Barely Legal Vol. 3: Barely Legal Series (A New Adult Contemporary Romance Serial) Read online

  Barely Legal

  Barely Legal: A Serial

  VOL. 3

  Kailin Gow

  Barely Legal (Barely Legal Vol 3)

  Published by Kailin Gow Books

  Copyright © 2014 Kailin Gow

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, please contact:

  Kailingowbooks(at)aol(dot)com.

  First Edition.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  DEDICATION

  To my mother who taught me girls can be just as cool as the boys.

  Prologue

  Three Years Ago

  Laura

  Looks can be deceiving. That’s what I learned first hand when I first walked through the door of the Women’s Center. I’d thought the pain and hurt, the disappointment and humiliation of the past months showed on my face, in my eyes, and though I felt defeated and beaten inside, though I wanted to cry and scream out my frustration, from the outside, it seemed I’d pulled off a degree of decorum. I’d somehow managed to pull myself together enough to be presentable.

  The bright and alert eyes of a strong faced woman in her early forties greeted me with a complete lack of sympathy or pity, but with just a welcoming smile, almost as if I were a colleague.

  She was an attractive woman who wore very clean, minimalist makeup, but despite the very prim shoulder length dark hair and the professional attire, it was easy to see that life had not been easy for her. Something hard and determined shone in her eyes. Something that said, ‘I’ll never let anyone hurt me again.’

  If anything, she wore her past like a badge of honor. There was something honorable about her that I instantly liked.

  “Can I help you?” Her smile was pleasant and her voice welcoming.

  I didn’t know what to say. Could she help me? And how? I was no longer sure what had pushed me to walk through that door. I’d felt lost for the past few days, but thought I could get through it on my own until that very morning when my life seemed so bleak, I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed. “I heard about the Women’s Center at UC Irvine,” I finally said. “I just stopped in wondering if maybe…”

  “Oh,” the woman said with a relieved smile as she extended her hand to me. “Finally. I was just about to give up. I’ve been hoping for some new volunteers and had begun to think we’d never get any help. I’m Kathryn Brickman and I run this house.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Laura.”

  “Well, Laura, it’s Chrissy you’ll be working with.” She turned and pointed to the left. “Head straight through that corridor and hang a right at the third door. She’ll be thrilled to meet you. We’ve put in so many requests for volunteers or interns from UCI, but we’re always at the bottom of the heap, the bottom of the list… after the public defenders, the legal aids, and halfway houses. If we’re lucky, there are some leftovers and we get someone.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I’m sure the Center provides an invaluable service. It’s a shame no one wants to come help out.”

  “I’m happy to hear you say that. Dedication is key here.” She turned away to tend to her duties. “Oh,” she called over her shoulder. “And let Chrissy know you’re from UCI.”

  Tongue-tied, I just nodded and headed to the corridor. If she only knew where I was really from. At that point UCI seemed like it had been in another lifetime. My studies had faltered and I had to get back on track soon if I didn’t want to lose a semester.

  I counted off the doors. One. Two. And finally I reached the third door and knocked.

  “Be right there!”

  I frowned. The voice wasn’t that of an experienced and mature social worker, but more that of a teenager; a sweet, cheerful and friendly teenager. Waiting, I heard the clickity click of a tiny hard heel on a hard linoleum floor and seconds later, the door flew open.

  The young woman stared blankly at me a moment. Her hair was dyed jet black, almost too black, just as black as the thick eyeliner and heavy mascara that darkened her eyes.

  I started to reluctantly extend my hand in greeting, but couldn’t believe this was Chrissy.

  The raven-haired girl looked over her shoulder. “Thanks, Chrissy.”

  I peered inside and saw a statuesque brunette with amazing green eyes, flawless skin and a body that could easily appear in the pages of a men’s magazine, all neatly packaged in a pair of snug black jeans and a conservative but fashionable emerald top.

  “My pleasure, Paige,” she called back. “I’ll see you next week.”

  “Will do.”

  “And stay clear of trouble.”

  Doing a sudden about face, the dark haired girl ran back into the room, and gave the tall beauty an affectionate hug. “I’ll do my best.”

  Shooting me a bright grin, Paige hurried out and I walked in.

  “Well,” Chrissy said. “Get a load of you. An intern and one who knows how to dress like a professional. I like you already.”

  Yeah, it was the one thing I was still capable of apparently; dressing in a way that made me credible. To look at me, no one would ever know…

  “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for you to walk into my life. I think I even had a dream last night that I had an intern.” She smiled at me. “Crazy, huh?”

  “I’m really happy I found this place, but…”

  “It’s a great place to intern.” She sat behind her desk and opened her agenda. “You’ll like it here. Very rewarding.”

  Staring at her agenda, jam packed with brightly colored appointments, post-its and more, I didn’t know where to begin. “Hum, I don’t know what to say, exactly,” I muttered. “I’m not sure I can handle this.” I looked around the tidy, but clearly old office. I could tell the walls had been painted over and over again and the linoleum floor was faded and mat along the heavily trafficked area.

