by A. Zavarelli
But that’s all past and feeling Lev behind me now, feeling his strong arm tighten around my middle, I know he can keep me safe. And he may even want to. Or think he wants to.
If Josh wasn’t in the picture, would he want to then, I wonder. But I don’t let myself go down that road. Instead, I have to think about Josh.
I feel Lev’s body relax behind me. He’s not gripping me.
If I’m quick, I can get out. Knock him out long enough to get back to the school, get Josh, and get out.
Josh will be upset not to have his things, but I’ll fix that later. I have no choice because I can’t allow the alternative.
“I need to use the bathroom.” I roll backward a little, and my belly quivers at the feel of him behind me. It’s like my body remembers. And I think about something. About when we were together.
I used to come when Mr. George touched me. When he forced me. I felt sick about it, but I did. And he loved it. Loved rubbing my face in it. Loved that Joshua saw me come again and again. Saw me enjoy the very thing that revolted me. That had me puking my guts out after it was over.
But when I was with Lev, it was different.
It was beautiful.
Fuck.
He pulls his arm away, and I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. They come away wet, and when I look at him, he isn’t surprised or upset I guess that I’m still wiping away tears.
I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
Lev stands, and I look up at him on the other side of the bed.
He’s beautiful in a cruel sort of way. When he’s not smiling, there’s something dark about him. But when he smiles, and he does just now, I see that dimple. And just as Josh’s smile reminds me of Lev, Lev’s reminds me of Josh.
And that’s what I need to think about now. Josh is who I need to think about.
Lev walks around the bed and takes my arm. He leans down, and I look up. His face is only inches from mine. He squeezes my arm a little. It doesn’t hurt, but I know it can hurt. I know he can make it hurt. He’s warning me.
“Don’t try anything stupid, understand?”
Can he read my mind?
I blink fast, and it takes all I have not to look away, but I know if I do, he’ll see I’m lying. So instead, I nod, swallowing back my anxiety.
I have one shot at this. And if I fail…no, I can’t think about that. I can’t fail.
He releases me, gestures to the bathroom with a jerk of his head, and slips his phone out of his back pocket.
I walk awkwardly with just the one boot on into the bathroom. I have to remember to grab the other one when I leave.
I’m closing the door when Lev calls my name.
“Kat.”
I stop and peer out.
“Don’t lock it.”
I slip back and close the door. The lock is one of those push-button locks anyway, and I’m sure he could break that without much effort, so it’s not a big deal to leave it unlocked.
I turn to the sink and meet my reflection. My face is blotchy, my eyes puffy and red from crying. I turn the tap and cup a handful of cold water to splash on my face. I keep it running as I bend down and open the cabinet beneath the sink. I know when it will creak so I’m careful to stop just before. I reach my arm inside and twist my body so I can reach around behind the pipes.
There, taped to the top of the cabinet, I feel the hard metal of the pistol I purchased illegally four years ago. Two nights after I ran.
I practiced with it that year I was pregnant, but I haven’t touched it since Josh was born. I hate the thing, and even now, taking the cold, hard pistol in the palm of my hand, as small as it is, I feel its power, and I know the damage it can do. The havoc it will wreak.
But I have no choice.
I straighten. It’s loaded. Six bullets. So, I guess I have six chances, not one.
“Kat?” Lev calls from the other side of the door.
“Just a sec,” I say, flushing the toilet and taking a deep breath. I flex my hand around the pistol, stare straight ahead at the door and cock the gun.
Then I open the door.
Lev’s a few feet away. He looks up as he finishes typing the last of his text and tucks the phone into his pocket. I think that all happens in just a split second of time. It just feels like it’s stretched out to me.
When I lift my arm, it feels like slow motion. His expression changes, darkening as I raise the gun and aim it at him.
I don’t have to shoot him.
I don’t want to hurt him.
Maybe I can make him cuff himself to the bed. Maybe I can do that.
Lev’s eyes narrow. He looks disappointed first, then angry as his mouth tightens into a thin, hard line.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I hear myself say, and my voice sounds strange, as though I’m in a tunnel. I’m crying again. I feel the tears, and my hand is shaking, and I have to shoot. I have to.
“Put it down, Kat.”
I shake my head.
He takes a step toward me.
I take one back. I need to shoot. Now. I need to pull that damned trigger.
“Handcuff yourself to the bed,” I try, my voice trembling. Weak.
He takes another step. I’m almost out of space.
“I’ll shoot. I mean it.”
My back touches the wall. I didn’t realize I was still backing up. But Lev keeps coming, taking that last step until he’s pressing his chest into the barrel of the gun, leaning into it.
“No, you won’t.”
