Hush (Black Lotus #3) (23 page)

“Let me get you another drink. What flavor did you have?” I offer.

“You don’t have to do that. I can get more money from my mom.”

“I insist.”

She tells me her drink and I place the order.

I reach out my hand and introduce myself. “I’m Erin, by the way.”

She shakes my hand enthusiastically, and giggles, saying, “My name is Hailey.”

“I’m going back out to the car,” her brother announces as he takes his smoothie with him to the exit. “Hurry up; I don’t want to be late to school.”

“And that,” Hailey says, “Is my annoying older brother, Steve.”

Steve. My dad passed his name down to that little fucker.

“You look like you’re all ready for school. What grade are you in?” I ask while we wait for her drink.

“Fifth grade.”

“Wow. Big girl on campus. So how old does that make you?”

“Eleven.”

Her perfect voice, her perfect hair, her perfect clothes all make me want to ball my fist up and slam it through her perfect smile.

“Hailey,” the employee calls out, and I fight the overwhelming urge to grab her and run.

“I gotta go. Thanks for the smoothie, Erin.” She’s so polite it irritates me to the point I want to claw my own skin from my bones.

She practically skips out the door, leaving me to watch their car as it pulls out and drives away.

I snap around when there’s a tap on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the employee says as he holds out a cup. “I called your name, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”

Without a word, I turn away from him and walk out the door as he stands there like an asshole, still holding my drink.

I hate everyone in this shit town.

Sitting in my car, I can’t bring myself to drive just yet. She’s eleven years old and has the life I was supposed to have. I was supposed to be the bubbly and polite girl who wore the pretty clothes and grabbed a smoothie before heading off to school. I was supposed to be her. Instead, when I was eleven, I was tied up to a garment rod and locked away in a closet for days on end. I was in the darkness with no food or water, left to piss and shit on myself. And when I wasn’t in the closet, I was down in that dank basement being molested, raped, sodomized, pissed on, beaten, and whipped. I wasn’t skipping out the goddamn door with my Raspberry Paradise smoothie. Her biggest struggle in life is having an annoying older brother.

I should’ve grabbed her when I had the chance.

Anger does nothing but ferment in my bones. It aches and pricks from the inside out, and I ball my hands, pounding them against the steering wheel as I growl between my clenched teeth. When I look up, I see an elderly lady staring at me in horror as she walks on by.

She has no idea that she’s staring at a monster.

Smoothing my hair back off my forehead, I straighten myself and start the car. It’s edging on eight o’clock, and I need to get back to the hotel.

I stand outside of our room and prepare myself for the wrath of Declan before opening the door.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he seethes as soon as I walk in. “Tell me it’s not what I’m thinking. Tell me you didn’t go back to that house.”

Keeping my cool so I don’t rile him up any more than he already is, I admit, “I went back to the house.”

“Jesus Christ! What were you thinking?” he snaps, grabbing my arms and shaking me.

“I don’t know, but I had to go. I knew you wouldn’t allow it, so I snuck out.”

He shoves me over to the couch and pushes me down, releasing my arms. I watch as he paces the room a couple times before walking back over to me. He takes a seat on the coffee table and faces me. His jaw is locked, a tell to his immense anger. I knew how much my sneaking away would affect him. Declan has to hold all the power for him to feel safe, and I stole that from him this morning.

“It’s not what you think.” I attempt to mollify him.

“Tell me, since you seem to know everything about me. Tell me what it is I’m thinking.” He throws his derisive words in my face.

“I had to see them. I had to know more.”

“
Them
?” he questions, growing more irritated. “You mean his kids?”

I nod.

“Christ, Elizabeth,” he barks, standing and walking away from me.

“Stop yelling at me!” I snap, getting off the couch and stepping up to him. “You’re pissed, I get it! But the expectation you have for me to just sit and be patient is something I can’t do.”

“You
can’t
or you
won’t
?”

“I’m not apologizing, if that’s what you’re after.”

I watch him grind his teeth as he glares down at me, and I turn this around on him, saying, “Why don’t you tell
me
something . . . If this were reversed, and it were your mother in this situation, tell me you’d be okay just hanging back. Tell me you wouldn’t act on every single one of your instincts.”

His eyes pierce mine, and I push him even more.

“Tell me you could restrain yourself and stay away.”

We meet each other’s opposition, neither one of us backing down.

“He’s my dad, so don’t you dare yell at me and belittle me for acting on my desperation, because you’d do the same thing.”

I turn to walk away from him, and when I do, he finally speaks.

“You won’t defy me again. Do you understand?”

I look back at him and respond, “Then I need you to bend and trust me. I snuck away because I knew you’d refuse to allow me to go. All I’m asking is for you to at least try to see things my way every once in a while.”

“Come here,” he orders, and I obey, walking back over to him. He takes my face in his hands, telling me, “I’ll try and bend for you.”

“Thank you,” I respond with an appeased smile.

“You will be punished, so I wouldn’t be smiling if I were you,” he threatens, and I don’t contest.

Declan needs this to feel in control, and I want to give him that because it’s what secures him. He depends on it. He can’t function without it.

“I want you on the ground on all fours with your pants pulled down to your knees.”

He lashes his voice out in anger, and I turn my back to him, positioning myself as instructed. It might be debasing for most, but I understand his need for this. It’s how his life has molded him to be, and I’m the perfect one to give him this outlet that he’s been deprived of in the past. I’m sure the women he’s been with previously have valued their bodies in a way I don’t. And because I love him so much, I have no problem handing myself over to him in this way.

