Damaged (Bound & Tied Book 1)

by Lucy Rinaldi

  “Yes,” I nod and my voice is barely a whisper.

  “Why, Sadie? Tell me why I punished you?” Now I really am going to have to lie to myself as well as him, but I know what he wants to hear so I’ll indulge him. If I do then this torment will end, for now.

  “Because I lied to you” I feel sick saying this to him.

  “That’s right, you lied to me, and you had to learn not to tell me lies. You know why I had to fuck you like that, don’t you?” Jesus, hasn’t he heard enough? I just want to go to sleep, but I do know why he felt the need to fuck me like that, it was to prove he was the better man.

  “Because I’m yours, and I let someone else touch what’s yours”

  “That’s right,” He kisses my forehead. “Good girl, I hope you’ve learned your lesson”

  “I have, I promise” He releases me and I watch him turn and walk to the shower turning it on, letting the hot water fall down and hit the glass screen. I breathe in the steam taking a lung full, it chokes me a little and I cough, while wrapping my arms around my aching body, hugging myself in sympathy. How can things have come to this? Here I stand, twenty three years old and I feel fifty. I used to think I had the perfect job, perfect boyfriend, wonderful friends and my whole life ahead of me, finally after the shit life I’d had. How could I have been so wrong? How did my perfect boyfriend turn from a beautiful monster, a monster I used to love to bring to the surface, to the vile, sick, twisted monster I see before me now? The same monster I’ve seen so many times before. I used to love the way he punished me, because it’s what I needed, what I deserved, what I’d always deserved. I’ve always been sick in that way. But, he turned it into something so very wrong, something I didn’t understand nor want. But yet he made me believe it’s exactly what I wanted and needed. Before long you start to believe that being beaten half to death is all you really deserve, all you’re worth, and that your life will never amount to anything but that. I wish more than anything I could mean something more to someone, anyone. But how can I when I’ve forever been stuck with men like Elijah? I know I’m destined to die a battered girlfriend, the battered girlfriend of an Irish monster! I wish he would love me the way he says he does, but then I wish I could leave him like I want to. But who would I be if I did? He’s twisted my mind so badly that I no longer know who I am anymore. I’ve gone from the carefree girl who loved nothing more than dancing and having fun with her best friend, to a girl who’s terrified of her own shadow! I’m only grateful that he hasn’t put me in the hospital this time.

  “Come here. I’m going to shower you, clean those cuts” Cuts?! What the Fuck?! I glance back over my shoulder in the mirror behind me. Jesus! My back, my legs, hips even my ass is covered in blooded red slashes. I knew I would have marks, but cuts? What in the hell! I look around at him with a what-the-fuck-did-you-do kind of look, he smirks at me. “You won’t lie to me next time, will you?” I stare at him because I’m fucking horrified he’s never gone as far as leaving me with such marks before! Yes, he’s marked me many times, knocked me out, left me in a coma, but marks like this? No, never. Christ, I need to see a doctor! I also know Elijah will never allow me to go to a doctor, he never allows me to. The only time he’s taken me to see a doctor is when he’s almost killed me, because then he had no choice. He wouldn’t even call a doctor out to see me when he broke bones in my body. No, I had to sneak out of my own home and take myself to my best friend’s house, and it was she who would take me to see a doctor, to fix what Elijah had broken. Of course he’d flip out and leave me for a few days once he found out what I had done, but that was only because he knew he couldn’t do anything to me when my best friend knew what he’d already done. I wish I’d have listened to her when she told me he’d never love me the way I wanted him to, because what kind of man beats the woman he loves the way Elijah beats me? I guess I just wanted to be loved!

  “No,” I say sullenly. He eyes me suspiciously “Elijah, why did you do this to me? Do you really hate me that much?”

  He touches my face in a soft gentle way. “Oh no, Mercedes, I don’t hate you” He smiles a fake smile, then leans into me. “This isn’t over. I’ve let you off lightly... For now” He whispers darkly. My eyes dart to him. What the fuck does he mean lightly? Jesus, he can’t be serious! He takes my hand and leads me over to the shower. He removes his clothes and climbs in first, then pulls me in to join him. The hot water stings my cuts, and the feeling is unbearable.

