Chapter 17
Idon’t scream. My throat seems to close in on itself, so I doubt I could—even if I wanted to—as Kayde drags me through the darkness of Camp Crestview.
Belatedly, it occurs to me we aren’t heading for his cabin, and I immediately throw on the brakes, dragging my feet as well as I can. When Kayde turns, his hand pulling away just enough, I jerk free of his palm and whisper, “Where are we going?”
“Doesn’t matter unless you’re telling me you’re not going,” Kayde reminds me, his voice free of any amusement or patience. “I gave you a lot of leeway last night with the knife, sweetheart. You’ve used it all up.”
“I’m just asking—” He lunges at me and I gasp, reaching up to cover my face, terror coursing through me.
In the dark, when I can’t see his face, Kayde reminds me of my dad. Of the way he’d come at me, copperhead fast, to strike before I could save myself.
I’ve stained my mom’s living room floor with my blood enough times to know how much it hurts, and this time I tense, waiting for the pain.
Only, it never comes. Kayde pauses, and I can’t tell if that was his intention all along, or if my reaction—the way I hid my face from his blow—surprises him.
“Oh,” he murmurs finally, and when he reaches out, it’s more deliberate this time. “We’re going to have to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I hiss into the dark space between us, made darker by the way my eyes are crammed shut. “I’m not—” But he doesn’t give me a chance to finish. Kayde grabs my hips, yanking me up and off of my feet quickly enough that it pulls a small yelp from my throat.
But he doesn’t carry me bridal style like before. No, this time Kayde slings me over his shoulder, and the breath leaves my lungs in a gasp as I come down against his shoulder. “Fuck!” I shriek, my hands scrambling against him for some kind of purchase.
“Don’t you dare kick me,” Kayde warns, an arm wrapped around my thighs to pin me against him. His fingers roam—of course they do—as he walks, and his other arm pins my ankles to his chest as if he thinks I won’t listen.
“I’m not kicking you!” I protest, though the muscles in my legs protest the lack of doing so. “I’m just trying t-to—” Well, it’s not like getting comfortable is a real option. But his hand around my ankles moves, until he’s dragging my arm over his other shoulder where I can bury it in his t-shirt with some kind of confidence.
“There. Happy?” I doubt he’s really asking, since he hasn’t stopped walking. And his fingers haven’t stopped moving until they’re kneading against the bare skin up my upper thighs and causing me to tense for an entirely different reason.
“Where are we going?” I whisper, watching the cabins get smaller and smaller. It’s hard to tell, though I think we’re heading for the lake. If he’s going to drown me, why wouldn’t he have saved himself the trouble and let me die in the river yesterday?
“Shouldn’t matter much.” His voice is sharp, the amusement I usually find there missing. The answer makes me fall silent, any other words dying before they can make it out of my mouth. But I hold him tighter, hating that it makes me feel just a touch better when he’s the reason for all of my problems in the first place.
It’s a good five minutes before I hear the lapping of water against the dock, and I stiffen in his arms. “Kayde…” My voice is soft, so soft he may not hear me, but Kayde doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow down as I hear a door creaking open, and I realize where we are.
The boathouse.
It’s off limits to campers, and even counselors rarely have a reason to be here unless we’re dragging out the kayaks and paddles. The rest of it is empty space, or storage, and because of that, most of us steer clear.
Except for Darcy, when she’d been in love with Daniel one summer.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve noticed Liza and Kinsley sneaking out of here in the afternoons when they don’t think anyone is looking. Too bad my jealousy is just that prominent that I do, in fact, notice. And maybe, just slightly, I’ve had my own wishes about having someone that I’d want to be here with. Someone to whisper with about our secret plans to come to the boathouse and spend a few stolen minutes away from preteen campers and judgmental counselors.
But God, Kayde is not the partner I’d had in mind for those fantasies. Not even close.
I’m dropped to my feet without notice, and my knees would’ve buckled if Kayde didn’t have an arm around my shoulders to hold me upright. My teeth lock around the words thank you to prevent them becoming real, and I step back from him the moment I feel like I’m able to do so.
“What are we—” A click cuts me off, and I see the flare of an electric LED lantern as Kayde sets it down on a nearby shelf. “What are we doing here?”
Kayde just fixes me with a look and turns on another, less bright lantern. But the orange light seems to mesh with the bright white, until this mostly empty side of the boathouse is well-lit enough for me to see every twitch of his expression, and for him to see mine.
“What do people normally do when they come here, Summer?” he asks, flicking back a tarp to reveal a stuffed black backpack in the corner.
“I wouldn’t know.” Even through my fear, it’s impossible to keep the sourness from my tone. “No one has ever asked me to come here. Or thrown me over their shoulder, caveman style?—”
His sudden grin is anything but nice as he steps forward into my space. “Am I going to break your boathouse cherry, then?” he purrs, his hands coming up to my shoulders. “What a fucking honor.”
