by Dori Lavelle
Then he was on top of me, tugging my skirt and pantyhose down, spreading my legs while unzipping his trousers.
Pain choked me when he roughly entered me and started to grind into me, his sweat dripping onto my face, his face stone cold, his eyes dark and unreadable. In a flash, it occurred to me what was happening. He had no intention of making love to me. He was raping me, taking what he believed was his. My feelings, my emotions didn’t matter. He was making a statement, warning me that he would hurt me if I disobeyed him.
The tears that slid down my cheekbones and into my ears were hot and unhindered. The harder he slammed into me, the deeper he plunged, the more I trembled under his weight from fear and pain. In that moment, another piece of me splintered and broke.
He held my hands tightly above my head, pinning me down with his body, making it impossible for me to move. I could only pray that it would end soon.
When he finally came, he slumped on top of me and groaned deeply. Then he pulled out, and zipped up his pants. He walked out of the room without looking back.
As I lay on our bed curled up into a ball, smarting from his touch, I knew something for certain. Marrying Jude Macknight had been a dangerous mistake. But some mistakes can’t be fixed. I belonged to him. I had no choice but to pay the price.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I looked forward to days when Jude went to the office, when I could steal a few hours of peace. These days, unfortunately, were becoming rare.
I stood at the bathroom window and watched his car pull up. He was back home early for the third time this week.
I watched him climb out his Jeep, looking sharp and precise as usual. Even from upstairs, I could see there was not a curl out of place and not a wrinkle on his dark suit, which stood out against the late summer leaves in the sunlight. He was always so put together, while I was falling apart. Just watching him made my stomach twist with disgust.
Why couldn’t he go away for a while? He hadn’t been on a business trip in two months. Every time he was home, my stomach was constantly in knots and I walked on eggshells. Even when he was out of sight, inside his home office, I felt his presence near me.
Since the day he’d raped me, things had only worsened between us. He hardly spoke to me at anymore and when he did, I was usually so surprised I didn’t know what to say to him. The only connection was sex. A connection I wanted to break desperately. He was now determined more than ever to get me pregnant.
Sex with him was now rougher, shorter, raw, and so frequent that my body forgot how to rid itself of the aches he left behind. Every chance he got, he pinched me, slapped me, bit me. Anything that made me cry out in agony. It disgusted me to think that hurting me turned him on.
He took what he wanted, when he wanted it, and didn’t care whether I was up for it or not. My needs, my feelings, no longer mattered. Every time he entered me, I became less his wife and more his sex slave. A toy with no feelings.
Wincing from the memory of his firm grip on my bruised thigh this morning, I unwrapped the towel from around my body and took a long, hot shower, scrubbing myself until my skin was raw. Disobeying his rule, I had locked the bathroom. What more could he do to me that he hadn’t done already?
When I was done, I pulled on a bathrobe and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Jude was probably in his office because I didn’t bump into him.
As soon as Lin saw me walk in, she turned away from the door and busied herself at the stove. “Mrs. Macknight, I make eggs, bacon, okay?” Over the past few weeks, I noticed that Lin had started asking me what I wanted to eat instead of just cooking what Jude wanted. She was doing little things to show she cared.
I sank into one of the stools at the marble kitchen island. “You don’t have to do that, Lin. I can make my own breakfast.” To hell with what Jude thought. A part of me just didn’t care anymore. “Take the day off.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Macknight.” Lin mumbled and quickly left the kitchen, her gaze still averted.
My face grew hot with humiliation. She knew. She knew what was going on, what Jude was doing to me. Lin had surely figured out that I was a prisoner in my own home. That I was trapped in a place I couldn’t bear to be but also couldn’t leave. If Jude hurt me under our own roof, what would he do to me if I walked out the door and left him?
Over the past month, I had been tempted to risk it, to disappear somewhere where he couldn’t find me. But he had money while I had nothing to my name—he now controlled every dime I spent, so saving was not an option. He would be hard to hide from. And he knew my fears. As soon as I left, the first thing he would probably do was call the cops on me, put me in jail where I should have been in the first place.
Once I heard the front door shut, some of the tension rolled off my shoulders and I poured myself a glass of freshly pressed orange juice. To distract myself from thoughts of him, I reached for the Serendipity Daily, which lay folded next to the water pitcher. I flipped through it absentmindedly until I came to an article about a girl who was found in a ditch a few nights ago, raped, and then strangled to death. They said she must have been there for some weeks. The man arrested for the murder of the twenty-five-year-old woman was her on-and-off boyfriend. Just another reminder that the people closest to us are the ones who hurt us the most. The motive was jealousy.
Tears dripped from my face, drenching the newspaper. As sobs engulfed me, I hugged the paper to my chest, wishing I could offer comfort to the dead girl.
A sudden, chilling fear nagged at the back of my mind. If I didn’t do everything Jude wanted, I could end up just like that woman. Crimes of passion were pretty common. And people are not always who we think they are.
My mind drifted to Dustin. What if he had changed too? Was he still the kind person he’d been in high school, or had life changed him? I hadn’t heard from him since meeting him two months ago, but I thought of him every day. Sometimes for just a moment, and other times for hours before I cried myself to sleep. Thinking about him made me feel safe. He was the only connection to my old life.
