Firstly, I would like to apologize for the wait. I had this chapter planned out, but it just didn't feel right when I wrote it, so I had to stray from my original plan. I initially wrote 10,000 words for this chapter too, but didn't feel like it all clicked together in one read. So I've decided to split it into two.
Once again, THANK YOU so much to all those who continue to support this story. I really appreciate it :D
To pleasegirldontyoudieonme, Yes Einstein did say that quote, but a few others have also said it too, Rita Mea Brown being one of them - as well as a few others. I suppose it's just whichever quoter you hear it from first. I like your theory on the repetition compulsion ; ) That would be one route to go down - to just say that britt does what she does to regain a sense of power, rather than having actual repetition compulsion. But that is the fun of a first person narrative. The readers only know what the narrator thinks they know lol ; )
You can't trust anything.
Living this life I'd always known it, but now I felt it.
It was like the ground beneath my very feet could in fact be a ruse, just like the crisp suits and friendly smiles of almost everybody that I knew.
We were all hiding – some more than others, of course.
Like Quinn Fabray.
She knew something that bubbled just beneath her coy holier-than-thou countenance, something that contrasted the warmth in her smiles.
She knew something. Perhaps that was why she clung to her crucifix so desperately.
I wanted to know the truth, and Ben had done all that he could. It was up to me to chase the facts…
"Can I get the address to the Fabray residence?" I asked, tap-dancing my nails to the neat desk.
With his back still to me, I almost began to think that my father was pretending I wasn't there, but then he turned around, smoke funneling from the flared nostrils of his arrow-straight nose. It was only when the thick gamboling clouds somewhat cleared, that I saw what he was taking to and from his lips. A cigar dangled classically between his index and forefinger, its tip blazing mid-air. "And what would you want with the Fabray residence address, Santana?"
It was just the kind of third-degree that I was looking for.
I shrugged a shoulder, feigning the casualness of a cat's indifference to the world bustling all around it. "If Fabray doesn't sign the deal when you proposition him, we all lose out right? I thought I'd try to get at Quinn again, make amends." Met with silence and vacant eyes, I added, "can't hurt right?"
He sat down in the plush leather swivel chair behind the desk, and tapped the tip of his cigar off into a black marble ashtray. "You think I'm going to trust you to tackle that again?"
"Here we go," I muttered under my breath, imagining those swirls of smoke assembling into two large hands and tightening around his neck.
"If you want to make yourself useful, you should go straight after Russell Fabray instead. I don't see how you could mess that up, unless you came right out with it, and told him that you were only expressing interest in him because you want him to sign with us."
At that, anger's boots stomped through me, and I felt my face morph into a hateful sneer. "What the fuck are you smoking? You're supposed to be my dad, not my God damn pimp! – And, hello; the world knows I'm gay!"
In that moment, I honestly didn't know what Puck was so pissed about. He wasn't missing out on anything. At all.
My father scratched the side of his nose, his eyes contemplatively leering off to the side as if he hadn't heard me at all. "He's getting up there in age. You're a young beautiful Hispanic woman. Flirting with him will soon soften any hesitation that he may have towards eventually merging with us - especially if you stroke his ego into thinking that he's desirable enough to turn you onto men."
"Fuck you!" I grunted, blunt as a heavy object to the skull.
There he is again ladies and gentleman; my father, Miguel C. Lopez, I thought, bounding down the staircase whilst imagining that each stomp was one of my father's ribs broken, a tooth slapped from his mouth, his fucktard ways exorcized out of him.
My first impulse, of course, had been to call Ben and ask him to go through the info that he'd compiled for me on Quinn, so that I could get the Fabray residence address, but he hadn't been answering his phone all morning. It was strange. He always answered his phone.
In the end I decided to just go home...
As I rolled onto the driveway in my Mercedes, I vaguely saw that the mailbox built into my front door had something jammed into its mouth.
