by Esme Devlin
He grabs the rabbit with his hook and swings it over to me. I take it, smiling and pretending I’m happy, before I turn around to Lawrie and tell her I’m exhausted, and I just want to go home.
Her eyes narrow at me. “Let me text Ada, I’m sure Scott will drop you off,” she says.
“It’s fine, Tommy’s passing that way anyway,” I tell her, pleading her with my eyes to leave it.
She hesitates and nods, giving me a smile. “Text me and let me know you get home safe, alright?” Everyone can tell what she’s getting at by the way she says it.
Tommy chuckles beside me. “She’ll get home safe, don’t you worry.”
“I’ll believe it when I hear it,” Lawrie tells him.
He shakes his head. “Be a bit stupid of me to kill her before the fucking wedding would it not?”
Fucking hell. I’m trying to stop her worrying and he is not making it easy.
“Right time to go! Lawrie, I’ll text you when I’m home, okay? Have a good night.” I take a few steps towards her and give her a hug, and she hugs me back. “And thanks for dragging me out, I had a good time.”
She smiles back when I pull away. “Stay safe, kiddo.”
“Always.”
Tommy tells Ryan and Jody to get a taxi home and then he grabs a hold of my hand, and we’re heading towards the exit without a backwards glance. I look up at him but his expression is blank, and he doesn’t look at me. “Tommy?”
“Don’t you fucking say my name like that.”
I check myself and shut up. I may do stupid shit but I’m not stupid, it’s obvious the last ten minutes were nothing more than a show. We walk along the promenade in silence, and when we reach the turnoff for the car park, he jerks my hand back beside him when I try to take a left turn.
“Where are we going?” I ask him, trying to keep my voice light.
He doesn’t answer; he just keeps looking straight ahead.
“Tommy, I want to go home,” I tell him, more firmly this time.
I glance up and his jaw is clenched, but other than that he’s calm as fuck.
Eerily so.
I look around and the lights from the fairground are quickly fading behind us. The floodlights from the car park only reach a little further and then there are only a few tired looking orange streetlights. There’s nothing here worth lighting up, an old crumbling warehouse and a large pier that’s been out of use since long before I was born. The aged wood looks so fucking black compared to the midnight blue sky behind it, and something about it scares me. I don’t want to go anywhere near it.
“Where are you taking me?” I can’t hide the worried edge to the tone of my voice now. He wants to scare me, and I am fucking scared. He said he wouldn’t kill me before the wedding and I can believe that, what would be the point when he could wait a few weeks and have himself a nice inheritance, just like he’s always wanted.
He couldn’t kill me but he could hurt me.
He knows I can swim, he could push me off the edge of that pier and laugh as I tumble into the freezing cold sea.
A full circle joke.
“Somewhere no one’s going to hear your screams,” he says. He jerks my arm again and this time he pulls me to the right, off the path and through the reeds that separate the promenade from the rocks at the edge of the sandy beach.
I try to pull away but he just grips on tighter, squeezing my fingers together until I moan in pain and stop pulling.
We continue through the long grass and I start to feel sand under foot, peppering the long grass before it fades into rocks.
My heart is fucking racing.
I rub my free hand along my jeans to remove the clamminess while I hold the rabbit under my arm and try to manoeuvre over the jagged rocks.
He’s going too fast; it’s like he can see in the dark.
My foot slips when I misjudge an angle and he lifts my hand, catching my weight and hauling me up before I fall.
“You need to slow down,” I tell him. “You’re going to break my neck!”
“I’m going to break more than that, darlin,” he spits. “By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll be wishing you’d broken your neck on these rocks.”
I swallow.
I can’t be sure if I want to freeze or I want to run.
His words act like venom, slithering around my veins and making it run cold. I should be paralysed, but I’m moving.
Freeze or run. Two choices.
But I know I can’t do either.
I run, he finds me. I freeze, he eats me.
I try instead to think of how I can fight. I know it’s hopeless. I know physically there is nothing I can do, but planning a fight means I won’t be tempted to submit to him. I won’t freeze up, his poisonous words can’t hurt me if I’m too busy plotting to listen to them.
I’m supposed to be being nice, how can I be nice and submit to a fucking monster like him?
I won’t do it.
I won’t be nice to him and I won’t give him what he wants. I’m going to escape, anyway.
This time next week I’ll be gone, and whatever he does to me right now will just be another memory that I can easily push to the back of my mind.
The black pier looms over my head as he drags me over the sand and I don’t know if I’m more scared of the structure in front of me or the devil beside me. Something about it creeps me out. It’s all the beams, like spider’s legs, criss-crossing over each other and so fucking dark. I don’t like it, and that’s exactly where we’re heading.
“Tommy, stop!” I shout, trying again to yank my arm out of his grip. I’m dragging my feet in the sand now.
“Fucking. Move.” He drops my hand and grabs my arm, pulling me in front of him and then guiding me by the neck to the pier. I look at the sand instead, although it’s pointless, I can barely see my feet in front of me.
The blacker than black wooden posts appear in my vision and it’s only now he slows down, releasing my arm but still holding firmly to my neck.
