Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
“It’ll be me or my dad, and trust me, you want it to be me,” he says, bringing the belt down across my hip and stomach.
I’m too stunned to make a sound. My body curls in on itself. But when he strikes again, I scream and turn my back. The next blow lands across my ass, and another follows quickly. I run to get away from him, but there’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide as he raises his arm and lands a blow low across the fronts of my thighs.
“You humiliated me tonight! You give me back my ring and not twenty-four hours later, I find you fucking Silas Cruz!” he screams as the orchestra’s renewed music muffles the sound of us from the party goers.
I run from him. When he catches the backs of my knees, they buckle, and I go down, landing on all fours.
Ethan stands over me whipping my back, my ass, as I try to crawl away. Finally, with the pain too much, the belt wrapping around my belly too sharp, I drop to my stomach. When I try to roll away, he presses the bottom of his shoe to the back of my neck, and he brings his belt down over and over and over until the whole of my back, my ass, the backs of my legs are on fire and I’m sobbing, unable to breathe, to even catch my breath to scream for help.
When the door finally opens, Ethan spits at the man to get out, his rage hot.
“Your father, sir. He just sent a message. He needs you both downstairs.”
I catch the man’s eye and he very clearly sees what’s happening, what’s happened, and he doesn’t even flinch. I realize then the kind of power the Foxes wield. They own Sinistral.
“I’m not finished yet. Get out,” Ethan tells him with a determination I have never heard from him. The man hesitates only momentarily but closes the door. When the door closes, he moves his foot off my neck and rolls me onto my back, keeping hold of one wrist as he drags a low stool over. “Don’t move,” he tells me as I roll onto my side. He lifts my legs, tugs me toward the stool and sets them on top of it.
That moment with Sly when he demanded Ethan punish me and Ethan seemed hesitant, did I get that wrong? Did I misunderstand? Because the look on Ethan’s face now, it’s not remorseful, not remotely so. It’s not someone wielding the belt out of obligation. He’s doing it with zeal.
“Ethan… please…”
He moves to stand at my feet.
“Don’t fucking move, Phee. If I have to tie you down to take it, it’ll be a thousand times worse.”
“What—”
“I’m going to make sure you feel me with every step you take. I’m going to make sure you know who owns you,” he says, tone arctic.
I only understand what he means to do when he raises his arm and brings that belt down across the bottoms of my feet. I writhe, barely able to catch a breath before he lashes me again and again and again.
I’m bleeding before it’s over, before he finally stops. I curl onto my side, sobbing, my entire body on fire.
“His come is pooling out of your cunt,” Ethan says, tugging the bench beneath my feet away, my legs dropping to the hard floor.
I watch as Ethan looms over me, threading his belt through the loops of his pants, hate on his face—which is red with the exertion of beating me.
“Get up.” He nudges my hip with the toe of his polished shoe. “Get up and get dressed.”
I can’t move though. Even as I try, I can’t move.
“I said, get up!”
He grips me by my hair, and I scream as he hauls me up. He thrusts me toward the chaise, and I stumble into it, falling to my knees, my chest against the cushion.
“I said, get dressed,” he orders, and I reach for the dress on the floor. It takes time but somehow, through the pain, I get the dress on but can’t reach back to close it. I’m still on my knees when Ethan roughly zips it and lifts me to sit on the chaise. I cry out as soon as my body makes contact, but true agony only comes when he pushes my heels onto my bloody feet with a sneer on his face.
He puts my mask on my face but leaves my hair down.
“Stand up!” He doesn’t even wait for me to try but tugs me up and I cry out, needing to lean on him because I can’t put weight on my feet.
He takes a look at me, eyes hard as he slips his own mask into place. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t… I can’t walk.”
“No? Well, maybe you should have thought of the consequences before you fucked Silas Cruz. Move.”