by Blake, Penny
After changing out of my graduation gown and into my sparkly black party dress, I knocked on Raine’s office door, trying to remember the speech I’d been mentally rehearsing for the past few hours.
When he beckoned me in, I found him in his usual spot at the desk, hunched over a pile of papers.
Doesn’t he get lonely all by himself in here, day after day?
His eyes moved upward, raking over my body before settling back down on his papers. “You’re dressed up,” he commented.
I hadn’t thought too much about it, but I was wearing a tight black dress and stockings with a black seam up the back for the party tonight. The stockings was for Blaze’s benefit—he’d once commented that seamed stockings gave him an instant hard on.
I’d been so busy preparing my speech for Raine that I hadn’t considered he might draw some unintended meaning from my outfit.
“Blaze and I graduated today and tonight there’s a graduation party,” I said coolly as I sat down in the chair in front of him.
“Congratulations,” he said distractedly without looking up, which irked me. Irked me so much that my rehearsed speech vanished as my mind went blank. All I wanted just then was to lash out at him for putting such stupid rules and restrictions on Blaze and I when he clearly didn’t care about us.
But I knew that yelling wouldn’t get me what I wanted, so I forced myself to stay calm.
I stood up in front of his desk and covered his paper with my hand, forcing him to look up and meet my eyes.
“Remember what happened the last time I was in here?” I said. “I ended up with my panties around my knees. Is that why you’re stopping Blaze and I from traveling? Because you want to get my panties down again? Because if that’s what you’re trying to do, you’re wasting your time and mine.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Jess honey, if I wanted your panties down, I’d have pulled them down by now. And you would have loved it. The travel money has nothing to do with you, me or your naked midnight swims. I apologize if I wasn’t clearer when I mentioned earlier that I’d finance your travels. I didn’t realize you were planning on a yearlong European tour.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back further in his chair. “I’ve been to Europe many times. It’s a wonderful place. But if you want to travel extensively, you’ll need to work for it yourself. I know you’re angry with me now, but you’ll thank me someday when you appreciate the value of hard work—and the benefits that come with having a lucrative career.”
“Like you?” I said. “Because I don’t think I want to be like you at all. You work constantly. You don’t love anyone and no one loves you. Your whole life is pretty damn sad if you ask me.”
He kept his gaze trained on me, but something dark and angry began to lurk there.
Good. I had finally cracked his cool.
Even if he didn’t give me access to the trust, I’d feel better knowing that I’d at least made his as angry as he made me.
“Careful young lady,” he said, a hard edge to his voice. “It’s my hard work that makes it possible for you to live a lifestyle that many young women would envy.”
“I don’t care about your money.”
“Then why are you here in my office asking for it?”
“Because it’s not yours—it belonged to my parents, and they left it to us. And l think what you’re doing is wrong. You have no right to keep Blaze and I here like this, and I’m still not convinced that you’re not holding the money over our heads because you want to fuck me.”
“You’re awfully self-confident, aren’t you Jess?”
“That’s right. Don’t act like I didn’t give you a raging hard-on the last time I was here, when you spanked my bare ass, because I felt it for myself.”
“And don’t act like it didn’t make you wet, because I saw it glistening on your thighs.”
“I don’t deny it. I liked what you did to me, but it can’t happen again. So if that’s why you’re holding back the trust—“
“It can’t happen again, you say?” He stood up from his chair, and between his height and the darkness in his eyes, I suddenly felt intimidated.
“Sweet Jessica,” he said in a voice as soft as silk. Then he reached around and pulled the zipper on the back of my dress down. The fabric fell and pooled around my feet. Now I was wearing nothing but a black bra and panties, and a garter belt and silk stockings.
“You know so little about men,” he continued. “There’s so much I’d love to teach you. Do you know how much I’d like to take you up to my bedroom right now, handcuff you to my bed, and fuck you until you screamed. And I wouldn’t just fuck you with this.” He gently took my hand and brought it to his crotch, which was unmistakably hard. “I’d fuck you with toys. I’d tickle you with feathers. I’d tease your sweet pussy with a string of pearls. Oh, the things I can do with a string of pearls, sweet Jessica. I’d pleasure you slowly, for hours, until you were begging for my cock. And then I’d turn you over and spank you for being a whore. Like this.”
In one swift move, he sat down in his chair and pulled me over his knee.
I could have yelled at him to stop. I could have said no. But the truth was, even though I hated to admit it, there was a fierce attraction between Raine and I.
His words triggered something unexpected in me, and as I lay over his lap, feeling his hand fall hard on my ass, I couldn’t help longing for him to slide his fingers into my panties touch me where I needed him most.
After three hard whacks, he rubbed my ass tenderly, then smacked it even harder. Rubbed it again, soothing me. Then give it a final hard crack.
“You may stand up,” he ordered.
I did as he instructed, then stared down at him. I felt blood racing to face, a combination of fury and animal lust.
Then he took my hand and guided it to his crotch, moving it up and down the fabric. “Keep doing that,” he said.
