Page 72 of My Vows Are Sealed

I froze.

Had he found out about Brendan?

If he knew I had a boyfriend…well, I had no idea what he might be capable of. How far he’d go in his quest to punish me before doing much, much worse to the man I loved.

“What are you talking about, Dad?” I choked out, my voice barely above a whisper.

“You thought I wouldn’t fucking see you?!” he continued to rant. “You thought that if you ducked into an alley to fellate that Judas, you wouldn’t be found out?! You’re just like every other fucking member of your sex! Weak! Impulsive! Sinful! Impure!”

Wait. What? What on Earth was he talking about?

I’d never “fellated”anyonebefore in my life. Not even my boyfriend. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about going further, because I had, but I was still a virgin, in everypossiblesense of the word.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad. I didn’t do anything,” I squeaked.

“Fucking treacherous harlot!”

He shoved me backward, making the towel I had wrapped around me – the only semblance of modesty I had – fall to the floor. I quickly bent down to retrieve it, but he kicked it away before I could.

“The stain of impurity willneverbe washed off!” he bellowed. “I can see the fucking transgressions written all over your body!”

I quickly crouched down and curled into a ball, trying to hide my most intimate areas from my father, who was staring me down like it was a contest, refusing to avert his eyes. He was looking at me like a dog would look at a steak. Like I was a prize, something to be won or conquered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his black boots approaching me, and I cowered further against the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible.

I couldn’t let him see me like this. A father wasn’t supposed to uncover his daughter’s nakedness. That was written in the Bible. He should have been forcing me to put clothes on, not prohibiting me from doing so.

Why was he doing this? Even if I had done what he was accusing me of, this wasn’t okay. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t discipline. It wasn’t even punishment. It was…I didn’t know what it was, but my stomach turned and my head spun with each slow step he took toward me. It felt like time was standing still and speeding up all at once.

“Get up,” he snarled, grabbing my shoulders and dragging me to my feet, using his entire body to press me against the wall.

Oh, my God.

What was…no. No.

This couldn’t be happening.

I might have been inexperienced, but I knew what it looked like, what itfeltlike, when a man was aroused. I’d felt it plenty of times with Brendan over the past few years.

It felt like this. There was no mistaking the stiffness I could feel pressing against my stomach as my father’s maniacal eyes bored into me, three inches away from my face.

I was naked. Exposed. Terrified. My father was seeing parts of me that I hadn’t even allowed the man I loved to see, and instead of being disgusted or ashamed by the fact that he was seeing me in this state, he was sexually aroused by it.

It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to swallow the bile that rose in my throat as tears sprang to my eyes and started to trail down my cheeks.

When had this happened? When had my father, the man who was so obsessed with following the Bible to the letter that he wouldn’t allow me to even be in a car with a boy, turned into this perverted and sickening monster?

What had I done to make him respond like this? Why was this arousing him when it should have been repulsing him?

“‘This is the way of an adulterous woman,’” he hissed menacingly, quoting from Proverbs. “‘She eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.”’”

“Abraham!” my mom gasped. “What in God’s Name are you doing?!”

He backed away ever so slightly, just enough to let me grab the towel that was now six feet away and cover myself again, as he turned to look at my mother. The crazed, demonic look was still in his eyes, his face was beet red, and he was panting like a bull about to charge at a matador as he slowly moved toward her. He almost looked even more enraged now than he had been ten seconds ago. Like he was upset with my mom for interrupting him. Like he’d wanted to be left alone with me, to continue down the dark, sickening path he’d just started to travel.

“I saw this fucking harlot fellating a man behind a building this afternoon!” he spat. “And she thought she could hide her treachery from me by washing his seed away!”

“What are you talking about?!” she exclaimed. “Darla was here all afternoon!”

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