Walk For Me: Club Avalon Book 4

by Kay Elle Parker

  She screamed, sharp and piercing, and her tiny frame shivered as though the room was down into minus temps instead of warm enough to strip down to the skin.

  The next slap was carefully measured. Spanking hard or soft wasn’t a problem, but slapping went against his character. His palm stung, the crack of skin on skin made his lungs twist. “Goddamn it, girl, you will wake your ass up right the fuck now!”

  Yeah, it wasn’t the best Daddy behavior or language, but he was desperate.

  He barely managed to pull the third slap as her eyes popped open, wide and blind, the blue hauntingly beautiful despite the glaze. “There she is. There’s my princess. Come to Daddy, Alicia. Shake it off, that’s a good girl.” He cupped her pinkened cheek, willing her to surface from the nightmare. “I’ve got you, Lisha. I’m waiting for you. Come back to me now.”

  Whimpering, she did. Her eyes focused, still wide and scared, and darted around the room as though there were demons hiding in every corner. “Are they here? Did they find me?”

  “No, princess. It’s just you and me.” Knowing how much she liked being rocked, he cradled her as best he could and set the rhythm going. “Nightmares chasing you, that’s all.”

  “They were here. Touching me, laughing. They cut off my hair…” She lifted a hand to touch her head, her distress palpable when she brushed the fuzz. “They cut off my hair,” she whispered, then frantically ran her hands over herself. “What else did they do to me?”

  That was a damn good question, Atticus thought darkly. As soon as Elliot let his guard down long enough for one of Att’s guys to pick him up, Atticus would have all the fucking answers he required. The coward was currently hiding his sorry ass amongst some unsavory characters, barricading himself in a shady district.

  No matter. Atticus was quickly losing patience with the situation. Elliot could either show his face voluntarily or get it smashed to a pulp when Att’s team breached the building and killed anyone who got in their way.

  “Just a bad dream, Lisha. I promise you, you’re perfectly safe.” Lifting her, he settled her firmly in his lap, essentially cocooning himself around her. “Take a long, slow breath and tell me what you can remember.”

  “Monsters.”

  “Yeah, baby, there’s always monsters. Do as I said. A nice long, slow breath, that’s it. And another, just because. Good girl.” He kissed the crown of her head. “I think it’s time you tell me everything, princess. There are too many monsters lurking in the closet, feeding on your secrets—how can I fight them for you if I don’t know what they are?”

  “No. They’re locked in the vault.”

  “Right now, my opinion is that your vault is cracked and broken, Alicia. All that bad shit you’ve stored away all these years is leaking out, polluting your life. It’s rancid and it’s poisoning you.”

  Alicia pressed her face into his neck, her breath warm and unsteady over his skin. “Better me than everyone else.”

  “This self-sacrificing shit has got to end. Your life isn’t worth any less than anyone else’s, Alicia. Your worth isn’t dependent on how many times you put yourself through hell to spare the feelings of others.” If she didn’t listen to him this time, he’d gladly spank it into her. “Forget about everyone else, princess, and tell me where it hurts.”

  “I’m not going—”

  “Evasive answers get little girls’ bottoms spanked until they can’t sit down without crying. Are you going to give me your secrets, princess, or would you like to sleep on your tummy tonight?”

  She flinched, peering up at him. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t underestimate the lengths I’ll go to. Daddies get irate when their princesses have nightmares—it makes us feel weak and helpless. Would it help if I wasn’t your Daddy for a few minutes?” He caressed her arm, displeased by the chill of her skin.

  “I don’t suppose it matters whether you are or not—you’re still going to know things that should never see the light of day.” Worrying her lip for a moment, she drew in a quiet breath and scrubbed her hands over her face wearily. “The first week wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t clean, but I was fed, and the orderlies helped me shower. I was homesick. I wanted so badly to call Connie and ask her to come pick me up, but Braun wouldn’t have liked it, and I’d already been such a nuisance to everyone. I thought it was time to act like an adult, and when things got bad…I figured it was payment for killing my parents. Karma and all that.”

