Memory

Ok folks this is my first time putting anything out there so bear with me. Comments and advice greatly appreciated. ~ Gigi

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Sometimes people don't have the best intentions, they're just evil and don't have half a mind to care. Mind you evil is not the same thing as hateful but I guess in a way they're pretty close. I'm hateful not evil but I've known several people who are. Growing up in an all-white town in Idaho wouldn't have been too bad if not for the sorry excuses I had for parents. My mother could have been described as a nomadic prostitute originally from Detroit who loved to take long rides with truckers; she got pregnant on one of those long hauls and out came me. So just that we're clear that is my utterly inglorious and underwhelming beginning; I do not know who my father is and I don't care to either.

My mother's one redeeming feature is her desire to try to at least raise me well so she did the only thing she knew how; she took up with Charles who I would come to know as my "father" and we got stuck in Idaho, yay me. Now my ambition in life was never to be like my mother but time and circumstance would conspire to one day make me question whether ultimately we aren't that different at all.

I'm not one to feel self-pity for all of the things that have happened in my life but I will only mention them to say that sometimes you have to be your own redemption. I don't hate the people that crumble and fall under the weight of their own reality, in truth I just never wanted to be them in the words of Lady gaga "It's not that I've been dishonest, it's just that I loathe reality." And I made my own reality and lived in it for so long that I almost missed the salvation right in front of me.

Summer 1992

"Come on Sarah.... Just one kiss? What can it hurt?" Thirteen year old Deacon Sloane looked beguilingly into Thirteen year old Sarah Madison's moss green eyes with his own deep blue orbs. His look compelled her to kiss him, inside he felt like he would die if she didn't.

"But D what if we get caught? Our parents would kill us!!" She worried her lower lip with her teeth and Deacon had to pray for the strength not to grab her and just kiss her. She had always been so cute, so vulnerable and from the time he'd met her he had known that she would be the one; his mate.

"Maybe.. but come on who's gonna see us out here? Just one kiss Sarah, you know how I feel about you..." Sarah did know how he felt and even at the tender age of thirteen words could not describe the sense of power that knowledge filled her with. Deacon was the son of the pack alpha, Alexander Sloane, and as the daughter of his beta, Tripp Madison, she knew the kind of influence that position would give her. Mating forever was a serious matter and while she had no doubt that they would one day be mated they had forever to think about it, until then she would enjoy every moment of it.

Sarah looked into Deacon's eyes and smiled. He was so handsome; his coal black hair was a little too long and fell around his eyes and ears in an unruly mop that she just wanted to run her fingers through. Right now he had it parted away so that she could see his dark blue eyes that were filled with that dark sinful emotion that was probably reflected in hers. Already he was much taller than her with a solid build and chiseled features that would one day take her breath away.

All of the girls at school practically drooled over him both shifter and non-shifter alike. Their little town of Ridge Falls Idaho was filled with wolf shifters and non-shifters that managed to exist in relative harmony. The shifter population dominated the non-shifter by far however and there were times that they would have to take special measures to ensure that certain prejudices never really caused the town any grief. Sarah for her part really didn't mind humans; still, she much preferred to stick to her own kind.

Deacon leaned against the tree effectively boxing Sarah's tiny frame against it. He felt like he had been holding his breath forever waiting for her to just say yes. He had brought her out here to this special place in the woods on his family's estate just for this moment. He knew that she was special, that this moment would be special and he didn't want anything or anyone to ruin it. He had been half afraid that his best friend Owen Kincaid would somehow find out and find some way to ruin it.

Sarah was so beautiful to him and he just couldn't stop looking at her. For a wolf shifter female she was surprisingly small and delicate. She only came up to about his shoulders now and he knew that with time he would outgrow her even more. Her luxurious blond hair, green eyes and almost pixie like features inspired him even more to be her protector, her defender and anything else she would ever need of him.

