Pretty, Dark and Dirty: A Forbidden Romance

by Margot Scott

  Time stopped the day I realized he was never coming back. It didn’t start again until the day he kissed me.

  “You don’t seem to mind how young I am when I’m sucking your cock,” I snapped.

  “Watch your mouth, little girl,” he growled, his eyes flitting to the partition separating us from the driver.

  “Or what? You’ll give me something to suck on?”

  “Don’t act like you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

  I would’ve enjoyed it, but I wasn’t about to agree with him.

  “Where the hell is this attitude coming from?” he asked. “Don’t tell me this is about Krista. She and I are ancient history.”

  “Then how did she know where to find you tonight?” As much as I didn’t want him to know I was jealous of his former model, I needed to hear the truth from his own mouth.

  “She probably asked Michelle or one of the others. We still run in the same circles.”

  “But you’ve been talking to her,” I snapped. “She said you told her about me.”

  “I did tell her about you. The day you arrived, when she came to look at my preliminary sketches, and long before that. Lots of people know about you, Jetty.”

  My hard outer shell began to crumble at the sound of his nickname for me. I fought with myself to stop it from shattering completely. “You had no idea she was going to be there?”

  “If I had, I would’ve cancelled on the group and taken you to dinner somewhere else.” He cradled the back of my head in his big, warm hand. “Krista is no more important to me than an old piece of furniture. There’s nothing to be jealous of—”

  “Of course there is! You fucked her.”

  There it was… the real reason for my biting anger. This wasn’t about Krista; I knew in my bones that Mason would never cheat on me. It was about us, me and him, and the one thing he refused to give me.

  He sat back against the leather seat, his expression hardening. “I see what this is really about. You want something, and you’re throwing a tantrum because I won’t give it to you.”

  In what felt like a single fluid movement, he unbuckled both our safety belts, slid to the center of the backseat, and bent me over his lap so that my face was pressed to the leather. He pulled my dress up and my panties down, exposing my ass to the air.

  The first slap was a shock to the senses, like an upward gunshot or the crash of a gavel. It hurt. It burned. It stopped my thoughts in their tracks.

  “You’ve been a bad girl, Jetty.” He held me tightly as I squirmed, the bulge of his erection demanding my attention through his slacks. He was enjoying this, and to my utter amazement, so was I. “A very bad girl.”

  The little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. He hit me again on the opposite side, then again where he’d spanked me first. My pussy fluttered with every slap. He spanked me twelve times in all, six firm smacks on each rounded cheek.

  Tears flowed freely down my face, not from the pain, but from release.

  I couldn’t believe how easily his touch had disarmed me, or the speed with which he had reduced me to a sorry little girl. In a way, the spanking had simplified things. I was no longer a spiteful teenager seething with jealousy. I was a brat in desperate need of punishment.

  Somehow, he had known that what I really needed was a taste of Daddy’s discipline.

  “Now,” he said, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

  He caressed my tender flesh. I sniffled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “Sorry for being a brat—and telling everyone about the painting.” I let out a sob. Mason shushed me gently, his fingers gliding between my legs from behind to caress my mound. His touch was both sexual and not, the way a hug or a kiss or a slap could go either way depending on who was giving it.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart. I forgive you.” He righted my clothes as we pulled up to his building, then raised me up to kiss me. That was all it took to rekindle my desire for him. I laid one hand on his cock and wrapped the other around his neck as he slid his tongue into my mouth.

  The car slowed and then stopped. I didn’t want to leave the warmth and privacy of the backseat, but the driver was waiting.

  “Come on,” Mason rasped, taking my hand. “I need to get you naked.”

  We hurried through the lobby toward the private penthouse elevator, ignoring the front-desk attendant who tried to snag our attention. Nothing was going to stand between us and where we wanted to be: pressed against each other, skin to skin.

  Before the elevator doors slid shut, Mason had me pinned against the mirrored wall with his hand between my thighs. He tugged my panties to the side and slipped two fingers inside me.

  “You are the most important thing in my life,” he said between kisses. “I need you to trust that I know what’s best for you.”

  “I trust you, Daddy.”

  He fucked into me with his fingers, using his thumb to stroke my clit. My pulse raced as he whispered in detail all the ways he was going to make me come tonight—

  All the ways except the one I was dying to hear.

  The elevator doors slid open onto our floor. Distraught and out of my mind with desire, I reached for the only leverage I had left.

  “If you don’t fuck me now,” I said, “I’ll take this elevator back down and you’ll never see me again.”

  His hands left my body in an instant. He took a giant step back, then another, all the way into the hall.

  “Well,” he said, “what are you waiting for?”

  Regret squatted in the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but the lump refused to budge.

  “Shall I book your flight?” he asked. “Hell, I’ll even help you pack your bags if that’s what you want—”

  “You know that’s not what I want.”

  “I know you’re not going to get anything by trying to manipulate me.”