“Raine—“
“You will call me Mr. Everly, understand?” He slapped me hard on the ass again, then in a swift move lifted me on his desk and did something I never would have expected.
He kissed me.
And then I did something I hadn’t planned. I kissed him back.
I kissed him back because even though I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, what I felt for him in that moment was potent, intoxicating and all consuming.
“Jess?” came a familiar voice from the doorway.
I turned around and Blaze was standing there with several of his friends behind him.
It took a moment for my brain to see through my haze of lust and make sense of what was happening.
Blaze and his friends had just walked in on Raine and I mid-make out.
I was wearing nothing but a black bra, panties, garter belt and stockings.
Raine had been kissing me and I was clearly kissing him back.
And Blaze looked furious.
“How could you?” he bit out, pain and hatred warring in his tone. “How the fuck could you do this to me!” Fury won out, and he grabbed a glass paperweight from a coffee table and threw it through the window, sending splinters of glass flying through the room.
“Blaze, calm down,” Raine said, raising a hand in protest.
“How dare you tell me to calm down. You’re hands were all over my…” He trailed off and turned to me.
“You’re fucking him too, Jess?” Blaze continued. “Really? So what do you do, come to my room and fuck me? Then come in here and fuck him? At least tell me that he’s the one getting sloppy seconds.”
“It’s not like that—“
“So you two are…sleeping together?” said Raine, looking between Blaze and I.
“Oh, we’re together, but we’re certainly not sleeping. Seems she fooled you too, huh Raine?”
“Blaze, will you just stop,” I said. Then my attention was drawn to the group of kids from our school standing behind Blaze witnessing the whole mess. There was more of them than I thought, seven maybe. The
y must have all met here to head over to the party together.
Fuck.
“That’s right,” Blaze announced to the room. “I’ve been fucking my stepsister—who’s also been fucking our legal guardian, Raine Everly. No, none of us are blood related. We’re only connected by money and paper and our worthless name. But my sister here sure seems to like keeping it in the family, isn’t that right, sis?”
“I’ve had enough,” I said, grabbing my dress and pulling it on.
“Why are you covering yourself up? Why not take off the rest of your skanky get-up and let all the guys here give you a go?”
“That’s just mean, Blaze,” I said, trying to stop my tears from falling down my cheeks, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.
“You know what mean is?” he said. “Mean is being a cock tease for years. For driving me crazy for years. Then you finally give it up, and it turns out, you’ve been fucking another guy the whole time.”
“It’s not like that Blaze. I wish you would just listen.“
“How was she, Raine? Was she good? Did you like the taste of her sweet little pussy as much as I—“
A crack resounded through the room as I slapped him across the face. “Enough!” I screamed, poking my finger in his chest. “Just…stop!”
My voice cracked and my tears finally began to spill. I tore out of the room, running down the stairs. Then I pulled my car keys from their ring by the door and ran out of the house.
I had no idea where I was going, but I knew I would never come back here again.
I raced to my car, turned the key and peeled out of the driveway.
I would just drive, I thought. Drive and drive until I was far away from the state of Maine, from Raine, and most of all, from Blaze.
His words echoed through my mind, piercing my heart each time I replayed them.
Huge gasping sighs tore from my throat as I drove.
Then there was the flash of tail lights, the skid of breaks.
The shriek of metal crunching and twisting.
And then there was only darkness.
Chapter 11
I awoke in the hospital three days later. Word about what had happened in Raine’s office spread like wildfire at the graduation party that night, and a social worker was called in immediately.
Since I was only a few days shy of eighteen and Raine could afford the world’s most elite lawyers, the state didn’t draw up any charges against him for his indiscretions with a minor. But he willingly relinquished his guardianship.
The social worker visited me every day while I recovered at the hospital. She told me that Blaze hadn’t tried to visit, though he’d been calling the hospital daily for updates on my condition.
Mirabeth hadn’t left the hospital waiting room, and the moment my social worker gave her the okay to come in, she was at my bedside, crying and hugging me.
In my severe emotional state the night of the crash, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the road. The driver in front of me braked suddenly and when I tried to stop, I lost control of my car, careening off the road and slamming into a tree.
I woke up with twenty stitches in my scalp, a shattered arm, and extensive damage to my arm and shoulder from shattering glass. The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive.
I wasn’t so sure.
When I first moved to Maine, I’d felt utterly alone in the world, but now, I was even more so.
I’d lost Blaze. And worse of all was the way I’d lost him.
His cruel words echoed in my mind all day in a constant loop while I lay in my hospital bed, and even worse, the bastard never came to visit me. To ask for the real story behind what he saw in Raine’s office. To ask me why. To give us a second chance.
I told Mirabeth everything. I was tired of hiding my relationship with Blaze. Tired of bottling up my feelings and living a life of quiet isolation.
I cried on her shoulder and told her everything.
She didn’t offer any advice or judgment. She just listened, handing me tissues and stroking my back while I cried.
Then she told me that Blaze was in a bad state. He’d moved out of Raine’s house on graduation night and she hadn’t seen him since, but she’d heard from others in town that he was on a horrible bender. Even getting into a fight that landed him in jail overnight.
