Chapter 6 Neil #2
She still didn’t believe me, and I couldn’t fucking stand it. I would never hurt my brother with a reprehensible move like that. Nor would I lie about it to my Babygirl who was, at that very moment, still looking at me with suspicion in her eyes.
“You just have to. I’ve got no reason to bullshit you about this,” I said, growing irritated, and her gaze drifted down over my chest. She wanted to touch me again.
I could feel her desires and read her thoughts.
I gave her a sly little smirk, and her eyes snapped up to my face, pulling me from my own twisted fantasies.
“You have to do something to earn my trust,” she said positively, a new firmness in her voice.
“Like what?” I asked skeptically.
“I’m not asking you to start a relationship with me, just to be faithful…” She paused. “Sexually,” she suggested, chewing her lower lip uneasily. Nothing had changed; the substance of her request was the same: She was asking me to choose her, even if she was asking in a slightly different way.
“Babygirl,” I said in a soft, wry voice.
“Do you think I’m as green as the little boy you were out with tonight?
” I needled her, referencing that Ivan dude, who looked all of twenty.
A cute kid, sure, but he had nothing on me.
I recalled Selene telling me that he was her friend’s twin brother and that he played basketball.
He was your standard issue college-aged guy; he probably did okay with women and generally led a charmed life.
I went on the offensive then and began stroking her beneath her shirt again. No one could resist when I went into virile seducer mode, but somehow Selene tried to squirm away from my touch.
“Quit it… Stop it, now!” she shouted, trying in vain to break out of my hold, though the goosebumps all over her skin told a different story.
“Being faithful to you would be the same as getting into a relationship with you, and it wouldn’t be like how it was with Jared. I’m different, Selene. A freak,” I told her gravely, tightening my grip around her to keep her in place.
“You aren’t a freak to me. You’re special, and I could accept you as you are.
I feel like I’ve already shown you that,” she answered, stung.
She was undoubtedly referring to the last time we fucked in a bed when I’d told her about my anorgasmia.
And then, the very next time we were together, I had punished her because… Well, I didn’t really know why myself.
I’d felt this uncontrollable rage in my chest when I’d caught her with someone else while I was so anxious to get to her and explain what happened back in New York with her little friend Alyssa.
She’d pissed me off during that phone call, and I wanted to talk to her about it face-to-face.
But when I found her smiling at that guy, it made me think that she hadn’t attached the same importance to the call.
And now she was acting like nothing had happened, telling me again that she could accept me as I was.
How could she possibly be so sure about that?
She didn’t know that I had been raped, had no idea that my innocence had been torn from me against my will, and that I’d been molested for a year.
If I could turn back time, though, I would have made the same choice: I would always let Kimberly violate me to keep her from taking her twisted perversions to my brother.
That was my reality, and this sweet girl could not possibly accept it. She couldn’t walk through hell with me.
I wanted better for her.
“I don’t think so. And it’s not just about sex, though I do see how hard you’re trying to keep up with me in that,” I murmured.
I had known for a while that Selene was working hard to act like a woman with me, despite the fact that she still had a lot of inner growth and life experience to catch up on before she got there.
She was searching for justifications for my addiction to sex, trying to convince herself that it was all normal when it was anything but.
It wasn’t normal that I needed to vent my misery on a woman’s body or risk falling into the void.
It wasn’t normal how I got pleasure from reenacting my abuse, subjugating anyone who happened to succumb to the temptation I presented.
It wasn’t normal for the Boy to control so much of my current life.
None of it was normal.
“So try me, then,” Tinkerbell went on, and my right hand trembled as I raised it to adjust my hair.
Selene tracked my movement with a heavy sigh before slowly inching closer to me.
She took my hand in her own and shot a glance at me before pressing a kiss to the back of it.
I remained motionless, stupefied by this display of profound sweetness.
Babygirl smiled and pressed her head against me, this time leaning forward enough to sniff my throat.
She deposited another gentle kiss there, and when I felt her warm, moist lips against my skin, I closed my eyes in sheer bliss over the contact between us.