  For fuck’s sake. She’d barely started and already his palm itched to turn her bottom red for that habit of denying her own needs, her own safety, for the sake of others.

  “The next week, everything changed. Not just the routines, everything. We were confined to our rooms, no socializing allowed—not that I did any. Bed baths stopped, showers were granted at the whim of the orderlies. Food was used as a punishment, thrown on the floor or placed out of reach so I could smell it. The stuff Connie and everyone sent me was opened by one of the orderlies, then just thrown into the corner. They took my chair to reprimand me for asking for things. Sometimes I didn’t get it back for a week, maybe two.” Her eyes were fading, going dull as he watched them. She was slipping back there, falling back into hell. “The hunger pains stopped after a while. So did my bathroom privileges. The orderlies would come in and change my clothes, wipe away the shit after I…defecated myself, but that could take a day, two if they were feeling mean.”

  They’d been torturing her. It went above and beyond laziness and incompetence, it was outright cruelty to another human being.

  Atticus had a horrible suspicion he knew why. “What changed?”

  A muscle jerked in her cheek. “Elliot.”

  Suspicion confirmed. Goddamn it, he hated being right sometimes.

  “I thought he was just an orderly?”

  Alicia shook her head. “There was a bad aura around him. The day he started there, he acted like he didn’t know what he was doing. By his third day, the rest of them deferred to him on everything. Meal schedules, bathroom schedules, social time. They treated him like a king, and he treated everyone who wasn’t fully-abled like something smeared on his boot. Me…he hated me. I don’t know why, I never did anything to him.”

  “You didn’t recognize him?”

  That tired gaze met his. “Should I have?”

  Atticus rubbed a fingertip thoughtfully between his eyebrows. This honesty policy of his was a treacherous path to tread, but one he couldn’t step off. “I have a source in your parents’ organization, Lisha. Had, should I say. He told me that there was at least one gang member working inside the facility, keeping eyes on you. I’ll bet my right arm that Elliot was one of them.”

  “Well,” she said shakily, “that would explain how he knew I’d murdered my parents, and why he was so vehemently opposed to me still breathing. The people who worked for Abraham and Diane were criminals, drug addicts, rapists, whatever, but they were stupidly loyal to them.”

  “Tell me about the first time you got your period, Alicia.”

  She blanched, her muscles stiffening under his hand. “I’d prefer not to.”

  “Do I have to play the Daddy card?” he asked, lifting his eyebrow.

  “No.” Those blue eyes stared at her lap. “It started with the cramps. I thought I was just hungry, but these were lower. I guess I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was wet between my legs. I thought I’d pissed myself again, but when I looked…there was blood. All over my thighs, the sheets…” She trailed off, swallowing sickly. “I thought Abraham had come back from the dead to…it wasn’t dissimilar to when he fucked me the first time,” she admitted hesitantly. “But people don’t come back from the dead when you fire bullets into their soft spots.”

  “Baby, with a bullet, every spot is soft. Go on.”

  “I panicked and hit the call button. Not supposed to press it for any reason—they come when they want, not when they’re summoned,” she mumbled, twisting her fingers together. “Elliot came. He was angry, but the
re was something else in his eyes that wasn’t…moral. It aroused him that I was scared, but more than that, he got off on the fact I was bleeding.”

  There was no point in losing his temper until the bastard’s neck was in his hands, Atticus reminded himself. It didn’t stop him wanting to throw something, but recognizing that Alicia was the only thing in throwing range was enough to calm him down.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “He threatened to make me lick the sheets clean if I didn’t stop whining. Said some horrible things—told me I was the devil’s whore, that just because my legs didn’t work didn’t mean I couldn’t fuck like one, and then hit me. He put his hand over my face and pinned me down,” she whispered hollowly, tracing her fingers over her cheeks and nose, “and spread my legs. There were some old rags in his pocket, I don’t even know what he used them for, and he pushed them inside me. So deep, so full, that it hurt worse than the cramps. The bleeding stopped, or so I thought. I didn’t dare take them out for a few days in case it started again. Probably wouldn’t have for weeks, but I felt sick, and the smell was…bad.”

