I’M AWAKE, but it feels like I’m still submerged in the deep dark abyss of oblivion. The rushing water floods my ears, hindering my hearing, and the waves of unconsciousness I’m still fighting off have my vision cloudy. It’s as if I’m no longer connected to my body, that I’m just floating there, limbless.
Desperately, I force myself to focus, to find a way to reconnect my mind to my body. Blurry eyes closed, I visualize that my hands are balling into fists and my toes are wiggling.
There isn’t a doubt in my mind Rafferty has found a way to drug me. My gut told me something was wrong with that shot of tequila, but I still allowed him to goad me into consuming it. I should have known he’d have a way to control what glass I took. He’s always been able to think five steps ahead of everyone. He’s manipulative, but more importantly, he’s highly calculating. He can walk circles around people and play games with them without them even realizing they’re participating.
I’m so far out of touch and out of sync with him. My ability to anticipate his moves is like a muscle I haven’t flexed in five years. I’m out of shape. Rusty. I need to get into fighting shape, or I’m never going to survive this.
Like a switch being flipped, sensation in my extremities returns and my vision corrects to its normal state. My breath comes in fast pants, a sound I hadn’t been able to hear seconds ago, as my fingers curl into the damp ground I lie on. The prickly, dew-covered blades of grass weave between my digits when I sluggishly push myself up into a sitting position.
It’s dark out here—really dark—making it clear we’re no longer at Rafferty’s house. There aren’t any sounds of life, no passing cars or the low chatter of other people. The only noise is the distant sound of a sprinkler system.
Looking to my right, I squint to make out any shapes to help get my bearings. In the distance is a structure nestled between tall trees, and in front of that are perfectly spaced … boulders? No, not boulders.
Gravestones.
I’m in a cemetery.
Why the fuck would he bring me out here?
The thought only lingers in my head for a second because as my eyes drift to my left, it all clicks. His perfectly executed—and morbid—plan becomes crystal clear. He hasn’t brought me out here to kill me and bury me in an empty grave. No, that would be too easy. Too quick for his liking. He brought me here so I will once and for all come face to face with the casualty of my treachery.
My heart is in my throat as I stare at the white marble gravestone before me. It’s elegant and pristine, just as it should be. The lettering engraved on the slab is just as delicate and intricate as the angel perched on top of it. But it’s not the angel watching over the resting place or the dead flowers in the ground in front of the stone that has my chest tightening and tears forming. It’s the little line between the two dates.
It’s a line that should have been longer and would have been had I not done what I did. It’s the simple symbol of a life that was cut short.
On my hands and knees with hot tears falling down my cheeks, I crawl closer so I can trace her name with my fingertip. The surge of guilt is suffocating, and when the sound of heavy footsteps comes from behind me, I can’t bring myself to face him. I know what I’ll see when I look at his face. Five years of grief and built-up hate.
“She treated you like a daughter.” His tone is a forlorn mix of rage and pain.
My nose burns as more tears fall. “I know,” I choke out, finger still tracing the delicate lines of her name.
He moves closer, but still, I can’t turn toward him. I don’t know how to. All the healing I thought I’d done in New York… I’m now starting to realize it was just well-executed denial and detachment. I’m no more recovered than Rafferty is. It was just easier to separate myself from the agony and fault when I didn’t have to face it daily like he has. Now, staring at the permanent monument of my choices has the patch work I’d done unraveling and falling at his feet.
“She was there for you when you had nowhere else to go. She was there for you when you got sick, with a washcloth for your forehead in hand. Every ballet you were in, she was sitting in the front row with a bouquet of pink roses waiting for you. She took you dress shopping for every dance because your own mother wasn’t there to do those things. Shit, in hindsight, maybe we should have all followed her lead and left you behind just like she fucking did.” With each word, he speaks nothing but the truth, and with each syllable, my heart breaks a little bit more inside my chest.
Rafferty squats down beside me, and when his fingers grip my chin in a bruising grip, I don’t fight him as he forces me to turn to him. The look on his face has me choking on a sob. Hurting him was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and I wish more than anything I never had to do it.
