Breaking Grace

by Rose Devereux

  I’m going to come. With Bram Russell. While he spanks and uses and talk dirty to me. I’m lost forever, and there’s no turning back.

  “Hit me again,” I whisper. “Please.”

  His fingers dance across my clit, slipping together every few seconds like a firm, hungry mouth. His mouth.

  He lets out an animal groan and slaps my ass with all his might. In the back of my mind, I think, it must hurt him, too. He’s breathing hard and his palm stings. He rubs his thick, long cock against the side of my thigh and does that thing again. Captures my clit between two extended fingers. Tugs gently on the wet flesh while pain surges from my ass to my pussy.

  I turn my head and look at him. My upper lip is damp with sweat and my face is flaming hot. His eyes are so close, so deep and intense. He doesn’t blink.

  I can’t be this intimate with him. I can’t let him make a possession out of me.

  I call up all of the pain he’s ever caused me, the grief and fury and misery. I try to protect myself with my hatred, but I can’t find it anymore.

  He destroyed it. He broke it. He broke me.

  As fire starts to coil through me, I force myself to say it. I hate you. But somewhere in the tangled wires between my pussy and my brain, hate transforms into something else. “I want you to fuck me,” I whisper.

  His lips part and his silver pupils flare. It’s too late to take it back, or to stop the orgasm that’s unfurling inside me.

  “And I will,” Bram whispers back, spanking me one last time.

  A cry rips from the deepest part of me. It’s the sound of a female animal in heat. The sound of everything I’ve never let myself feel. All the desires, the bad thoughts, the dreams, the deep, intense craving to live.

  I shiver as my hips buck and pleasure destroys me.

  “Bram,” I say, and then he kisses me silent. His tongue dances with mine and fucks my mouth, in and out like he’s going to fuck me.

  I come on his fingers with high-pitched moans of ecstasy. His teeth nip at my lower lip, tasting my blood and kisses.

  I want him to devour me. When this is over, I want to be part of him. I don’t want to exist anymore.

  Because if I do, I’ll be changed. Grace will be gone, and in her place will be a complete stranger.

  As my shudders fade, tears stream down my face. Bram hauls me against him. I fling my arms around his neck and clutch my nails into his back for dear life.

  “My girl,” he murmurs, stroking my stinging skin in soothing circles. “You came like the angel you are.”

  I sob into his shoulder. “It was wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “I promised…”

  He clucks his tongue. “Promises are dangerous. Especially when you make them to a memory.”

  I stiffen my body against his words. They feel like an assault, an insult to what I felt for James. “He’s more than that.”

  Bram holds me tighter. “No, Grace. He isn’t.”

  No. He isn’t.

  I take a long breath and, like a heartbroken little girl, sob as I’ve never sobbed before. My soul cracks and splits in two, then splits again.

  James is gone forever.

  No promise or vow of celibacy can change that. Nothing can bring back the person I thought had saved me. Not even the man who took him away.

  Sobs rack my chest until I can’t breathe. I try to keep crying. I reach into my soul for more pain. I have nothing left. After two years of weeping and bitterness and hate, I’ve run out of tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I choke.

  “Shhh.”

  Face smeared with tears and strands of hair, I look at Bram. “Why did you do it?”

  His eyes are sharp and alert. He knows exactly what I mean.

  With gentle fingers, he pushes my hair back from my sweaty neck. “I had to, Grace.”

  “But…the James I knew wouldn’t follow you. He wouldn’t force his way into your house.”

  “James was a chameleon.”

  I shake my head in frustration. “What does that mean?”

  “It means…he pretended to be what people wanted.”

  I frown. “How do you know?”

  Bram hesitates.

  “You can’t say that. You didn’t know him. You couldn’t –”

  Something in Bram’s eyes makes me stop. An expression I can’t read. Shadows so dark I don’t dare get close to them.

  “It’s okay,” he says.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes,” he says, and wraps me in his arms. “I promise.”

