❝P-please,❞ He whimpered, holding my hand over his erection. It was perfectly hard and ready for me, straining against his boxers in the most delicious way.
"What is it that you want me to do, baby?"
"Touch me," He moaned and drew his head back whe...
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Clover Vale was insecure.
It was hard for me to admit, having watched her from the moment she reappeared in my life walk around with her head held high and shoulders pinned back. She normally moved with confidence, so when I watched her stagger from my office with her arms curled around herself, I was scared.
Scared that she was hurting and there was nothing I could do about it.
I regretted not getting up after her. She was so much smarter than she gave herself credit for, and I knew that she couldn't see it. I wanted to help her see it, as terrifying as the realization felt, but I didn't.
I couldn't.
Father's hands gripped my chair stronger than any bit of confidence I could muster to pull away. In death, he kept me bound in my seat with the words he burned into my memories, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get away.
I didn't want to at first. I didn't want to admit that mother and father's words were finally sinking in, contradicting each other, and failing to make sense. I didn't want to because of the mantra father had sealed into my mind, one that I hadn't enough experience to determine its truth.
Girls are the devil's sluts, son. They will pull you into a life of sin and watch you burn.
I could hear the warnings he would give me, telling me what would happen if I hurt God by going against him. I could still feel the burning sensation of having offended God once before, and I didn't want to experience that by chasing after Clover...again—for both statements.
Girls, in father's opinion, were nothing more than cunning whores with ice-cold grins. The three greatest sins, according to him, were hurting the lord, disrespecting thy parents, and willingly slipping into a slut's grasp, giving away any form of purity to a devil with a pretty smile.
But I was confused. Father talked as if all girls were evil, but he'd married mother right after high school. Hadn't she been a girl? Was I missing something? When did a girl move into womanhood? Why was mother considered a woman...when Clover was not?
Clover. The beauty who always polluted my mind. She was a flower, but her nectar was poison. Every whiff of her aura pulled me further into her arms, and the longer I sat in my chair thinking about her—the same chair my father's spirit bound me to—the more I felt myself finally begin to pull away from the cognac leather and lord that were instilled in me.
Clover wasn't evil. She was kind to me. She smiled at me while the other students ignored my presence because of who my mother was. She didn't divert her eyes whenever she saw me. She would look into mine with that damned hypnotic look, forcing me to do nothing else but saunter to her beck and call.
She didn't seem to be anything like the devil my father warned me of, and when I was so close to lifting myself from my seat, I faltered. Maybe that was the problem. Her immense perfection had blinded me, I thought, and I dropped myself just as quickly as I rose.
I assumed, through the false gaze and touch of my father, that the crack in her confidence was not as I had thought. It is her inner demon peeking through, father whispered. She is revealing her true self, he said, and little did he know, his warning was all I needed to finally remove myself from his grip.
If Clover was a secret devil, then the crack in her facade would not have shown sadness. It would not have shown insecurity, nor would it have shown shame. Shame in me knowing her secret—that she was not as strong of a girl as she seemed.
One can not reveal what is not there—and the devil, in Clover, did not exist.