I hear him behind me, the faint clanging of metal, and I try to turn my head but he forces me forwards, straight towards the posts.
He guides me under the pier and now the tiny bit of light we had before is almost gone. I can see streetlights far off in the distance, but nothing close.
He stops me in my tracks about halfway under and spins me around, pushing me back forcefully until I hit a wooden post.
He’s on me in a second, grabbing my wrists and forcing them up above my head.
The toy I’d been carrying falls to the floor.
I smell the leather of his belt dangling in front of my face and I realize, that was the metal sound.
He was unbuckling his belt.
“Don’t,” I tell him, trying to tug my arms free.
I know how this ends.
He forces them back again, harder this time, and wraps the belt around, using his body to push me further against the circular post. I feel the hardness of the post press against my spine, and his chest, almost as hard as the damn post pushing against my tits while he sorts out the buckle.
He takes a step back and I’m trying to steady my breath. I’m trying to stop my thudding heart from jumping right out of my chest.
He’s so fucking calm, and it terrifies me — to the point I think a temper would be a mercy. I’m well versed in throwing his temper right back at him and turning it into an erection.
But how do you argue with cold hard steel?
“I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have gone out,” I tell him, still trying hopelessly to slide my arms out.
He laughs at me and takes a step closer. His breath is now warm on my cheek and suddenly I realize the rest of me is cold. “You think this is about you going out?”
Yes? I thought he had made that quite clear when he dragged me away from the place I was “out” too. “Well, what’s it about then?”
“It’s about the way you lie to me, little princess,” he says right into my ear. The
warmth of his breath collides with my cool skin, and then his lips brush over the damp flesh, making me squirm. “It’s about the way you take me for a fool.” He bites my earlobe and I squeeze my thighs together to relieve the tingles created by the action.
Even when I hate him and he hates me, and my heart is racing in a nauseating mix of anticipation and terror, he still has the power to do that to me.
My head is scared, my heart is ice cold, but my body?
My body doesn’t want to hear a fucking word of it.
What do I even say to that? I did play him like a fiddle in the car. I used all my skills and tactics in manipulation to bend his will to my own.
I played him for a fool.
I could lie again, and deny it, but something tells me he’s a once bitten, twice shy kinda guy.
Me, I’m clearly a once bitten, twice horny kinda girl.
Fucking idiot.
But maybe I don’t need to lie. I can be brave when I think I’m winning, I know it. I don’t know what he plans to do, but I have no intention of being a victim tonight. And I have a secret weapon of sorts. I have something up my sleeve, call it an insurance policy, for if the worst ever came to the worst.
With my arms strapped to a post above my head, and his knee now pressing up between my thighs and encouraging me to open for him — I suspect the worst is about to come to the worst.
And I won’t let him live the rest of his days thinking he got to take that from me. I won’t let him have that satisfaction.
“Why don’t you show me what happens when the little princess takes you for a fool?” I say back. I turn and press my lips close to his lowered head, feeling my breath come right back against me. It’s the side of his cheek and I feel the faint scratch of stubble as I run my nose along his jawline.
“You won’t last till morning unless I hear you begging for mercy,” he tells me.
“What are you going to do?”
He moves his head directly in front of me until his lips press against my forehead, and he speaks while kissing me. “I’m going to leave you here, tied to this post, until the first hint of sunlight breaks on that hill over there. You can spend the whole night in agony, praying that it comes soon, and you will learn that the sun doesn’t move for spoiled little brats. The sun doesn’t move for anyone.”
I swallow as I process what he’s saying. There was a hint of playfulness in my tone a second ago, I couldn’t have made it more clear what I wanted if I’d pulled his jeans down and grabbed a hold of his cock.
But he’s clearly not buying that shit anymore.
He doesn’t want to fuck me.
We’ve passed that point.
He just wants to destroy me.
I’m the girl who cried wolf too many times… and now I think if the wolf ate me, that would be a mercy.
“Enjoy your night, princess,” he whispers.
I moan right into his neck. It’s not a painful moan. It’s a moan like I’m right on the edge of a fucking orgasm. He holds still above me, our bodies still pressed tight together and I kiss his neck. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
He lowers his face and my kisses trail up from his neck, along his chin and over his bottom lip.
He’s doing a fucking good job of resisting me. I suck his bottom lip into my mouth and the kiss turns to a bite.
He grabs a hold of my neck and forces my head back against the post. “You… you’re a pain in the fucking arse.”
“I know,” I tell him, swallowing and feeling the pressure of his grip.
“What do you want from me?”
I want you to let me go. I want you to give me life back. I want to get as far away from you and this shithole town as possible.
All those things are what my head wants.
“I want you to fuck the brat right out of me,” I tell him. I say it so convincingly I’m almost able to convince my own head. Almost. But I’m going to let my body win this one. It doesn’t matter anyway — I’ll be gone next week.
I always said I would fuck Tommy, just as long as I could walk away.
He laughs, but it’s more like a growl. He pushes my chin up and we stay like that for a long moment, each of us weighing each other up and breathing each other's air.