I hated being touched without my permission, but when it was her…
she had long since taken liberties I’d never allow anyone else.
Touch me.
Touch me all the time.
Because when you touch me, you touch my soul, was what I wanted to say. But I remained silent.
“Get up, please,” I whispered into her ear. She got off my lap and tugged gently on my hand, urging me to stand up with her. I did as she asked, and the first thing I saw was my Babygirl, looking up at me with irrational admiration.
She should have looked at me like the monster that I was, not like some god.
She stroked my shoulders with her slender, elegant hands, trailing them gently down my arms. I looked at her in confusion, not understanding what she was after.
When her lips came to rest on my chest, I stiffened as though it was a foreign sensation.
I even briefly considered pushing her away, but then I recognized her gentle touch, and I relaxed.
There was nothing to be afraid of—this was Selene, not some random woman.
All at once, I felt sapped of all strength, afloat in a paradise of the senses like I had never felt before. Her lips, so delicate, traced the lines of my body. She slowly made her way to my chest, barely grazing a nipple, and then moving along further still to my abdomen.
And I did not feel at all dirty.
There was nothing nasty or perverse in her actions, and still I began to long for her head to sink below my waist, for her to pleasure me there with her unpracticed tongue.
It felt like an angel was touching me, intent on enfolding me in her feathery wings until the demon in me was mollified.
The sweet, feminine scent of Selene filled my nose, blocking out the smell of Kim or of any other woman.
Babygirl continued to drift even lower, hitting the waistband of my jeans before getting on her knees to continue touching my tensed legs. Her hands moved over the heavy fabric, seeming to transmit some divine energy to me.
I shut my eyes, my heart beginning to ache as I imagined all the things that I could never have.
I imagined a happy future. I imagined joining her in her ethereal light.
I imagined the door to her world, so pure and uncontaminated, opening to allow me inside.
I didn’t envision a castle nor anything else out of a fairy tale, just an unadorned path where Selene waited for me.
She wore a dress as blue as her eyes, and she had one hand outstretched for me.
She was as radiant and beautiful as any fairy creature.
My fairy.
All I had to do was step forward, just take one step out of the enveloping darkness at my back, and I could reach her.
I could clearly see the line dividing light from dark, and I could see where I was—standing firmly on that line.
And then, all at once, the cry of a child from behind me forced me to glance back.
Little Neil stood there, fearfully clutching his basketball as he shook his head in disappointment at me.
His Oklahoma City jersey was wrinkled, as were his shorts.
He didn’t want me to leave him behind because that would mean he’d suffer once more. He’d live through all the evils of the past.
All over again.
Alone, without anyone beside him.
On his narrow shoulder, there rested a woman’s hand.
The fingers were long, the nails painted a fiery red that recalled the very flames of hell.
I couldn’t see her face, but even in the shadows, I could make out her long blond hair and the white shirt that clung to her large breasts.
The Boy tried to squirm out from under her hand, but whenever he struggled, the woman’s fingers only pressed in harder.
Possessive and violent.
He cried for me. When he called for help, it was my name that he screamed. I swallowed hard, horrified.
What kind of coward would I be if I left him in the clutches of the child-eating witch?
Could I really stand by and watch a little soul like him be destroyed?
No, I wasn’t capable of it.
He and I would have to face the monster together.
Then, my eyes shot open.
The vision evaporated into nothingness, and with a fierce movement, I shoved Selene away from me.
“Don’t touch me!” I threw out a hand to keep her from approaching me again.
She staggered back in fright, a shocked look on her face.
She had done nothing to provoke my fury; it was my own brain that had put that distorted reality in front of my eyes.
None of it was her fault. “Don’t touch me again, for fuck’s sake… ” I murmured in a low voice.
I felt fuzzy-headed, and I leaned back on the kitchen counter bonelessly.
Babygirl tried to move closer to me, and I shot her a forbidding look to keep her away.
I could still feel her lips on my skin and her hands on my body.
What did she want from me?
To seduce me? To stagger me? To make me forget who I was?