Mandy scooted to the edge of the bed and somehow knew not to push him another inch at that moment or she’d regret it. She decided it would be safer to just follow his orders for the time being. Half of her wanted his approval and wanted to please him and the other half, wanted nothing more than to rebel against him and push him to his limits and beyond. She didn't understand the conflicting feelings. A quiet voice deep inside her mind said she was walking the edge of a very slippery slope by allowing Jett to treat her as David once had. She would not let Jett control her life. It was the last thing she needed after escaping David's clutches, but for some reason, deep down she felt that he was different.
God help her, she didn’t want to let him go. He was everything she had told Nicole he was, but he had not raised a hand to her that she didn’t want him to and even then, it was for pleasure not anger. He was surprisingly gentle and caring with her after they shared pleasure.
Urgh! What is wrong with me? One sexual encounter with Jett and I no longer know which way is up. The only thing I am sure of, is that when he is near, my painful past fades away.
Jett watched Mandy’s face closely and saw the myriad of emotions and thoughts fly across her face and smiled. He lifted her with gentle care into his arms and set her down in the wheelchair with the same amount of care. He had a plan to help her get through the MRI. He instructed the orderly when they reached the hallway to lead the way after he tucked a blanket around the front of Mandy. He pushed her down the halls to the MRI room.
The closer they got to the room, the more he saw her visibly stiffen, her hands were gripping the arms of the chair with such force that her fingers turned white. He stopped the chair in the hall outside of the room and dismissed the orderly, telling him to get lost. He would take it from there. He looked into the room and nodded at the staff and signed to them to give him a minute and they nodded back. "Tigress, trust me for this short time sweetheart. I promise, it will be okay." He waited until Mandy gave him a shaky nod before he pushed her into the room.
Mandy could not pull her eyes off of that MRI machine as a flashback to five years before surged forth. Unabated fear consumed her. She was not aware she had pushed the chair backward until the door stopped her movement, trapped in the flashback’s hold on her. Jett and the hospital staff in the room became a distant memory.
It took all the strength Jett had to hold Mandy still and in her seat. He knew from experience, she had to ride the flashback out and it was a flashback she was having, he was sure of it. Finally, he felt her body begin to relax and he tried to break through. He had been unable to find out exactly what happened to her and it was haunting him. The mysterious circumstances surrounding her horrific past was driving him insane. He was used to having complete control over everything but since meeting Mandy, his orderly and routine world was in complete chaos. She was dangerous to him and his sanity.
"Mandy, can you hear me?" He asked gently and not receiving a response, changed his tone to a very severe one. "Tigress! Look at me, right now!" It was enough to pull her out of the flashback and before she could slip back in, Jett's face took up her line of vision and he placed headphones over her ears for sensory deprivation after he asked her again, if she would trust him this once. When she nodded slowly, her eyes full of skepticism and fear, he placed a dark black blindfold over her eyes and tied it behind her head.
"What are you doing?" Mandy’s voice rose several octaves.
"Just trust that I am going to help you through this and I won’t do anything to harm you in any way. Just concentrate on the sound of my voice through the headphones. Okay?"
"I don’t know why, but I feel like I can trust you, this once Jett."
"Good girl." He lifted her into his arms and set her on the cold table and covered her back up again with the blanket. "Just stay completely still sweetheart and don’t move."
"His tone rubbed her wrong and she responded with, "Yes, Master," in a smart-assed tone.
"You’re asking for it tigress. Don’t push me anymore, even if you do enjoy it."
"Sorry, Jett." She purred.
"No you are not, but I will accept it this time." Jett said and spent the time telling her everything he wanted to do to her when he got her alone again.
It was more than enough to convince her mind that she was in his bedroom with him as he described it to her. The fantasy he created carried her away from reality.
Back in her room again, Jett tried to warn her away from him. "I don’t do regular flowers and romance type of relationships. I’m not boyfriend material either, Mandy." He felt the need to be honest with her.
"Thank God for that! I don’t want either of those things. I just want you for your body. Got a problem with us fulfilling a mutual need?"
"None whatsoever, tigress as long as we are clear on the issue."
"What happened to you, Mandy? Tell me about it."
"Maybe some time."
"Mandy…." Jett’s impatience grew by leaps and bounds.
"The answer is no, Mr. Damian and that’s final. Actually, you can go now. You don’t need to stay. I’m going to try to sleep anyway." She tried to cajole him into leaving because she planned to escape one way or another.
"My conniving little tigress. I am not going anywhere tonight and you will not escape until the doctor releases you tomorrow." Jett smirked, his eyes full of knowledge. "Oh by the way, I took the privilege of having your clothes removed from your room by my driver. He will bring them back tomorrow."
Mandy burst forth with a deep growl. "How the hell did you figure out my plans? I said nothing."
"You’re not that hard to read, honey and you have been eyeballing the far window and the door since I arrived earlier. You are planning on running and I have a feeling you have been doing it for far too long already."