  Behind her desk was a photo of a young girl smelling a daisy while her dog waited patiently at her side. The young girl was smiling and seemed happy.

  The simple things in life, the caption read.

  “The internship?” Chrissy said as she pressed the overstuffed agenda open. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll show you the ropes. It can be a bit intimidating at first, but you’ll get the hang of it fast enough. And, believe me, it’s a great experience. Having this on your résumé makes a great impression. You’ll see. The women here are a lot more like you and me than you might think. More than most people think. Everyone has that stereotypical image of what an abused woman should look like. Downtrodden, emaciated, hollow eyes.”

  I chuckled softly, maybe even a bit nervously. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so out of place, so uncomfortable. “Exactly.”

  She looked up at me with a confused frown.

  “I’m afraid Kathryn mistook me for an intern when, in fact, I’m here to seek help.”

  “Oh, my God,” Chrissy said as her eyes filled with concern then embarrassment. She leaned back into her old worn out chair. “Look at me talking about stereotypes. I’m just as guilty as everyone else is.” She gave me a disbelieving up and down look.

  “That’s okay. I think I go out of my way to hide it.”

  “Still.” She gestured to the chair
facing her desk. “It’s inexcusable, especially from me.”

  “I guess we’re all fallible.” I sat down and realized I liked her, maybe because she was fallible.

  “In that case, you came to the right place. And I know exactly how it feels to be in your shoes. It wasn’t all that long ago that I needed help and I was reluctant to ask for it, but it’s amazing what the love and support of good people can do for you. And here I am now, in a position to help women like yourself.”

  I smiled for the first time in a long while. I wanted her help. I needed her help.

  “Do you want to share with me what brought you here today?”

  “I took my own car,” I said, straight faced.

  She gaped for a moment before smiling and pointing her pen at me. “A sense of humor. That’s a good sign.”

  I nodded, but remained silent.

  “Is humor a defense mechanism for you? You make jokes instead of getting to the heart of the problem?”

  “Not usually. I guess I’m just particularly stressed out these days and I’m not too sure how to share my story. Actually, I’m not all that sure I want to share it at all.”

  She nodded her understanding, so compassionate and patient, as if she knew exactly how I felt. “I know it can be hard figuring out where to start. Let’s see if I can get you going. How about we start with your name?”

  “Laura Turner?”

  “And you're a student at UCI.”

  “First year law.”

  “Things are going well?”

  “I’ve had my ups and downs.”

  She looked down at the crisp white shirt I wore with my perfectly pressed black skirt. “Like I said when you first walked in, you're very well dressed. I would guess that finances aren’t a big problem for you.”

  I shrugged. “My father’s businesses are doing pretty well.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with your…” She looked expectantly at me. “Boyfriend…? Husband…? Partner?”

  Swallowing the ball of disdain in my throat, I looked into my lap for the answer. “I don’t really have a… boyfriend right now.”

  “How long ago did you split from him?”

  I raised my gaze to meet hers. “A few months ago.”

  “Whose decision was it?”

  “Mine.”

  “Tell me about him. What’s his name?”

  “Jackson.” I almost choked on the name.

  “And how did you meet Jackson?”

  “We met when I was eighteen, freshman in college. He was my first.”

  She cocked her brow. “Lover?”

  I nodded.

  “We rarely see girls who’ve had their first sexual experience at eighteen. Were you raised in a conservative family?”

  “Pretty much. I mean, we never talked about sex at home. None of my parents ever had the ‘talk’ with me. The topic was pretty much limited to just ‘don’t’.”

  “And what was your first sexual experience with him like?”

  I couldn’t help but let out a quick and cynical snicker. “It was like a revelation. I’d been led to believe sex was uncomfortable, painful, dirty. As it turned out, it was fabulous and I immediately wanted to do it again.”

  “How long were you and Jackson together?”

  “About a year.”

  “What split you apart?”

  I was silent a long time. The questions so far had been mundane and easy to answer. Now we were getting into the nitty gritty.

  “Laura?”

  “During our time together, sex was very… adventurous.”

  She cocked a brow. “I see.”

  “Jackson liked things a little rough.”

  “And did you like it a little rough?”

  “Yes.” I said with open frankness.

  “Did things get out of hand?”

  I nodded. “He slowly turned me into his sex slave, and at first I loved the role. I wanted to please him, to please myself, to do whatever he asked of me. But he kept pushing the boundaries, pushing me to do things that were increasingly uncomfortable. Pleasure and pain can marry very well in the bedroom, and for a long time the balance was perfect, but by the end I felt only pain and no pleasure; not only in my body, but in my heart, in my soul.”

  “He turned you into an object?”

  “One that had less and less value in his eyes.”

