Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
DRAKE
After smoking, my mind floats in dreamy circles. That’s often a feature not a bug, but tonight the image of Cadence smothering her chest in sunscreen breaks into my head despite my best attempts to force it away. I picture again her nipples reacting to the air, stiffening into peaks that make her tits tighter, perkier, the perfect shape for my hand.
I reach for myself, then roll over in the back seat, cursing.
You don’t fuck a siren. You block your ears to their sweet call or end up smashed to pieces on the jagged rocks they’ve made their home.
The resentment at denying myself goes straight on top of all the others, a tower of Babel stretching into the sky.
I sit upright, shaking my head then immediately regretting it. The weed took the worst edge off my migraine, but the pain still bites deep even if the nausea is tamed. The headaches often come in the ebb after an emotional firestorm.
Cadence’s fault again.
My eyes drift closed, and I see an older image of her, from the day I was dragged away for my own good.
Through the window panels in the door, I had watched her sitting outside the principal’s office. She balanced on the plastic chair, knees curled to her chest, dressed in replacement clothes sourced from the school’s lost and found. Shorts billowed around her slender legs, only holding at the waist thanks to a safety pin. Her top—two sizes too small—stretched tightly across her perfect tits, practically obscene.
A vision I stared at, head twisted with longing and confusion and fury, knowing her mother would never arrive to collect her, no matter what the school said when they phoned.
During her fruitless wait, I was stuck with the lawyer my father sent in his stead. The father who had only introduced himself a day before, conveniently ‘not knowing’ about me when it mattered, when we could have used his bloated excess of wealth.
The lawyer paced back and forth, talking the school out of pressing charges. Talking me into three months of pure hell at a boot camp instead.
The fucker really didn’t make a good first impression.
I pick through the ashtray mounted between the front bucket seats, searching for enough dregs to form a new blunt, but the hunt is fruitless. What I should do is sleep but each time I try, she floods my mind. Stirring my muscles into tight, hard knots. Making me so angry I’m close to losing control.
Action is the only cure when my thoughts spiral.
I switch into the driver’s seat and steer my precious car up the hill. I head straight past her new residence, parking in the next available rest area. One with a clear line of sight to the house.
The lights in Cadence’s room go off far sooner than the rest. Either she’s under the covers, checking her phone, or the day exhausted her enough to go to sleep early.
I wait for a full half hour once the entire house is dark, then drive down, parking behind the thick bushes that front the section. There’s an alarm set, the red lights blinking in every room, but I quickly disable it using my phone.
A thrill snakes its way along my spine, spilling adrenaline into my system as I avoid the gravel, stepping on the cushioning grass to reach her window. The curtains aren’t drawn, possibly so anytime she wants, she can sit upright in bed and stare across the sea.
Tonight, it’s hypnotising. The slight breeze chops the waves until the reflected moonlight is cut into a thousand shimmering pieces.
But it’s the sight inside the room I find more entrancing. Cadence lies on her back, face turned towards the window. Her features are so still, it’s only the slow rhythmic rise and fall of her chest that convinces me she’s alive.
The moment I raise the sash window, she’ll be awake and alert, so during this brief calm, I drink my fill of her.
So much pretty in such an evil little package.
My mind returns to the past, replaying my last day at Alabaster when I pushed her against the bank of lockers.
Torn between rage and grief and lust, the touch felt like a hit of electricity. Nine volts straight through my sensitive skin as the whites of her eyes shone, fear buzzing through her. Stiffening her muscles. Stiffening my cock as I stared down her shirt at those gorgeous tits. The ones she took such pains to display on the swimming platform this afternoon, wearing a skimpy costume to parade before the boys.
A tease.
But I’m more than capable of teasing back.
Since last week, when I first got a heads-up she was coming to Ashford Crest, I’ve been planning my revenge, but I forgot what it was like to be near her. My first crush.
Crush is right. It’s what it feels like when she stares straight into me, her beauty a tightening fist around my soul.
My fingers worm under the sash window and lift, wincing at the sharp squeal of wood against wood in the still night air.
She doesn’t even stir.
Emboldened, I throw my leg over the sill and clamber inside. Not the most elegant journey, but I’m not scoring points for presentation. I leave the window up for a quick retreat, then pace around her room.
The canopy over the bed turns her into a fairytale princess. One with a pea underneath her mattress or a fingertip bleeding where the spindle pierced her skin.
Asleep, she could be anything I want her to be.