  “I thought you said promises were dangerous,” I whisper.

  He doesn’t answer. I can’t see his eyes or ask questions. He holds me so tight I can’t move.

  And I let him. I let him silence me.

  Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to tell me. And I don’t want to know.

  Bram

  I stare at the ceiling, blood pounding in my ears.

  Just when I thought I had her, she goes back to James.

  She comes with me, and her first thought afterwards is him. Her very first fucking thought.

  Why did you do it? In that high, whispery voice of hers.

  Right now, I wish I could kill the son-of-a-bitch all over again. I wish I could kill him before he met her.

  She falls asleep in my arms, tears drying on her cheeks like a beautiful child. Her breath comes in little spasms as she drifts off. Her heartbeat is fast, her eyelids fluttering.

  Even in sleep, she’s not at peace. She’s still afraid of me. Her heart and soul are uneasy. As they fucking should be.

  God, I want her. My cock is huge and stiff, and my balls ache. I could fuck her so hard and fast right now. Roll her on her back, spread her wet thighs, and take her virginity with no fanfare at all. Just take it, like I’ve taken everything else in my life.

  She wouldn’t be the first virgin I’ve fucked. I should prove just how much power I have. How little I care.

  After all, the first lesson of control is to control oneself.

  Which I could hardly do. She wanted to talk, and I shut her down. I shouldn’t have, but for her to mention him…

  That was all it took. It doesn’t matter who I am now, or what I’ve accomplished. I’m right back there, a skinny runt kid all over again.

  Every good day, every Christmas, every summer afternoon – my father shit all over it. And he wasn’t even there. He didn’t care that I was turning nine, or it was July 4th, or I just got the bow and arrow I’d begged for all year. No matter what day it was, his absence was a wound that bled all over our lives.

  My mother was still young and pretty when he left us. But she turned down every good man after him so she could pine for the asshole who never came home.

  She tried to smile on birthdays and holidays, but her eyes always betrayed her. Even when she was looking straight at me, she wasn’t with me. She was with him.

  I could have had a stepfather, somebody to look out for me. She needed her ghost instead. The bastard stole her from me my whole life. And I’ll never forgive him.

  Grace’s arms are tight around me. So clingy and needy. Just the way I imagined my broken girl could be. Submission, stormy skies, silence forever. This is our isolated place, right here.

  My palm burns from striking her. Tomorrow she’ll have bruises, and I’ll make her wear them proudly.

  Tonight was the first time I’ve ever truly spanked a woman. Not that I haven’t turned the asses of a hundred girls red with my hand, but none of it was real. They pretended they didn’t want it and so did I. But Grace gave me the gift of her fear. Her resistance and her tears.

  I made her want it. I turned pain into fucking bliss. That was the power I always wanted and never had. Until she gave it to me.

  I love her for that.

  I wince. The thought of love makes me choke. I can be protective of her. I owe her that. But she’s not mine to love.

  I’ve tried this before. I’ve tried to love a haunted girl with loyal
ties I couldn’t break, no matter how hard I spanked, whipped, or fucked her.

  I unhook Grace’s arms from around my neck and slowly pull away from her. She whimpers, but doesn’t open her eyes. Her hands clutch a pillow in place of me.

  I stand up. Her ass is covered with a crisscross pattern of welts. My fingers, branded into her skin.

  As I turn to go, her lips part and she whispers something. Probably his fucking name. I’m not even gone and she’s dreaming of him already.

  Once upon a very different time, I made a promise to myself. I wouldn’t say a word about him. She wouldn’t believe me if I did.

  But right now, it’s all I can fucking do not to shake her awake. To stare into those innocent eyes and shatter the wall between us.

  Closing her door quietly, I go to my bedroom, change into jeans, and head downstairs. I ignore the boxes of five-star food sitting on the kitchen counter, and go to the garage.

  I know where I’m driving. I just don’t know why.

