20. Chapter 20 – Peyton
Chapter 20 – Peyton
I sat in a chair on the sun deck of Mr. Bryce’s pool and stared at the glittering water, lost in thought. It had been three days since my freak out on Dane in the corn maze.
Three days of absolute radio silence. And I hated every single fucking second of it.
My freak out had taken even me by surprise. I didn’t plan out what I wanted to say; I didn’t reflect on my feelings and what they meant. I just spoke.
And I regretted them.
He was right, of course. I had asked for every single thing he gave me. Begged for it even.
I just wasn’t prepared for how getting what I wanted would make me feel. Dane probably thought I was mad or embarrassed by what we did, thanks to what I said. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The truth was, I had finally felt free for the first time in my adult life .
For the first time since I took my first AP class in high school.
For the first time since I understood expectations and generational pressure.
The truth was, I was the first person in my entire family line to go to college. The first person to get a scholarship. The first person to have a career instead of a job. I was the first person in generations of Everett’s to make something of myself.
And I just had a degree in hospitality and until I randomly took the housekeeping job at Mr. Bryce’s estate, I used that degree to help design hotels for wealthy people. Hotels I’d never see the inside of as a guest in my lifetime.
But it was a start. It was the foot in the door that my parents dreamed of for me my entire life.
When I got accepted to college, it paved a way and understanding for my younger siblings to follow. A beacon in the night, guiding them towards something more than my parents ever had.
My parents were the most wonderful people in the world, our home had been so full of love and life that as a child I never understood the pressure they put on me to get more . What more could I want besides love? Laughter. Peace.
When I was a teenager, I started to understand that love, laughter, and peace didn’t pay the bills.
It didn’t give security in an ever-changing world. So I started paying better attention to the lessons my parents were teaching me and my sisters.
And I started working my ass off so I could make them proud.
But it never made me happy, at least not in the way I wanted to be. The pressure was unbearable on my shoulders.
Do the right thing, Peyton. Lead by example, Peyton. Show your sisters what they can have if they work hard too, Peyton .
And then I met Tyson. God, what a fucking idiot I had been seeing his flashy job and over the top ego and thinking it would ease some of that burden if I found a guy who could shoulder some of it.
WRONG!
Tyson was the opposite of that; he was a fucking sandbag tied to my neck that I had to carry around with me on top of everything else. The only reason I kept him around was because it made my parents happy to see me with someone. They didn’t know the real him; the needy, controlling, manipulating, unfaithful him. But it eased their minds a little, knowing I had someone in the world at my side.
Now that I had been away from him on my terms instead of his, though, I knew I could never go back. Because the truth was, Tyson was abusive.
He never hit me. I think we both knew I’d probably hit him back if he tried. But he did manipulate me. He held things over my head and isolated me until one day I woke up and he was really my only option to keep moving forward. To leave him, would mean I’d have to go backwards for a ways.
I’d have to start over.
And I couldn’t stomach the look on my parent’s faces if I told them I needed help, after all of these years. So I stayed. At least I had, until I found the job posting for Mr. Bryce’s housekeeper. In three months, I’d make enough for a fresh start.
And then I’d be truly free.
Yet, for some reason, since meeting Dane, the idea of being free from any other person in the world didn’t hold the same appeal it had a few months ago.
God, I fucking missed Dane’s presence in my life. Which was fucked up. That was like a prisoner saying they missed the guards, always watching them once they were free .
But it was true.
I probably would have been able to avoid thinking about him more than I had if Mr. Bryce hadn’t made an emergency trip somewhere, leaving me alone with idle time on my hands.
For a man who never left his estate, according to Mrs. Straight, he had left twice since I began working for him already.
I snorted to myself at the thought. Maybe I was the problem.
The dinner fiasco had ended terribly the other night, and then when I got up the next morning, after the maze fiasco, there had been an email waiting for me, announcing his unplanned departure.
Return date- to be announced.
So I sat. And I wondered. And I worried.
I grabbed my glass of wine from the side table next to the chair and caught a glance of the phone Dane left me that night.
