God only knew.
He was crazy. A sadistic criminal who deserved to have his ass beat.
He was around here, somewhere. I felt his presence everywhere. My nerves prickled. I was twitchy. But I let that unease drive me forward. I would find my stuff and I would get the out of this hellhole. Somehow.
And when the police came to lock his ass up, what would he say? God, I wanted to see them snap handcuffs on him and drag him out of this palace. I wanted to see him suffer like I did, like every girl before me had.
But I didn’t see him. I didn’t find my things, either. After hunting for hours, I returned to my room empty-handed and ate dinner alone. And then, feeling exhausted, both physically and mentally, I turned in early.
Now, in the wee hours of the morning, he’d come to me.
I kept my breathing slow and even, acting as if I was asleep. I was terrified. My heart pounded hard and fast in my chest. The sound thumped in my ears. My whole body tensed. Would he wake me? Would he drag me back to that fucking dungeon and whip me some more?
Would he kill me?
He stood beside my bed. Some part of him, his arms perhaps, pressed on the mattress. The bed sank from his weight. My breath caught in my throat but I forced myself to exhale.
Please, please leave me alone.
A touch. To my face. So soft. So gentle. A stroke along my hairline, down to my jaw. I was so scared I had to fight to keep my face relaxed and breathing even. It was almost impossible.
“I’m sorry I left you. Twice. You’re right. I am a bastard.” he whispered. “What is it about you? Why do you make me feel this way?”
What way did I make him feel? The words sat on the tip of my tongue. I could have easily spit them out, but I didn’t. I was terrified of what he would do if he knew I was awake.
His finger traced up my cheek again then traveled across my forehead. His breath, so sweet, warmed my face. Unable to stop myself, I wriggled. Then I stilled, forcing my muscles to relax. “Are you dreaming now? Of a good, kind, handsome prince charming? You won’t find him here,” he murmured. “Only a monster in a charming disguise. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you accept the truth?”
Did he think I saw him as something more than a cruel, heartless bastard? Because if he did, he was wrong…
Or was he?
“I can’t be a fucking prince. Not for you. Not for any woman.” He sighed. Silence fell like a heavy blanket over both of us. “I didn’t want to be. But you…you make me want to be better, to be more than a fucking animal. I hate you for that.”
And I hated him. For buying me. For beating me. And for this--mostly for this--for letting me see his humanity. It had been so easy to hate him when all I saw was the monster.
But now, now I saw the man.
“I don’t deserve this. You.” His breath gusted across my mouth. I felt heat. Radiating over my face and chest. “Could there be any hope?” Then the softest touch on my lips. A sweet, gentle kiss. The kind of kiss that broke spells and woke sleeping princesses in fairytales. The kind that transformed monsters into princes.
My heart lurched.
This was so much more dangerous than anything he might do in that awful dungeon of his. This vulnerability. This moment. This kiss.
I shuddered. I trembled. But I kept my eyes shut and prayed he would turn back into the monster I could hate. Because now, for the first time since I’d learned I had been sold as a slave, I was really doubting my will to escape.
“No, I won’t let you do this,” he said, louder. “You won’t make me question everything I am and everything I’ve done. I don’t deserve anything. There is no hope. I know women like you. They don’t fall in love with men like me.”
He left.
I opened my eyes and whispered, “Well you’ve made me question everything I am and everything I’ve done. So fuck you.”
* * * * *
Later that morning, I discovered my luggage in my room. All of it. Including my purse. And my phone.
The first thing I did was check for messages. There were over twenty. All of them were from Sidonie. Sitting on the bed, I listened to the first and the last and didn’t bother with any in between. She was freaking out, didn’t know why I wasn’t answering her calls, and, as of last night, was on her way to Spain.
Ohthankgod!
I checked the clock. By now she was probably sleeping in a hotel somewhere or enjoying a hot cup of coffee.
Risking waking her, I dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.
