Bona Fide (Illusive Duet Book 2)

by Hazel Grace

  Unedited and subject to change

  ♫ Tomorrow — Avril Lavigne ♫

  "Stormi!” My dad's voice pellets against my bedroom door, but I know he's not behind it. He's sitting at the dining room table with his work buddies playing cards and probably on his second or third case of beer.

  It’s one of many nights during the week where they get messed up, trash the house—more than it already is—and I’m on high alert. Ready and willing to jump out my bedroom window if a heavy knock sounds off my hollow-core door.

  It only means one thing.

  That one of his chummy friends is trying to get inside here—again.

  No matter how many locks I screwed into the trimming of my door frame, they bust through it with their steel-toed boots. So, in lieu of many broken latches, I use my wooden dresser. It’s lumber enough to buy myself some time in case one of them tries to pry that from their way.

  A wave of arguments erupts through the crack between the floor and threshold of my room, and my skin crawls on itself.

  I don’t want to go out there.

  I'm not sure which of Dad’s friends are out there, it changes all the time, but I don’t want to find out. Depending on the group tonight is how I’m going to be received the moment I walk outside my safe haven.

  "You better get your ass out here," Dad shouts again through my building anxiety. I clench my hands into fists, attempting to hold on to my composure. It’s not like I have any protection here.

  Dad either doesn’t realize or plainly just ignores the way I’m gaped at by the men he brings home. How they purposely find “something to do” only to press their bodies against my back or brush up against me. So they can whisper vile suggestions about how to make my night “better”. It’s also not so subtle.

  However, Dad dismisses it, and I deal with it the best I can—by hiding.

  The aged legs of my desk chair scrape against the hardwood floor as my heart tries to flee my chest. I can hear the erratic beat in my ears, the goosebumps that begin to prick my flesh in warning to leave the house because nothing ever good comes out from leaving my room.

  But my legs carry my body to the door as I hesitantly move my heavy dresser.

  The crack of a woman’s laughter rings through my broken headphones, and I release a heavy exhale. Whomever that is, she can take the heat for me. If she’s giggling at whatever stupid thing those guys are macking out there, I might be able to grab those beers and come back without a thing mutter in my ears.

  Another tide of giggles penetrates through the air, and I’m hoping it’s not one of those nights. Where the grunts and mewls from Dad’s room across the hall aren’t my soundtrack for the night. Another thing my father didn’t conceal from me at a young age, though I wish he would have for the sake of my eardrums.

  As a kid, I learned that the moans and muffled noises of slapping and things in his bedroom knocking to the floor wasn’t Dad hurting the women he brought home that night. Through smeared lipstick and mascara, they came out with crooked smiles on their faces. Some would even ask me for my name before Dad would scurry them out of the house and tell me to get back in my room. Little did they know that I’ve been taking care of myself for a long as I can remember.

  I made my own meals, packed my own lunch for school, did my own laundry, and went shopping for myself at the thrift store when Dad would, ever so often, leave me money.

  The often was more like every two years.

  We never celebrated holidays but once at Thanksgiving when he invited all his boys to come over to have an orgy throughout the house. I ate an apple pie from McDonald’s as I listened to women suck dick and getting thrust into by some beer-bellied clown.

  I was eleven.

  Hand wrapped around my doorknob, I open the barrier to my reality, the sour smell of cigarette smoke and dog filling my nostrils the moment I take my first inhale.

  My stomach turns on cue before fear starts to ripple up my frame. You think I’d be used to the unwanted attention—I’m not. I’d rather stay how I am to everyone outside these four faded siding walls of white, which is as invisible as air.

  My childhood wasn’t the best, not because I was bullied, but because I had no social skills outside of Dad and my stuffed animal bunny, Flops. By middle school, I was coerced into playing with a little girl named Heather because she made me, and by sophomore year of high school, she dated everyone and left me behind. Junior year, I was forced to take gym with a bunch of freshmen and got asked out several times from boys with bad acne and braces. Senior year, the captain of the tennis team asked me to homecoming, but I turned him down because I thought he was joking.

