Breaking Grace

by Rose Devereux

  I do as she says. Underneath the terror and resistance is a tiny glow of comfort. It’s a dangerous feeling. The urge to give in and trust. To make this bizarre detour in my life okay.

  Nothing about this is normal. I’m weak and in shock, but I can’t let my guard down. My life might depend on it.

  A minute later, I come back around the corner to find her running a bath. Beside her is a marble-topped table with a porcelain pitcher, dishes of soap, and clear glass bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

  “Get in,” she says.

  I shake my head. “I have to make a phone call. My parents will be worried. I need to go home.”

  “This is your home for the moment.”

  My chest aches with fear. “No, it isn’t. That makes no sense.”

  “It will. Now get in.” She holds out her hand.

  I fold my arms and set my jaw. Her cleavage rises and falls as she sighs. “One of the rules here is that you won’t be asked twice.”

  “You live in this house?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know what the rules are?”

  She twists off the faucet. A single drop falls into the water with a hollow ring.

  “As I said, the owner is a friend. I know what he expects.”

  “He.” Terror cracks through my heart. “Did someone kidnap me?”

  “They saved you. Now, come take your bath.”

  The steam from the tub looks so inviting. I’m dirty, frozen to the bone. I take a tentative step toward her.

  “Good,” she says.

  I step over the side and into the water. It feels like liquid fire as I sink into it. “It hurts,” I say.

  “You were outside for a long time.”

  She dips the pitcher into the water and pours a slow trickle over my head. I squeeze my eyes shut on instinct.

  “What are the other rules of this house?” I ask.

  “You don’t need to learn them all right now.”

  “Just tell me two or three,” I say.

  She laughs. “Were you always this willful?”

  “My parents would say yes.”

  She pours more water over my head and pulls the cork from a glass bottle. I hear her hands rub together, and then they start massaging my dirty hair. Shivers go down my back and legs.

  “You said they saved me,” I say. “Who’s they?”

  “Two men who saw you last night. You were in danger.”

  I try to comb back through my memories, but everything stops at the cemetery. “In danger how?”

  She hesitates just long enough to scare me. “Willful and talkative,” she says. “Just take your bath.”

  Just take my bath. Don’t think. Don’t wonder.

  She works conditioner through my hair, then starts scrubbing my back. I relax into her hands, shamed at the tears filling my eyes. I can’t remember the last time someone touched me. For two years I’ve endured the brief, skeletal hugs of my parents, the professional probing of doctors, and the tentative embraces of friends who’d mutter, “Sorry I’ve been so busy,” or “You’re so thin. Are you eating?”

  Coral’s soapy hands slip over my shoulders and collarbone, wrapping around my throat and rubbing under my chin. I tilt my head back and let her wash off the dirt, rain, and sweat.

  “Feeling better?” she asks.

  “I’m starting to.”

  She stands and sits again on the tub’s edge, facing me. I haven’t felt this way, this lost and innocent, since I was a child. Coral takes the soap from the dish and rubs it between her hands.

  “I can do it myself,” I say.

  “Not the way I can,” she says.

  She glides her soapy hands firmly down my arms, back up and down the front of my chest. I brace against her touch. No one’s touched my breasts except me and James, though he only did it once. I asked him if he wanted to, and he pushed his hands under my bra. His fingers pinched too hard and we fought about it, and after that he said we should wait until we got married.

  I didn’t want to wait. I wanted him to be so attracted to me, he had to have every part of me right now. But James wasn’t like that. Sex wasn’t a big deal to him. That’s what he said, anyway.

  I tried to be happy. If he didn’t want me for sex, that meant he loved me for who I really was.

  I’d give anything to be with him right now. To escape this confusing, shameful moment.

  Goosebumps ripple across my skin. Coral slides her fingers under and around my breasts, lightly running her smooth palms over my nipples. My breath quickens and I lower my eyes.

  Her touch shouldn’t feel good, but it does. I should want her to stop, but I don’t.