Quickly jumping out of the car, and securing its alarm system over my shoulder with a loud beep, I pounded the pavement that led to my doorstep, bending to inspect the foreign object with a curious frown. At first I attempted to pull on it so that it would fall into my palm, but it was too far inserted.
The shiny black cardboard making up its packaging just teared further with every futile tug.
I jabbed my key into the lock and let myself inside, closing in the door and immediately dropping into a crouch before the wedged box. It typically looked like a box that contained perfume, only now it was slightly battered, the once sharp corners now crumpled and pulled out of shape.
I secured a hand around its tail and gave one powerful jerk, falling back onto my ass with the momentum of it. With breathing that was now a little laboured, I slowly rotated the beaten-up box around in my hand.
Vulva, the fancy silver scrawl read, the lowercase A's flick extending around the entire box in intricate but pretty swirls. Scent of a woman, was also printed into the quality cardboard, just below a black and white cartoon-like – but still quite mature - image of vaginal lips.
I dug open the box's lid and lifted out a small smoked-glass vial. As I brought the bottle closer to my face, so that I could read the writing without having to go grab my glasses, a folded up piece of paper fell from it to the floor. The impact of it hitting the ground caused it to flutter open, and the neat blue-inked cursive that was scrawled to it brought a somewhat stunned chuckle to my lips.
You love pussy so much? You're going to smell like pussy. Have the vial with you at all times.
I uncapped the fancy vial, lifted it to my nose, and drew the scent into my nostrils, letting the aroma of the slightly yellow lubricant-like liquid blossom in my nose for a few seconds, before closing my eyes and shuddering at its familiar sweet musky smell. There was a really sexy quality to it that instantly elevated my blood pressure, and caused my mind to swell with images of me slurping on the pink cove that sat between Brittany's thighs.
The same pink cove that I had been feeling slightly awkward about lusting after since discovering Brittany's trauma.
"Ugh!" I opened my eyes and rose to my feet, groaning, "you are killing me Brittany."
She was, killing me I mean. Almost every cell in my brain seemed to conspire to make me think about her, whether I was brushing my teeth in the morning, or preparing something to eat in the evening, or masturbating at night. According to Dr. Hal, her behavior wasn't healthy, and whilst I wanted nothing more than for her to tie me up and pummel into me with either her fingers or intense thrusts of her hips, I couldn't help but feel that by going along with her games in pursuit of getting her into bed, I was perpetuating something that was detrimental to her.
I scoffed as I slumped down miserably into the couch. "Since when did you start to care?" I berated myself.
Because that's what it was; caring - a bad habit that I thought I'd given up a long time ago.
"Stop caring," I muttered scoldingly. "Just do what she says, and eventually she'll fuck you, and then you can move on with your life."
With a huff I pulled my phone out from my pocket, and dialled Ben's number in from where it had settled into my memory. I nestled the device between chin and cheek, reading the fine print on the back of the Vulva; scent of a woman box whilst it rang...
"Hello?" he finally answered.
I put the perfume box down beside me and interrogated, "where the fuck have you been? I've been calling all morning."
"Phone's been on the fritz," he simply replied.
I sighed. "Alright, well I need you to go through Quinn's folder for me and tell me the address to the Fabray residence please."
"I'm not currently – wait, did you just tag a please on the end of that request?"
I rolled my eyes. "Don't act so surprised. I have manners."
Ben issued my protests a fluttering chuckle, like they weren't even worth the breath that I had used to speak them.
Once he'd composed himself, he said, "I'm not currently at home, so I have zero access to her folder, but I remember the address."
"Great. I just hope she's home."
I was stood on the doorstep of the Fabray residence some forty-five minutes later. There were two cars parked on the driveway, neither of which looked that expensive. The actual building wasn't too extravagant either, sprawled over small land. It seemed older than the baby blanket, birth certificate, and hospital wristband that I kept boxed beneath my bed – older still than the yellowing pages of my abuela's diary.