Taking care not to wake her, I peel the bedclothes from her unconscious form, leaving them just covering her feet before pushing her onto her back. Her chest hitches like a deep instinct warns her, then returns to its steady rise and fall.
The cold wind blowing off the harbour bites deeper by the second. Exactly like it did when my clothes were soaked by icy water, left to shiver in the mountain air, not even a thin tent to protect against the elements. Even in early autumn, it got cold at boot camp altitude. Most mornings the wild grasses would crackle underfoot with frost.
My lips dried, then cracked, then split; the medicine cabinet didn’t stock the niceties of Vaseline. My right upper lip split in the same place so often it left a scar.
When the guards were bored, they’d bait us to fight each other. I learned to defend myself from the larger, wilder boys’ practiced fists, then how to put my height and reach to advantage, to put my full force behind a punch.
One fight ended with me in hospital, unable to get an MRI because of a steel plate in my head. An injury so old I can’t remember it. But it explains my chronic headaches, now worse thanks to the concussion that prompted the scan.
Three months of hell, then I came to live with my father. A transition that didn’t go smoothly even if he mouthed the right platitudes.
But at least when it gets too much, I can drive away and sleep in my car. I doubt he even notices when I’m gone.
I drag a chair to the head of her bed. Cadence’s lashes are long, curling at the ends where they’re paler. Almost white. Her hair would do the same if it weren’t dyed into a monotone blonde, cheap and brassy.
In the relaxation of sleep, her plump lips form a smile of utter contentment. I sit closer, my breath puffing across her skin, fluttering those lashes until her nostrils pinch together, a bogeyman entering her dreams.
My lips tease against her ear, whispering, “You’re going to pay, Cadence. I’m going to twist you inside out until you’re screaming, little girl. I’ll strip away everything you enjoy.”
But she’s gone somewhere she can’t hear. Her lips curve back into a smile.
I unbutton the top two fastenings of her sleep shirt, watching as goosebumps spread in a ripple across her skin. Her nipples pebble with the cold, the darker areolas visible through the thin fabric, the material rising and falling with each breath.
My eyes trace the shape of her concave stomach. I gorge on the sight of her long, slim legs, barely covered by a pair of tiny shorts. They’re parted slightly, one leg straight, the other at an angle, knee gently bent.
My fingertips buzz with the need to touch her, and I pull back, heeding the temptation like a warning.
She’s not waking anytime soon and there are more secrets hidden in her room than those covered by her inadequate attire.
I start my search at her wardrobe, pawing through the clothing on display. Most of the hangers hold pieces of school uniform, with a few basic dresses behind them. The shelves are stacked with new clothing, labels removed—probably courtesy of Emily—but not yet worn.
Nothing of interest. A few pairs of shoes battered enough to show her previous poverty, laces tied around the soles.
I move to her schoolbag, finding a few odds and ends, keepsakes maybe. A set of keys that have blackened with disuse, a stuffed toy that’s bald with wear.
Her exercise books are full of doodles. Song lyrics decorated with daisies and hearts. The rhymes are basic enough to make me retch. Her maths books have complicated lists of her workings, the scribbles and cross-outs making it easy to see where she went wrong, and a quick scan tells me most of them are wrong.
Pretty and pretty-dumb. The classic combination.
Books form a line-up at the back of her desk. A range of mass market paperbacks, their covers feathering at the corners. Tabs of a dozen different colours are dotted through the pages, marking out lines and scenes. I open one and the description of throbbing tentacles on dildo duty makes me roll my eyes.
A whore just like her mother. I tuck the book inside my jacket pocket to read later, just to be sure.
No phone. I check the desk drawers, but she hasn’t touched them.
Her discarded clothes lie in a heap beside her bed. There’s a hamper in the bathroom and I toss them in there, then hook my pinkie finger through the skimpy fabric of her panties, stretching them wide to release their scent.
They go into my pocket as a service fee, nestling against the book.
The cabinet holds a half empty tube of lip gloss and over-the-counter painkillers—ibuprofen, paracetamol. Another foil of pills sits without packaging on the lower shelf; the bottom row a darker colour that identifies them as birth control.
A wave of the same rage I felt earlier in the day recurs and I grip the vanity edge to steady myself, unsure where the anger stems from. The prescription is in her name, nothing dodgy.
I slide the cabinet door across, not worrying that it bangs.
“If I was a phone, where would I be?” I sing in my off-key voice as I walk back into the bedroom, scanning her face for signs she hears me, seeing nothing.
