Gant
Face down, ass up. Isn’t this the exact position I told Bae I’d get her in?
I trace the arch in Eloisa’s spine and follow the sway of her pasta and grass-covered ass as she edges along the greenhouse. When she freezes beside the lake, I take a moment to appreciate the plain triangle of white cotton peeking out between her legs. It’s the only part of her clothing that’s still clean.
For now.
When my shadow falls over her, she tilts her head back and gazes up at me with those big, round, green eyes that make me want to look away from their familiarity and yet freefall into them all at once.
“Look, Gant,” she begins, her lip already quivering, bullshit lies already on the tip of her tongue.
“I’m looking,” I say, circling her. “All I’ve been doing is looking. All I see is you.”
Her lip trembles again as she sits back on her knees before standing with a wince. “You have everything all wrong—”
“Do I? So you didn’t steal my phone and email everyone on my list a copy of our parents’ sex tape?”
She swallows. “Well, yes, I—”
I step closer and she steps back. “And you didn’t frame me as the one who exposed my mother’s affair?”
“That was an accident—”
“You didn’t make my mother think that I’d betrayed her until her dying breath? Or cause my father to blame me for humiliating our family for weeks until I got the CCTV footage of you inside the studio? Of you sending the email? Of you running away like the pathetic little cowardice cunt you are?”
She shifts back again and I press forward.
“Gant—”
“Even with the footage to prove it was you, it still wasn’t enough. My father made me issue an apology at my own mother’s funeral. I should have been grieving. Instead, I was explaining to over three thousand guests I didn’t know from a glory hole in the wall why I let some stupid bitch into my phone.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Her voice climbs to a shrill pitch.
Another step back.
Another step forward.
“Yet you sent it to Beaussip?” I ask. “Are you that much of a fucking idiot, or do you think I am?”
“I’m telling you the truth, honest. Look, my old email was BarbieOO7—”
“I don’t care if it was Cunt101.”
“It was my proof!”
“To blackmail my mother into helping with your Beaulieu audition,” I snort. “There’s nothing she could’ve done to help you. I had to hire a body double to replace your original submission tape.”
Something I can’t quite place at first blooms in her irises. But once it settles, and her expression flattens, I know what it is.
Acceptance.
My little ballerina has finally accepted what’s been plaguing her.
She doesn’t deserve to be at Beaulieu on her dancing talents.
But I could fix that. I could fix her so that when she breaks, it’s just that much more satisfying.
I run my eyes down her body now, wishing I could see more of it. “It was difficult to find someone with just the right proportions, but I remember every curve from when I held you. You remember that too, don’t you?”
Her eyes snap to mine, and I search for the memory in them. I can’t be the only one replaying the first time I’ve ever touched her in my head on a loop.
The bob of her throat tells me that she does remember.
“Of course you do. It was right before you ruined me.”
“Look—”
“Looking,” I sing-song, eyeing the button on her blazer.
She shakes her head slowly. “I had no idea Madame was your mother. If I did, I wouldn’t have told you how much I despised her. I wanted to show the tape to my mother. I needed her to finally open her eyes to the truth. To the fact that Jarett, my father, is an absolute piece of shit. If she saw the tape, if she left him, I could finally get away from him too.”
My fingers freeze midway to that gold, generic button most students wouldn’t be caught dead with as my first memory of Eloisa rushes to the forefront of my brain.
“Ballet is everything to me. It’s my escape. It’s a world away from my father—”
“What’s wrong with your father?”
“Everything.”
Jarett Crewly, yes Crewly and not Ginhart had been somewhat of a mystery this whole time.
Not on paper. No, on paper, he was remarkably unremarkable. But paper is two-dimensional and humans aren’t.
I’d convinced, no, brainwashed myself into thinking that Jarett must have a redeemable quality. It wasn’t money. Or class. Or prestige, but my mother had those things for herself already.
It wasn’t fidelity.She didn’t have that. Neither did he.
But maybe it was her. Maybe it was his Eloisa. Maybe he’d shown her what my father never showed me after a ballet class and my mother had swooned.
That’s the only way my mother would risk it all. That’s the only way I could never agree, but understand her lapse in judgement.
But as I look deep into Eloisa’s eyes and that singular word, everything, replays in my brain, I know it’s not true. I know there isn’t anything redeemable about Jarett.
And if that’s true, then…
The hard part is that I’m not ready to admit it.
I can’t.
The sound of Eloisa’s squishy shoes trying to circumvent me drags me back to the surface. To a new reality.
