Wild War

by Laurelin Paige

  Her hand lost its rhythm, and she gave up on fondling me, instead wrapping her fingers in my shirt, clutching on as though she needed the support to stand. I penetrated deeper, adding a second finger when her walls began to tighten around the first. Concentrating on her reactions, I moved my thumb against her sensitive nub, teasing her with a mixture of soft and hard strokes.

  I was painfully hard, her breathy gasps sending more blood to my cock, and shit, it was stupid. So fucking stupid—to be kissing her so possessively, to be finger fucking her in the yard—and after the day in the locker room, I’d been so good about not being stupid with her. I only allowed myself to touch her in the middle of the night. I insisted on condoms, and if we couldn’t get our hands on them, I didn’t put my cock inside her, never again putting trust in pulling out. I didn’t look at her at dinner. I didn’t say her name. I didn’t leave my room in the morning until I knew she’d already gone downstairs. I pretended I barely noticed her. I never let on that she was the only thing that ever crossed my mind.

  I’d been painstakingly good for four months, and now any ounce of restraint I’d had vanished, and all I cared about was making her come all over my hand. She was there, so close, so almost there…

  I don’t know how I heard it. I was so completely wrapped up in our bubble—me and her, nothing else. Maybe we had an angel on our side, or maybe my ears had just become so attuned to always being on guard, whether I was aware of it or not. However it managed to register, I heard the footsteps in time, and I pulled away abruptly so that there was at least a yard between us when Stark came around the corner. “The car doesn’t look done.”

  Jolie was used to thinking fast. She pushed away from the garage, her breathing still rapid. “Cade chased me with the hose,” she accused.

  She was pretty believable as a sibling complaining about her stepbrother’s antics, as long as Stark didn’t look at my crotch or think too much about the flush in her cheeks or notice how swollen her lips were.

  My heart racing, I took my place in the scene. “She poured the bucket on me first.”

  “Accidentally. God.” She marched toward the car and picked up her sponge, trying to pull her father’s attention. I recognized the motives of her behavior better than I used to. See, I’m doing what you want, Dad. There’s nothing to be mad at.

  But he saw something to be mad at anyway.

  I didn’t think he actually saw my hand down her pants or my lips on hers, because if he had, he would have made a very big production about it. But he saw something. Maybe it was how we were so quick to move away from each other. Or the panicked look of my posture. Or maybe he saw the same googly eyes that Amelia claimed we always had for each other.

  Or maybe I was being paranoid, and he was just pissed that we weren’t finished with his car. “To my office, Cade.”

  Jolie went pale, and even though we’d promised not to draw attention to our relationship by sticking up for each other, she did anyway. “Why him? I said I started it with the bucket.”

  “I heard you. Your punishment is to finish washing the car by yourself. And Cade can explain to me why he thinks it’s okay to waste my water, as well as why he finds it acceptable to distract my daughter from her chores. Are there any other transgressions you want to add to that?”

  I could sense Jolie wanting to say something, wanting to save me the way she knew that I would want to save her if the situation was reversed. But I gave her a quick glance that warned her to keep her mouth shut.

  Eight weeks. I thought the words loudly in my head, hoping she’d somehow hear them. Only eight weeks, and we were gone.

  Meanwhile, I’d been fucking stupid today, and even if that wasn’t what I was being punished for, I definitely deserved what I got.

  Eighteen

  Cade

  “Take off your shirt and put your palms on the desk.”

  It didn’t matter how many times I’d been in his office now, I still found my entire body tensing up as soon as I crossed the threshold.

  I was even more nervous today, the adrenaline from almost being caught still running through my veins, sending my anxiety to overdrive. My tension was validated with his initial instructions—the punishment was always worse when he started with bare skin.

  Spring break was definitely over.

  “It will be worse for you if you try to drag this out,” Stark said when I hadn’t moved past the doorway.