It just sat there, mocking me because I had yet to go through it. Frankly, I was afraid of what I’d see. Afraid of what I’d feel when he proved me wrong. It didn’t help that I had zero way of communicating with him to tell him I fucked up, because the creepy messages he sent me were only accessible after he initiated the conversation. And then they’d go away when he closed them out.
The shrill ringtone of my actual phone scared me as it started going off next to Dane’s phone.
“Hello, Olivia.” I sighed, answering my sister’s fourth attempt to call today alone.
“I’m coming to Hartington.” She snapped in response. “I’m rescuing you and dragging you back home by your fucking hair for how much trouble you’ve put me through the last few weeks.”
I snorted humorlessly as I took a sip of my wine. “You’re still as dramatic as ever. ”
“You take a job, on a whim, two hours away from home, picking up your entire life for a change , and then you have the audacity to suddenly become unreachable. Every single time any of us tries, you ghost us.” She huffed, “And then you end up with an actual ghost on your computer and have the audacity to call me dramatic?”
“Wait,” I sat up, fighting away the warm buzz of the wine. “What did you say about my computer?”
She sighed so loud my ear ached in its wake. “You were hacked. And I don’t know when the middle east started using ghosts to steal credit card information and identities, but nonetheless you’re completely infiltrated.”
“Olivia Everett, if you don’t start at the beginning, I’m excommunicating you.” I warned, already tired of her theatrics.
“Ugh!” She sassed, “I hacked your computer because you wouldn’t fucking answer your phone and you left me with no choice. But when I got into it, I hit a fucking wall so thick I couldn’t even break through the system I had installed on it in the first place.” I could hear clicking in the background as her words swirled around in my head. “At first anyway. It actually took me three days of constant work to get in, and once I did, I was stuck in ghost land. Someone hacked you and used a completely untraceable system to do it. But they can see everything. Literally everything. Even your computer camera was hacked, on multiple occasions.”
“I know. Hold on, are you telling me you hacked me?” I replied, attempting to grasp the significance of her revelation. I stood up and started pacing, “You installed a system on my computer?”
“You knew someone hacked you that wasn’t me and you said nothing?” She argued over me, “Do you have any idea how sophisticated a ghost program is, Peyton? It’s essentially giving someone full remote access to everything in your life. Social medias, bank accounts, login information, camera footage, I mean come on! I thought you knew better than to click on fishy email links!” “Stop,” I barked in my best older sister voice. “Stop talking and listen for five seconds. I didn’t click on anything stupid, so shove that idea right up your ass. And yes, I knew that someone had hacked into my computer, and I know the person responsible. It’s fine. But now I want to go back and talk about you and what you’re doing hacking me. How do you even know how to hack people, Olivia? I thought you worked at the bank!”
“You know them?” She screeched, “Peyton, the only people who can run ghost programs this effectively are the kind of people who go bump in the night! They don’t exist in the real world because they’re too fucking dangerous to mingle with normal people!”
“Oh my god,” I groaned, rubbing my forehead in exasperation. “Explain yourself first, and then I’ll go.”
“Fucking hell,” She replied and sighed, “I don’t work at the bank.”
“Obviously.”
“I do IT work for a freelance company. They work in cyber security, so I’ve learned a lot over the last year. I put a program on your computer when I was first starting out, like a practice run. I never had to use it because you live the most boring life possible and you were always right down the road. But then you went completely AWOL, moving away and shutting us all out, so I tried to take a peek into your life through your cyber footprint. But someone else locked it down tighter than Fort Knox.”
I tried to figure out why Dane would not only hack me, but make it impossible for anyone else to do the same in return. Maybe to prevent me from kicking him out of my cyber world? As if I’d have any clue how to do that. Apparently Olivia did, though.
“Say something!” Olivia snapped through the phone .
“I’m very disappointed in you, young lady.” I deadpanned, trying to buy my brain more time to come up with an answer in response to her information throw up.
“Now tell me about the hack.”
