Thirty Days of Pain

by Ginger Talbot

Fucking douchewad.

  “How would you know what normal guys do?” My tone is mild and conversational. I’m on risky ground, but it may be a risk worth taking. The last time I reached out to the human side of him, he walked away for a few days…but now I’m sitting outside under the stars, wearing normal clothes, and none of his men are there.

  “I study them for weakness.” He stabs his salmon with his fork for emphasis, and shoves a huge bite into his mouth. He chews it with vicious bites.

  “That sounds like a fun hobby.”

  “I don’t do anything for fun.”

  “You don’t read? Listen to music? Go to plays, or football games?”

  He snorts in contempt. “You want to get to know me better, Willow? Would you like to paint each other’s nails and braid each other’s hair?”

  Stung, I push my plate away. “Why, exactly, am I having dinner with you?”

  He keeps eating. “Because I told you to, and I fucking own your ass, so you do what I say, when I say.”

  “You own my ass for the next sixteen days.”

  “Maybe.”

  And what the hell does that mean, exactly? Is he threatening to keep me here indefinitely? But there’s no point in asking what his plans are. He’ll do what he feels like, when he feels like it.

  “So you’re going to sit there and insult me for acting like a normal human being. We’re right back to where we started the first day I got here. Good to know where I stand.”

  “You stand exactly where I tell you to stand.” I hear the sharp snap of warning in his voice, like a whip about to come down on tender flesh.

  “Yes, you’ve made that clear. Repeatedly,” I say, with an unusually nasty tone. I stare down at my plate in silence, my stomach twisting. I’m losing my appetite.

  “Eat.” There’s a tsunami of rage behind those words.

  I could be childish and refuse, but I’m pretty sure he’d either beat the hell out of me or force-feed me. There are certain things that make him genuinely dangerous, and refusing food seems to be a trigger point for him. So I take the smallest bites that I dare, like a child having a mini tantrum. I stare into space, not saying a word. I wait for him to either send me back to my room or order me to bend over the table.

  Instead, after a long, uncomfortable silence stretches between us, he speaks. “Don’t ask me about myself, my family, or my past.”

  I feel the heavy darkness lifting just a little bit.

  That’s progress. At least he’s telling me the rules.

  I take a sip of wine and set the glass down. “So, did you mean what you said about thinking I should be an art therapist? Or maybe just an art teacher.”

  “Or an artist with a gallery. I saw your sketches. You have talent.” His tone is considerably calmer now. It feels like a thick black storm cloud swept over him and then drifted away.

  “What did you like about them?”

  “Did I say I like them?” he grunts.

  I shrug, keeping my face carefully neutral, but inside I’m hurt.

  He takes a healthy swig of his vodka. “Everything you draw, you make more beautiful. It’s a reflection of the way you see the world.”

  I’m shocked and touched that he thinks that. I’m amazed that he took the time to notice my artwork and form a judgement of it – and of me as a person, because of my artwork.

  “I’m kind of a private person. I like the idea of painting to help people.”

  “I could pay for you to go to grad school after you leave. You could get a master’s of fine arts.”

  I look at him, startled. I almost ask, Why would you do that? But I suspect whatever answer he flung out would wound me. This need to follow up every moment of tenderness with a punishing blow…I am so tired of it.

  So I get in a pre-emptive strike. “I won’t touch a cent of your money, ever. When I leave here, I’m done with all this. Your world, my family’s world. One way or another, you all make money from other people’s misery, and I hate it. If I go back to school, I’ll get loans or scholarships or work as a teacher’s assistant.”

  “Suit yourself.” He drinks some vodka, then pins me with his gaze. “But you should take the money, because you’re going to need it. Your family will reject you when you leave here. Because of what I did to you. They are old-fashioned, and will view you as tarnished goods. An embarrassment. They’ll marry you off to someone who can keep you hidden away…or they’ll take more permanent measures.”

