I were to guess right I would get a prize, but I didn’t care.
His hand abandoned my knee and made its way up my thigh. My mind shifted away from the dresses. His fingers were now dangerously high, pulling my dress up on their slow journey. They stopped on my hip, caressing the side of my red lace panties before slipping underneath.