10. Evelyn
My dainty fingers wrapped around his length. I was shocked to find it almost molten to the touch, and that I could feel his heartbeat through it. He wasn’t hard, and I worried I was doing something wrong.
“Like that?”
“Just like that,” he said with a strange hitch to his voice that was very unlike him.
He kissed me, his lips moving along my neck. The fine hairs on my nape tingled with carnal lust despite my terror.
He twitched in my hand. He grew bigger.
Bigger.
Worryingly so.
His mouth tasted the hollow of my throat. A moan vibrated against my flesh, and I wasn’t sure if it was his or mine.
“Aww… Are we pryin’ on your sweet lil’ romantic getaway or somethin’?” Jimmy taunted.
The threat sent a flush through my body, my blood growing hot as I swallowed a whimper. The last thing either of us wanted was for him to get involved. Rurik had mediated the fight, but he wasn’t interested in stopping either of these men.
Our eyes met. It was brief, seconds at most, but years of pain and sorrow was shared between us. There was no pleasure in his expression, no lecherous grin.
We were performing for the Father. That was all. It was just like home.
“I want you to take me,” I murmured against his mouth.
Those simple words unlocked something in him.
His mouth was on mine, more passionate. He tasted of sweet brandy.
I opened my lips, and his tongue slipped past them.
He guided me up into a standing position, and then turned me around.
The heel of his hand pressed into the centre of my shoulder blades and bent me over.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered, and I obeyed. The air breezed across my rear as his hands rolled up my skirt, exposing more of me to prying eyes. His body moved towards me, shielding me as best he could.
“Damn. Who knew the moneyman was packin’,” bellowed Rurik, so the other guys further away could hear. They were acting like this was all some hilarious game, and Laszlo had whipped out a surprising manoeuvre.
I could feel Jimmy’s disapproval. He wanted Laszlo to fail. I had no idea why, but Jimmy would never recognize that Laszlo was one of them.
Laszlo gripped my panties. I held my breath.
“Such a gentle lover, though. You even know how to wield that thing?” Rurik added.
Laszlo tore the fabric. I gasped at the sharp pain of the waistband shredding at my hips.
I walked in the valley between two worlds.
The one of the Family and the one of the mob blurred together.
Past and present collided. It was all about power.
Control. I was little more than a conduit in the power struggle between Jimmy and Laszlo.
They fed on my fear, but I had an opportunity to broker some power of my own in denying them that.
My mother spent the last decade as a simpering fool for the Father, desperate to convince him of her use. She was weak, though. I wouldn’t be like her. I wanted to be more than a tool to harm and humiliate others.
If I could make Laszlo look like a sex deity that I was hopelessly addicted to, it would establish him as dominant. I was a virgin playing a game far beyond my skill level, but I had to try. I licked my lips, summoning every ounce of bravery I had to lie.
“I’ve been looking forward to round two tonight! I thought we’d be doing it back at your place.”
Was that too forward?
Would he understand enough to play along?
Laszlo froze. He didn’t seem to expect me to improvise like that after my trembling, though the other guys couldn’t have noticed with how quick he rebounded. A pleased growl reverberated through him, some foreign word I didn’t understand trailing along the underbelly of it.
He took hold of his manhood, guiding it to my most private place.
He smacked his girth against me a few times, making sure I was ready to take him.
He couldn’t know that I was a virgin and that of course I wasn’t ready.
Whatever arousal had built in me during our flirtation had to be enough, but it wasn’t.
He spat on his hand, wrapping it around his cock, trying to add to the lubrication. The hurt was instant as he started to stretch me open, my body resisting the intrusion. It stole every bit of wits from me, a burning sensation in my core.
“Ah… Belle,” he moaned.
This had been inevitable, ever since he came back into the room with a dark aura, ever since Jimmy grabbed me.
I’d disassociated enough to forget that this was the inevitable thing, and my cry of pain wasn’t an act.
