Salvage Her Heart

by Shelly Pratt

  The moment I enter her, I’m bathed in the heat of her body. Although she doesn’t move an inch, it does nothing to curtail the passion I’m feeling. Willing participant or not, tonight I’m in need of roughly dominating my wife back into her rightful place—which is below me.

  I thrust back and forth, building the climax that is closing in on me. I’ve never been one to come so quickly, but tonight’s events have had a devastating effect on me physically. My body is in such a state of hyperbole that I’m physically about to go off the rails.

  Evie’s moaning below me incites short, sharp jabs into her pussy. No doubt her moans are not derived from pleasure, rather the pain of our intense fucking. The sound, nonetheless, is arousing me to the core. My surroundings disappear. Even the table serves to leave my sight, as though Evie’s body is merely suspended in air while I pump furiously away at her. In a final bid to hold on to her with everything I’ve got, I clutch her shoulders with both hands from behind and stabilize her body while I come with devastating force inside of her.

  The release is as intense as the first time I ever hand-fucked myself—surprising, exultant and completely gratifying. I flop heavily against Evie’s back, catching my breath while I breathe in her scent. Evie—she will always be mine. Heaven help anyone who gets in the way of the life I’ve carved out for us.

  When my dick starts to soften, I pull out of my wife with a little more care than when I entered her. Her head is tilted to the side, her mane fanning out around her. If she didn’t have a bruise already showing on her cheek she would actually look quite stunning sprawled out on the table at dusk with the beautiful skyline behind her.

  I zip myself back up and survey the mess on the balcony. Evie is seemingly vacant, not moving spare the sporadic blinking of her eyelids. Perhaps she’s fighting tears—of which I have no time for. All I want now is a hot bath and a good scotch.

  ‘Happy birthday to me, huh?’ It’s a rhetorical question, so she dutifully doesn’t answer. ‘Get this mess and yourself cleaned up before you come to bed.’ I leave her, knowing full well I have just broken her a little more. To most, that would be an abhorrent thought. To me, I feel like the most fortunate man in the world.

  Five

  EVIE

  All that stares back at me is an empty soul. Dark circles emanate under my dull eyes and I look… broken—completely and utterly broken. There’s bruising on my face, which I’m currently trying to apply concealer to. It shames me that last night came to this. I know better. I should have done what was expected of me rather than whiling my day away with fanciful thoughts of a life I just can’t have. This is my life. It is all it will ever be. It’s almost masochistic to give oneself hope when there is no obvious out.

  And yet, the craving for more seems to bubble ever so slightly below the surface. Even his beatings will not diminish this little flicker of hope that boils within. I will not give up. I will not give him the satisfaction of being his toy forever. Sooner or later, one of us won’t survive the power play of this relationship.

  There was no sleeping in today. The phone next to the bed made sure of that. I was thinking that it perhaps might have been one of Alex’s work colleagues, but it was a bigger devil on the end of the line—my father.

  Dad had always been a silver-spoon man, born to a family that had come from generations of wealth and titles in Europe. What Dad hadn’t realised while he was racking up millions on the family credit ledger was that many years of bad debt were crippling the family. By the time his parents had passed and he realised the full extent of the situation, it was too late to do anything about it.

  He was left with a wife and teenage daughter to provide for while trying to beat the banks away with a stick so they wouldn’t repossess the remaining assets the family held in their name. With mounting pressure and no one to turn to, he took up gambling. For a while he was pretty good at it. But as they say—the house always wins.

  It was during a fateful trip to Sydney’s Star Casino that my dad, Jonathan Christie, met Alex. It would forever change all of our lives. He’d gone with the last of the money—withdrawn the very last red cent from the bank and gone to gamble the lot of it at the tables. Within an hour he’d folded out, unable to continue because the ‘house’ wouldn’t extend him a line of credit, either. When you run a casino intent on making profit, you soon learn who the players are.

  A drink in the bar to drown his sorrows saw Jonathan face to face with my future husband. Now, the thing about being down and out is that you should never sell your soul to the devil—it just might end up costing you everything you hold dear. And by everything, I mean your only child.

  Over many glasses of scotch, Alex’s proposal put forth the notion that the Christie family could rise back into the green with the banks and hold a generous sum of cash to boot. It was more than generous. It was absurd. But what could one man, who for the most part of his life had been a spineless and weak fellow, offer in exchange for his only path at redemption?

  I’ll tell you what—me. He made a deal with Alex, signed the contract and then put in motion every manipulation in the book to see that I would marry the one man who should never win the hand of daddy’s dearest.

  Alex was suggestive enough to plant the seed and nurture it perfectly while they consumed copious amounts of alcohol. What would be better for Jonathan than having his debts cleared completely, a heart-stopping amount of cash deposited into his bank account the very next day and his daughter marrying one of the country’s most eligible entrepreneurs?

  It may sound harsh, but what would have been better was if dear old Dad had blown his brains out and left the rest of us to carry on with our lives. Money isn’t everything, but I don’t think he ever realised that until the ink was dry on the contract.

