His eyelashes stick together with the wetness of his unshed tears. He takes the check without looking at the amount. “We’re not even.”
I don’t give a damn about his difference of opinion. “You’re out of get-out-of-jail cards. If you fuck with me or my family again, I’ll treat you like anyone else.”
His lips quiver. “You don’t mean that.”
“I’ll cut your throat myself.”
“Dami, you said she wouldn’t get between us. You said—”
“Clean up this mess and get out of my house. I want you gone before Lina gets home.”
He stares at me, body trembling, but he’s already dead to me.
After sending Jana a text to tell her to take the day off, I lock myself in my study. The sound of a suitcase being rolled down the hallway filters through the walls. The front door opens and shuts. A vehicle starts up. Silence descends. The dark house reeks of squashed hope and loneliness, of meaningless lives and unfamiliar ghosts.
It’s just me and my frazzled thoughts.
Lina betrayed me.
I lost the war for her affection.
Lina
The house is quiet and cold when I enter. Even in the heat of summer, it’s always cold inside. I thank Brink for driving me, who nods and takes up his post by the front entrance. I close the door, shutting him out with the sun, and shiver in my rain-drenched clothes. There’s something ominous about the silence today. Where are Zane and Jana?
Dropping my handbag on a chair in the entrance, I kick off my wet shoes and pad to the kitchen. I’m about to enter when someone grabs me from behind. I’m yanked against a hard chest. A big hand covers my mouth. Citrus fill my nostrils. Muscles bunch in the arm circling my waist. Damian is holding me too tightly. Despite recognizing him, I struggle in reflex, but he easily lifts me off my feet. I kick and tear at his arms, which only makes him squeeze harder. It feels as if he’s pressing the air out of my lungs.
Carrying me like this, he climbs the stairs. My efforts have no effect on him. In his bedroom, he kicks the door shut and drops me to my feet. I fling around to face him.
He doesn’t look at me. His jaw is set in a hard line, and his brown eyes are turbulent. He knows I’ve been to see Harold.
“Damian, please let me—”
He holds up a finger. “Do not speak.”
Turning a laptop on the coffee table toward me, he presses play on a video clip. It’s footage of Zane and me on the stairs. Shit. He has hidden cameras. I should’ve known.
He moves to another clip of Anne and me in the bedroom, when she stated her terms.
Looking at him with big eyes, I gauge his reaction, but his face is blank. Cold. I can’t read him.
“Did you accept Anne’s terms?” he asks.
He knows I did. I remain quiet.
“Did you accept Zane’s terms?”
“No,” I whisper.
He glances at the laptop where the scene with Anne is still playing out. “That’s not what it looks like.”
“I said I’d answer him tomorrow, and my answer was going to be no.”
“You expect me to believe that after the lies you’ve been hiding?”
Imploring him with my eyes, I say, “Yes.”
“I gave you truth.” He slams the table. The laptop rattles. “I gave you love.”
I stare at him, my lips parting, not sure I heard right.
Stalking to the window, he grips the sill so hard his knuckles turn white. “I gave you affection. I gave you everything that’s mine.” He turns his head to look at me, disappointment engraved in the beautiful lines of his face. “After everything, this is what you choose.”
His words ignite a spark of anger. I will not stand here and let him accuse me of ungratefulness when he forced the everything he so eloquently quoted upon me. “You forced me to marry you. You forced me to lie when you forced me to stay.”
“I didn’t force you to fuck me, and yet you do, often and with enthusiasm. Is that a lie, too? Every time you cry out your orgasm, do you fake it?”
“No!” How dare he degrade the only pure memories I have? Suddenly, I’m shivering with rage. “Don’t you dare judge me when your own hands are stained black. Yes, I took the bait when Zane threw it at me. What did you expect, Damian? I’m not a wife. I’m a goddamn prisoner.”
He straightens too slowly, with too much calculation. “I made you a promise I have to keep.”
I remember only too well, and too late. I should’ve kicked him in the balls when he was angrier. Now, he’s too controlled. Observant, he watches my every move, predicting my intentions. I glance at the door. His gaze follows. He believes I’ll try to bolt.
