Caleb ripped at my panties, the only article of clothing I had left. He tore them off me until I stook naked and trembling in front of him.
His gaze rolled over my body, his dick hard beneath his pajama pants. He dropped down onto the same step and crowded in on me until I was pressed against the banister. It was cold across my lower back, and I curled my fingers around the railing.
Up close, his bloodshot eyes stared me down, and his breath came in hot, ragged pants. A mixture of desire and disgust played out all over his face. But the aggression in his stance frightened me, forcing me back until I knew that with one tiny push, he could send me over the edge and onto the cold, hard tiles below.
“You don’t ever come into this house smelling of another man, you hear me?”
I nodded quickly. “I’m sorry. I won’t.”
I knew what would come next. I’d seen it all too many times from my hiding spot beneath the covers of my trailer park bed. So when he spun me around and dragged his pajama pants down, I wasn’t surprised.
But that didn’t mean I wanted it to happen. “Caleb, no.”
His fingers only gripped me harder, punishing for daring to refuse him.
I knew better than to say anything more. My face still stung from where he’d struck me. He was a man, bigger and stronger than I was. He was capable of worse than a slap.
I wanted his forgiveness. So I didn’t make a sound when he roughly took me from behind.
It was over in less than a minute. He pulled from my body and ejaculated all over my back and ass. I bit down on my lip, refusing to make a sound because I knew that would only make things worse.
He staggered backward up the stairs, yanking his pants up as he went. “Now you smell like me again.”
I nodded, not moving, even though his cum slid down the backs of my thighs. Any scrap of dignity I’d had was destroyed, so what did it matter? I waited until he stumbled back down the hall to his bedroom, the door slamming behind him.
It was only then that I gathered the beautiful dress from where it pooled around my feet, along with Nash’s shirt and my ripped panties. I gathered them all up, shoving the entire bundle into the kitchen bin. In the downstairs guest bathroom, I cleaned myself up in the shower, scrubbing at my skin until every inch of me smelled like my honeysuckle shampoo and bodywash, and then made my way upstairs to Caleb’s bedroom.
“Go to sleep, Bethany-Melissa,” he said in clipped tones from his side of the bed. “It’s three in the morning, and you have work in a few hours.”
I nodded, padding naked across his bedroom to slip in beside him.
I normally slept in his T-shirts, but tonight, I didn’t dare ask for one.
And he didn’t offer. He rolled to his side so he was facing the other direction, and a moment later, his quiet snores filled the air.
I didn’t sleep. I lay there until the sun came up with silent tears streaming down my face. Both for the brother I’d lost and for the piece of me that Caleb had just taken.
5
BLISS
In the brightly colored space of the childcare center, the night before seemed a million miles away. Caleb had been gone when I’d woken up, and I’d dressed for work slowly, carefully putting on more makeup than I normally did to hide the angry red mark across my cheek.
I couldn’t have a bunch of three-and four-year-old’s seeing that. They’d already asked questions about everything, and my slightly swollen eye was going to be hard enough to explain.
It would have been smarter to call in sick, but I needed to work. I loved my job, and being surrounded by smiling, happy, if sometimes grimy, faces was exactly where I needed to be after a night I’d rather forget.
“Miss Bethany? Did you know that dinosaurs can eat people?”
I grinned down at Kellan, a boy I’d had at the center since he was a baby. “I bet you’re right. If dinosaurs were alive today, they’d definitely try to chomp up little boys who didn’t eat their vegetables. That wouldn’t be you though, would it?”
“No way! I always eat my vegetables!”
I ruffled his hair, even though I doubted it. “Good man. You know some dinosaurs really liked vegetables too. They’re called herbivores.”
Kellan launched into a detailed description of all the herbivores he knew, but the buzzing noise of the center’s doorbell nabbed my attention. There was a security gate around the entrance to the expensive Providence daycare, and outside of parent pick-up and drop-off times, we kept it locked so all visitors needed to be buzzed in. I wandered over to the video monitor, expecting to see the weathered face of our postman, Ernie, but took a step back when a pair of dark-brown, unfamiliar eyes stared right into the camera, so close the rest of his face seemed out of proportion.