Lulina pushed me towards the couch. The back of my knees hit the cushion and I fell against the seat. Her hands were tearing at my zipper.
Luckily, I snagged the bottle of liquor off the floor. My head tilted back as I put the mouth of bottle to my lips. Lulina was in my pockets, pulling out a condom.
I had no buttons to rip this time around – thanks to her daughter - so Lulina ripped at my undershirt, pulling it up all the way to my arm pits.
I barely noticed as I was gulping away at my drink.
Lulina pulled my mouth away from the bottle and I felt her rough kiss and her warm possessive tongue. Her teeth latched onto my bottom lip as she growled.
Her fingers dug into my shoulders. “I’m gonna ride you hard like a horsemen would a horse, Tristan. You hear me? Giddy up.”
I went back to drinking, wishing the world would speed up and grow black. I barely even blinked when she latched the condom on and shoved me inside her.
I didn’t even care, but I did smile as one single thought surfaced: I would have felt better if Lulina held her hand over my mouth as she forced me to fuck her.
*
I was in bed, my hands immobile at my sides. The drinking had not done its job, that much I knew. I didn’t feel the familiar buzz of a drunken dream where I lived life on autopilot.
But I had accomplished the numbness, and I had one more accomplishment under my belt.
I felt empty.
I felt absolutely nothing. I didn’t feel used, which I had been – twice in the span of twenty-four hours – or tarnished, which I had felt and couldn’t get away from in the last two years, or broken, which I had felt like for my entire life.
Lulina sat on the edge of my bed, spraying perfume on. She pulled her panties over her knees, stood up and slipped them over her hips.
“I would’ve of liked to admit that I haven’t missed you, Tristan, but I have.”
“Is that so, Lu?”
Lulina nodded, running a hand through her hair. “It’s nice to have back what we had to put on hold.”
“We didn’t have anything before and we don’t have anything now.”
She responded, “Oh? Has something changed in the last few hours?”
“A lot has changed.”
She smiled, titling her head back as she gave one more squeeze of perfume to her skin. “You’re lucky I’m not a jealous woman,” she said, “I would have taken offense to smelling another woman on you.”
The bed shifted as she crawled on all fours towards me. She threw a leg over me and lowered down so that she was inches away from my face.
“Tell me, Tristan, did you not take the hint at dinner yesterday?”
“What are you talking about?”
A polished finger nail ran over my lips. “You think I don’t know where my daughter went yesterday, Tristan? You may have lied to her but you can’t lie to me. What you and her don’t have, but you and me do, is history.”
She lowered her head and kissed my lips softly. “I know everything about you.”
Lulina tried to kiss me again but I turned my head away.
“Tristan,” she breathed my name, “Do you ever think about all the women you fucked because you’ve missed me, wanted me but couldn’t have me because your brother was too busy having me instead?”
I stared past her to the ceiling with its mold and cracks. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“But, I do. I want you think about every face, every moan, every dollar you spent trying to replace me. I want you to think about all you’ve suffered in the sake of loving me.”
She dragged her finger over my chest again, her nail digging into my skin harder this time. “Tell me about Katie. We’ve never talked about her. She was close to filling my shoes, wasn’t she?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose as I shook my head ‘no’.
“No?” Lulina laughed. “You mean to tell me that goddess on two legs, with those baby blue eyes and long blonde hair, killed herself over a man who was in love with another woman.”
“I’m not a good man, Lu.”
Lulina leaned on her elbow. She propped her head on her hand. She drooped her lip and pouted. “I guess I had a little to do with that.”
I licked my lips, feeling the dryness. I tried to swallow and felt the ball of tears in my throat. “If you hadn’t fucked me when I was nine, I may have turned out different.”
“All your faults aren’t my burden, Tristan.”
“No,” I said, “but maybe if I wasn’t so wrapped around your finger, waiting for you to love me, I could have focused on other things in my life.”
She nodded enthusically, “You mean like your place in the family?”
“I don’t really know, Lu?”
“Well, I do know, Tristan. I’ve always been honest with you, and I’m telling you the truth that you were the one who made bad decisions. You went after women you couldn’t have.”
“Only because a woman I couldn’t have went after me.”
“But,” she said as she smiled, “Things are different. I’m not married anymore and enough time has passed.”
“My father and Papa would never let that happen,” I told her.
“I don’t care about what they think. You do, though. You’ve always tried to please them. Trust me, you may like the man you’ll become if you stopped trying to be the perfect little Rogue son.”
“I want you to leave, Lu.”
“But, I’m not going anywhere.” Her palm rested against my heart. “And you know that. I’m right here under all this skin, all these hurt feelings, all the women you’ve been with, all the booze you drank.”
Her tongue tickled the skin under my bottom lip.
“Tristan, you’re mine.”
“I’m your daughter’s.”
There was a flash of anger. Lulina recovered well, the deep lines in her forehead subsiding. “Dominique is your father’s Tristan.”
“But we –“
“I know what you two did,” she snapped. “Everyone knows what you two did, well, except for Almond.”