  Perhaps I’d been a bit of a catalyst in helping him get to that point, along with my mother as well. The illusion of wealth does make you think that the bank accounts are endless. Maybe if mum hadn’t spent as much, maybe if I didn’t insist on ballet classes and horse-riding lessons, then he wouldn’t have felt compelled to sell me out.

  I do know, though, that I never would have promised my child to a man who I didn’t even know.

  Dad’s only stipulation in the contract was that if he or my mother were to ever call requesting to see me, then Alex would comply without question, regardless of where we were living in the world. Alex reluctantly agreed, knowing that this would be the deal breaker. As Jonathan signed his name on the dotted line, Alex was content in the knowledge that the months he’d been stalking me had been well invested. Pretty soon I was his to control.

  Alex wasn’t always a monster. He kept his perfectly crafted image in check while we courted, so that he could sell the lie to my parents completely. At first, he was intoxicating and magnetic. He oozed confidence and power, he was masculine and everything a girl of my standing should hope they would end up with. The minute the marriage was consummated, all that changed. Insecurity set in. Manipulation and control became the norm for me. Ever so slowly, life became my worst nightmare. And all because my father had choreographed the whole thing, just so that he could still sit inside his mansion and sip on his port.

  In the early days of our marriage I still had my rose-coloured glasses on. While I thought Alex was controlling, I thought it was just his way. I thought he did it out of love. It made me feel loved—wanted. When I look back, I realise that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  It was one day while we were visiting with my parents that I happened to come across the contract that had sealed my fate. I needed my birth certificate to arrange a passport for travel with Alex to Italy on business. While rummaging through the filing cabinet in my dad’s office, I came across the contract. Sitting right there in the same folder as all the other important documents pertaining to my life, was the one that I was never intended to see. It would change me irrevocably. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, would ever be the same again.

  For what
seemed like ages, I sat there, all alone in the study, poring over the document. Reading over each and every horrible word made Fatal Attraction seem like a romantic love story.

  The very thought of it all made me sick to my stomach. Eventually my mother came looking for me, startling me out of my mortification.

  ‘Darling, have you been crying?’

  ‘No… I, ah…’ I sniffed, desperately placing a smile on my face to ensure there would be no further discussion.

  ‘Of course you have, Eve. Whatever’s the matter, love?’ I quickly stuffed the papers back into the folder in the cabinet and retrieved the birth certificate I had been looking for.

  ‘I’m okay, mum, I was just reminiscing my childhood. I really miss you, you know?’

  ‘Oh dear, I miss you too! It’s not the same without you in the house, but your dad and I are learning to cope with being on our own again after twenty-two years.’

  I remember the look on her face that day. It is the only comfort I have, because I know she had nothing to do with my father’s deception. She was naïve and unsuspecting to it all. She missed her daughter, but had no idea of whose clutches she’d fallen into. She is the only reason I still facilitate these visits with them. I could have made up some lie, spoke to them directly and told them that we were too busy, but I just couldn’t do that to mum, despite my father being the snake who signed me up for this ludicrous deal in the first place.

  So, when Alex informed me we were visiting with my parents today, I put up no resistance. I acted normally. I made breakfast. I showered, and now I apply make-up to cover the bruising of my cheeks and the split lip that cracks every time I open my mouth. The metallic taste of blood lingers on my tongue, but that’s okay. It’s a reminder; a reminder that with increasing urgency I need to get the hell out of this life for good.

  The reflection that stares back at me agrees. I will not be subdued, manipulated or become the timid, compliant woman Alex wants me to be.

  I’m Evie, and I’m strong—stronger than all of the men in my life who seek to make me a fearful, meek woman who can never say no. I will say yes to a happy tomorrow, I will say yes to a life without violence. Most importantly, I will say yes to a life without Alex.

  With a final application of lipstick, I wonder just how I can set all of my plans in motion.

  Six

  GRAYSON

  Once smitten… well, let me just say that a certain blonde has been on my mind for weeks. I find it quite amusing to want a person so much, and yet, know so little about them. Weeks ago I would have been dreading turning up to work—not because I don’t love the people I work with, but because it’s not my passion. I’m pinning all my hopes on one day having my own art gallery. In the meantime, the rent doesn’t pay itself.

  I’m lucky, though. If it weren’t for Jean, I’d probably be still living on the streets. When I was sixteen, I’d become quite the rebellious teen, which all stemmed from what can go wrong in teen romances. I’ve never confided in anyone about what really happened between us, but alcohol, pot and tattoos were just the beginning. By the time high school was out, I was up to my eyeballs in coke and heroin, and had a booze problem that just wasn’t going away.

  When my parents had finally had enough of me, they booted me out to fend for myself. They were hoping the tough-love approach would make me see sense. So, they piled me with a thousand dollars cash in my back pocket and all my worldly possessions on the sidewalk, and watched and waited to see if I’d sink or swim.

  At first, I was drowning miserably. Giving a drug addict enough money to kill themselves with is never a good idea. I mean, shit, with the need of drugs pulling me to the nearest dealer, it was more than obvious I was going to blow (pardon the pun) a thousand dollars pretty bloody quickly. My so-called ‘friends’ and I had a hell of a week, but when the blow and heroin has all been snorted and jabbed and the money has run dry, only you remain—strung out and craving for more.

