Tormented Part 2: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Elginvale High)

by Esme Devlin

  “I make you weak?” I drop her chin and turn around, because I can’t stand still when she’s getting things so wrong. “Don’t you talk shite, Lacey. The way I see it — it’s exactly the fucking opposite. Your dad decides to sell you and you say yes dad, right away dad.”

  Her hands go up to her shoulders and her fingers tighten around them. Her chin goes down, like she’s retreating into a ball, but still I continue. “Liam, the little cunt, manipulates you into marrying him and you don’t even know he’s doing it. Yet I’m the one who makes you weak?”

  I’m pacing the room now like a caged lion. I glance over at her and her expression is blank, like she’s still not getting it. “You fight me at every turn, you cut me down constantly with your words, and yet I make you weak? Bullshit. I’m the one who makes you strong, Lace. I’m the one who makes you fight, and if you can’t see that, then maybe you really are the fucking idiot you’ve been acting.”

  She swallows and looks up through her long lashes, and I think maybe something is hitting home. Maybe I’m getting through to her.

  Clearing her throat, she says, “You exhaust me. Do you know that? Since the day I met you, you’ve been there, in my head, and I spend every waking hour trying to work out what it is that you actually want. What do you want, Shaun?”

  I stop pacing and stare at her. “That’s not obvious?”

  “No, it’s not obvious! You hated me and then you apparently liked me and I have no idea when that changed.”

  Jesus Christ. She’s exasperating. “How many times, woman? I never told you I hated you.”

  “You never told me you liked me, either.”

  I look up at the sky. I never believed in the big man. I figured that if he is up there, then he won’t have much interest in a little shit like me. But if he is there, he needs to help me.

  “I didn’t think that was necessary. I thought I had time to show you. I took you out, I told my friends, I tried to be on my best behaviour… but well, I don’t claim to be very good at that. I couldn’t bring you home to meet the family because my dad wanted you gone, but I told you I’d sort that, and I have sorted it. You didn’t give me time though. You took me into your bed one night and I thought things would turn out alright, and then the next day you ended it. Not a backwards glance. And look at me, still here, still trying to give you time. And now you’re saying I’m the one who’s not been clear? How clear have you been, Lacey? I don’t see you shouting about your feelings and I’ve never once fucking expected it, either.”

  “I can’t shout about my feelings because I don’t understand them. This is what I mean, Shaun, you make me weak. I think one thing, and then the second I’m with you it all goes out the window,” she says.

  “So you think the answer is to close the window?”

  “At the time I did, yes.”

  I stand in front of her and run my finger down her neck and along her shoulder. It’s still wet from her hair that’s dripping down, and I watch as my finger hits every one of the beads of water and spreads them out. “And what about now?” I ask, looking her in the eye.

  “Shaun, don’t,” she says, her tone conveying a warning that isn’t in her eyes.

  “Don’t what?” I ask innocently.

  “You know what you’re doing,” she snaps back.

  “No, I don’t. Tell me what I’m doing?” My finger traces back up her shoulder and around the back of her neck. I watch her as she shivers and her breathing deepens.

  I do know exactly what I’m doing, but I want her to say it.

  I want to hear her admit it.

  “You’re manipulating me. You’re making me feel things no sane person should feel. You chained me to the wall in your basement, for fuck's sake.”

  Not the answer I was looking for, but true nonetheless.

  I shrug. “I did. And I’d do it again. If I thought chaining you to a wall in the basement would stop you from doing something stupid, then I’d chain you up and I’d leave you there for as long as it took.”

  She just shakes her head at me like I’m crazy.

  Maybe I am.

  “You hungry? All this talk of chains and seeing you naked earlier has got my cock right hard, so if you don’t want to fuck then I’m going to propose we eat instead.”

  Chapter 5

  LACEY

  This is what he does.

  He pushes and he pulls, and then just at the point when I think I know my own mind, he switches it up and the game changes.

  When he was stroking my neck and making me feel things I shouldn’t be feeling, I thought I was going to have to fight him. He was looking at me with those eyes that tell me exactly what he wants, and I thought for a minute that he was going to take it. Maybe I would have tried to fight him or maybe I would have given in easily… either way it would have happened.

  But it didn’t. He changed the subject and made me feel like I’d won a small victory.

  A tiny little victory that normally I would have been pleased about.

  But I am wisening up. I’m starting to see that he lets me have these victories so I don’t notice that I’m losing the war.

  And now I’m sitting across from him, wearing his t-shirt as a nightdress, eating dinner in his dining room. I’m not trying to escape and I’m not as mad at him as I was when I woke up.

  Funny that.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask him, looking up from the bowl of pasta I’ve been picking at. He’s already on his second one, the pig.

  “After dinner? Thought we could take sweeties and a cup of tea into bed, and then snuggle under the covers with a shite film on the TV,” he says, winking at me.

  It’s so fucking ridiculous that I can’t help laughing at him.

  “No, really. When you stole me and chained me to the wall in the basement—” I start but I stop again when he looks down at his cock and shakes his head at me.

