His Pretty Little Burden (Kids of The District, #4)

by Nicci Harris

She is far more compliant, sweeter, after a good spanking. Eager to please me now, are we?

Her smile lights up the darkest crevices of my stone soul. But even a rock can be worn down when affected the right way. By persistence. By determination. By another rock.

It would be wrong to leave teeth marks on them, and yet...

With a stunning wide smile that reaches her eyes, she gestures towards the new shirt. A print. A little deer—Bambi. She grins at me. Well fuck.

“I should ask them all their names,”

“They wouldn't answer you,” Clay states, and I gaze at him as his deep gravelly cadence hits me. "Why?" "Because they have been instructed not to." "Don't you trust what I'll say?" "Get out of your head, little deer."

He’s so handsome. He’s almost agonising to behold, his appearance inducing feverish skin, a galloping pulse, overwhelming faintness. He is basically a virus.

I try to keep my eyes on Clay and Landon as they exchange friendly words. Friendly! Bile fills my throat, my old friend betrayal wrapping around me like a serpent, squeezing the hopefulness from my pores. "Please, Clay. Please!" I cry out, panicked that Landon will twist the situation, telling him all the details I've omitted—turn Clay against me. Make a liar out of me.

About that night. About the drugs that weren't mine. About how Benji fell, and I'm crazy and have a silly crush and need someone to blame. About how I trashed my foster mother's house trying to find that goddamn camera! The one I saw flash moments before my memory fades to black. The one I know has my answers, my first time and Benji's death on it. About all the reasons I am really here. About all my eccentric actions. Eccentric... He called me eccentric.

My throat tightens, but I fight the internal sobs, picturing myself talking about thorns and roses and pillow stacks, and I thought for a moment he understood me. I choke within the clutches of betrayal. I thought we connected in a way I've never felt with another living soul, despite our age gap, despite our power divide, despite it all. I trusted him. What a fucking joke. Releasing the handle when my fist aches, I pull my knees up and cuddle them—alone again.

Eccentric. Just like your...

He cared about us then. He wanted to know. But he smiled... At Landon.

I failed. If Clay believes Landon, then I've failed Benji. He's dead. He's fucking dead, and those manipulative arseholes are going to get away with it. Jake gets away with it.

But Clay won't believe me after he finds out I lied. Why would he? The police didn’t. My foster mother didn't. Why would he when I've given him every reason not to trust me by omitting the truth. My body shakes. Landon is going to serve him twisted lies. I fucked-up by keeping this from Clay. I fucked-up by... falling for him.

God. I'm so stupid. He doesn't care. He was friendly with Landon. Friendly...

I groan as lumps of betrayal clog my throat, making it hard to breathe past them. The smile on Clay's face, so perfectly set, so patronisingly pointed at me. They are talking about me right now. They are laughing at me. At my stupidity, my gullibility, naivety, silly, stupid—eccentric—self.

"You had no right to drag me away from him. You had⁠—" His eyes snap to mine again. "You lied to me." I think about his smile. The one he gave Landon, and an angry sob fills my throat. "You chose him over me." "I did nothing of the sort,"

"You have been keeping your intentions from me, my girl. That disrespects me." "You disrespected me by pulling me away like a child, by making me the outsider, by smiling at him, by letting him think you're on his side like everyone else is. Letting him think he's won! They always⁠—"

I close my eyes, fist the sheets beside my naked body, falling helplessly into invincibility.

My lips exist for him to consume. Take. Bruise. I gasp for breath, so he gives me his, purposely exhaling into my lungs, filling me with everything him. It's too much.

But the weight of him... God, the authority in it.

He glares at my flushed face. Works his jaw muscles. Venom and warning ripe behind his eyes. Something wars within him.

"Fuck it," he hisses, yanking open the top button of his pants, dragging the zipper down, the sound resonating inside me like a drum counting down. My eyes widen. God... this is it.

It's going to hurt. If he fucks me like he just kissed me, he's going to rip me in two.

I hold my breath, and we both watch as his fingers touch my slick pussy lips. "So pretty. Do you want me to stretch you with my fingers first? I'd very much like to do it with my cock." Wide-eyed, I peer up at him, a looming muscular physique unhidden even within his clothes. "I'm already completely possessed by you, and I haven't even been inside you," he states. "I need you to know that as soon as my cock enters your body, you belong to me. Not as a lover. Nothing that trivial. In every way. You won't like what that means... Tell me to stop." He nudges his cock at my pussy, still using his fingers to touch the outer lips. I wriggle against them, and they slide around in my wetness. His eyes darken, his tone dangerous with warning as he says, "Tell. Me. To. Stop. Fawn." I can't. Words are hard to find, while air is thick and impossible to draw in.