“Why here?” I ask, glancing around the small room. The wood floor under me creaks as I step to one side, and I look down at the planks in alarm as if they’ll break and send me plunging into the cold lake below. Two pillars stretch from the floor to the ceiling, and I know for a fact they continue every few feet in the other area of the boathouse too, the side where we keep the kayaks.
“Because I wanted a place where you could be a little louder.” Kayde busies himself with his backpack, unzipping it and fishing a few things out before dropping it back to the floor. “I worry about you in one of our cabins. You’re not so good at control, sweetheart. Besides…” When I look back at him, I see he’s tying a rope around one pillar, at about head height for him. He uses one of the pillar’s horizontal pegs to make sure the rope won’t slip, tugs on it, and moves to do the same to the other pillar.
“Gotta teach you a lesson, don’t I?”
“What?” The way the word leaves my throat is more of a rush of air and fear, instead of a real word. I take a few steps away from him on the creaking planks, curling my fingers into my palms. “No, I’m not?—”
“I do like it when you tell me no,” Kayde muses, working on tying the other rope into place. “I like your little rush of panic when you realize I’m going to do something outside of your comfort zone.” His wolfish smile finds my wide eyes, and he drops to one knee, another rope appearing in his hands from his backpack as he ties it to the base of the pole. “We should do safe words. What’s yours?”
“What’s my…” I stare at him like he’s grown a second head. “I don’t have a safe word.”
The look on his face as he pauses to look up at me is, in a word, rather unimpressed. His brow raises dismissively, and his mouth twitches in a frown before he states, “That’s very unsafe of you, baby girl. You really need a safe word when you’re going to play?—”
“I never did this before you!” I throw my hands up in exasperation, stomach rolling as I pace along my side of the room like a trapped tiger. My heart flutters in my chest, and I’m sure I’m absolutely going to vomit. “I never needed a fucking safe word before?—”
“Sounds boring.” He cuts me off effortlessly, without raising his voice. “Pick a safe word. That’ll let you say ‘no’ and ‘stop’ all you want, and I’ll know you don’t really want to stop. Say your safe word, and everything stops. And…well you know.” He smiles at me, though any humor there is dark and mocking.
“I hate you,” I breathe out, still clenching my hands so hard my fingers seem to creak with the effort.
“You did this to yourself. I asked you so many times for the knife. But you made me take it from you. I warned you, Summer.”
I haven’t felt like this in years.
The feeling bubbles to life under my ribs, sparking to life in long-forgotten spaces buried under muscle and scars.
You did this to yourself, Summer.
Stop avoiding it, Summer.
The more you run from me, the worse it’ll be.
My father had been tall and imposing. His eyes were the same blue-gray as mine, though so much colder than I could ever manage. He always told me the punishments would be worse the longer I avoided him, or the longer I stayed out of his grasp in some way or another.
The time I’d told my teachers had been the worst. I can’t help but reach up to finger the only visible scar he’d left me, the one reaching from my brow up towards my bangs.
“…Summer?” If I didn’t know better, I’d say Kayde is concerned when he gets to his feet, his slow stride bringing him closer to me. He seems confused, like I’ve grown a second head, and even his touch is hesitant when he brings my hand away from my face, uncovering my left eye and the scar above it. Somehow, something seems to click into place, an understanding he has no right to and certainly no knowledge of.
Even Kinsley doesn’t know the extent of what my dad did to me before my mother managed to get him out of our house.
“Don’t say that to me,” I whisper finally, my eyes flitting upward to find his. I refuse to show him how afraid I am. I refuse to let him know that every part of me seeks any escape possible, no matter how unlikely.
“Don’t say what?”
“Don’t say…” I swallow hard, the words curdling in my throat. “Don’t say you did this to yourself. I can’t—I don’t?—”
“Fine.” Kayde cuts me off decisively, drawing me with him across the room. “I will never say those words in any order ever again, sweetheart. So long as you stand here and be a good girl for me, instead of trying to claw my eyes out. You think you can do that?”
Not really.
But before I can shake my head, he makes it obvious he isn’t really looking for an answer. Kayde’s fingers run up my sides, dragging up my tee with them until he can pull it and my bra over my head. But he doesn’t seem to be in a rush. He kisses me then, his tongue insistent and begging as I finally open my mouth to him.
My reward is a soft, sweet purr from his lips. The kind that would make me melt if I wasn’t considering strangling him with his shirt.
But then his fingers tug at the waistband of my running shorts that I’d changed into, and I can’t help the whimper of protest as he slowly drags them and my panties over my hips, pushing them down my thighs until they’re pooled on the floor below me.
