Page 14 of To Have and to Hold

Decapitation. Poisoned fruit that makes him bleed from his eyes. A fungus that makes his penis fall off. Or a simple shot between those evil eyes.

The blows stopped for a beat, then his hands came under my hips and he dragged me to the edge of the bed and forced my feet onto the floor. My legs wobbled, but I didn't fall. I waited while he moved around behind me, my body and mind unwilling to move and process any damned thing. Fingers swiped through my pussy, squeezed at the raw slices so blood dripped down my leg, caught in something.

Then the hits got worse. A whip of leather flying through the air was my only warning before his belt landed on my raw skin. It broke the thin layer on it's first contact, a deafening whack as the buckle landed right by my arsehole.

"You will bleed for me tonight, Violet DeLucci," he said with heavy breaths, using my married name to further remind me where I stood. "Look at all that blood pouring from you now." He whipped me, again and again, his belt flying through the air non-stop to rip into my skin. The pain was one now, radiating through my entire body, a never ending shock that only rippled when his belt landed, it didn't leave. My mouth was permanently open on a cry, my fingernails cracked and broke as I clung to the bed.

And I could feel it. The blood. Streaming down my body in rivulets. More than I could ever have produced if he was the first man inside me. I was weak with it. Giving up. But he didn't. When my eyes flew open after the blow against my clitoris, I saw the birdbath, or just the bowl on the top, resting between my legs, filling with dark red blood. I squeezed my eyes shut again.

He kept pummeling. Even when I blacked out, left the situation as my mind, at last, couldn't take any more. He didn't stop. I woke back up, could only have been moments, but he was still going. Whipping me raw across my thighs now, moving down my legs to make every inch of me suffer and bloody and raw like uncooked meat. Red poured from wounds everywhere now, right down to the backs of my knees I could feel the fluid streaming, feel the skin singing with pain. My throat was too irritated to cry out anymore, my mind breaking too much. I was too weak.

Rafe's legs being cut off by a lawn mower. His arm being bitten off by a shark. Theo peeling my husbands skin from his body…

I kept losing consciousness, but he never stopped. He never stopped. Not until the belt was landing on my pussy again in ravaging blows, opening fresh wounds, sending blasts of sheer, intense pain from my toes to my finger tips. I was on fire. Burning. Everywhere. And I couldn't force any more scenarios in my head. He was invincible now, my brain couldn't conjure up his death. Only his victory. He had it already, after all.

When Rafe pushed his cock back inside my body, it was harder than ever before, felt bigger, fuller. The lube of my blood made him orgasm in seconds, and I could hardly even feel it when he throbbed and released deep in me. I felt nothing when he flipped me onto my ravaged back and shoved three fingers into my abused hole.

He withdrew them and sucked them into his mouth, groaning and squeezing his cock at the same time. I watched him with a detachment I didn’t know was possible. And he was intact. So perfectly intact. No missing head or limbs, no stab wounds. I couldn't see it. Only him, sucking the blood and cum from his fingers like it was a delicacy. “Mm,” he said. “That’s what youshould taste like. Raw. Bloody. Like a fucking rare steak.” He licked his fingers from knuckle to knuckle. “Perfect.”

I sobbed, unable to move from all the agony shooting around my body, all the pressure on all the injuries leaking onto his bed. He looked at me with ice behind his eyes, then his gaze landed on my nipple. I tensed, oh no, was the pin still in there? The pain of that was so miniscule compared to what he’d just done. He could pull my nipple off with his teeth and I don’t think I’d even notice now.

He frowned. My heart skipped a beat. “Maybe another time,” he said, winked, then turned and sauntered from the room without looking back. As he reached the door, he paused. “I’m not one of those husbands who doesn’t share a bed with his wife. I expect fresh sheets and a clean little wife when I return.”

I tried to ask him how long I had, tried to move at all, but couldn’t. The door shut, and I sat up.

I fainted.

Chapter 8

Violet

“Youbettercleanyourselfup before he comes back. He isn’t kidding when he makes threats.” A voice. A deep one, soft though, not hard like they meant to upset me. It was a warning.

I forced my eyes open and looked up, finding the man from the bell tower, Rafe’s man who’d watched the photographer, and scowled at Theo when he showed me a modicum of grace. I blinked. He didn’t give me nefarious vibes, but you could never know here. I was naked, very aware of it, but this man hadn’t once looked away from my face - not while I was awake, anyway. He held a thin blanket out for me to take. I swiped it, hugged it to my body.

“Um,” I muttered, trying to sit up, wincing through the pain across my entire body as I did.

“Hey, let me help,” the stranger said, but when his touch landed on me, I jolted. He stepped back, hands raised, andfrowned as he watched me shuffle into position so my legs dangled off the tall bed, repositioning the sheet. I didn’t know where we were, not really. What this moody, kind of gothic house on the compound was. I didn’t think this was Rafe’s house because I knew we were traveling there tomorrow. Sheets. I needed to find sheets. Panic bubbled in my tender chest as I began looking around.

My eyes snagged on things I hadn’t noticed before, an open wardrobe with simple dresses hanging, the small bag I’d been allowed to bring at the foot of the bed. I let my gaze track over, looking for a place bedsheets might be and ignoring this strange man until my eyes landed on him again. The birdbath thing was gone, the bowl of my blood swiped away while I slept. But everything else remained, the creepy wall hangings, the knives…

“How long…?” I tried to say, but I was so bloody disorientated. My brain was such a fog, trying to make sense of everything that had happened today. This morning, I had woken up a single woman, a virgin. Now I had a husband, and I’d had two men inside me. I’d also been battered and bruised, my body hurt everywhere. It was a lot to take in, and my brain fog was hitting me hard, like it too was terrified of the emotional turmoil knocking at my doors.

And yet another man was staring down at me, too close, too powerful from the looks of him and his large arms. “Rafe sent me up here to… well, to make sure you hadn’t died already. But to check on you, really.”

I snorted. There was no way my new husband was checking on me for any reason other than the inconvenience of a fourth dead wife. “Well, I’m okay…”

“Gabe,” he interjected.

“…Gabe. So you can leave. I’ll… I’ll manage.” I stood, wobbled.

Gabe moved. “Nah, that’s not good enough for me.” He paused, looked around the room. “I’m helping. Get up. Go get yourself fixed up in the bathroom. I’ll deal with the sheets.”

“No,” I blurted. “Please. I have to do it myself. If I don’t…”

“He’ll never know,” Gabe responded, frowned again. His fingers strained like he wanted to reach out and touch me. I recoiled. He was… he was being nice to me, but I couldn’t trust it. Anyone under Rafe’s thumb was someone not to trust. Not a soul. That was something my mother had told me while two vodkas deep when explaining what would be expected of me. Gabe here was part of this church, quite high up it if Rafe trusted him. But there was a warmth behind his eyes, a concern I wasn't expecting to see. No.

Trust no one here.

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