He always felt like he should look out for her particularly since she was the last and only girl in a family that already had four boys. Her mother had died when she was only a baby and her father Tripp had never and would never remarry. He knew that she often felt neglected and overlooked and whenever she turned those tear filled green eyes on him he wanted to make it all better. Right now her long blond hair seemed to glow in the sunlight and form a halo around her head.

"Ok Deacon," she said as she licked her lips, "Just one little kiss..." Her sentence trailed off as he leaned forward and their lips met. Instantly he felt as if his heart, head and entire body were exploding. He was on fire and cold at the same time... and their lips had barely even touched. Her delicate pink lips were slightly moist so his slid smoothly and seamlessly over them. Instinctively he shifted position and his kiss became firmer somewhat more demanding and she melted against him.

Deacon was lost, caught in a world somewhere between heaven and hell, ecstatic that she had granted him this much but burning also for that unnamed more. He began to growl softly unconsciously at the back of his throat and against him Sarah shivered. They were so lost in their own world that he almost missed it, that nearly imperceptible shift in the wind and snap of a twig in the woods and when Sarah stiffened in his arms he knew that she had heard it too. While they had been lost their wolves had clearly been on high alert.

"What was that?" Sarah asked him with her tiny hand fisted in the material at the front of his shirt as she glared into the gloom of the trees. He knew that she was afraid that someone would catch them and no matter the circumstances Deacon hated when Sarah was afraid. If it was Owen out there he would kill him...

"Don't worry Sarah I'll go check it out." As he was slipping out of her grasp she held him and turned fear filled eyes on him.

"Don't leave me here all alone.." A smarter wolf or man would have reminded her that no matter what she would be okay since they were after all far more than human but he was in love or something like it and that idea never crossed his mind.

"I won't be gone long," he whispered and had to resist the urge to just kiss her again, "but I do have to go check it out." She nodded and he squeezed her hand as he went off in the direction of the sound they had heard.

As he drew nearer he thought that he could make out a small dark shape in the brush but he couldn't be sure since it took his eyes a while to adjust to the darkness in the thicker trees. When his eyes did adjust however he was certain that he could see something small and white crouched between some bushes.

"Hey!! Who's out there?" he shouted and he knew he saw the bush shiver and somehow he knew that whoever it was they would probably make a run for it. "You're not supposed to be out here it's my family's land and you're trespassing!!" He was using his wolf's instincts and skills in order to sneak up on the hidden figure despite the use of his voice. He was almost on them when they suddenly popped out of the bushes and what he saw shocked him solid.

It was the little black girl that lived in the old shack at the edge of town. Everybody knew them; well they knew them but didn't talk about them much, at least not in the presence of the younger ones. There was something to be said, however, about shifter hearing. Her mom had been black and dad white. The mother had died a few years ago from a fall or an accident or some such thing leaving the girl alone with the alcoholic father. There were whispers that there was something else wrong there but just what it was he didn't know and it hadn't mattered to him.

He saw her sometimes at school in the yard always by herself and always quiet. She seemed to always be in old clothes and dirty. She was around eight or so and he knew that she got teased because she smelled funny. He had always thought that she wasn't such a bad looking kid. She had the smoothest milk chocolate skin that he had ever seen with huge hazel eyes that sometimes looked greener than anything and the most surprisingly soft thick curly hair but it was always messy.

Deacon barely noticed any female other than Sarah but had anyone asked him he would have said that yes this girl was pretty. Pretty in a very different way to his Sarah but still pretty and she was much smaller. She barely made it to the middle of his chest where Sarah made it to his shoulders, then again she was only eight and humans sometimes turned out to be taller than you thought they would be.

He was struggling to say something, anything, to even remember her name because he knew he knew it but he was frozen with shock at the sight that she presented him. The right side of her face was all swollen and bruised looking and her lower lip was bleeding. She was just as dirty as always in a tattered old white dress that had definitely seen better days and her hair was matted. She also definitely looked like she had been crying. Her name was on the tip of his tongue when he heard Sarah's voice calling out to him and getting closer.

