His smile goes only over half his mouth. “That was no nightmare; that did happen. More than a few times. But I recall you agreeing to that. I recall reaching into your pussy and finding it wet and throbbing after those kinds of things. I recall you begging to suck my dick after those things. What is it you recall, Jenna?”
“I recall feeling weak. I recall thinking I had to make you happy, because you weren’t. I recall thinking that, if I could just make you feel loved, you would soften up some. And for the last part of our time together, you were softer. Not entirely, but you weren’t exactly that hard man you were in the beginning. But those things you did to me did scarred me deeper than the flesh wounds you gave me with your punishments.”
His eyes narrow and he looks down. “If things were better, and I was more like the man you wanted me to be, then why did you move on?”
With a sigh, I say, “Because even the man you had become wasn’t what I wanted. When I was eighteen and started things with you, I had no idea what I wanted. All I knew was that you had wanted me for two years, and that was pretty awesome in my young and naïve eyes.”
“So you never wanted me?” He looks at me with sad eyes.
That look used to get me every time, but not this time. “That would be a lie. I did want you. I did want to make you happy, and so I did the things you told me you needed. And still you fucked other women. And still you left me without a word. So my heart hardened. I learned how to harden a lot of things thanks to your training, Rod. So now you will reap the rewards of a job well done. You wanted me to be hard, and now I am.”
“And turned against me. Your owner. And if you think I’m going to let this go, you're very wrong. I’m going to leave, so I don’t have to deal with my little brother. But you and I are not done.” After picking up the contract off the bed, he walks toward the door, then stops and turns back. “See you soon, baby.”
As I watch him walk out the door, all the strength in me fades away so quickly, it’s unreal. My body begins to shake and I jump up and lock the door again. I also close the latch inside so even if he uses the key, he can’t get back in.
I managed to escape that little interaction unscathed, but that was close. I think he could see in my eyes that I wouldn’t go down easy. The tiger in me showed itself, I think.
But I don’t even want to know if I could actually fend him off or not. I’d rather never find that out.
I go and pick up the phone to call the front desk and hear a friendly female answer, “Hello. How can I help you this morning?”
“Are you the bitch who gave Rod Manning a key to this room?” I ask, trying to keep my tone sharp.
“No.” She hangs up and I call the other number on the phone. The one that says if you have any problems, please call.
“Good morning, Arizona Lodging Corporation. How can I help you this morning?”
“Hello, my name is Jenna Foster. My fiancé rented a room here at your Jerome location and I’d like to report that the woman who is working at the front desk this morning gave a key to another man and he entered our room. I suppose that’s frowned upon in your business. Is it not?”
“Oh my goodness! Are you okay, ma’am?”
“I am. But the man she let in and I have a very bad past. He used to beat me. So I was very scared. I’d hate to see anyone else go through what I just did. I can count on you to take care of this situation without my needing to involve the authorities, can’t I?”
“Of course! I’ll have the manager there soon and that employee will be fired immediately. Your stay with us will be free of charge, of course. Please don’t go to anyone else with this issue. I’d hate it if our lodging in Jerome got bad publicity for one woman’s poor decision.”
“Me too. I will be checking in with the manager before we leave a little later today, to be sure this was dealt with. Thank you. Goodbye.”
“Bye,” she says. Then I hang up feeling a little better about this thing.
Where Rod is concerned, I will pull no punches. I will take everything illegal or bad thing he does and flip it around on him.
If he thinks I’m going to go down all easy, he has another think coming.
Reed or no Reed, I will never go down that path with Rod or any man ever again.
Not ever!
The room’s phone rings again. I answer. “Hello.”
“Hello, Miss Foster. This is Lynette Jones, the manager here. I have Trisha Steen here with me and she tells me she did not give anyone a key to your room.”
I frown and then get mad. Really mad. “So you’re taking her word over mine?”
“I don’t know what else I can do, Miss Foster.”
“Tell me how many keys you have to this particular room, Mrs. Jones.”
She seems to be thinking. Then she says, “We gave you and your fiancé two of them. That leaves one we keep up here in the key box. So, three.”
“Look in the key box and see if that one is there, please,” I say and look my fingernails over as I wait.
I can hear her tell the woman to open the box, so I add, “I need you to look. Obviously, she will say it’s there.”
“Oh, yes. Hang on, then.” The phone clanks a bit as she puts it down. “I need to do that, Trisha.” I hear clicking sounds and then I hear a gasp. “Trisha, no!” Disappointment fills her voice.
Then I hear Trisha. “Aunt Lynn, I didn’t give it to him. I swear it. I don’t know where the key is!”
“Trisha, how could you? Everyone in this town knows about Rod Manning and Jenna Foster. Everyone knows about that time he pushed her all over their yard and the police had to come. How could you put her in jeopardy like that?”
Trisha is stammering and making no sense. Then I hear her say, “He made me. He told me he’d teach me good if I didn’t give him the key.”
Then my heart aches for her. But it doesn’t mean she should get off scot-free.