“Kendall!” she screamed into the phone, the volume almost splitting my eardrum. “Ohmygod! I was really worried. I’ve been calling you for days. Why the hell didn’t you answer?”
“Long story,” I said, grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. God, it was great just hearing her voice. She sounded so close. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the Weston in Cadiz. How did your date go? Where are you?”
“I’m at Ramos’s house, on the shore somewhere.”
“Oooh. You stayed overnight? Things must’ve gone well! I have Señor Ramos’s address. It isn’t far from here. I’ll come and pick you up whenever you’re ready to go. No hurry, though.”
She was on her way!
The nightmare was over. Over!
I’d survived.
Forgetting about my twisted ankle and my sore ass, I jumped to my feet. Neither hurt as I scrambled to the bathroom. “I’m ready to go today. Now.” I grabbed my toothbrush. “How soon can you get here?”
“A half hour?” she said.
A half hour! Thirty minutes! I would be out of here in thirty minutes! Halleluiah!
“But are you sure you want to leave so soon?” she asked.
“Absolutely certain. I’ll be ready to go in a half hour.” I tucked my phone between my cheek and shoulder to free up my hand. I squeezed some toothpaste onto my toothbrush. “Thanks for coming for me.”
“Of course! I’m sorry I couldn’t fly out with you like we’d planned. We’re still going to do the touristy stuff, aren’t we? I mean, I’m here a few days late, but we still have time. That is, unless you wanted to spend that time with someone else…”
“Of course I want to spend the rest of the time with you! I can’t wait!”
“So, you didn’t say, how’d the date go? Will you be seeing him again this week?”
I turned sideways and lifted the robe, pulling one side of my panties down. An angry red mark marred my creamy white skin. “I’ll tell you later. I’m going to let you go so I can get dressed. I just woke up.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
The phone line went dead and I launched into action, washing my face, brushing my teeth, and doing what I could with my makeup and hair. The shower would wait until I was out of this hellhole and safe. Before dressing (in my own clothes) I checked my bottom in the mirror. The marks had faded a tiny bit, but they still looked bad. That sadistic bastard had hit me hard.
Thirty minutes flew by, and then I was dragging my suitcase down the hall, silently saying sayonara to everything I passed. My purse flopped against my hip as I walked.
When I turned the corner toward the main entry, something big darted out of a darkened doorway. That big thing turned out to be Kace Ramos.
“I’m leaving,” I informed him, avoiding eye contact. I didn’t want to look in his eyes. I didn’t want to see if he was sad or angry or glad to see me go. Instead, I looked down at my handbag. It was a lot safer but not as interesting.
“Yes, I see you are leaving. Adios, Kendall.”
He’d said my name.
My gaze jerked to his eyes. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t.
They were dark and full of stormy emotion. I became instantly swept up in the roiling, intense emotions in his gaze. And for the briefest moment I considered calling Sidonie back and asking her to come tomorrow instead. But then I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, and the pain on my backside reminded me what I would be in for if I stayed.
And while I hated to admit that the pain had done something unexpected, had cleansed me of some guilt and remorse about my sister, I wasn’t ready for more of what I’d already received. And even more importantly, I wasn’t ready for the emotions churning in my gut as I stared into that man’s eyes.
Why the hell did I care that he looked so upset?
“How is your ankle?” he asked, his brows furrowed.
“My ankle is fine. As good as new,” I said, leaving out the fact that my ass was still sore. The fact was, I had to take some of the blame for that. I hadn’t said the safe word. He would have stopped if I had. Softer, I said, “Adios, Señor Ramos. Thank you for letting me leave early.”
His jaw clenched ever so slightly. “You are welcome.”
I moved, jerkily, the pain in my ass stilting my movement.
In that moment an involuntary reaction, a tiny cringe, pulled at his features. He motioned toward the door. “It is for the best you leave now.”
“Yes.” It was better for me. For him…I wasn’t so sure. I remembered what he had said last night, while watching me sleep, that he felt something different with me. And I wondered if I did something for him somehow. That I helped him.
