Chapter 8
Marlow
I pound harder on the door of the attic, my eyes starting to fill with tears.
“Can someone come let me out?” I shout, praying there is still someone left in the house and they didn’t forget about me again.
Not today. Not when it’s Tuesday and I get to see Eric at school.
After our incredible night together, seeing him is the only thing I want to do.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,” I chant in a whisper, knowing my eyes will be puffy for the whole day and that will only lead to questions, like “why were you crying”?
My stepmother locks me in the attic.
I can smell breakfast downstairs, but they don’t offer me any.
I’m a prisoner in my own house.
I know deep down that I should tell someone what they’re doing to me.
A person in an authority position. But then everyone would know, including Eric, and I couldn’t face that much pity.
That much humiliation. To be such a rebellious teen that these extreme measures had to be taken to keep me in line.
That I have a penchant for illustrating inappropriate acts among my characters.
My stepmother would show them. She’d tell the cops that I’m an ungrateful, oversexed miscreant.
Isn’t that what she called me last week?
Desperate to get out of the room, I bang harder on the door.
“Hello?”
I raise my fist to knock again, but my fist is left hanging in the air when the door opens to reveal my stepmother. Immediately, I search her face for a sign that she knows I snuck out last night. There’s no suspicion, though. On the contrary. She looks kind of smug.
“Hurry or you’ll be late for school,” she says with a straight face, cradling her coffee mug.
“Your sisters were out on dates last night and they didn’t even have a hard time getting out of bed this morning.
They know how to behave themselves, that’s why.
I can’t even imagine the state you’d come home in if we allowed you out on a date. ”
Once again, I scrutinize her for a sign that she’s baiting me.
That she knows I snuck out to be with Eric.
But I really don’t think she’s aware of my nocturnal activities or I’d have been grounded the second I crawled back through my window last night.
Jessie and Suzie wouldn’t have ratted me out, even though they saw me at the hockey game.
They’re nice girls and they don’t want to make trouble for me.
They just want to stay on their mother’s good side, so they go with the flow.
I used to hate them for not speaking up on my behalf, but I got over it.
I don’t want them to be miserable along with me, do I?
“Well, there are no dates on my calendar,” I mutter, slinging my backpack over my shoulders. “You don’t have to worry.”
“You’re in public school. Of course we must worry.
” She eyeballs me, top to bottom. “With your track record of glorifying smut?” She points her coffee mug at me.
“I’ve decided to let my daughters date, since they’ve proven to have good character, unlike you.
But if I find out you’ve been acting like a tramp and tempting the boys away from my girls, it’ll be back to homeschooling for you.
I don’t care if I need to tutor you myself. ”
The nape of my neck heats with a little shame, knowing that the two boys who are currently dating Jessie and Suzie asked me out first. Is there something trampy about me?
Do I have a fatal flaw that boys can sense, as well as my stepmother?
I don’t know. But I’ve been locked in this room long enough that I’m starting to wonder.
I think I’m a come slut. My words come back to haunt me, especially now that I know they were valid.
I am exactly what I suspected. Even now, I am jonesing for another taste of my boyfriend’s come.
I can feel his thick cock jerking and sputtering in my mouth, rhythmic pulsations traveling up my tongue and feeding an addiction I didn’t know I had until him.
Does Eric think I’m a tramp?
We hooked up the same day we met.
Twice.
With that worry weighing down my shoulders, I hurry out of the room. There’s a chance I might be able to make the bus if I run. “I won’t tempt anyone,” I say on my way past my stepmother, keeping my head bowed, so she won’t see my creeping self-doubt.
“Your filthy drawings say otherwise!” she calls after me.
I wince on the bottom stair, picking up my pace.
Thank God I hid my sketchpad under my mattress or she’d see what I drew in the wee hours of the morning.
My brutally big hockey goalie on top of me, squashing my smaller body to the mattress, delivering the contents of his balls between my thighs one hip thrust at a time.
Praising me for being fertile.
Begging me to get pregnant.
I pause at the end of my driveway and look back at my house, making eye contact with my stepmother where she continues to hover in my attic room, sipping her coffee. The undiluted hatred in her expression freezes my breath in my lungs.
I can’t ever bring Eric here.