  I’d already had the fortune of experiencing what happened when I wasn’t quick to respond and wasn’t about to test him again. His demeanor suggested he was in one of his more sadistic moods.

  Lucky me.

  Taking a deep breath, I forced my feet forward, stripping off my wet shirt as I went. Instead of dropping it to the floor, I set it on the desk before placing my palms on the wood. If this was going to hurt like I thought it was, I’d want something to bite on so I didn’t chew up my tongue.

  And so that I didn’t scream.

  Not that the happenings in this room were secret to anyone else in the house, but I preferred keeping a tough image. Even if Jolie knew it was all a facade, it kept her from acknowledging how completely awful it was, and for some reason, that made it fractionally more tolerable.

  Eyes facing the desk, I shook my head from side to side, knowing that the more tense I was, the worse it would feel. After one particularly bad session a few months before, I’d found a meditation book in the library that happened to include a section on managing stress. The deep breathing techniques had been useful, both when I was facing Stark’s latest punishment and when I was randomly seized by inexplicable panic.

  I tried one of the methods now, engaging in a three-part breath—into the collarbone, into the lungs, exhale. I only managed to get two in before I heard the drawer open—the distinct squeak telling me it was the drawer that kept the whip—and my focus was thrown. I’d been listening for the rustle of his belt, hoping that would be his weapon of choice, or even the yardstick, which he was quite fond of and didn’t leave lasting damage.

  The skinny-tailed whip was the worst, and my wounds from the last time were less than three weeks old and just starting to really heal. I’d been hopeful they wouldn’t scar, but if he reopened them today, there was less chance I wouldn’t walk away with a souvenir. If Jolie still had Neosporin, she’d give it to me, and if not, she might know how to get her hands on more.

  But I couldn’t think about the later because I was still in the now, and the now required all of my attention.

  Smack!

  Stark liked to crack the whip through the air before using it on my skin. Warming up, maybe. He seemed to enjoy the shiver of fear it sent through my body as much as he enjoyed the actual torture. Anyone that suggested that anticipation was worse than the actual pain didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about, but I would readily concede that it was far preferable to just get the shit over with.

  This wasn’t the crack of the whip, though. This was new. This was the smack of a thick cane against the desk. A cane that would surely feel a hell of a lot more substantial than the skinny-tailed whip.

  It was almost impossible to suppress the instinct to run.

  “You know why you’re here today, Cade?” he said, slapping the cane lightly against the palm of his hand.

  “Because I wasted water, sir.”

  In the early days, I’d argued my supposed transgressions. It was a natural defense mechanism, and even after I’d been given positive proof that it only made the punishment worse, I hadn’t been able to shut my rebellious mouth.

  Submitting to his power over me had never been an option until Jolie convinced me to try it. It had gone against every instinct in my body, but she’d been right. He wanted to see me on my knees—figuratively, if not literally—and the sooner I got there, the sooner he was satisfied.

  He’s even quicker if you cry, she’d said.

  I still had a hard time letting him see tears. I’d discovered he also got off on bleeding, th
ough, which I obviously had no control over.

  But I could definitely lick his ass from word one. “I’m sorry, sir. It was impulsive, and I regret my actions.” Blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t even hard to sound sincere. Seconds from facing the pain, I was always genuinely regretful.

  This should have been enough to get him going. Today, he surprised me.

  “You think I give a shit about the water? With as much as we use to keep the grounds green, the amount you used today is negligible to our bill.”

  Of course, I knew that. It was a surprise that he did. Usually, negligible was not a word in his vocabulary. He was a tightwad, always harping on keeping the furnace no higher than sixty-eight, practically measuring out how much cereal I put in my bowl in the morning, as if he saw the world in pennies and nickels.

  I hadn’t realized I could get any more apprehensive, but apparently I could. My heart rate increased, and it felt like it was lodged firmly in my throat. Surprises were never good where Stark was concerned.

  “Do you want to guess again?” he asked, slapping his palm again, taunting me with the way it smacked against his skin.

