Page 47 of There is No Devil

This is Cole unleashed. Full of fury and passion and hunger. His control was always an illusion. The real Cole takes what he wants.

He’s taking me here and now. Pounding me into this floor. Fucking me mercilessly.

And still he wants more. I can see it in those eyes. He wants something from me that I still haven’t given.

His hands close around my throat.

At first I think he’ll only squeeze for a moment, the way he’s done before: cutting off blood flow so my head spins and my pussy throbs. Turning sex into delirium.

This time he doesn’t stop. He only squeezes harder.

“Stop,” I gasp. Then, more frantic, “Stop!”

The word comes out in a croak. My throat is too constricted for speech. No air, no blood can get through.

Still he chokes me.

He’s looking down into my face, his eyes dark and pitiless.

I try to knock his arms away, but they might as well be iron bars welded in place. His hands close relentlessly, real pressure now, real weight.

Black moths flutter into view: first one, then two, then dozens. Blocking out my sight.

I’m hitting at his arms, scratching at them, clawing. Trying to tear his fingers off my throat.

I’m too weak and he’s too strong. I’m helpless in his grasp, floating, slamming back into my body, floating up again.

Now Cole speaks and I can’t see his lips moving, but I hear that low, insistent voice burying into my brain:

“This is what it will feel like if you wait for Shaw to finish the job. This is what it will feel like when he’s on top of you. This is what it will feel like to die as a victim.”

“Stop it! Stop fucking around!”

The words are a rasp, a whisper.

It doesn’t matter if he hears them or not: Cole isn’t fucking around. He’s never been more serious.

He chokes me harder. Fucks me harder. Holds me there while he beats the lesson into me.

“This is your way, isn’t it? Hoping for mercy? Never fighting back? Trying to do the right thing? You want to be a good person … good people die every day, Mara. Goodness never saved them.”

I’m clawing at his arms, desperate and dying. Black moths carry me away …

He’s looking down into my face, as cruel as Shaw as he taunts me. “Do you want to be a victim, or you want to be a fighter? I thought you were a fighter, Mara?”

I am fighting, I’m hitting him with all my strength but it’s not enough, I’m only a girl, a skinny girl, it will never be enough against a man …

I hate that I’m small. I hate that I’m weak.

The anger, the hurt, the goddamn fucking unfairness wells up inside of me. I’m the volcano now, I’m the fucking lava.

It all bursts out of me in a howl so raw, so animalistic that I don’t even realize that Cole has let go of my throat. I’m screaming right in his face:

“I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! I HATE THEM ALL! I WANT THEM ALL FUCKING DEAD!!!!”

I’m sitting up now, I don’t know when that happened.

My throat is raw, my shrieks still echoing through the house.

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