Passion Follows
Pain
Book 3 in the Passion Series
By J.A Melville
Acknowledgements
I have so many people I need to thank for having faith in me despite me being plagued with insecurities at times.
To the lady who first asked me to start writing I thank my friend who is like my sister, Andrea. I thank Lorraine for always having faith in my abilities as a writer, even when I doubted myself. I can’t forget Sharon too for her encouragement and for providing me with things to laugh about when I was taking it all too seriously.
I want to thank Danielle, Debbie, Karen, Mary and Katherine who read my books long before publishing and who keep me on the straight and narrow. To my wonderful friends and PR ladies Tracy and Jess, the ladies from Sweet N Sassy Book A Holics and SNS Authors who have had to endure my endless questions given my painfully inadequate computer skills, I give a heartfelt thank you.
I also want to give a special thank you to Tasha; who has been incredibly supportive.
To the ladies from Controlled who provide hours of distractions for me and who keep me entertained when I’m supposed to be writing I say thank you.
I give special thanks to one of my closest friends, Rachael who puts up with my constant Facebook messages. Not only is she there every day despite us living at opposite ends of the planet, she happens to be a very talented author.
Thank you to all the ladies who have been there since book one; you help me far more than you will ever probably realise.
Thank you too, to the new friends and wonderful bloggers I’ve met recently, who have kindly taken it upon themselves to promote me.
I have to give thanks to another lady, a very special lady who is determined to make it so more people know of me and who very kindly took the time to make my website for me. I can’t thank you enough Lori.
I need to give special thanks to Melly, aka Ravannah, for being my fuck but seeking friend. She hunts down my fuck buts and points them out to me. Thank you so much for drawing my attention to something I had no idea I was doing. (It’s a private joke, if you’re wondering what that’s all about.)
Then of course, I want to thank my partner Roger and our three children, Bianca, Jesse and Reilly who have had to suffer through hastily constructed meals, a less than tidy home, my vague behaviour and me seemingly always having my head buried in my laptop. I'm sure they have found me frustrating on more than one occasion and I've no doubt they got sick of talking to the top of my head.
An extra special big thank you to my daughter Bianca who designed the cover for this book since she knows her mother is technologically challenged.
I can't write this without thanking all my English teachers from back in my school days many moons ago who always told me I should consider a career in writing when I grew up. Well, it might have taken me awhile, but I finally did as you all suggested, thank you. All of those people who have been there throughout my short writing career and never let me give up, I say THANK YOU.
About the Author
From my teenage years, all I wanted to do was become a writer one day. Even now as an adult woman with a partner and three children who are not so little anymore, I've always lived with my head in the clouds, a dreamer, often amusing myself with my own imagination.
It might have taken me awhile to finally live my dream, but I did it. I hope to one day be good enough to stand beside the many talented writers out there who have kept me entertained with their wonderful stories over the years.
I live in a sleepy country town in Tasmania, Australia with my partner and three children plus our 4 cats, dog and cattle.
I've had to overcome many emotional obstacles along the way to get to this point and attempting to self-publish a book does tend to make a person feel like they've thrown themselves in at the deep end of the pool. Here's hoping some of you actually like what I write and save me from drowning in the deep end as I probably forgot to mention, I can't swim.
J. A Melville
© Copyright J. A Melville. 2nd edition July 2015
Do the right thing, don’t download pirated books.
Authors deserve to get paid for their hard work as much as anyone else.
No parts of this book can be copied unless permission is given by the author for quotes to be used for reviews etc.
This book is fiction. The characters are fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
This book is the work of the writer's imagination.
Cover photo used under license from Shutterstock.com.
Cover image designed for the author by Bianca Eberle.
Chapter One
Arissa
“You’re free.” I whispered, the words spoken so softly, my lips barely moving so no one around me would notice, maybe think I’d said something to them or perhaps even think I was crazy. I didn’t want to draw attention, I wasn’t crazy but I was free and terrified, suddenly inexplicably nearly rigid with fear.
I’d just landed in a new state, in a city where I knew no one, but that was the way I wanted it. A fresh start, a new identity almost, anonymous but free, free from the clutches of a man who terrified me, who beat me, abused me, scared me more than anyone in my entire life had ever scared me.
I guess at 19 years of age, one could argue I hadn’t experienced that much of life yet; but my knowledge of pain, whips, belts, boots, vacuum cleaner hoses, hair pulling, kicking, punching and being forced repeatedly to not only do unspeakable sexual things to a man who should have been protecting me, but to also have him do things to me that were so horrifying most people would find it abhorrent to think that a child had suffered that for years. All that was enough to make me feel much older than my 19 years.
I was finally free of my father. Free from his clutches, but would I ever be free of the pain, the trauma, the emotional toll his treatment had taken on me?
My father, my own father, my tormentor, my abuser, the man I should have been able to trust more than any other man in my life but he was no protector, all he protected was himself. For 19 years he’d virtually kept me a prisoner of our home, never free to see friends, go anywhere, get a job, nothing. I wasn’t allowed to own a car, have a boyfriend, not that I really wanted one anyway but everything I did, everything I wore, the very clothes on my back, everything was decided by my father.