Her entire body tensed and she turned toward the sound and before he could utter a word she took off like lightening through the trees. He should have taken off after her, he could have more than caught her, but Sarah was scared and needed him. Besides he was still in too much shock since he had just remembered that her name was Skye and he didn't know how to ask her why the back of her dress was bleeding.

Pain, tearing, blood and the prayer for death where the ghosts that followed the young Skye on her flight through the trees. Something was wrong and her Momma as mean and hard as she was was long gone. She had put on her fairy dress that morning the only somewhat clean one she had, it was white or at least it used to be but she loved it because the nice lady at the church had passed it along since her daughter didn't need it anymore. She was going to her secret place, Charles was drunk and in a mood and even if he wasn't he had been acting strange lately calling her a woman and looking at her funny.

She usually slipped out these days and spent long stretches in the forest on the Sloane land reading her fairytales pretending and making small talk with the trees. They didn't ridicule or judge and they didn't have eyes to see that she was dirty as can be. She was just brushing out her hair as best she could when the old creaky door swung open and in walked Charles. Somehow she had known it was too late and that he wanted to do the things she heard him doing to her momma at night when she was alive. Resistance was futile but she fought him anyway and then she came here to the forest to escape.

She had wanted to die she hurt so bad all over and on top of her own filth now she could smell her own blood, feel it sticky and wet between her thighs and the only thing she could think of was to go to her special place to talk to her trees and cry. She didn't expect the Sloane boy to be there, to witness her shame. She knew him from around and had admired him from afar, the pretty young white boy she used to imagine as her prince charming, but princess didn't like dirty little girls only sweet smelling little princesses like that Sarah Madison girl he seemed to fancy.

The fact that he had appeared here so suddenly in the middle of her woods was enough to make her heart stop beating. In the distance she heard a voice calling out to him and her heart sped up again. They both didn't know what to say so she did the only thing that she could, she ran away again.

Summer 2010

"Gentlemen now presenting the lovely Skye Rayne!!!"

The throbbing beat of the music was low and seemed to only feed the air of anticipation all directed toward the darkened stage. Slowly the curtains lifted to reveal the sultry scantily clad ebony goddess as came toward center stage. This world was glitter, glue, fake, diamonds, hard cocks and sweat and she was the queen. All eyes were mesmerized by her slow sensuous movement the world's greatest courtesan had come to play.

Their lust and desire fed her power guided her movements and she seemed to become sex and desire personified on that stage. She caught the eyes of all of her loyal subjects but she really didn't see them but she had gotten very good at pretending to and each of them vied for a second of her attention, showering her in a torrent of cash and praise. She gave them everything and still gave them nothing. How were they to know that the body they so desired was merely a vessel, a weapon of pain and devastating destruction to the owner but if they were to ever get too close they would find out and the knowledge would leave them breathless.

She was a study in skill and flexibility, a dream that all wished to possess not dirty somehow but polished and sweet. Her face, her body would be the one they would be dreaming about for many nights to come replacing their wives in their lust with her. It was her power, he refuge and her freedom and she used it so well.

Finally the music came to its slow sweet inevitable end and as the goddess on the stage moved once more to rejoin the shadows her departure was met with a sigh of such longing that it might have broken her heart if she had one. Then the spell was broken and the crowd erupted in cheers and calls for encores, Skye Rayne exotic dancer extraordinaire was done here.

"Hey baby girl great work tonight!! Why don't you think about NOT denying this club of your fine services and staying on, it just won't be the same around here without you!" Hank the owner of Skye's soon to be former place of employment, Club Divine, was all business under that jovial façade. He know she was his best dancer and wasn't too keen on seeing his cash cow ride off into the sunset.

