The Dark Light of Day (19 page)

I am waking up.

I am passing out.

I am waking up.

I am passing out.

I wake, and my mother is no longer over me. She’s across the room on the couch, tying a tube around her arm and shooting the needle into a vein by her elbow.

“Abby has been a bad girl, Vinnie. She screams when I punish her.”

My mother nods to a man sitting on the floor, leering at me. He isn’t
wearing a shirt. He smiles and his front teeth are missing, the rest of them a mixture of yellow and black.

“She needs to learn how to shut that mouth of hers. Think you can help?”

The man stands and throws me onto my back, my hand still cuffed to the burning radiator, blood drips down my arm. “Come here, darlin’,” he
says. He smells like the bottom of the trash can behind the Chinese
restaurant. The one where I’ve looked for food.

He slowly unzips his jeans, and before I can wonder what he is doing, he shoves himself into my mouth, pressing his hands against the back of my head. He holds a knife at my throat. My screams are muffled. I choke once, twice, three times. Then, I’m throwing up, but he won’t pull out of my mouth. He just laughs. The vomit spills out the sides of my mouth and splashes down his legs.

Suddenly, I don’t care what happens to me. A feeling of not being
meant for this world washes over me.

I bite down. I bite down so hard my teeth meet in the middle. The man jumps back and screams. Blood and vomit coat his lap. My mother is passed out, her chin on her chest.

The man lunges at me, knife raised and sinks it into my shoulder so deep he hits carpet before standing and running outside.

It takes me a few minutes before I am able to calm myself from the nauseating pain enough to wiggle my hand out from the cuff and remove the blade from my shoulder. Strings of flesh and thick carpet fibers cling to the rusty blade.

I look over at my mother, and for a moment, I contemplate shoving it deep into the back of her neck while she sleeps.

Instead, I run. As fast as I can I run into the night, down the road, three miles to the fire station. Naked, covered in blood and vomit, I knock on
the door, and when it opens, I fall into the arms of a large black man
wearing a blue t-shirt and red suspenders.

I went for help.

I was hoping for death.

Jake needed to know all of it. He needed to
see
. I sucked as much air into my lungs as I could. “Can you turn on the lamp, please?” I asked. While Jake leaned behind him to do as I asked, I lifted my shirt over my head and tossed it to the floor. I wasn’t wearing a bra, so he could clearly see all of me. I sat on my knees on the bed and waited for him to see who I really was and what I really looked like.

No more hiding.

When he turned back from the lamp, his eyes went wide.
Matching slashes covered the tops of both of my breasts. The redness of the injuries never truly faded to white as I had hoped they would. Burn
marks, patches of uneven and stretched looking skin—from
cigarettes, from cigars, from lighters and the steaming radiator my mother had once handcuffed me to—ran down the length of my right arm and my upper back. In contrast, my left arm was virtually mark-free. The
worst damage was a jagged, red scar that ran from below my left breast down to the top of my right thigh, traveling through the
inside of my legs, only a half an inch or so away from doing real damage.

My injuries hadn’t been inflicted to cause me to not function physically. They’d been meant to scar my body.

I held my breath.

“These are my punishments,” I said. A hot tear ran from the corner of my eye. Jake leaned into me and licked the line it left on my face. He was trying to take on my pain, consume it.

He sat up on his knees and reached out for me. Slowly, he ran his hand over each of the scars on my right arm. He bent his head and kissed along the lines marring the tops of my breasts above each nipple. They weren’t kisses meant to titillate.

They were meant to heal.

“Mom’s in prison. She got life for what she did to me and for the
drugs they found on her. She had a ton of priors so they threw the
book at her, no parole.” I exhaled and closed my eyes.

I was done. Exhausted and done.

Jake cupped my face in his hands. He looked me right in my eyes when he finally spoke. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispered.

It wasn’t what I expected him to say. I expected him to run.

“Just the way you are, Bee. These scars don’t make you ugly.
You
don’t need to hide them from anyone. Fuck anyone who thinks
anything on someone like you could ever be anything but beautiful. You should be proud of them, baby.”

“Proud?” How could I be proud of the ugliness on my body, left on me courtesy of the ugliness in people?

“Yes, proud. They make you powerful. Each line is a road
traveled, an experience you had, whether it was good or bad. Each mark is proof of pain in the past, not the present. You are a survivor, you are a warrior. These are the scalps hanging from your fucking belt. You
took the beatings and here you are, in front of me.” He kissed me
softly
on my lips and my mouth opened to him before he pulled away
again. “You are fucking amazing.”

What?

“How can you not see how fucking beautiful you are? He lifted my right arm to his mouth and trailed kisses and caresses from my shoulder to my hand, like he needed to experience with his lips each
and every mark, dent, line, and poorly-healed patch of skin on my
body. My mind reeled from bringing to the surface the memories I had pushed deep inside since the very night it happened.

Jake didn’t hesitate. He pulled me into an untamed embrace. “She should die for what she did,” he said.

I nodded. She should have. I wished I would’ve killed her then. I wished it every day.

Jake held me tighter, but we weren’t close enough. He raised
himself up, just enough for him to remove his shirt before pulling me into him again, with my back to his chest. He leaned into me and pulled
the tip of my ear into his mouth. He gently sucked and licked,
working his mouth and tongue down to the sensitive spot right behind my ear. I closed my eyes, relishing the feeling of his mouth.

