The Devil’s Keepsake by Somme Sketcher

Poppy

I’m like a horse with blinders. I wake up every morning, and if I stare at the day ahead, I can pretend that all of the problems looming in my peripheral vision don’t exist.

Almost.

Orna hasn’t visited me in three weeks. Not since the day she read the letter and scurried out of the museum faster than a freight train. Her sister, Callie has been coming in her place, bringing me three meals a day without a word nor a smile. My heart is heavy with losing the only person that I had considered to be a “friend” in my new twisted reality. Her sudden disappearance also opened up a handful of new questions about who the hell my father really is.

My days bleed into each other, the only thing that changes is the antique I’m working on and the mood Lorcan’s in. I wake up, shower, stuff a croissant in my mouth and travel the twenty feet to my workshop. I plug in the iPod Shuffle Lorcan gave me, listen to the same twenty tracks on repeat as I paint, stain, sand, or polish. Then I stop for lunch, before working until my back aches and I’m dizzy from fumes.

Then there’s the long stretch of darkness between dinner and Lorcan’s visit. The silence. It’s the time when the blinkers come off, and the problems and the unanswered questions eat away at my brain and crush down on my chest.

I want to know who my father is. Who he really is. Because with every reaction I get from people at this estate—first Lorcan, then Cillian, now Orna—it’s getting harder and harder to believe that he was nothing but an overgrown corner boy.

Lorcan comes after midnight, every night. And every night, the question burns on the tip of my tongue. It melts away the second his hands find my body.

We’ve moved into a new reality. One that exists only in my bed and only under the cloak of darkness. When the key scrapes in the lock, the anticipation brews in the pit of my stomach; I never know what Lorcan is going to slide under my covers that night.

Some nights, he’s in a playful mood. He’ll run his hands, lips, and tongue over every inch of my goose-bumped flesh—every inch except for the spot between my thighs. He’ll nibble at my neck, suck on my swollen tits, and only when I’m delirious with desire, only when I’m clawing at the pillows and begging him to fuck me, does he give me what I crave.

Other nights, he doesn’t say anything at all. The scent of liquor lingers on his ragged breath, the dirt clinging to his suit. Those nights, he fucks me rough. Parting my thighs with a forceful knee and taking what’s his, without a single word leaving his lips. I’ve come to accept that I love those nights as much as I love the ones where he brings me to my own orgasm. There’s something disgustingly satisfying about being used as a fuck toy. As his escape to whatever horrors are happening in his day.

The only constant is that he never stays.