by Amelia Wilde
I won’t let her turn away. I keep her open to it. “It’s just water.” I nip her earlobe and she gasps. “It’s only touching you because I want it there. I’ve opened your cunt to it for that purpose.”
Haley lets her head fall back against my shoulder. Her chest heaves. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’m a fucking monster. I’m a cruel bastard.” Her hips push back. Haley can insist that I’m a prince all she wants, but this turns her on. “And I want to touch you however the fuck I want. I don’t want a single door closed to me.” I don’t want any doors closed to her, either. I don’t want her to grow more and more sensitive until there’s no touch she can tolerate. It’s not for a person like Haley. I know.
“You like—you like to hurt me. I want you to hurt me.”
I laugh at her. “It’s more complicated than that, darling. I can’t always start with pain for you. It’ll only end up—” Well, fuck. I didn’t intend for my throat to get tight. I didn’t intend to get this close to the truth. That it’s too late for me, but it’s not too late for her. “There’s a limit to what you can take.”
“There’s not.”
I put my hand over her throat and press. “There is. If you want me to find it for you, I’ll fucking find it. But right now you’re going to come from the water running over your pussy.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I’m making you do this. I’m ordering you to do this. It’s soft, and it’s warm, but it’s fucking relentless. It won’t stop until you come for me. I want this. I want you to feel this, just like I wanted you to feel me stretching your hole until your little ring was white and you were crying.” Haley trembles now, her hips rocking. “And if you’re very good, I’ll fuck you again. But your cunt needs to be wet. You need to come before I’ll touch you. Because once I start, darling, there’s no stopping me.”
She makes a sound of despair. Of hope.
“I’ll tear you apart.” I keep these words soft. Low. “I’ll be too much for you, and you’ll take me. You’ll take this. It’s making you come. You’re fucking filthy, and all it takes to make you come is the water.”
Haley takes in three quick breaths and then her orgasm arrives. It’s a hard victory, and her thigh quakes in my hands. She rocks up onto the ball of her foot and tries to fuck the air. Jesus, she’s sweet. And crying. A relieved cry. I’m going to reward her for it. I’m perfunctory with the towels because I don’t fucking care. All I care about is getting her to the bed and pulling her to the edge so I can kneel between her legs and tongue the evidence of her pleasure off heated flesh.
“Please, Leo,” she begs. “Please, please. I need you.”
One last lick of her, and then I’m on the bed, pushing into her warmth. She’s fucking soaked. I was cruel, with the shower. I knew it would be difficult for her. But I have to erase what they did. And if I have to hide gentleness in a show of cruelty to get her through, I will. I have to hope and fucking pray it works. I have to hope there’s a way to at least replace the sensation. To overwrite the past horror.
For now I fuck her with one hand braced on the headboard. “Hold yourself open for me. Like I just did to you.”
Haley’s breathless as one of her hands goes under her knee. “Oh—it’s deeper like that. I can feel—”
She’s swollen. Sensitive. Tight. The fluttering of her muscles cascades through her body and into mine. “Fuck, darling. I’m going to come. Your cunt is mine. Mine.” Harder. Deeper. Pleasure unhitches itself from my hips and surges into her. Haley puts her hand on the back of my neck. It pushes me over the edge. I can’t stop fucking her. Can’t stop rutting against her. Into more heat now. My heat.
The bedroom door opens.
“Leo?”
Daphne.
Haley freezes underneath me, but I don’t freeze. I can’t. Every muscle is wrapped up in filling her with cum. There is no stopping it.
My sister makes a strangled sound. Like she’s crying. Or about to scream. And I am so fucking sick of screaming. I am so fucking irritated. I push up from Haley as the last shudder fades. “What the fuck, Daphne? You throw a tantrum for days and now you want to talk in the middle of the night? Get out.”
Then I see it. The slant of light through the door. Illuminating our bodies. Mine, mainly.
Haley buries her face in my neck.
My bare neck.
I don’t have a fucking shirt on.
This is what it must be like to step on a landmine. My heart stops. I have enough time to realize what I’ve done before the explosion of heat and shame and rage. Daphne wasn’t supposed to see this. No one was ever supposed to see this. Showing Haley in broad daylight was like excising my soul and laying it out for her.
“Jesus. Daphne—”
She runs out, leaving the door open behind her, and I drop my head onto Haley’s shoulder and breathe her in. With one gentle hand, she rubs the back of my neck. “Are you okay?”
I kiss her collarbone and get out of bed, which is the last thing I want. “I’m fine.” Lie. “I’m going to go talk to her.”
Once I’m fully fucking clothed, I pad across the house. Daphne’s staying in a tower suite overlooking the woods. The floor above the bedroom is a small studio where she can paint.
Light from Daphne’s room cuts across the floor. She’s left the door partway open. It swings open under my hand. This is not the first time I’ve come to Daphne’s room to talk to her. It’s a different room now. She’s older. But some things are the same.
She sits at her desk, head down, face buried in her arms. My chest caves in. I’ve done everything in my power to let Daphne be whoever she wants to be. Sweetness and innocence don’t last long for Morellis. I’ve given her as much time as I could. Shielded her from as much pain as I could. I didn’t want her to be like me.