  With all my chances with the folks dried up, I took to the streets in hopes that I could scrounge any addicts’ leftovers. It was a miserable sight. Here I was, the prodigal son, turned into a deplorable mess, wasting my life chasing my next hit. The private school education certainly wasn’t reaping its benefits.

  It was only a chance meeting with Jean that turned my life around. Out the back of her store is a communal rest room. I snuck in early one morning, dehydrated, shaky and looking worse than a mangy cat crawling back from the dead. By this time I was so desperate for any kind of hit that would take my cravings away that I had resorted to stalking other users. Not far from Jean’s coffee shop is a rocky riverbank that is home to some of Brisbane’s desperados. The large bridge that flanks the banks is the perfect camouflage for their seedy partakings.

  All I had to do was sit and wait. Eventually one of them would inject with that liquid gold and they would pass out, needle still hanging limply from their veins. I would sneak in and remove the offending syringe with as much grace as a rhino doing Swan Lake. I was desperate. Fuck, you’d have to be to resort to those kinds of things. I was a frenzied addict, anxiously seeking a means to fly away from reality. So much so that I would even resort to injecting the remaining heroin from some junkie’s needle. Now that’s low.

  All thoughts of disease and AIDS escaped my mind as I ran, suspecting that somebody, somehow had seen my emergence from under the bridge. Paranoia was a bitch. I took off to the only place I knew I could get some privacy and slammed the door shut. In my haste, I never locked the door. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be my saving grace. My one opportunity to escape this troubled life I now found myself in. It would be freedom of a different kind. It would be my do-over.

  No sooner had the pinch of the needle punctured my veins when I pressed the plunger, emptying the remaining heroin into my bloodstream. I wasn’t used to it, so it quickly engulfed my body, making me a target for whoever crossed my path.

  At this point, someone could have taken my life and I would have been powerless to stop it. Lucky for me, Jean walked in on me. She saved me with tough love and kindness. I wouldn’t say she kept me prisoner in her flat above the delicatessen, I mean, it was certainly no Misery, but she certainly watched me like a hawk.

  That woman herself has been through a lot, but she selflessly took me into her home and made me a better man. I healed, and learned to dream again. For months I never ventured outside. Instead, Jean had me getting well and focusing on making my body stronger. Before long I was challenging myself—eager to see how many push-ups I could do each morning, or how many chin-ups I could pull off the door frame. My new addiction became exercise—I loved it.

  When I was well enough, Jean had me baking goods for the shop. She was a great teacher and taught me everything she knew. After six months of living rent-free in her place, I finally had my feet back on the ground. It was time to re-emerge and integrate into society. It was time I got my life back on track.

  That was nine years ago. Now at twenty-eight, I’m looking forward to seeing some of my dreams come to fruition. I met nice mates, got a place where we can split the rent, and Jean kindly keeps me on the roster whenever I need it while I establish a portfolio of paintings. I’ve always been artsy but now it’s my passion. Late into the night I find myself at the easel, painting up a storm.

  With Jean’s support, I even rekindled my relationship with my parents. Things were strained at first but nothing was going to stop me from fighting to win their respect back. I know throughout my addiction things were particularly hard on my mum. It burned her up inside to see she was so powerless to stop my decline into becoming a rotting degenerate.

  With my life on track, a few weeks ago I would have said life was pretty sweet. That was until Evie walked into the store. Now I realise what’s been missing all this time—someone to love. I want someone who will love me, warts and all. I want someone who won’t judge me for my past, and yet love me for my future—our future. More than anything, I want that kind o
f connection with someone that overwhelms you, mind, body and soul. Do I think Evie is the one? You bet your arse I do.

  At the moment, I’m kind of like the kid who sits by the window, watching and waiting for the postman to bring the mail around birthdays. You just know there’s going to be that special envelope with money inside from your gran, and you’re so eager to get it you’ve already started spending the money, despite the fact that it’s not even in your hot little hand yet.

  That’s the way I feel about Evie. I’m waiting for the day she strolls back into the shop—back into my life so that I can, in some way, impact her life enough that she’ll want to come back for more.

  I’ve tried desperately to restrain myself from asking Jean about her. Normally when I come back to work I’m in the back of the store, out of view from the customers. Lately, I find any excuse to bump the barista off the coffee machine so that I might have another run-in with the beauty that had burned my eyes just from the sight of her. I have no idea why it’s so important to see her again—it just is. It’s like why the grass is green or the sky is blue. It just is, simple as that.

  Today I’ve already bumped Lisa from the coffee machine. She begrudgingly took my place in the kitchen, keeping an eye on the pastries while I keep an eye on the front window. Many people pass by on the sidewalk, although none of them are Evie.

  I’m minding my own business, which actually means I’m ‘Evie spotting’ when I can suddenly feel the stare of the boss on me. I turn to catch Jean offering me a critical stare from across the counter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, you’re gonna burn that milk if you keep staring off into space like that.’