  “It’s okay,” she says, as if she can read my mind. “You’ve been through a trauma.”

  “Have I?”

  “You tell me.”

  I shake my head. I still can’t look at her.

  “No judgment,” she says. “I promise.”

  My voice is quiet. “I was drinking yesterday. I quit my job.”

  “How did you get the scratches?”

  “I jumped from my parents’ bathroom window. They gave me two choices. Go to rehab or live with a man I hate.”

  “That explains the limp,” she says. “Stand up.”

  Water pours from my body as I get to my feet.

  “You’re already waxed,” Coral says. “That’s good.”

  I look down at the bare smoothness between my legs. “Good for what?”

  “Everything.”

  Soaping her hands again, she slicks her hands over my ribs and waist.

  “Feet apart.”

  I plant my right foot to the side. I’m in awe of her confidence as she grips my hip and slicks soapy fingers through the folds of my pussy. Every time she grazes my clit, I gasp.

  “I can do that,” I say, blushing.

  “You need to be cared for right now.” With expert poise, she washes me thoroughly and turns me around. “Bend over.”

  I wince at the wall. “No. I can’t.”

  “You’re not getting out of this tub until you do.” Her voice goes from friendly to stern in an instant.

  Biting my lip against a wave of embarrassment, I bend at the waist.

  “Excellent,” she says. “So much for I can’t, huh?”

  Her wet, slippery fingers soap between my ass cheeks and probe every inch of me. My pussy tightens. I can’t be aroused. I feel sick and my face is hot and I want to cry.

  It’s my fault. I’ve isolated myself for so long I’m like a starving animal. I’ll take anything that resembles warmth and affection. Demeaning pleasure from a strange woman’s fingers. Touching my pussy on my fiancé’s grave.

  Suddenly, hot spray from the hand-held wand blasts between my legs. Grabbing me again by the hip, Coral spins me around and rinses me from my breasts to my knees. She does my feet last, making me sit in the tub and present each one for a thorough scrubbing. I hiss when she scrubs across the sliver in my heel.

  “I stepped on glass,” I say.

  “Ouch,” she says, wincing in sympathy.

  She takes a pair of tweezers from a glass dish on the table and pries out the sliver. I bite my lip to keep from whimpering.

  “All better,” she says, holding up the tiny shard. “Now you can heal.”

  Now I can heal. She makes it sound so easy.

  After drying me off, she tells me to clean up. While she watches, I scrub down the tub, wipe up the wet floor, and put the towels in a hamper hidden under the sink. She wants every bottle and implement on the table to be wiped down and arranged with perfect symmetry.

  “The world outside is a mess,” she explains. “In here it can be different.”

  When the fixtures are gleaming, she blows out my hair in front of the full-length mirror and puts makeup on me.

  “Your body is scratched but your face was spared,” she says penciling in my eyebrow. “You’re lucky. A pretty face makes life easier.”

  “That hasn’t
been my experience so far.”

  “Maybe now it will be.”

  When she’s finished, she turns me around to look in the mirror. I look glamorous, almost too made up, like I’m about to perform. “What do you think?” she asks. “Better than yesterday?”

  A tiny part of me wants to smile, but I don’t. “A little bit.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “I think I look scared.”

  “You can be both, you know.”

  Going to a closet across from the tub, she takes out a long white satin robe. “Where did that come from?” I ask.

  “I brought it up while you were asleep.” She slips the sleeves over my arms and ties the slender string in front. It barely keeps the robe closed over my breasts.

  “I feel so exposed,” I say.

  “It’s that or nothing,” she says, sounding stern again.

  She takes out a pair of ballet slippers and puts them on my feet. “You can wear heels when that foot is better.”

  My heart aches with hope. Her words imply that I’ll have a future. That she won’t hurt me, and no one else will either.

  “What happened to my dress and underwear?” I ask.

  “They’re being cleaned. You’ll get them back.”