I step on her toes and she winces. Immediately, her hands fly to my shoulders to steady herself as she tips forward against me. She curls her fingers, desperate not to touch me, but dependent on my support.
“So you wanted to show your mother? So she could leave him?”
She nods, tears welling in her eyes, though it can’t be from pain. I’m pinning her, not crushing her.
“But you said everything was wrong with your father.”
She doesn’t answer, her lips beginning to form words, but ultimately she’s at a loss.
“Everything was wrong, is wrong with Jarett and she hasn’t left him. Yet you expect me to believe that video would suddenly cause her to change? Is Jarett screwing my mother somehow worse than anything he’s ever done to you?”
Her lip quivers, her big doe eyes swimming with emotion.
What has he done to you? My mind begins to wonder, but as she tries to flee by slipping out of her shoes, all my care flees with her.
In two bounds, I catch her around the neck and those hot tears finally fall onto my finger necklace.
“Liar,” I hiss, feeling her shaky breaths tickle my lips. “You knew deep down that wouldn’t work. You know deep down you aren’t that important to your mother. But Jarett is. You wanted to get away from them both, didn’t you? And Beaulieu would be your shelter and meal ticket.”
She begins to shake her head, but I squeeze her hard, stopping the motion.
“You wanted to nail that audition and that video was your way to do it. Your leverage. So what? Did you speak to my mother the following week? Did you bluff that you had the tape? Did she ask for proof and when you couldn’t provide it, she brushed you aside like the trash she always made you feel like? Then, once you realised you couldn’t get into the school of your dreams, you use that very school, her alma mater, to ruin her reputation.”
Despite my squeezing, she still tries to speak, to lie. But all that leaves her lips are sputters.
“I don’t want to hear any more of your fucking lies. I didn’t bring you here to hear them. I brought you here to torture you.” I use her neck to shove her back, and she stumbles, tripping over her shoes, and catching herself on her knees. “The only thing I want to hear from your mouth are pretty little whimpers of pain when I toy with you. When I pull that string on your back that makes you scream, cry and gag.”She gazes around at the water, the greenhouse, the sloping hill. But it’s just her and me.
And there’s no escape.
“Gant, please.”
“Please what? Help you? That’s what I’m doing. I said you were mine. And I always take care of my possessions. Starting with keeping them clean.”
She eyes the water, her nails digging into the wooden planks of the dock.
“Then let me go shower.”
I shake my head slowly, sadly. “How would I know if you did it right?”
She gulps. “You could watch.”
It’s my turn to swallow, to be at a loss for words.
“We could go to my room.”
She’s trying to gain control. Why?
“Ms. Trix isn’t drunk enough yet, and it simply can’t wait.”
She licks her lips. “Your room?”
As if she’d willingly slip into my territory. No. She’s playing a game.
“Mr. Lexington does his job diligently.”
“What about the locker rooms?”
That snaps something inside me.
“Locker room?” I snort. “Feeling nostalgic about your first stint as an incestuous porno videographer?”
“Gant—”
“Right here will do. Strip.”
She gazes from me to the campus and then back again incredulously. “Anyone could see.”
“The greenhouse completely blocks the dock from view,” I say simply. “Don’t worry. I never share my toys.”
She freezes, her jaw growing slack. Then all at once she snaps it shut and lunges, trying to crawl around my ankles.
One step, and I cut her off easily.
Squatting, I take in the fear in her watery eyes. The fear that wasn’t there in the auditorium when we were nose to nose and she’d kissed me. Claimed me. She’d been defiant.
What’s changed?
“What did I tell you about listening to me?”
She hesitates and there’s that look of defeat in her eyes as she says, “Not listening will spark nightmares.”
So she remembers just as much as I do.
“But I’m already in one,” she mutters softly to herself.
“It’s sad you think this is nightmarish. It’s just the start. But it’s all worth it, isn’t it? For your dream.”
She gazes back at the sprawling campus, her long, red eyelashes, three shades darker and webbed with water droplets from unshed tears.
“All you care about is humiliating me, right? By seeing me naked?”
“You think that’s humiliating?”
“Why else would you want me to strip?”
My little dove is so very na?ve.
I say nothing and her brows crease in frustration as time ticks on.
“If I take off my clothes, will you let me go?”
“I’ll consider it.”
She sighs. “Please—”
“That’s right.” I roll my eyes closed for one brief second, lavishing in the sweet sound of her begging. “No more words. Just whimpers. Just pleas.”
She shuts her mouth not because she’s following orders but because she’s fighting them.
