I never gave up my resistance.
Wrapping my hair around his fist, he held me in position with his hand, brutally biting into my jaw and the other creating a severe tension on my scalp. “Don’t make me repeat my orders to you again, Keaton.” He jerked my hair back, and I fell flat against on the floor. The back of my head hit the floor, impacting the ground so forcefully it left me off kilter.
He dragged me by my feet across the floor and threw me up and over to straddle the sawhorse.
I wobbled, trying to rediscover my bearings. My hands were yanked behind my back and bound. He released me, and I tried to move my hands. The rope was wound several times around each wrist but weren’t bound together. He grasped the free ends of the rope and tied it around the center of the bench. I was allowed slack to move my hands, but not enough to get off the bench and flee.
From behind me, I could hear his heavy and angry footsteps resound throughout the room. The jangle of chains and metal beat against the floor. He plodded toward me.
With every heavy step, my heart pounded and my body shuddered.
He was no longer the Noah who found me in Quebec City and was tender with me in only a way Noah could be. He was Noah the enforcer and sadist. The man who lived off the fear, anguish, death, and the degradation of others.
My clothes were cut and ripped from my body. Silencing my protests, he stuffed my panties inside my mouth.
Standing in front of me, he pulled on the middle portion of the bench. The sides collapsed into a V-shape making me strain against it, my weight relied heavily on my sensitive core.
He walked over to the wet bar on the other side of the room and opened the cabinets below the sink.
Shaking and helpless to do anything other than watch, I observed him fill two tin buckets with water to the brim. He brought them over. The water splashed over the edges of the buckets as he plodded toward me, landing on the ground with a soft series of splats. The muscles in his chest, shoulders, and arms broadened and flexed to accommodate the weight. He set them down on either side of the bench.
He paced back over to the wall of hanging torture instruments and grabbed a handful of rope that hung from the rack. Returning to me, he knotted the rope around the handle of one bucket, slipped the rope up over the back of the sawhorse, and then did the same to the other side.
He wrapped and knotted the rope over my shoulders and around my neck in a way to ensure I couldn’t move, and if I tried, I was choked by the weight of the buckets and my skin became rubbed raw by the tension of the rope.
He untied my hands and stood in front of me. “Pick them up.”
Trying and failing to adjust to the added weight, I shook my head. My eyes watered. My sex cried out in anguish. The acidic burn made me feel as though I was slowly being cut open with a blunt object.
He grabbed the rope and tugged while kicking one of the buckets away from me until the rope began to tighten around my neck, throwing me off balance. The burn and tension around my throat and in between my legs hit me all at once.
Through a throaty growl, he repeated his orders and kicked the bucket, urging it to slide back toward my reaching distance.
I removed my hands from guiding myself against the bench and picked up the buckets. The weight became an unbearable pressure, cutting deeply into my sex.
He removed my panties from my mouth and stared at me. His eyes were darkened, glazed over, and crazed. A smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “I want to hear how much this hurts you,” he ran a thumb down my cheek to trail a tear. “Make me happy, Keaton, or I will push you further.”
“Why are you doing this?” I was seconds from breaking down and giving into his twisted desire, demanding that I scream.
He straightened his posture and kicked at the bucket in my right hand, making the weight unsteady.
I cowered to the right, gasping and choking, fighting down the spasm of searing torment.
“What do I always want, Keaton?” he asked serenely. “I want you to cry for me.”
Sitting up straight and pushing the physical affliction out of my mind as I straddled the sawhorse, I remained strong, preventing him from getting what he wanted. I closed my eyes to find the memories that removed me from misery. They were too distorted to actualize and too far from my grasp to help me. All that filled my mind were the horrors of Rebirth; it made the pain Noah forced me to endure worsen.
I refused to open my eyes and show him that my tool for escapism was no longer known to me.
His footsteps intoned around the room. The sound of something heavy shifted across the floor. The bottom of the buckets in my hands pinged with an off-beat rhythm. The water began to splash against my skin. The sound resounded at quicker intervals, creating a chaotic melody. The weight of the buckets became heavier. No longer able to hold them, the buckets fell from my grip and crashed into the floor, spilling some of the water from the sides. The rope strained around my neck, preventing regular breathing. I clawed at it with one hand, while guiding myself against the apex of the bench with the other.
He’d weighted the buckets with variant sized rocks.
His grip twisted in the back of my hair, snapping my head back to stare at him and forced the rope to choke me. “Pick them up, and if you drop them again, I will open every inch of skin on every fucking inch of your back.”
As he spoke to me, I toyed with the knots binding my wrist to the bench. I was able to loosen the braid and weaken the binding. I quickly slipped down, making myself fall perpendicular to the bench. Moving to one side, I quickly unraveled and removed the rope from around my throat before his slow, daunting steps led him to me.
He toyed with me, making me think I had a chance to get away due to his delayed movements. He followed me, taking long slow strides, cornering me against the windows at the east side of the room.
“Reven!” I shouted with my hands out toward him, pushing at the air between us.
