Sweet Giselle

by Karen P. Williams

  When I looked at Angel, he looked surprised, too. He glanced from me to Bryce, with an amused look on his face.

  “Well, I’m glad you like everything,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Bryce said gruffly.

  Once we were all stuffed, Angel got up and pulled the cake out of the cabinet. As he did, he said, “Aye, I ain’t got no candles, dawg, but you can blow the fire out from the pilot on the stove.”

  Bryce chuckled. But the moment Angel put the cake in front of Bryce, his eyes got watery. And before Angel and I could even sing “Happy Birthday,” Bryce pushed his chair back and left the kitchen.

  When Angel was going to take me back to my room and lock me in, I asked him if he would allow me to go to Bryce’s room. He looked like he was against the idea, but I told him, “Come on. I’m not going to try to get away. You can walk me there if you don’t trust me.”

  A few seconds later we stood in front of Bryce’s door. Angel gave a couple knocks on the door and then barged inside. I followed behind him. Bryce was playing Lil Wayne. I saw that Bryce was seated on his bed, with a huge notepad in his hand and what looked like a piece of black chalk. He was wearing the jeans he had on earlier with a black wife beater.

  He looked up at Angel; then his eyes went to me. They lingered on me for a moment before he turned to his brother and asked, “What’s up?”

  “She asked me to bring her up here.” Angel left the room, leaving Bryce and me alone.

  Bryce looked surprised. He leaned over and picked up a Heineken off the floor, then took a swig of it and put it back down.

  “Uh, what are you doing with that?” I asked him.

  “Just messing around, doing some sketches. It’s just something I mess around with from time to time. I been doing it since I was a kid.”

  I walked farther into the room. I sat down on the bed next to him. “Can I see them?”

  He handed me the notepad. I went through all the pages, which had various sketches. There was a sketch of a hand, a sketch of a baby, and there was one sketch of Bryce’s brother. The one that impressed me the most was the sketch of this high-rise with a beautiful sunset in the background.

  “Wow. These are really nice, Bryce.”

  “Yeah. My mother used to sketch. She is a lot more talented than I am.”

  How sad, I thought. Because judging from the sketches, if she was better than he was, she was a pure waste of talent. Because Bryce was good.

  “You need to share this with the world!”

  He chuckled at my enthusiasm.

  “You’re laughing, but I’m serious.”

  “When I was younger, I thought about going to college and one day owning my own art studio. But it never really materialized, because I dropped out of school. I never really gave it any more thought after that.”

  I didn’t want to preach to him about how he shouldn’t give up on his goals, because truthfully, I gave up mine when the opportunity presented itself for me to accomplish them. And besides, he probably wouldn’t listen to me. So instead I asked him, at the risk of him shooting the idea down, “Could you sketch me? Just my face.”

  He didn’t respond, just flipped to a blank page and grabbed another piece of black chalk out of the box sitting on his bed. I positioned myself so that I was facing him. He stared at me intently and then looked at the page as he sketched. His stares caused me to fidget on the bed. “Stop moving,” he told me.

  “Sorry.” I tried to stay still.

  A couple minutes later, he put down the chalk and turned the notepad my way.

  Wow. I had a drawing of myself done for Giovanni. It was done by a so-called professional artist, who drew for a living and charged thousands of dollars. But Bryce’s sketch was just as good as that one. And I didn’t have on all the makeup I usually wore or the fancy clothes and jewelry. It was just me, and he was still able to capture just as much beauty.

  “This is really pretty.”

  “Ain’t hard to make it pretty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on. You know you’re fine. I’m sure you have heard that before. All I did was capture you. Draw what I saw. Beauty.”

  I had. My husband had always told me I was, and he was always getting praised by his friends for having such a “beautiful wife.” But I blushed upon hearing that from Bryce. To have approval for something felt good, coming from Bryce.

  “Would it be okay if I kept it?”