A fingernail broke as I squeezed the booth for support, and the throbbing of my nail bed didn’t distract me.
It was too similar to the throbbing down below.
Blood rushed to the surface in a steady thud-thud-thud. I wanted to run, to hide, to disappear, but there was no escape.
If there was one thing I could do, though, it was endure.
For nearly twenty years, that was what I had done.
What was another twenty minutes on top of all that?
“Those sounds can’t be faked,” someone said.
“Like fucking a poor girl with a baseball bat,” Rurik chuckled.
That was when I realized I’d been screeching out from the intrusion. Loud, shrill cries rang around me.
Even once I noticed them, I couldn’t stop. My face burned with shame and humiliation. The power I thought I might have bled from me. I’d been coy, trying to wrest a modicum of control from the situation, and failed. Just like my mother, I was nothing but a passing amusement to dangerous men.
My emotions twisted within me, and Laszlo split me open, his shaft like a searing hot iron pole being shoved up into me.
I wasn’t a person; I was a tool.
Air. I needed air.
A gap in my screaming, a desperate swallow. Blackness danced on the backs of my eyelids, my trembling stilled by Laszlo’s firm grip. His rings were cool and hard on my hip. I focused on that sensation, knowing that this would not be quick.
Could not be quick.
Laszlo kept me in place, stopping me from reeling and moving about. “Stay with me,” he murmured. “You’re taking me so well, angel. What a good girl. Arch your back.”
His hand was on my stomach, helping guide me into position. I obeyed, relieved for some clarity on what to do, how to submit, how to please him. But I was not meant to be stretched open that wide.
“You’re so tight…” Laszlo growled, his voice crackling with anger, with base pleasure.
“Hurts,” I whimpered, and I wasn’t sure he heard it, but his thumb gently stroked my tummy. A soft touch that the other men couldn’t see, and was for me alone. The other hand was on my exposed breast, hiding it from our audience.
He seemed to be doing everything in his power to retain my dignity beyond anything else.
Consciousness was hazy. Time was slow. Our bodies met in a way that should have been intimate and warm. Part of me responded to the carnal sensation, yielding, welcoming, but hot tears streamed down my cheeks, dropping to the cushioned bench below me.
The beautiful man thrust into me.
The pain didn’t diminish.
He was so big.
I was tiny and unprepared.
“Good girl. You’re doing so well.”
The sounds of the men flew through my mind, sped up beyond the human range. I could hear the derision, the offers to finish me off. I didn’t know what a train meant, when Jimmy said it. The definition came crashing into me with the full force of a high-speed rail.
The string of my halter top had come loose. It brushed against my bare arm with each thrust. The sensation was soft and breezy, wrong.
There was nothing gentle about any of this, and I felt angry at the reminder of anything else beyond the debasement and humiliation.
I loved the halter top when I found it at the mall.
Spent Laszlo’s money on it. Hoped that when he saw me in it, he’d like it so much he’d regret wanting to send me away.
Now I wanted to burn it.
I wanted to burn everything.
Maybe it was that anger, that sinful anger that did the trick. Just before I reached the breaking point, Laszlo gripped me, and he reached up my spine, his hand coiling in my hair at the base of my neck. I came back to awareness as he throbbed and twitched inside me.
He yanked my head back, and I screamed to the cheers and hollers from our audience as he stabbed into me as deep as he could, flooding me with his seed, staking his claim.
After a shuddering pause, he pulled back. I dripped his essence down my thighs. A greater torrent flooded straight down, splattering the floor.
Jimmy’s voice was too close. Too loud. I felt dizzy. Sick.
“Guess you got her warmed up for us in the end.”
Laszlo swung around, pure rage fuelling him. He hadn’t had time to clean up or make himself decent. His masculinity was still on display, furiously red, stained with my innocence.
“I don’t fucking share! She’s mine.”
Rurik caught Laszlo’s fist before it could impact Jimmy’s face. From out of Laszlo’s cuff came a switchblade, glinting as he opened it.