Brushing away my judgements, I rapped my knuckles to the door and waited…
The front door soon opened at the hands of a man with quite large protruding lips – the butler, if his attire was any indication. His face was flustered, and the wind that punched at the windows swept through and ruffled his blonde fringe.
Regarding me with recognition, he put the hand that wasn't balancing a tray of tea to his hair, as if to stop a hat from flying off of his head.
"I'm here to see Quinn," I said.
"In what capacity?" he asked.
"Oh," I said, reaching into my purse to pull out a copy of the small but weighty book, "I just wanna return the bible she borrowed me. I tried to give it a read, and it's really not my thing. I don't know how she's able to extract any understanding from it." Throwing a quick glance past him into the house, I further added, "she said to wait at the bottom of the stairs for her, and she'd be with me when she could?"
It was believable. Quinn thought she was the Virgin Mary, and the world saw me as one of Satan's most active patrons. It would make sense that she'd be trying to save me with a sprinkling of holy water and a copy of the bible after meeting me for that disastrous dinner.
I hoped that the butler would buy it, because I didn't want Quinn to see me coming. I wanted to witness the truth, not a performance, and if something dark was going down in the Fabray household, then I wanted to catch it when it thought it was free to be itself.
To my relief, the butler stepped aside and allowed me to enter. I slinked over towards the staircase and leaned my elbow on the rail, feigning the wait with a content smile.
"Ok," he sighed, seeming stretched to the bone, "let me just go and deliver this tray of tea, and then I'll let Quinn know that you've arrived." He locked the front door back and brisked off to the left.
With trout-mouth out of sight, I quietly set off in search of Quinn.
I felt like a Hispanic female James Bond or something, as I stealthed around the ground floor, ducking in doorways and hiding behind walls at even the slightest of change in the air. It would be over if I ran into Russell Fabray or Mrs. Fabray; I knew that much. I also knew that I had to beat that butler to Quinn.
My feet skidded to a stop once I came to a vast arch in the cream hallway wall. It opened out to what looked to be a kitchen.
Somebody was in there. They were out of sight, but in there nevertheless. I could hear their delicate footsteps.
The footsteps soon fell quiet to the sound of sniffling, which then quickly escalated into shuddering choked back snorts.
"Ugh! God dammit!" a soft defeated voice whined out, followed by a prickling that resembled oil simmering on a stove.
It was her voice.
Quinn's voice.
I quickly snuck a peek around the frame of the archway and popped right back out again. Then when all seemed to settle down in my head, I gradually snuck my head around the archway's frame for a second time, this time keeping it there.
Quinn's posture held a slumped stance as, back to me, she waded around a rectangular island to get to the stove. I watched her scrape some diced onions up from the chopping board that she was stood over, and fling them into the waiting wok pan, the loud hiss covering up her distraught whimpers.
It was abrupt, the way that the fire beneath the wok suddenly flared. Quinn threw herself out of the flame's reach, offering a quick sniffle and a more insistent, "God dammit!"
She watched, powerlessly, as the wok that she'd accidentally knocked clanged to the granite tile and wobbled to a halt.
I bobbed my head back out and threw alert glances both left and right, hoping that nobody would come running to inquire about the commotion. But that hope shattered to dust when I heard movement nearing this way.
"Shit," I whispered, glancing all around for some sort of solution.
In the end I did the only thing that I could think to do.
I rushed into the kitchen.
At the sound of my panicked feet, Quinn jumped and span around, her red-rimmed eyes wide with the fright of a thousand ghosts, her cheeks streaked with tears.
Before either of us could react, a tall casually dressed middle-aged man breezed right in past me, causing my body to tense up with the awareness of all the different ways that this could go wrong.
Quinn immediately bent to pick up the wok pan, though the suddenness of it caused me to suspect that her true intention was to conceal the state of her puffy crimson face.
The blonde-haired man silently tossed curious glances between me, crouching Quinn, and the messy stodge of onions that marred the floor.
"Anyway yes, I'll definitely check that out. Sounds like a lot of fun," Quinn suddenly chirped, as she stood up and placed the wok back onto the stove - though her back remained to us long after the wok was secure.
