Lured In (Dark Paradise, #1) (17 page)

Slowly inserting him inside of me, we both sighed at the welcome sensation. I seized his tongue with my mouth as I began to move my hips back and forth. I held nothing back when I had control of the moment. I kissed, licked, and sucked his ears, mouth, neck, throat, and chest. I moved my hips in a figure eight and the numbers of my birth date and even spelled our names. I listened to every utter that left his mouth and felt his needs and desires. I learned what moves made him moan loudly and which made him moan softly. I discovered what made him pant, grasp my hips with force, pull my body completely onto his, and dig his nails deep in my flesh as his eyes rolled back in pure ecstasy. With a slight change in position, I squatted over him, crouching on my feet that were planted firmly on either side of him. He grabbed my ankles while I squeezed my love muscle tightly and moved up and down, gyrating my hips in many variations of movements and speed. He pulled me forward and grabbed my shoulders to thrust up into me until we both released in a fervid climax.

I got to work at 8:45 a.m., and Timmie was already there with my favorite, a large cup of hot chocolate and a warm croissant with cream cheese from Chinatown Coffee Co. We went into the break room, where several staff had gathered. Most of them were staff from Health Choice and began whispering when we entered.

“Is there something I can enlighten you with?” I asked them with raised eyebrows.

They got quiet while Timmie and I continued on, until one of the guys broke the silence with, “Did you really silence Mr. McConnallay yesterday morning?”

I turned around, amused, and asked, “Silenced? What compelled you to choose that term?”

“Well, rumor has it he was unlike any Zach McConnallay we know when you stood up in his face and held nothing back. We heard you gave him a piece of your mind, threw your ID badge at him, and left.”

I looked at them and shrugged my shoulders.

“Ms. Winterfield? Did you really call him a douche bag and a hogwash-spewing jerk?”

I smiled and replied, “If rumor really has it, and that rumor fails cease, then it was never a rumor.”

Timmie and I took a seat and swallowed our breakfasts before we went about our day.

Over the next few days, Zach and I spent more time together and grew closer. We had yet to establish a relationship status, though he constantly reminded me that I was his. Timmie had asked me multiple times about the mystery man who kept sending me flowers, but I told him nothing. Zach and his sexiness had been the topic of choice during a few coffee and lunch breaks at the office. Whenever I overheard someone talk about how sexy the CEO was with his nice set of lips and beautiful bedroom eyes, or how they admired his amazing smell and charm, I would smile inside while drinking my hot chocolate or tea. Zach and I agreed that on Friday night, we would continue our conversation from Monday night. And when that night came, we did just that.

Zach came over to my place around ten that night, after his business dinner. We sat out on the terrace by the pool. We faced each other and dipped our feet into the water. He pulled me closer to him by my waist and said, “If at any time it becomes too much for you, I want you to stop.”

I said, “OK,” closed my eyes, and took a big, deep breath.

Zach held me tight and reiterated, “Stop if you feel uncomfortable. Understand?”

I looked at him and went back more than ten years into my dark, hellish past.

“Nobody, not even my parents, believed me when I told them he did it. My stepbrother, Connor, raped me first. He told them I was drunk and made an immoral attempt. He lied. By that point in my life I had never drank a day in my life. He took complete control of me. He was a freshman at PSU and had come home early from college for spring break. He had some friends with him: Kevin, Dustin, and Pete. My mother and Richard had left earlier that day for their vacation to the Poconos Resort, and Lauren was supposed to check in on me from time to time to make sure I was fine.”

Zach cut me off. “Lauren knew? That bitch. I’m firing her ass right now.” He pulled his phone from his belt clip.

I snatched it from him and told him, “No, she didn’t know.” I decided to hold on to it in case he got trigger-happy and dialed Joan or Stan to do something stupid.

“Anyway. I heard his voice from inside the study, and since he was always an ass to me, I didn’t bother to greet him. I was in the study with Carmen, Karen, and Rachel, my friends from school. They had come over so we could finish our research papers on the Italian Renaissance. We were learning the language. Lauren adored Connor and was happy that he had come home early. After they had talked for a while, I heard Lauren tell him that she and Derek were going out and would be back around one in the morning.

“He asked something like, ‘That gleeful bitch is here?’ Lauren told him not to say that because I was in the study and could probably hear him. He asked Lauren if she thought he gave a fuck whether or not I heard him and said that he didn’t give a fuck about me. I yelled from the study in Italian, ‘I don’t give a fuck about you, Connor. Stupid-ass idiot.’ The girls all laughed.

“Connor didn’t know what I’d said to him, so he yelled back to me, ‘Yeah, whatever you just said goes double for you, you little bitch.’ I closed the door to the study and ignored him. Lauren left at some point, and Gabe rang the doorbell at seven. I knew it was him; he’d told me he would stop by after baseball practice. I left Carmen, Karen, and Rachel in the study to answer the door. I walked past Connor and his friends, who were in the living area drinking, smoking weed, and playing video games. Dustin commented, ‘Damn, Abi. You filling out those pajama shorts and tankie, aren’t you?’

“I blew him off with a wave of my hand and opened the door for Gabe. We embraced, and Gabe heard Connor’s friends making comments about how fast I grew up and curved out since they last saw me. That was the first time I’d seen Connor or any of them in more than a year. Gabe got upset—jealous, maybe. He walked into the living room with his arm around my waist for them to see. When he saw it was ‘Connor and the amazing three,’ as they were called in high school, he was all of a sudden a little understanding, as he was friends with them also. They had all hung out and played sports together. They saw Gabe and it was all bromance from there. I pulled on Gabe’s arm for him to come to the study with me, and he asked if he could have a few minutes to catch up with them. I looked at Gabe, more than mad, and walked back to the study alone.

