Page 104 of Burn for Her
Gripping the wheel with both hands she said, “They dressed me like a doll. Made me take etiquette and dancing classes. I was groomed to please and curtsy and charm. As a made-up doll, I felt like I had no say. I was just a puppet who wasn’t allowed to speak up for myself or feel things. Just do as I was told.” Up ahead was the exit she needed to head home. Lena flicked her blinker, habitually looked behind her, and frowned because the damn mirrors weren’t there. “I hated every second of my childhood—from the parties to the nannies, to the private school system and later… the match making.”
A guy in a navy-blue hoodie was walking along the side of the road. She sped past him, veering into the opposite lane, then looped onto the ramp and hopped on the highway.
“The more my parents pushed me—when they were around to actually do it themselves—the more I rebelled. I remember my first fight. It was with this asshole my senior year in high school. He would pull my hair all the time in the hallway. He’d done it for three years, every day. My mother taught me to be tolerant. ‘It’s nothing more than harmless flirting,’ she’d say. But I hated it. So, this one day, just after English, we were switching classes and I see his smug face come straight at me from the opposite end of the hall. I didn’t wait for him to reach out and yank my hair. Instead, I dropped everything except my heaviest book, and I clubbed him upside the head with it.”
She smiled at the memory.
“That smack of the book on his face was music to my ears. He careened, holding his face. Then his temper rose and fists closed.” Lena’s pulse sped up. “He tried to intimidate me. Pressed me against the lockers. Shoved his hand on my chest to pin me while he called me names and chewed me out for what I did.”
A terrifying growl rumbled out of Dorian’s chest, but his gaze remained fixed on the road.
“I slapped him as hard as I could. But it was weak. So damn weak. Then I pushed against him, but he had about six inches and fifty pounds on me so that wasn’t helpful. He slammed me against the lockers again, and I cracked the back of my head. Then I saw red. Everyone was watching, he was laughing at me, then he pulled my hair hard enough to rip some of it out. I jabbed my fist into his nose and broke it. Broke my thumb too because I didn’t have a clue how to make a proper fist. They don’t teach you that stuff in etiquette class. Then teachers interfered, and I was suspended for two weeks.”
Best two weeks of her adolescence too. Her parents were so disgusted by her behavior, they wouldn’t even look at her, so she had time to herself with no parties, dinners, or snobby match ups with other pompous assholes her age.
“The rush of swinging my fist and not taking his shit anymore was worth the price of my broken thumb.”
But that wasn’t all…
“I’d finally stood up for myself.” Her stomach clenched because she was about to tell him something she hadn’t thought about for a long time. “Before that fight…” She gulped down her nerves, “I’d been attacked by someone else.”
Dorian’s next growl was stronger. She took that as a sign that he was maybe getting better again.
“My parents were in the middle of a big property deal. The guy who owned the land they wanted in Vermont said he’d only sell them the property if he got to fuck me.”
She was sixteen at the time.
“I didn’t know it, but when my mom picked out this ridiculous dress and told me I had to wear a set of blue lace lingerie under it… I started asking questions. She said I was to just have dinner with the guy. Alone.” She gripped the wheel tighter. “It was almost too late when I realized I was the dinner.”
Dorian let out a vicious hiss.
“I froze,” she admitted. “He paid our bill and then said he was going to drive me home. He didn’t. We sat in a parking lot and he put his hand in between my thighs. I was so scared and mad and hurt because when I threatened to tell my parents what he was doing, he laughed in my face and slapped me. He told me this was part of their negotiation. My untouched body for sixteen-hundred acres containing six of the largest interconnecting mountain peaks for another ski resort. My parents sold my virginity to grow their portfolio. Then he told me he’d bought the dress and underwear and gave it to my mother to dress me in for that night. He called me his pretty little doll. His pretty little fuck doll.”
Dorian slammed his fist into the dashboard. Another horribly vicious noise ripped out of him. Was it terrible that she liked his reaction? Was it twisted that his violent outburst made her feel safe?
Lena kept talking. If making him mad and furious, triggering his protective instincts, igniting passion of any level kept him going right now, she would happily confess her whole life story to him.
“He smacked me a couple more times when I started crying. So, I stopped. Then he unzipped his pants and pulled his dick out. I was terrified of what he was going to make me do. I pushed myself against the door to put as much space between the two of us as possible. He made me flash him my panties while he jerked himself off in the driver’s seat and told me to watch.” She’d been scared to death. “I didn’t know how to get out of it, so I—” She blew out a puff of air. “I did all the things my mother pressed upon me. I was tolerant. Complacent… obedient.”
Dorian made a strangled noise.
“He didn’t touch me, even after he came all over his slacks and hand,” she said, now worried Dorian would shred the car in a fit of rage. “I managed to talk him into taking me to a hotel. I told him if I was going to give him my virginity, I wanted to be treated like a spoiled fuck doll, not a cheap one. He let me pick the hotel. When he pulled up to the valet, I got out first and sprinted into the lobby, screaming my head off. The concierge knew me, my parents always ate dinner in their restaurant. He kept me hidden in the back and called the cops.”
Her parents hated her for that. The lawyers, the press, the truth—it cost them bank to keep it all quiet. And they lost the deal on the property. Her mother was furious. Her father never spoke another word to her after that.
“So back to the hair pulling asshole,” she said, smiling. “I was thrilled to have finally found my voice. If it was violent, so be it. I’d been tolerant long enough with him too, so when I got suspended for two weeks, I signed up for boxing lessons. That dickwad never pulled my hair again. And I stopped being a complacent, fearful little mouse in a den of lions.”
She kept talking and talking, trying to fill the empty space between them the whole way home. Lena bit her lip and sped faster, hating that she kept looking in her rearview and it wasn’t there.
“I trained with this one guy,” she jabbered on. “His name was Mick. You would have liked him. He taught me most of what I know now. Then one day he asks me if I want to get my hands dirty and fight with some big boys. I was all for it, so he brought me to my first underground fight as a spectator. No gloves. No protection. No mercy. Just sweat and raw aggression with a lot of pounding. I was like an addict after that. The entire time I trained in the boxing ring, I burned my anger off with the punching bag, or Mick, since he was the only one who gave me the time of day there. I convinced him to finally let me into my first fight. When I hopped into the circle with sweat, piss, blood, and men screaming and cheering over each other surrounding me? Something clicked into place in my heart. I had to prove myself first, of course.” She pulled off on an exit to fill up their gas tank on that note. Dorian still hadn’t said a word, but that was okay. His color looked better at least. And they were almost home.
Hopping back inside, she strapped her seatbelt back on and looked over at Dorian. Sweat trickled down his temples and his jaw clenched, making the lines of his profile sharper. Lena started the car up and headed out again. She looked back and cursed the fact that she kept trying to use a mirror that wasn’t there.
A figure ran past her on the right. A guy in a blue hoodie. The same guy she saw earlier. Wait… what? No. By the time her head caught up with her body, she looked again, and the guy was gone.
Okay, wow, stress really did awful things to a person’s mind.
Lena wasn’t mentioning it to Dorian. Not without knowing for sure it wasn’t just a trick of her exhausted mind. He had too much on his plate as it was. But she needed to keep on guard for both their sakes.