“Hey, easy. Calm down, man,” Rurik said.
“I’ll calm down the moment he recognizes what’s mine.
What? The boss is fine with the Crab fucking other guys’ girls now?
” Laszlo’s voice boomed, filled with malice.
“You’ve shown an unhealthy interest in what I do with my dick, Jimmy Chernyk.
You fucking come near me or my girl, and I will end you. ”
What?
His girl?
Me?
“Jimmy didn’t know how serious you were about her. She’s always up for grabs here. No one else even wanted her ‘til you,” Rurik said, holding back Jimmy from lunging in, fists wielded. “You understand things, right Jimmy?”
Mr. Bodrov sat back, watching as he let the bodyguard handle the mediation.
That redheaded thug grit his teeth then backed off, putting on that fake grin again.
“If any of you fuckers touch my girl, if you talk to her? I’ll fucking toast marshmallows over your god damned corpses.” Laszlo gestured to each of them with the tip of the switchblade, his silver eyes wide and wild.
My world was spinning; everything had shrunk to a pinprick.
Tunnel vision, that’s what they called it.
“Come with me, Belle,” Laszlo said, his voice holding a rough edge. It wasn’t meant for me. His hands were gentle as he helped me get cleaned up. He’d apparently tugged his pants back on when my vision failed.
My legs were limp beneath me. I collapsed as I stood, but Laszlo gathered me in his arms. He lifted me up, and I hugged his neck.
I clung to him, praying that he could get us out of there before I broke down.
Rurik tried to take me off his hands, as if I were a piece of cumbersome luggage, but Laszlo pushed past.
“Do you have your bags here?” Laszlo asked, and I nodded. He gestured for Rurik to go get my things, and when he returned with my single bag, he opened the door for us.
“Boss says I gotta keep eyes on you,” Rurik said.
“Then you can follow in your car,” Laszlo snarled.
The cool night air was a shock to my system. With great care, Laszlo bent down, and placed me into the passenger seat of his expensive car. He laid me out like I was in critical condition, and he was a cautious nurse.
A part of me hoped I would ruin his seat, leave a hideous mark on it, just as he’d left on me.
It was a muted desire, though.
The fury had burned to ashes in me, leaving me spent.
Flankers were all that remained, little sparks that fizzled in the fog.
When the door shut, it was galling in its manufactured gentleness.
I wished it slammed.
I wished it could shout my anger, but it, too, was muted.
My thoughts spiralled, spinning between rage, humiliation, and things I didn’t have words for, and wasn’t sure I even felt.
“Was that one bag all you had?”
“Yes.”
“It’s okay, Belle. It’s all over now.”
It didn’t feel over, but it felt better. He opened the window a crack; the misty air was refreshing, and I could breathe easier.
The street lights cast strange, long shadows on his face as we pulled out of the parking spot.
“I want to go home. I’m two streets down, five streets north.” The voice I spoke with wasn’t my own. It was my mother’s dark gravel, filled with resentment and disgust. I’d never, in all my life, heard her take that tone with anyone else aside from me.
Maybe she knew more about me than I thought.
Maybe she was right about all the things she saw in me.
The things she hated in herself.
She was basically a kid when she got pregnant with me. That she kept choosing the Father over me was inevitable. I was a reminder of everything she gave up for him, and everything he took for granted about her.
“It’s time to go to Idaho, angel,” Laszlo said, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry.”
There was music playing, an old song I didn’t recognize with a man singing about how he didn’t want to be fenced in. I didn’t have the energy to cry.
I unclasped my purse, placing it in my lap.
Inside was some lipstick and the drawing of a ring I’d obsessed over for days, wrapped around his business card.
I glanced at Laszlo’s hands on the wheel, the rings he wore glinting in the passing streetlights.
He wasn’t wearing the improperly set opal anymore.
He deserved to know the truth.
“That was my first time.”