"I am not running from anything but you––you moronic ass! I am losing all my muscle tone just laying around here and now I will have to start everything from scratch and when I am so close to graduating with my master status in Krav Maga. You do know what that is don’t you, mister know-it-all?"
"Workout then right here and now. I would love to see how good you think you are."
"I am going to kick your annoying, irritating, arrogant, self-righteous ass! Get out of my room! I don’t want or need you here, Jett!" Mandy currently felt great cynicism toward this too good to be true man. "How many times do I have to say it?! The spanking and sex was fantastic, the subspace….addictive, but no man will ever be allowed to control every aspect of my life, not ever again! You are just too damn dangerous for me."
"Is that what you honestly think of me? That I want to control every aspect of your life? Woman, you could not be more wrong. You know nothing about me but you will very soon, mark my words." Jett's voice sounded like shards of ice laced with barely controlled anger and hurt that he tried very hard to keep hidden. She had pushed him too far and brought out his inner primal beast.
Oh shit! There will be no return from this now. Mandy saw the fire blazing in Jett’s eyes and jumped right off of her bed on the side opposite where he was standing. She did not fear that he would hit her in anger, but she did fear his words and what devilish punishment he might decide to come up with. Her bum heated up with the remembered spanking. She also felt adrenaline rush into her veins when Jett took one long step toward her direction.
"Oh yes, tigress. My hands are itching something fierce and yes, congratulations are in order. You should be proud of yourself for finally pissing me off."
"I––I warned you in the beginning that I am never going to your club of sin, not ever!"
"Yes. You. Will. There is nowhere left for you to run, that I won’t find you and your punishment will only be that much more delicious, for me at least."
"Stay back! If you come any closer you are going to get hurt." Mandy warned him again and watched as he slowly removed his vest. His sculpted chest and ripped abs distracted her and threatened to take her breath away at the same ti
me, that is, until she saw him smirk. The bastard knows exactly what effect he has on my libido. Damn him!
"Bring it on Baby. No more threats. Let me see what you’ve got, tigress." He said and rushed her. If she really had studied Krav Maga, her reflexes would be sharp and precise not matter how weak he currently was.
Mandy’s Krav Maga training filled her head. She was going to break the cardinal rule that said she was only to fight if there was no other option and to use it only to defend herself. She’d decided in a millisecond, she was going to use it while on the offensive. Lord, please don’t ever let Master Yang hear about this. She allowed Jett to get close before she threw strikes left and right to disable the arrogant ass and knock him on his ass and hopefully, down a couple notches. And she would have––if he hadn’t caught every single one of her well placed strikes to his throat, solar plexus, and every soft area on his body she aimed at. That is impossible! There is no way in hell anyone is that good without training, not unless…. Her thoughts trailed off as realization struck. Jett had to be a master at Krav Maga and a damn good one too. No wonder he had not seemed afraid or surprised when she mentioned using it on him. That spoke volumes about him but it still did not stop her from going all out on his ass.
Thirty minutes later, she begged him to stop. She was out of breath, her body incredibly weak and shaky. She wanted to bawl from the disappointment she felt in herself. The workout had accomplished more than she had intended it to. Bent over at the waist, her shaky hands braced on equally shaky and rubbery knees, she desperately dragged air into her burning, oxygen-starved lungs. When she glanced up, it was Jett’s look of understanding and compassion combined with his words that did her in.
"Let it all out, Mandy, let it all out tigress. You will always be safe with me."
She burst into sobs and drew in ragged gasping breaths as the need to tell someone, anyone, what she had kept bottled up for so long, overwhelmed her.
Jett approached with compassion and caution as though she were a frightened rabbit that would run at a moment's notice.
When he was standing in front of her, he whispered her name in deep compassion. Mandy beat on his chest repeatedly, cursed him and damned him to hell over and over again for forcing her to need someone. For the need to be heard, to be seen and who would not judge her or her past decisions. She cursed him for breaking right through her concrete and well maintained wall as if he was some kind of immortal hulk.
No one had ever been able to get through or had even managed a peak behind her wall. She fell silent, lost in her own agony as she continued to beat on his bare chest. She wanted him to wear bruises just as she had for too many years now. She had ever so carefully constructed her wall in thick layers of concrete and steel over the course of five long and terrifying years. In walks Jett Damian and not only does he crash right through them, he decimates them and leaves her bare and raw.
"You arrogant, single-minded, conceited, egotistical, intimidating, domineering, pompous-assed, pain the ass!" She screamed into his chest when she no longer had the strength to beat on him.
All of sudden, everything came bursting out of her with the force of an F5 tornado. All of the pent-up emotions, memories, fears and even the now dead hopes and dreams she had back then rushed right out of her. She told him everything about David and her horrific, terrifying relationship with him and how it was her fault things escalated out of control.
She told him how she had believed everything David said she was and was now trying to make herself better. She spoke about the severe beatings where David left her crumpled and broken in a pool of her own blood more times than she could count. How he raped her time and again––at home, at work, on the streets and in disguise and how he held her down and allowed his bastard friends to rape her as well, one after another. She explained how it got worse after each attempt to leave.