At first I frowned, but I quickly grasped what she was doing and fell into character. "Ok, great. I'll, err, send you the details."
"Thanks. Dad, did you want something?" she asked, projecting her voice in as stable a manner as she could.
It was almost like I hadn't just caught her crying a river moments ago.
She was too good at it, too good at throwing up a facade to not have had ample practice.
Seemingly buying that everything was perfectly normal, Mr. Fabray issued me a smile and then stilled a lingering look over at his daughter, who was busying her hands with the knobs on the stove, back still to us.
"Nothing in particular, no. Just came to see what all of the noise was about," he answered, drawing his smile back to me.
I pulled the straps to my purse further up onto my shoulder, and smiled back out of sheer discomfort.
"Yep, well I've got it all under control," Quinn insisted all too eagerly. "Nothing to worry about. You should go back to your office. The sooner those accounts are straightened out, the sooner you can get the sleep that you've been moaning about being deprived of."
Like Quinn wasn't even in the room, Mr. Fabray pointed his index finger out at me and then rubbed his chin with a curious squint. "Santana Lopez, right?"
I nodded. "That's me."
"Russell Fabray," he said, offering out his hand for me to shake.
Over by the stove, Quinn snapped her head back over her shoulder. Her eyes warily zeroed in on the open hand that her father was extending to me.
It seemed a strange reaction…
But whatever, I wasn't about to shake Mr. Fabray's hand for anybody. He was quite possibly a monster, the cause of Brittany's – and however many other women's – trauma, and if Molly was his child, then how many other women out there had been forced to womb his offspring?
He would remain convicted of those allegations in my mind until proven innocent.
"I'm sorry, but I don't really shake hands." I chuckled in the hopes of keeping everything light. "I'm a bit of an obsessive compulsive when it comes to germs. No offense intended, of course."
Mr. Fabray chuckled right along with me and lowered his hand. "Who would take offense to such a beautiful woman?"
"Dad," Quinn drawled warningly, "she's gay. Stop it!"
"I know sweetheart, I know," Mr. Fabray chuckled, completely undeterred in his leering at me.
He was actually a good-looking man for his age, and when he smiled he shared his daughter's bone structure, but his pear-shaped body kept him at an overly generous four as far as attractiveness went. I shuddered to think of his potbelly weighing down heavily into a struggling Brittany's stomach, whilst he pinned his forearm into her throat and pounded into her.
He was a dirty old man. That much was undeniable, but Quinn's reaction to him flirting with me and trying to shake my hand was strange. It seemed to extend beyond the whole, 'you're married to my mother, so behave!' thing. She seemed almost… panicked?
Wanting to play off of that, I decided to take my douche-bag father's advice from this morning, and flirt with Mr. Fabray. "Well thank you Russell. Are you always this charming?"
"Dad, I really think that you should get back to the offi -"
"Only to those who deserve it," Mr. Fabray continued, his voice trampling all over his daughter's desperate attempt to interject. "I bet you break a lot of hearts, am I right?"
In the background I saw Quinn scoop a knife up from the chopping board. She subtly directed its gleaming tip in my direction, her eyes rippling with despair, almost as if to communicate that having it plunged through my chest would be a better fate than having her father set his sights on me.
"Not too many broken hearts actually," I answered him airily - "Uhm, Quinn?"
She silently placed the knife back down on the chopping board and rubbed her nose, sniffling, "what?"
Mr. Fabray glanced at his daughter, a frown etched into his forehead. "Honey, are you crying?"
"No!" Quinn hastened, brushing at the raw-red flesh beneath her eyes with the back of her hands. "Onions - they make me all puffy and weepy. You know that."
Somehow satisfied with his daughter's obvious lie, Mr. Fabray returned his salacious leer to me. "Well," he began, "it was nice to meet you in person Santana. I didn't even know that you and Quinn were friends; she never tells me these things anymore," he chuckled with an eye roll. "I think she's ashamed of me."