On the day of my release from the hospital, Mirabeth informed me that Raine and my social worker agreed to make her executor the family trust. My eighteenth birthday had passed a few days ago, and I was legally on my own. Mirabeth signed the entire lump sum of my inheritance over to me before we even left the hospital.
I stayed with her for the next few weeks while making travel arrangements, and then I left for Europe on my own. I visited the Sistine Chapel by myself. I spent a whole day reading books and drinking coffee in a Paris café.
I never drove the Autobahn or saw the red light district in Amsterdam. Those were Blaze’s dreams, and I would have felt sad doing them alone.
But I did spend some time seeing more of the United States. I spent a year just hanging out in New Orleans listening to jazz, eating gumbo and wandering down Bourbon Street.
Later I rode a bike through the quaint streets of Portland. Ate Tex Mex in Austin. Toured Pike’s Peak Market in Seattle. Learned to ski in Aspen. Watched the sea lions in San Francisco. Visited the rose gardens of Minneapolis.
And while I did all these things, my heart slowly healed. For the first time, I figured out how to be happy by myself. How to enjoy my own company, and be alone without being lonely. How to talk to strangers and keep an open heart, and how to make peace with the past.
Of course I dated, and even had a few brief relationships, but never with anyone I ever felt truly passionate about.
Through it all, I kept in touch with Mirabeth, sending her postcards and letters. She once told me that people don’t send letters enough these days, so I set out to change that.
Mirabeth would send letters back, telling me about her new job at a daycare center. She’d left Raine’s employ after everything that happened with me. She said the house wasn’t the same without Blaze and I living there, and she felt like it was time to move on.
Her letters detailed the latest gossip about her friends or my former classmates. She never mentioned Blaze, so I assumed she’d lost touch with him just like I had.
But I was wrong.
Two years ago, she casually mentioned that she’d been in touch with him for years. She didn’t mention it earlier, she explained, because she didn’t want to bring up unpleasant memories. She wanted to give me time to heal.
She admitted that she’d been in touch with him off and on for years. He’d had a horrible drinking problem, but now he was in a program and seemed to be getting his life together. Oh yeah, and he was engaged.
Engaged.
I read the word over and over with trembling hands and a hammering hear. Then I screamed, and trashed my little New York apartment.
Oh yeah, and Blaze was having an engagement party next month, the letter went on to say. You should really come. It’ll be good for you, honey. It’s been a long time. Blaze would like to see you again. I would like to see you again.
And now here we were. Blaze was breaking off his engagement, or so he’d said.
I hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, so I figured it was safe to assume that he wasn’t really going through with it. He’d spoken in the heat of passion. In the cold light of day, he was a happily engaged man.
And that was okay. I was a single woman who wasn’t even thirty yet. I loved my art and had a good job, plenty of money in the bank, and a nice group of friends. I would get through this, just like I did before.
Maybe I would even get a dog and start online dating. Why not?
I was going to be fine without him. Just fine.
I only wished it didn’t hurt so much.
Chapter 13
Present day
The second I open the front door to my apartment
building, my new dog Geno shoots out like a furry brown bullet. The scrappy little dachshund-beagle mix has no idea that I just rescued him from the local animal shelter’s kill list. All he ever thinks about is running around outside and finding other dogs’ butts to sniff.
He’s bounding down the front steps when he breaks free from his leash, and then I’m running down the sidewalk to catch him. “Geno! Get your ass over here or I’ll take you back to the pound!”
I see a man’s legs step in front of him, hands picking him up and tucking him under a large arm like a football. When my eyes rake up the man’s body and settle on his face, I see Blaze smiling at me.
I slow down my pace then. My dog is now reaching up to give Blaze a thorough tongue bath.
“Sorry about that,” I say as I take Geno from Blaze and bend down to secure his leash. “I just got him last week and we’re still adjusting. I wasn’t really going to take him to the pound. It was just an idle threat.”
“What’s his name?” Blaze asks with a half smile.
“Geno. His former owner named him that, and he answers to it, so it seemed mean to change it on him.”
Geno starts pulling me down the sidewalk, and Blaze stays in step beside us.
“I never knew you were a dog person,” he says.
“Well, when I was living in San Francisco I had a neighbor with a sweet French Bulldog named Mickey, and I used to dog sit when she went away, which was often. Mickey and I used to spend hours at the dog park. I got attached, and started wanting a little buddy of my own once I settled down.”
“When you were in San Francisco, that was when you were taking graphic design classes, right? And dating that artsy fartsy nerd you met in the coffee shop?”
I give him the side eye. “How do you know that? Have you been stalking me or something?”
“Mirabeth saved all your letters in one of her kitchen drawers. I was staying with her for a short time—after I got back from my first stint in rehab—and I found them. I read them all. More than once.”
I shake my head, annoyed. “I really wish she would have had more discretion. I didn’t even know she still kept in touch with you until recently. If I knew, I might not have been so forthcoming in my letters.”