Hold Me Close(58)

“Harder. More. Slap her up a little. Good. Yeah. That’s good.”

Effie knows what’s going on, but she has never been made a part of it. Nothing stops her from leaving the bedroom and going out there. Well, nothing except fear. She doesn’t want to see what Daddy makes Heath do.

“I’ll kill her,” Daddy has told them, over and over. “Don’t think I won’t. If you come out? If you make a noise, Sister, if you let her know you’re in there? I will kill her. If you pull another stunt like you tried before? I will kill her. Not you, Sister. Not Brother. I’ll kill that woman. Do you want that on your conscience?”

Daddy knows how to keep them in line, and not only with the drugs. He knows what to say. How to threaten. Later, Effie will be unable to explain why she and Heath didn’t overpower him, why they didn’t try harder to escape. It’s too difficult to understand, even for herself, when she looks back and tries to think what kept them there.

Tonight it goes on longer than it has before. There is more talking. Daddy sounds angry. The soft, surprised murmur of a woman’s voice, protesting, is quickly silenced by the crack of flesh on flesh. A muffled sob.

“I don’t care,” Daddy says. “I don’t care what you want. I told you to get over there and make her cry!”

Effie does not cry. She plugs her ears with her fingers and rolls to face the wall, hoping it will be over soon. Because after, Daddy gives them whatever Heath asks for, and the food will be safe to eat for at least a day or two, and after this it will be some long weeks before they have to go through this again.

She doesn’t think she could sleep, but she must have, because the next thing she knows is the bed is dipping beneath a familiar weight and the lights have gone out. Heath moves against her back, carefully, cautiously, as if she’s ever turned him away. As if she ever could, after everything he’s done for her.

His breath hitches. She feels it against the skin of her neck. He’s respectful and hesitant, but Effie wriggles back against him so he can be the big spoon. She takes Heath’s arm and pulls it across her to tuck his hand beneath her chin. She is aware he’s touching her breasts, but it’s not until she wriggles again and feels something against her butt that her eyes open wide and she goes very, very still.

Effie’s a virgin, but she’s not stupid. At summer camp when she was twelve, there had been a silent sort of competition among the girls to see if they could catch sight of “boners.” They’d been easy to spot in the pool, where the boys made a game of trying to catch and dunk girls as an excuse to get closer.

She’d never been one of the girls who got caught. She’d seen the tented swim trunks and embarrassed expressions, but until this moment, Effie had never actually felt a boner. She wriggles again, experimentally. When Heath’s breath hitches again, she turns in his embrace to face him. She slides a knee between his thighs to press herself against him, harder.

She says his name.

Heath shakes; has she hurt him somehow? Effie seeks his face in the darkness, finds it with her fingertips. Tracing the arch of his brows, the line of his jaw, she tries to tell if he’d been injured, but bruises are impossible to feel.

“Are you okay?” Effie asks.

“No.”

“What happened?”

He kisses her, their lips mashing against their teeth. It takes her by surprise. It’s nothing like Effie had ever imagined her first kiss would be. It’s rough and fierce and takes her breath away. It hurts. She tastes copper, blood, her mouth opened in protest and Heath’s tongue stabbing inside and filling her up until she isn’t sure she can breathe.

She pushes at his chest, but he grabs her wrists and holds them so tight she gasps into his kiss. Between them, that hardness presses her belly. Heat. His fingers grind her wrists until pain flares, and she brings her knee up on instinct. She hits him in the upper thigh, but it must be close enough because Heath flinches and lets her go.


Effie slaps at him. Her hand connects somewhere on his face, a solid thud of skin on skin. Her other hand clutches at the front of his shirt. The fabric tears as he yanks himself away from her. The bed creaks, headboard scraping the wall and springs squealing.

He rolls until she’s pinned beneath him, her wrists trapped above her head. She can see nothing, only feel him, but his weight presses her into the lumpy mattress hard enough to send the springs beating into her. His breath gusts over her face until his mouth finds hers again. Heath shoves her knees apart with one of his. That hardness presses her belly.

“You want to know what he makes me do?” Heath says this low into her ear. “You really want to know?”

No, no, no, Effie doesn’t want to know, but something in the way Heath rubs himself against her, lower now, makes her incapable of answering. Her back arches as he finds the softness of her throat with his teeth. She cries out when he bites her.

No, no, this isn’t what it’s supposed to be like, she thinks, tossing her head from side to side as Heath’s mouth moves across her skin. He’s supposed to be gently insistent; she’s supposed to push him away and make him wait. It’s supposed to be on prom night, maybe, or the backseat of his car. She should be older than sixteen. It strikes her, suddenly, just how long she’s been kept here. It’s been years.

Heath’s mouth moves lower, over her collarbones. Lower still, his mouth hot and wet through the thin fabric of her T-shirt, and then he’s let go of her wrists to run his hands up, cupping her breasts. Her nipples are hard. When he pinches them both at the same time, Effie writhes and cries out a plea, but not for him to stop.