I fell into the giggles that he expected me to, adding, "kids, right?"
"I know. Anyway, I really hope to see you around these parts again. I better get back to my office."
"Certainly," I nodded, as he left out through the archway with one last wink.
The second that his footsteps were no longer audible, Quinn tore around completely; head tilted forward, eyes narrowed murderously. "What the fuck, are you doing here?" she demanded with quiet menace.
Desperate Quinn seemed merely a thing of the past, swept away with her father's departure. But I'd seen it, that urgency. Narrowing her eyes and grunting now wasn't going to un-mash the potato. She'd been desperate to get her father to go back to his office, desperate to get him away from me.
With it now being just the two of us, I dropped the burden of my fictional smile and asked, "when we were having dinner at Solaris, why'd you get so antsy when I asked you about Mistress Brittany Sheridan?"
I watched Quinn's head slowly lift out of its forward tilt, that menacing look falling from around her swollen eyes as they darted frantically around the room, seemingly looking for plausible answers. "You were being crude. It was deeply repelling so I, I left."
I narrowed skeptical eyes at her. "Sure about that?"
"You think you can just come into my home," she stressed, jabbing a forceful finger into her chest, "and interrogate me? Get out."
"I know Brittany worked here back in 2005, Quinn. I know that she used to style your mom's hair, and I also know about your father's -"
"Get out before I have you thrown out!" she quickly whispered, as if to clip a lid over a tub of poisonous gas before it floated up nostrils and put hearts to sleep.
But it was too late.
"I know about the recent case against you father. And I don't think it's just a coincidence that back in 2005, when Brittany was working for you guys, she reported being -"
Pushing off of the stove's front, Quinn pounded the granite towards me and threw her hand around my upper arm, swiftly dragging me through an open door that was just to our right.
I shrugged her tight clasp off immediately, and she yanked on the inside door handle, enclosing us within the vast pantry with a loud slam.
I walked up on her so that our noses were sharing the same space, and spoke a heavy, "I know."
"No! No!" Quinn shook her head like that crazy woman who always lives at the end of the street, the one with all the cats. "You don't know anything! So why don't you just go back to fucking everything and anything in a skirt, and get the hell out of my life?" she quietly snarled. "That case was dropped!"
"Only because she was paid off," I instantly countered, remembering the small bits of information that I'd read about it in Ben's folder on her.
Her mouth jutted open and then closed again, and her hand found its way back through her tousled blonde hair.
"I know that you know, Quinn, so drop the bullshit!"
A hard, mirthless, manic chuckle tore from her throat. "Why, because you're big bad Santana Lopez, and you're going to make me?" she mocked.
"Because your father's a God damn monster who needs to be behind bars. Because you can't continue to let him do this to innocent women! And because Brittany has a seven-year-old daughter, who might just be the product of rape!"
With the release of those three sentences I saw everything fall away, and before my very eyes Quinn became real, her frame crumpling in on itself.
"I…I know," she choked out choppily, bowing her head like she herself had committed the assaults.
Fresh tears sprung to her eyes. They quickly brimmed to full capacity, rolling to the end of her chin and splashing to the floor in small lakes. "I – it just – I-I wasn't – it… with Brittany, I-I saw him." Her eyes clenched to tight slits as she presumably relived the memory, wrinkle lines webbing from them like growing cracks in the earth. "I s-saw him," she gasped, "and I hid, l-like a coward, until it w-was over."
With those barely decipherable watery words she slumped back into the wall, shuddering as she slid down to the floor. "I just wanted to, I just wanted to p-protect… my family," she sobbed, repeatedly hiccuping as though she was headed into hyperventilation.
She saw him. She saw him assaulting Brittany. She saw him and she didn't do anything.
As a woman, I stood there staring at her in absolute disgust, before ripping open the pantry door, breezing out past the much-too-late butler, and leaving.
