Passion's Fury (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 2) (7 page)

“Uhhh, no, I think I can handle that part myself.”  She nearly laughed at the disappointed looks on all three faces. Such blatant admiration from three such hunky men should have made her uncomfortable, even embarrassed.  But it didn’t.  Instead, it made her feel something she’d never felt before in her life.  Attractive.  Even…giddy.

“Okay,” Caleb said.  “There are two towels hangin’ above your head.  All you have to do is reach up.  You sure you don’t need some help washin’ your hair?  Or…other parts?”

He looked so hopeful, she had to laugh.

He grinned and slid the glass door nearly shut.  “Call us when you’re ready to get dressed.”

She gave him a mock salute and waited until they left the bathroom before shimmying her track pants and panties off her hips and down her legs, tossing them on the bathroom floor.  Next her top and bra joined the pile.  She turned on the water, adjusting the temperature to her satisfaction.  Then, holding the shower head above her own head, she pushed the valve open, groaning with pleasure as hot water sprayed down over her. 
Omigod, that feels so wonderful! 
She didn’t recall any shower ever feeling so wonderful before.

She made short work of lathering and rinsing her hair, but it took her a little longer to wash and rinse herself, since she was sitting on parts that needed to be washed.  But she managed, finally turning off the water and pulling down one of the towels.  She wound up using both of them to dry off, because she not only had to dry herself, but also the bench she was sitting on.  After she covered as much of herself as possible with the towels, she called Simon.

He came in so fast, followed immediately by Caleb and Ash, she knew they’d been waiting just outside the door.  Caleb was carrying a small, square plastic table with a bra, panties, a pair of khaki shorts, and a purple knit tee top.  He set it down in front of the bench.  “Hope this is all right with you,” he said with a chuckle, “didn’t have a whole lot to choose from.”

“Tell me about it.  Unfortunately, it was all I could afford.  Looks like I’m going to be doing laundry every other day or so.”

“Don’t worry about it, baby, we’ll buy you some clothes,” Ash ventured.  “We would love to shower you with beautiful things.  And not from Walmart, either.”

Compressing her lips together, she shook her head.  “No, guys, I can’t let you do that.  It’s bad enough that I’m forced to depend on you for my food and to get around for the next four or five days.  I will not let you spend your money on buying me clothes.  Now, shoo, so I can get dressed.”

But then a wave of remorse hit her.  She looked up at them, stricken.  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.  I’m more grateful than I can ever say.  I’ll never be able to repay you for your kindness and generosity.”  Once again the enormity of her plight hit her and to her horror, she began to cry.  “Oh, fuck, not
this
again!  God damn it, I’m stronger than this?  Why can’t I stop crying?”

“Cryin’ is not a sign of weakness,” Caleb said, bending down and cupping her cheek in his palm.  “It’s a coping mechanism to help you deal with things that are overwhelmin’ you.  And right now, you’ve got a whole shit-load of stuff overwhelmin’ you.”

“It’s so embarrassing,” she sniffled, trying to control her sobs, with little success.  “I’m not a wuss, I’m a grown woman.  I never cry like this!”

“You’re a grown woman whose boss was murdered, who is a target of Mafia hit men, who found her boyfriend in bed with another woman, whose house was bombed, who walked over broken glass to escape being burned alive, and whose car blew up as she was trying to escape.  I think that’s earned a tear or two.”

She sniffled again.  “You know, when you put it that way, it’s actually a kind of miracle I’m not having a screaming, hysterical fit.”

Caleb smiled.  “Exactly.”  He leaned forward and placed his lips against her forehead.  “Do you need to use the toilet?”

She shook her head.

“Okay.  Go ahead and get dressed and we’ll take you downstairs, re-bandage your feet and talk.”

Talk.  Hmmm.  That could either be very, very good…or very, very bad. 
“Okay.  We’ll talk.”

She watched them leave, her mouth watering at their identical, gorgeous asses, flexing against tight jeans.  Her belly clenched.  Geez, these men were hot!  As soon as she was alone, she pushed aside the towels and put her feet through her underpants, pulling them up one buttock at a time.  She did the same with her khaki shorts.  Next came the bra and her knit tee.  “Okay, guys, I’m ready.”

