Page 14 of Wings of a Butterfly

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Now

“Willyou just leave me alone already?” I’m getting infuriated by his incessant nagging. He’s always nitpicking everything I do. “Josh, just fuck off already. I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you think so?”He’s giving me that smirk that downplays my every move. He makes me question myself, and I don’t like it.

I tied Sky up in the basement, and she won’t be happy about that when she wakes up. If only she’d listened, I wouldn’t have to punish her. I wish she could see things my way. My little butterfly wants to fly away from me, and I can’t let that happen. I love her. She is the one for me; she just doesn’t know it yet.

“You’re going to push her further away, you know? Keeping her cooped up like a caged animal isn’t going to make her love you.”

“I wish you would just shut up. I’m in this mess because of you, you know.” My insides are melting. I just want to feel loved and everyone I’ve ever loved has turned on me or lied in some way. I just want her to be different. I want her to save me.

“No, brother, you’re in this mess because of yourself. You were never taught to love. We never were. We weren’t taught the right way to love.”

The heavy weight of his words always brings me down further into this abyss that is my mind. I think he’s supposed to be the good angel on my shoulder, but he doesn’t know what I need. What my heart is telling me to do. I’m pulling my hair out by the roots and screaming. He won’t leave, he’ll never leave me be.

I begin hitting my head against the table in the kitchen, making the whiskey I was drinking fall and shatter on the floor. Nothing I do makes him leave. I just want to drown him out so that I can think clearly. The more I pound my head on the table, my vision starts to blur, and I can’t feel the pain.

He is screaming in my ear to stop.

I can’t.

I can’t.

I can’t

CHAPTER 10

SKYLAR

Thump,thump, creak, thump, thump, creak.

The sound reaches my ears, pounding in time with the heartbeat in my head. Cool roughness presses against my cheek. I try to pry my eyes open. I groan at what I see because I’m back in the fucking basement. That’s when I see the boots clomping down the set of stairs.

“You motherfucker!” The scream that comes out of me is feral. I’m ready to fucking fight and amped up to go.

He stands in front of me with a wicked smile and blood running down one side of his face. I can’t deny the way my pussy clenches at the sight of him. He looks like every wicked villain I ever got off to for my own personal pleasure.

I stand up fully and lunge at him. In that moment, it feels like the world is pulled from beneath my feet. Falling back on my ass and almost choking up a lung from the forcefulness of it, I reach up and feel the rough rope wrapped around my neck and see the rope pulled taut in Alex’s hand.

“It’s time for your punishment, princess.” His cruel smile never falters.

Oh, fuck me. I’m in trouble.

“Stand up, princess. Come on, stand up. You don’t want me to yank on your rope again.” He pulls up on my arm, forcing me to stand while he laughs. He fucking laughs.

I’m fuming. I can feel myself grinding my teeth. I want to bite him and make him bleed for this.

“You look so cute when you’re mad. Now stand on the chair.”

A cool wash of fear ices my veins. He’s going to kill me. This is it.

“Oh, come on. We were just starting to have fun,” he says as he runs his fingers through my hair and pulls tight, bending my head back so that my neck with the rope around it’s exposed to him. “Mmmm ... I see a pretty little mark already showing on your dainty little neck.” He leans down to my ear and roughly bites the lobe. “Now, let’s have some fun.”

I’m standing on the chair, and he pulls the rope so that I’m standing up on my tiptoes. My fingers are looped through the rope trying to hang on and give myself some room to breathe.

“Now, princess. Are you ever going to run from me again?”

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