Page 9 of Blackmailed to the Altar

Distracted, he looked down and grinned. “Yeah, it’s a Prince Albert.”

I had no words.

“Do you want to touch it?” He waggled his brows with his suggestion.

I narrowed my eyes. “What is the last thing you remember?” I got back to the question at hand.

He shrugged. “Storming out of here and getting a drink.” He held his hands up placatingly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Scare me?” I echoed, momentarily distracted from his intentions as anger bubbled beneath my fear. “You didn’t mean to scare me?” I looked in his eyes, gauging his intent. I almost believed him. Until his eyes slid to the left. He was lying.

“Y-you raped me,” I gasped out loud when I felt stickiness between my thighs.

Sebastian winced, walking backward with one hand raised outward toward me, and the other shielding his shiny dick with a pillow. “N-no. I would n-never do something like that. I’m not like that.”

“YOU KIDNAPPED ME!” I screamed, throwing a pillow at his head. “You threw me in a fucking trunk, and you say you’re not like that?” I sneered. “You’re completely like that.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, and tried reasoning with me once more. “I know it’s hard to understand right now, but that wasn’t me. I am not a bad guy.” He shot me a good ol’ boy smirk.

I was distracted by his hands on display. He was wearing gloves each time he’d touched me last night, but now, I could see the pair of gloves he wore were crumpled on the floor in his haste to get into bed with me.

I didn’t think his scars could be any worse, but his hands were definitely the worst I’d ever seen. I could hardly put in words the horror his skin must’ve endured. The skin was taut, stretched thin and uneven across his knuckles and palms, a patchwork of scars that looked as though they had been pulled too tight over the bone. The burns had disfigured them, the once strong, capable hands now marred by deep, puckered ridges, and jagged lines of scar tissue. His fingers, though still long and strong, were twisted slightly at the joints, as if even the tendons beneath had suffered in the heat.

The burns covered every inch of his hands, from the tips of his fingers to the wrists, as if he had plunged them into fire itself.And maybe he had, but it didn’t matter. He took me, and he wasn’t remorseful at all.

I wanted to scream. “You are that guy. The guy a woman wouldn’t want to be caught in the middle of the woods with.” I fixed my glare on him. “There is no good in you. You can’t use me as a lifeline. I can’t save you.” My voice cracked.

“Give me a chance. Just like the men in your prison program.” He smirked.

“How do you know about that?” I gasped in shock. “You are so wicked.” If I had a weapon, I would try to use it on him.

He spun around, giving me his back to leave the room, throwing apologies up left and right, but they were empty. I gasped and covered my mouth at the sight of his back. If I’d thought his hands were worse, his back showed how hard he must’ve fought to get out of whatever fire he’d been in.

The burns were far worse than the ones on his hands, like a canvas that had been tortured by flame. The skin there was an uneven patchwork of scars; some areas smooth, almost too smooth, where the skin had healed unnaturally tight, and others gnarled and jagged, raised in thick, irregular ridges that spoke of deeper wounds. The burns stretched from his shoulders all the way down to the small of his back, covering every inch of him in a chaotic maze of disfigurement.

It looked like his entire back had been consumed by fire and barely survived. The skin wasn’t just marred, it was ravaged. Some patches were shiny, as if the skin had been stretched thin over the muscle beneath, while other parts were rough, scarred tissue that looked like it had been pulled from somewhere else.

They’re grafts; I could tell now, even if I didn’t know the medical details. They were the pieces of his body that didn’t quite belong, sections where the color and texture shifted suddenly, abruptly, as though his body had been stitched back together like a quilt, each piece trying to hold onto what littlelife remained. There were no freckles, no moles, no natural lines. Just scars. Scars upon scars, crisscrossing in places, as if the fire had taken a blade to him along with the heat.

His shoulders were perhaps the most brutal. The burns there looked deeper, angrier, as if the fire had clung to him longer, refusing to let go. The skin puckered around the shoulder blades, tight and misshapen, and I could only imagine the pain he must have endured, the agony of movement in a body that had been so violently torn apart by flame.

But it was the center of his back that broke my heart. There, at the very core of him, the burn was the darkest, the tissue thick and uneven. It looked as though the fire had tried to swallow him whole, branding him with the evidence of its destruction, but leaving him just enough to survive.

And yet, as horrific as it was, there was something… hauntingly beautiful about it. Not in the sense that it was anything less than tragic, but because it was proof that he had lived through it. His back was a testament to his survival, a battle between flesh and fire that had left him scarred beyond recognition, but still standing.

When the door closed behind him, I let out a blood-curdling scream, picking up the nearest object and throwing it.

The lamp crashed into a ton of pieces when it collided with the wall, but it didn’t give me any satisfaction. I ran to the door and pounded on it, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Let me go.”

After a while of this, I stopped, sweaty and panting. I tried pleading with him. “If you really think you’re a good guy, you’ll let me go.” I heaved, trying to catch my breath. “Prove you’re a good man. Let me out of this room. Right. The fuck. Now.” I kicked the bottom of the door, and my toe throbbed.

Silence met my actions, and I understood he wasn’t coming back to let me go. I was not being let out, and he wasn’t a goodman as he had tried to gaslight me into believing. I limped to the bathroom, realizing I could still feel him inside of me. I stepped into the shower, and threw it on as hot as it could go.

I scrubbed my body until I could see red, raised rug burns from the rag on my skin. Then I did it again until the water ran cold. When I turned off the water, and ran a towel over my body, I hissed from the pain.

I could ask Sebastian for some cream, but I wouldn’t. I’d rather my skin fell off than ask my rapist for any sort of kindness. I looked around for any clothes that I could wear. There were men’s dress shirts lined in color coded order in this closet.

I took one and threw it on my body, because it beat leaving myself naked.

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