  Alicia is the only thing in throwing range. Alicia is the only thing in throwing range. Do not lose your shit. Atticus clenched his fists, wondering how close she’d come to becoming septic. That was one bullet she couldn’t have dodged—her immune system, her weight, would have conspired against her. Without hospital treatment, she would have died—and he didn’t think the orderlies would have been inclined to send her for treatment knowing how she looked.

  One more reason on his Kill Elliot list. That sucker was growing rapidly.

  “You understand that won’t happen again, Alicia? Never again. Connie’s gotten you the right stuff to use, and if you run out, we get some more. Elliot will pay for every little torment he gave you, I swear it to you.” He kissed her cheeks, tilting her head back to catch the tear sneaking from her right eye. “That was a dangerous, irresponsible move made by an imbecile. He had no right to treat you as less than human.”

  Alicia sniffled.

  Atticus ran his fingertips over her head in the way she liked. “Is he the reason you lost your hair, princess?”

  “I didn’t lose it, Atticus. He took it.”

  *

  It was disconcerting that her inner filters were crumbling with the least provocation. A few words from Atticus, and her mouth spilled the secrets he wanted to know, without any thought to her self-preservation. There was so much pain he could inflict on her with those memories if he chose to, and she was loading his gun and aiming it for him.

  Alicia sat on his lap, her brain swimming in numb silence as those secrets were spoken in her voice. Her memories came tumbling free, falling into his hands.

  She told him everything.

  Once the tale of Elliot shearing her head—because her hair had grown too dirty and greasy for the orderlies to drag her around by, and the insects and crap sealed in the matted tomb freaked them out—was no longer locked in the vault, she waited breathlessly for one sign of disgust or mockery, and saw none.

  The only expression on his face was sympathy, with the fires of rage banked behind his eyes.

  That expression pressed the button on the detonation device to the C4 Atticus had sneakily stuck to her vault door, and when it blew, memories and secrets spewed forth like filth from a ruptured sewer pipe. Unfiltered, uncensored, she gave him the whole sordid lot.

  Abraham. Elliot.

  The beatings, the rapes, the taunts.

  She cried until she was sick, purging her system physically and emotionally. There was a point when she sobbed so uncontrollably, she thought the painful heave of her lungs would never end. It hurt to breathe, to blink, to exist.

  Not once did Atticus interrupt. He didn’t leave her alone for a second, and his unwavering presence was like having a giant Mr. Bear comforting her in warmth and security. He just listened to everything she told him, every horrible detail of her pitiful, disastrous life, and didn’t even attempt to pass judgement.

  Alicia did enough of that herself. Judging her actions, wondering where she went wrong, what she’d done wrong, and how to fix all of it. There just wasn’t a way to rewrite her history so she could coexist with it…not that she could see, anyway.

  “Is that all of it, princess?” Atticus murmured in her ear when she went limp in his arms, knuckling at her sore eyes.

  She nodded miserably, unable to speak. Her nose was stuffed, her throat sore, and she really needed a bed to drag herself into for a lifelong hibernation.

  “I am so fucking proud of you. No,” he said sternly when she shook her head in denial, “it’s your turn to listen to me now. I don’t care if this makes you uncomfortable, because you need to hear it, and you damn well need to let it soak into your brain.” He cupped her chin, fingers firm on her skin. “For nearly two hours, you’ve opened yourself to me. Given me a glimpse into what makes this smart brain tick.”

  She snorted. Her voice was different as she struggled with her wrecked throat. “Smart brain.” Another snort, with a touch of self-deprecation in it. “Can’t even read a stop sign, or write my name properly.”

  “Don’t need to read stop signs,” he argued. “They’re big and red.”

  Well, at least she knew her colors, she thought.