  Stepping in front of me, she puts her hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to leave you now. I hope I’ll see you again. Take care of yourself.”

  I grab her arm. “Why can’t I call home? I can keep a secret. I promise I won’t say a word to anyone –” I stop. I hate myself for sounding so desperate and weak.

  Taking my hand, she leads me back to the bedroom. “Wait here. Be patient. Leave the light off.”

  “Sit in the dark?”

  “For now. Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  She pries my fingers from her sleeve. “I can’t stay.”

  “Please take me with you,” I say, and start to cry. “Or call my parents. Scott and Melinda Garrett. Let them know I’m okay.”

  She smiles her strange, ethereal smile. “You’ll call them soon enough. Just sit tight. Wait. It won’t be long.”

  “Until what?”

  “Goodbye, Grace.” She kisses the tips of her fingers and walks out the door, locking it behind her.

  Bram

  “I made her pretty for you,” Coral says. She stands on my porch with her umbrella and car keys. Thunder rumbles overhead.

  “I don’t care if she’s pretty or not,” I say.

  I sound irritable as hell because I am. Thanks to Grace, I had to call in sick this morning for the first time ever.

  I haven’t slept since Vernon ditched her in my yard last night. I brought her up to bed with me around three a.m., but sleep was impossible. I was too busy making sure she wasn’t dying. All night and half the morning, I watched every breath she took and held her wrist so I could feel her pulse. I had to make sure she was safe.

  It was so fucking hard not to mount her drowsy body and fuck her into oblivion. I had to make do by jerking off next to her. Twice.

  But now it’s eighteen hours later and reality is hitting hard.

  It’s looking and feeling more kidnapping every second. Like a fucking pain in my ass with no clear end game.

  From what Coral told me, I’ve got trouble upstairs. A hard-drinking, suicidal girl on the run from her parents and some guy they want to pass her off to. She’s feisty, she’s fucked up from the drugs, and she wants out.

  “She says she’s not hungry,” Coral says.

  “Good,” I grumble. “I don’t feel like cooking.”

  “I would have cooked for both of you if you’d asked. Too late now.”

  Coral smiles. Sometimes I can’t believe how much she’s changed. I remember what she was like when Fritz and I first met her. Melancholy, no ambition, four arrests including one for stealing a car in London. She’d given up an out-of-wedlock kid for adoption and tried every drug she could lay her hands on. She was doomed to a shitty future until Fritz trained her and turned her life around.

  Eight years later, she’s the most confident and independent woman I know. Nothing fazes her, not even a request from her husband’s best friend to help with an unexpected situation.

  I asked her to come for one reason. I didn’t want mine to be the first face Grace saw. I wanted her to have the dignity of a bath and something to wear before she saw me. The man she hates so much.

  It was hard listening to her pound the door and scream, but Coral had to wait until Fritz relieved her at the bar. The isolation was probably good for Grace, anyway. It set the tone for what’s to come.

  “One more thing,” Coral says.

  Sighing, I raise my eyebrows. “What?”

  “You wanted this to happen. Remember that.”

  I snort. “Is that what Fritz says?”

  Peering out at the dark sky, she pops open her umbrella. “That’s what I say. You know where to find me.”

  I go back inside and head upstairs. Grace has been awake for three hours. It’s time.

  Her room was meant to be a saferoom, back when I was renovating the Bristol Mansion. For years I’ve been meaning to stock and furnish it, and turn it into the perfect place to spend the apocalypse. But work distracted me from the end of the world, and the saferoom became the one part of my house with no purpose. Until last night.

  By now, she can hear my boots on the stairs.

  It gives me a corrupt pleasure to imagine how she feels as I approach. Her ear turned toward the awful sound. Her heart throbbing in time with my steps. My heavy stride coming closer until it stops right outside her door.

  I’m enjoying my power way too much already, and I’ve barely begun to use it.

  I stand in the hallway. She’s just a few feet away. Mere inches. She has no idea what I’ve already done to her. How hard I came while she lay like a stunned bird in bed next to me.

