Page 84 of Born in Depravity

CATALINA

I snuggled closeto Damien’s chest, listening to the steady strum of his heartbeat to calm myself down.

I closed my eyes as fresh tears fell, and I wondered if he could feel them seeping through the fabric of his shirt. I couldn’t seem to make myself stop crying, though.

What was it Damien had said?

He liked it when I cried?

More tears fell from the thought. I didn’t want to cry. Not anymore. Not in this lifetime, and not in front of this monster, but this monster was the biggest, meanest monster there was out there, and this monster had protected me from the other monster.

I wanted this monster to be mine.

To protect me from all the other monsters out there.

How messed up I was, to be feeling so safe in his arms.

I remembered the anger in his eyes as he took in the man who had laid himself on top of me while he tried to take off his clothes. Had Damien not come in when he did, I would have been raped.

I tried to run away from the man, but he had blocked the door. I had tried to fight him off, but he was stronger than me. Everyone was stronger than me.

The man had slapped me across the face when he caught up to me in the room.

For some reason, that stupid slap affected me the most. My father liked to slap me in the face whenever I had done something wrong.

Damien, Mikhail, and Nikolay had never slapped me.

I closed my eyes.

I really was messed up, because now I was defending my captives. And Nikolay had spanked me, back at the motel. But this man from today—

I took in a deep breath and Damien tightened his arms around me a fraction. I wondered if he was even aware that he was doing it.

The incident from today felt worse than anything that had happened to me since the moment I’d stepped foot outside of Father’s house, and I didn’t know how to reason through why that was.

I felt Damien move his large hand to the back of my head, holding it there and grounding me as the song changed. I didn’t know why he had put the headphones on me. To comfort me?

Or to keep me from hearing what was happening outside the door?

And if it was the latter,why?

Why was he trying to protect me from that when I was already living in such a dark world?

We didn’t say anything. Me, for obvious reasons, nor Damien, because even if he did, I couldn’t hear him with the headphones on.

His hands moved down my naked back. I didn’t even care that I was naked in bed with him, just as long as he let me stay underneath this blanket with him for a while.

Just a while longer …

* * *

I didn’t knowwhen I had fallen asleep, but when I woke up, the headphones were no longer on me, and Damien was no longer in bed with me—but Mikhail was.

I was lying on my side of the bed, and Mikhail was on the other, wide awake.

Though he looked the same, there was a dark cloud crossing his blue eyes as I took him in. He didn’t say anything to me as we continued to stare at one another. Then he cupped my cheek and I could feel my bottom lip trembling.

They shouldn’t be so nice to me.

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