The next most obvious place is under her pillow, and she seems an obvious-place type of girl.
Bingo.
Except it’s locked.
Lifting her hand gives me a moment’s pause, but she’s truly out like a light. I press her thumb to the device, and it clicks open.
Voyeurism keeps me entertained for half an hour as I read through text messages and DMs. There are a few male names listed in her contacts, but they read like a task list. Doctor. Dentist. Garage.
I delete them all, even though I don’t care.
I don’t want her like that.
Not at all.
I’m not thinking about the thin layer of clothing that separates the warm promise of her body from mine. About the few buttons I could easily flick open or the waistband I could drag to her knees.
My headache sends a warning thump, and I refocus on the screen. Either she’s private, or years of sporadic wifi stopped her going online. The few photos she’s posted on social media have others captured in the same frame, like the display is for their benefit.
I get bored and rest the phone on the edge of the bed, wondering if I should take an explicit photograph for her to wake to. Maybe send one to her entire address book for a laugh.
My fingers make quick work of her remaining shirt buttons, then I pause as a wave of lust washes over me, sharp and jagged and everywhere . Like fingernails clawing at my skin.
I leave the sides of the shirt where they fall and place my hand on the cooling skin of her midriff, her reactive shiver so delicious I can taste it. She immediately warms under my palm.
A scent rises from her, and I lean closer, sniffing deep near her hair. Cherry almond shampoo. An odour close to cyanide, pure poison. Mixed with her natural scent, it smells fucking divine.
I inhale again, then sample my way down the rest of her, stopping at her hip, tugging those thin shorts down an inch to inhale the glorious, sweet scent of her pussy.
Enough to make my mouth water.
“Shh,” I whisper as her shiver grows stronger, and she tries to roll on her side. “I’ll keep you warm, baby.” I huff out a soft laugh. “The best I can without setting you on fire.”
My hand cups her pussy, feeling the heat of her through the thin fabric of her shorts. Just the idea of her vulnerability is enough to send blood surging into my cock.
But I can’t afford to touch her like that.
Just one peek. That’ll have to do. I lift the waistband, outrage flooding me when I see she’s smoothly waxed.
Who the fuck is that for?
With a low hum of irritation, I let the band snap back into place, again unlocking her phone to search through the messages, finding nothing more incriminating than I did the first time.
Maybe she swings for the other side. An idea that makes my dick harder, thinking of some sweet thing with pink gloss on her lips eating her out.
My eyes fix on her luscious mouth as I draw back. I wonder if she’d stay sleeping if I rubbed the head of my cock over those lips or did more; jamming inside and fucking her throat until her body bucked, fighting for air.
I shove the chair back, striding to the far side of the room as I press a hand to my chest, heart thumping, ready to explode.
My face is too warm. Far too warm. Giddy with the heat, I twist my knuckle into my sternum, letting the pain grow until it overwhelms the other sensations.
Cadence is dangerous.
She should come with a warning written on her chest.
With a grim smile, I grab a sharpie from her desk and bend over her. Having learned my lesson, I force my eyes to focus solely on the words.
Finished, I add the pen to the growing stash in my pocket, then slide her phone back under the pillow. My knuckles knock against something else hidden under there. Hard plastic. I draw out the bottle of pills, reading the contents with dull eyes, too enraged to be surprised.
The patient’s name is Madelaine Summers.
The same as the pills I found on Harriet. The ones I had to rage and rail and threaten her to get, then do worse to find out where she got them.
When I unscrew the lid and count, only eight are left.
My head thuds, stomach churning. The migraine has returned with a vengeance.
I shove the bottle into my pocket with the other treasures, then stride to the window, slipping out the way I came in, escaping to the familiar comfort of my car. A few minutes later, I park near the public jetty. Climbing into the back bench seat, I take a lighter from my pocket.
The flame calms me. My eyes focus on the bright point, absorbing the colours from blue through the cleanest white to sunshine yellow tinged at the very edges with red.
I spin the wheel, light the flame, close the lid, repeat. When I’ve regrouped, I return it to my pocket and lie back, eyes closed.
Along with the headache, another image thumps in my mind, edges so sharp it makes me bleed.
My mother’s body, curled on its side, the essence that made it her, gone forever.
And clutched tightly in her stiffening fingers, a pill bottle with the sticky label removed. A label I found near the top of the trash.
The same name.
The same prescription.
The same girl behind it all.
A girl I will torment until her eyes are as dead as my mother.