Page 35 of Only For Him

All the while she’s silent, occasionally looking back at me, questions staring back at me.

Oh, my little pet, there are certainly questions coming.

Rolling up my sleeves, one by one, I stalk around the desk. “You thought I was going to hit you,” I speak, focusing on my shirt.

She only moves to turn her head.

“I just …” she trails off and swallows audibly.

“Yes. You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

There’s a numbness that crawls over my skin. It’s sick and cold, two things I’ve been dubbed more than a time or two.

I thought she was enjoying this. My mind travels back to the thought I chose to silence:she could be doing this for ulterior motives.

“Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know,” she murmurs, and refuses to look at me. I have to bend to grip her chin, my other hand bracing myself. Her wide, dark eyes peer back at me, begging me for something and I don’t know what. “Is it because of that first night? When I hit that fucker who tried to sleep with you?” The cords in my neck tense. It was a fucking stupid thing to do. “I don’t—”

“It’s not you.” She rushes out the words, cutting me off.

Letting go of her, she lies back the way she’s meant to, and I take a guess. “Someone else hit you?”

She only nods and then sniffles like she may cry.

There’s not a damn thing I like about any of this. Every alarm is ringing, my body tense.

“Like this? Like I punish you by—”

“No. Not like this.”

“Do you not enjoy this? Do you want to stop?”

Her words are rushed, “I don’t know why I—” Tears brim at her eyes and I fucking hate it. “I don't know why I reacted like that.”

“Are you going to cry?” I don’t know what compels me to ask her. Of course she is. She’s already crying.

My hand moves to the back of my head and I rake my hand up as she shakes her head as much as she can before saying, “I’m just embarrassed.”

Her face reddens further as she attempts to hold back her tears.

Settling on what I have to do, my strides are purposeful as I wrap my arm around her waist. “Come here. You can get up. Come here.”

With her small frame cradled in my arms, I move her to the chair. She does what she always does, clings to me, buries her head so I can’t see her. And I do what I do, I hold her.

I prepare for her to cry, but she doesn’t.

“Tell me what happened.” I give her the command in a low murmur. Patience does not come easy. All the while we sit, I kiss her hair, and I stare ahead at the bookshelf, lined with a number of heavy trinkets I could so very easily bash against a man’s skull.

“I was married. Young. At eighteen. I didn’t know any better. We divorced.”

Each statement is spoken quietly, carefully.

I already knew she’d been married, but I assumed it was done and over. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d tainted my little pet with reactions I can’t control.

“And he hit you?” It’s not so much a question as it is a statement.

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