by James, Gemma
“You’re hurting me,” I said, barely above a whisper, but his fingers pressed harder when I tried to pull away.
“Not as much as you’re hurting me!” He drove forward and slammed me into the wall, trapping both wrists on either side of my face. “You know we belong together. You’ll never keep me away. Never.”
“Let me go.”
He brought his face close, lip slightly curled, and his hazel eyes stalled on the ring adorning my left hand. I unfurled my fist until the large diamond scraped the wall, hidden from his line of view. “I won’t stand by and watch you marry that bastard. I’ll kill myself, just like your mom.”
I gasped as the familiar, crushing reminder of Mom ate away at what was left of me. I had no words for him, no protests or pleas. He tossed out the threat to hurt me, like he always did. I wondered if he’d go through with it this time. I tried to imagine him gone, but instead of despair, I found the remnants of sorrow and the promise of relief. Shame accompanied both, as I shouldn’t feel sorrow after the things he’d done, and I shouldn’t feel relief because he was still my brother.
“Say something!” He cried, shaking me, his face a contortion of bewilderment. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m not kidding! I’ll do it.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve been drinking—”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. I don’t wanna live if I can’t have you. Say you won’t marry him.”
“I won’t marry him.” I swallowed hard and counted the seconds. Five in, hold, five out. Repeat. All the while, I prayed he’d let the issue drop, let me go and walk out the door.
He had other things in mind. His mouth smashed against mine, tongue forcing my lips apart and plundering. I didn’t fight him. I’d learned long ago it didn’t do any good. He’d only get rougher, meaner, and in turn, my fucked up body would only get off easier.
I kept my eyes shut and wished to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. The distinctive slide of his zipper rang loudly in my ears, and his hands blazed where he cupped my ass and lifted.
“That’s my girl,” he breathed as I automatically wound my legs around him, dress bunching at my waist. He pulled my panties to the side and pushed in with a grunt. His fingers banded around my wrists, pinned them to the wall above my head, and he pounded into me, shoving me higher with each forceful thrust. I held back the vomit burning in my throat.
One more thrust, another grunt. “No more Lucas,” he said.
“No more Lucas.” My face tightened as his tempo increased.
“No more avoiding me.”
I agreed to that too. I agreed to anything he wanted when he fucked me. The alternative always left me battered, bruised, and torn to pieces emotionally because the more I fought him, the more he set out to hurt me beyond what I could handle, and that usually meant he brought up Rafe and what he could do to him if I didn’t comply.
That threat carried more weight than ever.
Zach didn’t last long, probably because it’d been a couple of weeks since he’d last cornered me alone. Lucas’ presence had gone a long way in offering some form of protection, but I wasn’t so naive as to think he could act as a barrier forever. Even marrying him wouldn’t do that.
Zach finally loosened his grasp and allowed my feet to touch the floor. I rubbed my arms where the red impressions from his fingers marred my skin, making the faint, white scars from my nails more noticeable. He took my face in his hands, fingers gouging my jaw, and his gaze bored into me, through me.
“You didn’t get off.”
“I did,” I said quickly, because not reaching orgasm always angered him. “I swear I—”
“You didn’t get off. Don’t try to fake it. I’ll always know.” Stepping back, he gestured toward my dress. “Take it off.”
“C’mon, Zach, you don’t have—”
“Take it off.”
I unzipped the dress and let it fall to my feet, and my breasts jiggled in their braless state. He shoved me across the room, down to the couch, and forced my thighs open. Sinking to his knees, he yanked me toward his mouth until my ass was half off the couch, my legs dangling on either side of his shoulders.
The instant he tore my panties from my body, my mind went blank, as the sounds of my cries were too degrading to acknowledge. I vaguely recalled him twisting my nipples in unforgiving pinches, then slapping my breasts hard. He jammed his fingers into my pussy mercilessly, and after he’d compelled an orgasm from me, he made me suck my own cum off, shoving his fingers deep into my mouth as he emphasized how he was the one who had made me come.