I didn’t have brothers or sisters to turn to and my mother had passed away when I was 6 years old. It was shortly after her death that my father’s reign of terror began.
My body although young at just 19 bore the evidence of years of abuse. The scars hidden beneath clothing because Father, he’d insisted I call him that had been careful to make sure the instruments of torture he used on me would leave no scarring; well nothing that was visible to anyone else, anyway. No, the damage lay under my clothes where no one could see, and given I’d never had a boyfriend and seriously didn’t want one, no one was ever likely to see the damage that marred my fragile body, concealed from potentially curious eyes by my clothing.
My skin was pale, too pale but that was from lack of sun. I wasn’t allowed outside much, so my skin rarely had an opportunity to become sun kissed, not even slightly. I was too thin from inadequate feeding from my father plus he insisted I stay thin, he liked me skinny. Fat women were repugnant to him and he’d made it perfectly clear that I would be beaten if I ever gained weight. The fact that he carried excess weight and his stomach was typical of a person who enjoyed copious quantities of beer obviously didn’t factor in his reasoning.
When that flabby, sweating body lay on me and he forced his thing in me, or his
instrument of pain as I referred to it, sometimes partially flaccid from the amount of alcohol in his system, he would get frustrated and beat me, often until I was bleeding. Slapping me, punching me and whipping me with various weapons were an obvious turn on for him and he would get hard as he hit me until I was bruised and swollen. Then I would have to put up with him on top of me again, as he rutted with the god awful grunts and snorts like an animal until he would find his release and sometimes fall asleep still lying on top of me.
I shuddered as the memories rolled through my mind like an endless reel of film, and it was only when I heard the soft voice in my ear from an elderly woman, asking me if I was alright, that I finally snapped out of my thoughts with a start. I shot her a quick smile before following the other passengers across the tarmac to the airport terminal ready to begin my life in a new state. I had a job waiting for me; a job that had been lined up for me by a friend of mine, one of my friends from high school who had stayed in touch. One of the very few friends my father had allowed me to have.
I didn’t have many qualifications, ok I had no qualifications, but I could clean a house and since I’d been forced to look after my father for years, I could take care of someone, so my job was as a live in housekeeper to an elderly woman who had taken a fall and broken her leg. She had no immediate family, or none that could either help or who even cared enough to help it seemed. So she needed someone to assist her around the home, prepare meals and generally take care of her until she was better and that was to be my job.
I waited patiently for my bag to come through on the carousel and once I’d picked it up, I followed the other people making their way from the airport to waiting taxis and for some, relatives or friends picking them up. I had no one, no one knew I was here other than Debbie who had arranged all this for me, the job, the flight, everything to help get me away from my father. She had taken a huge risk for me. If he found out who had helped me, and he would know I couldn’t have organised to get away from him without help, I worried about how difficult he could make life for my best friend.
I still didn’t know entirely how she’d done it all for me, but she would probably never understand how eternally grateful I was. Of course, I was terrified, terrified of being out in the world alone, terrified that I would have no idea what I was doing and fail, terrified that the lady who was employing me would hate me and fire me, leaving me not only homeless but with no finances either. I had some money, the $500 that Debbie had given me, but that wasn’t going to last forever of course. My greatest fear was that somehow my father would find out where I was and come for me. I shivered just thinking about how angry he must be right now. His rage was awful and something I’d spent my entire life trying not to stir up in him, because it never ended well for me. He would beat me until I was covered in bruises, eyes sometimes nearly swollen shut and then he would rape me, forcing himself on me in every way possible.
He would use and abuse my entire body, making me do horrible things to him. If I tried to refuse or I didn’t do things as he wanted and expected of me, I would be punished. That frequently involved nearly being choked; his pudgy fingers wrapped around my neck as he squeezed me so hard, I thought my eyes would pop from my head.
Once I was dazed from blood loss to the brain, he would use my mouth to bring himself pleasure or if he was really angry with me, he’d beat me until I was nearly unconscious.
God I had to be careful. I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t see him again. He must never know where I was. I didn’t want him hurting me anymore. He’d done as much damage as he could to me. I was scarred both physically and mentally. Internally he’d damaged me from getting me pregnant one too many times and causing an abortion with his own barbaric methods. I knew he’d hurt me in ways I would never recover from. The last abortion he’d given me, I’d been in horrible pain and so sick. That must have been the time that left me so damaged I would never be able to be a mother.
I was in two minds about that. Sad that I would never have a child I could love, but given I didn’t intend having sex, a child was out of the question anyway. I wanted nothing to do with men. Maybe they weren’t all like my father, I didn’t know, but they would want to stick their thing in me sooner or later and I hated that. It hurt; it was horrible, painful and disgusting. All that grunting, sweating and thrusting. Then the feel of their warm seed inside me, leaving me sticky and smelling when I couldn’t shower sometimes for a couple of days. No, all that was something I had no desire to ever willingly allow a man to do to me.
