Exhibited Page 5

  He slid his hands over my skin, pulling out of me just a bit before sliding back into me in slower thrusts. I rocked back against him in time with his thrusts, moaning when he cupped one of my breasts in his big hand and squeezed it. He twirled my nipple between his fingers, plucking it. His other hand gripped my hip, his fingers digging into my flesh.

  His strokes increased in speed and in strength. He pounded into me with hard, deep thrusts that pushed me closer to the edge.

  “Yes… yes… fuck…” punctuated every thrust into me. The harder he fucked me, the more I loved it. I’d always been treated like some precious princess by other guys. Most likely because I was a mayor’s daughter.

  But Maddix was not gentle. Maddix knew I liked it like this.

  Rough.

  Hard.

  Desperate.

  He knew me more than I knew myself.

  I gave myself over when my climax came for me. I threw my head back, my whole body frozen yet trembling uncontrollably as heat so intense burned me inside and out. A long open-mouthed groan came out of me, until I couldn’t make a sound, just soft breathy gasps.

  “Fuck.” Maddix groaned. He decreased his thrust to short strokes as my pussy squeezed him. Then he slid out of me, turning me to face him because I was too weak to do it myself. He kissed me deeply, his tongue twisting with mine passionately. “That was fucking beautiful.”

  He sat on the bench, pulling me on top of his lap. His cock, still hard and hot was trapped between us. It felt incredibly intimate to be this close to him. To look into his face and meet his gaze. I dragged my fingers along his jaw, over his lips, amazed by the hunger in his gaze. It was all for me. He wanted me as much as I wanted him.

  I moved my hips, sliding my wetness along his length. His cock twitched, and he groaned. My knees were on either side of him on the bench. I rose on my knees and reached for his cock, moving it against my entrance. Holding his gaze, I sank onto his length. My lips parted on a soft sigh of pleasure feeling him deep inside me.

  He claimed my mouth in another deep, fervent kiss, swallowing my moan as I rode him. He wrapped his hands around me, both hands grabbing and squeezing my ass. He groaned into my neck, his hot breath fanning my skin and making it tingle.

  “I’m going to come inside you. I’m going to make you mine,” he growled.

  “Yes… Maddix… I want you to come inside me…”

  He got harder as I rode him and he bounced me on his cock, harder and faster. I squeezed his length, cupped his face and kissed him. He returned my kiss, groaning into my mouth as he came inside me. The warmth of his come, and the sounds he made as he lost control made me heady, pushing me to the finish. I trembled, gasping out his name until I was too breathless to say another word.

  After our breathing had returned to normal levels, I climbed off Maddix. I didn’t know what to say to him. Couldn’t even look at him. He told me where his bathroom was so I could clean up and get dressed. I fled for it without a second thought.

  It took several attempts before I felt ready to open the door and face him. He didn’t seem as awkward about our encounter as me. I returned to the room where we took the photos, and he was still naked.

  Heat burned the tips of my ears. His nakedness made me aware of the soreness on my bottom and between my legs. My body would remember tonight for a long time, I knew.

  I did my best to keep my eyes on his face as I asked him the question I should have asked before all this had started.

  “What are you going to do with those pictures?”

  He smiled. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  —

  And soon enough I did.

  So did everyone in Melbrooke City. Including my father.

  “Why would you embarrass me like this, Angela?” my father shouted at me through the phone.

  For the past year it had seemed he’d forgotten my number since he never called or text. Except he’d magically remembered how to contact me now he had a reason to curse me out.

  “Dad, I didn’t do this on purpose—”

  “Even when you’ve been caught in the act, you still pretend you’re blameless! You should never have posed for those pictures. You’re naked, Angela! Naked! Now everyone in Melbrooke thinks you’re nothing but a slut!”

  I gripped the phone, tears burning in my eyes. I didn’t know where to direct my anger the most. At Maddix for putting those pictures of me on exhibit at an art gallery. At that journalist who ran the news article about the gallery showing of the pictures. Or at my dad for always viewing me as an embarrassment and disappointment in his life.

  “You know what, Dad? I don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck what your precious citizens of Melbrooke think. And I’m done giving a fuck what you think of me.”

  “Show some respect! Don’t talk to me like that, you ungrateful—”

  I ended the call with a shaking finger and blocked his number. Soon enough, I’d get calls from my mother siding with him. Maybe from my sister, Adrianne, asking why did I continue being such a fuck up to our parents.

  I tried to contact Maddix, but he didn’t answer. All day I waited for him to call or even text. To give me an explanation of why he’d ruined my life.

  With the popularity of the news, I was too afraid to go outside. Instead, I called in sick from work and avoided the numerous calls I got from strange numbers. When I listened to the voicemails, I was surprised to learn some were from established modelling agencies interested in my work.

  “I think the pictures were amazing,” said Julia. Hers was the only call I was willing to take. Or Maddix’s if the asshole bothered to try. “Even though you were naked, it’s obvious it wasn’t meant to be sexual. It’s like I was seeing a different side of you. Something intimate and personal. Evocative. So much anger and frustration. Helplessness.” She breathed out, her voice becoming small. “It spoke to me. I can relate to those feelings. Especially with my mom being sick. It’s nerve wracking trying to save her.”

