Apathy by L.K. Reid

Skylar

My scalp burned as he continued pulling my hair, keeping me on my knees.

It was his favorite position. Me defenseless, crying out, begging for release, begging for something I couldn’t even voice. And tonight… Tonight he was more vicious than ever before.

“You are such a good slut,” he groaned as he kept dragging his dick through my folds, teasing me, taunting me, poisoning me over and over and over again. Tonight, he refused to give me what I needed.

Tonight, he wanted me to feel everything, to scream, to cry, to remember the viciousness he bestowed upon me. Tonight, my happy little pill was nowhere to be seen, and my skin kept shattering under his touch.

The dark mahogany headboard in front of me became blurry as my eyes filled with tears again when he slapped my ass. The pain, the shame, there was no escape tonight. My cheek still throbbed from where he slapped me as soon as I walked through the door. My throat felt raw, and I kept swallowing the sobs threatening to erupt from my chest.

He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of hearing my pleas for mercy, because this monster behind me, he didn’t know what mercy was. He only knew pain, suffering, and the eternal damnation he was condemning me to.

He pinched my clit, drawing out another scream from me, another painful reminder that all of this wasn’t a dream, but a nightmare, and I was never going to wake up. His labored breathing mixed with the sound of the pounding rain on the outside was like a symphony of terror.

Piano, mezzo forte, fortissimo, he went through the stages of quiet, louder, and extremely loud breathing. I remembered all those piano lessons Ms. Andrievich tried to drill into my brain, and Beethoven’s symphonies I could never remember.

I focused on my fingers gripping the white sheets on the bed. I focused on the memories from the time when life wasn’t so tragic, and when I thought that the future held something beautiful. I never thought I would end up here. Battered, bruised, broken, only looking for salvation in the form of oblivion, because I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t live with what he did to me. What I did to myself.

So, I ran.

I ran from my mind. I hid from my friends. I lied to my brother, and I kept searching for something that would take away this despair coating my insides.

“You’re dripping wet for me,” he murmured as he kneeled lower, placing his face in front of my pussy. “I’m gonna lick you, but you don’t get to come.”

No, no, no.

“You don’t get to come, because you couldn’t do one simple thing.” Another slap against my ass. “You couldn’t get the information I needed.” Slap. “And for that, you will be punished.”

“Please,” I moaned as he slapped my pussy. I almost jumped, but I knew that would only anger him more. I gripped the sheets and braced myself. I accepted the punishment, even though it wasn’t necessary.

“You had one job!” Another slap. “One fucking job!”

He massaged my ass where he slapped me earlier, and I couldn’t help myself, moaning when he dipped one finger inside me. No matter how much I hated him, my body always betrayed me. My mind was screaming, my heart breaking, but my body wanted the release he could give me.

And I needed it now.

If I couldn’t forget, if I couldn’t pretend that this depravity didn’t exist, I wanted to at least bask in the glow of an orgasm.

He wrapped his hand around my throat, pulling me backward, nestling his dick between my ass cheeks. “What are the St. Clares planning?” he asked again, as if I knew the answer to that question.

He wanted me to get closer to Kane, to use him and extract the information, but Kane was more fucked up than I was. He couldn’t remember his own name most days, and extracting any additional information about his family was useless.

“I don’t know,” I cried out, choking on my tears, on my despair. “I swear, he didn’t mention anything.”

“Then maybe I should kill you both and get the information myself.” He snickered in my ear and licked my neck, still holding me captive. “Maybe I should fuck you in front of him and break his heart.”

No.

“That boy is in love with you.”

Wrong. Kane thought he was in love with me, but he didn’t know what love was. Love wasn’t supposed to hurt. It wasn’t supposed to suffocate you, chain you, trap you… It was supposed to be pure, freeing, not toxic and caging. We didn’t know how to love.

What we thought we had, that wasn’t love. That was lust. A need to have somebody else drown with you, so that you wouldn’t be alone. And we were drowning.

All of us were drowning, we just didn’t want to admit that. All of us had demons to fight, we just didn’t know how.

I stopped fighting mine when Zane’s body was found that night. I stopped wishing for salvation, for redemption, because those would never come.

“Did you like his dick, pretty girl?” he asked as the tip of his dick pressed against my opening. “Did his dick leave you hanging, or did you manage to come?”

