Damaged (Bound & Tied Book 1)

by Lucy Rinaldi

  “What are you talking about? What did you say to her?” My poor Dr. Blake, so out of his depth in a situation so out of his control, not knowing what to do, and he sounds so vulnerable.

  “Blake, calm down. All I asked was for her to let me help her”

  “She doesn’t need your help, she’s got me!”

  “Oh yeah, and you have no damn clue what she’s saying. Stop being so fucking stubborn, Blake”

  “No, no, per favore no. Per favore.” My hands find my ears and my eyes close tightly on me as I rock back and forth, scared of what might happen, because all I can think when I’m in this state is how badly they’re going to hurt me.

  “Calm your voice Blake; we’re scaring her. Mercedes, va bene. Mi dispiace, noi non volevo spaventarti”

  “Va via. Va via. Va via!”

  “What’s she saying, Alex?”

  “Go away. Blake, dude, she’s out of her mind, you need to fucking call someone” I look up at them through my lashes and notice Blake has his cell in his hand; he’s going to call them! “Yes and have you locked away forever like a lunatic. And he’ll forget all about you and your craziness” No he can’t! I’m fucking frantic.

  I get to my knees and shake his arm. “Per favore. Si prega di non chiamare. Mi dispiace. Sarò buono. Prometto.” I’m literally begging him, but he’s looking at me with such sadness in his eyes. I know he doesn’t understand what I’m saying to him and it’s breaking my heart. He takes my face in his big strong hands and looks deep in my eyes, and all I want to do is scream for him to let go, I can’t bear to be touched when I’m like this it makes me frantic and so afraid.

  “What are you saying to me, baby? I know you’re in there. Please come back to me”

  “She’s begging you not to call them”

  “Si prega di non chiamare; Ti scongiuro. Non lasciare che mi bloccano via”

  “She’s begging you not to let them lock her away”

  “What the hell happened to you? What did they do to you?” His eyes burn into mine trying to read me, read what I’m thinking. But right now all I’m thinking about is not letting him make any calls to have me committed! I watch as he puts his cell on the floor, and with wide, scared eyes, I pull away from him and grab my cutting box once more close to me. “What’s that, baby?” I gaze at my box; I’m so out of my mind right now. I don’t want to cut myself in front of them, but I know I can’t stop myself from doing so, I’m not in control right now. I open the box so only I can see the contents and take out my scalpel, bringing it down on my arm; I feel hands on me stopping me. The sound of someone screaming rings in my ears, footsteps and arms around me. I know this episode wasn’t a bad one, I know I’ll pull myself out of it tomorrow or maybe the next day, but it doesn’t stop them happening every now and again when I feel stressed out. But I also know this is just the onset of something much worse. I’m so tired, I want to sleep my eyes are so heavy, the voices fade and I’m lost to a dreamless sleep...

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Thirty One.

  I woke up with a thumping headache; I don’t remember getting into bed! And I don’t remember much of last night either. I’m not surprised I don’t remember, I never remember much of my episodes. Jesus, I can’t believe I lost it in front of Blake. Way for him to find out. Nice one, Mercedes! I notice Blake sitting on the edge of the bed facing me. Wait, he’s got my box. What the fuck?! Where did he get that from? He’s been snooping in my stuff! “Where did you get that?” I ask as I pull myself up into a sitting position.

  “From you” His hand strokes the lid like it’s something precious. He doesn’t look at me he just stares at the box in his hand. God, I’m aching everywhere!

  “Blake, give that to me”

  “You think you’re ever getting this back? Don’t be stupid”

  “It’s mine; give it back to me. Now!”

  “GIVE IT BACK? GIVE IT BACK!” Oh my god, he’s actually yelling at me! His face is red with anger and the vein in his neck is thumping away hard. I watch as he puts my box on the bedside table, and my hearts pounding. I feel a little scared. I notice he’s got my scalpel in his hand.

  “What are you doing with that?”

  “You wanna cut yourself, Mercedes? You want to be punished? Give me your hand”

  “Why?” My voice is barely a whisper. Shit, is he going to cut me? His eyes are like fire, and I’m the moth drawn to the flame that burns within them.