I hear him move around the room, and then he kneels down in front of me to tie my wrists together with one of his ties.

“Tell me why I’m punishing you.”

I crane my neck to look at him, and answer, “Because I snuck off and took the control away from you.”

“Do you know what that did to me?”

“Yes.”

He then stands and moves behind me.

“Keep your eyes on the floor,” he commands, and I hear something rattling before being set on the ground. “Spread your knees.”

I do, and I’m instantly greeted by the piercing pain of an ice cube being shoved into my pussy. And then another and another and another and another.

I cry out in blistering pain and then he begins to spank my ass with a force so great I have to tense my whole body up to keep myself from falling over. The ice feels like I’m being sliced with razors from the inside, and I know I should be focusing on the pain that’s radiating from my ass because it’s so minimal compared to what’s happening inside my pussy.

With each welting blow he delivers, I scream out as the ice begins to melt and the water spills out of me and runs down my thighs.

“Tell me you’re my property,” he grits, and I instantly respond, “I’m your property.”

THWACK!

“Tell me who owns you.”

“You own me.”

THWACK!

“Tell me you love me.”

“I love you, Declan.”

THWACK!

“On your elbows,” he barks, and the moment I lower myself, his mouth is on my pussy, sucking out the melted ice from inside me.

His hot tongue is an erotic contrast to the freezing shards, and I let go of a heady moan while he buries his face between my legs. My mind rushes in waves of mania at the infliction of a multitude of sensations that I didn’t even notice that he’s now fucking me with his cock.

I close my eyes when the whole world blurs, and all that matters is this moment—having our two bodies blended as one—and it’s only together that we’re whole.

THE ICE BUCKET
and tie still remain on the floor from earlier. Declan has refused to let me clean myself up, so I sit and wait for him to finish his shower. I decide to log onto the laptop and search to see if Hailey has any social media accounts. When no hits come up, I move on to search her brother, Steve, which brings me to a link for a Steve Corre in Gig Harbor, Washington.

Clicking the link, I pull up his page. His profile picture is of him and a few of his buddies. I start clicking on different tabs on his page, but there’s no real information aside from his birthday, which lets me know he’s thirteen years old.

It’s not until I open one of his photo albums that the vile hate from earlier resurfaces. I scroll through picture after picture of family photos, my dad being in most of them. Photos of family vacations, birthday parties, holidays fill the albums—all the things I never got a chance to experience.

Once I was in Posen with Pike, I never got a birthday party, and most holidays I’d find myself locked in the closet so Carl and Bobbie wouldn’t have to deal with me. Pike would always manage to steal or use his drug money to buy me something small, but aside from those private gift exchanges in my bedroom, we never celebrated anything.

I despise these kids for the life my dad has given them, the life I never had. I look at their smiles, and I want to slit their throats. And then there’s my dad. Enlarging a photo with him in it, I zoom in on his face. His eyes are still the same, even though the crinkles in the corners from when he smiles have deepened. He no longer has the scruff of a beard, exchanging it for a clean-shaven face. When I close my eyes, I can see the younger him in vivid color. I can hear his laughter. I can smell his cologne.

God, I miss him so much.

Opening my eyes, I’m greeted by this stranger who wears the same face. I don’t know this man—Asher Corre. My heart double beats in love and anger. I love my dad, the man who danced with me, sang to me, and laughed with me. But I hate this man on the computer screen. I hate him for wearing the mask of my father, because he’s nothing like my dad. My dad loved me beyond love, and
this
man, I don’t even exist in his world. I’m nothing but an evaporated memory.

“What are you looking at?” Declan questions when he walks into the room, fresh from the shower dressed in navy slacks, a fitted light blue button-down, and the same black belt he used to restrain me a few days ago.

“Looking at family portraits,” I respond, and he tilts his head in curiosity.

When he sits next to me, I can smell the cardamom from his shampoo. Even in the midst of everything going on around us and our quarrel this morning, I feel the need to be close to him.

He is already sliding the computer from my lap when he asks, “Where did you find these?”

“It’s his son’s social media page.”

“His son? How did you even know how to find this?”

“Because I followed them. I got his name from his sister, Hailey.”

“I need you to tell me what happened this morning.”

“Can you control your anger?” I snark, to which he responds, “You’re testing your limits today with that smart mouth of yours. Tell me what happened.”

I go through everything that occurred, from following the car to what was said between Hailey and me.

“You shouldn’t have ever approached that girl,” he scolds. “She’s just a kid.”

“There are worse monsters out there than me, Declan. If I could handle my life at eleven, then surely she can handle a conversation in a smoothie shop.”

“That girl is a part of your dad.”

I look at him, angry that he would go there, and snap, “But I’m
all
of him.”

“I’m on your side here.”

“Then stop defending that family.”

“I need you to see things rationally though,” he says.

“Nothing about this whole situation is rational, Declan.”

He backs off and turns his attention back to the computer, scrolling through the photos. When there’s one I want to look at, I tell him to stop. It isn’t until a few more photos pass that I realize the kid tags his location when he posts.

“Scroll slowly,” I murmur to Declan when I lean in to get a closer look.

“What are you doing?”

“He tags his location in his pictures,” I tell him, and we strike gold. “Stop. Click on that one.”

Declan enlarges a photo of my dad and his son that has the comment:
Spending my day at work with Dad.

“Enterprise Brokerage and Realty,” Declan reads off.

Declan opens up another window and types the business name into the search bar, and up pops their website with my father’s picture on the main page.