I sighed and sat back down in the chair, “I can’t in a way that will make sense to you. But I met someone, and he was the one who hacked my computer or whatever it was he did.”
She paused, and I could almost imagine her mouth opening and closing. “You met someone?”
“Yes.”
“So that means you’ve finally kicked Tyson to the curb? That slimy degrading piece of shit deserves far worse than just that, but I’ll take it as a start.”
I snorted and rested my head in my hand. “Not exactly. But I will.”
She sputtered, “You cheated on him? Peyton Rosa Everett, I didn’t think you had that kind of bad-ass-ery in you!”
I rolled my eyes, “It’s complicated, but I am going to end things for good.”
“When?” She rushed on, “Wait, the guy you met, who is he?”
“I--,” I paused, physically unable to tell her anything about him. “I’ll tell you about him if it lasts. It’s complicated.” I repeated, “But please just know that I’m fine, just busy with work and you don’t have to show up at Hartington to double check.”
“Hmm.” She hummed, not convinced. “Tell me one thing, P.”
“Maybe.”
“Does he treat you the way you deserve to be treated?” she asked, all serious now. “Does he worship you?”
The word attacked my memories from when I threw it in Dane’s face three days ago. Shame and guilt filled my stomach. “He’s treated me better than Ty ever did. ”
“Well then,” She whistled, “He gets my seal of approval. Cyber stalking aside, because that’s just weird.”
I chuckled lightly, “Believe me, I’m actually kind of into it.”
“Ew.” She cringed and shuddered, “I’m going to go now.”
“Bye, I love you.”
“I love you too, P. Don’t be such a stranger, okay?”
“Okay.” I grinned, relaxing for the first time in days. “I’ll call you in a day or two.”
“Better.” And then she hung up.
I sat there contemplating what I said about Dane to her. I didn’t lie; he treated me better than Ty ever did.
Even if it was in his own secretive and creepy way.
I picked up the extra phone he gave me and powered it on, holding it like a precious jewel that was going to give me the answers to every modern-day mystery.
Hopefully, at least the mystery of Dane.
The background was generic, and I opened the contacts list, surprised to find it completely empty. Text messages, the same. There weren’t even any apps visibly downloaded. One icon sat on the screen beckoning me.
Gallery.
The very first picture in the camera roll looked like a screenshot of another other, of me. After examining it, I realized it was during a video chat with a friend a few weeks ago. I was in my apartment that I shared with Tyson. I was packing my suitcase to move to Hartington.
I was grinning as I packed a pair of fuzzy sleep pants for when the weather started getting cooler.
I looked happy.
Was I happy in my life back then? No .
Was I smiling so broadly because I was making moves to get out of it? Probably.
Dane had hacked into my phone before I even made the move to a new city, it looked like that was the first time he watched me. He said he saw a picture of me and that led to him searching me out, but how would he have seen one when I still lived two hours away? None of it made sense.
I scrolled to the next photo, and the next, and then the next. They were all screenshots of my screen as I talked on the phone. My brain rapid fired back through those different conversations as I tried to remember what I talked about with friends, but it was all just useless information about what I was looking forward to with my move.
Nothing stood out as important.
The next photo, though, made my chest ache.
I was crying.
I knew instantly, looking at it, that I hadn’t been on the phone when the photo was taken. No, Dane had hacked my camera without me using it to take that photo. It was the night before I left when Tyson didn’t even bother coming home to say goodbye to me.
I sat on the couch with all of my comfort items around me, all the pieces of things that made me, me, on all sides. Yet I felt alone and alien in my own home. I never felt peace inside of that apartment like I had expected to. It had always felt suffocating.
Because it was Tyson’s.
That was the night I told Tyson that I wanted to take a break while I was gone. I didn’t want to be with him anymore because he didn’t even bother to show up and say goodbye to me. It had been the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
Or maybe it was the last drop of water that broke the dam and let all the water free to flow where it wanted to for the first time .
I scrolled past it, wanting to move past that night altogether. The next photo was of me from my computer screen the first night that Dane contacted me. I could see the arousal in my eyes as I stared at myself and my body warmed instantly, remembering that night.
