She started to cry. “I don’t want to do this, Eric.” Visibly shaken, she searched around the room for someone beyond the eight men accosting her. “Please. I’m sorry for whatever I didn’t do right. Please, come out and talk to me.”
“You need to make up for the shit you fucked up,” said the leader of the crew. “Don’t you, princess?”
“D-Dom? H-he called you. W-why?”
“Look at that face,” Dom sneered. “You’re scared, aren’t you? You know you’ve fucked up if he had to call me all the way from the great state of Texas.”
She dropped to her knees and bowed her head. “Whatever he wants me to do, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’ll please him this time. Just please don’t…kill me.”
On the verge of the word ‘kill’, I looked at Eric with question.
Brooding, his eyes darted to the laptop.
I complied, because the look he gave me was menacing and strong. As much as he and the scene frightened me, I didn’t want to ruffle a situation that was on the verge of imploding.
Dom stepped back, allowing the other seven to tear off Tamala’s clothes. They shoved their tongues, hands, and erections at her—in her. Making her please them. Filling every orifice and both of her hands with their desires.
As she was filled, some….defiled her with bodily fluids…and solids.
I cast my eyes down to the floor, unwilling to see what they were doing to her any further. It was brutal—degrading. It made me sick to my stomach.
Eric marched over to me and jerked my head to watch. His palm rested across my throat, and his fingers dug into my jaw, holding me still, forcing me watch.
“Normally, when I break a woman, I use two men to do it. It’s what I do when I’m done with them. You were right. Women want to fight for it, and too many found it too hard to let go of me when I was done. So…this is my tried and true method. I record it for a reason. To prove there’s consent. They can’t come after me, when there is. Oftentimes, they are so filled with guilt for how far they are willing to whore themselves out for me that it’s enough to ensure I never see them again. But with Tamala…it obviously wasn’t enough. It didn’t break her like it should’ve…maybe not the way I wanted her to be broken.”
I sobbed, not knowing what to say. The man I loved just admitted he was a monster who got off on damaging women. Barely holding on, I rung my hands together and closed my eyes, hoping I could keep the pending internal reaction at bay. If I thought it through—thought too much about it—I was going to have another attack.
“Open your fucking eyes, Nik.” He firmed his hold on me, hurting me, forcing me to obey. “Do you see this? Do you see what you were asking for? Do you see that you had no fucking idea what you were asking me for? Do you want to be treated like a whore? Do you want half a dozen men to ravage you, come on your face, beat you, spit on you, and expel their disgusting bodily fluids on you? Is this still what you want?” His lips brushed against the side of my face.
I shook my head as much as I could underneath his hold.
“Good, because you could never fucking have it. You belong to me. No one else is ever fucking you, or touching you again. You. Are. Mine. And that bitch…” He glanced at the laptop and shook his head in disgust. “…is going to be broken tonight, and you’re going to watch.” He laid a palm across my torso to hold my body tightly as he stood slightly aside, pressing against me.
What I’m forced to watch is everything he said it was. Tamala is being broken before my eyes. Stuck gazing at the brutality, while Eric evoked me into another territory; I felt…confused, disordered…dejected. For Maisha, I wanted her to suffer. For what she did to me, I wanted her to suffer. I felt like a woman apart, because I took a minor pleasure in watching the infliction of pain on a woman who killed my first real friend.
“Do you think this turns me on? Do you think she turns me on? Do you think I would ever want anything to do with her after what she did to you, or what she tried to do to us?” He leaned forward and ran his tongue against the outer rim of my ear as he held me sturdy. “Rub my cock, baby,” he ordered through an erotic whisper as he bit my ear.
I shut my eyes for a moment as the tears streamed.
“Don’t make me angry. Do…what I told you to do.”
I reached out, aimlessly, touching the crotch of his jeans. I stroked down his length through his pants. It pulsed and hardened, erecting a lump down the leg of his jeans. His head tilted down to sink his teeth into my exposed shoulder. He groaned, “Take it.”