  It takes me almost forty minutes to drive into the city and out the other side, to a suburb of bleak apartment buildings and shabby, working-class homes. Every time I come here, no matter what season, it’s raining. Tonight, drizzle spits down from a flat gray sky, making everything look hazy.

  I park and look up at the corner unit on the second floor. 4B. The drapes are open and the lights are off. He’s in bed, or watching television in the dark.

  Sometimes I see his figure walking back and forth. He’s always alone.

  I knew his wife left him last year. I didn’t know his business had failed until Grace told me.

  I feel no animosity toward him. He’s just an ordinary guy that life steamrolled. He’s what everybody could be with enough bad luck.

  I imagine walking up to his door and knocking. Seeing his slack gray face blinking out at me when he answers.

  And then what? This is where my imagination always slams into a wall.

  There’s only one thing I could do. Tell him everything. Try to make losing his son okay, even though it never will be.

  I wanted to give him the money two years ago. In fact, I met with my lawyers and fucking insisted on it. But they said no. It would make me look guilty, and be bad for Phantom. The lead attorney practically repeated what Miriam Peck said word for word. Forget guilt. Forget what’s right. What matters is how things look.

  You could lose everything, he said, and it won’t bring back his son, anyway.

  And that’s a fact. I can’t bring James back. But I can give his father the truth.

  I can already feel the wet pavement under my feet as I grab the door handle. This time I’m going to tell him. I’m going to fix what I can fix, let Grace go, and move the fuck on.

  But like always, I drop my hand and sit back. And like always, I remember what my grandfather said when I was thirteen.

  It’s time you knew about your father, Bram. You’ve been in the dark long enough.

  He sat on our ratty couch for an hour and shit all over my illusions with the truth. Loser. Liar. A drunk. That’s the man your mother mopes over. A deadbeat fucking ghost.

  To this day, I wish he’d lied. I wished he’d left me something of the man my mother worshipped, and I missed like fucking crazy.

  I won’t do that to James’s father. I won’t do it to Grace.

  I start the engine and drive back across town. I don’t mean to go to the cemetery, but that’s where I find myself.

  I pull around back where the fence is low, park, and get out. The grass is slippery under my boots. I walk past rows of recent graves until I get to his. It looks well-tended. It hurts like hell to look at it.

  The grass is flat, like someone’s been sitting there. On top of the headstone is a little silver heart. It sits in a tiny pool of rain. Grace must have left it. A symbol of her undying devotion to a man who isn’t me.

  I shouldn’t have stopped here. It wasn’t James’s grave I came for anyway.

  Drizzle coats my hair as I walk toward the older part of the cemetery. I’ve never been here at night. I shouldn’t be here at all.

  The first time I came, eighteen months ago, I knew somebody might spot me. But once I found out, I had to see for myself. I had to know it was real.

  Grace’s mother made me promise. Whatever my lawyers dug up, I wouldn’t tell Grace. I was so shocked to hear Melinda Garrett’s voice on the phone two weeks before the trial, I could hardly speak.

  “You might…discover things,” she said. “From a long time ago.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “You will. And if you have any decency, you won’t use it. You’ll let my daughter live in peace.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, and she wouldn’t tell me. But I promised anyway. “I won’t say a word. You can count on that.”

  My lawyers came to me a week later with new information. It looked bad for Scott Garrett. It cast doubt on the whole family, on who they were and what they believed.

  But I’d made a promise, and I was glad. I told my lawyers that using it wasn’t an option. My decision was final.

  The grave is in such a dark, distant place. The back corner of the cemetery at the end of a row, set off all by itself. It makes me so fucking sad every time I see it. It’s like they wanted to hide him. To pretend this little boy never lived.

  No one’s tended this grave for years. There are no flowers, no silver hearts, just a blanket of dead leaves so thick it covers up his name.

  Squatting down, I sweep the leaves away with my hand. I scrape the dried mud from the front of the headstone so the years show again, and I can read the words. Blessed child.

  Or not, it turns out.