  “Oh god,” The words slip from my mouth in a pained whisper; I wince as my knees buckling with the pain. The water burns and stings my aching body. I can’t stop the tears, I’ve never felt this kind of pain before, it’s excruciating! My abdominal muscles tighten painfully with every breath I take!

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” I can tell he’s smirking at my discomfort, my pain is his amusement. I said nothing, I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, or the need to hurt me further. He washes himself with body wash, for some reason my senses are heightened by a million decibels, and the smell burns my nose. He looks at me with those eyes, the eyes I used to get lost in, big balls of chocolate brown. “Shall I wash your back?” The evil grin on his face makes my stomach turn. I shake my head and close my eyes. He takes my shoulders and turns me around and the voice in my head is screaming “Please don’t use body wash on this cuts. Please!” He reaches out of the shower on to the vanity and grabs a clean face cloth. “I need to wash away the dry blood, Mercedes” He wets the cloth and slowly, gently wipes the blood from each cut, my back, my ass, the backs of my thighs, even my hips, and it stings so badly. It’s an age, it seems before he’s finished but finally he drops the cloth, turns off the shower and leads me out into the bedroom draping a towel over me. “Get dry” He says darkly. I gently, slowly dry my aching body while he gets something from his bedside draw. “I need to cover your back with this” He doesn't show me what he needs to cover my back with he just starts tapping what I imagine to be protective covering over my new cuts. I’m so tired and it seems to take him an age to finish. “Now, get your pajamas on, get into bed and stay there. I have to go to work” What the hell, he’s going to work? Just like that, like nothings happened? I watch him walk into the closet. I can’t touch the back of my body, it stings too much. I feel like some kind of mummy all wrapped up, the back of me at least. I grab some panties from the draw, just a soft plain linen because it will be easier on my backside. I then pull them on and grab pajama bottoms and top, and pull them on hastily, the sting in my back is unreal but I don’t make a sound. I reach for my hairbrush from the dresser and I notice my wrist. Jesus Christ, I have the biggest red burn like blisters encircling my left wrist. I look at my right and it’s the same.

  Fuck!

  He walks out of the closet startling me. “Bed!” He snaps. I hastily brush my hair and climb slowly as best I can into bed and lay down. He chastely kisses me on the head “I'll be back at 6pm. Sleep. Don’t let anyone in, don’t make any phone calls, and don’t go out” I don’t speak, I just close my eyes and with that he’s gone.

  When I hear his car pull out of our drive and I know he’s gone, I climb out of bed and walk over to my closet. I pull out the blue shoe box that holds my private things, opening it I take out the morning after pills I hide there from him, pop one from the packet, I grab painkillers from the same box before putting the box back. Walking over to the bed is so painful, my back and legs hurt so much right now. I pop the morning after pill and the painkiller into my mouth and take a long draft of water from the glass next to the bed. Children are something I can’t risk not with him, not now, not ever I fear. What kind of person would bring a child into a relationship like me? I would never wish to mess up a child’s innocent mind, I would never ruin such an innocent life.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Four.

  Over the following few days, he said hardly anything to me, I think he’s trying to avoid my line of questioning and boy do I have questions, but he hardly even looks at me. Then agai
n, he hasn’t spent much time at my house, he’s avoided me as much as he could. In some ways I’m glad of that.

  He brought home some kind of ointment that night after work; he said it would help with the cuts. The pads he lay on my back to protect it from my clothes sticking started to tear the skin painfully from my back, making everything so much more painful. He said the cream and gauze pads he brought would stop me getting any infections; I really hope he’s right! But somehow I feel I already have an infection. I’ve had a continuous headache, and I ache something awful. The fact he hasn’t been around for a couple of days meant I couldn’t get the cuts cleaned up properly. Without him to help me its really difficult, and the only way I can clean them is to stand under a warm shower while the water pounds down around me. I can’t reach to cover the cuts, only some of them. It makes the whole thing terribly uncomfortable.

