Page 101 of Cruel Cravings

He would invade my space. Demand I kept my eyes closed. Snap at me to keep going. Tell him every excruciating detail untilit felt like everything was jumbled up inside my head. Was I really hiding under the bed or was I trapped in his office as his hands wandered?

And when I’d erupt in tears or explode in emotion, he would be perplexed. He was calm, staring at me as if I were losing my mind.

“We need to increase your dosage,” he would say. “I’ll let Nurse Hinkley know when she escorts you back to your room.”

He was supposed to be helping me. But instead all he made me feel was a sense of helplessness that was maddening. That made me seriously question if I really was losing my mind. Maybe I really couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what I’d imagined.

Was the monster I was hiding from so many years ago a figment of my imagination?

The bad things I did as a result were real. The fire left our apartment in ashes. Any wounds I had ever inflicted had bled like any other gash or scrape.

People were dead.

Dr. Wolford climbs onto the bed with his pants lowered, exposing himself from the waist down. Even in the dim room I can make out his slim thighs and the strands of trimmed public hair. I avoid looking at his erect penis as he runs his hand over himself and then shoves my thighs apart.

Turning my head to the side, I urge myself to concentrate on anything else but what’s about to happen. The other times I’d been so distraught and confused that I must’ve frozen up and let him do what he wanted.

Now, I’m present. I’m in the moment and I refuse to let him see me cry. I won’t beg and I won’t give him the satisfaction of getting to me.

My teeth rake over my bottom lip and I blink away any emotion that does come.

“You never learn your lesson,” he huffs as he reaches between my parted thighs and pries off my panties. He discards them somewhere on the floor. “You refuse to get with the program. But it’s alright, Jael. Because no one will ever find you here. No one even cares that you’re here. The one person who would… won’t know about it.”

I wince as he leans forward and trails his fingers along the sensitive skin behind my ear. The area has been stinging ever since I woke up strapped down in this padded room, but I haven’t had enough agency to even check where it was coming from with my arms bound.

“You feel that?” he asks. “It’s where we had a tracker implanted inside you. It showed us your location at all times. You weren’t aware of that, were you? You didn’t know that I was tracking you every moment you were gone. Do you even understand why I released you in the first place?”

He waits for an answer that doesn’t come, but it doesn’t matter to him—he continues reveling in the authority he has over me and my bound body.

“Let me let you in on a little secret,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper as he leans forward and nuzzles the side of my face. His breath is cool, blowing against my ear. “The Society asked me to. They hoped you’d be useful for once and would lead us to your sister, and in turn, Kaden Raskova. But you couldn’t even do that right.”

He pokes at the sensitive patch of skin with his fingers and makes me wince a second time.

“We took the tracker out when we brought you back. After that little freeze up of yours at the Games where you were pathetic enough to let me put you on that boat. Then we dropped it off at some random location to throw him off. Just so that whenheinevitably looked for you, it would lead him elsewhere. That has to be disappointing for you, isn’t it?”

The pleasure’s audible in his voice as he breathes heavier and rears back to properly position himself between my thighs.

I clench my eyes shut at the feel of his member brushing against my sex.

“He won’t find you now. He’s off searching like the dumb beast he is.” A choked groan leaves him as he slots himself partially inside, curling his body over mine. He’s about to be in ecstasy while I’m suffering in hell.

But as Dr. Wolford hovers above me, his face screwed up in pleasure, I realize I’m not the only one who has to suffer. I’m not the only one who has to be humiliated and put through the traumatizing pain of what he’s about to do.

The same chaotic impulsiveness that’s driven me so many times in the past swells up inside me until I’m lifting my head and I’m doing something I never imagined.

I crane my neck, tipping my face up toward him, and then I sink my teeth into his throat. Not in a gentle, hesitant sort of way, but in a vicious, carnal way worthy of a carnivore. My teeth rip into his jugular to his immediate scream and suddenly we’ve traded places.

He’s in agony while I’m overcome with giddy pleasure, his blood spilling freely. The copper tang of it on my tongue.

32.Brontë

Love into a Weapon - Madalen Duke

Jael was nowhere to be found when I returned to Hurst Manor. The aftermath of the carnage that had been inflicted that night lay before me. Bodies in their own pools of blood like Mr. Vanderson and his wife, but otherwise there was no sign of life.

My chest heaved, slick with sweat, every nerve in my body alight with pain that had long since outgrown its name.

It was an agony most people would never know, reaching me to the bone.

---