  “I told you to stop with the chain shit if you weren’t wanting fucked. I’ll no warn you twice, darlin,” he says, chuckling.

  I clear my throat to stop myself from snorting at him and try again. “When you did what you did, you must have had a plan. What are you going to do now?”

  He goes back to eating his pasta and I start to think he’s not going to answer.

  I take a bite of my own, wondering if I should push him, but then he puts his fork down and looks at me. “You know they’re not going to give up, don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t really going to do it,” I tell him.

  It feels better than I thought it would, telling the truth. Which is strange because it was only yesterday I was getting satisfaction from telling him that I was going to do it. “I told Liam that right after I told you. I said we could let everyone think we’d done it, but I wouldn’t really go through with it.”

  “You wouldn’t have had a choice. I’m telling you, I know Liam and I know his dad. His dad would have wanted proof,” he says. “But tell me how he reacted anyway, just for my own benefit.”

  I smile at him. “He wasn’t happy. Like a petulant little child.”

  Shaun smirks and sits back in his chair. “Good. I hope the rejection crushed him.”

  “Just like it crushed you?” I tease, looking down at my bowl and stabbing a piece with my fork.

  He chuckles and stands up, taking his bowl through to the kitchen. “Didn’t crush me because I didn’t accept it,” he shouts through from the other room. “I take what I want, remember?”

  “I’m learning that,” I shout back at him.

  He’s away for a little while and when he comes back, there’s a cup of tea in his hand.

  “You finished with this?” he asks, nodding at the half-eaten bowl of pasta. I nod, taking the tea out of his hand. He picks the bowl up and heads back through to the kitchen, and I follow him.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” I tell him.

  “What question would that be?” he says, scraping the food out from the bowls and taking them over to the s
ink. I remember what Alice told me, about how he doesn’t really lie. Maybe he just avoids questions when he knows lying is the only reasonable option.

  “The question about what we do now. Can I go home?” I ask.

  He puts the dishes in the sink and pretends like all his attention is focused on getting them clean.

  “Shaun?”

  “I don’t think you should go home,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want you to. I like having you with me and I really can’t be arsed abducting you again. It’s much harder than it looks in the movies, believe me,” he says, chuckling.

  “Why would you need to abduct me again?”

  He stops what he’s doing and turns around, drying his hands on the dish towel.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “We were getting along so well though?” he says, shrugging and flashing me a smile.

  “Cut the bullshit,” I warn him.

  “Fine.” His face grows serious, and he walks towards me. “You need to believe me when I tell you that they will not stop, and that I’m doing this because I don’t think there is any other way, okay?”

  “What is it?” I say, feeling myself getting exasperated.

  “They can’t force you to marry Liam if you’re already married.”

  I’m not already married though?

  No.

  He’s not seriously suggesting what I think he’s suggesting.

  He’s watching my face and I think he must see something he doesn’t like, because he comes over to me and holds on to my shoulders.

  “It’s the only way. And I’m not doing it for money like your dad, or for some revenge game like Liam. I’m doing it because I think it’s the only way to stop them forcing you into something that won’t be good for you. And I’m doing it because — call me crazy — but I think there’s at least a small chance we could make it work.”

  He is suggesting what I think he’s suggesting.

  Call him crazy?

  I’ll call him just as fucking insane as the rest of them.

  “I barely even know you,” I argue. “This isn’t just crazy, it’s fucking stupidity of the highest degree.”

  He just laughs at me. “You barely know me? I’ve shown you more of myself than most folks see who’ve known me for years. I don’t intend to change, princess, unless you’re adamant I have to. What you’re seeing right now is what you’re getting.”

  “It’s still stupid,” I tell him. “We don’t even know if we want the same things. We’re eighteen for gods sake! We don’t trust each other. All we do is argue.”

  “Not true. We fuck, too,” he says, cutting me off.

  I give him a single, solitary breath that could be a huff or it could be a laugh. He’s trying to diffuse the situation and as much as I hate myself for it, I struggle to say no to him.

  He makes me weak.

  I break free from his grip on my shoulders and walk over to the counter, putting my cup of tea down on it and resting my hands against the side, sighing.

  My back is to him but a few seconds later I sense him approaching. His hands grip on to my hips at both sides and he turns me around easily, so we’re facing each other, and then he lifts me up and sits me on the counter, like it’s nothing to him. He takes the space between my legs like he owns it.

  “Listen, I know you don’t trust me. If I’m honest, I don’t trust you either. You’re flaky as fuck and the little stunt you pulled yesterday, well, I’ve broken legs before for much less. Just trust me now and I’ll prove I’m right. If you go home to Dad with my ring on your finger and he congratulates you and says no harm done, Lacey, then I’ll eat my words and I’ll sign the divorce papers and let you keep the house and the fucking car, too. But I’m telling you now, that won’t happen,” he says.

  He’s looking at me with an intensity that makes my heart pick up its pace. “If you don’t do this, with me, right now, then you’ll be doing it with Liam whether you want to or not.”

