Page 11 of Gilded Fake

“Harder,” I say, and he squeezes tighter, like Baron used to do. Panic rolls through me, but I force myself to go on. Baron isn’t pulling my strings anymore.

I scrunch my eyes closed and ride Maverick, as if I can outrun my demons if I move fast enough, fuck him hard enough. The illusion of power is gone, so I search for pleasure in something else, in the tight grip of his hand, the tenderness inside me where he pushes up against the limit of what I can take.

“Hit me,” I choke out, needing more than the hand on my throat.

His free hand gives my ass a hard slap, and I whimper and slam down on him harder.

“Again,” I say.

He does it again, and again, and again, and I feel myself inching closer to the edge. The pain brings me back to sophomore year, curled up in a ball holding my middle after Royal wrecked me inside, the shame that would wash over me when I asked myself how I could have cum when it hurt so bad.

“Hurt me,” I gasp. “I’m almost there.”

Maverick grips my ass, squeezing so hard I know I’ll have to put on makeup to cover the bruises on stage tomorrow. I don’t care. I need to get there, to prove something to myself the way Duke had to prove something to himself when he’d go down, forcing an unwilling orgasm from me until I stopped fighting it and gave in.

“Harder,” I grit out as Maverick pushes his hips up, holding me pinned, his cock so deep I can feel the ache building in my core.

“God damn,” he says. “You’re a freak under that good-girl thing you got going on.”

“I just need it to hurt.”

“Want me to fuck your ass?” he asks. “I can make that hurt real good.”

“No,” I cry, shuddering involuntarily. “I hate anal.”

“Mm, too bad. Nothing like watching a good girl cry while she takes eight inches of gangster dick in the ass.”

His fingers cut into my hip until I wince and bite down on my lip as he slams into me. I match his violence, slamming down onto him harder and harder, seeking something I can’t quite find, my desperation increasing with each pass. Finally my body starts to tremble. I’m panting and sweating, and I can’t do it, and it makes me want to cry, and scream, and drive over to the Dolces’ house and ram my car straight through it, watch it all crumble into a pile of rubble with them trapped inside.

“Hit me again,” I say. “Hit my face.”

His hand clenches around my throat, the other one stinging across my cheek with stunning force. It whips my head sideways and sends my hair flying over it. The pain clamps down on my whole body the way his fingers have clamped on my throat, cutting off the blood to my brain until I see black spots. I feel my core flutter and then clench, and he slaps my tits, hard, backhanding one and searing his palm across the other.

I cry out a name, and I’m not sure if it’s his, or Colt’s, or maybe Royal or Baron or Duke. I don’t care, because I’ve finally found what I’ve been searching for, with pain aching through my chest, and stinging across my face, throbbing dull in my core, and crushing my throat.

I did it.

I came.

It should be a triumph, a cutting away of the final puppet strings. But I don’t feel triumphant as the last flutters fade. I feel hollow and dirty. When Maverick stands and leans me backwards over the vanity, slamming into me so hard it sends my makeup tumbling from the surface and scattering across the floor, I don’t feel anything. When he grips my thigh hard enough to tear a cry from my throat, I know that only my body hurts, because there’s nothing inside to feel the pain. When he curses and growls, “Take it,” while he cums, I do as he tells me.

But it’s not the way I obey Colt. I came, but it doesn’t feel like it did with Colt.

It’s a grim victory that has me avoiding his eyes when I nod at his question. He drops the condom in the trash, buckles his belt, and pulls me in to give my ass a quick, hard squeeze. It’s a presumptuous touch, arrogant and rude, but it’s honest. There’s no question that he’s about to walk out the door.

When he does, I limp around picking up the scattered tubes of lipstick and tubs of blush he knocked off my table. When everything is in order and I’m dressed, I leave without calling one of the bouncers to escort me to my car the way I’m supposed to. I can’t bear to see anyone, can’t bear the thought of them seeing me dragging my defeated shell to my car, grimacing with each step.

My body doesn’t feel strong or powerful. It feels battered and spent.

At home I lie on my back, lifeless, on the clean sheets in my new bed in my empty apartment. For this moment, I allow myself to be weak. Here, alone, where no one can hurt me and no one can help me, I let myself sink into the cold quicksand of despair.

Despair was something I was never allowed, not even when the Dolces first captured us in their net. I had to be strong for my sisters, show them the way—how to stand tall and hold my head high when even crawling seemed impossible, how to survive when I was dead inside, how to be pretty when they’d made me into something as ugly as they were.

I was sad then, sobbing into my pillow every night because I missed Rylan so much I thought it would kill me. Despair is something heavier than sadness, though, something that smothers like an invasive vine, that claims you when you have nothing left to miss, nothing to even cry for.

I try to think about the orgasms I had with Colt, how good they were, but it doesn’t help. I thought I remembered what his touch felt like. I thought I remembered him. I didn’t account for the ways he’s changed since last year. He’s both more and less, different, harder and colder and hungrier. I wonder what that means, not just about him but about me. About Dixie.

It doesn’t matter, though.

---