He impaled me in one thrust, painfully stretching me, cutting through my soul. Every time he did this, he managed to tear pieces of me, and he loved it. He knew what he was doing. He knew I would never be able to go back from this.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t.

He branded me with violence. He branded me with sick desires, and I couldn’t shake them anymore. I just wanted more and more and more until I couldn’t take anything anymore. I didn’t care who it was, as long as I got what I needed.

“You don’t deserve anything better than this,” he breathed in my ear, while searing pain rocked my body. “You are just a little whore, aren’t you?” He slapped my ass again, and as he started dragging his hand closer to my opening, I stiffened.

“What?” He slowed down and pulled me up, his hand tightly wrapped around my throat. “You think you won’t like that?” The headboard in front of me blurred, my breathing choppy as he kept squeezing my larynx. “You will love everything I do to you, and you’ll beg for more. Because you’re my little whore, pretty girl. You are only mine.”

He pinched my nipple with his other hand, earning another desperate cry. I thought he would stop. I thought he wouldn’t go that far, but I should’ve known that he wouldn’t mind destroying me if it meant getting what he wanted.

Still with his dick inside me, he dipped one finger in my backside, making me moan and cry, plead and beg. I didn’t know if I was begging for him to stop or to keep going. My skin burned, but as he kept pounding in me with sharp, heavy thrusts, the second finger joined, and in sync with his dick, he kept going in and out, stretching me until the only thing I could think about was coming and coming.

But that never happened.

He removed his fingers, stopping completely, my pleading only a whisper on my lips as he let me fall to the bed, with my hands next to my head.

I used to dream. I used to love, but it was all now erased, cloaked in darkness, forever lost to the monsters of this world. They didn’t have to have red eyes or horns. They didn’t have to kick you, but their words cut like knives, and this monster behind me, his words hurt the most, because he was supposed to be different.

Thunder roared through the skies, and I shivered as the demon behind me started moving, holding my throat, and flicking my clit. I moaned. I thrashed. I cried from pain and pleasure, but I couldn’t stop him. Unlike the other times, I was going to remember this, and no amount of drugs or alcohol was going to erase this from my memory.

I wanted to say no. I wanted to deny him a million times, but the beatings were too much to bear. I learned how to keep my mouth shut. But I would rather die than let him think that he won. No, I was going to get away from here. I was going to disappear, and they would never be able to find me.

This town, these people, these monsters, they were going to be just a memory.

But I didn’t know how long I would be able to do this. My body could take a lot, but my mind, my heart, my soul, they were shattering with each day. I feared that there would be nothing left by the end of the school year. I already forgot how it felt to be happy, faking smiles, faking contempt, because I didn’t want them to ask me questions.

No, I didn’t want Dylan to ask me questions. Pure, good Dylan.

I was good at hiding, locking myself inside my mind so that I wouldn’t have to actively participate in what was happening around me. I did it now, because if I couldn’t run away with the help of drugs, I could do it myself.

His grunts were far away from me, just an echo waiting outside the closed door of my mind. I let my body go, giving it fully to him, nodding when he asked me if I loved it, if he was the only person on my mind. I nodded when he told me not to come, but I wasn’t here.

I was back in that tent with Ash. Instead of these two filthy hands holding me, I imagined it was Ash choking me, caressing me, punishing me, making me wait for him and his release. I imagined it was his dick pistoning, his lips tasting me, his scent enveloping me. I let myself get lost in pleasure, because it wasn’t my father fucking me.

It wasn’t a monster who was supposed to protect me, tarnishing my soul. I imagined it was Ash.

It was all Ash.

“You’re so tight, pretty girl,” my father whispered, but it wasn’t his voice.

I lost myself in the land of dreams, where the person owning my body was someone I wanted, not someone I feared.

My father, Judah Blackwood, was a devil, a demon, a nightmare. He was the monster in those stories Dylan told me when I was a kid, and I realized way too late that he wasn’t the caring and loving father I wanted him to be.

“Oh God,” he moaned, placing sloppy kisses over my shoulder. I couldn’t fight the chills spreading over my body, and the sick bastard thought it was for him. “Skylar, you’re perfect.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I whispered because that’s what he always wanted to hear.

“You’re the perfect daughter.” Bile rose in my throat every time he reminded me who I was to him. It was easier pretending that he was just a stranger than my father.