  The gravity in his stare made me feel three feet tall. I moved toward him, out of the elevator, just as his phone began to buzz in his pocket.

  “I’m sorry.” I reached for him but he didn’t reach back. My eyes burned with tears. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “You said you trusted me to know what’s best.”

  “I do trust you, completely. But it’s not fair. You won’t fuck me, and you won’t tell me why you won’t fuck me.”

  “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “I didn’t ask for your protection,” I said a little too forcefully. “What could you possibly protect me from by coming in my mouth instead of my pussy?”

  His phone buzzed again. This time, he snapped it up to answer it.

  “What?” He paused, listening.

  Anxiety coiled in my belly as I watched the emotion drain from his face.

  “Send her up,” he said.

  He tucked his phone back in his pocket and disappeared into the apartment. I followed. He didn’t bother to take his shoes off as he strode to the kitchen to pour himself a shot of brandy.

  “Who’s coming?” I asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to volunteer the info. I swore, if Krista stepped out of the elevator, I was going to lose it.

  He downed the drink he’d just poured, refreshed the glass, then slid the shot over to me.

  “Looks like we’re about to have a family reunion.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I wished I could step back into the memory of the last time I saw my father before he left me. I would’ve used the opportunity to look for signs, clues, smoke signals. Anything that might’ve hinted at his impending disappearance.

  Whenever I tried to comb through the memories, the details blended together until I wasn’t sure if I was remembering the right film we saw, or the flavor of ice cream in my cone.

  To my twelve-year-old self, everything about that day had seemed normal.

  What I did remember was the look of relief on my mother’s face when I walked through the door, as if she’d half expec
ted to never see me again.

  I wondered if Mason ever considered running off with me. I used to imagine how differently my life would’ve unfolded if he had. Would we have circled the globe ten times over, only to find ourselves at a similar crossroads between my estranged parents?

  Maybe this was all inevitable. Absconded from my mother, or abandoned by my father, the outcome would’ve been the same: a life shrouded in secrets. The fruitless search for the disparate parts of myself. All roads converging on this exact moment in my father’s foyer.

  My mother stepping out of the elevator, looking tired and harried, yet beautiful as ever.

  “Hello, Jett.” She clutched a brown-paper shopping bag in front of her like a talisman against some perceived evil.

  “Mom,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “You won’t return my calls, so I thought I’d come to you.” She scanned the foyer, her gaze lingering on the open door to the studio. “I’d like to speak with my daughter alone.”

  “You can talk in the apartment,” Mason said. “I’ll be in my studio—”

  “Is there some reason we can’t talk in there?”

  She didn’t wait for him to respond before she stepped inside. Mason shot me a look of apprehension before he followed. I trailed behind them both, noting his gaze flickering toward his work in progress. Thankfully, only the back of the canvas was visible from this side of the room.

  “The apartment would be more comfortable,” he said.

  “This will do fine. I’m not staying long.”

  My mother stood ramrod-straight, forcing Mason to walk around her on his way to the door. My own spine felt about as sturdy as dried spaghetti in comparison. He lingered in the doorway; his expression guarded.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. I could handle my mother alone; after all, I had six years of training under my belt. Mason sighed; his gaze wary.

  “I’ll be in the apartment if you need me,” he said, then shut the door.

  My mother and I assessed one another in the resulting silence. She was wearing the silk scarf I’d given her last Mother’s Day over a striped dress that emphasized her waifish figure.

  “Have you been crying, Jett?”

  I sucked in a loud breath through my nose. “It’s nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.” She looked me over with a small, sad smile. “Is that a new dress?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s nice,” she said. “You look good.”

  My mother’s eyes appeared sunken, like she hadn’t slept in days. I wondered if she’d stopped eating, and if I asked her, would she tell the truth. She set her purse and the shopping bag on the floor and opened her arms to me.

  “Can I get a hug?”

  I remained rooted in place. I didn’t want her to touch me. I was convinced she’d be able to read the truth on my skin like Braille. She gave up on the hug after a few seconds, her smile tightening into a wince as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear—hair the same color and thickness as mine, only shorter.

  Guilt rapped its knuckles on the back door of my heart. I pinched the inside of my wrist, both as penance for treating her coldly and to distract myself.

  “Do you want to show me what you’ve been working on?” she asked.

  It seemed like a safe enough way to fill the silence.

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far to gather my sketchbooks. My mother stepped up to the workbench, and I laid my drawings out for her perusal. She fingered the pages with care, her gaze drifting over depictions of clouds and random body parts, distant cityscapes.

  “These are lovely.” She lingered over a series of sketches featuring my daddy’s hands holding and manipulating various objects: paintbrushes, bedsheets, flowers, my feet. “These are Mason’s hands.”

  “Um...yeah,” I said. Apparently, time plus wear and tear in the studio hadn’t altered his hands so as to make them unrecognizable. I was glad I’d known better than to store the drawings of his cock with my regular sketches.

