Page 24 of Broken Surrender
They claimed my body like I didn’t have any rights to it.
Maybe I never fought hard enough.
“Lena?” Desmond asked, his voice quiet. His eyes softened, waiting for my answer.
Even when Desmond told me that we were going to do things I might not like, henevermade me feel like my body wasn’t mine. He cared about my pleasure as much as he cared about my pain. He had shown me how good it could feel.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess he fucked me in the ass and I didn’t want to.”
“He raped you?”
I closed my eyes, going back to that memory. Aaron’s prickled palms as he held my head, using it as a grip to shove himself deeper into my ass, bruising me, making me bleed. I couldn’t sit right for two weeks.
“I don’t know,” I said. I had told him to do it, I just didn’t know he would take my ass or how much it would hurt. But I had asked him for it. Dared him. Begged him.
But I hadn’t fought hard enough. I lowered my eyes. I hated myself. I was so weak.
“Not every rape is clear,” Desmond said.
Tears welled in my eyes. How stupid could I be? “I didn’t fight him.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. He put a finger under my chin, lifting my eyes to his. An emotion flickered across his eyes, burning him. Then it vanished. He returned to his calm appearance. “He raped you.”
“Maybe,” I muttered. I flinched away, but Desmond tightened his grip, forcing me to look at him.
“You survived,” he said. “Something like that can destroy a person.”
I agreed. It had made me feel weak and stupid and afraid, made me think I hated anything that had to do with my ass, when that was obviously not the case. And when it came to John, as time went on, I lost interest in sex. Because what did pleasure matter if my body wasn’t my own?
And yet somehow, Desmond controlled me, didn’t let me come. Told me that my body, my pleasure, was his. But sex with Desmond wasn’t like it had been with Aaron or John. It was different.
“I had a friend who was raped like that,” he said quietly. “It stole her innocence. Made her lose her place in the world for a long time.” He clenched his jaw. “It made me sick.”
“What happened to her?”
“It’s not my story to tell.” He sighed deeply, lost in thought. “Sometimes, people survive. They live. They thrive.” He focused his attention on me, grabbing my shoulders. I sucked in a breath. His lips parted. “But that doesn’t forgive people for what they’ve done.”
I hadn’t forgiven Aaron or John. But most of all, it was hard to forgive myself. Is that what he meant?
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, and it looked different from the other phone I had seen him with. Maybe I was mixing up details. Desmond glanced at the screen, then turned to me. “Are you going to be all right by yourself tonight?” He paused, then he gestured at the hallway. “We have extra rooms.”
Warmth surged inside of me. It was more than he had to do. But there was no way I was going to take him up on that. “It’s probably best if we both sleep in our own homes.”
He nodded. “I can set up security at your place.”
I lifted my shoulders. Maybe I was overreacting about the whole thing. “That’s unnecessary. Really. I’m sure the note was—” I bit my tongue. What was it? “Maybe it was an old note that John was going to send someone, and I just didn’t notice it.” The words came out quickly, but my mind argued. It wasn’t true. I hadn’t seen it. But I must have been seeing things. Everything had been unhinged since I killed John; there was a big chance I could have missed it. “It’s probably nothing.”
Desmond went to a safe at the back of the room, unlocking it, then removed a tiny circular device, handing it to me. “If you press this panic button, I’ll get a notification on my phone with your GPS location.”
I bowed my head. “Thank you.”
“I’ve got some business to take care of, otherwise, I’d invite myself over.” He stretched his arms above himself, straightening. “But that device will contact me. Use it any time.”
I clutched it in my palm. Desmond walked me back to the house.
“I thought you didn’t care what happened to me,” I said, my gaze on the ground. He lifted my chin.
“You’re no good to me dead.” He opened the back door for me. “Get some sleep.”