I move. He jumps. Instead of fleeing toward the only exit, I grab the paperweight from the table and fling back my arm. Before I can throw it, he grabs my wrist. I whimper in pain and frustration as he squeezes until my fingers open, and the heavy weight drops with a plop on the carpet.
“Cooperate,” he hisses, “and I’ll take it easy on you.”
I believe him, because he never lies. Fighting will only make it worse.
He undresses me slowly, tenderly almost. He caresses my breasts and stomach. He trails his hands over my back and buttocks and tells me how beautiful I am. He brushes my hair over my shoulder and kisses my neck.
“I hate you for making me do this,” he presses against my ear.
Trembling in his arms, I rest my cheek against his chest. “You don’t have to.”
He lifts first one then the other arm, stretching them out horizontally. “I never break my promises.”
He fetches rope and secures me to the bed frame like the last time, but instead of stringing me up, he ties each arm to a bedpost, making me kneel with my upper body on the bed and my ass in the air. Unlike the last time, I know what to expect. It makes the anticipation worse. When he pushes a ball of socks into my mouth and secures it with his tie, my fear skyrockets.
I shouldn’t have gone to see Harold. I should’ve asked Damian to take me, but I never wanted him to find out what I was planning. Whatever he was so painstakingly building, whatever love he mentioned, is wiped away by this one, impulsive act.
Turning my head sideways, I watch him pick up a cane from the chair. My heart stammers. He didn’t have to fetch it from the study. He had it waiting, because he made a promise.
My courage fails. I protest around the fabric in my mouth. I want to beg him to believe me, but he won’t, not after the damning evidence he’s seen. He’s going to punish me for accepting a deal with Zane. He’s going to punish me for running to Harold, and for plotting my escape. Whatever I tell him now won’t matter.
“Ten,” he says behind me.
He runs the thin, smooth wood over my globes, letting me feel the potential viciousness of his instrument of choice. I pinch my eyes shut.
When the first lash falls, my upper body bows off the bed. I suck in a breath, but gag on the ball in my mouth. It’s excruciating. I thought the whip was bad, but this pain is thinner, deeper. It burns to the bone. The second has me writhering, trying to make myself flatter on the mattress. Tears steam from my eyes. I bite into the ball in my mouth, but it doesn’t help. He hits me again before I have time to catch my breath. I wail around the fabric that muffles my sounds. It feels as if I’m suffocating. Spots dance in front of my eyes. I wish it was from a deprivation of oxygen, but it’s from pain. I can’t stand it. I won’t survive it. Every muscle in my body clenches. Cramps pull my calves and feet tight. I scream into the ball of socks, the cotton sucking up my saliva and leaving my throat dry and burning. I try to block it out, pray to faint, but I’m awake and sensitive, feeling every lash that whooshes through the air and turns my skin into a canvas of fire.
There is a point of relief, after all. My vision starts swimming and something else pushes through the pain. Arousal. The lower half of my body is glowing. Heat devours my globes. My clit throbs. Grinding my hips on the edge of the bed, I seek distraction for the ac
he. Damian lets me, and just as well, because when he cries, “Ten,” the lash that follows cripples me. It hurts a thousand times worse than all the others. I don’t have to look to know this is the one that broke skin. Shaking, I half-choke and half-sob. The magic word is ten, but the hurt is far from over. It’s too deep under my skin. It’s traveled all the way to my heart and nestled in my soul.
I’m clenching my knees and rubbing my thighs together when his hand comes between my legs. He touches me where it aches with pleasure until a new kind of burn starts to build. My sensory impressions are cross-wired. Raw need overtakes the pain until my lower body throbs with desire. I’m high on it, relaxing my muscles and giving over to the touch.