"You're strong inside. I had a feeling you would be. And you're the prettiest thing. Too pretty. Don't fight me. You belong to me now."

"You will be a good girl for me, little deer. Do as you're told, and everything will be okay. You will let me fuck any part of you. You will take me like a good girl. And you will thank me when I kill the boy who put this baby inside you while you were too high to consent."

"Fawn." My name comes through a strained growl as he drags himself out and pushes back in again. "Fuck. Mine." He squeezes my hips, angling me, lifting me, using me as he thrusts into my body. "Not that boy's." Thrust. "Not Dustin's." Thrust. "Mine."

And even though he is relentless in his domination, making my small frame take him over and over again, I have never felt so completely safe. I don't know what that says about me. I don't want to think about it right now.

Fuck. He knows what to do with my body to make it break with agonising bliss.

"I'll let you off this once, little deer. But if you ever come again without screaming my name, I'll fuck your tight arsehole until you need my cock inside it just to feel normal—"

It's a beautiful sight. The moment he loses control.

I know he said I belong to him. I'm his dark possession. But people lie. Everyone in my life lies. Eventually, they give me up.

When his fingers touch the aching flesh at my lips, I gasp on a whimper. "Are you in pain?" "A little." I lie—it hurts more than a little, but I think he knows that as he strokes me gently.

"So pretty. Don't shower until I tell you to." "But I'm covered⁠—" "In me. You think I somehow forgot such a thing?"

I look up into his blue eyes. "You're leaving, aren't you?" "We are not going to spoon, little deer." My mind is dazed. "That was like..." My first time. Can you stay? Please. I stop on the sentence I was going to say, not able to force the pathetic pleas through my lips. He doesn't care. He doesn't feel guilt for fucking me and leaving. He's infallible.

Searching eyes roll around my sleepy face, as though he can see through the layers of cells to the feelings I conceal beneath. You left. You left when I needed to be held.

He exhales hard. "I lost control yesterday." "I don't want your practised smiles," I whisper, wishing he would pull my jaw towards his lips and let me feel their commanding dance. His eyes meet mine again. "And I don't want yours."

"No." I touch the hand holding my thigh to the mattress. "I haven’t showered." He ignores me. When he kisses my puffy outer lips, my reservations dissolve and I melt into the sheets on a long moan. Completely vulnerable. Completely at his mercy. Completely safe.

Who took her innocence when she could not consent? Who came inside her pretty young pussy like a fucking invalid who didn’t consider the consequences? They knew she had no one. Pregnant or not. Raped or not. No one would care, and no one did...

I didn’t want to involve the rest of the Family in the District and have them ask questions about Fawn. Didn’t want anyone to know anything about her now that... Now that I care...

She will never be alone like that again. My little deer. My Cosa Nostra princess. Mine.

I giggle, but I’m not happy. I want a scream to come from the place that giggle came from.

My face is so wet, tickles, trickles, a rushing sensation from my eyes, pooling into my ears.

I don't feel pain. Don't feel anything. Everything is submerged deep in a volcano of fury. My mind roars. Drawing my weapon, I point it at the glass panel opposite me and unload round after round after round, releasing all fifteen bullets into the air, needing the noise of exploding glass and gunfire to deafen the rage burning my brain to damn volatile psychosis. It isn’t enough. It’ll never be enough. I should have shut the goddamn thing down before I saw it all, before I saw them all take turns while she tried to crawl for safety, but I couldn’t leave her alone in that room with them for a second time and closing the laptop to savour my rage was an act I would never abide.

A sneer curls my lips as I walk from the office to meet the ashen faces of the soon-to-be-dead boys tied to their chairs, I immediately lock eyes with Jake. The fucker who stole my deer’s virginity. Who ripped through her and made her bleed.

Bronson slowly straightens from his chair, tense and wary, staring at me like I'm the damn rapture personified. For a moment, my little brother, the one who will slice a man's face off and have a tea party with my niece all in the space of an hour, appears wary of what I might do.

"What did they do to that sweet girl?" I don’t respond. It wasn't a question.

"Is that the only copy?" Vinny answers. "There are two copies, Boss." "I didn’t ask you," I say, staring at the boys. "Two! Two," Landon says straight away. "Destroy them both. She never sees them,"

“You touched my property. You did not have permission. And you made her cry, bleed, and put a baby in her young womb.”