Chapter Thirty-Seven

Havermouth, Five Years Before

It was past midnight when the Triquetra delivered her to her door. She stumbled into the house, her body exhausted and sore. Her lip was fat and her jaw tender from hitting the grass, her knees and hip were scraped up, and there were bruises that were making themselves known all over her. Cum was oozing down her thighs, and she had her first ever hangover.

She had no idea where her school bag was. She could not remember if she had left it at the park, or at the house. She was too tired and battered to care.

As she closed the front door, Cameron’s Ute pulled out onto the road.

“Where in all that’s holy have you been, Aislen Louise Carter?” Her mother demanded at a hiss from behind her.

Aislen groaned and rested her forehead against the door for a moment before turning to face her furious mother. “Out,” she said, and staggered towards her room.

“You look as if you were dragged behind a car! Your hair is a bird’s nest, and your top is stained. Have you been drinking and smoking? You smell like a pub!”

“Need to sleep,” Aislen closed the bedroom door on her mother’s face.

Tiffany opened it again immediately. “You did not just shut the door in my face, young lady!”

Aisled kicked off her shoes and crawled into the bed fully dressed. “Need to sleep,” she rolled over, presenting Tiffany with her back, and closed her eyes.

“You are lucky that your father is such a sound sleeper, or he would be in here with his belt, giving you a whooping, Aislen!” Tiffany said through her teeth. “Is it those boys? How many boys are there? Are you taking drugs and drinking with them? Are you…” She hesitated. “Are you having sex with them?” She demanded, in barely more than a whisper.

Aislen closed her eyes tightly and did not respond.

After a moment, frustrated and disarmed from a lack of response, Tiffany huffed and left, closing the door behind her.

Aislen was simply too tired, sore, and sick to spend time worrying about the next day. It seemed hardly a moment before she was sucked into sleep, and then her alarm was going off to get her up. She shut it off and went back to sleep rousing only a little when she heard first her father, and then her mother, leave about their days.

The doorbell woke her. She groaned. It rang again. She forced herself out of the bed and staggered down the hallway. Through the window, she could see Heath’s car. “Go away,” she said pressing her cheek to the door. “I’m sick.”

“Open the door.”

She sighed and opened the door.

Heath stepped in and looked down at her. “You stink and you’re a fucking mess,” he observed with every evidence of disgust. “Go have a shower and do something with yourself. I will make you breakfast. Where is your school bag?”

“Oh, fuck,” she moaned. “I don’t know.”

“Was there anything important in it?”

“My art book,” she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.

“It will turn up,” he decided. “If not, we will stop by the house and ask them to locate it.”

“I might have left it at the park,” she admitted.

“We’ll check the park on the way to school. Go have a shower,” he walked past her and down the hall.

She sighed and went to her bedroom. She’d slept in her school clothes, but she had spares.

She took them into the bathroom and showered. Washing and brushing her teeth made her feel more alert and fresher, but the sight in the mirror as the steam was sucked away was not a good one. Her bottom lip was still puffy and there was a bruise on her jaw.

“Fuck,” she winced, and opened her mother’s cosmetics drawer.

When she had been younger, before she had developed her gift, things had been better with Tiffany. She had adored her mother and playing dress up with her. She and Tiffany had spent many mornings getting “made up” together. She knew that Tiffany missed those days, and resented Aislen for their end as Tiffany felt that she had lost Aislen at the same time as that bonding activity had ceased. Aislen couldn't explain to her, however, that it had been the arrival of her gift that had changed things, and the pain of rejection lingered between them as a result.

Aislen sighed and reached for the base. By the time she’d applied enough foundation to disguise the bruises, she realized that she was going to have to do the full face. She groaned and set to work.

Face done, she needed to fix her hair, so she dried it with the diffuser to get the ringlets into order and failed miserably, pulling the lot back into a messy bun instead.

Good enough, she decided, and began to dress. The skirt was shorter than it should be, and she sighed. Tiffany had raised the hem in one of her efforts to improve Aislen's appearance. “Of course,” she complained. “Because a shorter skirt and too tight shirts are precisely what I need right now to add to the whole reputation as the Triquetra’s whore.”

Heath looked up from the newspaper as she entered the kitchen and raised his eyebrows. “You look surprisingly good,” he commented, sliding the coffee and toast over the Formica benchtop to her. “Except the hair is shit.” He pulled it out, running his fingers through it. “Much better.”

“Skirt is too short, shirt is too tight, hair is a fucking mess, and I’ve had to apply makeup with a trowel because you guys fucking raped me on the lawn of that house last night and I face-planted.”

“Excuse me?” He lifted his eyebrows and took a sip of his coffee. “We did not rape you.”

“You fucking well did,” she replied, shocked that he would deny it.

“You are a terrible morning person, but accusing us of raping you is just going too far,” he said with anger. “That is not what happened. You got drunk and stoned. We rescued you from a would-be rapist. We had sex, as we do. The police came. Rhett and Cameron, mindful of your reputation, took you to the underpass whilst I stayed to try to smooth things over.”

“That’s just…” She had a flicker of self-doubt. She had been drunk and stoned and great big portions of the night were just… blurred and confused. “That’s just not… It’s not right. You used the sex to… to punish me for taking off the chastity belt.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replied coolly calm. “What chastity belt?”

She stared at him, her heart racing. “The one that you made me wear yesterday.”

“Drink your coffee and eat your toast,” he looked back at the newspaper. “You must have had a very vivid dream, Aislen. Ask yourself, with my sexual appetite, why would I put a chastity belt on you? Does that actually sound like something that I would do?”

Aislen’s hands shook as she picked up the coffee. Her head ached and she felt teary and confused. She fought back the tears because, fuck it, she’d put on eyeliner and mascara. He was right though, she thought miserably, putting a chastity belt on her didn’t seem like something Heath would do.

“You did rape me,” she whispered. “You did before, at the river house, too. Cameron raped me and you tricked me…”

Heath sighed heavily and set his coffee onto the benchtop. “Honestly, Aislen, that’s fucking low. We had sex. The four of us. Group sex. If you are ashamed and embarrassed, that is your problem, but trying to make it out to have been rape, that you were in any way unwilling, is just bullshit.”

“I…”

He turned his head to look at her his expression tightening and his eyes like ice. “Your lies could get Rhett, Cameron, and I in a lot of trouble. They could ruin our reputation. Do you want to do that to us? Do you hate us that much?”

She swallowed hard. “No,” she barely breathed it. “No.”

“Then be honest with yourself, Aislen. You like being fucked by us, you like it when we have group sex. You come harder than you’ve come before in your life when we’re all fucking you.”

“I do,” she admitted heavily, because it was the truth.

“That’s all there is to be said on the matter. Come on, we’ll be late.” He folded the newspaper and put their cups into the bin. “Eat your toast before you get into my car. I don’t want crumbs on the carpet.”