  I was stunned. I’d never considered others would view the pictures in a positive light. My father’s anger and extreme disapproval had made me believe they were disgusting and ought not to be seen. That I should be ashamed of them.

  “You should be proud,” she said. “I always knew you should be a model. I used to think more in the traditional fashion sense. But I prefer these. Who took them?”

  I bit my lip, hesitating on whether to tell her about Maddix. As I was about to tell her the truth, she swore out loud.

  “Gotta run. My break is over and they get snippy if I take extra time. Catch up later?”

  “Sure.”

  After we hung up, I looked at the photos again online with fresh eyes. Instead of anger and shame, I tried to see what Julia saw.

  Maddix had developed them in black and white, the lighting above me highlighting my body. In none of the pictures was I bared vulgarly, but my breasts and my mons were visible in a few of the shots.

  One hand, I recognized that it was me. Yet it shocked me it was me in those pictures. It seemed like a completely different Angela. How had Maddix seen that? How had he known how to capture that side of me that not even I knew existed?

  Late at night just as I was considering heading to bed, I heard a knock at my door. I went to it, peering through the peephole to see Maddix standing on the other side.

  I opened the door. We gazed at each other in silence.

  Wordlessly, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope. Then he handed it to me.

  “Open it.”

  I took it and opened the envelope. Inside was a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars made out to me.

  I looked up at him again in amazement. He answered my question before I could ask it.

  “Several of your photos were bought. That’s the earnings for the purchases.” He smiled. “Should be enough to help pay for your friend’s mother’s surgery.”

  I stared at the number there. I’d earned this. I’d done the
work for it… and other things afterward. I could help Julia with this and still have enough left over to restart my life in the right direction.

  I gripped the envelope and met Maddix’s gaze again. I pursed my lips.

  “If you expect me to say thanks, then forget it. I still think you’re an asshole.”

  His eyes brimmed with amusement. He stepped into my apartment, shutting the door behind him before pulling me in for a kiss.

  “That’s OK. I know what needs to be done to bring out your gratitude.”

  —

  Thank you for reading!

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  Excerpt of Punished

  One

  —

  A weight settled on my shoulders when I stepped inside the diner’s locker room.

  Sections of the beige paint were peeled away from the walls. One of the fluorescent lights stayed dark, casting shadows about the room. At least it was no longer bright enough to see the cobwebs in the ceiling corners, or the dust on the floor.

  I knew how to change a fluorescent bulb. My dad had taught me while I worked in our hardware store. During my brief tour of the diner on my first day, I’d offered to fix the light. Fred, the diner’s owner, curled his lip and said women were shit at doing a man’s job.

  “Don’t worry about it, sweet cheeks. I’ll fix it,” he’d said.

  A year later and it was still as broken as his promise.

  I opened my locker and reached for my work shoes. A cockroach ran past, and I jumped back with a squeal. It raced under the lockers before I could crush it with my foot.

  I hate this place, I thought as I changed into my uniform.

  My hatred included Melbrooke too. After growing up in a claustrophobic town called Coburg, I’d wanted nothing else than to get away. Freedom was an ache in my chest which didn’t ease until I’d abandoned my parents’ hardware store for Melbrooke City.

  My only path in life in Coburg was marrying some guy, having kids, and being a good little housewife. Sure, that life had its positives, but as much as my parents had wanted that for me, I wanted more. When I’d left Coburg for Melbrooke, all I had was a suitcase of clothes, five hundred in cash, and a hazy dream about becoming a nurse.

  I thought I was destined to play a much larger part in life than a tiny, forgettable small town girl.

  I thought it would be easy to achieve everything I wanted in a place brimming with possibilities and choices.

  Well, I thought wrong.

  Everything worth having in this city was like a small pie. And everybody who wanted a piece of it had a knife they were willing to use on the competition. So someone like me who still said ‘please’, ‘sorry’, and ‘thank you’ was at an instant disadvantage. In a place like Melbrooke, there was no room on the ladder for slackers or people who played by the rules.

  But my only option was to give up and head back to Coburg. I didn’t want to do that. Not after the flounce I’d made when my parents didn’t support my move to the city.

  Wearing a white dress shirt tucked into my short black skirt, I stood and shoved my bag into my locker. Probably wasn’t the best idea with a sandwich inside my bag and a rogue cockroach on the loose.

  “Ten years I’ve been working here. Ten fucking years,” Susan muttered as she stormed into the locker room.

  As always, Susan tied her blonde hair back in a messy ponytail. She was in her late thirties, but the deep creases on her face made her look closer to fifty. Susan once showed me a picture of her younger self. She used to be a knockout, but her period of extreme drug abuse before she got clean stole her beauty. When she saw me, her light blue eyes lit up and she gave me a quick smile. “Hey, Jenna. How you doin’?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t complain. You?”

  What a lie. I could scream all my frustrations bubbling inside me at the top of my lungs. But I cared what people thought of me too much to do something like that.

