Page 447 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

But he just laughs quietly against my skin and gives me a soft kiss. “Hush, princess. It’ll be over sooner than you think.” I don’t imagine the dark undertones to his words. We’ve been playing this game of cat and mouse for too long.Everythingis part of it. The way he sips his coffee in the morning, the curl of his lips, the cologne he wears. That smell envelops me.

Why is he all dressed up? I’d have expected him in sweats and a hoody, but he’s wearing freshly pressed jeans, a dark, long-sleeved shirt that highlights his muscular body. And cologne, freshly applied.

This can’t all be for me, can it?

He slides a hand up my skirt, and I whimper when he touches me through my underwear. On-screen, the porn music fades out and is replaced with loud, feminine panting. I’m reminded of the girls I walked past who stuck their tongues out at me. I still have no idea what that meant, but I’m guessing it’s a porn thing. I’ve seen one or two racy scenes in movies, but not proper porn. I never really needed it, and it wasn’t like my mom hid porn mags and stuff in her underwear drawer. The stuff she hid hadnothingto do with sex.

Jude pushes my thighs apart and starts stroking me, humming wordlessly against the side of my neck.

Despite everything, his touch turns me on. I start tingling, the sensation sinking deep inside me. On-screen, the darkness is slowly starting to resolve into solid shapes. I make out a bed, nightstands. The lamps on them cast a reddish hue, but the color is mostly washed out like there’s a filter over it.

Jude slips a finger behind my underwear and lets out a low, pleased rumble. That’s when I smell the liquor on his breath. Brandy, whiskey, I don’t know. Fear prickles over my skin, and I try to pull away from him again.

“Ssh,” he whispers. “Just let it happen, Harper. Just let it happen.”

My eyes brim, but I blink furiously until the tears clear away. He’s teasingly gentle, barely a knuckle deep inside me, toying with me as if he knows I’m still trying to get into this. So why fight?Why? If I can forget who he is, whoIam, then I can enjoy this. It’s what I deserve, isn’t it?

Harpy Dearth, the whore.

That’s who I am, right?

So I force my eyes up and stare at the movie Jude put on for us, and I try to ignore what he’s doing to me. The vodka makes it easier than it should be, as does the way my body responds so eagerly to his touch. I’m wet, tingling, my core aching for something thicker, harder, more intense. He uses his thumb to brush feather-light touches against my clit, and my resolve melts like a marshmallow in a mug of hot chocolate.

I spread my legs and lean back against him, my eyes fluttering closed so I can lose myself in his touch.

“Eyes open, Harper.”

My lids feel too heavy, but I find myself obeying him. I guess just in case he decides to stop being gentle. That I won’t be able to handle.ThatI might struggle against. But he’s a fucking snake, this stepbrother of mine because he eases me intohis touch one soft stroke at a time until I’m whimpering and squirming on his lap, silently begging for more.

On-screen, three figures slowly emerge from the gloom. The whole time it’s been just a blur of red and black, a woman panting and the sound of a man’s heavy breathing, the occasional moan or groan. I was starting to wonder what the hell could possibly feel so good...but then Jude uses a third finger to circle my hole.

I buck my hips so he has even more access to me, my knees unabashedly wide.

He groans, and for a moment soundsexactlylike the actor in the movie. I shudder, reach down, and force his finger deeper inside me.

“Christ,” he growls. “You’re such a dirty little slut.”

His words wash over me in a tantalizing wave. I throw my head back as I laugh, and rest it on his shoulder. “Harpy Dearth is a whore,” I whisper.

“What’s that?”

“Stop talking, you’re ruining it.” I grab his wrist and force him to finger me properly, groaning as I add, “And fuck me harder.”

He pulls away from me with an angry growl. His hand—still damp from being inside me—claps around the front of my throat, his other squeezing painfully at my tit. “Don’t think for one fucking second you’re the one pulling the strings,” he warns. “We were having a good time...why don’t you just get over yourself and enjoy it?”

I’m about to tell him to go fuck himself again, perhaps with some tips on what he can shove up his asshole, when the girl on the video says, “Oh God, yeah, fuck me in the ass!”

Jude laughs roughly and rips my underwear down my legs. I start to struggle, but then the dark filter over the movie recedes, baring the three people in the shot. At this angle, I see two guyson the bed, the girl on her back between them. But why are the guy’s faces blurred?

The camera moves, exposing the girl’s bared nipple, her writhing body, the hands touching her all over. And, a second later, her face.

A jolt of shock goes through me.

Jude shoves his fingers deeper and nips at my ear. “You look tasty, Harper. You’d do good in porn, you know that? This tight little pussy of yours, that sweet voice.”

It’s soobviouslynot my fucking voice. It’s too high-pitched, too sweet. But on that screen? The girl pinned down on the bed by those two blurred-out boys?

That’sme.

---