  Safe to say, I’m good with just being alone. I don’t like forced conversations. I’d rather read and do my job at the library where people were quiet.

  It’s not that I don’t like people. Misty from my English class is similar to me besides the fact that she has a mad crush on this boy named Gino and never stops talking about him when he’s within eyeshot. When we’re alone, and she tags along with me at the library, we talk about what we want to do when we graduate from college—which is a long way away.

  Community college is expensive since I only make minimum wage, and the saturated students that compete for scholarship money are overwhelming. Next semester, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I only have half of the money saved up and no other second job is panning out the way I have hoped.

  “Last warning,” Dad shouts down the hallway from the kitchen.

  Forcing myself to take a step outside my safe space and then another, the combination of 80’s rock music and the TV assaults my ears as I loom further down the long hallway.

  A gaspy moan welcomes me between songs on Dad’s CD player, and I freeze before rounding the corner into the compacted kitchen. If I can quickly grab the beers and drop them off, I might be able to get back to my refuge.

  “You’re looking mighty pretty tonight, Stormi. If I didn’t know any better, I would think you’re hiding from me.” My body cowers in dread at the throaty male voice that just snuck up on me.

  He’s exactly what I wanted to avoid tonight.

  Him, his hands, the way his eyes suck me in and infringe upon me because he thinks he can.

  A beefy palm suddenly rests on my lower back. His fingers splay as a weak shove gets me to step out of the darkness. “Come join the rest of the party. I saved a spot for you.”

  Hollis’s words sting each one of the hairs on my body as I stumble gracelessly into the throng of the gathering tonight. Three men sit around our modest wooden table with Dad, all chins into their chests as they study the cards in their hands. Bottles of Jack Daniels and Miller Lite scatter the table with remains of peanuts and ashtrays of still lit cigarettes along with a wad of cash carelessly discarded in the middle.

  Coffee brown eyes snap up at me from the head of the table, and Dad, for once, looks satisfied to see me. “There you are.” He pulls his hand closer to his body. “I need—” His gaze then latches on to the menace behind me. “What did you do, take a piss for an hour?”

  Hollis chuckles half-heartedly behind me before gripping the fabric of my second-hand T-shirt that I bought from the Salvation Army last week and twists it to keep me grounded in my spot.

  I can’t stand myself.

  I despise that I don’t round on him and bark out for him not to touch me. That my lips fail to respond to the way my brain tells them to move. My mind and my body, they don't function well together. It's two different entities that short circuit when danger emerges from its depths and into my solace surroundings. Hollis learned early on that these grounds are easy for the chase.

  And even then, it’s not a pursuit because I’d have to run in order for it to be one.

  “I was on the phone when I found your daughter,” Hollis returns. “We were about to catch up.”

  I wait for it on bated breath.

  I hang onto the belief that Dad will ask him why he’s so close to me. Why
he’s probably looking at me like he found a piece of cake that he wants to devour in one bite. I know he has to see it because Dad’s vision hasn’t diminished in his old age.

  Please, say something.

  “We need more beer.” My next exhale is rickety as he fails me for the millionth time in my existence.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, not one bit. I shouldn’t hang on to him ever being my hero one day because he’s never been one. I read too many books, that’s the problem. I hold on to faith that is placed in the wrong people and situations.

  I’m on my own.

  And the more time that passes, the more hopeless I become that I’ll never get out of the slums with Dad.

  He doesn’t mind it here because he doesn’t get treated like I do. I’m just the live-in maid, the one who cooks him dinner that, half the time, goes untouched. So when I stare at him to utter anything to Hollis, I’m not completely surprised by his response.

  He’s as worthless to me as I am myself.

  I watch Dad’s attention land back on his cards, but don’t stop the immediate reaction my shoulders slumping in disappointment. His buddies surrounding the rest of the table and haven’t even stolen a look at me. Too busy chugging down the rest of their beers and focusing on their hand.