Only me, Lex. No one else.
Then he was gone, and I was in the scalding shower, eyes squeezed shut, fists crossed over tender breasts to keep from bloodying my knuckles on the tile. The only drops of water on my cheeks came from the shower head. I never cried. I didn’t allow myself the luxury. My breaths came out in soft shudders, and I tried to keep myself in one piece as I recalled what he’d asked before he left.
Do you still love him?
My denial hadn’t placated him, and his parting words blared through my head, more forceful than my shame. If you go anywhere near him, I’ll fuck him up for life. He’s a lot easier to get to now, isn’t he?
The thought of my brother hurting Rafe terrified me, so I’d told Zach I hadn’t heard from him. A lie, because I was pretty sure the note came from Rafe.
Was this always going to be my life? Lies upon lies, sprinkled with the occasional half-truth?
I could leave. I’d considered it before, had even tried once, though I only made it halfway to the California border before chickening out. Too many people close to me had suffered, like the guy I’d teamed up with my Junior year for a science project. He made the mistake of hitting on me, and Zach had given him the nastiest beat down of his life, leaving broken bones and bloody flesh in his wake. Dad’s money swept that one under the rug.
There had been others, some no one knew about because Zach was intimidating enough without his reputation as a fighter to keep most quiet. They suffered his rage in silence. Fear of retaliation wasn’t the only thing keeping me from fleeing though. I’d hung on to the stupid, absurd, fanciful hope that Rafe would someday forgive me.
Impossible. What I’d done was unforgivable.
Standing at a crossroads of sorts, I needed to find the strength to move on with my life. I glanced at the enormous engagement ring Lucas had pushed onto my finger earlier that night. No matter what Dad believed, tying myself to a man I didn’t love wouldn’t fix anything. Neither would continuing to allow Zach free rein of my puppet strings.
For the first time in your life, Alexandra, do the right thing.
The voice sounded like my father’s. Certainly, the words were something he’d say, something he’d said again and again every time I fucked up. And I fucked up a lot. My whole life was one big fuck up.
I shut off the water, wrapped a towel around my body, and entered the bedroom, then changed into jeans and a sweatshirt before pulling a duffle from the closet. I blindly flung clothes onto the bed and stuffed some into the bag. The stash of cash I’d saved, tucked underneath the mattress, also went inside. Lastly, I tossed in my wallet. I didn’t need anything else. Just myself and the courage to leave.
That was the hard part.
I took off the ring and let it drop onto the nightstand, then I closed my eyes and envisioned my escape. I’d walk down the hall, feet sinking into the plush runner one last time. I saw myself crack the door open and peek outside, saw myself hop down the stairs of the porch, my paranoid gaze buzzing around as I approached the Volvo Dad had given me for graduation.
The alluring taste of freedom, only a few feet away, tempted with promise. I just had to close the distance and take the first step. I left the bedroom and moved toward the foyer, like a teenager sneaking out past curfew. I felt like a child, excitement fluttering in my belly as my hand neared the doorknob.
Trepidation also stirred in my gut. If I disappeare
d, would Zach really hurt Rafe, a man he’d once called his best friend?
A knock sounded, and I jerked my fingers back. A few tense seconds passed before the knock repeated. For someone terrified of escaping the shackles of a life unwanted, I should have given more thought to the possibilities on the other side of that door. Swinging the duffle to my back, I pulled it open, and my breath whooshed from me as I uttered his name.
“Rafe.”
He was here, standing in front of me, and my knees almost buckled, weaker now than when I’d first spied his note upon returning home. A violent blast of air and rain blew in with his presence, carrying a hint of roses from the bushes off the porch. The aroma infused me with a sense of serenity despite the darkness shadowing my street.
