by Abby Weeks
“You love me?”
“Would I be giving you a wedding dress if I didn’t love you?”
“Oh, Heath. Thank you so much.”
“Pull it out of the box,” he said. “Hold it up. Let’s see how it looks.”
Aisha practically tripped herself up as she rushed back to the box. She held the dress up and admired it in the light. It glittered. It was so pretty. She knew they were breaking all sorts of etiquette—a groom wasn’t supposed to see his bride’s dress before the wedding day, but she wasn’t superstitious. She didn’t care about any of that. All she cared about was that she was with a man who loved her, a man who cared about her and wanted her to be happy. Whatever else life threw at her, she knew she could survive it if she was with a caring man.
She let the dress unravel in front of her and held it up to her. It was fabulous, like a dress out of a dream. It must have cost thousands of dollars. It was beautiful, perfect almost, but there was one problem with it. It was tiny. There was no way she’d fit into it. Even just holding it up, she could see that the bodice was way too small for her. She knew she wasn’t a massive girl, but holding it up in front of her made her feel like a giant.
“Honey,” she said shyly, “I don’t think this is going to fit me. What size is it?”
Heath was smiling at her. He looked so handsome when he smiled.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You don’t fit into it now, but you will.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you’re thin enough to fit into that dress, that’s when we’ll get married.”
“What?” Aisha said, her mind reeling.
He nodded. He meant it. He’d just told her that he’d marry her when she was whatever tiny size it would take to fit into that dress. She was stunned. It was as if she’d just been slapped across the face. How could any man be so cruel to a girl? Didn’t he know what that would do to her? Didn’t he realize how it would make her feel? Did he even care?
“Lose the weight and you’ll have yourself a husband,” Heath said. “Now put it back in the box. I have to bring it back to the store tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“I’m not going to pay for a dress when we’re not even sure you’ll ever fit into it.”
“Oh, you didn’t buy it?”
“Of course not.”
She had to sit down. She pulled a chair out from under the table and sat on it.
“Can you lend me the ten dollars?” Heath said.
“What?”
“Dinner was forty, you should have ten left.”
“Oh, are you going back out?”
“Got to,” Heath said.
Aisha got up and went to her purse and took the final ten dollars out of it. She hoped he didn’t use all the gas in the car. If he did, they’d be stranded.
*
Chapter 14
AISHA LAY FREEZING IN THE BED. The house was so isolated, so quiet, that every sound startled her. She sometimes got scared being out there all alone at night. The forest was dark and thick, and the wind was howling. There was a branch somewhere that was being blown into a window, and the sound of it drove her nuts. She felt as if someone was trying to claw their way through the window. She could see the lights of the town down in the valley in the distance, but they were miles away and weren’t really close enough to offer much comfort. On nights like this, she would sometimes turn the TV on just for the company it gave her.
Tonight she was too defeated to even get out of the bed and turn on the light. She tried to clear her mind and not think about the rustling branches hitting the window. She also tried not to think of Heath. It was too upsetting. Why would he do something like that? Was it just to hurt her? Did he get pleasure out of knocking her down and keeping her there? Was this his way of keeping her in her place?
She thought of the wolf. It seemed like that had happened a million years ago, but it had only been that very morning. What was it like for a wolf like that? Was she all alone too? As far as Aisha or anyone else knew, there were no wild wolves in Washington. Had this wolf wandered all those miles by herself? Was she the first of her kind to come back and resettle these mountainous forests? Or was she lost? Had she been cast out of her pack for some reason?
Whatever it was, Aisha felt a strange affinity for the wolf she’d saved. She felt she could relate to it. If she were a wolf, she’d wander off too, away from this place, away from this man. What was the power Heath held over her? He scared her, he made her feel small and weak, and yet, she couldn't imagine her life without him. The only life she’d known outside of foster care was with Heath. She’d been with him since sixteen. All her adult life had been lived under Heath’s watch. Could she even survive without him?
These were the thoughts on Aisha’s mind before she drifted off to sleep. When she woke up, it was the middle of the night. The room was icy cold, and she could see her own breath puffing in front of her. Heath still wasn’t home. She looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. Surely he should have been home by now.
She got out of the bed, despite the cold, and hurried into the bathroom. She turned on the light and looked at herself in the mirror.
And then she heard something that made her heart stop. It was a sound she’d never heard before in her life. The wind had died down, the branch was no longer scratching against the window, and she hadn’t realized how quiet it was. And then she heard, ringing clearly through the night, the sound of a wolf howling.
Was that her wolf? The one she’d saved? Or was her pack coming back for her?
Aisha ran to the bathroom window and opened it. It was cold and still outside, and the moon was full. She shut the window and went back to the mirror. She pulled off her shirt.
She didn’t look to see if she was fat. She didn’t look at herself with Heath’s eyes, trying to guess what faults and flaws he would have seen in her. She looked at her body with her own eyes, the way she saw herself, and she knew deep in her heart that she was beautiful. Her breasts were full and ripe, feminine and nurturing. Their purpose was to give life, and she knew one day they would. Her neck sloped elegantly. Her skin was white as snow, it looked silver in the moonlight. She shivered. It was so cold.