  I open my mouth to argue, then shut it again. My heart sinks as he realize he’s right. I planned on taking my cousins, and hopefully my aunt, and disappearing as soon as I got home – but will I even be allowed in the front door of their mansion? Coldness seeps through me as I think about the fact that I may never see them again. I should have realized that, but I was too preoccupied with thinking about how to survive another day.

  Even if Vilyat is dead – and he will be soon – that won’t help, because Edik and Latvi will never tolerate a woman shaming the family name.

  Helenka, Yuri, their mother, me…all of us will be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.

  “You knew that all along,” I say, looking at him accusingly. He knew that his punishment of me would last far longer than the thirty days he kept me. He knew that by taking me, and using me the way he did, he was handing me a life-long sentence when I’d committed no crime.

  “Yes.” No apologies. No excuses.

  I try to take another bite. Food suddenly tastes bitter in my mouth, and I choke down that one piece and push my plate away.

  “So quit being so stubborn, and do something smart for once. Take the money. You’ve earned it.”

  His words slash through me like a scorching-hot blade. It takes all my self-control not to grab my knife and jam it into his thick neck. “For being your paid prostitute?”

  He meets my gaze, completely unruffled. “For putting up with my crap. For having more loyalty than the rest of the entire Toporov family put together. Not that they deserve your loyalty.”

  “I already told you, I won’t touch a cent of your money.”

  He shrugs. “Suit yourself. It’s your funeral.” He attacks his salmon again, with gusto.

  I look up at him. He just delivered my death sentence, and now he’s sitting there enjoying his dinner without a care in the world. A wave of rage swells up inside me, and it grows higher and higher and higher, until it’s a tidal wave that could drown skyscrapers.

  I know it’s suicide, but I need to strike back, to hurt him the way he hurt me. I can’t stop myself. The wave is pushing me forward, helpless before it.

  What can I do to him? If I throw my food at him, scream and rail at him, he’ll just smile. Kindness is the only way to wound him. And what kind of sick bastard is he, for that to be the truth?

  “I know you weren’t born like this,” I tell him gently. “Something terrible happened to you when you were a child, to turn you into this. I can see the good man underneath all that, the moments of decency and humanity, and that’s what I will remember about you after I’m gone. The gentle way you touch me when we make love. The way you protected me from those men.”

  I am a fool for doing this. I am as good as calling him a weakling. I am taunting a rabid animal.

  Just as I guessed, he flies into a fury. I know him well enough to know what buttons to push. Where his tender spots are. Thank you, Sergei. You have made me into the kind of person who would use that knowledge to wound.

  He leaps to his feet and his chair flies backward. “Don’t fucking tell me what I am, you little shlyuka!” I know that one. It’s the Russian word for whore. “If I tell you what made me into this monster, those will be the last words you ever hear!”

  “I am sorry about whatever happened.”

  And that, I mean sincerely. Something nightmarish shaped him into what he is, and whatever it was, no human should have to experience such suffering. But I am also using his pain as a weapon to be turned back against him.<
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  Instead of answering, he springs forward and pulls me to my feet. He twists my arm up behind my back.

  It hurts so much I cry out. He marches me past servants, past bodyguards. He takes me down the hall to his play room.

  He doesn’t bother giving me orders. He bends me over the bed there.

  “Move, and you die.”

  Right now, I believe it. My words had their intended effect. They sent him into a different place, pushed him into the ice-cold steppes, a land where only monsters can survive.

  He roughly shoves my dress up, shredding it, and yanks my panties down.

  Then he lubes up my rectum, forcing his fingers into the tight, puckered hole. I jerk. He’s not gentle this time, and it really hurts.

  A second later, he pushes in a butt plug, but it’s much larger than the last one he used, and it burns like a lump of coal shoved up there.

  “Stand up.”

  I do so, trembling. I am an idiot. I did this to myself. What kind of fool picks a fight with Sergei?

  The black rage in his gaze is truly terrifying. He slowly, methodically, shreds my dress with his hands until it falls off me.

  “Go back to your room. If you take it out, I’ll beat you until I see the light leave your eyes.”