  “Yeah.” He tore the page out and handed it to me.

  I took it out of his hands looked at it again and folded it in half.

  He downed the last of his beer and studied me. I watched his eyes scan my whole body before coming back to my face. “You are not what I thought you were.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “These past couple months I have come to understand you to be something different than what I assumed at first. You ain’t that person. What I mean is, I see why your husband fell in love with you. It don’t seem like it’s hard. I’m not saying I’m in love with you, so don’t think that,” he said quickly. “You sweet, without a doubt. You seem pure. You have a heart. And I think you are honest. You seem like an overall good woman who chose the wrong man to share her life with. That’s the only spot you seemed to go wrong in.”

  I was shocked that Bryce saw all those things in me. I was glad that he did. Because if anything, I wanted him to believe me when I said I had no idea what my husband was doing. And he was right. My husband was where I went wrong in my life.

  “I’m glad you feel I’m trustworthy, Bryce. Because I want you to know that I swear I would never be with a man who would do something like that to an innocent child. I swear to you I would ...” My voice cracked and I had gotten teary-eyed, so I stopped talking. At first, I was confused by my sudden emotion. Then I realized my emotion came from the fact that I now knew Bryce and Angel and I liked them both, and what they were going through was hard. To not know where their little sister was? To see her treated so inhumanely? Rethinking it made me cry. I felt bad before, but now it was at a different level, because I now cared for both of them. It was like their pain was mine, like she was my family.

  Bryce saw it. He looked like he wanted to touch me for comfort. But he fought it and simply looked away.

  I wiped the tears in the corners of my eyes.

  “I think I said too much.” He stood and stretched. “Come on. I’m going to take you to your room.”

  I stood and walked after him out of his room. Once we got to mine, Bryce hesitated in the doorway. He had his arms stretched out and was holding on to the top of the door frame, flexing his muscles in his arms.

  I placed the drawing on the nightstand and sat on the bed, watching him.

  “I may take you out tomorrow. To get some air, if you act right.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” I pulled the covers back and slipped underneath them.

  Bryce was still standing in the doorway.

  I closed my eyes, and it seemed like five minutes passed before he flicked off the lights, closed and locked the door.

  The next day, Bryce decided to take me to one of his small houses in Chino so I could go swimming. When we got to the pool, Bryce walked over to a table and dialed a number on his cell phone.

  I asked him, “How am I supposed to swim without a bathing suit?”

  “Improvise, little girl,” was what he said before going back to his call.

  “Improvise with what?”

  He put his hand over the phone. “I don’t have time to go back and forth with you. Either you are going to get in that shit or you not.”

  I sucked my teeth and pulled my dress over my head. I jumped in the pool in my underwear and bra. I swam around the pool while Bryce continued with his phone call. A few minutes later, he ended his call, turned his attention to me, put his phone on the table, and walked toward the pool. He kneeled down and dipped his hand in the water a few inches from me.

  “How is it this
pool is supposed to be heated?” he mumbled.

  Quickly, I grabbed him by his collar and pulled him, and he lost his footing and fell forward.

  “Shit!”

  I laughed as he took the plunge into the pool, getting soaking wet.

  “You play too fucking much.”

  I swam away quickly as he came after me. When he caught me, he dunked my head under the water. I managed to escape, bobbing my body in and out of the water, laughing. When I tried to evade him again, he caught me and hemmed me up against the wall of the pool. He put his lips to mine and started kissing me.

  It was a long, passionate kiss, too. When he invaded my insides with his tongue and I liked it. I was really getting into it and was playing with his tongue with my tongue.

  Bryce broke the kiss by pulling away and asked, “What are we doing?”

  I shrugged. I was attracted to and felt this connection to the man who had abducted me. I knew deep down he had a conscience. I knew deep down he cared when others were hurt. He wasn’t the bad guy. My husband was. To me, the bad Bryce did was based on necessity and circumstance. No matter how mean he was to me at first, the good in him showed through. And I liked him more than I cared to admit at first. The “like” was getting deeper day by day. And I found myself antsy late at night, when he locked me in my room, and I got up extra early, waiting for him to return.