Caleb came back in and knelt in front of her, unmindful of the wet floor beneath his knees.  Being very careful not to pull on her skin, he removed the duct tape and the plastic bags.  Then he picked her up and carried her out of the bathroom, passing a grinning Simon, who squeezed into the room behind them.  “He drew the short straw for cleanup duty tonight,” Caleb remarked and Kylie felt a sudden surge of remorse.

“God, I’m so sorry to be such a bother.  I could’ve picked up my own clothes.”

“Nonsense.  We are enjoyin’ lookin’ after you.

A girl could definitely get used to this,
she thought, hooking her arms around Caleb’s neck.  Without stopping to think, she nuzzled her face against his skin, breathing in his scent.  Musky.  Earthy.  Pure, primal male.

“Christ, sugar, you are one sweet little bundle,” he murmured as he started down the stairs.

“You mean one sweet
big
bundle.”

“Ah, yes.  Simon mentioned you had a problem with the way you look.  You need to quit thinkin’ like that, sugar, and you need to stop disparagin’ yourself, because we have no problem with you whatsoever.  To us, you’re perfect.”

“I’m a size sixteen!” she wailed.  “Well, at least the top half of me is a size sixteen.  The bottom half is a size ten.  But that’s big by most standards.”

“I heard that,” Ash said, emerging from the living room.  “No more remarks like that, young lady,” he said with mock sternness, “or there will be consequences.

Consequences?  Holy fuck! 
“You’re kidding, right?”

He just gave her a mysterious little half smile, glancing up at Simon who was coming down the stairs behind them.  “I never kid about consequences.  Just don’t say you weren’t warned.  C’mon, let’s go sit down.  We’ll bandage your feet while we talk.”

They entered the living room and Caleb sat down at the left end of the sofa with her sideways in his lap.  Ash sat at the opposite end and Simon sat in the middle, lifting Kylie’s feet into his lap and examining her wounds.  “They still look a little angry around the edges,” he said, “but there’s no sign of infection and some of the shallower cuts are beginning to form scabs.  I think Doc will be pleased when he sees you in four days’ time.”  He tore the paper off a roll of gauze and they all watched as he began wrapping it around her left foot and ankle, tucking the end into the top of the dressing.  “Is that too tight, darlin’?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “No, it’s good.”

When he finished wrapping her right foot, he sat back, keeping her feet in his lap.  Ash scooted forward so he could see her better, resting his elbows on his knees.  Caleb palmed the side of her head and pulled her gently against his chest, tucking her head under his chin.  “Okay, sweet thing.  Tell us about yourself.  Any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope.  I was an only child.  My father was a preacher, an extreme fundamentalist, who was a strict believer in corporal punishment.  He spanked me every night, no matter what I had done or didn’t do.  And if I really did something to rile him, he’d beat me with his belt, then lock me in a dark closet.” A shudder ran through her entire body, from her shoulders to her feet, remembering how hard she’d struggled against the darkness, fighting the terrified thoughts swooping at her from all directions, like demons from Hell.  She had curled up in a little ball on the floor, never knowing when he would come back.  Or even
if
he’d come back. “I was terrified of him,” she admitted.

Silence draped over them like a pall as Kylie soaked up the warmth and comfort from Caleb’s hand shaped around her head, Simon’s and Ash’s strokes against her legs. 

“Where was your mother durin’ all this?” Caleb finally asked in a shocked voice.  “Didn’t she even
try
to help you?”

“She couldn’t.”  Kylie’s voice was barely audible.  “Every time she tried to intervene, he would beat her even worse.”

The Raffertys sat, grim-faced, as Kylie lapsed into another silence, one that stretched into nearly ten minutes.

“Do you think you can continue, baby?” Ash finally asked.

“I-I think so.  I need to.”  She gave a tiny, self-deprecating little laugh.  “You’d think after talking about this for so many years with my psychiatrists, it would be easy.  But for some reason, with you guys, it’s…not.” And all of a sudden she was crying again.
Damn it!
  “I thought I was over this, but for some reason I’m feeling all those horrible, awful feelings again, like I’m dirty, sinful, helpless—”

“Christ, sugar.” Caleb lowered his head to press his lips against the top of her head.  “You are not dirty, sinful, helpless, or any of those other things your father made you feel.  You are a sweet, thoughtful, carin’ woman who is beautiful both inside and out.  You can tell us anything, you know, your secrets are safe with us.  We would never reveal anything you tell us in confidence.  And we would never judge you or think any less of you for things that happened to you, especially things that happened to you as a child.”