  Awkwardly, cursing him in my head, I do the naked walk of shame, and this time it’s a million times worse – because there is a plug protruding from my butt cheeks. Men are patrolling the halls, servants are cleaning, and they glance at me, their gazes holding a little too long before they look away. I’m mortified. I’m furious, and helpless. Tears roll down my cheeks, and I am shaking.

  I limp all the way back to my room, lie down on the bed and wait for him.

  The butt plug burns and throbs inside me, and every second feels like minutes, and every minute feels like hours. Time drags on.

  Tears leak down my cheeks, and I squirm on the bed. I can’t focus on anything but the fiery pain inside me.

  I struggle not to regret standing up for myself.

  Damn it, I’m a human being, I can only stand having my feelings kicked and stomped for so long. It’s not fair. Why do I have to just sit there while he mocks me and gloats about ruining not just my life, but my cousins’ as well? Who wouldn’t lash back, eventually?

  I can live through this. I can, I can, I can…

  Can I?

  I start to sob. How much longer will this go on? Would he really kill me if I disobeyed him? Mere days ago, he was kissing away my tears and holding me in his arms. Is that Sergei gone forever? Did I push him into a place from which he’ll never return?

  I roll onto my stomach. It doesn’t help. I roll back onto my side.

  Every second is a pulse of pain. Throb, throb, throb, throb, throb, throb…

  I grit my teeth. I climb out of bed slowly, carefully, awkwardly, and hobble across the room, hoping that somehow shifting my body will help ease the pain a little bit, but it doesn’t. It feels like there’s a hot poker shoved straight up my ass.

  I am crying big, gulping tears.

  The door bangs open. He points at the bed and I stagger over.

  “Face down,” he barks at me. I obey immediately.

  I weep with relief as he slowly, slowly slides it out of me.

  “Having fun?” he says nastily.

  “No. Sir.” We’re back to being formal, and I want to make sure that he knows it.

  More lube drips onto me, and he works it inside me with two rough fingers. I tense.

  “If you tense up, it’ll hurt more. But I’ll enjoy that.”

  He mounts me from behind…and reaches around and strokes my clitoris with his finger. He rubs the pad of his finger across it, back and forth.

  Despite the pain, despite my fury, I feel those red-hot flames of desire licking up inside me, and he pushes the enormous head of his cock into my rectum. I stiffen, then force myself to relax as much as I can.

  He thrusts into me, grunting with the effort, and it slides up further and further.

  His cock is enormous, and it hurts. Every brutal thrust hurts. I’m crying, but at the same time, my need burns inside me like a bonfire.

  He begins to pump into me, stretching me. It’s too much. I can’t go on. I buck and try to squirm out from under him, throw him off, but he holds me to him.

  “Please,” I sob. “You’re hurting me.”

  He stops instantly, and the pain fades. Then he resumes, but slowly this time. “Is that better?”

  “Yes.” I choke on the word. I could beg him to just stop taking me up the ass, and I think he actually would. He’s never forced himself on me sexually. It seems important to him that I want it.

  And I do, even now.

  His sickness has found an answering perversity, deep inside me. It’s a sickness that I never knew existed before. The need for pain to spice up the pleasure.

  Did he create it, or was it always there?

  He picks up the pace and fucks me harder, but now it doesn’t hurt as much, and every fiery thrust is pure ecstasy. The pleasure builds and builds until I’m crying out, until that great explosion inside me sends rivers of pure pleasure burning through my body. His thrusts quicken, and I hear his harsh gasps of pleasure, and then he’s gripping my hips so hard he’ll leave bruises. He explodes inside me, and collapses on top of me, gasping. We lie there in silence, and he’s still thick and hard, and I feel the pulsing burn in my rear channel.

  Then he slides out of me.

  He’s about to leave me. I am desperate for some connection. For reassurance. I crack myself open to let him in. I burn for him. And he’s going to leave me with nothing.

