Sin & Savior

CHAPTER 10, PART 1

Scarlett gathered up her things to leave practice and head home with a true grimace on her face. For as much as she loved bullying the other girls on their practice team assignments, she couldn't truly better her skill-set without the competition Seraphina provided her. Grey was the only one who constantly challenged her to continue improving outside of their seasonal games, and she'd been mysteriously absent for nearly the entire week's worth of classes. As much as she'd hated the idea of ever admitting it: Seraphina's presence made her a better player on and off the ball. She constantly had to decode where she was going and what she would be doing next, and without anyone capable of replacing that antagonistic flame she brought to every meet, her presence was sorely missed in the short period since her unexplained disappearance. Scarlett, for as much as she hated her guts, couldn't improve consistently as a player without her on the other side of the ball.

                                                                                       ❧ ⁂ ❧

As she wandered into the front door of her house, lost in thought about the many discordant comings and goings of the week at hand, her mother greeted her fuming mad, and nearly foaming at the mouth to get to her.

"What did I just tell you yesterday? When you come or go from this house: you text me first and let me know where you're going. I don't care how old you are — so long as I pay the bill for that phone you carry around: you are going to follow my rules, or I am going to follow my heart next time the bill comes. Do I make myself unquestionably clear?" Rhiannon suggested, turning her nose up at Scarlett. She knew going back and forth would only make her mother engage in a more lengthy argument: one she had no interest in taking part of that day. She knew her mother: old, intractable, emotionally abusive, simultaneously unwillingly but willfully carrying on generational curses, and accepting the knowledge that she was too old to consider adjustment of her life choices, and would never change. She, like Scarlett, was stunningly attractive — especially for her age — and incredibly demure of character on the surface. Underneath it all, though, she was extremely aggressive towards her children whenever the mood should strike her, and only knew how to express her love towards them by being unaffectionately protective over them: hovering over them ritualistically, if one could call it that, and only ever accepting the state of things when they were molded to suit her narrative.

"I'm sorry, Mom." Scarlett quipped, not apologetic in the slightest, but knowing what came next as a result of nearly any separate response she would not like. She tossed her duffel bag to the side and skipped speedily toward the staircase stating "I stink. I'm heading up to shower. I'll see you in a few minutes, Ma." She knew her mother loved her in her own very weird way, as exactly as she knew it wasn't the way she'd ever needed to receive love from her. She knew why, though: her mother had lived an incredibly hard life before her and her half-siblings were ever born, and she'd lived an even harder one after they'd all been born, considering that all of their fathers either emotionally and financially abandoned her with the responsibility of the children left solely in her care, or her having the uncompromisingly arduous task of parenting them alone while having to offer a majority of her time towards being hard-working and responsible for 4 mouths alone. It left her little time or ability to be the excellent parent she'd probably set out to be at the onset. She'd discussed her so frequently at-length in therapy recently that she couldn't keep herself from quietly criticizing her every time they'd happened to cross paths.

Thankful for having avoided engagement in lengthy arguments that led to a circuitous and unproductive end: Scarlett stepped into the shower and let the scalding hot water wash her worries away. She'd racked her nerves to the ends of their threads about the upcoming AmeriCup games and what the subject matter of her research paper for Dr Manley's class would be about, as well as a chemistry test she'd not adequately prepared for. Her plate was full, and yet: her thoughts were consumed by a singular event that eclipsed it all.

She felt her hand slowly start its southward descent as her imagination laid out for her, in crystal clarity, how hot she'd grown for the artist and his flunky. They were both so undeniably attractive in their own very different ways, but one thing was for certain: her loins never had a fire light inside of them before like they had now for these two men she hadn't considered in days. She had been hard at work preparing for the FIBA championship, the AmeriCup, mid-term studies, and had barely given herself a break to breathe between every individual assignment, let alone the time to relax and shed her stresses off her shoulders. She was young, unmarried, dedicated, committed, in incredible physical shape, and yet strained herself trying to build meaningful connections with anyone around her at all. She couldn't figure it out: why that element of her life came with such great difficulty to her. Nor would she try and be interrogative now, as her fingertips swirled over and across her clitoris beneath the near-boiling water. She moaned into her left hand while she tried to cover her mouth and entrap her audible arousal inside. It was all she could do to keep herself from imagining being bent over a table by either one of the men in her machinations.

She slipped two fingers inside while her other hand took to work peeling back to the hood of her clit and working it as she stroked her G-Spot in a come-hither motion imagining taking the attorney into her mouth while the artist claimed her aching hole from behind. She didn't know these men from a hole in the ground, but she knew one thing for certain: her body craved for them like nothing she'd ever felt before, and it was killing her. Her pussy began to clench around her fingers while she wound her fingers across her clit in silken spirals and jettisoned her deepest, darkest desires right there into the stream of free-falling water and the forward-facing wall of the shower — her head hung backward, tongue lolling, cheeks clenched, legs stiff, and soul satisfied -- for the moment. And only the moment.