  I try to think, but I don’t have time. He could chain me to that wall in his basement for a week with nothing else to do, and it probably still wouldn’t be enough time.

  “I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no either,” I tell him. That’s the only answer I can give him, and I hope it’s enough for him.

  I remember when I used to be scared about what new ways he’d find to torment me. And then I was scared that the claims Rosheen made were true, and he wanted to break my heart. Suddenly, in the space of 24 hours, both of those things don’t scare me half as much as they used to.

  Now, the thing that scares me the most is that I’m actually considering trusting him. I’m swallowing his madness like it’s normal. I’m listening to his reasoning, and I’m understanding it.

  I’ve already given him too much power over me, and when his rough finger comes up and traces my bottom lip, sending a shiver straight through my whole body… I know I’m about to give him even more.

  I can’t fucking help myself.

  Chapter 6

  SHAUN

  She didn’t say no, and that’s something. That’s the easy bit out of the way… the bit where I convince her to forgive me for effectively kidnapping her and proposing to her in the same night.

  I still need to ruin her only relative, fuck up a company, seriously fucking injure her ex, and make her one of us.

  Piece of cake.

  But I’ll worry about that later. Right now our lips are inches apart, she’s got her legs wrapped around my waist and she’s wearing my t-shirt. It smells like me but it smells like her too, and the only part of me that’s thinking straight is my cock, which is pressed hard up against her thigh.

  I’m still angry at her for what she did and how easily she did it, and now I want to fuck her like the cold-hearted little bitch she is. And I’m not saying I do love her, but if I did love her, this would be one of the reasons why. Even when I’m angry at her, even when I want to take my hands and snap her pretty little neck with them, I cannot resist her. She has this power over me that no one else has ever had, and it’s sexy as fuck. I’m still obsessed. I’m still insatiable. I’m angry at her but I still want her to need me.

  And I don’t ever want that to end. I’ll never fuck anyone the way I fuck her, not for as long as I live.

  When I kiss her, I make sure she knows that.

  I take her head in my hands and clamp her mouth onto mine.

  She has no choice, she couldn’t stop me even if she wanted to, and I don’t give her a chance to ask.

  I kiss her like that until I hear her moaning, and I feel her fingers running through my hair.

  I kiss her until my cock is aching, and her fingers are prying at the button on my jeans, trying desperately to put it inside her, to fit us together.

  I kiss her until I own the air that she’s breathing and every sigh that comes out of her mouth sounds like a cry for help.

  I could take her right here, on the kitchen counter and put us both out of our misery. But I won’t do that, because that would be easy.

  Instead I snake my arms around her waist and I lift her up. She wraps her legs around me and grips onto my neck, still kissing my cheeks, my head, my ears.

  I take her back up the stairs to my bedroom and put her down on the bed, backing away. I remove my T-shirt and throw it over the chair before I sit down on it.

  I’m on the other side of the room watching her. She’s still breathless from the kiss, lying on her stomach, sitting up on her elbows and watching me watch her, with a confused look on her face that she’s trying her best to hide.

  “What are you doing?” she says finally, still breathless.

  I smile at her. “I’m waiting.”

  Her eyes narrow on me. “What are you waiting for?”

  I sit back in the chair, sticking my right leg up and resting my ankle on my thigh. “I’ve not heard you beg yet.”

  “You want m
e to beg you to fuck me?” she says, her lips curling up at the sides in an amused smile. “Not a fucking chance.”

  I smile right back at her and shrug my shoulders. “You can either beg me to fuck you or you can beg me not to fuck you, but either way I’ll have you pleading for something. Gold star for you if we have tears.”

  She smirks at me and then flips herself around on the bed so I catch a glimpse of her ass-cheeks and how shit a job my T-shirt is doing of hiding them. “Do you know how exhausting it is being chained to a bed all day? I think I’m just going to go to sleep. You can wank yourself off over there in your corner, don’t mind me.” She crosses her arms under her head and rests it on them, lowering her lashes. A smile plays on her lips and it’s sending me all sorts of crazy.

  “Little princess, you’ll regret this,” I tell her, my tone a warning.

  “Make me,” she says, her tone unconcerned.

  I fucking intend to. I’m up off my chair a heartbeat later, unfastening the buttons on my jeans and kicking them off. I don’t think I’ve ever got naked quicker in my life. My arm goes around her stomach and I pull her hips up off the bed until she’s on her knees, her most intimate parts now on show and completely under my control. Her eyes fly open and that’s the last thing I see before I bend down and my mouth connects with her pussy.

  Her whole body jerks and her hands come to my arm — which is wrapped around her stomach headlock style — but she’s not got a tenth of the strength that I have.

  I don’t think she has half the determination either, because even though her nails are digging into me, she’s moaning into the bedsheets like my mouth is rearranging her insides. It’s not, of course, but I am eating her cunt like I’m a wolf and she’s the sexiest little lamb I ever did taste.

  “Shaun… please,” she whimpers.

  I come up for air temporarily. “Tell me stop,” I challenge her. “Make me.”