She looked at the birthmark on her right shoulder. It had been there her entire life, and Aisha felt it was a mark of protection. She thought back to the wolf and smiled. The birthmark was exactly the shape of a wolf’s paw mark.
*
Chapter 15
THE CAR CAME RUSHING UP the driveway. Heath was back. It was three thirty.
Aisha didn’t put her shirt back on. She turned out the light and went into the bedroom. She heard Heath at the door, kicking off his boots. She opened the curtain in front of the bedroom window and let the moonlight into the room. It was so bright she could see everything, the bed, the door, her own breath in the icy air. Her skin shimmered silver in the eerie light.
She removed her pants and let them fall to the floor. She stood there, naked in the silver moonlight, and waited for Heath. She could hear him approach. She closed her eyes and felt his presence, the heat of his skin, the weight of his flesh, the pulsing throb of his heart.
When he opened the bedroom door he froze.
She’d startled him, standing there naked.
“Holy,” Heath gasped.
Aisha said nothing. She looked him straight in the eye. She could see him so clearly, his eyes flicking back reflections of the moonlight.
“Aisha, is that you? You scared the crap out of me.”
Still, she said nothing. Heath took a step toward her and then stopped. He’d sensed something, her power, her courage. It scared him. She could smell his fear.
“What are you doing?” he said. She could hear the uncertainty in his voice. She, the girl he kept under his thumb, stood before him, naked, powerful.
He took another step toward her. He was opening his jeans.
She went over to the bed and climbed onto it on her hands and knee
s, her back to him, and she waited. He pulled off his jeans, and she could smell the musky scent of his cock. He’d already had sex that night. He’d been with the waitress. She could smell the waitress on him too. But she didn’t care. That wasn’t what this was about. It was about her, Aisha, and the howling wolf outside in the moonlit forest.
She remained on all fours, her back to him, and didn’t look over her shoulder. She didn’t need to. She knew where he was. He got free of his jeans and climbed onto the bed, kneeling behind her. She could smell him. He sickened her. The stench of the waitress on him sickened her.
She pushed her butt back against him. It brushed against him and she could tell he was erect. He was as hard as she’d ever felt him.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Take me.”
She heard him spit on his hand and rub it on himself. She held her breath and closed her eyes. She didn’t know what had come over her. She didn’t care. The knot of emotion in the pit of her stomach was indecipherable to her at that moment. All she knew was that she wanted to be taken, and she wanted it to be hard.
Heath pressed up against her, his tip pushing against the soft lips of her pussy. She could feel the pulse of his heart pumping inside him, stiffening his cock with each beat. He pushed forward, sliding into her warm, wet pussy. She exhaled.
He moaned as the length of him slid inside her. She felt every inch of it as he filled her. She felt like a void inside her was being filled. Despite all of the cruelty Heath had shown her, the pain he’d caused, there was a strange comfort to having his cock inside her. She felt it was the way things were supposed to be. This was nature. It was necessary, like breathing.
Heath pushed in all the way till his groin was pressed up against her buttocks and he stayed there. She felt a throb in his cock. Then he began to slide slowly out of her. He repeated the smooth motion, slowly at first, and then progressively faster.
Aisha stared forward, her mind a million miles away. In the silver moonlight she could see the outline of her bedside table, her clothes in a pile in the corner, a little stack of novels and veterinary text books on a shelf, but she wasn’t really present there. Her mind was blank. She was somewhere else, or she was nowhere at all.
“Give it to me,” she said, concentrating on nothing other than the sensation of his cock sliding in and out of her pussy. “Give it to me hard.”
Heath began to pant as he thrust forward, more and more forcefully, faster and faster. The pleasure began to well up in her pussy and she moaned quietly. Heath was a big guy, he was muscular. His arms were built, his chest was broad. He probably weighed twice what Aisha weighed, all of it muscle.
She concentrated only on sensation, only on what she could feel. She could feel his thick cock pumping into her. She could feel his groin press against her ass each time he thrust in, his pubes brushing her butt before being crushed against her. She could feel his hands holding her tightly at the top of her hips, just where her waist began. In his passion, his fingers dug into her soft flesh. They would leave ten little bruises where the fingertips pressed in deepest.
Heath grunted, more and more loudly as he continued to thrust. She could feel him getting close to the edge. His cock had grown to its limit. It was at its bursting point. On each thrust it throbbed, each throb growing in intensity. A few more and he would burst.
Heath cried out. Aisha listened to the word he screamed. His cock pulsed and the first gush of semen burst out of him. He sounded as if he was in pain. The sperm flushed up into her, first one jet, and then a second, then a third.
She concentrated on the sensation of each jet of semen as it poured into her. She gasped in satisfaction. There was something about the feeling of a man’s orgasm in her, something intensely satisfying. It was an achievement, satisfying in a way that was different from the pleasure of her own orgasm.