I gulped down the acid rising in my stomach and tightened the muscles in my pussy, urging him to come. I couldn’t prolong this without the pills he always gave me. It was so easy avoiding his eyes, avoiding his face, pretending that his voice wasn’t the same voice that read those stories to me before I went to sleep.

“You’ll always be my favorite girl.” He chuckled. “Always mine.”

If I could, I would stab him in the heart for everything he did to me—for every threat, for every slap, for every piece of me he took with him. He shattered me, made me think I wasn’t worthy, made me think that no one would ever believe me if I told them what he did to me.

“My dad touched me like this as well,” he told me the first time he brought me here.

How many times did I scream? How many times did I cry? How many times did I beg to disappear? But no one ever heard me, because Senator Blackwood held more power than anyone could ever imagine. I didn’t have to know what was going on behind the closed doors of his study to know that the men he used to bring over to our house were not the kind of men you wanted to hang out with.

Nikolai Aster, Logan Nightingale, Agostino Romano, Frederick De Wolfe, they were frequent visitors, and I knew every single one of their faces from the television and from newspapers. They were supposed to be good men, but the first time Nikolai Aster hugged me, I knew that there was nothing good about them.

The first time Logan Nightingale undressed me with his eyes, my skin crawled, my stomach clenched, and I wanted to hide from them and their leering eyes. The masks they wore for the public to see were left at home, and the true monsters came out to play. I saw them for what they truly were—monsters.

And my father, the person that used to put Band-Aids on my knees, he was one of them. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when a year after I first met them, that my father told me to undress in front of him and start touching myself.

I was fifteen years old.

I couldn’t tell Dylan. I couldn’t tell my friends. I couldn’t tell anyone because he threatened every person I loved. He made me feel like I was filthy, unworthy. He made me do things I never dreamed of doing. He fed me poison. He pushed me into the dark abyss, and I fell so hard, all the way to the ground and I couldn’t climb out.

“Are you going to come for me?” He bit my earlobe, punishing me with each thrust. “I want to feel you squeeze my dick.”

His other hand gripped my breast, flicking my nipple, pinching me, making me scream all over again. And I let it go.

I let it all go because he knew I couldn’t come for him without pain. He made me into this. He made me beg, plead, cry, because my body needed to be punished to get to the soaring heights only an orgasm could bring.

“That’s it,” he breathed into my neck. “Oh yes, yes, yes. You love my dick. Admit it.”

“I love your dick, Daddy,” I answered with a robotic voice, sounding nothing like myself. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Not to be myself, because if I tried to be myself, I wouldn’t get out of here alive.

I stopped fighting him long ago, because every time I ended up with a new cut, a new bruise, new damage to my soul. My thighs had scars he inflicted upon me. My heart had marks no one would ever be able to remove.

My soul bled and bled and bled, and I wasn’t sure if there was going to be anything left of me once this was done. He was too powerful. He was everywhere, and I had to be careful with the plan I concocted. I had to. If he knew what I had planned, he would kill me before I managed to escape this town.

My hair fell over my face, over my eyes, and I welcomed the darkness as I closed my eyes, pushing my ass against him. The sound of his balls slapping against my skin, the sounds of our moans, my cries, the pouring rain, and thunder crying in the night, it was the song of depravity. The song of loss.

He increased his pace, letting me fall on all fours, and held my hips with bruising strength, letting himself go.

Ash, Ash, Ash, I chanted in my head as my body clenched around his dick.

My stomach tightened as my father kept pounding into me, drawing out the orgasm I didn’t want to give him.

No, it’s for Ash. It’s all for Ash, not for him.

He flicked my clit, and I erupted around him, my entire body shaking, but it wasn’t his name on my lips. It wasn’t his poison killing me slowly. It was thunderous eyes and a violent touch. It was a guy I didn’t only want, but needed. I needed him to chase away all the bad things surrounding me.

And I was going to find a way to get what I wanted, again.

* * *

“Dylan told me there’s a new kid at school,” my father started as I pulled on my sweater, careful not to touch the spots where he bit me. He was usually more careful, worried that people would ask questions if they saw me like this.

He could punish me, he could fuck me into oblivion, he could take everything away from me, but I still had to behave like a good daughter of a senator. He cared more about his picture and how people saw him than about his family.

“Yeah,” I murmured and picked up my bag from the floor. “His family moved to town recently.”