“Read the stone aloud. I want to hear you say it,” he snarls, blue eyes like murderous flames. When I hesitate, the sob sitting in my throat still stopping me from making a sound, his fingers dig harder into my face. “Read it. I won’t ask again, Posie.”
I don’t have to look at the stone again to know what it says. The engraving is now permanently etched in my brain. My soul. Never will I be able to forget it.
My tongue wets my lips, and I search deep for the strength to speak. “Mollie Elaine Wilde-Blackwell. Wife, daughter, and beloved mother. 1972 to 2017.” The dates come out like a strangled whisper.
“She was the mother you never had, but she was the only mother I ever had.” Each word drips with toxic venom. “And you took her from me. From us.”
My head shakes, but his hold on me limits the movement. “I never meant…”
“You never meant to?” The sour laugh that comes from him has my blood running cold. “I warned you many times what would happen, but you didn’t keep your goddamn whore mouth shut. That’s all you had to do. You just had to keep the promise you made me, and my mother would be alive, and my brother wouldn’t be…” he trails off like he can’t bring himself to admit what’s happening with Pax.
I want to ask him how bad things are with his brother. Based on the mostly empty bottle of alcohol he was carting around like a safety blanket tonight, I expect things aren’t well. That was my concern five years ago too.
Instead, I whimper the same thing I told Raff the night our world blew up. It’s like a script I’ve memorized, and it’s the one I will stick to till my dying breath. “I just wanted to help you. Protect you. I loved you and I couldn’t bear to see you in pain.” The Blackwell boys were my family, and I would gladly sacrifice myself to protect them if they needed me to. And that’s exactly what I did.
His free hand pounds on his chest to emphasize his wrath. “But I could bear the pain, and I told you this! Your protection wasn’t something that I needed or wanted. You sit here telling me you loved me but that’s bullshit. If you loved me, we wouldn’t be standing above my mother’s grave right now. If you loved me, you would have put that above your self-absorbed need to be my fucking savior.”
And that’s really what it comes down to. I saved someone who didn’t want to be saved. In doing so, I also sacrificed our relationship and his mom. And yet, knowing all of this, I would make the same choices I did five years ago. My heart may never heal from the damage I caused, but I know in the broken pieces left of it that I did the right thing. I did the only thing I could to keep him safe.
That’s why I swallow the emotion clogging my throat and look him in the eyes as I tell him, “I’m sorry you didn’t think you were worth being saved, and I’m sorry that you felt you had to endure that pain alone and in secret.”
“You’re about to be even more sorry because tonight is the night you will start to pay for your crimes against my family. The law may not be on my side, but make no mistake, Posie, you’re a cold-blooded killer. A murderer through and through, and I’m going to treat you as such.” His fingers loosen on my jaw, but it’s only so he can trail them down my throat and wrap them around my neck like a choking necklace. The air that had been in my lungs rushes out between my parted lips as he applies pressure. “Do you know how you’re going to pay?”
“No.”
The way his lips curl into a grin reminds me of the way he used to grin before he broke someone’s nose or ribs. Never has that grin been directed at me, and now that I know what it feels like to be the recipient, I pity the ones before me.
“You’re going to be mine again, Butterfly.” His other hand brushes the loose hair out of my eyes and tucks it behind my ear with a gentleness that is terrifying. “You’ll be my bitch, my entertainment, and if I’m in the mood, my whore. Everything I ask of you, you’ll do with a smile on your face and with unwavering enthusiasm.” His whore. He used to call me that, but before, it had my heart fluttering and stomach muscles clenching. The degrading term used to be a turn-on, but now it’s nothing more than a threat and wicked promise. “If I tell you to suck my cock, you’re going to tie your hair up and fall to your knees. Doesn’t matter when, where, or who’s watching, you’ll do it.”
Anger that he thinks I’d be willing to do this flares up inside me. “What’s stopping me from just biting it off?”
