Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76572 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I round on her, and she shrinks to the floor in front of the door. It’s not enough, though. I stalk back to her, but she crawls through the blood on the floor as if she might get away.
Her handprints dot the concrete on the other side of the pool, and I stalk her to the other side of the room, where I’d been secured. I get around the table and drop to my knees. The ground is cold, but I’m hot and sweating from the adrenaline and the movement. “Are you running from me, Priscilla? You can’t escape, so why are you trying to get away?”
She shrugs and rubs her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m not trying to get away from you, just the blood, I guess.”
I swipe the tears off her face and the blood as well. “You’re a shit liar. Don’t worry. I can teach you how to do it right. Now…” I try to keep my voice calm and even. As if she might spook at the slightest inflection. “When did you stop fighting? Did you used to fight them?”
She nods and stares over my shoulder at the wall opposite the bloody pool. “I used to fight, but then they’d make it worse. Drug me more or make it hurt worse. I learned to just submit, and it’ll be over faster. I couldn’t stop it, so what the hell was the point?”
I grab the back of her neck and pull her toward me so I can look deep into her eyes. “The point is you die before you make yourself another victim.”
She shoves at my chest, but I keep her in my grasp, her scent reaching me over the sharp tang of the blood. “Is that what you did? Fight? You never took the easy road against your father? Never stopped him from hurting you or anyone else?”
“It doesn’t matter what I did. I was asking about you. At what point did you give up? Can you even remember? Why let your father play these games with you all this time?”
She sniffles again, and I glance at her full lips, imagining them around my cock. Shit. The drugs. I release her and tuck my hands into my lap.
“If I didn’t do what he asked, he threatened to give me to one of my uncles, and then he’d show me what happens to the children that get sent away to them. He thinks he’s better than his brothers, more moral, but he’s been drugging and using me my entire life. I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
I clench my fists and shake my head. “Of course, you didn’t, Malyshka. Bad men are just bad men. They don’t need an excuse to do evil. I do bad things every single day, and most of the time, it’s because someone just pisses me off enough that I explode.”
She stares at me, her eyes searching mine. “But you’ve been kind to me. Nice, I guess, in your own sort of weird way. I don’t think you’re evil.”
I cup her chin, unable to resist the temptation of touching her again. “Don’t misunderstand, Cilla. I’m a very bad man. And I don’t intend to release you anytime soon.”
13
CILLA
I should be terrified of him. My body screams at me to get away, run, and hide. But the parts that have conditioned me to cower, lie down, and die won’t allow me to move. Not under the heavy weight of his hold or his eyes. “I…” My voice shakes, and my shame is a hot wash through me on top of everything else.
There might yet be a part of me that can feel shame, at least when he’s staring at me so intently; it’s like he can see inside to my deepest, darkest thoughts. The very ones keeping my body hostage in his brutal grip.
“I…I…I…” he mocks me, but there’s no vehemence in it. Like I’m a child he’s trying to teach a lesson in the most sadistic way possible. “Finish what you were going to say, but you better fucking make it good.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t just be a different person in the five minutes I’ve known you.” There it is. The hot shame is covered in an icy blanket of anger. The bastard thinks he knows me. That he knows a single thing about my life or why I am the way I am. “You don’t know shit about me, so if you’re going to escape, please, be my guest. You don’t have to make me feel like shit on the way out the door.”
He narrows his eyes, and the tiniest smile flicks at the corner of his mouth. Barely there and gone just as quickly. “That’s what I’m waiting for, Malyshka. I want your anger. Your rage. I want to feel it on my skin as you rip these bastards to shreds.”