I unzipped and pulled out his hardness, stroking hard as the tears continued to fall.
“Do you feel that? It’s all due to you, not her. She’s a spiteful whore that means nothing to me. You…” I squeezed the head of his erection, producing a sticky sheen. He slowly blew air down my neck as he softly moaned. “…are the center of everything. You have no idea how fucking monumental that is for me say. Because, I love you, Nikki. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone.” He slipped his hands from me, stepping away. Too scared to move, I remained still. In the background, Tamala’s muffled screams bounced off the walls in the other room and intoned through the speakers of the laptop.
I heard the rustling of clothes—the scraping of the chair against the carpet. Coming behind me, he lifted my hair, and kissed the nape of my neck. He pressed his nudeness against me, ensuring I felt how turned on he was.
He sat back in the chair and pulled my hips until I stood in the middle of his legs. Reaching around my body, he unbuttoned my jeans and removed them from my body. He slipped my panties down my legs, forcing me to step out of them. My oversized cold-shoulder sweater draped over my bottom, allowing for slight modesty.
He pulled me back until my legs draped over his. “Ride me,” he commanded wryly. I squatted down while holding on to the arms of the chair. He took a hold of his erection, pointing it towards my droughty opening.
Reaching around, he manipulated my slit with a harsh provocation in order to get me wet. I slowly lowered myself onto him, taking him fully inside me. I tilted my pelvis back and slowly undulated my hips.
He moaned my name against my spine. Pulling my body closer to him, he pressed his forehead against my spine. “Ride me harder.”
Even through closed eyes, the things the men in the other room were doing to Tamala burned inside my mind. I couldn’t move.—couldn’t think. My legs were too weak. The onslaught of emotional pain made me still.
I hated her. I truly hated her. I shouldn’t care, yet I do. The man who’s inside me, is not the man I thought he was—if I thought he was anything genuinely decent at all. I realized; I don’t really know him…not at all. But like Tamala, I can’t hate him. My feelings for him are as strong as ever; a fact that’s a startlingly hard pill to swallow.
Suddenly, he grabbed my hips and thrust me up until he slipped out of me. He stood strong and shoved me down on the bed. I landed on my hands with my behind up in the air and my feet planted awkwardly on the floor. He slapped me on my behind several times. The hits were so brutal, it overcame the pain Tamala and her friends left me with.
I yelped and cried out.
He plunged inside me, rocking me with a harsh fast pace. “When I say ride me hard, ride me hard. Got it?”
“Yes!” I called out as my chin dropped to my chest.
As he stroked inside me with a ferocious intensity, I found it hard to stand. The friction and rhythm broke away the control I had on my anger and disillusionment. When he reached across my torso and strummed my clit, I no longer had the control to clamp down against the way he made me feel. The cracked tin armor was forcefully singed away.
He rocked me harder, tilting my lower half so the friction hit deepest at my elusive zone. The rush rang strong, unrelenting, and unforgiving.
“Eric,” I whimpered. He took the invitation and plunged deeper, grabbing my hips to meet every hard thrust as he drilled into me.
He made me scream. He made me call out to him
. He made me remember how much I needed him. He made me cry out so much, my shouts overshadowed the dinning next door.
With my mind numb, my vision blotchy, I came…hard. I screamed and cried and shuddered against him as the feeling took hold. I felt like I was in the midst of a cool fire that ran through burned every ounce of my pain: emotional and physical. I weakly slipped against the bed as he rigidly rocked into me, grabbing my hips tighter, I felt his warmth expel inside me. My contractions made it pour out of me immediately.
He leaned down, pressing his body against my back, and painfully bit the flesh on the back of my neck. Without adoration in the aftermath, he redressed. My body felt frozen in a constant cycle of involuntary tremors. He didn’t give me a moment to recover my senses and pulled me up to observe the laptop. Things fell quiet as the men, now done with Tamala, put their clothes on and filed out of the room.
Tamala huddled on the bed in a flurry of tears while bleeding…in several areas. Her lip was busted. There were bruises on her thighs and around her nipples. Deep bite marks were easily seen on her areola, labia, and neck. Blood trickled from between her legs.
