by Skye Warren
“I’m not.” My voice is shaky. It’s my little-girl voice, the one I only use for him. Except now West and Oscar and Luca are hearing it too. Not just as part of an act, with a dress-up schoolgirl outfit and pigtails. This is the real little girl that’s buried inside me, right on the surface.
Ivan sees it too. He reacts to it, even if he doesn’t want to. “I want you to go inside and wait for me. Right now.”
“I’m scared,” I whisper. “It’s happening again.”
A month ago there was a message left on my vanity mirror with bubblegum lipstick. John 10:16. A Bible verse. A warning. And now this, a river of blood. Ivan believed that was a random attack, but it felt familiar. And this feels personal.
Ivan doesn’t deny it. “I’m going to fix this,” he says, right there in the back alley, in front of Luca and West, with the seedy downtown Tanglewood as my witness. “Daddy will make it right.”
He holds me tight, and only when I’m wrapped in his arms, turned sideways, do I see it.
Scrawled across the crumbling brick of the Grand is a message. No bubblegum lipstick this time. This one is written in blood. Peter 2:25.
Chapter Ten
I meant to leave the Grand tonight, to quit, to go somewhere else and start over again, just like I did years ago. It broke my heart to even think about it. Leaving the Grand and the girls. Leaving my friends, especially Honey and Lola. And Clara, though I really should never have befriended her.
And most of all, leaving Ivan. It broke my heart more than I’d been willing to admit, and there was a part of me that had wanted him to make good on his threat to keep me down in that basement. If I didn’t have a choice, it wouldn’t be my fault. It wouldn’t be my sin.
But after all that hoping, all that heartbreak, here I am in Ivan’s house, tucked into my old room.
Right where I started.
I close my eyes again. I don’t even remember how I ended up in this bed. Did I walk here? Did he carry me? The walls are bare, painted a pale cream. No windows. The sheets are white and soft as butter. The room is an expensive blank slate. An upgrade from my colorless days at Harmony Hills, but not much better.
My muscles are stiff when I pull myself out of bed. I’m wearing my baby blue tank top and peach-colored panties. My jeans are slung over a chair in the corner. It’s dark outside, which means I must have slept for hours. I pause at the staircase and look out at the courtyard, more concrete than grass, walled in by a high brick fence. The front door opens directly to the street, the front of the house an impenetrable brick face. Around the back is a tall brick gate that surrounds a concrete courtyard. From up here, I can see the spikes in the top of the wall that keep someone from climbing over.
A few plants cling to life in ceramic pots around the space.
If there’s one upside to being here, it’s that I feel safe. Safe from whoever left those notes, if not entirely safe from Ivan. His house is more of a fortress than a home. I’m surprised there’s not a moat surrounding us.
But then I guess the barbed wire and armed guards do the trick.
The lights are off downstairs, a deep stillness creating a kind of intimacy. I can feel Ivan’s presence down here, a beating heart in one of the cold rooms. I search until I find him—his silhouette, seated at the head of the long, ornate dining table. I can see that he’s wearing a suit. I’m guessing he never changed from earlier.
He’s reclined in the high-backed chair, one leg slung over the other. It’s a relaxed pose, but I can feel the tension running through his body. I can feel his eyes on me too.
He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
There’s a book spread open on the gleaming table in front of him. I don’t even need to look closely to know it’s a Bible. I have seen enough of them to recognize the thickness. I can almost smell the thin, ink-drenched pages. Where did Ivan get this? I can’t help but wonder if he asked Luca to bring one to him. It almost makes me smile to think of him buying one—or stealing it.
I drop my finger to the words, barely making out the heading Peter. It’s too dark in the room to see the letters. Has he been sitting here since the sun set?
I don’t have to read to know what it says.
“‘For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.’” Even soft, even hesitant, my voice rings out in the quiet.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks, solicitous.
“I should go,” I say. “I already quit, and this…this doesn’t change anything.”
“Are you hungry? I had Rosa put a plate together. I’ll heat it up for you.”
Frustration rises in my chest. He’ll take such good care of me, making sure I’m well fed and well slept. And well spanked, probably. He won’t take care of what I need most. “Stop ignoring me, Ivan.”
“You should go back to sleep. That wasn’t enough for the night.”
I stomp my foot. “Stop. Ignoring. Me.”
His fist hits the table so fast and so hard I jump. “I’m not ignoring you, Candace.” He leans forward, breathing hard. “You’re all I can fucking think about every second of every fucking day. I have to know what you’re doing, where you are. I haven’t treated you right, and the worst part is, I don’t think I’m capable of it, but if there’s one thing I’ve never done, it’s ignore you.”
I take in a shuddering breath. “God.”
He flips the Bible shut with a bang. “Fuck this asshole who thinks he can fuck with my club. He’s nothing. I’m going to find him and snuff him out like a fucking cigarette. You don’t worry about him.”
He’s talking about the nameless, faceless stranger who defaced the club, but he could just as easily be talking about God himself. You don’t worry about him.