  “Let me catch up with Stormi,” Hollis vouches. “And she’s all yours.” And without a response back from Dad, he wraps a meaty arm around my waist and begins to guide me into the dimly lit family room.

  Passing the large sixty-inch TV that Dad randomly brought home one day, a lust-filled groan charges from it. A brunette on all fours, knees, and palms placed on a bed is being fucked from behind, displayed in HD, and my feet freeze in mid-step. My body finally listening to my head.

  “C’mon,” Hollis exhorts with another thrust towards our tattered couch. My socks drag along our dirty shagged carpet and in the direction of the furniture with reluctance, but they continue the journey to my utter frustration.

  Pivoting around to sit, Hollis is already in my space, keeping me from running because I have before. Hence my dresser in its commonly put spot now.

  My butt hits the springs before Hollis takes a close seat beside me. Leaned back with his legs spread apart, his stomach fills out his white tee underneath his brown flannel as he slowly chews on a toothpick. He lets his dark eyes shamelessly fall over my body before his arm rests above my head.

  I'm nothing to look at besides the fact that I’m accessible to Hollis filthy fantasies. At school, people bump into me all the time. I'm so quiet, and out of the way, that half of my co-workers don't know who I am. When I can pick up a shift at the animal shelter, I just blend in with the animals. I prefer their company anyway.

  Not the company that Dad keeps. They are all drunks and drug heads. Pills, cocaine, heroin, weed, and oxy, as long as they can get high, they swallow it, smoke it, or inject it.

  “Been doing good in school?” Like he gives a shit, but I nod anyway, keeping my chin into my chest because I’m not watching what’s on TV. Wish I could unhear what’s going on off of it, but that’s another superpower that I don’t have.

  “You been in there doing your homework?” Another bob of my head and he scoots closer to me, his thick legs brushing mine. “You’ve always been a good girl.”

  Removing his arm from over me, his beefy hand lands on my jeaned thigh. My gut twists painfully, tightening harder as his fingertips gently squeeze my clothed flesh.

  “You know I’m a good teacher too.”

  Oh no, no, no…

  “You see the TV...she’s about to come. You ever—” I jolt up from the couch, but he’s already ready for any attempts of fleeing. The metal springs dig back into my ass when Hollis immediately leans over me.

  “Don’t be scared,” he coos gently. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “No,” I stutter. “I want to go—” His hand starts fumbling with the button of my jeans.

  “I’m going to show you—” The waistline of my pants loosen. “—how a man can elicit so much pleasure, baby girl. Just let me show you.” His callous fingers brush my lower abdomen before trailing underneath my cotton panties. A throaty groan flees from his throat, and I feel as though I’m going to throw up all over him.

  “Look up,” he orders, working on his pants with his free hand. “I’m going to finish us both off. Don’t be afraid to tell me how much you like it.”

  Something springs from his pants, and I know he has his dick because he slowly starts to stroke it. The tips of his fingers slowly descend towards my folds, but he halts them there.

  “We’re not going to do that tonight.” He gestures for the TV with his head. “I’m going to start you out slow. Now that I finally got this opportunity, we’re not going to rush it.”

  I bite the inside of my bottom lip. I’d rather feel pain and taste my own blood than experience his grubby hands on me.

  Honestly, I’d rather suffer from an aneurysm right now than then continue this.

  “Da—” Hollis’s body slams into the side of mine, rocking the word from finishing. The pressure of Hollis’s over two hundred and sixty-pound frame begins to crush me.

  “Now, why are you going to do that?” The woman on the TV takes this moment to curse while a male feral growl crams my airwaves. “Watch what they’re doing. You don’t want me to show you my knife again, do you?”

  My neck cranes on demand because I’m scared he’ll hurt me like last time. Each time he catches me, these meetings are more explicit. As though he’s trying to prep me for the end game of whatever sick delusion he has running through his head. The faint scar on my left breast is the constant reminder that when he asks for me to do something, it’s in my best interest to do it.