  “Or yours.”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t argue there.

  “So how have things been since the break up? Has he been harassing you? Stalking you? Is that what brought you here?”

  I shook my head and looked up at her. I had so much shame, I couldn’t bear to tell her all I had done.

  “You can’t shock me, Laura,” she said. “I’ve heard it all. Girls come in here who’ve been to hell and back, and the trips either way have not been pretty. I promise you. I won’t judge you and you’ll feel much better when everything is out in the open.”

  “I was a good girl when I first met Jackson.” For some reason I felt the need to get that in.

  She looked expectantly at me.

  “Despite our spiraling relationship, despite the punishment he doled out on a regular basis, Jackson managed to instill in me a need, a deep rooted, animal need.”

  “Go on.”

  Tears suddenly blurred my vision at the thought of saying aloud what I’d become since leaving Jackson. The prim and proper shirt and skirt were millions of miles away from the wanton girl I truly was.

  “When I left Jackson, I realized my appetite for sex remained. At first I’d pick up guys at bars, bring them home, fuck their brains out and go on my merry way. But soon, I wanted more. I wanted the intensity I’d had those first months with Jackson. I started hooking up with men who had a need to lash out. I wanted to be pinned down, I wanted to be treated like a bad girl.”

  Of course, there was also Michael Brooks. He’d been one of the first guys after Jackson to really thrill me, to excite me the way Jackson had. While with him, sex was easy to get and constant, but our relationship grew stale and what had first thrilled me soon bored me. He wasn’t dominant enough, not alpha enough. No, Michael had had a weak streak in him and I’d had no patience for it.

  Chrissy took in a deep, long breath.

  “Would you say you became addicted to sex?”

  “I didn’t want to believe it at first. I mean, I didn’t even know such a thing existed. So I promised myself I wouldn’t go out, I wouldn’t meet any men. I stayed home and concentrated on my studies for a solid two days.” I looked up at her and laughed. “I thought I was going to go nuts. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t write a cohesive sentence. I would read the same page over and over again, but not a single word would sink in. Finally, that Sunday night, I stormed out of my apartment wearing only my tight white boxer briefs and a baby blue tank top. I banged my fist on the door of my neighbor five doors down. I knew he lived alone; a man in his late forties with a bit of a gut, but big strong arms covered with tattoos and thick calloused fingers. I’d never even spoken to him before, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at that point. I wanted a man, a man with a cock.”

  I looked pointedly at her. “I slept with older men who could still get it up, with young guys eager for their first thrill and I even had one wild weekend with a brawny girl who knew how to work a strap-on. Hell, if you had a cock, I’d probably be hitting on you right now. It doesn’t matter that we just met, I’d be all over you.”

  Chrissy smiled. She was right. Nothing seemed to faze her. “Did this sort of thing happen often?”

  “More and more. It got to the point where I couldn’t see straight. All that mattered was finding a man, any man, anywhere.” I wiped my hand across my brow as I thought of all I’d done to get sex, all the risks I’d taken.

  “And how did these men treat you?”

  I shrugged. “Some of them were okay, but…” I flinched at the thought of the last man I hooked up with, a guy who took to whipping me
a little too much. Too ashamed to go to the hospital, I’d spent almost two weeks locked in my apartment tending to my wounds. “Many of them treated me like the trash I’d become.”

  “So you took to self-bashing as well?” she said with a critical cluck of her tongue.

  “I’m just being honest. There’s no point pretending things were different. I was a whore, and they treated me as such.”

  “And is Jackson completely out of the picture now?”

  “He’s tried to worm his way back in.” And on a few occasions, he’d succeeded. “I haven’t seen him a while now.”

  “Men must have really gone nuts for you; the typical clean cut, sweet school girl who can fuck like a pro. That’s a winning combo.”

  I nodded. “Indeed.”

  “So we’ll have to work on retraining your desires and needs. We’ll turn them into something safer, something a little healthier.” She jotted down something in her agenda then closed it and clasped her hands on her desk. “Let’s try something. Close your eyes.”

  “Right now?”

  “No time like the present. Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “The mind is an incredible muscle, Laura and if you work that muscle right, you can regain more control than you can imagine. I’m going to say a few key phrases and you’ll repeat them with me.”

  Chapter 1

  Present Day

  I couldn’t get past the fact that Peter knew Price. It didn’t make sense. Okay, so Price had hired Peter to find out about me, to find out what I knew about Serena and Michael, but still. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Or maybe I just didn’t want to.

  And how could I ever trust Peter again?

  My mind raced back to that long ago weekend, a weekend I’d forgotten about, buried. A weekend Chrissy had been instrumental in washing from my mind. He had satisfied me in so many ways and now that those memories had been brought to the surface, I hungered for him all over again.

  It was so easy to conjure up fantasies with him, to give him a role and to succumb to his power. My nipples remained hard, despite Price’s sudden appearance.