I rubbed my head, confused.
Lulina continued. “My daughter was due a show of favor from your family. She made one request – while you were running away – and asked that if she was to be married to a man whom she did not love, then she would have the choice to lay with a man who she did.”
My voice was growing softer and softer, my strength leaving me in droves. I could feel the hollow space inside and it was growing, gaining speed.
“Dominique isn’t stupid, Tristan. She may be fond of you, but she knows whats important.”
“She said –“
“And she may very well love you, but she understands that she has to be your father’s wife for her to get the reigns in the family, or for her own father not to wage war because of what was stolen from him. She may have screwed you, but that’s all it was.”
My eyes closed as I pinched the bridge of my nose again. “I don’t believe you, Lu.”
“I’ve always protected you, Tristan.”
“You don’t even love me. You never have.”
“But I do. I was trying to protect you from my daughter. You wouldn’t listen, but I knew you wouldn’t. Your dick has its own mind and its own wants and you can’t help but crumble at its will.”
I opened my eyes and looked into Lulina’s hazel eyes. “Leave,” I said.
She kissed the side of my ear. “I’m not going anywhere, Tristan.” She caressed my cheek. “You were such a sweet little boy, Tristan.”
“Only you would know.”
“You were fun that I could have all by myself. Do you remember how special our first night together was?”
I did. I remembered the night she crept into my room. She had appeared from no where. I had gotten in trouble for some reason. I couldn’t remember, but I was sure that whatever I had done, wasn’t enough for the beating I had gotten. My father had screamed at how he hated me. I was, after all, one
of the smartest kids in the school, won the most awards and gold stars on the chest, but my father talked to me like I was nothing.
Back then, during my childhood, my life had been a living hell. My brothers hated me, would hit me when they could get away with it, which was all the time because no one cared.
Lulina was the only one that had been nice to me.
Lulina didn’t even have to give the pedofile speech of never telling anyone. I would not. She was my friend, my only friend and I would’ve done anything for her as long as she continued to be my friend. I did not have a mother, and knew that Lulina was not her replacement, but the feeling of her was a mother’s touch.
It only happened that once but I had been ruined by it. I was convinced that I had not been good enough. I strived to be better. Paid for my first whore four years later at the age of thirteen – lied and said I was eighteen. The whore didn’t care. One whore turned to dozens and the dozens turned to a blur of very old faces, some bruised, some pinched up and pissed at how sour life had gotten.
But, finally, at age nineteen, Lulina slithered back into my bedroom, curious on how much of a man I had become.
And I hadn’t disappointed.
It had been so long since I thought about it all. I had dismissed the crucial moment at the age of nine that had began a very ugly cycle for me. Lulina had showed a very unloved boy a bit of kindness and it wrecked his life.
She whispered in my ear, “I even remember the present you left me after our first time.”
I closed my eyes and breathed, “What are you talking about?”
“Same drive leads you to the same destination,” she said.
“Lu, I’m tired of the metaphors.”
She cackled. “Trust me, I love you too much to clarify. I’ll bare that secret on my own.”
I told her, “I don’t want anymore secrets.”
“You’ll want this one.”
“You don’t love me,” I argued.
“I love you,” she retorted, “Who said love was flowers, rainbows and candy? Sometimes its hard, cold and available only when it’s convenient, and you’ve always been convenient for me, Tristan.”
I gripped my sheets, my hands curling into fists. I lifted my head as she continued to kiss and nibble. My teeth came together and I clenched them, starting to grind them.
It wasn’t pleasure of her kisses I was feeling, it was rage. It was rage: pure, raw and dangerous. I could feel it bursting from the nerves in my brain and spreading over my body.
Nothing had changed. Fifteen years later and I was still the little boy being kicked by everyone. And, here, Lulina was playing pick up the pieces to Tristan, only because it suited her purposes.
Dominique had used me. She had gotten what she wanted out of me and now I was done, through, over, and she was off to her father, preparing, tying up loose ends, and getting ready to walk through the front door of a very wonderful future.
And I was enraged at how blind and stupid I had been.
There was no way in hell Dominique could have walked out the front door and hop into one of my father’s most treasured cars to chase after me without anyone noticing.
Like mother, like daughter, I was an easy, delectable play thing. And the world worried about men dressed in dark clothing hiding in an alleyway, but not about a woman who knew how to smile right before she sliced your throat.
Women could be so evil, so cruel.
They could build you into a King.
Or pound you into nothing.
When I spoke, my voice was still lifeless and subdued. “I’m tired of being used, Lu.”
Lulina still had her head buried against my neck and could not see the color draining away from my face. She couldn’t see as my teeth were rubbing against eachother, or the way my eyes were rolling in the back of my head as the rage was building in me, driving and barreling against me.
“I’m not using you Tristan; I’m loving you,” she answered, and dragged her tongue a little harder against my skin, “I should be the one mad. You took my daughter’s viginity.”
“You took mine.”
“Are you complaining now?”