  My pussy promptly is spread with two of Hollis’s fingers while I watch a stocky cock go in and out of some woman’s ass.

  “You’re fucking getting wet,” he mutters, pleased. “We’re gonna get off together, then I’m going to lick your young cunt off my lips while you watch.”

  The pads of his finger slowly start to circle my clit as Hollis peers back at the TV. The young man with solid abs is now slowly fucking his partner’s asshole while she’s on her back as she moans for more. Her pussy is spread open as her legs fan out for easy access.

  “Open your legs wider,” Hollis orders gruffly. “I wanna have full access to this.” He doesn’t wait but nudges them wider with his hand then goes back to my clit. “Fuck, yes.”

  His strokes get more urgent as he watches the porno on TV, using me as his personal sex toy to get himself off. My body begins to buzz as he works me, and it’s disgusting.

  Hollis is not an attractive man. He’s in his early fifties with a ZZ top beard that’s graying and a crater face. He looks like a dude that wanted to join a biker group, but they wouldn’t let him in because he couldn’t get out of his own way.

  And couldn’t keep his hands to his damn self.

  “I bet her ass is as tight as this pussy,” Hollis murmurs, but I don’t miss the hidden suggestion that he flatly lays out. A finger finds itself inside me and slowly starts to thrust in and out. “Aw, God…”

  “Just like that,” the woman on the TV mewls in pleasure, arching her naked body for more. Hollis’s thumb grazes my clit while his finger still drives inside me.

  “Damn, Hollis,” a female voice chides lightly. “You didn’t want to wait for me?”

  Bianca.

  She comes with Hollis from time to time and fucks my dad and his friends one at a time and once all together. Her honey brown eyes are glued on Hollis, and I, clearly uninterested at my presence as she stares back at Hollis, who remains unfazed at being caught.

  Inching into the room, she brushes her blonde hair back before crosses her arms and waiting for Hollis’s response.

  “Little Stormi wanted to learn a few things tonight that she couldn’t learn in her textbooks.” She smirks, her full lips and curvy frame appearing amused.

  At what—no clue.r />
  If she wants to take my place, she’s more than welcome. She’s fucked Hollis before while sucking another man’s cock.

  All I wanted was a glass of water. Not a front-row seat to an orgy that she was the starring role in.

  “Ride his dick,” Bianca chimes. “He might not be a looker, but his cock will make you come within minutes.” With a wink, she begins down the hall, probably to steal more of my clothes that she never returns from my bedroom.

  “Feel good?” Hollis’s question yanks me back into reality, and he doesn’t give me an opportunity to reply before continuing with, “You wanna stay quiet for your Daddy’s ears.” He sniggering in amusement. “That’s okay with me, baby girl.”

  The roughness of his fingers causes more friction between my clit and pussy. It sends pleasure and revulsion writhing through my gut.

  I’m twenty-two, I know what’s wrong. I know that I should be elbowing him in the side or punching him in the dick, but I’m in a comatose of fear and distress. Emotions that always filter through my frame when he’s around.

  I don’t want to come on his fingers. To hear and feel how my body is betraying me by the second.

  I’m disgusting.

  I’m worse than the man sitting next to me, jacking himself off while fingering me to his completion. Hot tears prick at my eyes. They’re heavy, blurring my vision of the X-rated movie.

  I should’ve never left my room in the first place. I’m fully attentive to what could’ve happened the moment I left my room, and Hollis waited for me.

  He purposely abided his time, wanted this, and I played right into his sickening hands.

  “Watch how easily that cock goes inside,” Hollis praises off aroused groan. “That could be—” An abrupt crash bursts through the room, jerking my foggy attention to the direction of the front door.

  An impending figure stands there, but all I can see is the black outline through my pending tears. One finally hits my cheek as I blink before I hear the distinct rack of a gun prickling up my spine.

  Hollis shifts next to me, making an effort to shoot up from the couch but plops down as quickly as he tried to stand. Through my confusion about what happened or what is currently occurring, I’m relieved that Hollis’s body parts aren’t touching mine.