“Because Daddy’s going to fix it?” I ask, only the hint of a challenge. I’m a shadow of the girl I was in that club. Stripped of my armor. “Are you also going to buy me a mockingbird? And a diamond ring?”
“Do you want them?” he asks mildly.
Part of me wants to hit him, just to get a reaction. Something intense. Something meaningful. It’s the same reason I smoked and drank and danced up against guys at dark underground parties. I lashed out at him, and God, he lashed back. “No.”
“What do you want then?”
My gaze finds the black rectangle on the table again. It’s been so long since I saw a Bible. Since I touched one. It leaves me shaken, and I want something other than a spanking. “Something to call mine.”
I place one hand on his shoulder. He’s tense underneath his suit jacket.
Slowly, carefully I climb into his lap. I half expect him to mock me. Or maybe just push me to the ground. He doesn’t do either of those things. He just lets me climb onto him, into him, cradling myself with his strong body, self-soothing with the erection I feel growing beneath his slacks.
One minute passes. Then another.
I’ve resigned myself to this, to holding him while he doesn’t hold me back. Then his arm moves. He slides a hand around my shoulders and drapes his other arm over my legs. I’m curled up in his arms—like a child. That’s how I feel, helpless and small.
Only now can I tell him what I’ve been thinking, ever since I saw the blood on the wall. Before that. When I saw the bubblegum-pink message on my vanity mirror. “It might be…” My voice breaks, and I have to start over again. “It might be someone from my past.”
He’s silent. I haven’t talked much about my past. He saw me at the beginning, so he knows how sheltered I was, how warped. But he doesn’t know the details. “Because of the Bible verses.”
“Yes, and I need to go. I already planned on leaving, but it’s even more important that I go now. Before he… before he hurts anyone.”
Ivan’s hands tighten on me. “Let’s get one thing straight. You’re not going anywhere. Not out of Tanglewood. And I might not even let you out of this house.”
“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” I whisper.
That makes me laugh, despite myself. Ivan is always like this, irreverent. He doesn’t give a shit about politeness. I wanted to be like him from the beginning. I never quite succeeded, could never quite lose the sense of wonder and fear that marks me as a sheep.
“They’re both about the flock,” I say. “And the shepherd.”
Ivan tucks me against his chest, his chin on top of my head. “More than one man has delusions of grandeur. In fact, pretty much all of them do.”
The thump of his heart in his chest is making me sleepy. “Even you?”
A huff of laughter. “Especially me. Why do you think I haven’t touched you?”
I’m too tired, too broken to be anything but honest. “Because I’m dirty,” I whisper.
It’s what Leader Allen always said about my mother. She has demons inside her. They drive men to sin. You won’t let them in, will you, Candace? You’ll be a good girl.
Tension runs through Ivan’s body in waves. His voice is even when he speaks. “I don’t know who made you believe that. But I’d love five minutes in a room with him.”
“Then why?” I ask, my voice sluggish in sleep. Why haven’t you touched me?
“I’m not sure it matters anymore.”
Chapter Eleven
He carries me upstairs. I’m drifting on the shore between sleep and waking, content to remain here as long as I feel his arms around me. As long as I can smell his musk. As long as I’m safe.
The sheets are cold against my heated skin, and I make a negative sound.
He starts to pull away, and I grab on to him. It’s so cold in this room. So colorless. “Please,” I beg.
He stares down at me in the dark, more shadow than man. “Go to sleep.”
“I won’t,” I say, but that’s a lie. I’m already half-asleep even while we talk, pulled further out on every wave—and he’s sand between my fingers. Even knowing that, I hold him tighter. “I’ll have nightmares.”
“Shhh,” he says, and relief fills me.
“You’ll stay?”
“Shhh,” he says again, and I know the answer is no.
The bed shifts as he sits on the edge. He strokes my temple, my cheek. “So pretty,” he says, and I shiver. I never wanted to be pretty. I never wanted to drive men to sin—until that was all I had left.
His hand strokes lower, down my neck, and over the swell of my breasts. I suck in a breath. This is the most he’s ever touched me. His fingers are light, barely a caress. It’s more like he’s tracing me under my clothes. This is as far as he’s ever gone with me. That may sound strange considering I’ve had my panties down while he spanked me, but nothing else ever happened. Now we’re in a bed and he’s touching my body. My hands lie on the bed, not stopping him.
When he reaches my panties, he slips his hand inside.
My whole body flushes hot and then prickles with goose bumps. I bow up off the bed, a soft sound escaping me. “Ivan? What are you—”
“No, Candy. You know better than that.”
The thud of my heart almost drowns out his words. Almost. I know what he wants from me. I just don’t know if I can give it to him. I move to push him away.
He presses one wrist down on the bed. “Don’t fight me, little one.”
I close my eyes on a deep breath. No, I can do this. God, I’ve practically begged him for this. Now that he’s finally giving it to me, I’m afraid. It’s too much, his calluses on my bare flesh, the contrast of my pale peach panties stretched taut over his large hand.
He seems to be resting there, not moving. I push my hips into his touch, but he squeezes my wrist and lets it go. “No,” he says gently. “You need to be a good girl now.”
My mouth forms the words without making a sound. “Yes, Daddy.”