If he doesn’t already think I’m a dirty tramp, she’ll convince him I am. And maybe just maybe, in that setting, where he’s able to compare me to my two sisters, he’ll agree with her. He won’t want to be my boyfriend anymore and that would shatter me.
Because Eric is the first person to make me feel seen and safe and wanted.
I don’t want to lose him.
Despite my stepmother’s best efforts to thwart me, I manage to make it to the bus on time.
I skid into first period right as the bell is ringing, my heart rocketing up into my mouth when I spot Eric at our table, looking so incredibly handsome in a black hoodie and jeans that I could melt into a puddle.
I take my spot beside Eric, smiling up at him with everything I’ve got, even though my chest is heavy after this morning. After the doubt I’ve been steeping in since leaving the house. Am I as disgusting as she tries to make me believe?
“Hi,” I whisper, as the teacher starts to talk.
“Hi,” he says back. But he doesn’t smile.
In fact, he looks kind of…nervous? What if he’s horrified over my behavior last night and already wants to end our relationship? “Is everything okay?” I ask, after a few seconds of gathering my courage.
“What? Yeah.” His leg starts to bounce under the table, but it shakes the whole piece of furniture, drawing the eyes of our fellow students, so he has to stop. “Yeah, I just…I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Oh.” My swallow gets stuck. “Okay, I understand.”
He does a double take, scanning my face. “Understand what?”
I open my mouth and close it. “What were you going to say?”
“I was going to ask if, uh…” The tips of his ears darken. “It’s okay if you say no, but I was going to ask if you’d sit with me at lunch.”
I’m frozen for a good five seconds before his words register and the relief comes pouring out of me on a gusting exhale. “Really?” I breathe. “I would love to.”
His own relief is starkly obvious. “Really?”
“Yes.”
He reaches out and cups the side of my face. “Why are your eyes full of tears, Fairy Tale? I don’t understand.” His thumb brushes across my cheekbone. “Did you have a bad morning?”
Yes. Until now. “I’m having a great morning,” I whisper, resting my cheek in his hand.
And the day only gets better. Eric holds my hand and walks me to second period, my backpack thrown over his beefy shoulder.
When that class ends, he arrives once again to hold my hand, bringing me to calculus.
I’ve never felt more special in my entire life.
Especially since my mother passed away. He holds my hand like it’s made of glass and kisses me before leaving me at the door to my classrooms, sending a silent warning to every male in my classes, his message clear: Don’t you dare go near my girlfriend.
Unfortunately, every time he kisses me, my panties get a little damper and by lunch time, all I want is to get on my knees for my medicine.
Is calling Eric’s come my medicine a little extreme?
Yesterday, I might have thought so, but I’m itchy and restless without it.
I close my eyes on the way to the cafeteria and imagine the milky consistency of it dripping down my inner thighs, his face a mask of bliss above me, his body jerking, jerking with the utter satisfaction of putting a baby in my tummy.
More, Daddy. More.
“Hey, Fairy Tale,” Eric says now, coming up behind me.
Taking my hand. I’m beaming up at him as we walk into the cafeteria together, aware that everyone is staring, as they’ve been doing in the hallways all day long.
Good. Let them look. I couldn’t be prouder to be walking with Eric, the most beautiful man in all of creation.
He’s proud to walk beside me, too. The proof is right there, in the set of his shoulders, the puff of his chest, his confident walk.
Would he be proud of me if he spent five minutes listening to my stepmother?
I ignore the influx of nerves and focus on the positives in this moment.
I’m adding food to my tray, aren’t I? A chocolate milk and pasta salad, so I won’t be hungry from the lack of breakfast soon.
My boyfriend is carrying my backpack and standing behind me like a sentry, glaring at every boy who gets too close.
Now, he’s walking me over to his table full of hockey teammates, holding both of our trays, because he’s proud of me.
For now, whispers a voice in the back of my head.
“Hey everyone, you already know this is Marlow, my girlfriend. She’s sitting with us, but she’s with me. I suggest none of you forget that.”
“Hey Marlow,” they say as one, but all of them keep their eyes on the table.
Eric leads me over to the other side of the group, setting down our trays side by side, before pulling me down into his lap.
While my breath is catching over the turgidness of his shaft against my butt, he proceeds to open my carton of chocolate milk and hand me my pasta salad fork. Taking care of me. Valuing me.
