Authors: Jordan Silver
EMILY
I heard movement outside the door again. Good, she had come to her senses and was about to let me out.
I heard what sounded like a drill and thought what the hell? I moved from the bed over to the door and tried the knob, nothing.
“Who’s out there? Daddy is that you? Let me out daddy, mama’s having another one of her spells again and shut me in.”
“You’ll be fine doll baby.” Huh?
“What, daddy, what’re you doing?” I could hear his footsteps moving away swiftly, and his voice sounded like it was coming through wet paper.
I pounded on the door, screaming my fool head off, but no one came to my rescue. Well spit, what was I supposed to do now?
The connecting door was my best bet, but they’d already locked that one as well. I could always try kicking it in, but I knew that wouldn’t work.
The doors in this old house were made of mahogany. I stood a better chance of breaking every bone in my foot than I did getting the stupid thing opened.
When this was over, I have to remember to bring some tools in here and hide them under my bed, so the next time that old lady loses her mind, I could just take the door off the hinges.
I can’t believe my own daddy would turn on me like this, and what for, that no count redneck hick? I was back to fuming again.
I finally got some sense in my head and ran for my phone, why hadn’t I thought of it before? I’ll just call my brother to come rescue me, he was over to a friend’s for part of the summer vacation, but I know he’d come get me.
My phone wasn’t on the charger. I’m gonna skin mama alive, see if I don’t, first chance I get.
Fine
, I’ll just use the antiquated phone she insisted we all kept in our rooms. Heaven forbid we should get a touchtone, like everybody else in the twenty-first century.
No, according to her they just didn’t fit in with the natural décor and ambience of our home. She’s whacked in the head.
I dialed the number after scrounging around in my old address book. I kept getting dead air and wasn’t surprised to find that the cord had been cut.
She’d thought of everything hadn’t she? I wonder how happy she would be if I broke my fool neck trying to squeeze throug
h the bathroom window to escape?
Or maybe I should try shimmying down off the balcony. Too bad I was scared spit-less of heights.
I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out how to get out of this pickle. Mama has done some hinky stuff in her time, but this takes the cake.
It’s worse than when she showed up to my sweet sixteen, with that buck tooth heathen Tobias Treat, and declared that he was my beau for the evening.
Took me damn near a year to live that down in front of my friends. She apparentl
y hadn’t learned her lesson yet.
A
nd if she wanted old Jet to get some of what I gave old Tobias, to get that jackanapes off my butt, well then bring it on mama. I haven’t kicked a male in the gonads in a mighty long time.
I started getting hungry just about sundown, or at least that’s when the hunger pains got so bad, that I was about to fall out.
I’d heard Jessie Mae, our cook, talking about her fried chicken and grits earlier, before mama went blotso. If she made me miss that fine cooking she was gonna get it too.
I don’t know how yet, after all I’m not a savage, I don’t go around beating up on my own mama, but maybe I can put shaving cream in Melissa’s shampoo, that’ll teach them.
I know that doesn’t sound very much like a college graduate, from one of the finest families in the state. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
I’ve been the reigning princess in these parts my whole life, on account of my daddy was the biggest man around.
Our family’s been in the shipping business since cotton was king, and we never hit a snag yet as far as I can tell.
Then again, they usually kept the women folk out of such matters, so we wouldn’t know. I went to school for business, though mama did her best to get me to change my major to something more ladylike, probably flower arranging. She was plum out of her mind.
As the oldest of daddy’s children, I’m fixing to take over things when the time comes. That’s what we’ve always talked about, since I was knee high to a grasshopper.
Daddy promised, and if he went back on his word and made me marry that…person I’ll do to the Durant plantation what Sherman did to Georgia.
That’s just the way I am. I’m set in my ways and daddy knows this. He thinks I’m too young to help him out of this bind he’s found himself in.
Yet it doesn’t appear that he thinks I’m too young to get married to some hick from the sticks and bred like a breeding sow to carry on his family name. Hah
I threw myself back down on the bed, and I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew, I was smelling that chicken, and it was mighty close.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked around. There was a tray of food on the bedside table. There was chicken and cheese grits with gravy and nice fluffy biscuits, with honey in a pot next to it.
It couldn’t have been there long, because there was steam still rising from it. I was too hungry to think about who brought it in and how, so I just up and dug in.
I ate like a JD hog, until I was about to make myself sick. Now I’m not one of those city girls I eat, the only thing is, something’s a little off about my metabolism, because no matter how I eat I don’t gain an ounce.
In fact, the only thing that grows on me, is my chest, it’s embarrassing. Southern men for all their talk about wanting a woman with meat on her bones, sure do a lot of salivating over my chest.
By the time I was sixteen it got so I couldn’t have a conversation with one of them without turning red in the face, because they couldn’t keep their eyes in the right place.
I pushed the tray away and went to see about my bath. I might as well make myself comfortable, because there was no telling when mama would come to her senses; and with daddy joining the enemy camp, I was in for a long haul.
I ran my bath and chose my favorite lavender scented bath salts to add to the water.
Usually at bath time, I have a whole routine; I check myself over in the mirror, to make sure I didn’t have a pimple on my butt at the very least.
See that I wasn’t getting one of those mustaches like aunt Vi had. I was deathly afraid of that one, and have been checking for years now.