The way his face lights up tells me this is precisely the question he wanted me to ask. “You’ll be obedient because you care too much about your brain-damaged daddy to jeopardize his health or whatever remains of his happiness.”
And there it is.
Game, set, fucking match.
I knew Rafferty would play dirty, but I didn’t think he’d bring my father into this.
The dread that has been a constant pit in my stomach since I stepped foot back in Washington amplifies tenfold. So much so, I feel like I might puke. “Leave him out of this, Rafferty. He’s been through enough.”
“Yeah, from what I hear, the accident resulted in a pretty traumatic brain injury. Bummer. But at least he’s still breathing. We can’t say the same about my mother though, can we?” The taunt in his tone has me fighting against his hold. The second my hands slap against his chest and arms, his grip on my throat increases in warning. Reluctantly, I’m forced to cease my assault. “Relax. I’m not like you. I won’t kill him, but I will evict him. From what I’ve been told by his old nurses, stress is really bad for him. Causes seizures, right?”
The original injury to his brain resulted in a hemorrhagic stroke. The lasting effects from it have been detrimental and have permanently altered him. Never again will Henry Davenport be the man who raised me. Mourning that new reality was an unimaginably painful process and I lost my place at Juilliard because of it. Along with the loss of motor skills, memory, and cognitive issues, he developed epilepsy after the stroke. Preventing those subsequent seizures is now the utmost priority for him. Stress or agitation have been the constant and primary reason for their occurrence. The calmer he is, the better.
Moving him out of the only home he remembers ever living in will cause him an indescribable amount of stress and anxiety. Displacing him when he’s as unstable as he is now is the worst thing that we could possibly do to him. On top of that, his police department had a fundraiser for him to make the entire house wheelchair accessible. They made all the necessary modifications in the bathroom and bedroom so my aunt, Josephine, could properly care for him.
The money it would take to make another home accessible for him just isn’t in the budget right now. Which is something we knew the last time we feared we’d need to relocate him.
We almost lost the house eight months ago when the medical bills started to pile up. Jo didn’t see a way to keep it, and we made the heartbreaking decision to sell it to recoup as much money as we could. She was looking at small, bottom-floor apartments when our luck turned. Someone was looking to invest in property in Seattle and was willing to rent the house back to Jo and my dad.
At the time, I thought the deal was too good to be true, and now, staring at Rafferty’s knowing smirk, I know it was.
“It was you? You bought the house,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
He nods gleefully. “Technically, an LLC bought the house. Either way, I overpaid for the fucking thing, but it was worth every penny because now I’ve got you trapped.” His finger catches the tear that falls, wiping it away. “Are your tears for your dad or for my mom? Perhaps, they’re falling for me?”
“I can’t cry for all of you?”
“No,” he snaps. “Not when you’re the one who burned everything to the fucking ground. You’ve mistakenly made yourself believe you’re a victim in all this too. That you’ve also lost things. Even now, you look at me with pity and empathy in your eyes like we somehow share in this pain. I’m going to change that. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll hate me as much as I hate you.”
Hate him? I know the trouble I’m in, and I’m fully aware of how dangerous he’s become, but still, hating Rafferty doesn’t seem possible. How can you hate someone who used to be your other half? Hating him would be admitting the boy I once knew is really gone, and I’m not ready to grieve him too.
“Will making me hate you truly help you heal? Is that what you need, Raff?” Before I ever struck the match that blew everything up, I’d accepted there would be a day that Rafferty would take justice into his own hands. He even warned me that night in the rain that he would get his revenge. I told myself then I’d handle it with as much grace as I could when the time came, but now that he’s standing before me with murder in his eyes, I can’t help but want to run. To flee. Rafferty has gone ahead and done the one thing that could possibly make me stay. He’s threatened my dad. “Okay, give it your best shot. As long as you stay the fuck away from my father, I’ll play your sick game.”
His brows furrow with skepticism. “Just like that? You’d give in that easily? You disappoint me.”
“I won’t let you jeopardize my dad’s health.”
