Page 38 of Bred Mate
He gets it. I’m impressed.
“You want me to act like a depression era forced bride, this is what you get.”
Patrick pushes back from the table, enraged by my malicious compliance. He doesn’t like that I’m not breaking. He wanted me to crumble, to beg. He wanted me to want to please him, but I don’t give a fuck about him, and he knows that.
“You think that’s funny, you little bitch?”
He swings at me, his fist clenched. This is a man who hurts women. This is a man who needs to be removed from the gene pool completely. I dodge the blow, but I don’t run. I taunt him back.
“You want to hit me again? You can hit me if you want. If you can. Make it count. Make me bleed. I don’t give a fuck.”
He looks at me with the sort of horror a bully gets when they realize that their intimidation isn’t really working.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you that you wanted a woman who had no choice but to have you?”
He hits me again. Not how Karl would smack me. Not with some kind of dominant disciplinary energy, but with the little piss-ant demeanor of a small boy lashing out at something that’s not supposed to be able to talk back.
I fall on the floor, losing my balance because my head is ringing and your ears don’t work when people hit them hard enough. Fucking stupid human biology. When this is over, I am going to shift and stay shifted and nobody is ever going to have the chance to give me a mild concussion again without risking an arm. I want to rip his fucking limbs off. I will rip his fucking limbs off.
“Stay down,” he says, looking at me with those far too light blue eyes. “Stay down in every fucking way there is, because if you get up again, I’m going to make you regret the day you were born.”
I kick his fucking ankle. Hard enough to hear it snap. Stupid fucker had his weight on it and didn’t see my foot coming. Thought he was going to win in spite of the fact that I am a thing too dangerous for my mother or his father to have around.
“Bitch!” He curses at the top of his lungs, while screaming and grabbing at his foot. He likes giving pain, but he has no idea how to receive it.
The commotion brings Rainer in. When it was just the heavy thud of a woman hitting the floor, he didn’t give a fuck, but the agonized screaming of a horrible shitty man is enough to make everyone come running.
“She broke my fucking ankle!”
My mother goes down on her knees next to him, giving him the kind of attention designed to pacify the feelings of a very weak man. He’s been coddled. Told he was special. Told he was in control. He’s been made to feel like he’s the most special boy in the world, and the fact that he’s pushing forty doesn’t make him any more grown up than a toddler. I hate him. And I think I might be jealous of him.
His father stands at the door, staring at the whole scene gormlessly. He’s not used to this sort of thing. He’s used to board meetings and TPS reports and filing for bankruptcy to avoid paying his contractors. Both he and his son could do with a good fucking mauling.
My mother sighs. “She didn’t break your ankle. She hurt your foot,” she says. “You’re going to have to be stronger if you want my daughter.”
Patrick has lost his temper. It’s nice to see that there’s some kind of human under that fleshy cold wet demeanor, but what is there is nasty.
“I don’t want your fucking bitch daughter.”
My mother looks at him, her lip curling in a unique kind of disdain. I wonder if she’s realizing what a mistake she made, trying to get rid of me with this.
“It’s not going to work,” she says to her rich husband. “He’s not going to be able to handle her. She’s too strong.”
Yep. She’s realized.
“She’s a fucking animal,” Patrick says. “She’s a filthy little fucking animal and nobody is ever going to want her.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I say, sitting up. I’m pretty sure my face is swelling. Maybe my eye. Feels like it’s closing up a little. “I already have a boyfriend anyway.”
My mother wants so bad to hope that there’ll be an easy resolution, that the right cock will sort this all out. It’s always been her modus operandi. She’s always thought that finding a man will fix her problems. That’s why my brothers and I have four different fathers, and it’s why she’s clinging to Rainer andhoping his money will erase the place she lost herself in over and over again.
I feel sorry for her, though I shouldn’t. I wish she knew what it felt like to be loved, and to know that it’s not a solution, it’s just the way most people are and most people get to live. This is crazy, this constant manipulation of the past and the present. If she’d just allow her to be herself…
“Take the girl and get her away from here,” Rainer says. “If she’s a handful, you handle her. You know how to do that. I’ve taught you, haven’t I?”
Patrick hears his father’s voice and stiffens, reminded that he’s not just being seen by women, but by a man. By someone whose gaze matters, someone he wants to impress. He gets up, and suddenly he can bear weight on the same ankle he could hardly move a moment ago.