“You and Dominique are no better than my father or Papa.”
“I guess not. We all get to screw Tristan Rogue.”
My knuckles cracked as I squeezed the bedsheets. I hissed a breath and tried to fight to breathe again but the rage choked it away from me, and was left in my throat.
Lulina mistook it for pleasure.
She chuckled and bit the side of my neck hard enough to draw blood but I barely felt it. “Relax, baby, I’ll make you feel better.”
Lunacy was so sweet as I tasted it against my tongue and felt it move through all my senses. Good, bad, and evil and the difference between them became blurred lines. My mind ripped apart and I was lost in a very dark, ugly world. My heart was slowing, no longer beating as fast as I was arriving to a very evil destination: insanity driven and loved by rage.
The world was turning red, all of it, a deep red and I felt oddly at home. Not a murder - killed a man but not a murder but I could feel the change. I was now one with the men who beat the life out of Jimmy Ricky and laughed as they did it.
I understood them now.
It was pain, all about pain and the pain they caused was an art. You protected your art, you built on it, and you were happy as you were creating it.
You were free.
It was apart of you, the coldness, and you enjoyed it as much as you enjoyed breathing after being surmerged for so long.
Lulina had pushed me over the edge and she was too busy, sucking and teasing to know it.
If she had, she would have screamed and ran.
And I would have chased her.
Lulina was still talking. “I let my daughter borrow you, Tristan, but let’s be clear about one thing: you’re my dark secret, mine. You touch my daughter again, and I’ll tell your father and grandfather how we fucked behind your dead brother’s back.”
And then the world went from red to black.
I reached and grabbed a handful of her hair and curled her hair over my hand and yanked her head back, making her sit up on her knees. I glared into her face and she looked away. Her mouth opened and I knew she was going to beg.
“No,” I said evenly, “You get to see the monster you all created.”
Then I shoved her away and watched as she flew over the end of my bed and hit the floor.
I was on my feet, walking slowly and calmly around to the end of the bed.
The world was sideways and on fire.
Those expensive panties that Lulina loved to spend my family’s money on broke away as I tugged on them.
Lulina met my eyes as a tear slipped down her cheek. “Tristan, I – I didn’t mean what I said.”
I slapped her, hard.
Her head flung violently to the left, hitting the hard floor. Her bottom lip split at the impact.
I hit her again to make it bleed harder.
I flipped her over to her stomach. Her head smacked the hard floor again. I grabbed her by the hips and pulled her to her knees. Lulina was mumbling something, but my guess was that she couldn’t talk because her jaw was either aching so much that talking was forfeited or it was broken.
And I didn’t care at either junction.
I leaned in close to her ear. “I’m going to ride you like a horsemen rides a horse. So Giddy the fuck up, bitch.”
She whimpered in response and I could hear the tears in the back of her throat.
It did nothing for the rage.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The world is too crooked for me to walk a straight line…
Lulina had passed out at some time.
The rage drained away as suddenly as it crept up and the world righted itself and the colors of life returned.
There was blood on the floor, blood from where I had penetrated her, blood from her scraped knees and elbows.
There was blood on me.
I was tired, exhausted, and cleaning anymore blood tonight was not going to happen. I collapsed on my bed and pulled a secret stash of whiskey from my night stand and sipped slowly on it.
My knuckles were torn and broken from the many times I had hit her. I had only remembered a couple of slaps and maybe one punch and everything else was a blur.
When I had sucked every drop from the whiskey bottle, I could barely keep my eyes open. I felt it slip from my grasp and I heard it shatter on the floor and figured I would cut myself on the glass if I didn’t clean it up right away.
I fell asleep before I could put more thought into the idea.
*
I wasn’t sure how long my eyes had been open.
My mind didn’t snap awake until I heard my own ragged breath escape from lips and crying from somewhere in my room.
I turned and looked at the clock on my bedside table. It was five in the morning and I was still exhausted.
And there was a bit of after taste of rage from earlier, but it was being shadowed by disgust for my ownself.
I wasn’t a good man…
Yet, eventhough I wasn’t a good man, the world was just as rotten. Beaten and kicked so much that I had finally kicked back.
But, I had been a better man than a woman abuser for twenty-four years, but tripped up and became the mere definition of an monster.
My memory was foggy but slowly coming back.
I remembered muffled screams and the flow of blood.
I sat up, swung my legs over and cut my foot on a piece of glass from the broken whiskey bottle.
My head throbbed and my vision blurred. It felt like my skull was too small for my brain. I winced in the darkness as the pain in my head seemed to build. Then I went back to feeling the glass in my foot. Through clenched teeth I pulled it out.
The night, the brutal rape, my involvement, my enjoyment to it all, came back to me.
My life, as screwed and misconstrued as it was, now was over. I, at least, wanted a say on just how over my life was and when.
And I didn’t want to fall from the graces of life alone.
My hand was in my nightstand before I knew it. I stepped over the glass as I walked around my bed, leaving bloodly footprints, following the whimpering and crying.
Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) Page 20
