The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (9 page)

My heart swelled, making the ache in my bones seem nearly non-existent when he wrapped his arms around me. My other aunts followed suit, gushing about me and how they’d missed me. Not one of them put me down for the things I said in the funeral home. And I hated that I hadn’t given them all more of chance when I was younger. My mom had never completely discarded them as family members, but she didn’t spend a lot of time with them either. Her connection to them was strictly through Facebook and sparse phone calls here and there, even though they all lived in a small town barely an hour away. The times we saw them were just mutual meetings at weddings, or when we went to see my grandparents, which wasn’t often either.

She had written them off so easily once she found Taylor and didn’t need their charity anymore. I was only nine years old and didn’t know better when she told me that they were beneath us. That we were better.
What a fucking joke.

Within minutes we were all sitting around on the various plush furniture, my aunts and uncle chattering loudly, trying to talk over one another to tell me about their lives, their kids, grandkids. None of them came today because Taylor had demanded that they not. I assumed he hadn’t wanted her siblings there either, but he couldn’t very well tell them they couldn’t come to her funeral.

I didn’t really feel bad that my cousins didn’t get to come and say goodbye. My mom was the mean aunt no one liked anyway.

“You know my little Bethie has four of her own now, with number five on the way,” Gina gushed.

“Good God, isn’t there a law that you people shouldn’t be able to reproduce?” I jumped at the sound of the cold voice. Laura’s voice, my step-grandmother, Taylor’s mom. She was adorned in a dress that probably cost more money than I made in the last three years fucking strangers. Sparkling black jewels hung from her ears. Her hair was dyed black and done up in an elaborate swirl on her head. Just because she hid the gray hairs didn’t mean she hid her age. Her skin was worn and leathery from too much tanning.

Gina stood up defiantly, her hand clutched around a glass of wine. “You’re lucky today was my sister’s funeral old lady, or I’d punch you in the fuckin’ face.”

Laura smirked. It was a look so familiar to me, so identical to Taylor’s that it made me shiver. Laura had never liked me, never took me in as her own grandchild. She never cared for my mother either. All around she was just a bitchy old bag of bones.

“Well, look who it is.” Her cold hazel gaze met mine. “The little whore came back to make a fool of herself in front of everyone we know.”

I clenched my hand in my lap. “It’s nice to see you too, Laura.”

She narrowed her gaze. “I never said it was nice to see you. Rhett should have left you wherever it is he found you. Where was it? Some run-down shack with the rest of these heathens?”

I was almost too shocked to respond. I figured that Rhett had told everyone about my new seedy life.
Looks like he didn’t.

“You’re asking for it aren’t you?” Gina charged forward, while my other two aunts started shouting at Laura simultaneously. Uncle Georgie jumped up at the last minute and snatched Gina back forcing her to drop her wine glass, red liquid coated the carpet.

Laura looked absolutely appalled and terrified all at once. I nearly laughed, but then
he
came into the room. Taylor walked in like he owned the place, which technically he did, but there was air about him that I had never seen in anyone else. It was that cocky
I own you
air. It made strangers look his way in awe and jealousy and it stilled my aunt’s flailing arms, along with his mother’s snide remarks.

“What’s going on here?” His eyes immediately found mine, just like they used when I lived here, when he fucked me nearly every night of the week. I was suddenly weary, exhausted, ready to just keel over and sleep forever, but the pain that tingled under my skin wouldn’t let me. I needed a bump. I fingered the side of my purse and looked away from Taylor.

“This little whore and her family are destroying your beautiful house!” Laura exclaimed.

Bitter anger swam with the weary achiness. “Three years away and you’re even more of a bitch,” I muttered and stood. My aunts laughed loudly.

“How dare you—”

“Mom, stop.” Taylor’s gaze finally left me, turning to his mother. “We laid Jessica to rest today.” He looked at my mom’s siblings. “There’s no need for a riot. Not today.” He sounded so sure, so confident. So well composed and perfect. I could see Gina’s shoulders visibly relax. Laura stormed back into the other room, placated for the moment.

My hands trembled. It was why I didn’t try telling anyone back then. They wouldn’t have believed me. No one would ever believe that he took my virginity when I was nine years old. Not this caring, successful man.

And then I was back there on my princess bed, his big body looming over mine. His hands petting my braided hair. I liked my new daddy. He was good to me. He bought me what I wanted.

“I want something from you, Faye baby,” he whispered in my ear. And then, there in that moment I knew I would give him anything. I knew he would do anything for me, but then he took my clothes off and I became afraid.
So afraid.
But he promised he would make it good for me. And I believed him. And I think I hated it more that he told the truth.

It would have been easier to accept if he had taken what he wanted with force. If he had held me down and shoved his big dick inside me while I tried to get away. But that’s not how it happened. I laid there in my pink little bed and let him have my virginity. Let him put his mouth between my legs until my body shook before he entered me. It hurt, but he promised me it would get better. And I hated it even more that he was right.

“Faye, are you all right?” Betty’s voice jerked me back to the present and I glanced at her with what I hoped was a normal expression. But that’s when I felt it. The warm liquid sliding down my face, over my lips. I reached up in horror and pressed my hand to my nose, coming back with dark red blood.

FOUR

I pressed the back of my hand to my nose and hurried to the bathroom just down the hall from the living room. One tug on the door proved it was locked, occupied by someone else. The blood was starting to track down my arm and I spun around, desperate for a bathroom. Not because I didn’t want to stain the carpet, no, I couldn’t give two fucks about the stupid carpet. But the urge to be alone, away from my past seemed to grip at my very bones.