  I really didn’t want to guess again. Because if it wasn’t the water, then it was Jolie. Had he seen us after all?

  Well, I wasn’t admitting shit. If he’d seen us, he’d have to put the accusation out there himself. I wasn’t walking into a trap, and I wasn’t bringing Jolie into it, no matter what he did to me.

  “I’m waiting, Cade.”

  “It was taking too long to scrub the car,” I said, knowing that wasn’t it, but doing my best to paint myself as innocent of whatever it was he believed. “That was my fault too. Amelia stopped by and—”

  “Since you aren’t allowed to have guests when you have chores to complete, that’s another infraction to add to your list, but you’re still far from the reason you’re here right now.” He bent down next to me and clapped his hand around my shoulders, as though we were buddies. “You’re a dumb one, but you aren’t this dumb. You know what this is about.”

  “I really don’t, sir.” I could feel his breath on my cheek, smelled the lingering scent of the tuna fish sandwich he’d had for lunch. He wasn’t usually this intrusive, and the new tactic upped my trepidation. I didn’t dare turn my head, afraid my eyes would give something away. Because if he really had figured out our secret, there was no way I was leaving the room alive.

  He pulled on a hair at the base of my neck, chuckling when I jerked. “You really think I’m the dumb one, don’t you? Think you’ve been pulling the wool over my eyes for months, but let’s be clear—the only reason you’ve gotten away with it is because I let you.”

  I moved from trepidation to out-and-out fear. “I don’t think you’re dumb at all, sir. I don’t know—”

  “It’s okay, I know. I’ve seen you, Cade.” His tone was suddenly gentle, coaxing. “You think I’ve missed the way you look at her across the dinner table? I’m a man, too. I remember what it’s like to be a teen. The hormones. The way anything with tits can get you hard. And my daughter is a looker. It’s understandable.”

  My chest hurt, and it was getting increasingly harder not to piss myself. I’d thought I’d been so careful, trying to never look at her in case I let something on. The only glimmer of hope was that he was only talking about longing looks. And so far, he was only talking about me.

  I’d never been big on praying, but I started right then, praying to whatever God there might be in the sky to please not be anything more.

  “I figured no harm in lustful thoughts,” he continued. “It seemed to be making you miserable, but no harm in a little suffering. Good for the spirit.”

  That was his life mantra spoken out loud right there.

  “You know what was different about today?”

  I couldn’t help myself—I turned my head toward him, desperate to hear the depth of the shit pile I’d gotten myself in. The word what was on the tip of my tongue, but I forced myself to continue playing dumb. “I’ve never looked at your daughter the way you’re suggesting. Not today. Not ever.”

  He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Today, you weren’t just looking at her with lust. Today, you were looking at her like you thought you could have her. See the difference there? See why there’s no way that can’t go unpunished? Because there is no way in hell you are ever getting your filthy bastard hands on my daughter. Do you hear me?”

  It was surreal how relieved I could be while simultaneously feeling the weight of his threat. But fuck, I was slack with the relief, my eyes tearing. He didn’t actually know anything. He hadn’t seen. He had nothing but suspicions.

  But if he ever, ever knew there was more…

  “You do hear me,” he said, clapping my back on my previous wound so that I would jerk again. “It’s so gratifying to be understood. I’ll make this memorable for you, so you don’t forget. Go ahead, and let it out. Tears don’t look good on a man, but we both know you’re just a whiny little bitch. No use pretending otherwise.”

  I hadn’t realized I was really crying, until he pointed it out. He hadn’t even struck me yet, and a puddle was forming on the desk. By the time it smacked across my back, tearing and lacerating my skin, I was sobbing.

