Chapter One

She knew she should have found somewhere better than the closet to hide.

She could hear him, hear his heavy work boots thudding up the stairs, could picture him in her mind searching for her, seeking her out, knowing she was hiding, but where, this time…

Elise Blake slowly, carefully folded her body even smaller and tucked a few hanging clothes around her, hoping it would camouflage her whereabouts for just a little longer – just until he lost interest, just until he went for another whiskey or a baseball game came on.

Just something, until he lost interest in her.

But she knew that was a joke.

Elise had been in the system for too long to doubt how this particular story would end – again.

Some foster kids got placed with warm, loving people who made them part of the family; others got placed with people who only wanted the support check.

And in the case of the Reid family, a chance for an easy piece of ass.

Elise glowered at the closet door.

Well, she thought darkly, not easy.

Dale Reid was the worst kind of foster father – a drinker, a gambler, an unemployed, lazy man with a penchant for young girls – and he was meaner than a snake and stronger than an ox. The first time he’d tried to have his way with Elise, she’d fought and fought, until the concussion landed her in bed for two days.

She still fought – she would never go quietly into that bedroom with him – but she knew the limits, knew how much to fight before irreparable damage, or death, lay in his reach.

Dale Reid was a rapist; a child molester; a blotch on society.

And Elise Blake was in his care.

He was a grown man; she was a fourteen year old girl at the mercy of strangers and a system designed to save her now that she had outgrown the orphanages of her youth.

She silently scoffed at the foster care system that was supposed to protect her, and instead did nothing but make forced prostitution a little closer to home.

Want to eat? Want to stay off the streets? Don’t complain, don’t tell, and just lay back and take it.

But when Dale’s fifteen year old son Dennis began making noises that he thought he was also entitled to Elise’s body, she knew a change was going to have to come along – and soon. At first it was an inappropriate brush against her body in the hallway, but then it quickly progressed to caressing her ass, grabbing for her breasts when he thought no one was looking, and trying to shove his tongue in her mouth.

So far she had managed to keep him at bay from what he really wanted, but it was getting harder and harder to hide from both father and son…

She cringed as the door to the closet flung open suddenly, her eyes stinging from the abrupt brightness of the light, backlighting Dale and making him seem larger than life.

She sighed, and even as he pulled her up by the hair and flung her onto the bed, knew there was no way out.

But maybe someday…

She would never be treated like this again, she vowed for the thousandth time. When she was eighteen and in control of her life and her own destiny, she would always be treated with respect, dignity and human decency.

Never again.

She yelped as Dale pinched her arm, hard, bringing her back to the present, but she still fluttered her eyes shut, imagining a serene beach, the lapping of waves, warm sunshine, anything but a dingy bedroom in a row house with a man grunting on top of her.

She’d never been to a beach of any kind – not much in the way of oceans in Iowa – but she imagined it as her warm, safe, happy place.

She bit her lip and tried to be strong even as Dale hurt her.

She may not have known her father, and her mother may have died a penniless mistress addicted to coke, but Elise knew she never would.

If she could survive this, she reasoned, she could survive anything life threw her way.

As Dale continued his unwanted ministrations, Elise let her mind drift again, back to the calm, deserted beach in her own private paradise, her escape.

She could survive – she would have to.

874/50000