Pursued(130)

“Well I have news for you, princess—your real father is dead,” Charles snapped. “And that mutt won’t always be around. We’ll have our moment together—don’t worry about that.” With a last, low curse, he slammed the bedroom door, leaving Elise and the dog in the darkness.

“Oh, Buck.” Elise put her arms around the shaggy neck and buried her face in the big dog’s fur. “Why won’t he leave me alone? I know I shouldn’t have been doing…what he caught me doing. But I never…never thought…” Her last words dissolved into tears and Merrick’s heart ached with her worry and fear and shame. He felt her guilt and the certainty that this was somehow her fault—the certainty that the man, Charles, would have left her alone if he hadn’t caught her in the middle of some guilty act.

She must have been touching herself—pleasuring herself, he thought, his heart twisting as he watched her sob. That’s why she got so upset the first time she let me touch her—it brought back memories like this one. Brought back all the guilt and the shame she’s feeling right now at this moment.

Because Elise was feeling it, all over again, he realized. She wasn’t just watching as Merrick and the Elders were doing—she was reliving the whole thing. And the Gods only knew what came next. He took one last look at the sobbing girl and the dog, which was whining softly and licking her cheeks, and then turned to the Elders to insist that they stop this experience right now…

And then the scene changed.

* * * * *



It was Spring—Elise could feel it in the soft, warm air currents that caressed her skin as she walked home. Her high school was only a mile from the house where she and her mother lived with Charles and she preferred to walk rather than drive the ostentatious red convertible he’d given her as a seventeenth birthday present.

A present, right. More like a bribe. For awhile, her stepfather had thought he could somehow buy her favors with new toys and clothes, but Elise had put an end to that idea as quickly as she could. She wasn’t interested in his immense wealth or anything he could give her—she just wanted him to leave her alone. Unfortunately, that was beginning to seem less and less likely. Rather than backing off, he was stepping up his attentions to her, always trying to catch her alone so he could whisper something disgusting in her ear or cop a feel.

Elise hated the dirty way he made her feel when he touched her—when he even looked at her. Hated the nasty, filthy things he said when he knew no one else was around to hear him. She’d thought of trying to record him somehow and then playing the recording back to her mother, but she was sure it wouldn’t do any good. Her mother knew something was happening between her daughter and the man she’d married, but she didn’t know exactly what and worse, she didn’t want to know.

If only she’d listen to me, Elise thought, kicking a rock from the gravel path as she walked. Though her house was only a mile from the school it was set far back behind a set of ornately scrolled gates and a hedge too high and prickly for anyone to get over or under without being scratched half to death.

Elise sighed. She knew well enough why her mother wouldn’t listen—she didn’t want to hear. Didn’t want to know what her husband was up to. Because if she listened to Elise and believed what she was saying, she’d be forced to move out, to lose everything her second marriage had brought her. And Elise’s mother was much too fond of her big house and fur coats and Mercedes LX to do that.

Elise kicked another rock. They had been dirt poor when her father was alive. Dirt poor, but happy. And she hadn’t had to live under the constant threat of being touched against her will, either. Sometimes that threat felt like a huge, heavy stone hung around her neck. It was invisible—no one but Elise could see it. But it dragged her down constantly, weighed on her even when she was out with her friends and trying to be happy.

Just a few more months, she reminded herself. Just a few more months until I get out of here and go to college. And she’d earned her own way, too—getting a full scholarship to UF in Florida.

It wasn’t the most prestigious school. Charles had offered to send her to Brown or Harvard if she would just let him…Elise pushed the thought away. She was going to UF because they were willing to pay everything from tuition, to books, to room and board, as long as she kept her grades up. And Florida was at the other end of the country—over a thousand miles from Oregon. Elise couldn’t wait to put that distance between herself and her stepfather. To turn her back on this awful time in her life and never look back again.