His hands were on my neck, suffocating me until tears expelled from my eyes, preventing my chance to repeat it. He pressed his body against me, making me feel his erection. He unzipped with one hand and shoved my legs open with his legs and tried to enter me.
In full fighting mode, I hit and scratched him until I made contact with his eye and made him falter. He slipped away from me and retreated, blinking repeatedly. He rubbed at his right eye and shook his head. “I like your fight, princess, but this?”
The inability to speak didn’t fall solely on my sore throat. I had no idea what to say to him.
“Okay,” he said with a marked look of disappointment. His right eye began to redden. He shoved his erection back inside his pants. Walking backward, he shook his head at me. “You won’t survive in your mother’s world by reverting back to the weak little girl who ran from everything she was afraid of.”
“I’m something much worse than the villain…something you’ll never find a definition for.”
-THE SECT
It was a burst of pressurized steam, knocking me on my ass. I’d never felt anything that strong. In all the mornings I’d spent praying on my knees, I never received what I was looking for. This time, I did. It could’ve been a glimpse of the future or a message. Either way, my direction was definite. Rebirth would never happen again because I had a grander idea for something better. At times, I cursed Keaton for crossing my path, but after what I saw, I counted my blessings. She would have a crucial role in what I was told to do in the message. But in order for her to be receptive, my approach with her would have to change. She would have to really know what it felt like to be broken down. The tiny little pieces I broke her into would be molded into my image, and she would learn to sin for me in my name.
I STAYED AWAY FOR the rest of the morning after I heard Keaton call in sick to work. I ran some errands: visited a doctor to get my eye checked out, destroyed my tattoo by covering it with another tattoo, and made preparations for the next level.
I’d never been in a defined relationship befor
e. While I knew how to get Keaton to do what I wanted her to do, this situation was new to me. Instead of weakening to my will, she had become more rebellious. She was the woman who tried to fight me kicking and screaming when she realized her situation was going to permanently change in North Dakota.
THE CROWD AT THE airport irritated me. I was seconds from throwing my elbows at the next person who decided to brush up against me. Not used to the eye patch yet, I reached up and almost scratched it off my eye. I shoved my balled hands into my pockets and made the “don’t fuck with me” expression on my face a little stronger.
She stuck out like a beacon. Her dark brown hair draped down her shoulders and her blue eyes squinting, pissed off over something. Adam trailed behind her carrying her gigantic purse and some other things that obviously belonged to her. She cursed at him, calling the attention of the crowd in the airport.
She saw me standing by the conveyer belt in baggage claim—specifically at the one for her flight—and her eyes turned into jagged little slits.
Shaking her head, she stomped up to me. “You? Where the hell is Mrs. Sherman? I didn’t ever want to see you again.”
There was only one way to disarm her. I’d do whatever I needed to do to get what I wanted. Sex was never a sacred experience to me. It was a tool for exploitation and pure pleasure. I wasn’t going to fuck her, but I was going to make her think there was a chance I would. I grabbed her, slanting her in a slight dip and kissed her mouth like I had never kissed anyone. I kept my eyes open, watching Adam as he clutched her bags a little tighter. I shut my eyes slightly and pretended I enjoyed the way Nadine kissed me back. He took one step forward, but shook his head and decided, wisely, against throwing his weight around.
I stepped back, watching her blink and try to catch her bearings. She touched her lips, looking up at me completely disarmed. It was similar to the starry-eyed look she had when we first met in rehab.
“Did you come with bags?” I asked, looking back at the moving conveyer belt.
“Adam has them,” she said in a soft voice I’d never heard her use before.
I slipped my hand into hers and guided her out of the airport. I could tell I’d thrown her so far off her anger she had no idea what to say, and she barely spoke a word until we were thirty minutes out from the warehouse I’d turned into my home.
“I was so pissed at you, Noah,” she uttered like she stepped out of her dream. “You said you changed your mind about tearing Rebirth down. Isn’t that why you left the first time? Why did you change your mind again? Why did you do it? We had a good thing going and you ruined it all…for her.”
“Her?” I asked, playing dumb.
“You know who I’m talking about. Keaton. I know you told me to tell her you did, but was it the truth? Did you really destroy it for her?”
I snorted. “Did you have a bout of amnesia? Let me clear up your confusion for you. Rebirth couldn’t last forever—at least not in the same location for too long. I made sure events happened to lead to the climax and made the destruction make sense.” I glanced over at her, remembering the last time I spoke to her; it was the night Rebirth died.
She made me talk to her lackey—husband—whenever I needed to speak to her after the compound burned down. It pissed me off to no end, but I had other things on my mind to worry about other than her need to be petty. “Instead of making me talk to you through Adam, you should’ve answered the fucking phone when I called and discussed the reason you were so upset with me. I’m sure you feel monumentally dumb right now; you were angry over something that wasn’t true.”
“You have to admit you were acting like a new Noah with her,” she said, finding her fight. “The things you did to and for her? You’ve never been that soft on anyone.” She paused for a beat to stare out of her window. “I caught a few of the things you said to her—especially that night. Do you really love her?”