Droplets of sweat tickled down my glistening sternum, disappearing beyond the low neck of my red tank top as I pounded my feet to the treadmill's conveyor belt. My diaphragm grew and shrunk in quick burst, my mind racing with just as much haste.
Unemployed life was supposed to be boring, uneventful, yet there were multiple things that had occurred in the last few weeks that sought to keep me on a constant treadmill of drama and questions.
With everything that had happened, I was feeling overwhelmed to be honest, and usually there wasn't that added tension lingering in my loins, but the fact that Brittany was the only woman that I wanted to fuck right now, meant that I was being forced to cozy up to my vibrator at night, as well as my fingers. Hardly the same as a warm, soft, feminine body now was it?
I was frustrated, big time, and it was doing nothing to alleviate those feelings of being overwhelmed.
"One," I panted, "more," I wheezed, "lap!" I pushed, gripping the handrails and going as hard as I could.
It didn't help that Brittany hadn't contacted me for five days. The Vulva; Scent of a woman perfume was the last I'd heard from her, and in some strange fucked up convoluted way, I was growing more riled, with every passing day, at the seeming abandonment. So riled that on day three, I began to formulate possible reasons for her absence; maybe her daughter was sick, or a parent had died, or maybe she was on holiday. It was sad and pathetic, especially since I'd told myself that I would stop caring. The woman had strung me up to a pipe in a public restroom and left me for Christ's sake.
But I cared, and I hated it.
I cared that Russell Fabray had gotten his perverted animal hands on her, and I cared about the impact that her trauma had possibly instigated within her life.
"Snap the fuck out of it! It happened seven years ago; she's probably fine," I tried to convince myself through ragged breaths.
Just below the sound of my feet hammering the moving belt, Deadmau5's 'I Remember,' began to hum in my pocket.
I quickly sprawled my legs, and situated both feet on the ledges either side of the treadmill's conveyor belt, hitting the stop button seconds later.
"Fuck," I panted, trying to catch my breath, before reaching into my pocket for my buzzing phone.
Holding it before my face, I took in the name flashing on its screen. "Fuck," I muttered.
It was Brittany.
I almost dropped the device in my rush to press the pick-up icon and get it to my ear. "Uhh, hello?"
"Next time I send you perfume, I expect a thank you."
She had such a sexy voice; it was a little difficult to concentrate on anything else. "Errr -"
"Grab the perfume and put on a dress – none of that Gucci crap. Casual," she ordered.
I frowned. "Why?"
"Because I said so, that's why. I'll arrive at your place in thirty minutes. Make sure you're in your car waiting for me on your driveway, doors unlocked. If you're not exactly the way that I've just described when I arrive, you'll be punished. Severely."
A quite crackle and a click signaled that she'd hung up.
I stood there partially feeling like maybe I should've been more careful of what I'd wished for.
"But if there's room for punishment, maybe there's room for a reward," I smirked.
After a quick shower, I slipped into one of my most casual dresses. In fact, it didn't look much like a dress at all. Sleeveless and lacking any distinct shape, it more resembled a long T-shirt that stopped mid-thigh. The print on the front of it was a black and white picture of some sweaty rocker chick belting silent notes into a microphone.
I tousled my hair before my mirror, and considered how hot I looked in the new mascara that I'd purchased the other day. Brittany would want to gobble me up, even if she was restrained enough not to show it…
I twisted the knob on the radio built into the dashboard, letting the usual chart crap swirl around my car. Truthfully, it was just something for me to tap my foot to whilst I waited for Brittany. It was clear that I was still being hazed by her. She'd once told me that I hadn't earned an appointment or a date with her. I wondered, with an anxious curiosity, what she had planned today in order to have me further 'earn' those things.
The moment that I glanced at my wristwatch, there was a tug on the passenger door. Cold briefly swept in as Brittany sunk into the seat beside me, her perfume immediately flooring my sense of smell.
She closed the door in and cast complex blue eyes down over my outfit, presumably scanning it to see if it met her criteria.