  He only hit me once with the cane, but he followed with a smack of his hand against the wound, eliciting a higher-pitched cry from my throat. I could barely distinguish the next two slaps from each other because my whole body felt like a throbbing nerve. I didn’t need to have the cane across my back to be in pain. It hurt just to exist, to have the mother that I had, to have to endure these punishments, to have to hide the only joy in my life from nearly everyone around me. It hurt to understand that this had been Jolie’s whole life. It hurt to know we had eight fucking more weeks to survive, and it hurt to know that, even though our future had to be better than this, it was still uncertain.

  And even though we were determined to escape, it hurt to know that we would never completely break free of him—he’d marked himself on our souls. He’d broken us in places that would never be healed.

  I was so consumed by my crying, I didn’t realize when the slaps stopped. It was almost like coming to—the way I suddenly became alert to my surroundings, the way that only a moment before I’d existed in some plane by myself—and in the shock, I didn’t think before I twisted to look for Stark. It wasn’t like him to have me linger after he’d finished his abuse, but I’d never broken down before, and now that I was aware of my skin, I had a feeling my wound was pretty bad.

  It certainly hurt to turn, and I winced when I did, but the pain was momentarily forgotten when I saw my stepfather. His eyes were shut, so he didn’t see me. The cane was hanging from his left hand, loosely at his side, and the right was fisted around his exposed cock, jerking himself rapidly, and judging from the expression on his face, he was very close to climax.

  Bile rose in my mouth, and I quickly turned back to the desk, focusing my eyes on the wood so hard they physically hurt. Unsee it, unsee it, unsee it. I commanded myself to forget. It was such a brief look. So brief it didn’t count. Like when I picked up a cigarette that I’d dropped on the ground and told myself five-second rule before picking it up and putting it in my mouth.

  I didn’t see it.

  It didn’t happen.

  It couldn’t be happening.

  As terrible as everything else was, this couldn’t be part of it. This would make it too terrible. This would make it that much closer to unsurvivable.

  At the same time, another part of my brain tried to sort the new information. Tried to be reasonable. You always knew your pain got him going. This is probably what he does every time after you leave. This isn’t anything new. This doesn’t change anything.

  But it changed everything.

  I knew that despite not having time or capability to process it.

  I knew this had inflicted a new pain that I couldn’t begin to absorb.

  This thing he’d done—was doing—to me without
even touching me, it had an immeasurable weight. This was a trauma that couldn’t be scaled against the other traumas. I was desperately trying to compartmentalize it, trying to stow it someplace I’d never remember, but it was too big to tuck away neatly, so instead it occupied every part of me, and still I was already trying to block it out, trying to paint over it. Trying to make it blend in with everything else so I could pretend it wasn’t there. So I could make it go away. Make it not be real.

  Just look at the desk.

  Just see the desk.

  Don’t see anything but the desk.

  I stared at that one spot, and didn’t move for what seemed like ages. I managed to concentrate all of my attention on my throbbing back, so I didn’t hear when he finished or when he zipped up his pants or when he finally walked to the drawer to put away the cane.

  “When you’re done sobbing like a little girl, you can clean up your tears and get out of here,” he said.

  He’d been so self-absorbed, he hadn’t noticed I’d stopped crying.

  That was good. I was glad he’d forgotten about me. It made it easier for me to forget about him.

  I pretended to wipe the last of my tears away, grabbed my T-shirt to dry up the drops on the desk, then left without putting it on. Without looking at him. I always felt small coming out of his office, along with whatever pain he’d administered that session. Today, I also felt exposed. I felt naked, like I had more than just my shirt off, and it wasn’t just my back burning from the slaps but all of me that burned with red-hot shame.

  Eight weeks, I reminded myself as I climbed up the stairs to my room. Thank God Jolie wasn’t waiting for me. I couldn’t see her right now, and after this, we had to be cautious as fuck.

  I wouldn’t go to her room tonight.

  I would avoid her.

  We had to stop sneaking around. We couldn’t risk being caught. I’d keep my eyes down through every meal. I’d lay low and keep her safe, and I swore to myself that I would never ever say a single word about what happened in that room to anyone as long as I lived.