“What is his last name?” he asked and pressed the tip of his cigar to his lips, inhaling slowly.

“I’m not sure.” I shrugged. “I can find out.” Liar. I already knew his last name.

Ash Weber.

He wasn’t mine to protect, but knowing my father, he would find out about this weird attraction I felt toward him, and he would hold it over my head.

No, Ash had to stay out of this.

“Good.” He nodded, enveloped in the cloud of smoke. “Do that.”

I crossed the room, heading toward the door, counting when I would be able to break down without him seeing it. Counting down the minutes until I would be able to breathe without his foul stench surrounding me.

“And, Skylar,” he called out, stopping me in my tracks. I turned around, looking at him for the first time tonight. His hair was more gray than blond now, and his silver eyes just like Dylan’s were not soft anymore. No, he was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. “Not a word to anyone.”

“Yes, Dad.” I surprised myself with how strong my voice sounded, but I guess that after two years of this, I learned how to hide my emotions. I was thankful that the voices inside my head kept quiet while I stood in the middle of the room, the stench of sex, cigars, and his expensive cologne tickling my nose.

I didn’t wait for another word from him. I slowly opened the door, storming through the hallway of the darkened house, all the way to the front door. I didn’t stop to take a shower, even though I wanted to get his filthy scent off my body. I didn’t stop to look at myself in the mirror, because I didn’t want to see myself. I couldn’t face myself. All the other times he would leave me alone to gather my thoughts, but this time, he was the one staying behind.

Our family used to live in this house years ago, before I was born, before our parents got married, but they decided that living on the edge of Winworth was not suitable for one of the founding families.

So they moved, taking the land on Ashword Street, and building the house that now held some of the best and worst memories for me. Too bad it was the bad ones that started prevailing, and the good ones got lost.

I yanked the door open, letting it slam against the wall. The smell of fresh rain and clean air welcomed me, slamming into me like a freight train. People often said that rain always came to wash away all the bad things on earth, and I wondered if I would ever be able to wash away the sins clinging to my skin.

Sins and tragedies, the only two things I had to offer.

I started running, jumping from the porch into the darkness, rounding the fountain perched in front. Rain poured over me, mixing with the tears streaming down my face. My chest hurt, my breaths rushed, but I just wanted to get away from this place. I wanted to forget, to erase these memories from my head.

I hiccupped, fighting the sobs shaking my entire body, but I still ran. There were no other sounds apart from the pouring rain and my feet thundering against the ground, not even caring about the shoes that would no doubt be ruined after tonight.

I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to look at Dylan and lie to him. I didn’t want to look at Lauren and smile until my cheeks hurt. I couldn’t lie to them.

But there was one person I could lie to. One person that didn’t give a fuck about me, and as long as he didn’t, he was going to be safe. One person whose name was like a melody repeating in my head, and I needed him tonight.

I slowed down as I exited through the open gates of the former Blackwood Manor, seeing my car parked just a few feet away from it. No one ever came to this side of Winworth, and my father knew he would be safe. His secret, my downfall—they would be safe from the people of Winworth.

Little did he know that these people wouldn’t give a fuck even if he stripped me naked and tied me to the pole in front of City Hall. The only thing they cared about were their own lives, and if it didn’t affect them, they looked the other way.

Lightning illuminated the night, distorted tips of the mountain visible from this side of the town. I pulled my keys from my pocket, unlocked the car and opened the door, welcomed by the silence. The forest on both sides of the road should’ve looked sinister, but there was nothing more sinister than what was sitting inside the house I just left.

Humid air somehow seeped inside the car, and turning the ignition on, I switched on the air conditioning, letting the cold air onto my face. I knew what I was going to do tonight. The screen of my phone lit up as I turned it on, and an array of messages both from Dylan and Lauren welcomed me, but I didn’t want to look through them.

Instead, I rushed through my contacts until I found what I was looking for. I contemplated calling him throughout the week. I wanted to feel him again, but I was a coward, afraid he would deny me. Yet tonight… Tonight I had nothing else to lose.

The phone rang for what felt like forever, but when his gruff voice answered, the cold that started seeping into my bones suddenly evaporated.

“Hello?” He sounded confused, almost sleepy, but I didn’t care if I woke him up.

“Meet me at Infernum. I need you.”

And I dropped the call. I just hoped he would come.