I took the stairs two at time, rushing down the hall to the room I didn’t want to see, but at the same time, needing to see it. I burst through the door of my old bedroom, alarmed to find it identical to the way I left it. I didn’t pause to reminisce but headed straight into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Flicking the lights on I stared at my reflection. It was so weird, so familiar staring at the mirror I had looked into every day for over seven years. Blue towels hung on the wrack behind me. My towels, my favorite color. The sparkly blue electric toothbrush I’d left behind still sat in its charger on the white sink top. I stared at it in wonder for a moment before looking back at myself.

I was me, still me. Just an older, even more fucked up version. I gripped the sink with my hands, sticky blood smearing on the pristine surface. I watched it run out of my nose and drip down my face. I got nosebleeds more often than I liked and supposed it was from all the coke I snorted.

At that thought I immediately rummaged through my bag. My hands made contact with the little pill bottle containing the medicine that would cure my STD.
I have a sexually transmitted disease.
A burst of laughter escaped my lips.
Why am I suddenly laughing at everything that isn’t funny?

But the laughter turned into a sob as I emptied the white pill onto my bloody palm. I considered throwing it in the trash.
Maybe Chlamydia can kill me? Maybe I can die and be done with this fucked up mess of a life.

I shoved the pill in my mouth before I could think about it, forcing myself to dry swallow and almost gag. I fumbled around in my purse searching for the little baggie I so desperately needed. It would make it all better. It always did for a little while at least.

The blood still dripped from my nose when I finally pulled the baggie out and opened it revealing the thin white powder I so coveted. But then my fingers slipped on the plastic and the baggie turned on its end spilling into the sink.

“No!” But the cocaine had spilled into the wet blood. “Fuck.” I tried to scrape it up, but my hands were shaking, the powder completely soaked and stuck together in gloopy balls. “Fuck!” I wailed.

This can’t be happening. It can’t be. It can’t be!

Panic set in. Raw and consuming, it engulfed me whole and dragged me down into its depths.

I fucking need it. I need it!

Tears poured down my face mixing with the blood as it dripped from my chin.

What am I going to do?

“Faye, baby. Are you okay?” The door opened abruptly revealing Taylor. The last person I wanted to see. I couldn’t help the sob that escaped my lips as I stumbled backward. He followed me, closing the door behind him. I didn’t miss that he flipped the lock. He did it nonchalantly, but the clicking sound reverberated in my head.

I shook my head back and forth quickly running the back of my hand over my mouth, coming away with blood, snot, and tears. “You need to leave. Please.”

Was that my voice shaking? It couldn’t be.

“Faye baby, it’s okay.” He took another step toward me and I shrank back, my butt hitting the tile floor.

He stopped his movement and I took him in, really took him in for the first time since I’d been back. He wore a black dress shirt that fit tightly on his lean body. He’d always been fit back when I lived at home. Anal about going to the gym every day. He looked older with more gray in his hair, but it was still clean cut and short. His face was shaved smooth. No one would have thought he was a man in his late forties. Not with his air of arrogance and his youthful physique.

“Please, Taylor. Leave me alone.” I sounded like a child and I hated it. I fucking despised it.

He didn’t say anything but continued to stand before me. His hands casually tucked in his pockets.

“I mean it. I fucking mean it.”

He shook his head slowly almost as if I was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. He bent down, going to a knee before me. He reached a hand out to touch my face and I flinched away. Something like pain flashed across his features. “What happened to you out there? What did the world do to my girl?”

“The world didn’t do anything to me.
You
did.” I spit the words at him. They wounded him further, I could see it plain as day on his face. It made me feel good to see him hurt.

“I loved you. I always loved you. I
still
love you.”

His words made my stomach roil, though some sick part of me was happy. For years I had strove to make him happy. I let him fuck me, use my young body because I wanted his love, his happiness. I needed him almost more than he seemed to need me back then. It was sick, horrible, bad, but some twisted part of me craved his closeness—his love.

It’s how I felt until I got older. I started to realize that the relationship we had was wrong and I’d asked him to stop coming to my room. The girls at my school didn’t fuck their daddies. It wasn’t normal. And that’s what I wanted to be—normal.

“You loved me too.” He nodded his head like he was certain of it. “You still love me.”

“You hurt me.” I don’t know why I bothered. He knew what he had done. At the end. After that summer when Rhett left to go back to school, after I’d propositioned Rhett, begging him to have sex with me. Somehow Taylor had found out and he was angry and jealous. So fucking jealous. He hadn’t touched me at all while Rhett was in town. He didn’t want his son to know about us. And once Rhett was gone, that’s when things had changed. Drastically, horribly. That led to frequent trips to the hospital and lots of money being doled out to keep mouths shut.

“You were a bad girl.” He rubbed his hand up and down my face and I jerked away trying to move back from him, but the tub stopped my movement. “What kind of drug is it Faye? Cocaine?”

I jerked my gaze up at him. “How did you know?”

He brushed his finger through the blood that had tracked its way down my chest and brought the crimson covered digit to his lips. I wanted to look away, to be horrified, but I found myself riveted to the action.

He reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled out something that made heart beat quadruple.
Cocaine.
A tiny clear baggie held the heavenly substance.

“Is that really what I think it is?”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Do you think it’s cocaine? Because that’s what it is.” My eyes stayed glued to the little package. “It’s Colombian, uncut coke. The best you can get.”

“What? How did you get ahold of something like that?” Blood tracked into my mouth as I spoke, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to me was dangling inches away from my nose.

A wicked smile formed on Taylor’s face. “You don’t know much about your daddy, do you, Faye baby?”