Page 78 of Violent Delights

Chapter 46

Joseph

She lets a few moments pass before she moves away from the door. I turn the knob and push it open carefully, in case she’s still standing close to it.

I find her standing in the middle of the room, naked and distraught, with new tears mixing with the dried-up bloody mess on her cheeks.

A violent cry escapes from her chest when I hurry toward her, wrapping my arms around her small body, as I pull her in for a heartfelt embrace.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper in her ear, while she cries in my arms.

“You said you’d never hurt me,” she whimpers. “You promised.”

I close my eyes, my chest heavy with pain as I’m confronted with her agony.

“You have no idea how sorry I am,” I repeat. “For everything.”

She buries her face in my chest, shaken by brutal sobs as I lift her up and carry her out of the room. Her crying intensifies when she realizes that I’m removing her from the attic, the place she thinks she deserves to be right now.

“You’ve been punished enough,” I tell her as I carry her down the hallway. “My pet.”

Her gaze wanders up to me, searching for clarification.

“You’re not sending me away?” she asks, hope shining through every syllable of her question.

I shake my head.

“You’re insane, crazy, twisted,” I tell her. “But you’re my crazy pet.”

I set her down to open the door to her bathroom. “Let’s clean you up.”

She sniffs and nods, looking so insanely vulnerable and exhausted that I’m overwhelmed with the urge to protect her. No one, especially me, should ever be allowed to make her feel like this. It angers me to know how she’s been treated by other men before, her father, her ex-boyfriend. They don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as her.

I draw her a bath, and as I reach over to start the water, she gasps in shock next to me.

“Your hand!” she exclaims. “It looks terrible. You need to see a doctor!”

I hadn’t even noticed the blood on my knuckles, it only caught my eye when I left traces of it on her beautiful face.

She takes my hand, carefully pulling it closer to her so she can inspect the damage I’ve done to myself.

“It’s nothing,” I say, trying to downplay the extent of the injury. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

She furrows her eyebrows as she looks up at me.

“Where’s your medical kit?” she wants to know.

I sigh. “I will take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”

“Please,” she begs. “It’s my fault this happened. If you deny me taking care of you, it’d feel like another punishment.”

She pauses, her face turning to a focused expression as she contemplates her next move.

“You’d hurt me,” she adds. “Not allowing me to take care of you would seriously hurt me.”

She can’t hide a little smirk on her face when she’s speaking those words to me.

“Little minx,” I say. “You know you can’t play that card every time you want something from me.”

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