Damian says pretty words of how good I’m doing, but they’re nothing but white noise. I home in on the rough timbre of his voice, letting it stroke my senses as the calloused pad of his finger strokes inside me. He enters me with another finger in my dark entrance. I’m hot with fever, burning up. I push back against his palm and make disgusting noises around the gag. I’m submersed in a fire where climaxing will be my only release. He stokes it higher, raining kisses over my back and in my neck, beckoning me to look at him.
I try, but my eyes won’t focus. He’s got something in his hands. Lube. He tells me to tell him no and squirts cold, slick liquid around my anus. I pinch my eyes shut again, because I can’t cope with more than processing the different sensations I’m feeling. It’s already an overload, the way he puts pressure on my dark entrance with his cock, and how the muscles stretch to accommodate the large head.
I can’t tell pain from pleasure, any longer. It hurts when he pushes in, and it feels good in other places. It feels unbearably good where his fingers are pumping inside my pussy. He’s going too slowly. I can’t take it anymore. It hurts too much. I just need him deeper, to go from torture to pleasure. I push back, but he holds me down with his hands on my hips, keeping me still.
“Shh. You’ll tear.”
Everything is already torn. My heart is bleeding, and my skin is mourning the loss of what we could’ve had even as the burn twists into pleasure.
I heave and remember I can’t swallow.
He pumps, going shallow. It takes a long time, so long I start to drift in a sea of happiness. Just when I’m about to go under, he presses a finger on my clit. I start to contract around him, too full, too filled with Damian. He’s in my pain and under my skin. A band of pleasure pulls my womb tight, and my vision splinters into spears of light. He moves faster, igniting fresh pain and pleasure. The sound of my scream is lost as he releases himself in my body. He stabs his hips into my burning buttocks. His muscles lock. He grunts and pushes me deeper into the mattress. Just when I think my ribs are going to crack, he lets up and pulls out.
It’s over.
My senses separate. The fleeting pleasure flees. Pain returns. It leaves tears in its wake, and agony in my heart. Wetness dribbles from my ass, between my legs. Kneeling, I’m an epitome of punished humiliation. I wish for the floor to open and swallow the bed with me tied to it.
Damian works fast to free me. First my hands, then my mouth. My tongue is thick. My mouth is too dry to swallow. I look at him as he throws the ropes aside. He didn’t even undress. He took me like this, fully clothed. He’s already zipped himself up. When he disappears into the bathroom, I collapse to my knees. I roll onto my side, huddling on the floor, facing the wall. I can’t look at him.
“Lina.”
He’s standing close, speaking softly.
“No,” I manage to croak out, “don’t.”
He crouches next to me, a wet rag in his hand. “Let me take care of you.”
“Get out,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Lina.” He reaches for me.
“Don’t you dare touch me.”
“You’re not yourself.”
Anger floods me, white and bright. It clears my vision and eats up my pain. My body pulls tight and straight. My nails cut into my palms. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. “Get away from me. Leave me alone.”
He straightens abruptly, hovering next to me.
“Go away. Get out. Leave.” I choke on a sob, barely able to catch it on time. He can’t see me break down. I won’t give him that, too. “Now, you son of a bitch. I hate you.”
Soft footsteps retreat to the far side of the room. The door opens, then closes. I lie dead still in the silence that follows. I’ve never felt lonelier. I’m shaking with sobs and pain.
What he did to me, I can never forgive him. I didn’t think there could be anything worse than a whipping. How wrong I was. How much worse can he do? What comes after the cane? He’s just shown me how dangerous it is to trust a monster, how stupid to forget a monster is not made of kindness.
Rolling onto my stomach, I push to my knees. I have to use the bed to pull myself up. My legs are quaking so much I can’t make it to the bathroom without the aid of the wall. For the first time since I married Jack, I lock a door behind me. I turn the key and feel the welcoming safety enveloping me. Gripping the edge of the vanity, I heave as a wave of nausea sets in. Aftershock. Adrenaline. I wait for it to pass before I open the faucet and wet my face. I cup my hand and take a sip of water. Turning, I look at my backside in the mirror. Nine red welts run across my ass. The tenth is bleeding. At least he only broke skin once. I study the new marks and imprint them in my mind.