And then he catches my mouth with his, parting my lips easily and invading it with his tongue.
He kisses me like he owns my lips, my body, like he owns the sand beneath our feet.
And I let him.
I open my mouth and I let him fuck me with his tongue. I want to run my fingers through his hair… I want to press my nails into his thick arms but they’re strapped so tight I can’t move an inch — and the frustration only adds to the tension.
It only makes it better.
Instead, I move what I can, and I hook my leg up around his hips, pulling him in tighter to the place where the tension is through the fucking roof. I grind against him and he pins my hips to the post, slamming them back with such force that my tits heave forward and I cry out from the shock of it.
“I’ll make you regret thinking you could ever cross me.” He wraps his arms around my thighs and pulls my legs up around his waist, the both of us trying to keep our lips together while he whispers sweet threats into my mouth. “You’ll regret every lie you ever told me.” I moan in frustration as we grind against each other.
His cock is right there, pushing against my clit, separated only by fabric. “You’ll regret pushing me on that dance floor when you were just a spoiled little brat.” I sink my tongue into his mouth, a silent plea for him to stick his cock inside me.
It’s a cold night, but I’m burning up.
There’s a fire inside me, a fire inside him and we’re both keeping each other warm.
He just needs to get it over with.
Do it.
His mouth leaves mine and I feel empty, like he’s taken the breath right out of my lungs.
Pulling my shirt down with one hand, his mouth trails down my neck, kissing, nipping, and licking while I squirm in delight, until he reaches the place where my neck meets the curve of my chest and he bites down hard.
“You’re going to regret. The fucking. Day. You.. Were. Born, little princess.” He’s devouring me. Sucking and pinching my tits with his teeth until my whole body is screaming that it needs to be fucked.
“Tommy, fuck me,” I beg, although I can barely get enough air in my lungs to produce anything coherent. I tilt my chin and kiss the top of his head.
My arms are aching, my back is sore, I’m going to be hurting for days after. But not as much as I’ll be hurting if he doesn’t do this. “Please. Fuck me.”
He drops my legs with a growl and his whole body covers me as he deals with the belt. A few seconds later and I’m loose, but I’m not free.
His arms are straight back down, tugging my shirt up over my head and unclipping the back of my bra.
The cold air hits my nipples, hardening them instantly and my hands fly up to cover them. He grabs my shoulders and flicks a foot behind my ankles, tripping me up but catching me so I don’t fall, and laying me down on the freezing cold sand.
My back barely hits it and he’s already got my jeans and underwear down at my knees, pulling them off and taking my shoes with them.
I’m completely fucking naked and he’s not removed a single piece of clothing.
The air hits my body and while it’s cold, it’s the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
My skin is cold but inside, I’m burning up.
It’s torture.
I want him to take me right here in the sand like he owns me. Like I am his. Like he is mine.
Even if it’s just pretend. Even if it’s only for one night.
And my Tommy, well he doesn’t disappoint.
His knees push my legs wide apart and he collapses down on my body like a tonne of hard steel, almost knocking the breath right out of me.
There’s less fabric between us now, and
I rub myself against the softness of his t-shirt while his hands take a hold of my wrists and push them into the sand beside my head.
His lips cover mine again, and this time it’s messy. This time it’s not harsh hatred or fury or spite. This time it’s lust. It’s passion. It’s desire. It’s two people who don’t know how to be together without one extreme or the other.
I moan into his mouth and he growls in return, pushing his hips down hard into mine. He slips a hand down between our bodies, between my legs, and I almost buckle around him right there.
A finger runs right along my slit and I can feel how wet I am, how much my body wants this.
He inches to the side and trails his damp finger up across my pubic bone, over my navel and up between my parted breasts. Then he runs it over my bottom lip before planting a kiss on them, and unbuttoning his jeans.
With his cock in his hand he positions it against my entrance and lowers his body down, kissing me almost tenderly. He hesitates, barely moving and I think he’s teasing me, like I’ve done so often to him.
Then I sense the restraint in the way he’s holding himself, in the tightness of his muscles, in the way he’s barely breathing as his lips touch mine.
He thinks I’m a virgin.
He doesn’t want to hurt me.
Cute.
And just like that, the urge to win is back, and I remember this was the exact reason I ensured I wasn’t a virgin for my sixteenth birthday. My own sweet little fuck you to Tommy Heenan, should the worst happen.
And I’m not about to waste that opportunity now.
I wrap my legs around him and I pull his body down to me while forcing my own hips up. He goes all the way in, and even though this isn’t my first rodeo, my body still aches in protest at the size of him.
He is… big.
If I had been a virgin, I’d have been screaming in pain. But instead, I’m trying hard not to bite my bottom lip. “Are you going to lie there or are you going to fuck me like you promised?”
He pauses for a second while his face hovers above me. My eyes are somewhat adjusting and while I can’t see his features, I can make out basic shapes and I can feel the heat of his breath on my cheeks. “You’re not a virgin?” His tone is accusatory and I don’t like it.
