I awoke with him inside me again. He dragged me off the bed, with my hands weakly clutching at quilt, pulling some of it onto the floor where pillows waited.
And him. I heard him chuckle, felt him kneel and straddle me.
From behind, he thrust in.
Pleasure bloomed. I squeaked.
Belly down, I blinked away sleep, felt him drive in then thud full hilt inside my pussy, parting my already spread legs. He draped me over two pillows, rucking up the strayed quilt.
I was plowed thoroughly, woken completely, and when I tried to climb to hands and knees, he squashed me floorward and kept pounding.
The floor shifted, or I was sliding, smothered under toppling pillows and rumpled quilt. Mounted, fucked, and thumped into the floor, I keened at the forced pleasure.
Then he was coming and was withdrawing, with the last of his come squirted onto my back.
The wet, splattering warmth was obvious. I had barely clawed at the sheets and seen light and the room, and he flopped down near my side.
Come covered my legs and back.
“Ugh.” I shut my eyes. “Mess.”
“Not yours to worry about. We will go soon. You can shower and then we’ll pack.”
I made a harrumphing sound into the pillow gathered under my face, sighed. Then realized I tasted blood. My lip stung and seemed to be swollen. When I touched it, my finger collected blood. His rough sex had crammed my face into something too hard.
Blood always looked appalling. As I stared at the it, he noticed and studied me, but said nothing. My ankle hurt too, and I would surely have a bruise there.
The hardness in his expression was nothing new.
Another day, another scene where I’d had orgasms and temporary joy. I had been a fuckdoll rather than a person. One never felt like anything more than used after a mesmer had you. Thoroughly used, but the hope for more had a habit of making my eyes sting with unexpected tears. Like now. I wiped them away.
Hope was ever present. How did you make a man who had forgotten the meaning of right and moral figure out what good was?
Make that figure out what it was, again. He must have once been ordinary?
That was it. I must make him remember how to be ordinary. I stuck a bookmark on that.
Isak, ordinary… hmmm.
The dog barged in then – Banjo – shoving open the door with its nose. It wagged its tail madly looking from me to Isak and back, as if wondering who to go to. Or where its next meal was coming from.
“Here, boy.” Isak beckoned to him then sat on the bed and patted the dog. He was still unreadable, but the behavior was new.
When had I ever seen the man with a pet?
First base in ordinary – patting a dog. Chalk up a one on my list.
There was hope. There was always a seed of hope, wriggling up from the dark cracks in the pavement.
CHAPTER 12
RED
With Banjo happily camped in the back seat, we drove off at dawn with Isak at the wheel – heading south-west at the intersection outside the town simply because he felt like going that way. The road was well-cared for with few potholes, though it narrowed to single lane here and there.
The two of us, venturing into the unknown, except I knew him well. The reverse was also true. He knew me.
Though I had a helluva lot more gaps in my memories.
While I mused on this, the car rattled over bumps. A paperback slipped from the dashboard and dropped onto my legs. Having caught it before it fell into the footwell, I glanced at the cover then began to flick through the pages. Isak had been reading this. Reading used to be a thing I did. Books had been a balm, a way to escape the rude reality of the world.
The owner of the car must have left the book. Wait, no. This had been in the car before this one? I flicked more pages, not really seeing them, and a pen rolled from the middle. I checked the cover again.
Eddie Izzard. What an odd name. Wasn’t he a comedian? Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens. I snorted a laugh. Maybe I should read this?
Or not.
I dropped the book into the footwell and found the pen still balanced on my knee. Idly, I twirled it in my fingers, as if learning a cheerleading baton routine.
That episode at Ted’s house had begun this road-trip escape.
New memories shook into place. Ugly ones.
His men hauling me to a sofa and stripping my underwear down to my ankles. The jolting pain as the shove of a hand in the middle of my back forced me to collapse over the arm of the sofa…
I could remember more than I had before. My brain was making more sense of things.
A girl had come into the room with a gun pushed to her jaw by her own delicate, slender-fingered hands. I could see it. Her own hands.
That.
It was bizarre.
I sat straighter in the seat. Her youth made her remarkable because I knew now why she had done it. I remembered words, conversations and more.
Isak had controlled her. Of course he had. It crawled a sourness into my stomach.
Had he really done that?
Though my mind had been partially AWOL, I was sure. She had been a teenager at most, but likely younger than thirteen.
The paleness of her face and smallness of the wrists on those gun-holding hands.
“Ted’s daughter,” I whispered.
“What?” Isak turned his head. The car kept growling along.
“Did you hook a child with those dirty claws of yours?” Oh, now. I was being brave. Too fucking brave. Dangerously so. But that was such