She was so fucking beautiful, with hair that glistened like new coins - even if she was wearing a simple white V-neck T-shirt, and jeans that flared over modest brown boots.
I really wanted to know what she thought about me. Did she think that I was as hot as I thought she was?
I had to ask: "Do you like what you see?"
"It'll do," she replied, reaching her finger out to jab the radio's off button.
"I look good in this," I complimented myself, the way that she wouldn't.
"Outer beauty doesn't ask you to be clever, witty, kind, or thoughtful. It's something that is worn, and it eventually frays and falls to nothing," she said, bored. "Where's the perfume? I told you to have it with you at all times."
Despite her demand to know whether or not I had the vial of Vulva with me, I found myself deep in frown beside her. What, she didn't think that I could be clever, witty, kind and thoughtful?
"I'm all of those things you just listed, and beautiful," I argued, my nerves dipping into feelings of anger.
Brittany simply looked at me for a few seconds, nothing but infuriating indifference swirling in those blue pools. She then slipped her hand into her right jean's pocket, and once her pale fingers reappeared I was able to make out that something pink and frilly was scrunched in her palm - perhaps a hair scrunchie?
I knew that the hair scrunchie theory was way off when Brittany let a pair of pink lace panties unfurl from her fingers before my eyes. "Pull them down over your head, and make sure that you can still see to drive," she calmly instructed, flinging them into my lap much the same way as I'd tossed that roll of fifties at her the night we met.
I bit my bottom lip as I stared down at the clearly worn panties; the scent wafting up from them made that of the Vulva perfume seem like a poor assimilation.
"What are you waiting for?" Brittany asked. "Do I have to put them on for you?" she berated, with a condescendingly arched eyebrow.
"Not at all," I smirked, picking them up and slipping them down over my head and face.
They smelled as though she'd deliberately worn them for a couple of days; simply glorious. I didn't want her to take them away, because the thought of getting myself off with them draped over my face did stupid things to my currently twitching sex.
I tightly gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and breathed out a content yet sexually frustrated breath.
"I said to make sure that you could still see to drive - weren't you just defending your big clever brain?" Brittany mocked.
Her tone was unnecessary, but she was right. I didn't want to end up in a pile-up. So I fiddled with the fabric that was covering my face, arranging it so that I could see out of both eyes clearly. "Uhm," I began, attempting to gather myself, "where are we supposed to be going?"
"You're going to drive to the Mission of Hope homeless shelter over on Twenty-Fifth Street."
"Uhh, excuse you?" I piped up, releasing the steering wheel whilst shaking my head in rejection of the idea. "I'm not going to a homeless shelter."
"Were you not just saying how kind and thoughtful you are? The people down at that shelter could use some kind and thoughtful, and you're going to be one of many to give it to them. Am I making myself clear?"
I knew what went down at those homeless shelters, and I wasn't about to start making cups of tea for druggies who were only homeless because they couldn't be bothered to get a job and turn their lives around.
"I'm nobody's slave, least of all for a bunch of druggies," I spat.
Brittany's lips twitched, threatening a smirk. "Actually you're my slave, and you're gonna go help those homeless folks out, because you're embarrassingly desperate to get a lot closer to my pussy than just wearing my panties on your head. Now start up the car. Dinner at the shelter begins in an hour."
A stare-off ensued between us, before Brittany snatched my hand from my lap and secured it around the steering wheel with a forceful pointed squeeze. The aggression was such a fucking turn on, but no way in hell was I about to let her know that. I had to salvage some of what was left of my shredded dignity – that was if I even had any left at this point.
"Ugh! Whatever, I'm not talking to any of them!" I grumbled, jabbing my thumb print to the glass scanner built into the dashboard. The engine rumbled as a result.
Brittany mussed her fringe and checked her teeth in the rear-view mirror. When finished, she directed her stare out of the windshield and said, "shut up and drive."
Silence hissed over the entire journey, like the beige leather interior of my car hid rattlesnake-filled coves...