Dom approached the bed and took off his belt.
She covered herself with her arms and stared up Dom with a broken sadness.
“Did you get the message, Tam?” Dom asked through a bridled anger.
“Yes,” she sobbed.
“Good.” He quickly wrapped the belt around her neck and pulled the ends in opposite directions. Panic and fear stained her eyes. She struggled, scratching hard at the belt as her eyes began to bulge from their sockets.
“No. No. Let me go.” I struggled against Eric’s hold. He wrapped his arms around me, holding me tighter. “Eric, let me go, or I’ll scream.”
“Did you forget what this bitch did to us?” he snarled. “Fuck…no. This will happen, Nik. It has to.”
I started screaming, and he covered my mouth. I bit his hand and stomped on his foot, hard. It wasn’t enough. I scratched his hand with a brutal force, and kicked him in the groin. He relented and let me go.
I rushed to the other side, bursting through the door. “Let her go.”
Dom looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“Let her go, or I’ll call the police. I’ve seen your face—do you really want to do this now?”
“Let her go,” Eric croaked from the doorway.
“Ethan, man…if you let this bitch live—“
I glanced between the both of them. The use of the name Ethan—the name in the files Mrs. Hobbins gave me—affected me in a way that I didn’t need to be affected.
“Just let her go, Dom.”
Dom withdrew his belt and tossed up his hands, leaving the room with a slam of the door.
Eric slowly walked over to Tamala. She looked grateful for her life as she sucked in copious amounts of air. Eric jerked her chin up and leaned into her face. “You’re very fucking lucky she forgave you. I haven’t. If we ever cross paths again…I’ll kill you, and Nikki won’t be there to save you. No one will.” The deep throatiness to his tone seemed to scare Tamala. She wasn’t the only one experiencing fear. Between the two of us, we knew he meant it.
She slowly removed her bruised and pained body from the bed and replaced her clothes. She stopped at the doorframe and looked at me. I caught a whiff of her rancid smell and covered my nose. Just as I started to feel sorry for her, she leaned over with her eyes cold. She said, “Just for the record, someone texted me anonymously and told me where you were. You better check your circle. Someone hates you just as much as I do. You should’ve let him kill me, because this isn’t over, bitch. You’ll get what’s coming to you,” before she walked out of the door.
I stared at the disheveled room, particularly, the blood on the sheets. I rolled my shoulders back and brushed off her comment as Eric looked after the door. Unsure if he heard her; his expression carried a remarkable sense of impassivity. “Who…are you?” I asked through a shaky tone. “Are you Ethan…or are you Eric? How did you know those men? Did you meet them in juvie?”
He shot his glare at me. “She wanted to kill you. She killed the dog that I bribed the owner into letting you have. Why are you looking at me like I’m the one in the wrong?”
I blinked, startled at another piece of information I didn’t know. Maisha was never willingly given to me? “I hate that woman. I hate her. But this doesn’t compare to throwing an overpriced camera in a bay. You almost—don’t you think your punishment was a little over the top?”
“No.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “In my opinion, it wasn’t severe enough. I would’ve made her suffer for a few more hours. You don’t know her. You don’t get her. This had to be done to get her out of our lives. You think I enjoyed it? What the hell did I just show you? This wasn’t about pleasure for me. It was about getting a message through her thick skull for once and for all. You think I haven’t had countless chats with her about leaving you alone? This had to be done. But you fucked it up.” Suddenly withdrawn, his eyes glazed over as he stared at me. “I thought you were something different. I thought you understood.”
“I guess we were both wrong about each other. And when you’re done with me, if I can’t let go…will you do this to me? I saw Estelle in the DVD. You claim I’m not her, but this rang as you trying to make me become her.”
He marched towards me with his posture strong. Grabbing my shoulders, he slammed me against the wall. “She had a fucking choice. She could’ve walked away. She started it, and I would’ve ended it if you hadn’t fucked things up. You don’t get it. You don’t know what kind of relationship she and I had. So, my strong suggestion? —don’t make fucking assumptions about shit you know nothing about.”