If they were friends maybe just maybe she would find it in her heart to care, to make this place her home and settle in New York, but it was just a place and they were just people to her. She didn't have friends and up until a week ago she didn't have a purpose and just flit from place to place ever since she escaped from foster care at sixteen. These days though she didn't do it the way her momma did, she traveled by greyhound bus and didn't pay her way with straight pussy but her earnings from stripping at various clubs. It was a vast step up from prostituting, how her mother would have been proud. She was a name on the circuit and never hurt for work.

"Sorry baby boy but I have places to be and things to do, maybe next time I'm out this way." She said it with a smile that she really didn't feel inside. Tonight she would be taking off her makeup here for the last time and hanging up her G-string, for the first time in years it wasn't wanderlust that drove her but purpose. She had someplace to be and a reason for being there.

This time around on her visit to New York she had reconnected with an old friend, Ruben Church. A nice kid she had met in the system that at 14 had been lucky enough to reconnect with a long lost aunt and taken care of. He didn't forget the other kids at the old home and in particular he never forgot her. They sent letters back and forth keeping in touch even after she had run away. He had turned out nice, a male nurse with his own place and a pretty little blonde thing named Darla in his sight. Skye liked her and she had never liked many people.

After years of lying, she was freelancing here, settling nicely there he had finally convinced her to come spend some time with him in the "big city". He didn't know where she ran off to all night and he knew better than to ask but she had made it abundantly clear that it was not hooking since she firmly drew the line at that. That didn't mean that she didn't enjoy sex, she really did but she used it for her own means and at her own discretion. Usually she used it to inflict some kind of pain because she loved to see that sad look of longing in the eyes of a lover that longed to get another taste.

She called herself a one hit wonder because she rarely ever returned for a repeat performance. She was like that Ntozake Shange poem about the girl who wanted to be a memory, what was that line again.... "she wanted to be unforgettable, she wanted to be a memory a wound to every man arrogant enough to want her." She loved that particular poem and play like she did nothing else, ever since she had found an old raggedy copy on one of her travels. It was the story of or life, it was all that she had aspired to be, a wound. But she was trying her best not to be that kind of wound for Ruben because after all he was a genuinely good person.

Somewhere in her heart she wanted him to be happy to have a good life because he seemed to be doing alright. But the thing about being as hateful as she was and as angry is that she was conditioned to share the pain and her brand involved a sharing of bodies. So try as she might even knowing that he had a good thing going with Darla within a week she was fucking him and slowly she could see that he had grown far more attached than he should have and wasn't just her friend anymore. The only hope she had to save him was to walk away early and make a clean break of it and hopefully she could save him from falling prey to her own special brand of revenge on the universe against men.

Her salvation came in a letter, short and sweet. Charles was dead and he had left her with all the piss poor belongings he had ever had in this world since she was his only living "relative". If her situation was different she would have just ignored it and moved on to another town and another club repeating her never ending cycle. But in truth she had started thinking more and more about the place that she had once called home, the place that held all the pain and fear of a child trying to escape an abuser. Despite the fact that her memories of it mainly held such horrors that even she couldn't face them it was still home and she got the sense that it was where she was supposed to be.

So tonight that was why she hung up her G-string she was going home and at the same time saving Rueben from himself.

It was almost 4 am when she finally got in, Ruben had long since finished his shift and she expected him to either be home waiting, which wouldn't be a good thing, or out with his lady love Darla which is what she was hoping for. When she got to the front door she took a little breath and if she believed in anything she would have prayed but she didn't. If she swung open that door and he was there either awake or even otherwise in the apartment it would be too late for him, too late for the both of them. Before she could even lift her head from the breath he was already opening the door slightly disheveled but with that worried anxious look that a man got sometimes when he cared too much. Fuck!

The kindest thing that she could do at this point was make it fast and clean and hope that he had the good sense to save himself this mess. She walked passed him and paused, stunned at the array of candles, roses and a warm dinner, or was it breakfast, she could see all laid out for her in the dining room.