What if by leaving I halted what could have been a very good thing? A healing experience?
Intending to move toward the door, I took a couple of steps. But instead of heading that direction, I traveled toward him. Pausing a few feet from his tense, massive bulk, I stared up into his eyes. “I hope someday you’re free of your shackles, too.”
Rage ignited in his eyes, taking me off guard. “Vete al carajo, puta! Bitch!” Lunging forward, he caught my upper arms in his fists and shook me. “Don’t give me your fucking pity. I don’t deserve anyone’s pity. Do you fucking hear me? Do you?”
My teeth chattered as he shook me. “Y-yes. I hear you. I don’t feel pity. I—“
Yanking his hands away, he curled them into fists. “Good. Because the only thing you should ever feel for me is disgust. And hatred. Fear.” He pointed an index finger at my nose. “You got that? Hatred. Nothing else. No pity. No affection. No fucking kindness. Do you know what I am? I’m a monster. An animal. Do you know what I do? I buy girls like you. I pay money to break them, to bruise and maim, to whip. I need to hear them scream. I need to hear them beg and cry. They’re nothing to me but things. A means to my satisfaction. Voices to cry out for mercy. Skins to bruise and cut. Canvases to paint with pain.”
Unafraid, despite the rage burning in his eyes, I asked, “Why? Why do you do those things?”
“Why do you feel joy when you eat your favorite food? Why do you feel satisfied when you do your favorite things? Why? Can you tell me that? Then you’ve answered your own question.”
I understood and yet I didn’t. How had this man become so convinced that he wasn’t human? I saw the beast in him. There was no way to not see it. But I saw the human inside him, too.
In those quiet moments last night, when he showed the slightest tenderness. When he snuck into my room and stared down at me, thinking I was sleeping. When he watched me, wincing ever so slightly at the sight of my pain from his lashes. When he silently cringed with regret as he unshackled my wrists and ankles. I saw those moments. Every single one of them. He didn’t know it. Maybe because he himself didn’t realize what he was doing.
But that tenderness, it was real. And it, not the cruelty of the beast, was what I feared most. God help me if I fell in love with this man. God help me. Because I knew it would be a miracle if I survived.
And yet, I was drawn to him. Even as he blustered and shouted, I felt a magnetic draw, pulling me toward him. He was so beautiful and yet so dangerous, like a massive lion. Majestic and powerful. And just like that beast, I knew he had the strength and the instinct to rip me to pieces. But deep inside I believed he would subdue those feral drives because he felt something between us too and he wanted to understand it.
“Leave now. Before I change my mind,” he growled.
My brain told my legs to move. But they didn’t listen. Instead I stood in place and gazed into his eyes. There was so much turmoil in that man. More than there was inside me. Maybe that was why I felt so enraptured by him. We were two souls that had been shredded apart. Somehow, our brokenness wasn’t so ugly when we were like this, standing eye to eye, being open and honest and vulnerable.
“You hurt me,” I told him.
“I hurt them all.”
“Yes. I believe that. But do you feel this for them too?” I pressed my hand against his chest. “Do you feel anything for them?”
His mouth pulled into a thin line. “Nothing. As I feel for you.”
“Liar.”
His jaw ticced. He jerked his gaze away. “Leave, puta.”
I swung. My palm landed on his cheek. The large slapping sound echoed off the walls. “Stop calling me that. I’m not your whore. I never was. Not in my eyes and not in yours either.”
He shook me again, this time violently enough to rattle my teeth so hard I was afraid one might be knocked out. “What the fuck are you trying to do to me?”
I didn’t know the answer to that question. The truth was I had no idea why I hadn’t run out that door yet. Since I’d found out I had been bought and paid for, I’d been searching for an escape. I had one now. It had been handed to me on a silver platter.
But I hadn’t left.
Why?
I said, more to myself than to him, “There’s something about you—“
“There’s nothing good about me,” he interrupted, fingers tightening on my arms.