  “DO IT!” God, I’m so scared, I never imagined him yelling at me like this, and I never imagined him this angry. I hold my arm out in front of me, shaking, scared of what he’s about to do. Cutting myself, I can control the pain, someone else cutting me, I can’t take it. He grabs my trembling hand and forces me to hold the scalpel, he then fists, his hand over mine so I can’t let go. I watch him hold out his left arm, and then he brings my hand and the scalpel down over it, just holding it there, not quite touching his skin, but one slight move and I’ll be cutting him.

  “No! Blake, please don’t do this. Please, please” Oh my god, he actually wants me to cut him!

  “I want you to feel the pain you caused me when I had to stitch up your body from your self abuse. And, the pain you caused me when I had to watch as you almost hacked at your own body last night. Now, you’re gonna cut me so you can see how it feels!” I’m pulling frantically at him. I don’t want to cut him. I’m begging, I’m crying, almost screaming for him to stop.

  “Blake, please stop! Don’t make me do this. Please, don’t turn into Elijah!” His eyes bear into me as he stops dead in his tracks. “Please, please. I’ll do anything you say, just don’t make me do this. Please...!” I’m practically sobbing. I’m so afraid, my hearts pounding in my ears and out of my chest. My eyes sting from all the tears. He lets go of my hand, takes the scalpel from me and puts it back in my cutting box.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you saw a shrink? How could you keep the fact you had a mental illness from me?”

  “I... Was go-going to. I ju-just didn’t know how when I thought you would leave me because of it” I stammer through my tears.

  “But you told Sam and Clyde”

  “They have be-been my friends since I-I was a baby. I didn’t tell th-them they witnessed it just like you did. Sam’s the one who-who made me go to-to a shrink when I was fifteen”

  “And you’ve been self-harming for how long?”

  “Since I was fourteen” He sounds like a teacher! Picking away at me like I’m some damn child!

  “You have to stop this, Mercedes. You’re destroying your body and your mind. You’re better than all of this. You need to stop running when things get tough. You have to face it head on and deal with it. You might find it’s not as bad as you first thought it was going to be”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I don’t mean to be this way”

  “Nobody means to have a mental illness, Mercedes. Nobody can help suffering in that way. But they can help slipping when they don’t take their medication or have it evaluated when needed”

  “I know.” He’s right, of course. “Do you hate me now?” I ask with a sob.

  “No, I don’t hate you, Mercedes.”

  “Are you going to leave me?”

  He breathed deeply. “I will never leave you, I love you. I will never stop loving you, but you need to tell me everything. I can’t deal with all these secrets popping up at me all the time”

  “I know, and I will tell you, I promise. I was just so scared that you would leave me if you found out about my illness. I didn’t want to lose you. You’ve made me feel so normal, you made me feel like I was just like every other woman. No one has ever made me feel the way you do. I wanted to tell you, Blake, I just didn’t know how”

  “Come here” I climb into his waiting arms, wrapping myself around him and resting my head on his chest. “I can deal with your illness, Mercy. It doesn’t bother me any. But you have to take your medication on time every time” I nod against him. “We can deal with
anything as long as we’re on the same page”

  “I promise”

  “How did it all start? The self-harming I mean?”

  “After the first time Roberto made me do that stuff, I don’t know, it just happened. I found I could cope if I punished myself, cutting, burning, even fighting with people. Especially my brother Vinnie, because he’s the only one who would hit me back in a way I felt happy with. I needed to feel satisfied that I’d been punished enough for what I’d done” How can I tell him that I like punishment, that’s it’s nothing to do with what happened to me, not really. It’s always been inside me, I love how it makes me feel. I didn’t like being abused obviously, that’s something else completely, no one could ever like being sexually abused especially as a child. But beatings, being restrained and strangled, god it’s what I live for. He’d never understand, who would? Only someone like minded I guess. Even Sam doesn’t understand, she goes bat shit crazy when I hurt myself or get others to hurt me. When I was twenty, and even though I had just gotten with Elijah, he hadn’t yet punished me in a way I found acceptable, so I took Sam to a kink club. I’d met a man through a mutual friend and he turned out to be a Dom, he punished me so badly in a room of that club, and my god, it felt amazing! I don’t even remember the name of the club or even where it was, but Sam, she watched, he made her, and she was so scared. She didn’t talk to me for three weeks after that, she said I was sick and needed help. It’s not about sex for me, sex isn’t what I’m looking for it’s just the punishment I get off on. I need it to feel alive and being hurt in those kinds of ways is the only way I feel alive. How do you make someone understand that that’s what you want? To be hurt, beaten, punished in any way you can and that it’s not just because I have problems?

