Page 107 of Promise of Destruction
He knows the answer without me having to say anything, but he removes his hand from my mouth finally, wiping a tear off my cheek with a slow stroke of his thumb.
"You're broken, Soren Palmer. Beautifully, tragicallybroken."
The words whisper across my lips, like a secret between lovers. But he isn't telling me anything I don't know. He isn't telling me anything that the world doesn't already know. I've tried to keep things running, to maintain the illusion that I'll be okay hoping that I can manifest that to reality. But there's no willing yourself not to be depressed, no amount of asking the universe to heal your brain that can fix you when you're broken so fully.
"I can fix you." Declan promises. Or taunts. I can't tell, honestly, what his intentions are as he strokes my cheekbone reverently. His eyes are full of something that I can't place, something that feels eerily like devotion.
Obsession.
He's crazy. Every bit as crazy as I am.
I hide behind my perfectly styled hair and my immaculate home, and Declan hides behind his wealth and the power that bought him. But underneath all of the facades we've put out there, we're both crazy.
He stalked me. Stood outside my house, bought the paper I work for, watched me from across the street, coerced me into working for him. I should have run far away, because he's not who he pretends to be.
And now I'm tied to a bed at his mercy.
"I can fix you." He says again, sliding down away from me. He crawls off of me and stands, stepping away from me so that he can take me in all at once.
His retreat leaves me cold. "But I have to break you more, first."
sixty-eight
Declan
Panicsparkedinhereyes when I told her I was going to break her more, but I'm not sure what she was imagining I meant when I said it. Whips and chains and pain? BDSM isn't my thing.
I don't care what people choose to do in their own bedroom, but there's too much control sharing in BDSM practices, too intimate a knowledge for your partner. Too much trust, too much need for a strong foundation. I fuck whoever makes my cock jump, usually. It makes for quick interactions, no foundation to build upon. And it works for me. I don't like whips and chains, anyway. Not only because they remind me of my benefactors, but because I prefer to cause pain and pleasure with my own hands, my own body.
When I walk out, the panic burns brighter.
"Declan, wait!" She calls out after me, but her words glance off my shoulder, falling on deaf ears.
I can hear her struggling, hear the headboard rattle against the wall as she tries to pull her hands free of the leather, as she tries to pull the belt free from the bedpost. She's not getting out ofthat; she's too weak to even try for long. The IV the doctor gave her earlier can only do so much. Two cups of coffee may have helped to keep her from jetlag, but the crackers she nibbled on the plane aren't going to sustain her for long.
She's going to pass out soon, from exhaustion, from physical exertion, from mental fatigue, from lack of real food. It will serve as a factory reset, I hope, when she wakes up with another needle in her arm.
Her screams follow me through the guesthouse as I peruse the space, judging Remington Boudreaux's accommodations. The refrigerator is stocked with fruit, cheese, and bottles of water. I help myself to a bowl of pineapple chunks and sink into a leather chair in the sitting room, kicking my feet out onto the coffee table.
I sigh, taking my phone from the waistband of my boxers, which I slipped back on just before I left Soren tied up in the bedroom. I discard it on the stand beside me and open my laptop. Her screams are incessant, a beautiful melody as I listen to her submitting to exactly what I wanted. I don't know if she thinks I'm going to come back with a knife and carve her up like some sort of sculpture or if she thinks I'm going to leave her to rot.
Either way, she turns from screaming for me to pleading for help from anyone, from the universe, to whatever god has forsaken her for so long.
I don't go out of my way to hide the fact that I'm there, but I don't bother turning the TV on to drown out her screams. I saw how secluded we are from civilization when Dimitri drove us out here. He and the housekeeper are gone, and the large estate seems to be empty. I know there's no one around for miles to hear her scream, so I let her knock herself out— literally. Her screams turn at some point to sobs, and then eventually she quiets, her throat giving out on her.
A short time later, I'm confident she's crashed entirely, but I stay situated while I review the information that I know about her.
The doctor sent me her medical records earlier, and I'd been waiting on the results from the bloodwork they ran. Doctor Kent got me her file when it became clear that the OB wasn’t going to give me anything. She’d watched me warily at Soren’s appointment, and I know what she thought of me. That I was her pimp, her captor, her nightmare. She’s right on one of those counts.
The files were sent hours ago, but this is the first I've had a chance to sit and review them. And what I see isn't a surprise.
Kent did me the courtesy of breaking down the medical jargon, sending me a succinct summary at the end after I’ve sifted through charts and numbers, red and green lines that look like stock market analyses.
Anemic, possibly due to malnutrition. Suspected eating disorder, anorexia nervosa as suggested by total blood count. Blood sugar was low, blood pressure was low. No presence of any disease, including STDs. Suspected dehydration, evidenced by shrunken veins.
I’m not shocked by any of it. She hasn’t taken care of herself, and her blood work confirmed that. I’ve also never seen her drink a glass of water despite the first time I watched her get one from the sink in her kitchen. She always seems intent on drying herself out with copious amounts of coffee… caffeine which could be dangerous with an irregular heartbeat. Her file doesn’t state that, but I saw how the doctor scrunched her face up when she was listening to Soren’s chest, how she moved on and then came back to check it a moment later.
If Soren can’t take care of herself, I’ll have to do it for her. I’m not letting her go and get sick because she’s got some weird hang ups about basic healthcare. I know she isn’t a fan of doctors—she sure as hell doesn’t want to be hospitalized because she neglected herself.