  “Now shush and let me finish.” He tweaked her chin, narrowing his eyes at her until they were vibrant green slits. “I have an urge to have you in my bed tonight, and it’s late. So no more interruptions. Let me repeat myself: I am so fucking proud of you. This is a gift—ah-ah,” he said as she opened her mouth. “Not from you to me, but from you to you. It’s one of the first steps on a long road, but you took it. The only way to go now is forwards, and I’ll be behind you, every step of the journey. Giving you a slap on the ass if you try to move backwards.”

  She scowled, resisting rubbing at her swollen eyes again.

  “When you were dreaming, I noticed something. Would you like to know what I saw?”

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, and she massaged an ache in her thigh. The cramping in her belly was threatening to return. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  His hand covered hers on her thigh. It was an impossibly intimate gesture, and Alicia found herself wishing she had the courage to move them both higher, toward the apex. “In sleep, your body isn’t broken, princess. Far from it.” When she jerked sharply, shock stealing her breath at his implication, Atticus nodded. “I’ll never lie to you, Alicia, especially not about this. While you were sleeping, your legs were kicking. If that isn’t an incentive to move in the right direction, then I don’t know what is.”

  What the hell…Alicia stared down at her legs, the straggly appendages that hung from her lower body like a ragdoll’s. There was no possible way the stupid things worked. They hadn’t moved since she was ten years old—not when she’d willed them to kick her father away as he crushed her under his bulk. Not when she’d yearned about getting up off those piss-drenched sheets and walking out of the facility.

  Even now, with her Daddy’s assurances that, yes, they did fucking work, she couldn’t make them do anything. No matter how hard she strained to make the muscles respond to her commands, how fiercely she concentrated on the recollections of how it felt to walk on her own two feet, they remained stubbornly useless.

  Frustrated, she banged her fist on her other thigh. The pain registered, the thud of flesh on flesh was clear as a bell, but as always, no response from the limb itself.

  “None of that, Alicia. You’ve done enough tonight to pave the way.” Atticus nuzzled her throat gently, then secured her in his arms and rose. He skirted the mess she’d made on his carpet, left her chair abandoned by the chaise longue, and swept her away as though she was the heroine in a romance novel, and he her white knight. “Any objections to sleeping in my bed with me, princess?”

  Her mouth went dry. In bed, with him? She’d never shared her sleeping space with anyone. It had always been just her, alone in dirty sheets,
waiting for the shadows to come eat her. Would he touch her? Would he be naked? Oh God, would she?

  “I…” Would his arm curl around her waist as they slept, or was he the kind of the man who kept to his own side of the bed? Alicia nearly giggled as the pressure of the dilemma unnerved her. “Can Mr. Bear come too?”

  “If he wants to, I’m sure Mr. Bear can squeeze in somewhere.” Atticus carried her through her bedroom doorway, straight into the bathroom. He placed her carefully on the toilet. “Wash your pretty face, princess, I don’t want to see any trace of those tears. Brush your teeth and change the tampon. I’ll be right back.”

  The blush that seared her cheeks lasted for a good few minutes. She could feel the heat of it, even as she did as she was told and used the cloth to scrub away any remnants of the evening’s crying jag. It felt nice to get rid of the stiff evidence of her tears from her cheeks, just as it felt really good to brush her teeth and taste the freshness.

  Maybe Atticus would kiss her now that she was minty clean.

  The tampon was a different issue. Connie had shown her how to put the little cotton cylinder inside herself, and explained that all she had to do was pull on the string to remove it. That sounded simple enough, but Alicia wasn’t keen on testing it.

  What if it got stuck? Or worse, the string broke?

  That would be bad, she thought, but nothing came closer to the top of her scale of bad than being admitted to the hospital, and that was what Connie had warned her would happen if she didn’t change the sanitary products at least three times a day.

  In the morning when you wake up. In the afternoon, and before you go to bed. There is no maximum limit on how often you can change it, but every four to six hours is best. Never leave it longer than eight hours if you can help it.

  Grumbling under her breath in response to Connie’s voice in her head, Alicia manhandled her legs until they were spread. She still couldn’t believe that Atticus thought the fucking things were capable of anything but being deadweight. Just because there was sensation didn’t mean there was hope for a miraculous recovery.