Page 182 of Lessons in Cruelty

She doesn’t look in my direction.

After five slow counts, I sneak into the bathroom, clutching the front of my ruined dress closed with my hand, grimacing at the feel of my cum-soaked panties. I slip into the shower as soon as the water is warm enough to bear, and peel my underwear off with a grimace.

Hot water stings the cut on my ribs and the prick on my throat, and makes the bite mark on my tit ache and throb. I need slow five counts to work up the courage to look down and assess the damage. With the blood already washed off, the knife wound on my torso looks like a tiny little tear in my skin.

Not wide, not deep.

So why does it hurt so fucking much?

The bite marks on my breast are red and angry looking, but it doesn’t look like he punctured my skin. I hiss when I touch myself, though. That’s gonna bruise.

There’s a bar of soap in here that one of the sorority sisters must have left behind. I lather up every inch of my skin, even my hair.

Especially between my legs, my cunt’s pH balance be damned.

I want him off me. Gone. Every trace.

I scrub harder. Like I’m trying to erase fingerprints from a crime scene.

Like I’ve done before, too many times. Kai’s stains aren’t permanent. I’ve washed off worse.

Dad’s complete lack of interest when I try to tell him there’s no food in the house.

The memory of Uncle Lenny’s hands.

Much worse.

This is nothing.

But the more I scrub, the more I can feel him.

His crushing weight.

His hot skin.

That sound he made when I grabbed his dick. When he came. I didn’t expect how much it would turn me on, hearing him give in like that.

Fuck!

I wish I could scream, but then I’d have everyone in the house running in here, seeing me like this.

Naked, damaged, broken.

That’s not going to happen.

What Kai did tonight will never happen again. It’s pathetic, and sad, and feels like a step backward, but from now on, I won’t go anywhere alone. Because that’s when he knows he can play with me as hard and rough as he wants.

I’m no snitch. Never have been, never will be.

That’s something that runs deep in Riversiders’ blood.

There’s a pair of towels near the sink, and one of them is just large enough to cover me from nipples to non-existent thigh gap. I don’t bother looking at myself in the mirror, because I know I look like shit.

…you’re so fucking beaut⁠—

Melissa lays her phone on her stomach when I come back into our bedroom. “Where the hell were you?”

“Bathroom.”