When the manager gets back on the phone, she’s apologizing like crazy. I stop her. “Look, I know he’s intimidating. I heard her, and I do believe her. But something has to be done to show her how she can handle something like that if it ever happens again. So please see to it that some kind of measures can be taken to teach not only her, but your other employees, how to handle a situation like that. Perhaps something as simple as teaching them to say there are no other keys to the rooms.”
“Yes, ma’am. And your stay is on us. There will be no charges at all.”
“We were here two months,” I say, as I can’t possibly imagine them comping the whole time.
“I’m aware of that, and the entire stay is on us. Thank you for staying with us. When you visit again, I hope you will consider staying with us again. I am very sorry, and this incident will help us to form a protocol for just this kind of thing. I am so sorry, and so is my niece.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry he did that to her.” I hang up and feel even more awful that he would do that to anyone just to get to me.
Does he draw no lines?
Chapter 22
REED
As I try to open the door to our room, I find the inside lock is latched.
“Reed?” Jenna calls out.
“Yes, it’s me.”
She comes and opens it and nearly falls into my arms. “Thank God!”
“Are you that hungry, Jenna?” I laugh a little as she wraps her arms around me.
But then I feel her body shaking as she hugs me.
I move with her, set the drinks and bag of food down, and pick her up. “What’s wrong?”
“Rod.” Then the tears start again.
“Jenna, you have to get a hold of yourself. You can’t let him get to you like this.” I run my hand through her hair.
She takes her face off my chest and looks up at me. “He was here, Reed. The girl at the front desk gave him a key, and he got in here.”
My body goes instantly hot. “No fucking way! That bitch is getting fired!”
“I already took care of that
, and we don’t have to pay for our stay here. And the reason she did it is that he intimidated her into it. But they’re going to figure out some way to train their employees not to let that happen again,” she says, then buries her face back in my chest and wraps her arms tightly around me.
“What did he do to you?” I hold her tight and fight the urge to leave to go find him.
“Nothing. He didn’t do anything to me. Just told me he wants me back. That kind of thing.” A shiver runs through her.
“Bet there’s a lot more to it than that,” I say as I hold her back and make her look at me. “I need to know it all. What happened with you two in the past? Don’t leave anything out.”
The way she looks up at me makes my heart hurt. I know it’s bad, and I know she doesn’t want to relive this, but I have to know.
She moves off my lap and climbs under the blanket and leans against the headboard. “Reed, I’m afraid you won’t be able to respect me if I tell you what I allowed.”
“You were young and inexperienced. I promise you there’s not a thing you can say to me that will make me lose respect for you. I respect who you are today. That young woman is not you anymore. I wouldn’t even ask you to do this, but I don’t want Rod to think he can make you stay quiet about what he’s done to you.” I move around on the bed and give her my full attention.
She bites her bottom lip. Then she looks down. “Not long after we moved in together, Rod asked me to enter into a contract with him. A submissive/slave contract, where he was the dominant. It said in the contract that he owned me.”
The way my stomach tightens and rolls makes me want to throw up. “I see.”
She keeps looking down. “I wasn’t going to sign it. I really wasn’t. But he had another woman come to the house, and she was ready to take that offer. She was ready and willing to do whatever he wanted, right then and there. So I told him I’d do it. I signed it and became his property.”
“That’s not even legal. But I get what you’re saying. So this contract was for life, then?” I ask, and have to fight nausea.
She nods. “And it came with rules and punishments for breaking them. And conditioning my body to accept pain.”
I run my hand over the blanket where her legs are. She can’t look at me, it seems. “Jenna, what did he do to you?”
“That first night, right after I signed the contract, he bound my hands and hung me up on a hook he’d put up on the wall in our bedroom. A hook like you’d hang a robe on. Only robes never hung there. Only me.” She has to close her eyes, and a tear runs down her cheek.
“I know this is hard.” I run my hand up her arm and over her cheek to wipe the tear away.
She opens her eyes, but doesn’t look at me. “He got out his leather belt and told me to say the safe word only after the pain was enough to make me cry. I was able to take five lashes before that happened. And he was pleased with that.”
My heart is pounding, and I wish that was all the fucker had done to her, but I know it couldn’t have been. “And after that?”
“He had sex with me while I was still strung up. And while I was still crying.” She closes her eyes again. “That was not the worst thing he ever did to me. It was just the first thing. It sticks out because of that, I guess.”
“So he hit you often?”
She nods. “For the first few months of the contract, it was every day. To get my body in condition, he said. And when I made little infractions of his rules, it got more intense. Nipple clamps, collars that were tight and large. They made me very uncomfortable, you know.”
“I can imagine. And you were incapacitated when he did those things?”
“Yes, strung up, so I couldn’t get away from him. Do you remember that New Year’s Eve when we all went to that bar and you left early?” she asks me as she looks into my eyes.
“I do.” I take her hand in mine and lace our fingers together.
“After you left, he made me go into the bathroom when that woman he was playing pool with went in. I had to beat her up. I busted her head against the sink and never felt worse about anything in my life. Not anything made me feel as bad as that did. But he was so proud of me for doing it. He told me he was making me strong and fearless. The kind of woman he needed.” She looks away.