When I stepped out of Hobart Airport, the mid afternoon sun hit me in the eyes, temporarily blinding me. I blinked against the harsh light and made my way over to where a line-up of taxis waited.
Once the driver had placed my bags in the boot, I gave him the address and settled back in my seat to look at the scenery as we headed towards not only my first job, but my first address free of the control and torture of my father’s clutches.
I liked the look of Hobart from what I could see from my seat in the back of the taxi. We were leaving the city behind now, heading towards what appeared to be a more affluent part of town, past some big club by the water which roused my curiosity, but a place I knew, I was never likely to frequent.
Finally the driver turned into a quiet street, high on a hill and pulled the taxi into a concrete driveway leading down to an attractive brick home. When I climbed out of the car, stretching briefly, my eyes scouting around to see my surroundings, I found my gaze settling on a house across the road. It was huge, sprawling, intimidating looking and if I was honest with myself, almost scary looking. If the door had opened and Herman Munster had walked out, I doubt I would have been surprised. I wondered who lived in such a big, slightly scary looking house that I felt sure would not look out of place in the middle of a horror movie. It appeared that no one was home, all closed up, curtains drawn but there was a car in the driveway a big old Rolls Royce by the looks of things, so whoever owned the house must have had money. I could see a few more cars parked in a massive carport next to the house, so the owners were obviously very wealthy or a lot of people lived in it.
Still, it was not my concern at all, and I turned my back on the house that appeared to lord it over the others in the street from its vantage point on the hill, and made my way to the front door of the house that marked the beginning of a new life for me.
I knocked on the door, nerves taking flight in the pit of my stomach, like the frantic flutter of butterfly wings, as I waited to see what my employer was going to be like. Debbie had told me that Mrs Appleby was very nice and sounded like a sweet old lady but a voice over the phone compared with the reality of being face to face with someone inside their home was a different thing altogether.
I heard a voice call out to ‘hold on’ and that she was ‘coming’ and faintly from inside I could hear the clatter of what had to be her crutches on a tiled floor.
When the door finally opened, I looked nervously into the eyes of my employer or that was my intention, but my gaze missed the mark and I ended up only seeing the top of her head, before dropping my gaze to the tiny frail looking woman standing before me. She was propped up and looking extremely uncomfortable, quite obviously finding the crutches challenging. She raised a hand to wave me in and wobbled alarmingly to the point where I dropped my bags and jumped forward, slipping my arms around her to stop her falling.
“Oh bless you child.” She gasped, her voice lilting and warm, flowing over me, relaxing me, making me smile. “I hope you’re Arissa Petros because this is going to be a trifle embarrassing if you’re not?” She chuckled, an almost musical sound to me and my heart warmed even more for this woman.
“I am and you must be Daisy Appleby. My friend Debbie explained how you were after someone to help care for you and your home, prepare meals and do the housekeeping in exchange for board? I can’t tell you how thankful I am for this opportunity to work for you Mrs Appleby.” I gave her a tentative smile.
The ol
der woman straightened, getting herself propped up on her crutches again. “Come in dear. Grab your bags and let’s try that again. Follow me, I’ll show you your room.” She started off down the hallway and I hastily grabbed my bags, and followed her into the house.
“Mrs Appleby I wanted to thank you for giving me this job when I have no references besides years of caring for my father.” I started to say but my employer stopped suddenly and turned towards me, moving carefully on her crutches.
“Please dear, for starters, call me Daisy. You make me feel really old when you call me Mrs Appleby and your friend was very persuasive. She made it abundantly clear to me how important this opportunity was to you. You know of course that it is only a temporary position and once this plaster is off my leg, I will be able to look after myself again?”
I gave her a shy smile, liking this woman more and more every moment. I didn’t trust easily, I was normally wary of anyone I met, although my father had kept me shut away from most social interaction, but something about Daisy made feel more relaxed, safe almost. She was kind and gentle. I didn’t need to spend long with her to know that. I could see it in her eyes. I was very good at reading a person by the look in their eyes. I’d had years of experience with my father. I would always look closely at his face to read his expression so I’d have time to prepare, to brace myself to deal with whatever mood I could see behind those mean eyes of his.
Daisy’s eyes were warm and kind, they sparkled with good humour and just that earliest clouding of what would probably later develop into cataracts.
“Here we are.” She stopped by a doorway, indicating that I should go in before her. When I stepped into the room, I gasped, my eyes widening. The room was beautiful, so pretty, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A double bed dominated the room, adorned in a thick frilled quilt in creams and baby blue colours. The bed was piled high with pillows and cushions and looked so pretty I worried about sleeping in it and messing it all up. The carpet was a thick cream pile that was soft under my feet. The walls were painted a rich buttercup yellow and were covered with paintings of landscapes, flowers and even one painting that looked like the city of Hobart from my limited knowledge of it. There was a comfortable looking recliner chair, a small round table and chair by the floor to ceiling window. A large flat screen TV was mounted on the wall on one side of the room, with chest of drawers below it. Two doors led off the room; one I could see was the bathroom, a small but well-appointed en-suite, the other a walk in robe.
Passion Follows Pain (Passion Series Book 3) Page 1