“The hypocrisy of that statement is laughable.” He falls quiet, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m trying to trick him. I’m sure that’s a move he expected from me, to act as if I’ll participate in his game willingly, only to run away when his guard is down. Finally, with a sigh, his hand releases from my throat, and he stands to his full height in front of me. If I had to guess, he must be close to six-three now. “Okay, Posie, let’s see just how compliant and obedient you can be.”
Sitting on my heels, I look up at him. “What are you going to do? Put a collar on me and make me perform tricks like a show dog?”
“Interesting idea, but no. You’re going to suck me off.” He grips his cock through his faded jeans. “My hate for you keeps me hard, and you’re going to do something about it.”
Lips parting in horror, I gape at him and then at the white marble headstone next to me. His mom’s name is visible in the sliver of moonlight. “Here? You can’t be serious.”
“Why? Would you be more comfortable in my car?”
My stomach turns and my palms become sweaty. What I should be arguing is the very notion that he wants me to do this and not the location of where it takes place. But there is something so macabre and vulgar about doing it over his mother’s final resting place. “I mean … yeah.”
He smirks, triumph clear in his expression. “And that is precisely why you’re doing it right here. Now get to it, I don’t have all night. Take me out and put me in your mouth.” My momentary hesitation has him growling. “You either do this voluntarily, or I will do it myself, and if I have to do it myself, I’ll break your jaw and make you suffocate on it. While you’re passed out, I’ll make all the necessary calls. Your dad will be sleeping in a bedbug-infested Motel 8 by tomorrow evening while your aunt scrambles to find him new accommodations.”
Six feet below me, Mollie is probably rolling in her grave as I sigh and reach for the button of his well-worn jeans. Rafferty now has more money than God, but by the way he dresses, you’d never know. His boots are scuffed and the laces shredded. His jeans look like they’re way past the point of being well-loved. He couldn’t give a single shit though. His mom was the one who always worried about outward appearances, the opinions of others mattered more to her than anything.
As I pull his zipper down, my heart sinks with it. An act that I used to do for him freely and eagerly is now my punishment. Any sense of familiarity is tarnished by the fact I’ve been coerced into this position. To protect myself from the reality before me, my brain tries to take me back to those happier times. It’s nothing more than a desperate dissociation tactic. Memories flash in my head like a nostalgic flip-book, but I can’t find salvation in them no matter how much I wish I could.
The only way I’m making it through this is to face it head-on.
Tugging his jeans down his hips just enough that I can better access his boxer briefs, I reach beneath the elastic waistband and pull him out. He’s hard and thick in my hand—far thicker than I remember him being. I start to wonder what else has changed about him but discover my answer when the silver metal glints in the moonlight. A barbell stud now goes through the tip of his dick.
“You did it. We used to talk about you getting it pierced,” I muse, remembering how he would tell me if I got my nipples pierced, he’d go with me and get an apadravya piercing. The idea undoubtedly intrigued me, but a part of me always thought he was just joking. The barbell that’s currently eye level with me tells me that I was very much wrong.
“Don’t think for a second that I did it for you,” he bites. “Now shut the fuck up, I’m tired of listening to you speak.” Tilting his hips forward, he pushes the pierced tip against my closed mouth. The bead of precum drips on my bottom lip. “Be a good girl and open.”
My breath hitches in my throat as my lips part. Rafferty wastes no time pushing forward. It’s been years since I’ve done this, and I have to remind myself to breathe through my nose as he nudges the back of my throat. My hands ball into fists at my side and I resist the urge to gag. Showing him any kind of weakness or distress will only further stroke his ego, and I have no desire to do such a thing.
I’m trying to get my body to reacclimate to his size. You’d think it’d be like riding a bike, but it is, in fact, not.
I must be moving too slow for his liking because before I can back away and stop it from happening, Rafferty’s fingers tangle in the strands of my already mussed hair and he holds me painfully in place as he surges deep down my throat.