And yet.
This pose is so familiar. She could be me, sitting in that pew at church, waiting for the pain to pass and knowing it never will.
I step into the light. “Daphne.”
She lifts her head from her arms. In the soft lamplight her eyes are red. Cheeks splotchy. “Who did that to you?” A pause. Her chin dimples, the way it does when she’s going to cry. “Was it Dad?”
* * *
Haley’s in my personal library when I get back, curled up under a blanket with Jane Eyre in her lap. Every one of my scars is on fire. I can feel the individual wounds. My head swims with exhaustion. With the agonizing stress of having to have this conversation with Daphne. So when Haley opens her arms, I go. It infuriates me that we’re limited in the ways I can hold her, that I can be with her, because of me.
But fuck it. I get to my knees by her chair. Rest my head on her lap. Let her fold her arms over me.
It feels familiar here. Haley reaches for the lamp and turns it off. Starshine feels better than naked light.
“You did this once when you were sick,” she says, running her fingers through my hair.
“Did I?”
“Yeah. You were having a nightmare.”
“I was dreaming of hell.” I remember that part. I remember Eva, and Haley. I don’t remember doing this. It feels like a last resort. It feels like having my chest cut open and my heart exposed. “I was dreaming of—other things.”
If Haley asks me, I’ll tell her. I told her after my fever stopped boiling my brain that we would talk about what happened, and we haven’t.
She takes a deep breath. “How is Daphne?”
“She’s pissed at me. Even more now. For not telling her earlier.”
“You couldn’t tell her.”
“No, I fucking couldn’t. She was five years old when Caroline happened.” Regret taps at my ribs. “She’s hurt, and she’s angry that I’m keeping her here, and it’s—” I let out a breath. Haley curves her hand over the back of my neck. “I’m not happy about it. She used to tell me everything. Even shit I didn’t want to know. Not anymore. And now she thinks I kept a secret from her because I th
ought she couldn’t handle it.” There. Is that enough penance? Everything above my waist aches. “Do you miss your family?”
Haley considers this. “I miss my dad. I want to talk to Cash. Whatever happened must have been bad if it convinced him to do that to me. He has to feel like shit. I miss Petra, too, but she has her own life now. And I—” Another heavy breath. “I don’t know if I can fix all of this. Not just for now, but forever. I don’t know if I can keep them in my life.”
She doesn’t say the rest. She doesn’t say if I’m with you.
I hear it anyway.
“What do you miss?” I miss very little about my childhood. I have no desire to spend more time with my father, or my mother. The photo Haley found was a rare moment of happiness on my part. We had money, yes. We lived in a mansion. Attended an expensive school. And suffered a private hell. The best times were undoubtedly the vacations, like the one in the photo. My father wore his public persona when we were on vacation. He didn’t beat the shit out of me in the Bahamas.
“You’ve met my dad,” Haley begins, “so you know how he is. He’s so excited about his work. And he’s absentminded. He’s always been like that. His mind is always in his own world, with his inventions and his projects, so sometimes he missed things. Sometimes it was Petra who came to my after-school things and not him. But we spent time together.” I can’t see her face, but I can hear the smile in her voice. “On the weekends he would take us to the public library. Petra would go to the romances. Cash and I would go to the youth section. My dad would go to the science section, and we would spend hours there. We would go and find him when our stomachs started growling.”
It sounds so normal. So un-fucked up. “And then you would go home?”
“We would stop at this hot dog stand outside. I would get mustard, and he would get ketchup with relish.” Haley laughs. “I can’t stand relish. Sometimes the hot dog guy would get mine wrong, and Cash would always make him fix it.” A sad sigh. “He would defend me. He was younger, but he would always stand up for me.”
“At the library?”
“At the parties.” Haley outlines the shell of my ear with a fingertip. “We had to go to the Constantine parties, and I would get teased.”
I pick my head up, take one look at her face in the pale light of the stars, and switch with her. Gather her into my lap. It’s times like this I wish I could just sit in the chair like a normal fucking person. But I’ll be damned if it stops me from holding her like this and looking out into the night. “What could anyone have to tease you about?”
Haley snorts. “You ripped up all my Target clothes the first night I was here. Which was kind of hot, honestly. But that’s what they would tease me about. My dresses wouldn’t be designer. They would be secondhand or borrowed, and I always brought a book with me. Cash would get into arguments about it. Fights. Even though he wanted to fit in. He was the best at fitting in.”
“I didn’t know Constantines would use such terrible manners at parties.”
A sad laugh. “I felt bad when it got that far. When he could get hurt. And then Caroline’s henchman hurt him again. It’s my fault. I left him out there on his own, and they had to break his ribs to get him to do what he did. More than that, probably. He must have thought—” She shakes her head. “I feel bad that it came to that. I hate that it came to that.”
“Don’t.” Haley turns her face to mine, her eyes luminous. “He defended you because he wanted to.”
She runs her fingertip along the collar of my shirt. “Like you defended your siblings?”
I turn my face away. Pure instinct. I don’t want to talk about that. Don’t want to go back to that time. Except this is what that bastard Father Simon meant. Damn him and his penance.
