Blue Light of Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

kept hopping and bucking and wailing as his hand rained down, until she was exhausted. Breathlessness, not remorse, stole the wind from her panicked cries; burned-out adrenaline took the kick out of her legs. Her struggles waned in fits and starts until she could only lay like an old doll over his table, trying to muster up the strength to fight back.
    “Never!” he bellowed, punctuating every word with one more terrible CRACK! “Run! From! Me! Again!”
    She tried again to apologize, gulped air, and shook her head instead.
    He stopped, but she could see his shadow on the wall, his hand still high, wanting to fall. She didn’t move, not even a twitch, and never mind how badly she needed to squirm and rub at herself. At last he released her and stood back. Those green markings were still blazoned over his skin, actually throbbing with his pulse in crazy harmony with her blistered bottom. He glared at her, plainly seething, and finally snarled, “I’ll call you at whatever hour I wish. You are here to answer my desires. No more insults!”
    All of Skye’s fractured breath left her as a baffled, “Wha—?” which he terminated by pointing a claw at her.
    “No more! You are here to serve me! Serve!”
    She obeyed, confusion succeeding where spankings alone had not, and for the first time in seven long, difficult years, tears flooded her eyes and fell. She knelt down to coax his member out (and it took a lot of coaxing), aware only of his hoarse, furious breath, and the way his hands kept flexing from fists into hooks and back again at his sides. She had no idea what she’d said to provoke him, and couldn’t even ask. She only huddled at his thigh, feeling dirty and used, until he brusquely ordered her up.
    She turned toward the table fast, but he saw her face. She assumed the position and waited, evening out her breath, trembling.
    It was a long wait.
    He muttered again. She heard him pace curtly back and forth behind her for a few brief seconds. When he touched her, it wasn’t an angry grip. When he took her, it wasn’t hard and hurtful. She cried a little more, relieved, but tried to be quiet about it.
    It took him longer to than usual to finish and she could tell he was trying to hurry by the end, hissing under his breath and maybe swearing (the words had a brittle, ugly sound to them). When it was finally over, she didn’t wait for him to open the door, but yanked her panties up and fled into the darkened hall back to her own room, where she threw herself on the bed and sobbed into the forgiving muffle of her pillow.
    She thought crying would make her feel better, that it would magically gather up all the hurt and pour it out of her with the tears, but it didn’t. If anything, she felt worse, as though she’d betrayed herself, betrayed maybe even her parents by making it possible to compare her misery tonight with her grief at their passing. She felt weak and pathetic and shameful, which only made her cry harder, and soon she didn’t even care about the fiery sting still throbbing through her bottom. Her mind spun with uncertainty and accusations and humiliation: ‘I could lose the house without crying, but I couldn’t get through this,’ she kept thinking, or, ‘I could drop out of school and be a janitor, but I couldn’t get through this,’ but mostly it was, ‘What did I say ? Why was he yelling at me? What did I say ?’
    The confusion never ebbed, but her tears eventually did, and once they had, she could hear him in the hall, pacing in front of her door. He was there almost an hour, and then he hissed again and stalked into the exercise room.
    Skye fell asleep lying on her stomach with one hand twisted back and lightly cupping one burning cheek, listening to the sound of him running on the incline. Running, hissing, and swearing.

    * * *
     
    He made it easy to avoid him. She stayed in her room until hunger drove her out, and the hunger had to be extremely compelling before she made herself drink