  My mother cleared her throat but said nothing in response. You could fill volumes of empty pages with everything she’d left unsaid over the years. Grimacing, she pressed a hand to her stomach.

  I had to ask. “When was the last time you ate?”

  She breathed through what appeared to be an intense abdominal cramp. “I had coffee this morning.”

  So, this was how she was going to punish me for not staying in touch. By refusing to take care of herself. I clenched my jaw. “I’ll get you something from the apartment—”

  “No,” she snapped. Then, more calmly, she added, “I have a granola bar in my bag.”

  Hands shaking with frustration, I snatched her purse from the floor and rifled through it until I came across a fruit-and-nut bar. She took her time opening the package, and even more time forcing herself to take a bite.

  Her gaze flitted about the studio as she chewed. I counted my breaths. One. Don’t see the painting. Two. Don’t ask what Mason’s been working on—

  “Is that Mason’s newest piece?” She pointed to the back of the large canvas by the window. The one that, on its front, depicted her teenage daughter masturbating with no clothes on.

  “It’s not finished,” I said, trying to sound detached. “He doesn’t want anyone to see it yet.”

  She took a few steps toward the painting. My heart kicked against my sternum. I shadowed her, grabbing her hand before she could reach the easel.

  “He doesn’t like people to see his work before it’s done.”

  She tugged free from my grasp and continued on, determined. Short of physically restraining her, there was no way to stop my mother from seeing the painting.

  I hugged myself as a bolt of panic ripped through me like lightning. Bile washed the back of my throat. If she saw it, if she assumed the truth and confronted me about what we’d done... I was going to lose it.

  If my body were a house, my mother would be the tornado blowing the roof off its frame and tearing the doors from their hinges. She rounded the easel and then abruptly stopped.

  She cupped a hand over her mouth.

  “Oh, God... No.”

  The look of abject horror on her face made my stomach coil in on itself.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said, though I had a feeling it was indeed exactly what she thought. “His model called in sick. I offered to take her place.”

  “And he let you?” Her voice was pure agony. The sound of it made my stomach cramp, like a child wailing after hearing its mother’s screams. Tears streamed down her face. “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

  “Knew what would happen?”

  My mother wiped her cheeks and turned to the window like she couldn’t stand to look at either version of me.

  “Just tell me the truth. Has he touched you?”

  “You mean like, a hug?” Even now, I was still desperately clinging to the hope that I could spin this, that I could somehow convince her the painting was the extent of our physical relationship.

  “Don’t play dumb, Jett. Has Mason put his cock inside you?”

  I nearly burst into giggles at the realization that Mason’s restraint—infuriating as it was—had inadvertently saved me the burden of lying.

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  I wasn’t sure if she believed me but asking would only undermine my insistence.

  She made her way back to the workbench, giving the futon a wide berth, as if its presence alone was enough to make her sick. She cried silently for over a minute, then rubbed her eyes and said, “This is all my fault. I should’ve told you what he was, why I made him leave.”

  “Why did you make him leave?” I moved around to the opposite side of the workbench so I could look straight at her.

  “He didn’t tell you?” She choked out a laugh.

  “Well someone had better tell me, because I’m si
ck of being kept in the fucking dark about my own childhood.”

  I stood across from her and waited. I waited a long time. Finally, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and met my gaze.

  “I made Mason leave, to protect you.”

  A shiver scurried up my spine as six years’ worth of pain and anger lodged in my throat.

  “Protect me from what?” My voice trembled. “He might not be my real father, but he was a good father to me. What were you so afraid of?”

  She reached beneath the table and pulled out the shopping bag.

  “See for yourself.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  My mouth went dry as cotton. This was it, one piece of a puzzle I had come all this way to put together.

  Was I ready to see the whole picture?

  Hesitantly, I reached into the bag and pulled out a stack of sketchbooks. The pages were old and frayed around the edges. I took a deep breath and drew back the cover on the top book. The pencil lines were smudged from having been compressed, but the shape they made was unmistakably that of a sleeping child.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “It’s you.”

  I turned the page. There I was around the age of two in duck-themed pajama bottoms, then again, clutching a stuffed clown fish. Me wrapped in moon-and-star sheets with one foot off the mattress, my head just south of the pillow.

  I closed the first sketchbook and moved on to the next. It was the same thing. Sketch after sketch of me asleep, first in my old twin bed, then in what appeared to be my father’s bed, from the time I was little to around the age of eleven.

  “Mason drew these?”

  My mother nodded.

  I watched myself grow up across the pages, saw my limbs lengthen and my hair darken, my face and figure sharpen. Back then, my father couldn’t afford the most spacious living arrangements, so he would crash on the couch and let me sleep in his bed. He would've had to have been slipping into his room to draw me every weekend, quiet as a ghost, for over a decade to capture this progression.