The night that started it all.
I flipped through the next few until one in particular stopped me in my tracks. It was a video, but it wasn’t of me.
It was Mr. Bryce, standing in his closet with his hand on the center island in a tight fist. The camera must have been up in the corner, like a security camera. How had I missed it all the times I’d been in there?
I clicked the play button and leaned in close to see it clearly as Mr. Bryce’s fists clenched and opened multiple times on the center island before he let out an animalistic groan and reached down into the waistband of his pants and pulled his cock out.
“Oh, my god.” I paused the video, feeling like a voyeur and looking out over the pool deck as I tried to calm my breathing down. “The panties.” I whispered to myself, recognizing his outfit from that day he caught me in his closet with my panties off, taking a picture of them for Dane.
Dane had said that Lincoln had jacked off after that, and I didn’t believe him. Could he have been telling the truth?
I chewed on my bottom lip and looked back down at the screen. Before I could think better of it, I hit play.
“Jesus fuck.” I moaned when Lincoln’s head tipped back as he stroked his cock. He was big. Like really big. I shouldn’t watch his private moment in his own home, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it either as his hand circled the head of his cock, twisting it.
His voice flowed through the speaker of my phone and my body tingled when he moaned my name .
“Peyton.” His warm voice echoed in my ears as my name fell off his lips. “Fuck yes, baby.” He had his eyes tightly shut as he pleasured himself. My fingers slid over the soft fabric of my shirt absentmindedly as I watched the most erotic thing I’d ever seen before. Before I knew what I was doing, my fingernails traced small circles over my nipples, making them hard as his moans turned me on. He was so vocal as he jacked off, I found myself wondering if he made that much noise when he fucked a girl.
I bet he was a dirty talker when he was deep inside of a woman.
“Take it, Peyton.” His voice deepened as he got closer to his orgasm and for a second I half expected him to say Puppet instead of Peyton. There was something so familiar in his moans and growls as he stroked his cock faster and faster.
I licked my lips, pinching my nipple and watching him as he tipped his head back and roared. He grabbed a clean shirt off the island and came onto it with a massive cry and I watched as each shot of come coated the dark fabric, aching to know what it tasted like on my tongue.
And then the video ended, going black and leaving me feeling like the worst kind of creep as I realized how wet I was from watching my boss jack off for me.
And then I remembered why I had the footage at all and felt even worse.
Dane had given it to me to show me just how much he worshipped me, and I got wet for my boss while watching it.
“Jesus.” I panted and forced myself to scroll away from the dirty video and instantly found myself back on the screen.
This time, though, I was on my knees, taking Dane’s thick cock into my mouth as he praised me. The camera angle was from somewhere on a tree around us. I couldn’t see the front of Dane’s body, he was angled away just enough, but I was on full display in the black mesh bra and nothing else as I greedily sucked him down.
Dane’s gravely voice flowed over my body like a caress through the video, “I already told you, P, I’m the only one who will ever give you everything you need.”
God, he had been so right.
I pushed my fingers down the front of my loose shorts and played with my clit as I watched me suck his cock. Fuck, I missed him.
“Dane.” I groaned when the video ended and I flipped to the next one. It was another video I’d never seen it before. But I knew instantly what it was.
It was that same night, as he snuck into my place, returning my dropped items to me. He videoed himself, creeping through my place, setting my shoes and purse down by the mirror after silently walking into my bedroom. I couldn’t see him, of course, just the tops of his shoes as he crossed the room to my bed. I laid in the center of it on my back with my arms thrown over my head.
I looked like a mess, with my tank top barely covering my boobs and my hair in a cluster.
He stood over me, watching me after putting my phone on my charging stand and then leaning over my body. His fingers danced lightly over the side of my face as he pushed my hair back off of it.
And then he leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to my temple as I slept. I leaned forward, trying desperately to see any part of his face, but all I got was his lips as they briefly touched my face. That was it.