“You…took advantage of her want to please you. I just—I would never want to have it so bad for you that I lose my mind and all sense of reason, that I would be willing to be broken just to please you. I don’t think you know what to do with that kind of admiration. Scared if I get there, I’ll become Tamala or Estelle.” I shook my head and rubbed my forehead. I winced when I hit the bump and thought better of it. “The fact that you couldn’t answer my question about who you are is very telling.”
“You could never be them. How many times do I have to say that?”
“I sort-of knew what was on the DVD. I just…wanted to see if you had the ability to lie while looking slightly genuine about it. You do. But you can never replicate the face of the man I saw in that photo. You just proved that you never could. I…want you to leave me alone.”
“Can’t…do that,” he wavered.
“It’s not your choice,” I sobbed. “I want you to leave me alone or…I’ll file that police report I should’ve filed against Tamala, except, I’ll name you as the perpetrator. Not sure if I should list it under Ethan, or Eric. But…police have been called on us before. They keep records of such things. It could easily be believed.”
“Nik…” His eyes drew down as they watered. His completely shattered appearance was too much to endure.
“Is that enough for you to leave me alone?”
He cast his eyes to the wall as he turned placid.
He never gave me an answer.
When he drove me home, instead of coming inside, he went next door.
I fiddled with the razor blade, teasing it with my fingers. I lost count of the days. All I knew is that I could barely get out of bed. The only time I did was to use the bathroom. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t leave the four walls of my bedroom, much less my bed. The moment the razor hit my fingers was the first waking minute in which I wasn’t crying.
I sat up tall on the bathroom sink and pressed the blade against the skin on my thigh. I pushed hard enough to feel the pinch and draw blood.
I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t…feel the feeling it use to give me. I dropped the blade in the sink and slid off the counter, falling to my knees. The feeling that paralyzed me for countless days took over. I couldn’t be without him anymore. Desp
ite everything, he made me want to stay. My need to be with him crippled me.
I fingered the shattered screen of my phone that miraculously still worked…sort-of. I thumbed through my contacts and almost called him. Something stopped me cold. I threw my phone across the bathroom, shattering the screen beyond repair.
My aching body crawled to the bed. I slipped underneath the covers, pulling them over my head. The wave hit me again. The loss. The helplessness. The exhaustion. The sinking feeling that anything remarkably decent in my life never lasts.
As reality swept me, I howled into my pillow.
I thought I dreamt it when I heard the doorbell ring over and over again. I clutched the pillow over the top my head, but Chopin’s music haunted me. I screamed weakly into the pillow, before I slid my weak body from the bed.
My form felt like it weighed a ton, causing me stumble to the floor several times before I got to the front door. I cracked the door open, remaining behind it.
“Go…away,” I moaned. “I told you to leave me alone.”
He pushed the door open, causing my stance to stagger. I closed my eyes because I couldn’t see him; I didn’t want to see him. I felt the heat of his body press against me. I moved backwards and stumbled as I fell against something. Enveloping me by the waist into his arms, he stopped me from falling.
“Don’t…touch me.” I shoved at his hold wetly.
“It’s been fourteen fucking days,” Eric rasped. “I can’t do this anymore. Just…talk to me. Get it the fuck out so we can stop this. Can’t do it anymore. It’s hard to be who you made me to be if you’re not there. I need you, Nikki.”
“Shut up,” I sobbed as I shook in his arms. “Shut up. Shut…up!”
He moved to pick me up. I moaned my discontent, but having had very little nutrition in fourteen days, I barely had the energy to stand. He carried me to the couch, laying me down gently. I covered my face, still convicted in my refusal to look at him directly. I could hear the rustling of his clothes. I felt the pressure on the couch and his warm nakedness on top of me. He pulled my body down and slid on top of me. Holding up by the strength of his arms, he was careful not to push his weight against me and hurt me.
The Sordid Promise Page 21