  “This is not supposed to be like this,” he said.

  “Like what?” I asked breathlessly.

  “You are the wife of the man I want to kill. I’m supposed to hate you, hurt you any way that I can.” He kissed my lips again and lowered his voice so it was husky. Giving me a stirring down below. “But all I want to do is make you feel good. I want to do this” He kissed me on my neck. “And this.” His lips trailed down to my breasts. He then whispered in my ear, “I want to lick you here.” He placed a hand over my pussy.

  I moaned, wanting him to touch me underneath my panties.

  I felt the same way he felt. All he wanted to do, I wanted him to do to me. I knew Bryce was the man that tore away the facade of my life. But had he never done that, I would still be living that facade, not knowing it was a facade, and I would still be happy with my husband. I would probably be shopping for clothes, jewelry, and lingerie, waiting for my husband to spend his quality time with me, totally oblivious to the fact that he was a monster. Never in my marriage did I have the urge or desire to lie with another man. But I wanted Bryce. I wanted him to touch me in all the spots he wanted to. The reality of that made me feel a mixture of emotions I didn’t quite know how to handle. Bryce made me feel so good. But I knew, despite the situation my husband was in, that it was wrong. I was married for the time being. But that didn’t stop me from letting Bryce put his lips on mine again for another kiss.

  It was a kiss that was so deep, it seemed like our tongues were battling with each other to see who could explore the other’s mouth better.

  “I know how you feel. Bryce, it’s not supposed to be this way. And those things you want to do to me, I swear to God I want you to.”

  Then I felt Bryce pull my panties down, spread my legs open to play with my pussy. I moaned deeply as he rubbed my clit.

  His voice was husky in my ear. “I like you, Giselle.”

  I could no longer talk. I closed my eyes as the pleasure pulsated throughout my whole body.

  Then his phone rang, putting a halt to all of that. Damn.

  He pulled away from me and leaped out of the pool. I took a deep breath and pulled my underwear back up. Bryce snatched up his phone off the table and answered.

  “What’s up, Percy?” He paused and then said, “Give me an hour, and I will be there.”

  He turned back to the pool, looked at me, and said, “Let’s go now.”

  “Now, I don’t want to do this, but I need to make sure you stay put, and there is only one way to make sure of that. Yeah, you been cool lately, and I like you and think about you a whole lot more than I care to admit. But my obligation is to my sister first. So I gotta do this.”

  I frowned but nodded my head as he put the torn sheets around my wrists and ankles and tied them to the posts of his bed. I understood his position. He needed to get his sister back, and he had to be sure I didn’t run off.

  Still, I didn’t want to be tied up again, so I tried to give him a pitiful look, but it didn’t make a difference.

  “I’ll be back.” Then he walked toward the door. I figured it had something to do with his sister. I hoped he found her safe and alive. I ignored the question that popped in my head. Then what will happen to me?

  As he reached for the doorknob, I called his name. “Bryce?”

  He turned around. “Yeah?”

  “Ever since you told me, I have been praying for your sister’s safe return. I hope you find her. I really do.”

  He smiled and said, “I hope so, too.” Then he slipped out of the room.

  Later that night, I heard the key turn in the door and someone come into the room. When the light was flicked on, I saw it was Bryce.

  I blinked a few times before saying, “Bryce, did you find out where your sister ...” My voice trailed off when I caught sight of the murderous look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  Another man followed behind Bryce, fiddling with a phone. It was Angel. They both stood in front of the bed. I was surprised when Angel didn’t say hi to me.

  Coldly, Bryce spat, “Your husband murdered my sister.”

  I gasped. “What?” I instantly felt so bad for Bryce and his brother. I didn’t know the sister, but my eyes started to get watery.

