Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
UNKNOWN
My knuckles split the second my fist connects with the plaster wall in my bathroom, spurts of hot, sticky blood trickling down my palm and forearm upon impact.
I stare numbly at my fingers, her clear slickness still lingering there, glinting enticingly in the soft lighting.
Chest heaving, I can’t bring myself to look in the mirror, because I know what I’ll find there.
Shame. Embarrassment. Self-loathing. A man raised by monsters to be the very same, but one who can’t fathom taking something from someone so pure and innocent.
I want to. Badly. I want to plunge my fingers through her slick folds and into her tight cunt.
The way she’d fluttered around just my thumb had made me woozy with ecstasy. I don’t know how my cock would fit.
A wave of fresh humiliation pumps through me, and I glance down at my soaked jeans.
Pissed, I tear off the mask and throw it in the tub behind me before bracing myself on the pedestal sink.
I blew my load like a horny teenager, and all it took was washing her.
I hadn’t intended to get so carried away, but…
Something about Summer has wriggled its way beneath my skin, and I am powerless to control my baser urges around her. It makes me despise myself more than I already do, more than I thought myself capable.
Sighing through my nose, I bring my eyes back up to the mirror and stare at the familiar face there.
Oddly high cheekbones from my mother’s side that dip to hollow cheeks.
A narrow chin but sharply defined jaw. A mess of slightly curled, light brown hair, frazzled because of the Bozo the clown mask.
Slanted brows, lips pressed into a frown, and a nose that’s been broken more than once.
I am the culmination of my lineage, a deplorable ancestry rooted in hellish secrets.
Summer is safe here with me. I am doing the right thing. I just…I can’t let myself get so carried away again. Good people don’t do that, and I want more than anything to just be good for once in my life.
An impossible feat considering the mindset and worldview I was raised in, but one I will continue to work at until I am dead.
Though this situation deviates far from the morals I seek, I at least have to keep trying.
Peeling off my soaked jeans and boots while my fist throbs from punching a hole in the wall, I kick those aside and rip a towel from the rack, drying my body quickly and shoving away my mortification at coming in my pants while dry humping a crying girl in a makeshift shower.
Stomping to my room, I throw on a pair of gym shorts and dig around in my messy closet for anything else that will serve as a mask. Halloween shops pop up early around this town, but I can’t keep purchasing them. I’m already a pariah and don’t need any more targets on my back.
Finding an old black bandana with a skeletal jaw printed over the mouth portion, I tie it quickly to my face and begin the hunt for warm clothes, coming up with a pair of gray sweatpants and an old black band tee.
Trudging back to the bathroom, I grab a clean towel and make my way down the hall to the door at the top of the stairs, sucking in a calming breath before unlocking it and stepping down into the dimness.
It’s uncomfortably humid down here now, the shower still hissing and splattering, a broken little doll sitting beneath the water. Face pressed to her knees, arms wrapped tightly about her legs, she cries, rocking slightly on her plump ass.
My arms hang limply at my sides. Hurt swirls in my chest and seizes my muscles, my throat constricting.
I have no way to explain to her who I am and why she needs to be here with me, and I doubt she’d believe my story anyway.
Frowning, I step quietly around her and turn off the taps.
She sniffs and her head pops up, her red-rimmed eyes puffy and face swollen from crying so hard.
She blinks up at me, those stunning green eyes sparkling beneath the glassy sheen that accompanies sobbing, and the memory of that sound echoes in my skull, making my cock twitch in earnest again.
Even her cries are pretty, just like the rest of her.
Crouching down, my knees groan and pop as I hold the towel out for her.
Her eyes flick to it and then back to my face; without the top part of my head covered, I’m worried she’ll somehow be able to identify me, though we’ve never spoken before.
She was all too easy to find and follow, posting her entire life on the internet like a flashing beacon for every predator on the continent.
I’m just thankful I got to her first.
She doesn’t take the towel, so I unfold it and move to wrap it around her shoulders, but she scuttles backwards across the soaked floor, exposing herself to me without realizing it.
My eyes dip to her cunt of their own accord, that tiny little slit beckoning my cock like a siren in the sea.
She’s as inexperienced as I am, I think, which somehow makes her all the more enticing.
No girl wants to fuck the guy who can’t speak, a harsh truth I learned many years ago.
I was always overlooked in favor of my older brother. I often wonder if any of them regret not choosing me once he strangled the life out of them. My father would always sigh in annoyance over his morning newspaper when a hungover Carter would stomp into the kitchen and ask for a body bag.
“If you break another toy, son, I’ll have to take away your cars.”
Coming back to reality, I direct my gaze to her wild, curly hair instead and bite back a laugh.
The bar of soap did her kinks no favors, and as it begins to dry, it springs up in frizzy patches of blonde and brunette.
She used to post so many videos about her hair and how she cared for it, the comments beneath from thousands of women saying they wished they had some physical attribute of hers.
But none of them would ever amount to my sweet Summer.
I’ll sort through her posts later and try to find the right shampoo for her. Maybe that would make her happy.
Holding up the towel again, I also show her I’ve brought warmer clothes.
Her eyes bounce between my outstretched offerings and face a dozen times before she sucks her bottom lip between her pearly white teeth.