“Good girl,” Kayde murmurs, sounding like he actually means it. “Don’t fight me, baby.” He reaches for my left arm and tugs it away from where I’m covering myself, pulling it up near my face before looping the rope around my wrist and tightening.
I try.
I try not to fight him, because I know all he has to do is make the threat he holds over me and I’ll have to suck it up, anyway. But I can’t help the soft sounds that pour from me; the ones I won’t admit are please or don’t. I don’t trust him to tie me up. Especially here, where no one really could hear me if things went poorly.
“You should be coming up with a safe word,” is his only response as he secures my other arm to his makeshift rope restraints. Before I can dignify that with a response, Kayde drops to his knees, pressing his mouth to my hip as he urges me to step out of my shorts so he can throw them to the wall with his backpack. I hate how afraid I am of him; how my arms tug in the restraints and even now I can’t help but watch him with wide, terrified eyes.
“I don’t know,” I mutter, shrugging jerkily. “Fuck, I don’t know what a safe word should even be.”
“Something you wouldn’t normally say during sex,” Kayde advises, pushing my ankles wider until he can tie them to the poles on either side of me. When he’s done I shudder, the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable setting hard into my bones.
“And stop doesn’t qualify?”
“Not when we’re playing.” He runs his hands up my sides, making me squirm, though it really just proves how little I can move at all.
He has me trapped, and I can’t do anything to get away from him. The thought brings another whine bubbling past my lips, one that Kayde chases with his lips eagerly. “Safe word,” he urges, hands on my hips. “Now, Summer?—”
“Darcy,” I say without thinking, causing him to pull back. He stares at me, bemusement etched into his features, before his lips pull into a genuinely amused grin.
“Darcy,” he repeats, the edge of a chuckle in the words. “Yeah, okay. That’s appropriate. Never met anyone who’s as much of a turnoff or a boner killer. I’ll take it. Now…” He runs his hands up my sides, not stopping, until one grips the base of my throat and again I pull at my arms, wishing I could will them free.
The other keeps going, moving until he’s cupping my cheek and still going higher.
But when his fingers touch the scar on my brow, I jerk away as hard as the ropes will let me, eyes wide at the searing feel of his touch where I want it the least. “What happened to you, sweetheart?” he murmurs, stepping just a little closer so I really have no escape from him. “Who did this to you? Who said those words to you first and ruined them for you, hmm?”
“I…” This is an angle of attack I hadn’t been expecting in the least. “Kayde, I’m not going to tell you?—”
“Why?” He actually seems confused, and a little bit curious. “They can’t hurt you anymore, can they? Surely they can’t be scarier than me.”
And that, of all things, drags an incredulous laugh from my throat as I tilt my head back, his hand slipping around to the nape of my neck and cradling me in his hold. “Oh, Kayde,” I mumble, eyes shut hard. “If only that were true.”
The confusion is as genuine as it is expected. His hand doesn’t tighten on my throat, though he thumbs the scar a few times, causing me to feel queasier than I had a moment ago. “Stop, please.” I murmur, knowing it isn’t my brand new safe word but wondering if it would even count for something as non-sexual as this.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not physically.”
“Will you tell me?”
A slow smirk crawls over my lips, and I gaze ruefully up at Kayde, arms twisting in the ropes holding them just over my head. “What will you give me if I do?”
His confusion fades, replaced with his own grin. His hand moves lower, until he can stroke the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip almost affectionately, though I don’t know how in the world I’m supposed to tell him anything if he keeps his hand there.
“I’ll let you stop something once without breaking our deal,” he murmurs at last. “Just for tonight, because I know you won’t like how I intend to play with you. Not at first, anyway.”
“Anything? Any part of it, you’ll stop?”
“Well.” His grin turns a bit sheepish as he drags his hand back up to cup my cheek. “Anything except fucking your sweet little cunt. Come on, Summer. You can’t take that away from me.”
I snort, considering it. He really is giving me a choice right now. It’s rare for him, I suppose. I can either tell him and receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card for later, or refuse to tell him now and forsake it.
Is telling him really that bad?
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me tell you some other time?” I ask, wiggling my arms. “And still give me the pass? No offense, but this isn’t exactly how I enjoy having my heart to heart confessionals.”
His grin never falters, but his eyes do glitter. “Not a chance, baby girl. You could lie to me and make something up later.”
“I could make something up now.”
“If you do…” He leans in close, jaw brushing mine before he murmurs against my ear, “Then you better not let me know it’s a lie.”
That’s rather terrifying.
And definitely a threat.
Taking a deep breath, I twist my hands in the rope that I can reach, and close my eyes hard for just a second before letting them flick back open. If I’m going to tell him, then I won’t hide from him.
“So my dad was a piece of shit…” I begin, a humorless grin curving over my own lips. “And like, I mean that with every bit of disrespect possible.