  By Thursday morning I began to feel like I could go back to work. I love to work I enjoy what I do, but I didn’t say anything to Elijah I knew he’d stop me going back in case anyone saw the marks and bruises. Not that anyone would, I’d keep myself covered, like I’d want anyone seeing what he did to me, what they both did to me. I waited for him to call me at 8.30am, checking on me to make sure I’m still home before I rushed to find something to wear. I needed something comfortable as I’m still in pain, the cuts don’t seem to be healing and they weep with something awful, and even with the pads covering my cuts it doesn’t seem to help the infection he told me I wouldn’t get. I asked him last night when he came to check on me if I could go to my doctor, just so she could help me, help clear up the infection I knew I would get. He yelled at me and asked if I wanted the same thing to happen to my stomach and chest. It scared me something awful, and so I shook my head and told him how sorry I was, and that he was right, I didn’t need to see a doctor. He cleaned up my cuts and changed the dressings for me. I really need them changing now, but I can’t do them by myself. I’ll just have to pray the dressings hold up until tonight when Elijah comes around to change them. I decided on gray suit pants, a white blouse and matching jacket to wear for work. I always like to look professional at work. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and I am so thankful for makeup, it hides the bruise on my cheek perfectly. Since being with Elijah I have become a top class makeup artist! Jesus, it’s needed with the amount of bruises this man’s given me since we’ve been together. I slipped in to my gray dress pumps, grabbed my purse and left.

  I climbed into my car, a sleek sky blue Lotus Exile S sports car, it’s not my first choice of car, I wanted something more... me, something simple but it was a present from my father, another “Sorry” present for something else he’d done to hurt me!

  I’m cruising down the ST Bernardino freeway on my way to work, fully aware I’m driving way too fast but not caring two hoots. I began to wonder how his day is going and if he’s okay. It’s funny how even after everything he did the other day, how much I still worry about him. Elijah’s a lawyer in a firm he owns alongside his eldest brother Scott. Scott was the brother I was in love with from the age of eleven, he’s the nicest man in the world, but I met Elijah and fell in love with him. He was what I thought I needed. Since being with Elijah I don’t see Scott much, I think that’s Elijah’s doing.

  I don’t really remember Elijah from when I was a child, he was sent to boarding school in Ireland due to his bad behavior. He came back when he was eighteen and I was thirteen, but I was in Italy with my father. When I came back at the age of fifteen, I was very much wrapped up in a life of Dominance and Submission with a friend from school, an ex-boyfriend of Sam’s. He was almost eighteen, and shouldn’t really have dragged me into that life, but I will never regret that he did. He changed me, helped me figure out who I was inside. I wouldn’t have been the girl I was before Elijah without him. I didn’t meet Elijah again until I was twenty, that’s when I fell for him and he became the only thing I needed, or so I thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong!

  Scott and Elijah’s company sits in the heart of mainstream LA. McLaughlin Brothers and associates, is one of the biggest, most respected law firms in the country, ruthless and successful only taking on cases they know they can win. Their success sometimes overwhelms me. Elijah never speaks about a case he’s working on even when it’s high profiled. “Discretion is everything, Sadie” His words ring in my head, it hits me that I’m going out with the most ruthless man in America! “Ruthless? Heartless more like!” I do find it odd that I rarely get photographed with him, when I am he tells photographers or reporters that I’m “Just a friend” He told me once that he only says that because he’s so high profiled and works on such big cases that anything could happen to me if criminal families found out who I was. They might kidnap me to get back at him for making sure their family members went to jail. I don’t know, maybe that is the case. I shake my head at myself ignoring the voice within.

  I eventually arrived at work, a tall fifteen story building, standing high in the middle of a busy main street; I drive around to the parking lot at the rear of the building and park up. The building is full of stores of all kinds, from clothing, beauty, book stores and Starbucks, my favorite coffee! Mmm, coffee, I could do with some right now.