  “All those clothes that you picked out for me,” I call out to him, as he’s about to walk away. “They were perfect for me. And the books. You took the time to get to know me, even before I came here. You did it to make me comfortable. Because you’re not all bad. You’re not.”

  The look that he casts back is half pity, half amusement. “Was it love at first sight, Willow? Or did I do it to mess with your head?”

  His words are like a punch to the stomach. I feel sick as I watch him go, the way he always does. Without a backward glance. Dismissing me from his mind.

  Sixteen more days.

  My body may survive this, but my mind? My heart? If he were brutal all the time, it would be easier. It’s the taste of paradise followed by the toxic rain of his hatred that’s corroding me from the inside out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Day fifteen…

  I feel dull and hollowed out as I walk through the garden the next morning. I feel as if I’m mourning a death. And worse, it’s the death of something that never was.

  The death of a dream can hurt more than the death of something real. Real life is ugly. A dream represents hope, progress, change.

  There will be no change here. And as for progress, I feel as if I’m moving backward. I’ve made things worse with Sergei.

  On some level, up until now, I still comforted myself with the bright shining lie that you can cure anything with kindness. Sergei threw that back in my face. He made me feel like a fool.

  I got greedy. I wanted him to change for me. I’ll even say the L-word, a word that he would never have the courage to utter, a feeling he’d never be brave enough to feel. I wanted him to love me, just a little.

  I want him to care. I’ve opened myself up to Sergei in ways I’ve never opened myself up to anybody. I let my body tell him about my twisted, perverted desires. I tried to tell him, without words, that he could trust me. I asked him for mercy.

  For those few magical hours, when he held me in his arms, I thought I’d worked a miracle. I thought he’d looked deep into my imperfect soul and cared for me anyway.

  Now I fear the distance between us is too vast for us to cross.

  He’ll use me again sexually while I’m here. And my body will love it. And my heart will break a little more every time.

  I won’t try to reach out to him emotionally again. I
can’t survive the aftermath.

  When I sit outside and sketch today, it’s like the darkness inside me is flowing through my pastels. The seagulls that swoop overhead have dark, angry eyes and cruel, hooked beaks. The flowers that frame my picture are spiky and stunted.

  “Majka!” a little voice cries out, and Lukas is dodging through rose bushes, running straight for me.

  He reaches me and hugs me, babbling.

  I feel happy and sad at the same time. I love being with him, getting to play with him, but I hate that he’s growing up in this toxic place. And it’s so sad that he wants something that he can’t have.

  I flip the sheet of paper over and call up a fresh one. I point at it, and the little boy’s eyes light up. He sits still as I sketch him.

  “Willow.” I hear Sergei’s harsh voice summoning me from behind the hedges. Something about that feels odd and out of place, and then I realize that he’s never spent any time with me in the sunlight. I’m his dirty little secret.

  I sit there and ignore him in a fit of petty spite. He calls me a second time, and this time his voice is closer. I sit there for just a moment more, hidden behind a hedge of roses, and pretend that I am a free woman who is not at the beck and call of a cruel, sadistic dragon. Like all moments of pure pleasure, it passes too soon. I hear his footsteps thudding toward me.

  “What?” I call back, standing up.

  He comes around the corner and heads my way, a look of anger on his face that vanishes instantly when he sees Lukas.

  Lukas lights up and waves at him, and I feel as if a mountain has been snatched off my shoulders. Lukas is not the least bit afraid of Sergei, and that sends a ray of light beaming into the darkness of my world. Lukas is safe. Whether he’s Sergei’s son or not – and I’m sure he is – Sergei won’t hurt him.

  “You heard me the first time,” Sergei says to me, his voice deceptively calm. Today his eyes are not blue. They are a stormy gray, and they hold the promise of pain without pleasure.

  “Yes, sir.” I don’t bother to deny it.

  Just then, the older couple comes rushing up, breathless. They look worried, but not flat-out terrified. I’m glad they’re not afraid of him. Sergei’s relationship with them and the little boy is different than with anyone else.