“What else has he made you do?”
“Sex in places that were semi-public. Your family’s bathroom, the men’s room where he worked. The café where everyone in town eats. Behind the grocery store in the alley. I couldn’t work so he could call me to come to him when he wanted or come home to have sex or get a blowjob whenever he felt the need. If I wasn’t available for him then he said he’d get it from another woman and I didn’t want that. That’s why I made myself available for him.”
“He’s a very fucked up individual.”
She nods. “After that fight in the front yard when the cops came, and I told the cop not to take him to jail, he changed a lot. He threw away the belts, the bonds, and the other things he used to hurt me. He stopped making me cater to him. And he let me do my online classes. Then he asked me to marry him, and everything was great.” Her eyes cut up to mine. “Nowhere near as great as one single moment you and I have shared. But great for me and Rod. But then he disappeared and left a hole in my soul. I was a slave with no master. The contract was still there, always lingering in the background of our relationship.”
“You belonged to him in your mind, didn’t you?” I run my hands up and down her arms.
“In my mind, I did. And with each day that passed after he left, that idea of belonging to him faded away. The reality of what life really is about started seeping in. Going off to college was the best thing I ever did for myself. I met this guy there, Cam. He helped me come to see that I had secluded myself. I pushed people away. I had no trust in anyone. With his help I came out of the shell I had allowed Rod to put me in.”
“Was he your boyfriend, Jenna?” I feel pangs of jealousy.
She shakes her head. “No. He was a great friend. I think it was very important for me to make him my friend and learn all men are not like Rod. All men don’t want to control women. All men don’t feel the need to punish. All men aren’t out to hurt me physically or emotionally.”
“I’m glad you had a friend like that. You became a very different person with that guy’s help. I should send him a thank-you card,” I say with a smile.
She looks at me. “Can I be completely honest with you?”
My heart lurches, as I have this deep fear she still has feelings for Rod, but I have to hear it if she does. So I nod and hold my breath.
“If this all comes out, Rod is going to say some things that are very personal about what we did. You see, I have no idea why this happened, but when he was giving me lashes I would get wet inside. And after he stopped I would have this frantic sex with him. I can’t explain why. It just worked like that. And I feel shame about that. I feel like a horrible person for that.”
“And I am going to get someone you can talk to about what happened to you, Jenna. Someone who can help you forgive yourself for things that were beyond your control. You were young, and he took advantage of the fact that you had never been allowed to date. You had no idea what was normal and what was not.”
Her hands shake as she moves them through her hair. “You’re right about that. And I think it would help if someone who’s been through that could help me understand why I’d react that way and understand why I didn’t leave. I had my parents to go to. But I never did. You told me to call you if I needed anything, and I never did. I had people who would’ve helped me. Thing is, I didn’t want help. I didn’t want out. And even when he first disappeared, I didn’t want it to end.”
I pull her into my arms. “I’m so sorry that he did that to you. So very sorry.”
Her hands move over my back and up to move through my hair. “Make love to me, Reed. Take my mind back to me and you and away from thinking about those days.”
Her hands move to
the bottom of my T-shirt and I hold my arms up so she can pull it off me. Then I take off the nightgown she has on and toss it on the floor as I kick off my shoes.
I stand up, get rid of my jeans, and pull the blanket back. Her body rises and falls with her breathing and I find her beautiful. How my brother could do those things to her, I can’t understand.
She is an angel and should never be hurt. I run my hands over her stomach and watch it quiver with my touch.
She breathes out my name, “Reed.”
I look at her to find her gazing at me. “I love you, Jenna.”
Her hand runs over my cheek. “I love you. You really have made me happier than I ever imagined I could be.”
The sick feeling her story gave me starts to fade away as her touch heals me. I hope my touch does something similar to her.
“You have made me happier than I knew possible too.” I move my body over hers and she raises her legs, running her feet up my calves then wraps her legs around me as I slide into her gently.
I move with slow strokes and kiss her softly. Then I trail kisses down her cheek and over her neck. “You’re perfect.”
She moans as I move deep inside her. “Reed.”
Her breasts rub against my chest as I let the upper part of my body move to feel them between us. I move in and out of her with nice, slow strokes.
As I make love to her slow and steady, I want to show her how much I adore her and cherish her. I want to let her know that part of her life is over and she will never have to live like that again.
Her hands leave little currents of electricity as she trails them over my back and arches up to me. I roll with her so she’s on top of me and I can look at her.
She sits up and takes my hands to her breasts. I take them and rub them as she moves rhythmically over me. Back and forth she rocks on me, as I give her breasts gentle squeezes.
I move my hands down to her waist and pick her up to allow her body to stroke my cock. She puts her hands on my stomach and runs her fingers through the lines that divide my abs.
Her body is perfect and voluptuous. Her skin is a creamy peach color and her cheeks are flushed with desire.
Rockstar Untamed: A Single Dad Virgin Romance Page 44