Maybe it was for the best that he hadn’t contacted me. I was not the same person I used to be. I had done terrible things I couldn’t walk away from. Who would want to get tangled up in my problems? Besides, if Jude found out that I’d given another man my number, he might just kill me.
I was slowly getting the feeling that he was capable of much more than he was showing me. He was a monster at heart.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I sat on the porch with my arms around me, begging nature to soothe me.
Spring had made way for summer and beautiful, rich colors surrounded our grounds. But I couldn’t enjoy the beauty as my heart shriveled.
The horror of my life dragged on and I finally lost myself. I didn’t recognize my husband anymore and I didn’t know the woman he’d turned me into. Jude became more controlling with each day. He ordered me to do what he wanted, told me where to go and how long to stay, and he had sex with me constantly. Or was it rape? I was married to him and denying him sex had terrible consequences. Except, I never wanted to sleep with him anymore. Lying in the same bed with the monster he had become tortured me, and my pain was reflected in my nightmares.
Jude now insisted I sleep naked every night. He said he wanted to feel me, to have me anytime without any distractions. And he did. Sometimes a sharp pain between my legs would wake me from a deep sleep and his weight would pin me down to the bed as he moved in and out, fucking me hard, my face pressed into the mattress, my air supply sometimes cut off.
Other times, he’d literally drag me out of sleep and lead me to the living room where he switched on the wall-sized TV. He’d watch porn while he had sex with me, my screams from pain, masked by the voices of pleasure coming from the hidden speakers. Sex with him was always rough, painful, and unexpected. But something had changed recently. He was always gentle afterward now, running me a bath to help relieve my aches or holding me until he thought I’d fallen asleep. Even though I har
dly slept anymore.
Most mornings, especially those following a brutal night, I woke up to find a sparkling piece of jewelry blinking at me on top of the bedspread. His way of apologizing.
Jude Macknight, my knight in rusted armor, had become two different men in one. The man that hurt and destroyed me, and the man that comforted me. If only that comfort didn’t hurt so much more. It reminded me of the man he used to be.
Why was I surprised that Jude had changed? People change all the time. I had experienced it firsthand.
My father, the man whose eyes had twinkled every time he’d looked at me, the man who had cuddled up in my bed next to me when imaginary monsters hid under my bed, the man who told me he would never leave me, just woke up one day, a changed man, and walked out of my life.
The day he left had been a beautiful summer’s day. As I’d sat on the doorstep, waiting for him to come home, the sun had sprinkled my skin and top of my head with its purest gold. The breeze stole the sweet scent of the honeysuckles in our backyard and wrapped it around me.
As the hours ticked on, I fanned the skirt of my blue birthday dress, the one with multi-colored butterflies lining the hem, the one he gave me on my last birthday.
He never came back home. In the end it was him who had turned into a butterfly and flown away. I had found a way to deal with him leaving our lives, but when my mother and I found out a few months later that he had committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a speeding truck, my world was changed forever.
My father had changed. Just like my mother had, following his departure. Just like Jude had. Just like I had. The only constant it seemed, was change. And the pain of that realization burned into my heart like acid, burning a hole in my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The smell of roses slipped into my nostrils, and I opened my eyes slowly, my blurred world coming into focus. My gaze met Jude’s. He sat next to me on the bed. I looked over his shoulder and took in the light streaming in from the window. It had to be around 9 a.m. and he was still in bed, not working.
He was usually dressed by this time and out of the house or holed up inside his office. But today he still wore his blue and white striped pajamas. A heavy wooden tray lay on his lap, on it a cup of coffee, a single rose, and a small wrapped rectangular box on it.
“Happy anniversary, my love.” He bent to kiss to me.
I allowed his lips to touch mine but nothing remotely sensual passed between us, nothing from my end at least.
“Won’t you say it back?” His voice was gentle, eyes expectant.
Did he really expect me to love him after he had destroyed our marriage and shattered any remnants of love I might have felt for him? What was there to celebrate? “This is not a good day, Jude. Let’s just pretend it’s another day.”
He placed the tray next to him on the bed. When he looked back at me, annoyance covered his features. “I love you, you love me. This is the day we got married. True love has to be celebrated. But first things first.” He picked up the wrapped box and handed it to me. “Open it.” He looked kind again.
During the first year of marriage, I’d enjoyed the little surprises, the gifts, his love. Now, as I reached for the box, disgust was all I felt. I wanted to throw it back in his face but I didn’t want his eyes to darken to the point where he would be forced to hurt me. I sat up and pulled at the ribbon, occasionally looking up to see him watching my fingers, as he ran a hand up and down my leg.
I peeled away soft pink tissue paper, expecting to see jewelry. What I found shocked me. A pink and very familiar box. “Jude, what’s this?”
“Before we leave to go and have breakfast at the Damor Hotel, I want us to find out if we have an anniversary gift awaiting us, to make our day that much more special.” Annoyance disappeared from his face and his eyes sparkled.
Filled with sudden rage, I shoved it back at him and climbed out of bed, headed for the bathroom. Before I could close it, he slipped in, still carrying the offending box.