“I told you to suck me off, not just sit there with my cock in your mouth,” he snaps, his punishing tone louder than the strangled sounds coming from me. My fingers pull on the waistband of his jeans, trying to push him away but he doesn’t move an inch. He continues to choke me with his dick.
The thought that he’ll just kill me now and bury me somewhere out here crosses my mind as my vision dims and black stars form around the corners. Instead of having a beautiful headstone like Mollie, I’ll be in an unmarked grave. The good news is my father won’t agonize over my mysterious disappearance. He’d have to actually remember who I was for that to happen.
My frantic slaps to his hips and thighs I’d started to do become more sluggish as my vision darkens more. Before I can truly drown, Rafferty pulls me from the deep end. Like I’m surfacing from being submerged underwater, I gasp loudly when his grip on my hair relaxes, and I can finally pull away from him.
Doubled over in front of him, I pull in greedy gulps of precious oxygen. “Please…” is all I manage to get out.
Tightening his hold on my tangled strands, he stands me back up on my knees. “Begging me already? I swear you used to have a better gag reflex than that. Now, do what I told you. If you don’t, I’ll fuck your mouth while you’re unconscious.”
“Fine!” I cry out, my shaking hands held up between us in surrender. “I’ll do what you ask. Just don’t fucking do that again.”
Wrapping my fingers around his shaft, I use the saliva left there to glide my hand up and down as I take the smooth head back into my mouth. Not wanting him to think I’m hesitating again, I waste no time finding a pace and rhythm that works for me. Raff used to like it best when I took my time and took him deep, but I don’t want to prolong this any longer than I must.
The quicker we get this over with, the faster I can get out of this godforsaken cemetery.
Licking up his length, I swirl my tongue around the tip. The way his breath hisses when I graze the ball of the piercing has me curious. To see if I can get him to make that noise again, I repeat the motion, this time staring up at him so I can see the shadowed expression on his face.
Something flutters in my belly when his eyes squeeze shut and air rushes through his parted lips in a pant-like sound. My reaction to this has me torn. One part of me is disgusted he’s making me do this, the other part of me is pleased I can still make him feel good. The fact he chose me as the person to make him feel that way used to make me feel like I won the lottery. It filled me with a sense of pride. The hallmark of Rafferty Blackwell’s personality has always been that he hates everyone, but he let me get close.
Now is a completely different scenario, and yet, those old feelings still emerge from the depths in which I stored them.
Curious to see if he’ll shove himself down my throat again if given the opportunity, I breathe deeply through my nose and take him as far back as I can manage without panicking. When his dick nudges the back of my throat, I expect him to force me to keep taking more, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he praises me. “That’s it. Fuck, Butterfly. See what happens when you use your mouth for good? Maybe had I kept you silent with my cock back then, we could have avoided all this.”
Nothing was going to silence me back then, but there’s no point in arguing with him now. My only response is to take him an inch deeper before pulling back so I can play with his piercing a little bit more. My jaw, which hasn’t been worked like this since him, aches, but I power through it.
A groan comes from him and his hips tilt toward my face, forcing him to shove deeper into my mouth. It’s a sound I know well and used to love. It would drive me absolutely mad but in the best way possible. My scalp prickles with sharp pain as he uses the strands of my hair to hold me perfectly in place. Hot salty cum drips down my throat and coats my tongue. He holds himself deep in my throat as he rides out his release. It’s just bordering on too much and it triggers my gag reflex once more, making my eyes water.
Both of our chests are heaving when he pulls out, but for completely different reasons. A combination of spit and cum drips off my lip, and before it can fall to the grass below me, Rafferty’s thumb catches it. His cold eyes lock with mine as he pushes it back into my mouth. On instinct, I suck the digit into my mouth and swirl my tongue around it.
“I knew you still had it in you,” he praises. “My good little whore has always liked getting me off.”
I hate that he’s right, and that’s why I don’t respond. What is there for me to say, anyway?
Wordlessly, he tucks himself back into his pants and zips up. “Alright, let’s get out of here. It’s getting late and I’m going to need you to stay well rested.”
