Chapter Two
“God, what am I getting myself into?” DeeDee asked her reflection as she touched up her makeup in the bathroom mirror. The woman staring back at her seemed nervous. Her eyes were wide. She licked her lips then had to redo her lipstick.
She couldn’t explain her sudden attraction to Carl. It was more than just physical appearance. Sure, he was nice to look at—tall, with those wide shoulders tapering into narrow hips. A handsome face with kind eyes. Maybe it was the way he carried himself. He exuded a certain confidence. And power. Like in the way he’d handled Frank. She had been shocked, but it had been over before she could react. Carl had stopped as soon as Frank had fallen down, as if he had control of the situation. DeeDee remembered how wet she had suddenly become. She had been sure he could smell her arousal.
Isn’t that so trite, reacting to a strong man that way?
Control. A dangerous drug in the wrong hands. Frank wielded control like a weapon. She had been attracted to it at first. It satisfied her longing. Yet Frank quickly went to the dark side, especially when he drank, which was often. Instead of using it as a sexual stimulant, Frank turned it against her. If Carl hadn’t come along, she would’ve tried to end it anyway. Whether she could have pried herself free of Frank’s clutches or not had been the question.
So Carl had stepped in and saved her, and now she might find herself right back where she started. Unless Carl was different. After all, few men were like Stephen.
Tears came to her eyes at the thought of her old lover and she cursed under her breath. She daubed her eyeliner, trying to keep from smearing the makeup. “I don’t have time for this!” she told her reflection. She checked her watch. 6:45. He’d be here in just a few minutes.
Think of something else!
That didn’t help. She couldn’t help but think of Stephen now. Felt doomed to keep searching for a man who could both thrill and protect her like he had. Someone in whose arms she felt safe, even when he was demanding so much of her.
She shook her head. DeeDee didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her where this came from. Her father. He’d been a wonderful father to her and a loving husband to her mother. A very strong man, but in a good way. He had believed in discipline. If she got bad grades or if she was willful, she got spanked. The spankings hurt, but she found herself enjoying them, too, in a strange, perverse way. She couldn’t explain the emotions that had welled up inside her. Sometimes, she would do something wrong just to feel his broad, flat hand on her bottom. He never used a brush or a belt, yet DeeDee thought about the possibilities more than once.
Overall, her father had supported and encouraged her, allowing her to grow up into a well-adjusted, pretty, twelve-year-old girl, gaining confidence even as her body changed.
Twelve years. That was all the time they’d been given. It wasn’t nearly enough. The memories flooded back, like snapshots. Dad, swinging her in the backyard swing set he’d put up himself. Dad, eyes misty as DeeDee had blown out the candles on her birthday cake. Dad, walking along the trail beside her during a Girl Scout hike at the park.
Mom had been there too, of course. But in the presence of Dad, she seemed smaller somehow. Not in a bad way. She had loved her husband as much as DeeDee did. She just preferred to let him make the hard decisions in life. It seemed natural to DeeDee, too. When she began maturing, she had wanted Dad to be there, when boys came by to pick her up for a date, to give them a stern look and some key advice. And later, when she walked down the aisle, she had wanted Dad at her side, patting her hand to calm her nerves.
It was not to be, of course. Two weeks after her twelfth birthday, it all came crashing down. A drunk smashed into his car as he drove home from work, killing him instantly. The grief was total, for both DeeDee and her mother. The shock and crying lasted for days. They couldn’t function; her uncle had to come in and handle things.
Why did this have to happen to me?
DeeDee shook her head. She had gone from missing Stephen to missing her Dad, and neither one would help her get ready for her date with Carl. She dabbed her eyes again and forced herself to think about something else. Unbidden, her guilt surfaced. She remembered how she had treated her mother after her Dad’s death. In her little prepubescent mind, events that occurred were somehow her mother’s fault. Now, she knew she had just been lashing out and Mom had been the closest person to her. They had long since made up. But for a few years, DeeDee had been a little hell-raiser.
Her mother had tried to be patient and understanding. Probably would’ve sent her to counseling if she could have afforded it. But after her father died, money became a big problem. He hadn’t had much life insurance and when that ran out, her Mom had been forced to sell the house and move them into an apartment. DeeDee could remember thinking that her world had come to an end. First the loss of her father, then all her father’s memories in their house. She had blamed her mother for that, too.
As she had developed into a young woman, DeeDee made her mother worry, perhaps as punishment. DeeDee had tried drugs and alcohol, but that didn’t scratch the itch she felt, the emptiness caused by her father’s death. It only masked it. For many, that would have been enough, but DeeDee kept looking.
She had found what she had been missing in sexual stimulation—including punishments—no doubt caused by her father’s spankings. She was old enough now to know that she’d been sexually stimulated by his callused hand on her bottom. She sought out anything that would create that tingle in the stomach and loins. It made her feel whole again, if even just for a while.
It had started in high school, during her junior year. She’d had a crush on Rob Fisher, a handsome senior on the basketball team. When he’d hugged her, held her close, she could imagine it was Dad holding her, keeping her safe.
She’d lost her virginity to Rob on their second date, in the back of his mother’s minivan that he’d borrowed. They’d told their parents they were going to the movies, then parked on the side of a remote road and made out. It was cramped and awkward in the back seat, but DeeDee couldn’t stop herself, nor Rob. They didn’t even remove all their clothes. In anticipation of the event, she’d worn a skirt that she simply flipped up out of the way. She let Rob remove her panties, that familiar tickling sensation filling her loins. She remembered being stunned by the size of his cock, even though it was of average size she later learned. It had just seemed too big to fit inside her.
She had hugged him fiercely, afraid to watch as he adjusted himself between her legs. When she felt her hymen tear, she cried, not because it hurt, but because the feelings she’d hoped for lasted just a moment. The anticipation of the event had been far better than the sex itself. Rob had climaxed quickly and it was over. She hadn’t told him how empty she had suddenly felt.
When she had confided in her best friend, Lucy, about the night and her disappointment, Lucy had said that it was always that way the first time. She told her all about orgasms, something DeeDee had not fully understood before. “Just relax,” Lucy had told her. “Try it again. You’ll see.”
But she hadn’t seen. Rob tried to help her in his gentle but clumsy way, yet she never achieved that climax Lucy had described. They eventually broke up and DeeDee dated other boys and had sex with a few, but none could sustain that anticipation, that sexual stimulation she craved. They all wanted to fuck her quickly and didn’t understand why she wanted to prolong the act.
She had discovered the answer herself, during the spring of her senior year. It had been a hot day, promising to hit eighty. DeeDee had been in her room, in a bad mood because she didn’t have any clean panties. So, she’d gone without them. She wore baggy shorts, so it really didn’t matter. No one would notice.