I was the perfect prey in that moment, too stunned to keep my head. I stumbled back, a mistake on my part because he was the second man that night to shove his way into my house.
2. COMEUPPANCE
Rafe
I’d always fantasized about taking a woman, really taking a woman, and until Alex had destroyed me with a single lie, the fantasy had only been the depraved thoughts of a man who still had his moral compass intact. A lot could change in eight years. Fuck, I remembered her as the 15-year-old girl she’d been, so I had trouble thinking of Alex as a woman. My dick didn’t have the same problem; it couldn’t wait to get her alone on Mason Island.
Engaging the deadbolt, I leaned against the door and stared at her with a nonchalance I didn’t feel. God help me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off all those dark curls cascading over her tiny shoulders. The slender slope of her neck drew my attention, and I imagined closing my hands around her throat and squeezing the essence from her, imagined the panic in her eyes as she neared loss of consciousness.
“Miss me?” I asked.
Her eyes, already wide at the sight of me, grew even rounder. “What?”
I crossed my arms, aware of how my biceps bulged. “I didn’t stutter, sweetheart. It’s been a long time. Did you miss me?”
“Did I…?” She shook her head, as if I’d uttered the most ridiculous question she’d ever heard. “What do you want, Rafe?” Her words fell from her lips in a nervous whisper.
“I think you already know.” You couldn’t send an innocent man to prison without expecting some sort of consequences. Except Alex didn’t know two fucks about me. The real Rafe Mason was about to do reprehensible things to her, like toss her deceitful naked ass into a cage.
Her gaze veered to the floor, and I barked at her to look at me.
“If I could change things, I would,” she said, inching back, a fist rising to her mouth to hide her trembling lips.
“Would you now?” I tilted my head. “What would you do differently? Would you take it back, what, a week later? A month? Maybe after I’d been in there a couple of years? Eight fucking years, Alex. That’s what you took from me.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.” Two more steps back.
I pushed away from the door and followed, hand sliding into my coat pocket to finger the syringe. “I want to know why you lied.” I’d waited so long to ask that question, and the set of her jaw told me she wasn’t going to answer. “You didn’t even have the guts to face me at the trial.” She’d refused to make eye contact, even once. That hadn’t surprised me nearly as much as Zach’s cold shoulder treatment. How he believed I’d do something so vile, to Alex of all people, was beyond comprehension. She must have put on quite the performance for her family, because her testimony in court had been mechanical, as if she’d read from a script.
She’d stripped everything from me in that courtroom. My career, friends, freedom, and she’d displayed no emotion while doing it.
“I-I can’t do this now,” she said, a tremor stringing her words together. “I have to go.” Darting past me, she made a run for the door and managed to fling it open by the time I whirled around. That’s when the duffle swinging on her shoulder caught my attention, and it dawned on me she was running.
Because of the note I’d left on her door? Guess my mind-fuckery had done the trick, only I never expected her to take off. There was no way she could know what I had planned for her. Before she escaped the house, I shot an arm out and slammed the door shut, then pressed into her soft curves that fit perfectly against me.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Even in that heady moment, as adrenaline pumped through my veins, I hesitated. What I was about to do changed everything. I was about to become the criminal they’d accused me of being.
But no one deserved comeuppance more than Alex.
The duffle slid from her shoulder, landing with a thump on the mud mat. She flattened both palms against the door, and I covered her hands with mine, sliding cool leather over warm skin. I wondered if the gloves worried her, if she sensed the danger I posed. I wedged a leg between hers, thigh nudging her ass, and electricity spiked, a current so hot my whole body sizzled. Was she aware of it too? Did she feel my cock prodding her backside?
“You need to leave,” she ground out, but even as the words left her mouth, she relaxed in submission. She turned her head and peered at me through lashes slightly lowered, disguising what I might find in her jade depths. “Please, you’ve gotta go.”