Tonight I wasn’t in the mood for my primping though. I had too much on my plate just at the moment.
Like how I was going to deal with whatever nonsense mama had in store for me next. One thing was for sure, if they brought that Jet Durant up to me again, I’m gonna drive over to his swamp hut and blast him to kingdom come with my granddaddy’s old Remington special.
I heard movement through the closed door, and just about broke my neck hopping out of the tub.
“Mama…” I came up short in the bedroom when I saw Jet Durant, sitting in my bedside chair, looking right at home.
I’d only had enough time to grab a hand towel, which barely covered my front, my hair was wet from my bath and I was dripping wet.
I screamed like a panther in the Louisiana bayou and jumped back a good ten feet.
“You, what are you doing in here?” He stood from the chair and moved towards me with a slow gait.
I stepped back one, not risking a look back to see where I was going. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, living on the outskirts of a small town in these parts, it’s that you never turn your back on a wild animal.
“Don’t come any closer or I’ll scream.” I held my hand out in front of me while trying to stay decent with the other one holding up the miniscule towel.
I didn’t miss the way his eyes travelled up and down my body before coming to rest on my face.
“You’ve already done that.” I didn’t trust that look he had on his face one bit. He had sort of a lazy smirk type thing going on, and his eyes looked like they could see more than was proper.
“Daddy…” I started screaming my head off. No matter who he was, I know for sure my daddy would blow his fool head off if he caught him in here.
“Your daddy ain’t here little girl, neither is your mama.”
“What, what in the Sam hill are you talking about?” I tried sliding along the wall to my escape, if I could just make it to the bathroom…
“He dangled keys in my face, keys that looked like my room keys.
“Where’d you get those?” I was starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I had to deal with the issue in front of me first and foremost. He dropped the keys back beneath his shirt and I wanted to kick him in the shins.
I was backed up to the wall behind me as he advanced, his eyes never left mine, as he came to a stop in front of me.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“You’re not the first little girl to reject a Durant male, out where I come from, we have our own way of taking care of such things.
Your daddy has sense enough to agree with me, so he and your mama took your little sister off for a few days.
It’s just you, me, and the servants here now; but they can’t hear you, and they have strict orders to stay away from that door, except for meal times.”
He now had his hands spread on either side of my head and was sniffing my neck. My heart started thumping away in my chest, but I wasn’t sure if it was fear or the effect of his nearness.
When his tongue licked me there I felt a strange tingle in my body and tried to get away. I’ll be damned if I was going to be treated like some eighteenth century runaway bride.
“Are you mad? You can’t do this, we have laws against this kind of thing.” Now he was nibbling the skin of my neck and making me go all weak in the knees.
I had to keep a cool head here, unless I wanted to end up barefoot and pregnant out in the boondocks for the rest of my natural life.
“Those laws don’t amount o a hill of beans in this equation. Your daddy and me got us a deal, you don’t want to do as you’re told the right way, well then we’ll see that you do.
Besides, I like this way better, this way I get to see what I’m getting before I take it home.”
“Hah, you lay a finger on me mister and I’ll geld you.”
“I’m thinking it’s going to be more than a finger little girl.”
I was speechless for all of ten seconds, before I really caught his meaning. I looked for a means of escape but he had me locked in.
“Don’t you dare put your hands on me Jet Durant or I will call the police.”
“Go ahead, call.” He grinned at me like he knew darn well that I had no phone. Why would my parents go to such measures, just to get me to marry this beast?
“Is this the only way you can get a wife, by kidnapping one? Because there’s no way I’ll agree to marry you. As for your gibberish the other night, I’m a grown woman I don’t need you or anybody else to run my life for me.”
“Too bad, because when we get married, that’s just the way things are gonna be. I’m the man, what I say goes and if you don’t like it, well then a nice hand to your backside should take care of that.”
He had the nerve to grin at me after saying that. I should really just marry him to kill him on the wedding night.
“Listen you overgrown primate, I will not marry you. You’re rude, overbearing and…and…I won’t live in the backcountry. I just won’t.” I stomped my foot in fury.
I refused to cry even though he was making me so mad I could chew nails. Tears are for wimps, if I stood a fighting chance of getting out of this mess I had to stay strong.
JET
She’s so adorable
, the way she’s spitting fire at me, it was all I could do not to laugh in her face. She thought of me as a caveman, all I was doing was living up to her expectations.
That’s what she gets for judging someone without giving them a chance. Oh I’m going to have her, there’s no doubt about that, no matter how she kicks and screams.
In fact, that might be fun; I’d like to see some of that fire when I’m buried to the hilt inside her. Which if I have my way, and I will, will be soon.
She’s already mine she just hasn’t accepted her fate yet. I was here to see that she had no doubts after tonight.
After what I have in store for her, she’ll be begging me to drag her off to my lair. I mean to tame her once and for all, and put a stop to all this nonsense.
Her daddy had let her rule him for so long, she thought she needed a man that would let her do the same.
She’d be bored in ten minutes flat. What she needed was someone to fuck the piss and vinegar out of her and this ole boy was just the man for the job.
I pulled her close to my chest, and the little bitty towel she wore fell to the ground. I felt those beauties of hers as they pressed into my chest, and the first thing I noticed, other than the feel of her skin beneath my hands, was the hardness of her nipples.