  “Good for you,” she said. She yanked her blue t-shirt off, revealing looping tattoos crawling down her arms, sagging breasts in a black bra, and a stomach lined with stretch marks. “Meanwhile, the rest of us gotta deal with shitheads like Fred on top of all the other shit that’s going on in our lives.” She scowled as she tugged on her white shirt with more force than necessary. “My dad had a stroke yesterday. I asked Fred for time-off to visit him in the hospital, and you know what Fred said to me?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “He said, ‘Unless he’s stiff as my dick you ain’t taking time off on my dime.’”

  I screwed up my face in disgust. “What a horrible man. I’m so sorry he said that, Susan.” I patted her shoulder, not knowing what else to do or say. I wanted to suggest she report Fred to the authorities for his awful behaviour. Maybe even peg him with sexual harassment for mentioning his penis.

  But I kept my mouth shut. Fred’s disrespectful, belligerent nature wasn’t a secret. It also wasn’t a secret he had strong connections with the mafia. Men like Fred you learned to either accept or abandon quickly and quietly.

  “Yeah, well, I figure Fred’s stiff dick is probably the size of a raisin, so that ain’t all bad,” Susan said. “Gotta be optimistic ‘cause life’s a bitch, right?” She pushed her feet into black shoes with thick soles and brushed the stray cat hairs from her skirt. “Kicks you into a pit filled with shit right up to your knees. Then it hands you a spoon and says, ‘Shovel all that shit out the pit with this.’ So as you’re trying to get rid of the shit with that tiny li’l spoon, life says, ‘Here’s some more for you to shovel and I got even more to give ya soon,’ and pours twice as much shit all over your head. All in your eyes and in your mouth. That’s life.”

  “Wow, that’s really… um… vivid.”

  “You know, my ma always said my imagination’s wilder than the hair on my pussy.”

  Susan cackled as she left and I exhaled in relief. Susan might have been one of the few friendly people I’d met in Melbrooke, but she was more crass than I could handle sometimes.

  Since there was a bit of time before my shift began, I hung back to check my phone for any new messages from Jackson. He was a guy I’d met on a dating site two weeks ago. After we hit it off in our initial messages, we’d exchanged phone numbers.

  We’d never met in person, but I saw his pictures on the dating site. In each one of them was a smiling, handsome man with light brown hair, friendly blue-green eyes, and a fit body.

  When I showed his picture to Stacy, my roommate, she curled her lip and said he was probably catfishing me. I didn’t know what that meant until she explained it was someone who pretended to be somebody else on the Internet, especially on dating websites.

  Before Stacy made that comment, I would look at Jackson’s pictures and squeal a little with happiness. Men who looked like him weren’t common in Coburg, and the few that did were already locked down. Yet here was this sexy, twenty-eight-year-old who said he loved children and animals, baked in his spare time, and worked for an investment firm.

  And he was single.

  I was twenty-two years old and still a virgin. Still waiting for the perfect guy I trusted with all of me. Stacy said I was delusional to believe perfect men existed. Yet just talking with Jackson, hearing his sexy voice on the phone, and learning as much about him as he learned about me made me believe he was The One.

  “He isn’t the one,” Stacy had said, rolling her eyes. “There’s no such thing, Jenna. Grow up. This guy’s too good to be true. You better be careful before you get yourself into trouble.”

  I didn’t want to believe Stacy, but I had some doubts
about Jackson. But the doubt disappeared when I read Jackson’s latest text:

  Jenna, I would love to see you in person. Meet me for dinner tomorrow?

  Hell yeah, I would! My response was a lot more measured, of course. I read in a magazine that an overeager woman looked ‘desperate and needy’ in a man’s eyes and he’d lose respect for her.

  Floating out of the locker room as if the ground were made of clouds, I clocked in to get to work.

  “Heads up,” Susan said, approaching me with a pot of coffee and a sly smile. “Sexy guy in a suit at table five.”

  I headed toward the table she indicated. The man looked up from his cell phone and watched me as I approached. His eyes were a rich dark brown and they pinned me with an intensity that stole my breath and weakened my knees a little.

  His dark hair was professionally cut and he wore a charcoal grey suit that hugged his body. Even seated, he gave off the vibe of a man accustomed to being in charge.

  “Welcome to Fred’s Diner,” I said, my voice higher than usual. “What can I get you today?”

  He didn’t speak right away and I fidgeted beneath his intent gaze. I had this strange sense he could see past my too-stretched smile and through every secret I had hidden in my soul.

  “Sir,” he finally said, his voice deep and smooth.

  “Excuse me?”

  “‘What can I get you today, sir?’ Repeat it.” The inside of my stomach tightened when he spoke. For some reason, I wanted to follow this stranger’s orders instead of being put-off by his commanding tone.

  “What can I get you today, sir?” I pressed the pen to my notepad but my hand was shaking too much to write. So I dropped my hands at my sides and decided I’d take his order by memory.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Coffee, black, one sugar, and a tomato and feta omelette.”

  “Got it.” I nodded, blushing and pleased with his praise.