  “But it wasn’t your fault”

  “I know that now, but at the time I was made to believe it was all my fault”

  “Did no one notice what you were doing to yourself?”

  “They noticed. They just didn’t care enough to stop me. Sam and Clyde were the only people who cared enough. I remember the first time I cut myself in front of Sam. Clyde was used to it, he was a cutter too, and I was always there to help him with what he was going through. But I couldn’t bring myself to let him help me. Anyway, when I was fifteen and Sam had just turned sixteen, she stayed over one night. We argued about something so stupid. I don’t even remember what it was about” I do remember, but I’m not about to tell him that we fought over a man I’d fallen in with. He was her ex and the man who opened my eyes to the world of Dominance and Submission. The first man I gave myself willingly to, and I relished his punishments. She’d forced me to break things off with him and I was lost. I screamed at her and she told me a few home truths about myself which I couldn’t take. He never needs to know this. “I lost my temper and slashed my hip. She freaked out and ran to my mom, who told her not to overreact and to just ignore me because I’d get over my tantrum soon enough”

  “Harsh”

  “My mom was so far gone by then, her mind destroyed by Roberto and the way he treated her. She had no mind to care for me anymore; I did the looking after, because she was like a child. Anyway, Sam made me go to a shrink with her. She listened as I told the Doctor things about myself, things Sam never knew. But she never left me, even though I thought she would, she stayed my best friend, and she’s always been there for me through everything” Telling him all this is making me anxious, the same old guilty feelings are coming to the surface, the feelings of doubt at the fact I shouldn’t tell him anything because he’ll leave me if he knows everything.

  “So, the reason you do it is because, what exactly?” God, he really is quite obtuse sometimes, did I not just explain to him why I do it? I best put it in layman’s terms for him I suppose.

  “Blake,” I pull myself out of his grip and look at him. I admire how he’s staring at me in wonder, wanting to know; desperate to understand the woman in front of him. “I have what my shrink calls “A Masochistic Personality Disorder”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means... It means that I hate myself. I hate myself so much that every tiny piece of happiness I get makes me feel guilty because I know I don’t deserve it. I’m worthless and no good to anyone. When I’m sad I feel guilty again, because I should never have dared to feel happy in the first place. All the good in my life I ruin for myself. Just like I almost ruin us all the time. The only way I can make the guilt go away is if I punish myself, or let others punish me accordingly, in any way I or they see fit, and on all sorts of sick levels. When I thought you’d left me that was the worst feeling I had ever felt, and then my self-hate and guilt reared its head and I knew it was what I deserved. That was the first time I’d cut myself in over two years. I hadn’t needed to hurt myself in that time because I had Elijah, and he was all the punishment I needed”

  “Did you want him to punish you?”

  “Sometimes”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Sometimes”

  “Were you submissive to him?”

  “Yes, sometimes”

  “Did he ever hurt you as bad as he had when I first met you?”

  “Yes”

  “How?” Oh for the love of all that is holy, does this man ever give up?

  “In many ways, Blake. He caught me talking to a friend once; my friend was a very gay man. Elijah didn’t like it, said I was fucking him. I told him not unless I was a man; he hit me and said he didn’t like me answering back. He beat me that day, he beat me so badly he put me in a coma for two weeks. It effected my memories, and I don’t remember a lot of things from my childhood because of it” I look down at my hands, my head hurts and I don’t want to talk anymore about this.

  “That’s why you got scared the other day. You thought I might hurt you like that?” I nod my head slowly. I don’t want him to be mad at me for the simple things it frightens me. “Mercedes, I love you, mind, body and soul. I would never hurt you like that; I could never do that to you and I can’t stand that you hurt yourself. I don’t ever want you to hurt yourself again. If you feel the need for punishment, then tell me. Come and find me wherever I am, and we’ll get through it together. You don’t need all of this anymore. Let me take care of you, Mercy. Let me fix what’s in here,” He points to my head “and in here” then my heart.