“They talked about sports, college chicks, and other things. Connor, out of nowhere, asked Gabe, ‘Dude, do my parents know you fucking their precious St. Abi?’ Gabe told him it wasn’t like that, and they teased him and asked Gabe if he even knew what to do with curves like mine. Gabe told them again that we didn’t have that kind of relationship. I stormed out of the study, and Carmen, Karen, and Rachel were quick behind me. I asked Gabe in Italian if he’d come to see me or them. He replied back in Italian, ‘You, my love,’ and they commented about him speaking Spanish. I told them it wasn’t Spanish, that it was, in fact, Italian. Gabe eventually came into the study with us and we finished our research paper. Around eight, Gabe, Karen, Carmen, and Rachel left, and I went up to my bedroom. At some point after they left, he—Connor—must’ve sent Pete, Dustin, and Kevin home.

“I was lying in bed listening to some old Italian romance songs on my MP3 player. I didn’t hear him come in. He yanked my headphones from my ears and pulled me off the bed by my ankles. I never thought he would do anything like that; it had never crossed my mind. I just thought he was being mean to me, like he had been so many times before. He kept calling me St. Abi, Ms. Gleeful, and Ms. Happy-All-the-Damn-Time. I got up from the floor and slapped his face and told him to go sleep it off. I knew he was drunk; I could smell an entire liquor store on him. Richard would always tell him go sleep it off, and he would comply without argument. He came close to me and asked me if I wanted him to sleep it off, and I told him yes. He asked me if I knew what would make him sleep it off, and I told him to just sleep it off like he always does. He pulled my hair, hard, and said, ‘Why the fuck are you always so fucking happy? Why do you smile and laugh so goddamn much? Huh, St. Abi? You a saint, Abigail?’ I pushed him away from me and called him a drunken idiot.

“‘I have something that will make you happy, St. Abi. You want to be happy? Let me make you happy,’ he said. He grabbed my ass and tried to kiss me. He reeked of booze. I pushed him forcefully to my bedroom door and asked him what the fuck. The push inadvertently closed the door. He smiled and said, ‘See what you did, St. Abi? You locked us in here together.’ He locked the door and reached out to grab me, but I moved out of his reach. I started crying, and he said, ‘Fuck those tears.’ I cried and begged him to leave me alone and promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. He came closer, and I tried to kick him, but he grabbed my leg and moved really close to me. He let my leg go and grabbed me by my throat. He started taunting me, ‘Oh, St. Abi. No need to cry. I promise to make you feel better than Gabe does. I promise to make you happy. You like being happy, don’t you?’

“I begged him not to do it. I begged him to stop. I told him he was drunk and slapped him again. He picked me up by my neck and threw me on the bed. I scooted back to the wall and tried to get away from him, but he was too quick. He pulled me by my hair and forced me back to the bed. He got on top of me and told me to shut the fuck up and stop fighting him. I tried to fight him. I did. I even bit him. But he was too, too strong. He held my hands above my head with one of his hands and pulled my shirt above my head with the other. He ripped my bra and put his drunken mouth on my breasts and asked me if I like the way his mouth felt on my breasts. I told him no and to stop it right now. I screamed for help and he teased me. ‘No one can hear you, St. Abi. This is the only house in a mile radius. It’s just me and you.’

“He put his alcoholic lips on me again and told me he was going to fuck me real good, but if I kept struggling he would do it over and over all night. He promised me he wouldn’t stop. He yanked at my shorts until they tore to shreds, and I closed my thighs and knees as tightly as I could, but he managed to get them apart somehow. I don’t know how when I fought so hard him to get off of me. I heard his zipper. Then I felt a horrible, horrible pain that made me scream before I was robbed of my voice. I don’t know why, but I just stopped fighting. I lay there voiceless and motionless. My ears didn’t work anymore. The sounds were faint. I felt terrible pain and couldn’t cry out. He finally stopped and just lay on me. He laid his filthy body, his filthy head on me. He didn’t move for a long time; he just lay there on top of me. Then he lifted his head and looked at me. He said something, and I couldn’t quite make it out because my damn ears didn’t work anymore. He said something like, ‘Gabe and I share all the time. He never left one this damn tight.’

“He rolled off of me and stood up. And that’s when I saw myself. I saw me, my purity, there on his filthy penis. He looked down and saw it too. He pulled at his hair on his head and looked at me. He pulled me off the bed. My legs didn’t work anymore either, so I fell to the floor. And that’s when I saw more of me. I saw my purity soaking the lavender sheet. I laid my head on the floor and saw the blood all over my thighs, too. He tried to make it go away. He did. He made me stand up, but my legs still didn’t work anymore. He stood me up again and dragged me into the bathroom. He turned the shower on and put me in, and I slid down in the back of the shower.

“He came back after a long time, both hands filled with feminine products. He held out both hands and asked me which one. Still dazed and confused, and with little sound to my ears, I looked at him and said, disoriented, ‘I already had my period.’ He pulled me up and out of the shower by my hair and told me to repeat myself. I told him, again, that I already had my period. He grabbed me by my throat and said, ‘If you tell anyone, I will tell them you got drunk when your little friends left and couldn’t control yourself. I’ll them that I had to force you off of me when you climbed on top of me when I was trying to sleep mine off, and you were obviously too damn drunk to remember how you were conducting yourself—you’re probably just angry that I didn’t let it go any further. You understand me? You got that? Don’t open your fucking mouth about what happened, and if you do, I promise to do it again. And no one would believe you.’