Page 100 of Promise of Destruction
“Don’t do what, Ren? You’ll have to tell meexactlywhat you don’t want me to do.”
A tear breaks loose, cutting a jagged path down her cheek. “Don’t hurt me.”
Her whisper is barely audible, swallowed in the dark corners of this large room. I tug at the strap in my hand, pulling her with me so that she is yanked to the edge of the bed, a small gasp of pain leaving her lips as her arms are jerked overhead.
“I thought you liked to hurt. Isn’t that why you did this?” I tap her forearm where the pink scars have been fading with time.
The police file that contained the photos of her wounds when they were fresh would have led me to believe they’d take longer than this to heal—they were wicked. Deep, but clean. It’s how I know she didn’t inflict them herself.
“No.”
The word is just a whisper against my lips. If I leaned into her, I could cover her mouth with mine and place a claiming kiss upon her. But right now, it’s not my lips I want on hers.
“I didn’t do this.” She doesn’t sound entirely sure.
“Why should I believe you?”
Soren stares at me a moment, weighing my words, and then laughs. She’s surprised me to this point, but I see the fire spark in her a second before it ignites. She goes wild, straining against me, bucking her hips and pulling on the restraints I’ve fashioned in a desperate attempt to get free. She fights as if she isn’t outmatched by someone twice her size—as if she hasn’t deprived her body of everything it needs to flourish.
She hasn’t thought beyond that glorious idea of escape, of what she’d do if she even made it out of the guest house, let alone off the property. A beautiful and fragile woman, mostly naked in a foreign country where she doesn’t speak the language, wouldn’t get far. Sure, some good Samaritan may find her and take her somewhere safe… if the people like me don’t get to her first. What she doesn’t seem to realize is that she’s a magnet for people like me… people like her husband.
“Soren,” I sigh, “Calm down. You’re only hurting yourself.”
“You’rehurting me!” Her voice cracks, almost like she’s suffering betrayal at my actions. I’ve not given her any reason to trust me, so if she’s disappointed now that I’ve finally come out to play, she only has herself to blame.
Patience waning, I snap the belt through the air, knocking her off balance so that she falls flat on the bed again, her breasts heaving with the weight of her panicked breaths. I wrap itaround the bedpost and notch it before she can worm out from under me, and when I tug on it, proving how truly stuck she is, she lets out a dry sob.
Fire and hatred burn in her eyes, melting into an intoxicating medley that exists only for me.
I quit believing in a higher power when I made a deal with the equivalent of the devil, and it did nothing to change the course of my fate. I quit believing that someone above was watching, listening, or caring about the absolute cesspool that is humanity when I prayed for weeks without ceasing. I stopped caring if there was a heaven or hell right around the time I realized I sold my soul for nothing. Since then I’ve never had cause to contemplate divinity.
But in this moment, I feel that she was put into my path. This broken doll is mine, as sure as the moon belongs to the night. She’s beautiful just as she is, with all her chaos and anger and fragments of wit. But for the person willing to piece her back together, she’s a masterpiece of immeasurable value. I am willing to sift through all the slivers of her, to re-arrange the shattered chasm of her soul.
There’s just one thing in my way.
sixty-three
Soren
Iwon’tcryforhim. I won’t plead with him to stop. I’m too angry— too betrayed.
And you did this to yourself.
Signing that contract had been so very stupid, given that I knew the man who’d presented it to me was wicked. I read the words he’d printed and signed my name below them. I’d guaranteed to satisfy all reasonable work-related requests. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a judge in the world that would uphold a contract for sex-slavery, and though I know that’s not what I agreed to, I know that he’s banking on me not to fight it.
After all, I’m the woman who killed her husband. I’m the one that carved him up and then sliced my own wrists in the bathtub, who did it again days later wearing my wedding dress. I’m the one who got away with murder, and Declan Evers is an upstanding, model citizen… as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of my tears, but I also won’t give him the satisfaction of being a good little slut who will readily spread her legs for him. My hands are still bound abovemy head, but as he shifts his weight on my stomach, squeezing the air out of my lungs, it leaves my legs free to try and dislodge him.
But in terms of our size difference, I am a kitten and he is a lion. A smirk ripples across his face as he doesn’t bother trying to hide his amusement at my pathetic attempt to sway him off of me. He leans forward, runs his tongue slowly up my neck to the soft spot behind my ear. And then his teeth close over my earlobe, sending pain and pleasure shooting through me in disgusting tandem.
The sound that fills the air starts as a scream—I feel it bubble in the lungs that can’t get in a good breath. By the time I clamp my lips shut, desperate to deny it, it almost sounds like a moan.
I can practically feel his lips move as he smirks against my ear. “Purr for me, kitten.”
The whisper is seductive—I don’t know if he’s doing that intentionally or if that’s just how it is, but it loosens something deep inside of me. Another sound escapes me, though I’m inclined to believe it’s just the last of my air being forced out of my body as he leans further into me.
I jump to get out from under his touch, which feels feverish on my hips. When my back is pressed to the headboard, he grabs the strap again and lifts. There’s a moment where my wrists feel like they’ll be severed all at once, and then the pressure eases.