  I work as a shop assistant in the biggest clothing boutique this side of Beverly Hills. Jacques Boutique is a woman’s clothing store, offering an array of woman’s wear from sexy lingerie, cocktail dresses, shoes, perfume and jewelery. Jacques is situated on the twelfth floor and is the size of a large soccer field. I work in the lingerie department advising women on the sort of sexy garment they should wear beneath whatever beautiful cocktail dress they’ve either bought or have their eye on. I like helping them feel sexy. It’s the way all women should feel, it’s our God given right to feel sexy, although at this very moment I feel anything but. The lingerie department is basked in pale pink walls with beautiful Victoria wall lights hanging here and there, creating a romantic feel about the place. Everything is well set out, panties, bras, Corsets, stockings, garters, even feather bowers all neatly placed on circular rails. All new and exciting stock is hooked on to the rack on the wall behind the counter. I watch as Amy, the girl who works alongside me replenishes the rails with new stock. Amy is young and very attractive, and at nineteen years of age, she’s seen more of the world than most people are ever likely to. She’s a brunette and wears her hair shoulder length, her makeup is always perfect and her clothes immaculate. Her personality is just amazing, kind, considerate and funny. I’ve worked here for the past year and a half; it’s not my first choice of job. I’m a fully qualified PA, and that’s exactly what I was for my father in Italy. When I came home to California I thought I’d find a PA position easily, and I had a few interviews, but Elijah didn’t want me working as anyone’s personal assistant because that would more than likely mean I’d be a successful man’s PA. A man who might find me attractive, after all I’m not unattractive. I have curves in all the right places, a firm backside, and perfectly pert breasts. Before I was with Elijah I had a lot of men ask me on dates, I wasn’t the dating type and so I’d say no. But when Sam, Clyde and I would go clubbing I’d dance with men, I’d pole dance, I’d even dance with both Sam and Clyde in a way that would be deemed erotic. But then I have always been so comfortable with my two best friends. I’d sleep with whoever I wanted, even Sam, but we just had that kind of friendship. I’ve even slept with Clyde more than once, and I’ve played a few sexual games with Sam and Clyde, sometimes together, sometimes separately. But, it hasn’t been that way in a long time. It’s not the sex I miss its being my own person. I wish I could get the old me back, I hate the scared, timid girl I am now.

  “Excuse me?”

  Shit!

  I laugh to myself as the sound of a young girl’s voice startles me out of my daydream. “Do you have this in a five?” She holds up a pink silk Corset with black lace around the edges, and small black strips of silk entwined either side of the bone lines that sit from underneath the b
reast, down to the stomach.

  “Yes, Miss, we have that in all sizes,” I smile as I walk over to her and find the size she needs from the rail.

  “Oh good, I really want to surprise my fiancé” The smile on her face radiates excitement, it’s infectious! I can’t help but smile at her, she must have a wonderful relationship with her boyfriend, she oozes happiness. I could be friends with someone like her, even though she’s nothing like me, she’s all long legs and long blonde hair that falls right down to her curvy backside, and I’m dark haired, dark eyed, curvy but skinny at the same time. But I’m always looking at other girls thinking how they’re better than me, when in reality no one is better than anyone else. Everyone is perfectly different in their own right, and that’s as it should be.

  “Would you like to try it on?” I ask as I hand her the size she needs. “We have matching baby doll panties to go with this”

  “No thank you. I’m sure it will fit. I don’t intend to be wearing it long” She smiles a smile so wide her eyes crinkle. “I will take the matching panties though” She hands me the Corset to ring up and grabs the panties that match from a rail just opposite where she’s standing.

  “That’s $85.99, please” She hands me her card and answers her ringing cell phone.

  “Hey, baby... I’m in a lingerie store” She giggles and I can’t help but smile, even though I try to hide the fact I’m listening to her one sided conversation. “It’s a surprise... For you... Elijah! You’re a dirty boy... You can peel it from me later... Okay, baby. See you tonight” She hangs up and I look at her as I hand back her card.