“But there is. I know. I see it.”
“You don’t see anything but what you want to see. You see the fantasy. A rich man who can buy you anything.”
Anger flashed in my gut. What the fuck? “Is that really what you believe? Really?” I smacked him again. As hard as I could. Across the face. He smiled. And that only made me more furious. “I think you know I don’t give a damn about your money. I don’t expect to marry a billionaire. Not you. Not any. All I need is a decent man who can support his family.”
Had I just said that?
Had I just admitted that I didn’t ever expect to marry a rich man? After hoping all these years that I would marry a man with tons of money so I could help children?
My dreams were stupid. Honorable. And good. But idiotic. And unrealistic.
No rich man would want me. Virgin or not.
I’m such an idiot.
“If you don’t care about money, why sign with an agency, puta?” he challenged, releasing me.
I rubbed one arm with the opposite hand. His fingers had bruised me. “Because my friend works for FI. I signed up as a favor to her. That’s what friends do for each other.”
He scoffed. “That is what friends do for each other? They sell each other to the highest bidder?”
My insides twisted. “She didn’t know.”
“If she works for Franchot then she knew.”
Dammit, this guy really knew how to push my buttons! I despised him for that. I shook my head so hard I got an instant headache. “Hell no. Absolutely not. My friend would never do something like that. Never!” I wanted to punch him. My hands curled into fists. My fingernails dug into my palms. “She didn’t know what Franchot was doing. And when I tell her, she’s going to be furious. She’ll quit her job.”
One side of his mouth curled up, producing a lopsided smile. “Ah, puta, you live in a fantasy world.”
I swung a fist at him, but he dodged the blow.
“No I don’t, and stop calling me that, you bastard.”
I swung at him again. This time he caught my wrist and jerked me against him, pinning my arm behind my back.
With my tits smashed against his hard, hot bulk, he glowered down at me. “You believe you can spend one hour or two with a man and know him. You believe you can change a fucked up monster like me into a human.”
I glared into his eyes. “I believe a ‘fucked up monster’
like you can change yourself. You just need a little help. Maybe a reason to change.”
He grabbed my other wrist and yanked it behind my back too. My purse slid off my shoulder, catching on his hand, clamped around both my wrists now like a shackle. His head dropped until only the breadth of a hair of space remained between his lips and mine. “And you are the reason I would change? Don’t kid yourself, puta. You are a whore to me. Just like all the others.”
“I don’t believe that, and neither do you.” Acting on some crazy, completely irrational impulse, I raised up on tiptoes, closing the distance between us.
The kiss was nothing like the first one we had shared. It wasn’t a tentative, patient seduction. It was violent and full of fury. No tenderness at all. Tongue, teeth, lips. They punished me for kissing him. And yet, my body responded. Lust thrummed through my center, heating my core, making me wet and ready for him.
He slammed me back against the wall and continued. It was a relentless, merciless discipline. My lips felt bruised. My body abused as hands squeezed and fingers clawed. I struggled, wriggling between his huge bulk and the wall, fighting for breath, for freedom from his onslaught and from the furious need slamming through my body. But he would not let me go. He shoved a knee between my thighs and leaned into me, using all two hundred and something pounds of lean, hard muscle to hold me in place. His hand replaced his knee and I cried out, the wanting so overwhelming tears were burning my cheeks.
“Don’t you get it?” he growled after breaking the kiss. His eyes were like daggers, piercing my soul, driving deep, where my most tender secrets lay hidden. “You won’t ever feel a warm embrace, only the burning embrace of my ropes. You won’t ever feel a gentle caress, only the cutting caress of my shackles. You won’t ever feel a sweet, passionate kiss, only the bite of my whip. That is all you can expect from me.
Hate me.
Fear me.
But don’t ever want me.” He stepped back and shoved me toward the door.
Hugging my purse to my chest, I stumbled out without looking back.
Raw, A Dark Romance Page 6
