Page 19 of Nasty
Sam’s smile was jagged and unfriendly. “Just for the record, I’m not a child molester. I do have a daughter. She’s a year older than you, and I adore her more than life itself. I’d never lay a finger on her. I’m not a child molester.”
I didn’t flinch. I stayed very, very still. “Am I not a child?” I asked slowly.
Sam’s eyes narrowed into slits. “In the state of South Carolina, you can legally consent to have sex at sixteen.”
“I’m not sixteen. I’m fifteen. And I didn’t consent to this.”
A ripple of anger flared in Sam’s eyes. “Your father told me you were old enough,” he hissed. He didn’t mention anything about the fact that I’d just told him I hadn’t given my consent, though. Convenient.
“Sixsmith lies about things. He’s an addict. I’m guessing you deal with addicts on a daily basis. You should know they can’t be trusted,” I said.
A thick red stripe had developed across Sam’s cheeks. He looked as if he were about to swell up and explode all over the inside of his shockingly expensive SUV. “No one can find out about this, Sera. Do you understand what will happen if you breathe a word of this to someone at school? Your father will pay the price. We’ll hurt him. We’ll hurt him real fucking bad.”
He really had no idea if he thought he could use Sixsmith’s safety as a bargaining chip for my silence. A surge of excitement hit me as I considered the idea: I told the first person I came across what happened here with Sam. And as a result, Halloran would pay for what he was about to do, and Sixsmith would end up dead in a ditch somewhere, the birds eating out his eyeballs before his mangled body was discovered.
It would solve all of our problems. It would be better without Sixsmith, even if Amy and I ended up in the foster care system. But then, would she and I be placed in a home together? We were both teenagers now. A family wasn’t likely to take both of us on. And what would happen to her in a stranger’s home, if I wasn’t there to protect her? I turned away from Sam, looking out of the window, watching the town fly past as we traveled through familiar streets and suburbs.
Sam didn’t speak to me again, but his gaze was crawling all over my skin like a thousand fire ants. Soon, we reached his bar. The place was known around town as The Bar. The establishment had been known as The Dutchman once upon a time, probably as a tip of the cap to Sam’s Dutch roots, but the locals hadn’t called it that in years.
Sam got out of the car, and I saw his driver for the first time—a young guy I recognized from high school. Peter Fairley. He’d graduated last year and told everyone he was going to move out to California, but here he was, playing chauffeur to the sketchiest thug in Montmorenci. His eyes met mine, and the guilt I saw there told me enough: he recognized me, and I recognized him. He knew perfectly well what was about to happen, and he wasn’t going to do a damn thing to stop it.
Sam didn’t take me into the bar through the front door. He took me in through the back, leading me up a flight of rickety, steep steps; he grunted and heaved as he dragged himself up behind me, blocking my way, just in case I decided I wanted to turn tail and flee.
The residence above the bar was small but plush and decorated in dark hues of crimson and grey. It smelled alien and musky—a masculine, faintly unclean smell that itched at the back of my nose. Not a pleasant smell at all.
“Go and wait for me in the living room,” Sam ordered Peter. “And you,” he told me, placing his hand in the small of my back. “We’re going to the end room there.”
I’d hoped he would leave me for a moment, so I could get myself together, but he followed directly behind me, his hand forcefully moving me forward. We passed a room to our right, and a pair of wide, brown eyes met mine—a young girl with dark hair, sitting on an overstuffed couch with a book in her hand. She jumped when she saw me, leaning forward, as if she were stunned to see another young woman inside the apartment. Must be the daughter Sam had mentioned back in the car, I reasoned. All thoughts of her vanished when Sam shoved me non-too-gently into the room at the end of the hallway, and I saw the huge, king sized bed inside.
My heart turned to lead, sinking inside my chest. On top of the sheets: a pair of handcuffs and a red rubber ball attached to a length of black webbing. Sam closed the door behind us. He saw me staring at the cuffs and the ball, and he tutted under his breath. “You know what that is?” he asked, gesturing to the red ball.
“No.” My voice was a whisper.
He chuckled. “Such innocence. I love it. That is a ball gag.” He picked it up from the bed and held it up in his hands. “Here. Open your mouth.”
Panic sang through me, loud and urgent. “I—No. I don’t want—”
“Open your fucking mouth,” Sam snarled. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as you’re told.”
God. Why hadn’t I secreted a knife into my pocket before I left the house? I knew where Sixsmith kept his small weapons stash. He’d threatened me with a flick knife before that I would easily have been able to keep hidden. I hadn’t been thinking straight, though. I eyed the ball gag, my heartbeat frantically thumping all over my body. I had to do it. I just had to. Closing my eyes, I opened my mouth. My jaw almost popped out of its socket as Sam jammed the large rubber ball into my mouth, past my teeth, and I whimpered, trying to force it back out again.
Sam hissed as he held the ball in place, wrapping the webbing around my head, and fastening it tightly. He leaned into my face, and I could see the faint, spidery blood shot veins in the yellowed whites of his eyes. “Now we won’t have to worry about you screaming.”
I could barely breathe. The ball in my mouth made it hard to swallow, too, which made my ever-increasing fear even worse.
“The handcuffs are just in case,” he told me, leering as he looked down at my chest. “If you’re a good girl, and you don’t fight me, I won’t use them. But if you give me any trouble, I won’t hesitate to restrain you. Do you understand?”
Tears were welling in my eyes. I could do nothing but nod.
He took hold of my shirt, and he tore it over my head, then, his breath quickening as he surveyed my bra, and my breasts within. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I’d convinced myself that it would be easy to disassociate myself from my body as Sam Halloran took his fill of it. But as he stripped me bare, and he started to touch and grope me, I couldn’t help it. I cried. Silently. Pitifully. I hated myself for my weakness, but over the next three hours, as Sam got naked and forced himself on me, hitting and slapping at me when I didn’t obey him immediately, I wept uncontrollably.
At one point, I tried to hold back the pathetic sobs that escaped down my nose, worrying that Sam might grow angry with me, but he gripped my face in his hands, grinding his forehead against mine, and he said, “Don’t stop on my account, sweet girl. Your tears are better than Viagra. My dick hasn’t been this hard in years.”
So he touched me. He took the most precious thing I possessed from me. For hours, he shoved his way inside me, and I bore it because I had no other choice. When he was finally spent, he rolled off me and unfastened the ball gag, then flopped back onto the bed, panting and groaning like he was about to have a heart attack. “Go and get dressed, then get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to look at you anymore,”
I’d been dismissed. I gathered up my clothes and fled the room, not caring that I was still naked, or that Sam’s come was running down the insides of my thighs. As soon as I’d located the bathroom, I bent over the toilet and my body locked in a spasm as I violently threw up the contents of my stomach into the bowl. I wanted a shower. I needed to scrub the top five layers of my skin from my body, but I didn’t have time. I washed myself between my legs for the second time today, extra thoroughly this time, and when I dumped the fluffy grey towel on the floor that I’d used to dry myself, I was startled by the amount of blood that marked the material.
So much blood.
