Page 84 of In Love with the Devil

With a nod and a menacing smile, he says, “Listen, baby. Don’t feel bad, okay? You figured it out. It’s why you came to me. It’s why you were searching every corner of my office; why you asked me the questions you did. You always try to find the good in people and you were just trying to confirm that the man who kidnapped you had a nice side to him. This is why you said the things you said last night. So don’t feel bad. You’re a smart, tough girl with an amazing big heart, that’s all.”

“Julian…” The whisper carries so much pain.

“It’s okay.” He pauses as my face contorts with agony. “And I wasn’t attracted to you because you acted or were a victim. I was attracted to your willingness to love and forgive. I took full advantage and destroyed it. But in the end, you won. You taught me how to love–"

"Shut up!"

"You're a phoenix. And the flames that you unleash are gorgeous–"

“Julian, please shut up,” I whisper because I can’t take the monster who has destroyed me, being nice to me, rebuilding me like no therapist or psychotic drug has done in a year.

“Astoria. Look at me.”

I do.

“Blame me. Not you. Me.” He points at his chest.

Why is it getting harder to walk away? Why is it hurting?

For too long, all we do is stare at each other with tears overflowing our eyes, but then he breaks the silence and whispers, “Go ahead, baby. It’s okay." He nods. "I know you. I know you need to run right now. But I’ll always find you, Astoria. Do you wanna know why?” He pauses, studying me. “Because in the sickest, worst, most disgusting way, I love you too. So go ahead, run wherever you want to run. I’ll never be far behind.”

“Asher Julian Michaelson, I want you to know that the next time I see you, I’ll do everything in my power to kill you.”

His eyes narrow into slits and a smile pulls at one corner of his lips. Then his eyes drop from mine down my body. His tongue sweeps in between his lips. My eyes mirror his, taking in his nakedness, his hard cock, hanging. I turn the handle, open the door, and rush out. I run to the elevator, then out of the building, knowing that he’s watching me from the window.

The city is foggy, and it’s snowing. Clouds are blocking almost all hints of sunlight.

Asher is Julian. Asher is Julian.The thought keeps repeating for all five blocks I run. The iciness I felt when I found out the truth changes into a hot pain. At first I think it’s just my lungs burning, but it’s not. Every inch I run away from him hurts. There’s a sick part of me that wants to be back in bed, being held and kissed by him.

My phone rings at an incoming text. At first, I assume it's Mindy, panicking, but then I see it's a blocked number.

Unknown: I love you.

Then the pictures of me curled and tide up on the bed start filling my screen, followed by videos of me screaming from pleasure from the fisting. I stop it from playing, walk into the cafe behind me straight into their bathroom and watch it again. The video plays long past when I climaxed last night. Sometimes the phone was on the bed, only catching my sounds, others he picked it up to record himself fucking me. I play it again, promising this will be the last time and get myself off, coming so hard, yet having to resist everything in my body and mind that demands me to run back to him. It dawns on me. This is what he wanted by sending me this. "You fucking sick asshole."

I call a taxi and tell the driver to drop me off in downtown. I don’t tell him I’m going there to buy a brand new cell phone and to dump this one.

Chapter thirty-six

Three = 1+ π

Julian

A year and 9 months ago

Astoria's worse fear had always been pregnancy. I don't know why it took me so long to realize it. As soon as it dawned on me, it became an obsession. It was all I wanted, to make her live her worse fear right next to me. So all I did after she tried to run away was fuck and come in her pussy every chance I got, and every single time, she fought me. She’d run away, scratch, bite, scream, faint, hit me with the first thing she could find, even attempt to choke me with the chain, but I always won. Despite her fears, Astoria loved my cock in her pussy. She couldn’t help coming every single time.

Did I plan for all this to happen? No. I was just having fun, fucking with her mind, trying to satisfy a hunger she'd wokenin me that day on the grass. Two weeks later, in the middle of the night, the sound of her vomiting in the bathroom woke me, and I smiled at the possibilities.It was the most cheerful I’d ever been. I enjoyed knowing soon, Astoria would have no choice but to get used to being mine. She was terrible at hiding her wish to run away. The way she'd look at my cell phone, at the front door, and the forest… It was so obvious, and I knew that for as long as she kept contemplating escaping, our relationship would go nowhere.

With her violent morning sickness, depression, and rage, I couldn't get anywhere near her. She begged me for a home pregnancy test, but I figured if I allowed all the symptoms to pop up one by one, the horror to slowly increase and spread, it would have a more lasting effect. By the second month, her hyperemesis gravidarum was so extreme that I had to connect her to IVs almost every day so she wouldn't die of dehydration.

The situation didn’t fuck with my mind until we listened to the heartbeat and then, it all crashed down at the end of the fourth month. It was late and the sound of her vomiting woke me. It wasn’t rare for her to be sick at that hour, so I kept trying to go back to sleep, but then her shriek echoed off the tiles. I ran even before I was fully awake, my heart in my throat. She kept pounding her hand on the floor while gasping for air.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”I lay next to her.

“C-cramps.” That's when I saw the blood.

“No, no, no, no–” she kept whispering when she saw it.

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