And her own orgasm started just as Heath’s squirting semen began to subside. The sensation of it filling her up drove her over the edge. She felt a surge of pleasure come to a boil somewhere deep within her groin, and then it gushed through her like a wave crashing on a beach. It surged like a torrent. The pleasure poured out of her, flowing from her cunt through her entire body like wildfire.
“Oh, God,” she cried out.
And even as she cried it, even as the pleasure of her orgasm overwhelmed every one of her senses, all she could hear was Heath’s cry.
“Bitch,” he cried out, over and over, with each slowing thrust of his body. “Bitch, bitch, bitch.”
Aisha collapsed onto the mattress, Heath’s heavy body on top of her. Even though she was sweating from the exertion of their lovemaking, the chill in the air caressed her. In the blue moonlight, her breath billowing in front of her, Heath lying heavily on her back, Aisha shivered. She shivered, and she couldn’t stop.
*
Chapter 16
THE NEXT MORNING AISHA ARRIVED late at the clinic. She’d had disturbing dreams all night. She kept seeing Heath’s face in the throes of orgasm, calling her a bitch. It scared her.
Aisha stamped the snow from her boots before walking into the clinic. It was a cold, clear morning.
“Are you all right?” Lilly said.
“I slept in.”
“You look exhausted.”
“Oh,” Aisha said. She hadn’t realized she looked that disheveled.
“I had these awful dreams. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the full moon.”
Lilly smiled. “You were hanging out with a wolf yesterday.”
Aisha laughed. “Is Sophia here yet?”
Lilly nodded toward Sophia’s office door.
Aisha knocked gently on the door before opening it.
“Aisha,” Sophia said, “are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Aisha said, flustered. “Everyone keeps asking me.”
“It’s just, you look like you’re coming down with something.”
“I’m fine, I just slept badly.”
Sophia looked at her closely. She had her journal open. “I’m just looking at application deadlines for the best veterinary programs. You’re going to need a lot of science pre-reqs, so that’s where we’ll start. What did you take in high school? We should call and get your transcript.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Aisha said.
Sophia noticed her solemn tone. “What is it, honey? What’s happened?”
“How do you know something’s happened?”
“I can see it on your face. Something’s happened.”
Aisha took a deep breath before speaking. “Heath proposed to me last night.” She shuddered at the memory. She wasn’t even sure she could call it a proposal. He’d basically shown her a dress that was too small for her and told her to lose twenty pounds.
“That’s great news,” Sophia said.
Aisha nodded.
“Isn’t it?” Sophia said. “You and Heath, you’re doing okay, aren’t you?”
Aisha sat down. She thought she was going to cry, and she tried to keep herself together.
“Oh, honey,” Sophia said, sensing Aisha’s desperation.
“He’s been offered a logging job in Alaska.”
“Alaska?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s a thousand miles away.”
“More,” Aisha said.
“How can they expect him to go that far for a job?”
“I don’t know,” Aisha said, “but that’s what they offered him.”
“And that’s why he proposed?”
Aisha nodded, again refusing to allow herself to think back to the nature of Heath’s proposal.
“What did you say?” Sophia said.
Aisha shrugged. It was then that she started to cry. She honestly couldn’t tell Sophia how she’d answered Heath’s proposal. She couldn’t even remember. It was the same with everything Heath ever suggested to her—she never felt like there was actually any choice in the matter. She felt as if the decision was already made as soon as Heath
brought it up. If he said they were moving to Alaska, then they were moving to Alaska. If he said they were getting married, they were getting married. How could she resist the force of him?
“I agreed,” Aisha said weakly.
“Honey, are you all right? You don’t look happy. You know I care for you like a … like a daughter.”
Aisha smiled. She forced herself to stop crying and pull herself together.
“You have a choice in all of this. You know that don’t you?”
Aisha nodded. She didn’t know it at all, but she couldn’t allow herself to get into all that now.
“Do you want to marry Heath?”
One of the biggest regrets in Aisha’s life during the past few years was the fact that she’d never told Sophia the truth about her relationship with Heath. Some misguided sense of pride, or perhaps embarrassment, had made her pretend that things were always better than they were. She just couldn’t bring herself to admit that Heath mistreated her, that he made her feel small and weak, that he scared her.
“Of course I want to marry Heath,” she said. “I love him. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
Aisha ran out of the office then. She was about to start crying and she knew Sophia would guess the truth. The look on her face said everything. Aisha was not a girl who was in love. She was a girl who was scared.
*
Chapter 17
THE DAY THEY WERE TO leave Washington was the saddest day of Aisha’s life. She’d spent her entire life on the Olympic Peninsula, a rugged, mountainous community on the Pacific coast. Her life there hadn’t always been easy, but it was all she knew and striking out for new pastures with Heath terrified her.
Heath’s logging company was taking care of their transportation, so at least they didn’t have to worry about that. Instead of flying them up to Fairbanks or Anchorage, the company policy was to drive new employees up through Canada. It was the most practical way when people were moving with their belongings. Because the long route would take them through some of the most remote and rugged terrain on the entire North American continent, the company provided guides and organized convoys when there were enough people to justify them.