The shift is subtle, just a twist of corded muscles. Then his fingers are on my clit, around my clit, forefinger and middle finger sliding on either side. Exactly how I touch myself. He’s watched me do it in that basement. He’s studied me, and now he uses that knowledge against me.
Pleasure pours through my body, molten hot, and I moan softly.
It’s more than the way he touches me. It’s how hard he presses, how fast he goes. Every second I spent under him, obeying him, he knew exactly what I was doing. And I know that he was telling the truth down in the dining room. He never did ignore me. Of all the things he did to me, he never did that.
I’m flat on my back, hands bound at my sides because he told me to. My legs are spread just enough for him to touch me. Completely at his mercy.
He rubs faster, and I can’t help myself now. I squirm against his touch, trying to get myself off. “Does it feel good?” he murmurs.
Of course he knows the answer, and even more so when I pant, “Yes, Daddy. Please.”
“You’ll get there, little one. I’m going to help you.”
I don’t know what that means until I feel cool air over my tummy. He lifts my tank top higher until my breasts are exposed. My breasts aren’t small, but his hand covers one completely, plumping it and caressing me until I’m shaking. I’m on fire both inside and out, the flames of my arousal licking me inside, his hands like a brand on my pussy and breasts.
“I feel funny, Daddy,” I say, my voice trembling. “I feel…”
“I know. That’s your body’s way of helping you relax.”
“I don’t—I don’t feel relaxed.” I feel strung up tight, every muscle in my body hard and tense. I know what an orgasm is, I’ve given myself plenty of them, but this is different. Those were stars in the sky, far away and almost invisible. This is like the sun, making me burn. I’m sweating, panting. Begging. “Help me. I can’t…”
“Shh. I am helping you. But you have to let it happen. You have to give in.”
He pinches my clit at the same time as he pinches my nipple, and the heat consumes me completely. I cry out as my climax overtakes me, scorching me, hurting me more than anything, until my body douses the fire, gushing my release over his hand and drenching my panties.
I’m still gasping for breath when he pulls away.
Two fingers push at my mouth, and I open for him instinctively. “Clean them,” he says softly, and I taste the musk of my own release. He rests his palm on my chin, keeping his fingers inside me. I slide my tongue over him, the ridges of his calluses sending sparks through my body.
“Good little girls like to suck, don’t they?”
I nod without releasing him, my eyes wide. I would suck more than his fingers, and he must know that. He makes no move to undo his pants—to fuck me or to let me suck him. He just keeps his fingers in my mouth, casual and perverse, letting me take comfort from the fullness.
There are questions I want to ask him. Things I need to say.
But I don’t want him to move his hand, so I continue sucking, taking my reward for being such a good girl. I let him touch me. You have to give in. And I do that, if only for one night. That’s how I fall asleep, with his steady breathing as my lullaby, his thumb caressing my cheek, his fingers resting on my tongue.
Chapter Twelve
I dream of volcanos, of giant explosions and the drifting of ash. I see red molten rivers that turn black. The earth cracks open, swallows us whole, reclaiming what it had lost.
I feel the singe of my skin, smell burned flesh. I hear the screams—and I sit up.
My screams. I pant, trying to gather myself. I heard myself scream. The sheets are tangled around my waist. The room is empty. I wait in the inky night, almost expecting Ivan to burst in the room. Won’t he have heard me?
Maybe he’s deep in sleep. Or more likely, maybe his bedroom is far away from here, on the other side of this massive house wit
h thick walls. His room is on the third floor. I know that much, but he never let me in there. Not in the year that I lived here, and sure as hell not last night. The first and only time I tried to explore it as a naive sixteen-year-old, I actually got lost. When Ivan found me, he sternly marched me downstairs with strict instructions never to return.
He treats me like a child, and I obey him, because I like it.
I still like it, but not enough to stay.
I need more than that.
Part of me is disappointed he didn’t hear. I want to see what he’d do to comfort me, what else he might give me to suck. Another part of me knows this is for the best. This is my chance.
I cross the room and find my cell phone in the pocket of my jeans. The light blinds me for a second before I can make a call.
One ring. Two.
“Hello?”
“Clara. It’s me. Candy.”
“Yeeeah,” she says, drawing out the word, sounding distracted. “They have this thing called caller ID. I saw it was you before I answered.”
“Mhm, thanks for the technology lesson, but actually I need your help with something else.”
I can feel her attention snap to me over the line. “Something wrong?”
That means she hasn’t heard about the blood at the Grand. That’s good. If she knew, she might be more inclined to side with Ivan about this. “I need you to pick me up from Fourth and Lennox in twenty minutes.”
“Are you in trouble? Should I bring Kip?”
Clara is the little sister of Honor, one of the girls who used to dance at the club. When Honor got into trouble, Clara spent a couple of hours at the Grand under my questionable supervision. We struck up something resembling a friendship, even though I have no business talking to someone that innocent. Not anymore.
Kip is Honor’s very protective, very dangerous husband. He’d be only too happy to protect me, but it would put them all at risk.
It would also eventually get back to Ivan.