  “You already are” He smiles at me. I know he thinks he can fix everything, and protect me from the world. I don’t know, maybe he can, or maybe I just need to trust him completely. But the fact he would help me like this is amazing to me.

  “Do you ever think maybe you, were misdiagnosed when it comes to your mental illness?”

  “I wasn’t diagnosed with Schizophrenia at first”

  “You weren’t?”

  I shake my head. “When I saw the shrink with Sam, she told me she thought I had a form of bipolar. She gave me some medication to help me. It worked well. It wasn’t until I had my baby that Roberto took me to his Doctor. He said he’d finally had enough of the way I was, that it was time someone sorted me out. No one but Sam and Clyde knew anything about me being on medication. Not even my mother ever knew. But Roberto said there must be something wrong with me to keep acting crazy. I didn’t understand much of what was going on, I was so lost in my grief. It turned out that the doctor he took me to see believed I had Schizophrenia” I shrug. “I was diagnosed a couple of years later with a masochistic personality disorder as well as Schizophrenia, and here I am”

  “I don’t believe that you have Schizophrenia, Mercedes. I’m not saying you haven’t got a mental illness because it’s blatantly obvious that you have. I think maybe I should take you to see someone and have you checked over properly. If you have been misdiagnosed I would like it dealt with”

  “Okay” Is all I said before kissing him softly. I haven’t really got a clue what he’s on about right now. I highly doubt I was misdiagnosed, but whatever keeps him happy. Shit! My mouth suddenly fills with water.
Fuck! I’m gonna be sick. I dive off the bed, with my hand over my mouth and run to the bathroom. Christ, I only just make it in time. With my head down the toilet I vomit up what feels like my lungs. It won’t stop, Jesus!

  “Christ, baby” He grabs my hair, holding it in a makeshift ponytail out of the line of fire, and rubs my back. It’s soothing to a degree. That’s it, I am never drinking again! Finally it stops, my body is completely empty and I feel so weak. I need to brush my teeth. I shrug him off me and get to my feet, press the flusher and walk over to the sink grabbing my toothbrush. “You look so pale, Mercy” He’s right, I do, I look almost ghost like.

  “It’s just a hangover”

  “Bit more than a hangover if you ask me”

  “Well, I didn’t ask you, did I?!” Whoa! Where’s this anger come from again?

  “You look so pale. Why don’t you let me examine you, make sure you’re okay?”

  “Blake, you’re not my Doctor, please stop fussing. I’m fine. I drank too much when I shouldn’t have. Its my own fault, I should have known better. Now that I’ve I’ve thrown up I feel fine” The truth is, I don’t feel fine I feel awful, my stomach feels like it’s full of stones. My throats on fire and my heads banging, but I don’t want him to worry. “I’m sorry if I seem off with you. It’s just headaches make me grumpy”

  “You have too many headaches, and way too often. You’re starting to worry me” God, here we go, he’s always in Dr. Mode. Can he not just be normal for once?

  “I’m fine, Blake. Nothing a couple of painkillers won’t cure”

  “Look, if you won’t let me examine you at least let me take you into work with me so a colleague of mine can examine you. Please, Mercy” How can I resist those childlike eyes? Besides, if I go it might put my own mind at rest, because to be honest all of these headaches are starting to worry me too.

  “Okay, if it will make you happy I’ll go with you. Just let me shower real quick” I lean into him and kiss him, just to let him know we’re okay. But he doesn’t let go, he grabs my hands in his left hand and holds them behind my back with such force my wrists hurt. “Blake, what are you doing?” He smirks at me then grabs my throat with his right hand choking me, Jesus it hurts! Then his lips are on mine, his tongue forcing its way into my mouth. This is so painful. Releasing my hands he pushes me back against the wall. “Blake, you’re hurting me” My voice is barely audible. I’m so confused, if I didn’t feel so ill I’d love this! He releases my neck, pinning my hands above my head. This is fierce, hard, rough, punishing. Fuck, is this what I need? Is this how I’ll feel better? It’s been so long since anyone was this rough with me. At least I know nothing I’ve told him about myself has changed the way he feels about me. “Ah!” I want him, I want him now inside me, fucking me hard, punishing my body. He forces my legs apart with his knee, while his hand travels up my thigh, my body’s tingling and I no longer feel the pain in my head only the want between my legs. “Blake. AH...!”