Does she think her silence, and brash movements to pull off her blazer in the most unsexy fashion she can muster, will turn me off? I’m already on, and her reddening lips from how hard she’s biting them only add to my arousal. Would they get that red when she’s sucking on my cock? I wish she’d lick them and wet them so I could get a better visual.
“Slower,” I order when she drops the crusty blazer and reaches for the buttons on her shirt. “There’s no rush. No one’s looking for you. No one’s coming.”
She momentarily slows down as the words sink in before she moves quickly again.
“I said slow down, or I’ll tie your hands with that blazer and do it myself.”
Clenching her jaw, she obliges, exposing a plain cotton bra. The kind that can never support more than A cups. She must be a double D at least. I trace the deep crease between them that slopes gently downward with their weight. Her nipples beneath the thin fabric are already hardening from the gentle breeze blowing across the lake.
As she sits up on her knees to unhook her skirt, I’m in complete awe when the fabric pools around her. I’ve never seen more atrocious panties in my life and yet, I’ve never been drawn to a pair more than I am now. Despite the excess fabric around her waist, her ass is still devouring the bottom as is her slit, that’s stretching the crotch tight. Is that why they’re so ill-fitting? Because her legs are too thick to go a size down to accommodate her waist? Or is it a money thing?
I reach out to run my finger along the sagging waistline, and her hand flies out to stop me. It doesn’t. It just comes along for the ride uselessly as I skim her hairless sex and the stretched-out elastic band.
“Why do you wear these? It barely covers your pussy.”
Her nails dig into my wrists so hard, I’m sure she’s broken the skin.
“I don’t want to ruin the good ones. Haven’t you heard of period panties? Go any lower and you’ll—”
“Deep dive into your blood? Is that supposed to scare me?”
“Of course not,” she snarks. “I know how fond you are of bodily fluids.”
“Especially when they’re on you. Soaking you.”
But there is no blood. We both know that. Still, I don’t want her to know that we share a phone now and that I’m tracking her periods too. So I leave her with her invisible pad or tampon and run my fingers up the curve of her thigh, settling the tips in that deep crease where her thigh meets her hip.
“Take off the bra.”
She wants to protest. She wants to peel my fingers from her flesh, but she doesn’t. Where they’re resting is the best she could hope for.
In one fell swoop, she rolls it over her head and leaves it balled in her white-knuckled fist.
The recoil of her tits from the motion is so heavenly that I nearly explode then and there because the reality of them outweighs any fantasy tenfold.
They’re heavy teardrops, with little silvery white stretch marks at the corners to prove their weight. And I was right. Her nipples are the same colour as her lips. I’d have to wait to compare her slit.
“Sit up straight.”
She’s so hunched that those rosebud nipples are nearly kissing.
She does, but when I look into her eyes again, there’s no defiance, no humiliation, no anger. She seems…smug.
So she knows just how perfect she—
“Are you happy? Now that I’ve shattered whatever sick fantasy you had in your head?”
Shattered? She’s tripled it.
I stroke my thumb along that deep crease again, hoping the ministration is enough to stop me from grabbing her and hauling her onto my cock.
“What are you talking about?”
“You wanted to humiliate me, but you were curious too, right? You hoped maybe the sight of me could get you off.” Her smile’s cruel and her eyes shine with false victory. “But I have granny tits. So, are we done? Are you satisfied now that the curiosity is gone? Can we go back to the old school bullying and leave this, whatever the fuck this is alone?”
A slow smile cracks my lips and my gut clenches. Before I know it, I’m laughing.When last had I laughed? Tears well in my eyes as confusion and panic begin to bloom in hers.
When the chuckles subside abruptly, I snake my hand around her sticky neck and pitch her forward. Her face lands hard on my thigh, her nose brushing my rock-hard cock.
“Does it feel like I can’t get off?” I ask, pressing her so hard and close, my cock muffles her gasp. “Look at me.”
Her wide eyes fly to mine as if on a string. Or perhaps on a hair, because that’s what I use to pull her back up to eye level.
“Don’t you ever insult what’s mine? Got it?”
She winces as I tug her hair harder.
“I’m Gant fucking Auclair. No one has better taste than me.”
An incredulous gasp leaves her lips just as my fingers disentangle from her filthy mane to grip the back of her neck again.
“And you’re going to let me taste you.” I eye her food-crusted cheeks and neck. “But I don’t like leftovers.”
The scream that leaves her throat as I toss her sideways off the dock and into the lake is blood-curdling.
But it’s not a normal scream, an indistinguishable sound of horror.
No, she’s saying something, that carries on the wind…
Dy?
Addy?
Daddy…