“Okay.”  Kylie sniffled and wiped her cheeks with her fingertips, rubbing them together before dropping them back in your lap.  “Where was I?”

Caleb smiled.  “Have you always lived in Philly?”

“No.”  She drew a quick, deep breath. “We started out in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, surrounded mostly by Amish families.  We did have electricity, but no TV, no phones, no computers, not even any books, except for the Bible.  Those were all instruments of Satan, according to my father.  My mother schooled me at home, using only books approved by my father and the deacons of our church.”

“I cannot imagine how awful that must have been,” Ash said.

“Yeah.  But it was all I knew, so it never occurred to me how much I was missing out on.  Besides, there was no one to turn to.  All of the people I grew up with were fellow church members, so they were as brainwashed as I was.  We moved to Philly when I was seven.  One day, two years later, a family with a girl around my age moved into a house across the street from us.  When she spotted me sitting under the tree in our front yard, she came over and sat down with me.  Her name was Janelle Goodman.

“God, what a contrast she was to everything I’d ever known.  She wore a bright pink T-shirt and purple shorts.  I was wearing an olive drab rayon dress that had once been my mother’s and was much too big and too long for me.  She wore her curly blonde hair in a ponytail.  My hair was drab and lifeless and hung down around my shoulders.  I was forbidden to associate with those outside our little cult.  But she was so bright and bubbly and full of life, I was fascinated by her.  The next day, when she got home from school, she invited me to come over to her house to watch TV.

“I knew I should have said no.  I knew that if my father found out, I would be soundly punished and locked in the closet.  I knew that if I had asked him, he would have flatly refused to let me go and given me a lecture on the perils of Satan’s world.  And I would still have been beaten and locked in the closet.  But he wasn’t there.  He was at church, where he spent all his time when he wasn’t out railing against gays or blacks or Muslims or some other group that, in his eyes, had earned God’s wrath and condemnation.  So, of course I said yes, deciding that what my father didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt me. It was my first act of outright defiance. And I was terrified of being found out.  So terrified, I almost backed out. But once I stepped foot into Janelle’s house, I knew I had done the right thing.

“She opened up a whole new world to me. A world filled with sunlight and love and bright, beautiful things. Vases filled with fresh flowers, photos, pictures on the walls, stuff that seemed to have no purpose other than to just sit there and be beautiful.  By comparison, our house was dark and drab, with no personal or decorative touches anywhere because, according to my father, those things did not glorify the Lord.”

Caleb’s arms tightened around her.  “I’m so sorry, sugar.  Your father sounds like a real asshole.”

“I remember Mrs. Goodman giving us glasses of ice-cold lemonade and I was bowled over by how delicious it was. The first time I stepped into Janelle’s bedroom, I felt like I had landed on an alien planet. It was pink and white and lacy and frilly and feminine. It was like this magical fairy realm filled with beautiful and wondrous and forbidden things. I couldn’t believe people actually lived like that.

“She was seriously into ballet, so that day we watched a DVD of
Swan Lake
with Natalya Makarova and Antony Dowell of England’s Royal Ballet.  I was enthralled.  It was the first time I had ever heard music that wasn’t atonal, unaccompanied church music and it just echoed inside me, so achingly beautiful I couldn’t stop crying. The dancing blew me away.  I was hooked.  I couldn’t understand how anything so beautiful could possibly be the evil my father insisted that it was.  I couldn’t contain my excitement.  The minute I got home, my mother knew by the look of sheer and utter joy on my face that I had been, as she phrased it, ‘dancing in Satan’s garden.’  I wound up telling her everything about it, and she said something that shocked the living daylights out of me.  She confessed that she had taken ballet lessons as a child and had absolutely loved them.  So, every day for the next two weeks, I begged her to let me take them.  We talked about it and she told me that she would do whatever it took to see to it that I got ballet lessons.  She talked to Janelle’s mother and all of a sudden, I was going to dance lessons with Janelle.  And my mother was making dresses for Mrs. Goodman and her friends to earn enough money to pay for them.