“I didn’t come here to talk to you, perverted bastard that you are. Look how you corrupted my daughter. You’re just like that trashy, home wrecking sister of yours.” Ella was screeching now.
Tess felt her face flame in shame as she stood to her feet, her legs shaking from her exertions and her fear. Dear God, how had her mother got into the house?
“Mother, why are you here?” Tess’s voice was thick with tears and confusion.
She wasn’t ashamed that she had experienced the sexuality of the act. But being caught in it was mortifying. And by her mother!
“I came to see why you were here after I found out your father and his tramp were away for the week,” she sneered. “You haven’t even called me. I was worried.”
The classic guilt trip from her mother any time Tess spent time with her father.
“Ella, control your tongue,” Jesse’s voice was hard and laced with warning.
Tess looked at him in surprise. She had no idea Jesse knew her mother.
Ella cast the other man a look that should have withered him with shame. Jesse stood before her, his shoulders squared, his dark face furious.
“Tess, go shower or something.” Cole drew her into his arms, kissing her head softly, his hands soothing on her back. “Let me take care of this.”
Tess shook her head.
“I haven’t needed you to fight my battles before this, Cole. I don’t need you to do it now,” she said. “I haven’t done anything wrong—”
“Wrong?” Ella’s voice was piercing. “You think f**king your perverted lover and his friend isn’t wrong, Tess? I raised you better than to whore for some depraved bastard.”
Tess trembled at the fury in her mother’s voice.
“Ella!” Jesse’s voice was a lash of cold, hard fury now. “Get the hell out of here before I escort you out. And I don’t think you want me to have to do that.”
The heated edge of fury in Jesse’s voice surprised Tess.
“Get her the hell out of here,” Cole muttered to his friend.
“Would you guys just stop this?” Tess ran her fingers through her hair, hating the tremble in her hands as she faced her mother.
Years of being made to feel ashamed of her sexuality, of her needs as a woman washed over her. She remembered the lectures from the time she was a child, on the depravities of sex and the sins of the flesh.
“Mother, I told you I’d be back after the party,” she sighed, leaning against Cole for support, thankful in a way that she didn’t have to hide from her mother now.
“How could you do this, Tess?” Ella’s expression was livid, her gray eyes glittering with fury. “How could you have become so depraved?”
“Depraved?” Tess shook her head, sighing. “I’m just different from you. I’m sorry.”
A tear escaped her eyes. She hated having her mother angry with her, just as she had hated leaving her father so long ago.
As she finished speaking, a movement behind her mother caught Tess’s attention. Her father, tall and strong, his face coldly furious, moved into the room.
“Well, I guess you’re satisfied,” Ella sneered when she saw him. “She’s just like you and that whore you married.”
Missy was with her father, and for once, Tess saw anger lining the beautiful blonde’s face.
“You’re in my home, Ella,” Missy reminded her, her slender body tense and lined with anger. “I suggest you leave it and consider what you’re losing in this display you seem intent on. Tess isn’t a child. She’s a woman. Her lifestyle is none of your concern.”
Fury pulsed through the room, nearly choking Tess.
“I can’t believe you did this. That a child of mine would lower herself to the same games her father plays.” Tess flinched under the cold, unrelenting judgment her mother was meting out.
“Ella!” Missy’s voice was a lash of hot fury. “I will have you escorted from my home if you cannot speak to your daughter decently. What she does is no business of yours. She’s a grown woman.”
“And I don’t need anyone fighting my battles for me,” Tess bit out, more than surprised at the confident edge of power in her stepmother’s voice. Missy with a backbone? She wouldn’t have believed it.
“Do you know what she was doing here, Jason?” Ella screamed out at her ex-husband. “This had gone even further than the games you practice—”
“For God’s sake, Ella!” Jason cursed furiously. “Listen to you. Do you think our daughter wants to hear this? Our problems don’t involve her.” Her father’s face was ruddy with his own embarrassment. “I don’t care what she was doing. I trust Cole to protect her, that’s all I needed to know.”
“Well had you shown up a moment sooner—”
“Then I would have warned them of my arrival before entering the house,” he growled in disgust as he cast Tess an apologetic look. “For pity’s sake, stop humiliating Tess because of your own bitterness. This has gone too far.”
Ella turned to Tess, her eyes hard, resentful. “Leave your belongings, Tess. You’re going home with me. Now!”
When had she ever given her mother permission to order her around in such a manner? Tess watched her in growing confusion and pain. She had never known how angry, how bitter her mother had become. And for what reason? She had often stated how her life was more secure without a man interfering in it.
“I won’t leave, Mother.” She felt Cole’s hands tighten at her shoulders, the way his body tensed expectantly behind her.
Shock filled her mother’s expression.
“What did you say?” She seemed to gasp.
“I won’t leave—”
“He’s using you, Tess,” Ella said furiously. “You’ll be nothing but his whore. He proved that today.”
Tess shook her head. “I love him, Mother. I have for years and I was too scared to admit to it. But I’m even more frightened of being alone and bitter, without at least having this time with him.”
Silence held the room. She thought she heard Cole whisper a reverent “Thank God.” But she wasn’t certain.
“You will,” Ella screamed furiously, her fists clenching at her side, her eyes glittering wildly. “You won’t stay with these monsters.”