And when she had finally escaped him and began to feel safe, he found her again. It happened one night after working at one of her three jobs. He followed her, dragged her into an alley and beat her. But it didn’t end there. He whipped her with a cable wire then stabbed her in the chest with a large hunting knife.
He planned to leave her in the alley to die, behind a large commercial garbage can when she made the mistake of trying to drag herself away. That was when he stepped on her back holding her down and shot her in the back of the head in cold blood, execution style. The bullet bounced in her skull inside before it exited behind her ear.
Lastly, she told him about her horrific hospital experience and how they had let him in to see her because he played the loving husband card. He tried to suffocate her with a pillow and would have succeeded, had the security guard not happened by to check on her for a concerned friend. Then, how her own parents tried to have her committed when they found out she planned to testify against her ex. He was rich, powerful, and older than her by thirteen years. He paid off all of her parents' debts and convinced them that she was framing him because he left her the day she claimed to escape. That was the story he stuck to or at least tried to. She had been forced to hire a bodyguard service, testified against him and put the bastard away, she had thought, for 25 years.
Mandy never spoke to her parents ever again. They were dead to her and her to them. When she sued for damages and medical expenses, David’s parents settled the lawsuit above and beyond what she had asked for. She took the money and moved to the other side of the country and obtained a new identity thanks to the underground railroad of volunteers who helped her disappear and started her life over from scratch. Her survival had been a miracle, the doctors said. All that mattered to her, was that she was alive, free and safe.
Those same volunteers with the Underground Railroad delivered a letter to her, addressed to her old name at a undisclosed post office box. They made a copy of it for her file and then returned the letter as addressee not known. David was getting out on a technicality and granted a new trial. The letter said the judge agreed to use her former testimony instead of trying to find her and forcing her to come back and relive it all over again. The evidence against him was overwhelming and the witnesses to his crime would testify. But none of that mattered now, she would never be safe again. She knew David would not stop until she was dead. She begged him not to tell a soul about her, because he would kill her. As far as she was concerned, David’s ex-wife died that night in the alley and someone new was given life out of her ashes.
Jett was stunned by everything she told him and beyond furious at the bastard who did it to her. He was in complete awe of Mandy. When she stopped beating on his chest and collapsed in his arms, spent and exhausted, he carried her to the rocker-recliner and rocked her as she cried her heart out. He could tell it was way overdue and was honored that she trusted him so deeply with all of it.
Mandy had also explained to him that she had tried nearly every kind of therapy in the field to help her move on in life and let the past go. She further explained how she desperately wanted, no needed, some semblance of normalcy in her life that didn’t consist of flashbacks, hyper vigilance, bouts of insomnia and so much more, all of which have kept her trapped in the past and never moving forward. That is, until the moment he pushed her body and mind into subspace.
She explained to him how in that space, she was finally free of the past. It was as if a small part had been released, never to haunt her again and how amazing that felt. She begged him to help her reach it as many times as it took to completely release her past and heal her soul.
Jett said he needed to think on it. His body did not need any time to think as it hummed to life with the implications and desires. Mandy needed to know exactly what becoming a part of his world will entail and what he will expect of her and what she could not expect of him. What he was incapable of giving her.
"You need to come to the club with me Mandy, before you decide if you want to be a part of my life and my world. But know this, whether you choose my world or not, if you choose me or not, I will
keep you safe from the bastard who did this to you. I will use every resource at my disposal to keep you safe while you live in this city. There is no need to run again, sweetheart. Running doesn't solve anything and it will not solve anything now. Do not run again Mandy. Trust in me, please and yes, I know exactly what I am asking of you."
"Is it really necessary to attend your club, just to make my decision?"
"Yes. My club's logo, "where reality fades into fantasy" has more erotic implications than you can possibly imagine, tigress."
"What about my friends?"
Jett explained to her that they had access to the main part of the club but not to the VIP area. Not until she has seen it for herself and they discuss it more in his home in private.
"There you go, being presumptuous again."
"Not presumptuous, just honest. You are exhausted after releasing your massive burden. Let me get you to bed so you can rest." Jett lifted her trembling body in his arms and carried her back to bed as if she was the most precious thing in the world to him. He laid beside her and held her as she fell asleep, something he despised but with her, it felt right. Jett also knew how badly Mandy needed human touch and to feel safe in his arms, especially when in her mind, her world had been thrown into chaos and terror once again not only by the letter about her ex, but when Nicole told him too much in her jealousy.
While Mandy was deeply asleep, Jett talked Nicole into telling him what Mandy did and said before she left the bookstore the day of her accident. After Nicole told him everything, he was positive she had just given up at that point and it was all his fault. It did not matter that he knew nothing of her past at the time or the horror she had miraculously lived through. It was still his fault she was in her current state of mind.
Jett knew Mandy should have died in that alley and while she claimed the old her did die there, Jett now worried that maybe deep inside she was still dead and yet fighting to live. He feared he was only going to cause her more pain, but at the same time could not bear to let her go. Forgive me Mandy for not being a more honorable man, if I was, I would walk away right now and let you heal on your own.
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