“Fuck,” I groaned, rubbing my clit faster as he watched me. Why was it so erotic to me knowing he had broken in and watched me sleep?
That was creepy, yet there I was, wet and aching for him as I watched .
“Dane!” I hissed, begging him to hear me somehow. I never knew when he was watching me through my phone, but he always answered me when I called.
Until now.
Only silence found me in response.
I flipped through the camera roll, finding more photos and videos of myself. Most were of just me, videos of the morning after as I came for him with my toy, and then dressing for my afternoon with Lincoln.
God, even as I dressed sexily for another man, he still wanted me. There was something so much more powerful between us than just play, like I had accused.
The last video was of that night, in the maze. I watched as he fucked me on my back, legs spread and tits out, begging for his cock.
Never in my life had I ever felt more sensual than I did watching myself with him. He made me feel bold and wanted. Lust, like no other, covered my body as he flipped us around and put the phone against the bench so I could actually watch us both on the screen.
Fuck, he was so sexy. His body, covered in intricate tattoos and designs, was as if cut from stone as he thrust into me from behind.
And that mask.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Ghostface mask was so hot.
His abs rolled as he rocked his cock into me, and the look of pure pleasure on my face made me nearly unrecognizable.
He did that.
He made me feel that good. And then he made me choose who he was going to send the video to.
And ruined it all.
I was a people pleaser and having that kind of pressure on my shoulders made me both hot sexually but anxious and when the high of the orgasm faded; I imagined Tyson getting the video and what he’d do with it.
He’d show anyone who would watch it.
He’d tell everyone what a whore I was.
He’d tell my parents what I was really up to here, and they’d be so ashamed of me.
It wasn’t like it’d be the first time he used videos against me.
And of course, instead of telling Dane that, I panicked and lashed out at him. It wasn’t his fault, exactly, but he had to have known that you couldn’t do things like that in the real world and get away unscathed.
Sure, he had a mask on and could hide his identity from everyone in the fallout, but I wouldn’t have had that same freedom.
I would have burned for it.
Ty would have ruined my life back home for it. I never would have been able to return to life as it was, and maybe that was Dane’s plan all along.
I closed the gallery and opened the camera. With no other means to contact Dane, I was desperate to talk to him. So I hit the record button and told him everything I needed to say, not even knowing if he’d ever see it.
I needed to at least say it all to get it off my chest, so I no longer felt weighed down by it.
And then I needed to ride the jet in the hot tub because I was hornier than ever and alone to take care of the problem myself.
I dreamed of him.
Dane.
My monster had a name, and a voice that I recognized as he chased me through the woods. He had for the last few nights, which made the divide between me and Dane even bigger in real life.
But when I heard his voice in my ear, purring with that deep gravel that I craved when he pushed deep inside of my body, I leaned into him, grasping at him to keep him forever.
“Did you miss me, Puppet?” He growled, and I moaned.
“Dane.” I called out, digging my nails into the back of his neck as he thrust deep from behind. He always fucked me from behind, but tonight he held me to his chest while he did it. My voice sounded unfamiliar than it usually did in my dream, like it was groggy in sleep. I cleared my throat and Dane sighed in my ear as his thrusts stilled.
“Remember who you belong to, Puppet.” He growled and then bit my neck hard enough to make me scream out and flail in his arms.
But when I swung my arms out, they hit the softness instead of his bulky body or the damp earth around us.
I ripped my eyes open and stared up at the ceiling in my bedroom, hissing in frustration as my dream time with Dane was cut short. If I couldn’t see him in real life, I should at least be afforded a few hours in dream land to ride his cock.
It was the very least the universe could do .
That was when I heard it.
The sound of someone walking through my living room.
I froze in place as my heart rate skyrocketed into my chest as I fought through the fight-or-flight urges burning my limbs.
A shadow crossed the doorjamb of my bedroom entrance and I realized instantly that it wasn’t Dane.
He was too tall, if that was possible. His head nearly brushed the top of the doorway as he walked through it.
And I fucking screamed bloody murder.