I wanted to take her then, fuck her right against the door. “Not a chance. I’ve waited too long for this.” I latched the deadbolt again, satisfied with the decisive click that echoed off the walls, and pulled her further into the house.
“What are you doing?” she cried, tugging against the fingers I’d clamped around her arm.
I stopped once we reached the hall. “Where’s the note I left?” I couldn’t leave behind any evidence. “Did you show it to Zach?”
She yanked her arm from my grasp. “No, why?”
“Doesn’t matter. I want it back.”
“It’s in my bedroom.” She opened the first door on the right. Going by the clothing piled in haphazard fashion on the bed and the floor, she’d packed in a hurry. She crossed to her nightstand and withdrew the note from the drawer.
I snatched it from her fingers, making her flinch, and pocketed the last piece of evidence. “C’mon.” I dragged her into the kitchen, my pulse rocketing, and my jeans grew uncomfortably tight as I shoved her into a chair. She gazed up at me, mouth open, messy curls partially obscuring her eyes, and I was so close to bending her over the table.
Patience.
I couldn’t rush this, no matter how much I wanted to. “Don’t move,” I warned, pressing on her shoulders to make my point. I rummaged through the room, found a pen and paper, and slammed them on the table in front of her. “Write down what I say, word for word.”
“Why?”
“Quit asking so many fucking questions.” I forced the pen into her fingers, and she clutched it tight, hand hovering above the paper. The fury in her eyes wavered, replaced by confusion. She wasn’t scared of me yet, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“Rafe, what are you do—”
“Write ‘I need some time. Don’t worry or try to find me.’”
Short and to the point. The less written, the less the authorities could dissect. I expected them to look at me as a person of interest in her disappearance, but I was prepared for that inevitability. Besides, they’d need probable cause and a warrant to search the island, and they wouldn’t have either.
Lower lip tucked between her teeth, she wrote out the words and paid careful attention to each letter, her hand trembling every so often. Once finished, she set the pen down, angled her head, and met my eyes. She didn’t have to voice her alarm. Her expression was unmasked. Naively, she let me see everything.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
She must have sensed the darkness in me, but what she failed to understand was how it had always lurked, entrapped by a code I no longer lived by. She’d blown the padlock on that cage when she’d uttered three little words that ruined me.
He raped me.
&
nbsp; The accusation rang through my mind, as loud as the clank of the prison cell doors when they slammed shut. I grabbed the syringe from my pocket.
“What are you doing?” she cried, wide eyes locking onto the syringe. She jumped into motion and reached the foyer before I caught up to her. I wound an arm around her shoulders and pinned her against me. She bucked, kicked, and clawed, all the while letting loose a scream that made me so fucking hard I almost lost it. I uncapped the needle with my teeth and stabbed it into the side of her neck. An instant later, she went limp in my arms.
3. BREAK ME
Alex
Consciousness washed over me in dream-like phases, the first a stifling darkness that pressed from every direction. I trembled as an inescapable chill crawled over my skin like icy tendrils, licking with relish. Hard, rough concrete chafed my body. My naked body. Acid rose in my throat, and I thought I was about to lose my last meal, but the observation only caused more panic to set in. I couldn’t recall what I’d eaten.
For a few horror-stricken moments, I couldn’t recall anything at all. Then I remembered.
Rafe’s face burned in my head, his older, scruffier face. His unforgiving face. The rest of my memories flooded back, and I jerked to total awareness. He’d jabbed a needle into my neck.
Now, I felt it, his presence casting over me like a shadow waiting to swallow me whole. I tried to throw my hands up, my first instinct one of protection, but something heavy and cold and menacing kept my wrists locked together, stretched behind my head and chained to…something. I whimpered as my brain tried to pound out through my eyeballs.
“Good, you’re awake.”
His voice shouldn’t sound so sexy under the circumstances, but that gravelly timbre, barely above a whisper, registered low in my belly.
“Rafe?” I had to be hallucinating or dead. This couldn’t be real.