Page 59 of Delivered to the Devil

Everything hurts.My throat, my lungs, my pussy, my legs—the biting cold that has my body shivering all over. Fat tears roll down my cheeks and into the water as devastating sobs rip up my sore throat, making my stomach contract in painful spasms and blocking the newly freed passage to my lungs.

Next thing I know, I’m hoisted into strong arms, and the person carrying me jumps out of the tub, placing me on the floor. I squirm to process the pain and panic pounding through my body—inside and out—but I’m forced to my side, my chest angled toward the floor.

“Breathe,” an urgent voice demands. “Slowly.”

I try, but I can’t seem to drag in air.

“Slowly,” the voice repeats, and a large hand splays over my chest to demonstrate the motions I should make. The palm lifts slightly off my chest, then presses down. Up and down, up and down. In and out, in and out. Gradually, I fall into the steady rhythm, and the air reaches a bit farther down with each breath.

I keep crying as I go. Crying and breathing. It’s all I can do.

Someone bustles behind me, speaking a foreign language, then leaving. An angry growl next to me prompts another set of feet to leave, and the front door slams, and then I’m carried to bed. Still crying.

The arms don’t release me. They position me to lie against a strong, warm body, pull the comforter around me, then they wrap around me, rocking me gently, trying to calm me. But it doesn’t work. Just like my cold body refuses to give up the shaking, the panic lodged in my mind refuses to abate.

I desperately cling to Janos. “Why do you let him do this to me?” I cry into his chest, and when he doesn’t answer, I repeat the words over and over, shaking him with what feeble strength I can muster. Then I pound his chest with my fists. I’m as desperate for an explanation as I was for air. “Answer me!” I demand, the force straining my throat and making me cough. But I don’t let up. “Why?!”

“Because I owe him my life,” a regretful voice finally says.

I keep banging my fists until everything is so hopeless I just curl up on myself and weep.

A small eternity seems to pass before he finally expands. “If it wasn’t for Gabor, I would have been dead long ago. Or in jail for killing someone. I was so angry. A hand grenade without a pin waiting to explode. He taught me discipline and gave me the skills it takes to make it in this world.”

“Can’t you just quit? Stop being his henchman?” I pull away to stare at him with desperate hope in my eyes. “Start a new life somewhere and take me with you?” For a short moment, I think he’ll feed my fantasy to soothe me—make me believe I’ll get out of this, if only for a moment.

But he won’t even give me that. “I’m sorry I can’t be the hero you want me to be.”

“But you’re not the cruel man he makes you, either.”

“No?” Janos’s lips twitch like a hungry predator. “You don’t think I’d find my own girls to rape if I wasn’t Gabor’s henchman, as you call it?”

My eyes dart back and forth between his steel-gray ones. I want to say no, but I wouldn’t believe it myself.

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t have forced myself upon you if I hadn’t tipped off Gabor about the sweet, little, submissive woman down by the river?”

Everything stops. I stare at him with parted lips, my breath barely moving. All this time, I thought Janos was just following orders, but really, he was the one who dragged me into this nightmare? He’s not just some man forced into some shady business in order to survive. He’s the instigator—the very reason I ended up in Gabor’s claws—and he doesn’t show the tiniest sliver of remorse.

I thought Gabor happened upon me by chance, but really, he was there that day to check me out. Because Janos had tipped him off. It all makes sense. Men like Gabor don’t frequent restaurants like that.

“But… how? How did you find me? How did you know I was submissive?”

Janos huffs. “I came by one day. You were talking to a customer at one of the outside tables. Some rich, bossy guy who flirted with you, and your eyes kept flickering down. Your whole posture was teeming with submission. You’d probably have gone home with him if it hadn’t been for your boss coming out and yelling at you to get back to work. Am I right?”

I remember that day. That man had called upon my every submissive instinct in a way few people have. He was competent, confident, and dominant, with a hint of arrogance that made me incredibly turned on, yet he seemed friendly. Protective too, as he barked at Iszák for yelling at me. But I tucked my tail betweenmy legs, ran into the restaurant, and stayed hidden until he was gone, too embarrassed that he had seen Iszák yell at me like that.

“Why didn’t you take me yourself?”

“Your potential would be wasted on a one-time fuck, and I wasn’t interested in a toy of my own.”

Tears pool at the corners of my eyes, but it’s not because I feel betrayed. It’s not because this man is someone else than I thought him to be—because he’s not. The tears well because I can’t make myself push him away. I know I should hate him, scream for him to leave, wish to never see him again, but I can’t do either, and once the most immediate shock settles, I realize this new piece of information changes nothing. The only thing that shifts at this new information is my self-respect, and that is already on a slippery slope toward its full demise.

I still want Janos.I want him with a burning desire unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Even after he’s helped Gabor nearly drown me and confessed he was the one to deliver me into the claws of the devil. Even after he’s told me he would have raped me himself, I still want him.

It doesn’t matter how I ended up here, and whatever intentions he had at the beginning make no difference. I don’t care that he would use and abuse me even if Gabor wasn’t involved. Or maybe I do. But not the way I should. In some fucked up way, it only reinforces the strong pull that keeps me gravitating toward him.

I need his unmerciful power—his sadistic yet caring brand of brutality. In some way, I think that’s what draws me to him so strongly. It’s not just Stockholm syndrome or the fact that he’s the only person showing any kind of concern for me. Most of all, I want him because he sates this sick craving for unwavering, all-consuming dominance that I’ve always had.

At this very moment, I realize something crucial. I no longer want to escape. It doesn’t matter that Gabor’s sadistic games areonly getting worse; all that matters is that Janos is here with me through it all.

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