God’s penance.
Fuck.
When Haley puts her hand on my cheek and turns me back to her, I let her. “You don’t have to talk about this,” she says softly.
“My father was a real bastard.” It feels like new whip wounds, to say these things. “He would get into a mood. Something would set him off. He hated to see us being human. Being weak. But that was always a moving target. He liked it best if you were a ruthless prick like him, but always with fucking flawless manners. That’s why he liked Lucian best.”
“Manners?”
“Yes. The Constantines think we’re uncultured fucks, but they’ve never sat for a formal dinner with my parents. None of them would have survived.” Haley leans her head against my shoulder. She’s too soft to hear this. “I couldn’t fucking stand the waiting. He’d take it out on one of us eventually. Someone would use the wrong tone at dinner or say the wrong thing, and then what the fuck are you supposed to do? The last time I—” Jesus. This is way too far. It’s like being burned alive. “He thought he was doing us a favor. He would say that. I’m doing you a favor. It would only ever be one of us at a time, because he would get tired, or he would get bored. Only Tiernan ever escaped the abuse, because he was a bastard. My father never saw him as a child, more like a tool he could use. The rest of us, though, we were his. His to raise. His to beat. It was his version of parenting.”
“So you—” She’s crying. “You put yourself in the way?”
“I’ll never forgive myself for the last time I let him get to Eva. She insists it wasn’t my fault. It was one night at dinner, and he was in one of his moods, and she made some comment. At first I thought she’d get away with it. That motherfucker waited until after everyone was done eating to call her to his office. And her face afterward—” I can’t let myself think of it now. “Anyway. I decided then I would be the target. Whatever I had to do.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.” I kiss her because I can’t say anything else. I can’t drive the knife in any deeper. The taste of her, sweet mint and Haley, soothes the wretched fear that telling her is itself a weakness. Even if I’ve been compelled to do it. “This has to be enough penance,” I grumble against her mouth.
She pulls back, stroking the sides of my face. “What?”
I was wrong. There’s a deeper cut to make. I’m going to make an enormous donation to that fucking church. Maybe then Father Simon won’t try to kill me on a regular basis. “You know that my family is Catholic.”
“Everyone knows that, I think.”
“We never missed a Sunday Mass. We never missed anything at the church. We had to be a credit to our parents. That was—” It hurts to laugh. “That was the great irony of life. That he could be such a piece of shit at home and an icon at church. Most of my siblings stopped going after they moved out.” I hate this. I hate this. “But I couldn’t let it go.”
Haley stares, her blue eyes wide. “Really?”
“I know. I should burst into flame when I step past the threshold.”
“No.” She puts her hands on my chest. Gentle, gentle. Puts one over my heart. “I never guessed. I never knew.”
“Yes, well. I don’t advertise it. And it’s very different now. I obviously can’t go to a regular Mass, and no amount of money would convince me to go back to the one we attended. It was too corrupt.”
“So…what do you do? Where do you go?”
“St. Thomas’s. In the city. The priest there holds midnight Mass for me. He hears my confession first.”
Haley’s eyes shine. “Confession?”
“I’m a sinner, darling.”
“I have a confession.”
I lift her face to mine. “It’s not a sin to love the way I fuck you.”
She laughs, a tear slipping down her cheek. “When we were fighting before. When we weren’t talking? I went to the kitchen at night. Gerard was there. And I met Timothy.”
“I know. Gerard told me.”
A huff. “I thought he might. But that’s not the confession.”
“Tell me.”
“Timothy told me about your dad. He told me about the maids, and about being your half brother. And he told me—” A deep breath. “He told me that yo
u think you’re going to hell. Is that what it means—is that why—”
I kiss her into silence. Jesus. There’s always more she wants from me. She’s down to the bone already. “Timothy’s wrong. For a long time, I thought I was already burning.”
“What changed?”
“You.” Haley pulls me close by the neck. Kisses me. Her tongue darts out to meet mine, and fuck, I want her. “You’re too innocent for hell, so this can’t be it. Even if it hurts like a motherfucker.”
“You’re corrupting me, though. What then?” That she can play with me, at a time like this—I’ll never be worthy of it.
“Then I’ll go to church and ask for absolution. I’ll do the penance, if that’s the cost.” I lean down and brush my lips over the downy skin at her neck. “I confess to you, darling, that I go because sometimes it eases the pain.”
“Like a miracle?”
“No. Not like a miracle.” I could breathe her in forever. “When I was growing up, it was a safe place, which I know is another ridiculous irony.”
She makes a sound of sorrow, but I shake my head.
“For that hour, my father had to be on his best behavior. He couldn’t beat anyone in the pews. So I looked forward to it. I looked forward to church, and vacations, and birthday parties, even though they were always strict, formal affairs usually attended by the fucking bishop. My fucked-up nerves recognize that, on some level. It can be less painful when I walk in the door.”
“Leo.” She can’t keep the sympathy from her voice.
“It wasn’t all a nightmare, darling. Don’t get that into your head.”
She runs her lips down the line of my jaw. “The birthdays. Were they big parties?”
“Yes. My mother has always been good at throwing elegant events.”