“Take the pregnancy test.” Evil dripped from his tone.
I snatched the pregnancy test from his hand. “Fine.” My voice lacked emotion. I waited for him to leave the bathroom and give me privacy, but instead he folded his muscular arms across his chest and leaned against the doorframe. He wanted to make sure I really did it.
What would he do to me if he found out I was not pregnant, that I was still on the pill? Would he pull me by the hair again, slam me into something, rape me? Hurt me more than he already had? Was that even possible?
Without saying a word to him, I turned toward the toilet pot and praying silently, opened the box, taking my time, wishing the ground would swallow me. Behind me, he stirred and sighed with impatience. His body heat reached for me, and I smelled pure the evil permeating from him.
I gritted my teeth as I pulled out the white stick and pretending he wasn’t in the room, I crouched down on the toilet pot. Since I wore nothing, there was no need to remove underwear or pull aside clothes.
I positioned the stick under me and closed my eyes, peed.
I heard something tear from my right side, the toilet paper. He had pulled off a sheet.
“Give it to me,” he said and I opened my eyes to find him reaching for the stick with a hand that was covered by a thin layer of toilet paper. I handed it to him.
He smiled brightly then, as if what we were doing was completely normal. A happily married couple hoping to be pregnant. He kissed me on top of the head. “Have a shower and get ready for breakfast. Don’t be too long. I might have some good news to share with you.” He gazed at the pregnancy test.
When he left, I stepped under the shower and turned it on at full blast. Then I just stood there, my face turned up as the water slapped my skin and washed away my tears.
When I was all cried out, I massaged thick lather over my skin, starting with my neck, moving to my arms, down my breasts and then empty stomach.
He must have the result by now, and I was terrified to death of his reaction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jude didn’t barge into the bathroom as I thought he would.
As I squeezed the water out of my hair and wiped myself off, dread swirled in the pit of my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was return to the bedroom, to find him there. Or maybe he was downstairs in his office. Maybe it wouldn’t hit him too hard. Surely he knew that sometimes it could take years for someone to get pregnant. Feeling less anxious, I walked out of the bathroom, a thick towel around my body.
He half perched on the edge of the neatly laid bed. Lin must have been up to clean the room.
He was dressed now, after probably using one of the guest room showers. The pajamas were replaced by the suit that wrapped itself around his defined shoulders. No tie. The top button of the coffee shirt was undone. During happier times, I would have found the way he lay there, looking powerful and in control, sexy. It would have turned me on. We would have ended up under the sheets and made love. It felt like so long ago.
My gazed drifted to the drink in his hand, a dark golden liquid settling at the bottom of a tumbler. He hardly drank unless he was stressed or angry. And as I stepped further into the room, I smelled it, thick and dark, suffocating. Anger. The quiet, dangerous kind. Everything underneath my skin started to tremble.
“Haley.” His voice was cool, controlled, too calm. He sat up and took a deep swig of his drink, barely wincing. “I’m going to ask you one question. If you lie to me, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
I knew what the question would be and already scrambled around my mind looking for a fit response. But whether I lied or told the truth, he’d probably kill me anyway.
He cleared his throat, took another drink and placed the glass with a slam on the bedside table. “Where did you hide them?”
I tightened my towel around my body, wishing it could shield me from whatever awaited me in the next few minutes.
“I … what?” I licked my dry lips.
> “Don’t fuck with me, Haley. Where are the damn pills?” He shouted and I jumped.
I’d made sure to hide them well this time, in the laundry room, where he never stepped foot, taped behind one of the washing machines. I had to keep lying to save myself from his wrath. I dropped my gaze. “I’m not on the pill … anymore.” I tried hard to keep my voice from shaking.
“So,” he said slowly, “you’re just a worthless piece of shit, then? Good for nothing.”
I lifted my head and met his gaze head on. “Why did you marry me then? If you hate me so much, why don’t you just let me go?”
His reaction was so quick and unexpected. I almost didn’t dodge the glass as it hurtled through the air toward my head. But I managed to move to the right just in time. It smashed against the wall next to me, exploding into what seemed like a thousand shards of glass. One caught the side of my neck and sliced into my skin. I breathed in sharply, inhaling the stench of alcohol before grabbing my neck, the towel sliding from my body and pooling at my feet.
I smothered a sob as I watched the man I had married leering at me with the satisfaction of watching me in pain. I refused to cry in front of him.
“Come here,” he ordered.
I bent down to pick up the towel. The sight of blood on my hand made me nauseous.
“Leave it there.”
Careful not to step on any glass, I went to stand before him. He unzipped his pants and whipped out his cock. “Suck,” he ordered. “That’s all you’re good for. Sucking and fucking.”
His words tore through me but I kept my mouth shut.
He made me give him a blow job for what felt like an hour, until my mouth was numb and my throat sore from him slamming too deep into my mouth. Before he came, he yanked me by the hair and threw me on the bed. Then he fucked me in every possible way, every possible place.
First he came inside me. The second round he withdrew before he came and stood over me on the bed, squirting his sperm on my face and hair. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see the pleasure on his face.