With a shaking hand, I turn on the water in the shower and wait for it to run warm. I wash myself as much as I can endure, everywhere I can. I force my legs to comply until I’ve stepped out of the shower, and then I sink down on the rug. I take the time I need, enough to feel emotionally more stable, before I dress and put on my shoes. I take a bag from the closet and throw in a few changes of clothes. Draping the sling over my shoulder, I open the door.
Silence greets me.
The grandfather clock strikes. It’s five in the afternoon.
I walk down the stairs, softly. I pass every room. Empty. He left.
In the entrance, I retrieve my handbag. I take out my phone and leave it on the table with the keys. The phone will be tracked.
Brink doesn’t bat an eyelash when I open the door. He didn’t hear what happened upstairs. He goes to the car and opens the door. I get into the back, wincing at the pain as I sit.
“Where to, Mrs. Hart?” he asks when he takes the driver’s seat.
“To the supermarket, please.” I don’t have a plan. I’ll figure things out from there.
His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. “You have a bag.”
“I’m going to the gym afterward,” I lie.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We pull off slowly. The car rolls by the bat boxes and the new Acacia trees. We pass the gates and take the off-ramp to the highway. As we hit the traffic, I make myself a promise.
No one will ever hurt me like this again.
Chapter 19
Damian
Slamming the steering wheel, I turn the car around. Everything inside me protests at the distance I put between Lina and me. I don’t even know where the fuck I was heading. There’s an urgency in my gut to be with her, something gnawing, something disturbing. Everything feels wrong. Upside down. I’m a fucking mess. My head screams I shouldn’t be near her right now, but my heart doesn’t want to listen. If I hadn’t left the house, I wouldn’t have been able to respect her wish for time alone. Fuck time alone. Fuck the fact that right now I’m emotionally about as stable as a ticking bomb.
Cars honk as I skip lanes and force myself between a minivan and a truck. I don’t know what’s driving me so hard. I only know I need to get back to her. Maybe it’s the little voice in my head that tells me I fucked up. Couldn’t I for once not deliver on a promise? I clench the wheel harder. I can’t make exceptions. It’s the shortest way to losing credibility. Why the hell did she have to force my hand? Lina’s pain makes me hard, but what I had to do today didn’t turn me on. I didn’t enjoy breaking her perfect skin.
I desired her like always, but it wasn’t the sadism. It was the need to possess her. It was an all-consuming burn to own her in every way and hole possible, so she knows to who she belongs, where she belongs. I didn’t fool around. I took her hard. I should’ve ignored her request for space, damn it. She needs me.
Cold sweat breaks out on my forehead for no explainable reason. Exceeding the speed limit, I try to make it back to the house before peak hour traffic hits, but it’s too late. It takes over an hour before I get home.
Brink isn’t at the door. It’s a different guard.
“Where’s my wife?”
“Out, sir.”
Fuck. “Out where?”
“Supermarket, sir.”
I hope with all my soul it’s to buy jelly beans, but my gut already knows otherwise. Goddamn. I shouldn’t have left her. Not like that.
Charging through the door and up the stairs, I dial Brink. “Where are you?”
“At the strip mall, sir.”
“Where’s Lina?”
“In the pharmacy.”
I stop on the landing, my heart slamming to a standstill. “Tell me you’re with her.”
He clears his throat. “She said she needed tampons.”
Of course, that’s what she fucking said. The idiot. She doesn’t have a cent in her purse. “Can you see her?”
“Yes. Uh, no. She must be behind the shelf.”
“Go the fuck inside. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
A car door slams and footsteps fall. A bell chimes.
The wait is too long. Five, ten seconds, but I hold onto hope.
A curse. A shuffle. Another bell.
“She’s gone, sir. Backdoor.”
“Find her.”
“Yes, sir.”
I cut the call and dial Lina. The phone rings from downstairs. Peering over the rail, I see it on the table in the foyer. Fuck. She’s alone, without money or a phone. So fucking vulnerable. Raking my hand through my hair, pulling at the strands, I try to think like Lina.
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