It’s such a warm feeling, I fumble with the pasta salad before I manage to get one of the soft pieces of fusilli on my fork. Forgoing my bite for the moment, I turn slightly and lever myself up to leave a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
“Getting to hold you while you eat is thanks enough, Marlow.”
My face warms. All of me warms.
Boy, I wish we were alone so we could kiss. Deep kisses. Leading kisses.
He tugs on the spaghetti strap on my shoulder, his attention straying to my breasts where they’re pushed up in the tight yellow bodice. “You look so pretty in your dress.”
I’ll look pretty out of it, too.
That’s what I want to say, because I hesitate.
Eric narrows his gaze. “What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. It was too forward.”
His eyes start to twinkle with humor. “I think we’re past worrying about being forward.” Rumbling a laugh, he drops a kiss onto my head. “That parking lot is never going to recover. And believe me, neither am I.”
I chew my lip hard. “We only just met, though. Did I…do you think I’m…”
His amusement is beginning to disappear. “Do I think you’re what? The most perfect girl on earth? Yeah. I do.” He gathers me closer, visibly concerned. “What’s up with you today? Are you sure nothing happened when you got home last night?”
“Nothing happened. I just laid there and missed you.”
One or both of us must have moved closer, because we’re breathing against each other’s mouths now, his erection swelling more insistently against my bottom. “I missed you more, baby.”
We’re speaking quietly so the rest of his teammates, who are carrying on their own conversation, don’t hear us. But I lean in closer, anyway, to make sure. “Do you have hockey practice today?”
“No. Not until tomorrow.”
I nod, trying to rein in my considerable appetite for Eric, but I can’t. It’s got me by the throat, my underwear sopping wet from a day of touching him and seeing him without getting the relief he showed me last night. “My parents don’t get home until six o’clock, if you want to hang out.”
His chest starts to rise and fall faster, his heartbeat knocking against my shoulder. “I’ll be home alone until six, too. Do you want to come over after school?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
Looking at each other, we know what it means.
I’m going to end up in his bed.
We both want that connection so bad, his body inside mine is inevitable.
“I’ll need to stop at the pharmacy on the way home and buy condoms,” he says shakily in my ear, his hips shifting underneath me, just slightly, but enough to make my sex constrict like a whip cracking.
“I don’t want to use one,” I whisper, looking him in the eye. “Do you?”
A violent shudder goes through his giant frame. “No, baby. I don’t.”
I’m very close to suggesting that we ditch school now, but I never get the chance because two more of Eric’s teammates sit down at the table. I do a double take when I notice that they’ve brought my stepsisters along, both redheads squeezing into spots on the opposite end of the table.
Suzie sends me a pinkie wave, Jessie smiling sardonically.
“Hey,” I say warmly.
“Yesterday, the whole team was single. Now three of you have girlfriends?” one of the guys says, sounding peeved. “Way to put the pressure on the rest of us.”
“Yup!” Garrett slings his arm around Jessie’s neck, causing her Diet Coke to slosh around in its bottle. “We’re official. Meeting the parents tonight and everything.”
My stomach lining turns to ice.
My stepsisters are introducing their new boyfriends to my dad and stepmother?
Already?
I’ll never be free to do that. Not while I’m living under their roof, at least. And once I’ve graduated high school and moved out, I doubt I’ll ever look back.
For now, though, my relationship must remain in secret, unlike my stepsisters.
Otherwise, my stepmother would lock me down twice as securely.
Me having any kind of happiness or social life will be totally unacceptable to her.
Even if a miracle occurs and she allows me to continue seeing Eric, she’ll slander me to him at first opportunity.
I can’t risk him being poisoned by her. Turned against me. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
“H-how are you meeting them?” I ask.
“They’re coming to dinner,” says Jessie, a measure of sympathy in her eyes.
Because she knows. Not only do I not have the option to invite Eric, but I’ll be locked in my room with my dinner while they’re having their meet-the- parents dinner downstairs.
The side of my face warms and I know Eric is looking at me curiously.
Expectantly?
Does he wonder why he’s not coming to dinner?
Probably.
But there’s nothing I can do about it, so I sip my chocolate milk and pray for someone to change the subject.