  Eyes pinned to her face, I pressed her tiny hand to my chest. I talked to her while I pumped my fist, hoping somewhere in her senseless mind, she could hear me.

  “You know what this big cock could do to you, baby girl? See how much come I have for you?”

  I raise my thumb to the sensor by the door and press it. I can feel her fear through the wall. Energy surges through me, a second wind so strong it makes me sweat. My exhaustion is gone. I’m high on what’s about to happen. I’ll be all that matters in her world in three…two…one.

  The door swings open slowly. I’m wired. My body feels tight and ready to spring.

  Light from the hall spills into the dark room. She’s standing under the window with her forearms clutched to her chest. I can see her pale, slim legs and long neck. The white wisp of a robe barely covers her.

  Her breathing is quick but soft. In a moment, that will change.

  I press another sensor and the light springs on overhead. I’ve been waiting hours for this moment. Fucking years.

  I have just enough time to appreciate the captive specimen of femininity in front of me before her pupils dilate and the blood drains from her face. Clutching the lapels of the robe, she shrinks away.

  “What the fuck,” she hisses.

  She backs up until the wall jolts her shoulder blades. Silky auburn strands fall over one eye.

  “Hello, Grace.”

  I step inside and shut the door. The lock clicks.

  “You fucking criminal,” she spits out. “You kidnapped me.” Her voice is scratchy but still soft and high. As if it never caught up when her body developed.

  “I’m sure that’s how it looks,” I say.

  Her hands clench into trembling fists. “Stay away from me.”

  Fear suffuses her skin, turning her chest and neck a deep red. Her bright, aqua eyes never leave my face. Her whole body is vibrating.

  Suddenly, with a sharp intake of breath, she starts to scream.

  The sound pierces my brain like a baby’s cry. Her pretty pink tongue quivers and her white, straight teeth open and clench.

  Poor wre
tched thing. She’s so beautiful, bathed, and dolled up for me. A wretch gone astray. A fatherless filly who’s wandered into a lion’s den.

  Her screams bounce off the walls, making my ears ring. My muscles are hard and my blood is pumping.

  Coral made her as pretty as possible, but makeup can’t disguise her jutting hips and collarbone, her sunken cheeks or glassy eyes. One hot bath won’t restore her strength. It will take care and discipline. A strict sleep schedule. Maybe even force-feeding.

  When she pauses between shrieks for breath, I say, “Your ankle is swollen. You need ice.”

  She screams again, more hoarsely this time. After another minute, her voice cracks and gives out. The only thing left is whispery breath.

  She’s voiceless, and it terrifies her. Panic fills her eyes. She rushes to the door and runs her hands over it.

  “There’s no way out, Grace,” I say. “The sooner you accept that, the better you’ll feel.”

  She searches the wall for a button, some magic device that will set her free. “No,” she whispers. Her back slumps as she realizes she’s trapped.

  I don’t expect her to give up, and she doesn’t. She turns around, her face wild.

  She charges at me and pounds her hands against my chest. Her fists flail uselessly, like a child beating a tree trunk. I barely feel them, and what I do feel makes me hard. My cock lays throbbing against my leg as she tears me apart with her words.

  “Monster! Bastard! Murderer!”

  “I know. It’s all right. Let it out.”

  I stand with my arms at my sides and take her blows. She shrieks with frustration that she can’t reach my face. When she’s exhausted and her hands are bruised, she sinks to the floor in the corner and cries.

  My boots make a hollow knocking sound as I walk up to sit beside her. When her sobs turn to hiccups and she raises her mascara-streaked face to look at me, I smile.

  “You’re just a mess, aren’t you?” I mutter, smoothing the hair back from her huge, horrified eyes. Her breasts are white half-moons, her nipples barely covered by the robe.

  “Where am I?” she asks. Her lips shiver.

  “My house. The old Bristol Mansion.”

  Her eyes are tormented. “Where James died.”

  “Yes. And where I live.”