“Do you know how proud of you I am?” he whispered. “That
you got away? That you defended yourself against those sick fucks?” His tongue was in my ear, his cool breath danced over the hairs on my neck. “My strong girl.” His hand moved from my stomach, traveling further up, his fingertips grazed the underside of my breast. I couldn’t hold back the long moan that came out even if I’d tried. Jake responded with a groan from deep within his throat. “If I knew who those guys were—” He tried to pull me even closer. “—the one you stabbed in the eye—” I felt his hardness against my leg through the thin fabric of his sweat pants as he pressed against me. “—I would find out if you really had finished off that fat fuck.” His hand moved further until he was cupping and massaging my breast in his palm. “If you hadn’t and I found him alive—” He brushed his thumb over my nipple and back again. I writhed against him, arching into his touch. “—I would tear that one-eyed bastard limb from fucking limb for you.” In one quick motion he had ripped my panties off, tossing
the scrap of fabric to the floor. “Then, I’d end him with a bullet
through his fucking skull. Would you like that baby?”

“Mmmmmmmm……” My body released a flush of wetness between my legs.

“Answer me, Bee.” He kneaded my breasts in his palms then
rolled my nipples in between his fingers. “I need to know if you would like it if I put him to ground for you.”

No secrets. No lies.

“Yes,” I answered honestly. I arched my back into him.

Jake moaned into my neck. He pulled on my shoulder and positioned me onto my back. He lowered himself over me, holding
my face in his hands. We were looking right into each other.

Broken soul to broken soul.

Jake’s bare chest pressed against mine, his hardness and my
softness finally together. “Now that we know all of each others’ secrets…” He dipped his fingers below my belly button, teasing my
skin until he made his way in between my legs, cupping my mound. All I could do was moan.

I was done with words anyway.

All my hesitation was gone. The voice that had always told me
to run was a distant memory. I had lost my ability to have a
conversation sometime after he ran his thumb over my nipple. A pulling sensation in my lower stomach had already started.

Jake pushed his hand down lower, until his fingers found my
wetness and spread it over my sensitive nub. At the same time, he
sucked my right nipple into his mouth, lavishing his tongue over
and over the hardened peak as his fingers stroked my tender flesh.

My body had never been so alert. It was as if his mouth was
right on my core. Every lick, every gyration, every sound he made sent me further and further toward a place I wasn’t familiar with.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said again. He covered my mouth with his, stroking my lips with his tongue, urging me to open
for him. When I did, he tasted my tongue in long slow strokes before
breaking our kiss to lavish his attentions on the nipple he hadn’t yet tasted.

“You know I’ve never done this before,” I whispered. Since I’d never just come out and said it, it felt foreign to me. I guess I was technically a virgin, although I never really felt like one.

I may never have had sex, but I’d lost my innocence a long time ago.

Jake looked up into my eyes while he pressed two fingers inside me, pushing them in as far as his hand would let him go. I gasped at the new sensation while he watched my reaction, a sly smile on his face. He slowly and expertly pumped his fingers in and out. His thumb circled my clit in a torturous rhythm of fast and slow, hard and soft. I bucked my hips at the sensation of him touching the most sensitive part of my body. The pulling inside grew stronger and a pressure had started to build low in my stomach.

“I know,” Jake whispered. His beautiful lips were curled up in a crooked grin.

“I may not be any good at this,” I said.

“Not fucking possible,” Jake said.

“And you still want to? Even though I’ve never…” I trailed off.
The pulling was building faster, and I had forgotten what I was
about to say.

“Fuck yes.” He circled my clit faster, applying more pressure. I
bucked under him, writhing around for some sort of release. He continued to fuck me with his fingers.

“You see, Abby, a respectable man would probably not want to take your virginity. Some guys, the kind with manners or morals,
would even be turned off at the thought of being your first, but like I’ve tried to tell you–” He leaned in closer, and his lips brushed
against my
neck when he whispered in my ear. “I’m not like those men.” He
pressed firmly on my clit. The pressure that had been building exploded in a blinding white hot release, sending shock waves from my toes to my neck, my insides pulsed and clenched as I rode out the new waves of sensation that just kept coming.

I didn’t know how much time had passed when I could again open my eyes. “That was…”

“Nothing yet,” Jake finished for me. He looked downright
wicked,
sinful, amazing, I could go on forever. “I’ve never wanted to be
inside someone as much as I want to be inside you right now, baby. I want to feel you come around my cock.”

I shuttered in anticipation.

Holy. Fuck.

Jake reached over to the nightstand and pulled out a foil packet from the drawer. I watched him intently as he sat on his knees next to me and opened the package. He never took his eyes off mine as he rolled the condom over his thick length. I was in pure awe of him. I could feel the power radiating off of him. The moonlight highlighted the shadows of his hard biceps and abs. His beautiful black and gray tattoos glistened with sweat.

He positioned himself between my thighs, pressing his hands on the inside of my knees and spreading my legs. As I gazed at the raw power and beauty of his naked form, I realized something.

“Fuck. This is going to hurt isn’t it?” I asked, panting with need and a little bit of fear.

Jake flashed me his most wicked grin. He ran his hand through his hair and smiled down at me. “Only in the best of ways, baby.”

With the base of his cock in his hand, he rubbed the tip over my clit, creating an all new pressure inside me. He crawled up my body
and kissed me. Not an
I’m going to be gentle with you
kiss. It was an
all-consuming kiss. I returned it with the passion that had been
simmering at the surface since the day I met him. My hands linked on the back of his head as I pulled him to me. The vibration of his moans in my mouth sent an electric pulse right to my core.

Jake didn’t break our kiss as he pressed himself into me. My
body stretched for him, but not enough. “Shit, baby. You’re so tight.” He groaned into my mouth, pushing my knees further apart. “Spread your legs for me baby. Let me in.”

When I obeyed and had spread my legs as far as I could,
opening myself all the way up to him, he surged inside me like he had been waiting to do it his entire life, taking the last traces of my virginity with him. He pushed right through the quick pinch of pain, without pausing his movements even when I flinched.