She’s considering reaching out, and I nod gently in encouragement.
Shifting on her ass, her trembling hand snatches the towel from me, and she wraps herself in its warmth before releasing a shiver.
I follow the traction of her gaze, my cheeks flaming when I notice she’s staring between my thighs.
I hadn’t bothered to pull on underwear, and in these sweats, I know she can see just about everything; my heavy cock surges with an onslaught of blood, bobbing against the fabric, and my balls tighten, aching to spill my cum in her cunt this time instead of my pants.
I know I shouldn’t do that. Normal people don’t do that, asshole, I berate myself. Good people don’t do that. And I want more than anything to be worthy, to be everything my family is not.
But the fantasy of hearing her sobs as I piston myself into her is almost enough to make me cave and bring that dream to life.
I know I’m fucked up, sick in the head. Hearing your older brother make his toys cry and beg did something to my brain at that young, impressionable age.
My father was far more calculated and controlled in the way he chose to get off, but even the most austere of men make mistakes, and on the morning of my sixteenth birthday, I’d found my mother dangling from the banister in our foyer, rigor mortis already set in, her eyes wide open and bulging, her purple limbs stiff.
Furious, I’d sought out my father, prepared to fight him to the death for killing the one thing in my life that had been close to kind and decent.
But Carter was there with him, and the fucker had held me down while my father took red-hot poultry shears to my vocal cords as punishment for questioning him and calling him names.
Summer blinks up at me, pulling me from my hellish memories. It’s why I always liked watching her videos; there’s something soothing about her, the way she speaks and moves with such lightness and grace. Her parents chose the perfect name for her.
A small smile lifts my lips beneath the mask, and I prod at her with the shirt and pants.
Her lips part, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinizes me more thoroughly. “Why are you doing this?”
Her voice cracks, and a new wave of tears brims her eyelids. There is no simple way for me to explain it to her, and she’d never believe me. Not yet, anyways. Again, I shake my head at her question. Her exhausted eyes fall to my split knuckles as she sniffs, confusion rippling her expressive brows.
When her gaze snaps back to mine, there’s a steeliness to her I haven’t seen yet, and it makes me nervous. “Why did you…stop?”
She grits out the word stop through tightly clenched teeth, fury making her brave.
She’s pissed, and there’s a bratty air about her right now.
Like she views me as the lowest piece of shit on the earth.
It angers me in return, and with no way to communicate other than broken sign language and physical action, I choose the latter.
Throwing the clothes I brought her aside, I strike out just as quickly and grip her wrists, yanking her to me and standing us both up as the towel slips to the floor.
She screams so loudly my eardrums rattle, and fights me like an enraged raccoon with rabies—hissing, spitting, biting, clawing.
A silent laugh at her pathetic attempts shakes my chest, and I throw her carelessly onto the mattress.
She falls on her back and bounces a few times, sprawled before me in the perfect position for me to sink into her and never resurface.
Her features are frozen in utter shock and horror as she tries to scoot herself backwards, but I dip my knee between her legs and grip her ankle, yanking her back to me as she falls flat onto the creaking springs.
Tugging down the waistband of my sweatpants, I free my fully erect cock and smirk in satisfaction as her eyes widen like a frightened doe’s. Wrapping my fingers around my dick, I give it a few harsh strokes, allowing a bead of pre-cum to collect on my tip.
Summer is frozen, hardly breathing, and although I am trying to convey a distinct and important message to her, the temptation she presents is too great.
Stuck in a war between my opposing desires, I pause above her, staring at her cunt, unable to see much of her entrance, even with her sprawled before me like this.
I wonder if I’ll make her bleed?
That image drives me over the edge, and I cave to my desperate need to be inside her, pressing the tip of my cock to her clit before dragging it down.
“No, no, wait! Please! Please!”
I stop. My heart thuds so hard it makes my dick twitch in my hand and tick against her.
It takes me a moment to find the courage to look in her eyes, but I do.
Tears stream down her pretty face. Her brows are pulled up and puckered in the center, her pleas not only vocal, but physical, spiritual.
She doesn’t want this, and although I do, I refuse to be like the man who created me.
So I release my cock and reach out to cup her cheek. She flinches, and I slow my movements, gentle and soft as I swipe a crystalline tear from her smooth skin.
Holding it before her eyes, I nod once to it. She glances between the tear and me, hopefully making the connection. I am capable of doing to her whatever I can dream up, but I am just as weak for her—desperate for her to want me as badly as I want her.
Releasing her bony ankle, I tuck my cock away and stand, backing toward the stairs. She watches me go, still frozen, still terrified, but now even more confused than before.
And when I turn away to ascend the stairs, her trembling voice stops me in my tracks.
“What’s…what’s your name?”
Glancing at the floor over my shoulder, I grit my teeth and consider answering her question.
I want her to know my name. I want to be as embedded in her mind as she is in mine.
But I don’t think she’d be able to read sign, and it embarrasses the fuck out of me because even after having no voice for seven years, I barely know more than the basics of the language.
A thick layer of dirt and dust catches my eye, and I crouch down once more, using the fingertip that collected her tear to burn my name into her soul.
K A G E