  “Untie her!” Bryce shouted.

  Angel quickly rushed forward and removed the torn sheets from my wrists and ankles. I lay there, confused, as Bryce pulled his shirt over his head and came toward me.

  “Bryce?”

  He yanked off his shoes and pants next.

  Now knowing what he was going to do, I panicked and leaped off the bed. Bryce blocked me from moving and slapped me so hard, I screamed and flew back on the bed.

  “Is it ready?” he asked his brother.

  “Bryce, come on. Don’t do this, man.”

  “Get it ready!” Bryce barked.

  That was when I got it. He was going to rape me on video. The way his sister was raped. That was his revenge to my husband.

  And the thought of it ... It looked like Angel couldn’t even stomach it. He looked away. Neither could I.

  I tried to fight Bryce with my fists, beating them into his chest, but to no avail. He was able to open my legs and straddle me. “Bryce, stop!”

  “Shut the fuck up! Aim it now, Angel!”

  His brother pointed the phone at us.

  “Angel, stop him. Bryce, please don’t.”

  But he ignored me and rammed his dick into my pussy.

  I screamed.

  “Bryce, the battery is dying. It won’t record. Man, let’s just forge—”

  “Get the fuck out, Angel!”

  Angel left the room quickly.

  I screamed at how rough it was, giving me no pleasure at all. He was unable to look me in my eyes. After a few strokes, he flipped me over onto my stomach. The worst fear crept up into me. He was going to rape me anally. I had never had anal sex before.

  I begged him with my eyes and words. But it fell on deaf ears and cold eyes.

  He plunged his dick into my butt with so much force, my head hit the headboard. I screamed and cried all at the same time from the tremendous pain. Bryce yanked my hair and rode my buttocks savagely. I sobbed into my arm and bit my lip from the pain.

  After a few more thrusts, Bryce came inside of me. He then shoved me away and got off the bed.

  I peeked out from under my forearms at Bryce’s face.

  He glared at me hatefully, despite the fear on my face, my shoulders racking with sobs, and the hot tears sliding from my eyes. He continued to glare at me like he hated me. And it hurt. All the gentleness he had been showing me was long
gone. I was filled with shame over what he had done to me. He had brutally raped me.

  Bryce walked to the door. He turned and gave me one more murderous look before exiting the room, leaving me there sobbing.

  I remembered his words. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a rapist or even a woman beater. I’m not a violent man at all, unless I have to be. But sometimes in life, circumstances cause you to act out of character.

  And that was exactly what he had done.

  Chapter 15

  Bryce stayed away from me for several days after he raped me. Although I was sore during those days, I was able to heal. My feelings didn’t, though. Not initially. I was hurt, embarrassed, and I felt ashamed. I had never experienced something like that from a man before, and I never wanted to again.

  Bryce hired an older black woman to care for me during this time. And during this time Bryce was pretty much a ghost. If I were to make some sense of the situation, and if I were to be honest with myself, I would have to say that I understood Bryce’s anger. Why he was so upset, even why he treated me as badly as he did. The reality that my husband was responsible for his sister’s murder ... Every time I thought about it, it made me sick to my stomach. I felt so stupid for marrying Giovanni. I hated Giovanni to no end.

  It all made sense. This was why she never came back. She was killed. I wondered how she was killed. What she endured that night, aside from the rape Giovanni committed. I wondered why. Then I shuddered to know. I could only imagine his pain, Angel’s, and hers. What would I do if someone killed my brother? I would probably want to die, too, but not before killing the person responsible for my brother’s death. I also wanted to be there for Bryce. I didn’t want him facing this alone. No one should be alone in a circumstance like this.

  Which was why, as soon as the maid opened the door and said, “This will be my last day here with you ...” I pushed past her before she could finish and ran out of the room—despite her yelling for me to stop—and straight into Bryce’s room.