That’s another reason I didn’t take her virginity. Fear that I’d break the honey sweetness that radiates from every inch of her. But like this… with her in the water, I can’t get to her, and I don’t want to.
I sit on the stream bank and unbuckle my belt. Her ballet outfits were always tight but now I don’t have to imagine her bare tits swaying, the flashes of her pink cunt. I can see it all as she spins for me.
My cock hurts when I take it in my fist. It’s as big and ugly as I am, as marked with scars and tattoos. The girl’s breath catches in her throat as I tug, but she keeps dancing, pretending to be oblivious. We’re both pretending now. I shouldn’t be doing this, I swore I’d let her be happy with my brothers, with some other, less damaged man. But here I am, stroking off to her, letting her see exactly how I feel.
I pull myself tight and fast. I can almost taste her rose-pink nipples, almost feel her sweet breath at my throat. Her dancing slows. She runs her hands over her tits, and I make a guttural sound like a wounded dog. That’s all I am, a filthy beast panting after a beauty I could never possess.
Our eyes meet again, and I look away, pain and lust rising in me like a tide. I disgust myself, but I can’t stop pumping, can’t stop making myself come to her. I think of her on her knees with my gun in her mouth and my balls tighten up.
“More. Keep moving.”
She does. When she danced ballet, she was so scared she’d get something wrong and disappoint her teachers. Now she’s moving like the water around her, rippling like the afternoon sun. In my dreams, she’s always dressed as a ballerina, one leg on the barre as I fuck her. But this is better. This is everything.
I come with a grunt, striping white across my hands. I look up and the treetops spin. Stupid. Reckless.
A whimper makes me open my eyes. The girl is standing stock-still in the water, a hand pressed between her legs. My semi-hard cock pulses. “You liked that, huh?”
She doesn’t say anything, but her head gives the slightest incline. I scrape out a laugh. “Are you gonna rub your little cunt? Show me how much you liked it?”
Her soft lips part and she mumbles something.
“What?”
“Would you… do it for me?”
I look at her, a glowing goddess in the crystal stream. I look at myself, at the mess of cum and scar tissue and ink and deer blood on my hands. “You deserve better, Pryntsesa.”
Pink tinges her pale cheeks. “I like when you call me that.”
For a second I feel my lips curving upward, then my stomach plummets. All at once I feel like I do when I’m in public without a gun. Naked. I turn, wiping my palms on the grass. “You need to leave. Get your slutty dress on and go back to the house.”
The girl’s face falls. She takes her hands away from her pussy. That small sacred place I’ll never corrupt.
“Adriano… Can’t I just like you?”
That twisting feeling in my chest again. Why can’t this girl be bitchier? Why can’t she cry and whine and beg?
I stand, pulling up the fly on my stained hunting pants. “There’s nothing to like.”
“Maybe we just see you differently.”
“Are you out of your mind, little girl? I threatened to kill you a hundred times. I fucked your mouth with a gun. Twice. And I liked it.”
I would have done anything Eli ordered me to do, but when January Whitehall arrived, I wanted to abuse her. I hated her, this princess that had everything—that everyone wanted. I was already coming to thoughts of her every night and now she was in my home, invading my space as well as my head. I wanted to kill her. At least I thought I did.
“I like you,” she says softly. “Under everything, I think you have a good heart.”
I bark out a laugh. “You gonna cure me with your love, little girl?”
She lowers her head, her bare tits shining in the setting sun. I want to find her a towel. I want her to leave and never come back.
“Wake up, Pryntsesa,” I say, striding back to the deer. “I want to shoot a load in you, same as any straight man with eyes, but I’m not some dog you’re gonna train. This is where I belong.”
It’s still too soon to carve the meat but I pick up my knife and slice into the front leg. I want to hurt something that can’t feel. I want to be alone. There aren’t enough intact places inside me for me to love. How can she not see that?
She steps out of the water, brushing her hands across her sides. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she picks up her dress and pulls it over her head. Her movements are exaggerated. She wants me to look. She’s changing already. Living at Velvet House, away from her family and the threat of Parker, there’s something flirtatious to her that wasn’t there before. But I don’t mourn her inexperience. She has an innocence of heart, not body. She’ll always be pure, sweet and soft as a cloud.
When she’s dressed and her shoes are back on her feet, she walks toward me carefully, as if I was a caged bear.