“You know most of what I said to her—many of the things you didn’t hear—were lies.”
“Why lie about it?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders and raising her voice. I gave her a look to make her keep it in check. She nodded, complying, and set her eyes back to the window. “Why didn’t you break her like you did the other girls?”
“I did what needed to be done to change Keaton at the time. Treating her with the same formula wouldn’t have worked; it would’ve repeated the same outcomes as all the other women before her. I needed a different reaction with her, especially once I found out she’d been raped. I needed Keaton to change, but still be compliant to me and what I wanted.”
“Why?” she asked, blurting out the question in a bad-tempered way. “Why is she so fucking special?”
I let my silence be her answer. I could see the glint of her pearly whites in my peripheral vision as she slowly caught on.
“You, jerk!” She laughed. “Why didn’t you trust me and tell me all this before?”
“Partially, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with her. Something was made clear to me this morning. Keaton is going to be very important to what we need to do.” I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as traffic became intense. I thought about the questions Keaton had asked me when I found her in Quebec City. It was mostly an exchange where I let her make up the answers to the questions she asked me because I was too tired to think up creative lies for her. Her answers seemed plausible, so I let her think her assumptions were right. “Did you tell her everything you were directed to say when she found out the truth?”
She bobbed her head. “To the letter.”
“And she believed it all?”
“She’s with you now, isn’t she?” She grabbed her purse from the ground and rummaged through it. “So what’s up with the eye patch? Did she turn rabid puppy on you?”
“If you pull out a piece of gum,” I warned, pissed off that she reminded me of something I wanted to forget and doing one of the many things that drove me fucking crazy about her. “I will throw you out of the car onto the fucking highway.”
“Fine, killjoy. Sheesh. No gum.” She threw her arms across her chest and exhaled loudly. “I see being with Keaton hasn’t kept you from being tense as hell all the time.” She flicked her nails. “Why was I summoned to D.C. of all fucking places?”
“This is where it all begins,” I replied.
“You mean this is where you need my help because you haven’t gotten her to where she needed to be yet? All the shit I told you about how to fuck a woman’s head went on deaf ears, huh?”
“For the record,” I contended, “you never taught me how to fuck with heads, I’ve been doing that a long time, Nadine, before I ever met you. The only thing you did do, is help me find out how to hone my needs and keep them more controlled. Mrs. Sherman began the process, but it ended with you.”
“Then why do you need me here? What’s the problem?”
I shifted in my seat, hating the way she phrased it and further hating that she knew I needed her. “What I’m doing to her is making her resilient toward me, not pliant.”
“What do you need me to do?”
I flashed my signature smirk at her. “What you do best, Nadine.”
“Hope was the disease of the devil.”
-THE SECT
I felt harried and haggard after a very busy day. If I were physically able to sit down, I wouldn’t have had a second’s rest to do so.
I looked at the people inside my mother’s office, requesting nine different things at once. Between the battles I waged with Noah, my friends, my mother, and now taking up a position for a job in which I felt wholly unqualified for, I was on a downward spiral, losing everything I tried to regain.
“Phone call for your mother.” Mrs. Harris, my mother’s secretary walked into the office and spoke over the creative director who fretted over the theme for the next makeup collection. “But I thought you could take it.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Harris,” I apologized with an equally apologetic smile. “I can’t take it
now. Can you put the call on hold until I finish this up?”
“He’s been on hold for fifteen minutes.” Her eyes shot darts at the creative director and the new trade manager who began talking over one another. “I buzzed you fifteen minutes ago about him, and you said to give you ten.”
“Right,” I said, recollecting. “Can you take a message?”
“After I told him you were here, he said he needed to speak with you,” she replied. “Immediately.” She overemphasized the word and nodded persistently.
“But he called my mother’s office, why would he need to speak to me unless…?” I looked down at the mockups, lipstick samples, and the comp cards for the choice of celebrities to become a spokesmodel for our next collection. “Who is it?”
“Braedan Michaels.”
My chin immediately slanted up. My face scrunched up as I tried to seek a motive in his need for me.
“Your mother is on the road, remember?” Mrs. Harris reminded me. “Maybe he wants to talk to you because he might not be able to get to her.”
“Veronica would move oceans to make sure my mother was able to speak with him. He’s the golden boy for her campaign. Strange.” I turned back to the people in my office and gave them their marching orders in quick succession. They filed out, intending to carry out their duties.
I stared at the blinking light on the phone for a few counted breaths. Clearing my throat, I picked up the receiver and pressed the blinking light. “Sherilynn Mara’s office,” I said in my chipper professional voice. “This is Keaton Mara speaking. Whom am I speaking with?”
There was a pause and the clearing of a throat. “Braedan.” The quality of his voice was so hoarse, low, and soft I had to strain to hear him. It was also deeply masculine. There was warmth and friendliness in his cadence that could’ve easily provoked the most untrusting individual to trust everything he had to say. “I missed the opportunity to meet with you the other night.”
The Rebirth of Sin (Wicked Trinity Book 2) Page 8