  I would have brought something for him if I’d known I was coming. I’m the only person who ever comes, which is why I do, I guess.

  I stand up and walk away. It just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not the promise to Melinda Garrett, or the secret. It’s not even how he died.

  It’s that Grace would love him, if she knew. And he deserves that.

  Grace

  I wake up when he leaves my room. The lock clicks behind him. I listen to his fading footsteps, then the house goes silent.

  I’m here again, in my room. Trapped and alone.

  No special night. No conversation. None of the things I desperately need.

  I gave him so much tonight, but nothing changed. I didn’t earn trust or freedom. He didn’t even stay with me. I fell asleep in his arms, but I’m still nothing to him. Just a prisoner to fuck with and control.

  My stomach growls. I never ate, and Bram doesn’t care. I wonder what happened to the dinner he brought home. He probably tossed the whole thing in the trash.

  I crane my head over my shoulder. Even in the dark I can see welts and bruises. I have the sick instinct to be proud of them. Bram Russell did this to me, and I took it. I not only took it, I got pleasure out of it.

  I wish I knew what he was thinking right now. Is he proud of me? Still angry?

  I roll over and squeeze my eyes shut. Forget it. It doesn’t matter. Be grateful he didn’t hurt you even worse.

  Just then, I hear the rumble of the garage door. I hold my breath and listen. A minute later, Bram’s car roars to life and drives away into the darkness.

  Loneliness sweeps over me. He left me. Again.

  I’ve never felt so solitary and forgotten, even when Bram left me for hours at a time. I’ve never been alone here this late at night.

  I strain to see the moon or stars through the window, anything that will make me feel grounded. There’s nothing outside but flat gray darkness. It’s starting to rain.

  Maybe he went to Coral’s husband’s bar. She said they were best friends.

  Or he needed something at the grocery story. Breakfast for me.

  Or. I press my lips together.

  He’s never mentioned anyone else, but he wouldn’t.

  How do I know he doesn’t have someone to fuck? Or three?

  M
y stomach pitches as I imagine him naked in another woman’s bed. Fucking her with the long, thick cock he never even took out of his pants tonight.

  At Phantom, he must be surrounded by beautiful, accomplished women. A man like him? He probably fucks one girl on his lunch hour and another after work. For all I know, he fucks them under this roof while I wait for thirty pathetic seconds of attention.

  I’ve never seen even him naked. It’s so unfair. He’s never been vulnerable, not with me.

  Why? Maybe if I didn’t talk back, if I were a better person...

  I growl into the mattress. These thoughts are crazy. I’m crazy.

  I can’t be jealous. I can’t want him like this. It’s horrible and wrong.

  I pull the pillow over my head and try not to listen for his car. I try to force myself to sleep, but my heart feels sick and broken.

  What if Bram never comes back? Would Coral rescue me?

  A desolate feeling cracks open inside me. I lie awake waiting, feeling so desperately alone I can hardly breathe.

  When I finally hear him pull in, it’s relief like I’ve never known. I’m not alone anymore. He’s here. He’s safe. I listen for his footsteps and the sound of his bedroom door closing, and close my tear-filled eyes.

  I wake up with sweat pooled in the hollow of my throat. It’s barely light out. My chest is so tight I can hardly breathe.

  I was on the Chapman Bridge, about to jump. I could feel the rain, the slick railing, the chilling vertigo of black water hundreds of feet down.

  It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.

  I squeeze my eyes shut but the vision gets brighter. I can feel the cold, slippery grate under my bare feet.

  I was there. Just like Bram said I was. I was that far gone. And being Bram’s captive has pushed me even further.

  I have to get out.

  I wake up in this room every morning with no decisions to make. Bram rules me. He’ll tells me what to do, when to breathe, and how to think. He’ll even give me vengeance if I’m good enough. Millions of dollars in cold, sweet payback.

  All he wants in return is everything I am.

  James’s father wouldn’t want the money. He’d want me to resist.