“Please,” I sob. I’m the one with the gun, yet I’m pleading with him.
He cocks his head, eyes matching the cold steel of the weapon. He closes his big hand over mine, and I have no choice. I have to do this. I have to shoot.
And I do.
I pull the trigger.
The sound isn’t like the night at Nina’s. That popping was quieter. This shot, it’s loud. And we’re both falling.
As we go down, Lev shifts his position, changing his grip of my gun hand to my wrist, aiming it over my head.
Another shot goes off, and I hear myself scream as glass shatters somewhere behind me.
His other hand comes around to cup the back of my head just as I hit the floor, the wood hard as I slam into it with his weight on top of me.
I’m not sure if it’s the force of the fall or his grip on my wrist that has my hand opening, but the gun slides across the floor and under the bed. I watch it, then turn to him. I should see blood. I shot him.
Didn’t I?
But there’s no blood, and Lev isn’t hurt. He’s just really, really pissed.
He takes my jaw and squeezes so hard I think he’s going to break it. “Didn’t I tell you not to do anything stupid?” he asks through gritted teeth.
I claw at his forearm, feeling his skin under my fingernails. Instinct takes over, and I ram my knee up into his balls.
Lev curses, and it’s only then that I can move.
I flip over onto my belly, and I clamber toward the bed, trying to drag my legs out from under him, but he grips the waistband of my jeans and hauls me backward. Standing, he lifts me with him. He’s still cursing, still not quite upright after my assault on his balls.
He tosses me on the bed again, laying all his weight over me so I’m trapped. He pushes the hair away from my face, and his breath is warm on my cheek.
“Didn’t I fucking tell you not to do anything stupid?” His hand slides between us, and he’s fumbling with something. “And that was about as stupid as it gets.”
He straightens, and I start to, too, but he shoves me back down, jamming his knee into my lower back.
I can’t move more than a few inches, and I crane my neck to look back at him, and I see what he’s fumbling with. What he’s opening.
“Lev, no,” I plead as he unbuckles his belt. I claw at the bed, trying to drag myself away, but it’s hopeless.
“Kat, yes,” he says, mimicking me as his hands slide between the
bed and my belly. I fight and twist and turn to get away, but I can’t. He’s too strong. And when he tugs my jeans down, I scream.
His fingers are in my hair, hauling me backward against him. Looking around, he finds a scarf I’d tossed over the back of the chair and drags me with him as he picks it up. He squeezes his fingers and makes me look at him. He’s a blur through my tears.
“You made me do this. You brought this on yourself.”
“Lev—”
But before I can finish, he has me back over the bed and ties the scarf over my mouth, and when I open it to scream or to plead, he tightens it. Then he finishes stripping me of my underwear so they and my jeans are down around my knees, and I think he’s going to do it. Do that.
Everything stops for a minute then. Or maybe it’s a split second. It gets quiet and perfectly still, and the only sound is my breathing, my pleading through that gag. I turn my head to find him looking at me.
“I don’t like hurting you, Katerina,” he says.
I want to tell him not to, that he doesn’t have to, but I’m gagged. He tugs his belt through the loops of his jeans and doubles it over. When I understand what he intends to do, another panic, a different sort of panic takes hold of me.
I shake my head, and when I try to claw against the bed to get away, he takes his knee off my back, captures my wrists, and holds them at my lower back.
“But you have to learn this lesson, and you have to learn it now.”
I watch in shock as he raises his arm and brings it down hard.
Silence after that reverberating sound of leather against flesh. Silence as it echoes, and my breath catches as fire slices through me.
“You will do as I say.” He lashes me again, holding me still when I fight to get away. “You will do exactly as you’re told.”
He strikes again and again and again, and it’s too fast, and I don’t have time to catch my breath or process as pain sears my ass and thighs.
I’m sobbing, the scarf-gag is drenched, and he’s not done yet. Not even when I lose count. Only when I stop fighting, only when my body droops onto the bed, and I take it, take his punishment does he finally stop. Only then do I finally hear the clang of the belt buckle as it lands on the floor, and my wrists are free, and I feel myself slide down over the edge of the bed to my knees, my hands still behind me as if he’s still holding them.
I press my face into the blanket and sob and I feel him behind me, feel him kneel at my back. He’s close enough that I can feel his hardness.
He’s aroused.
Whipping me aroused him.
I make a sound into the gag, into the blanket because if this isn’t over, if he touches me now, I’ll die. I will die.
But then the gag is gone, and he cups the back of my head, and when he turns my face into his chest, I let him.
“I don’t like hurting you,” he says, and his voice is choked and tight.
I hear his heart. Listen to the rapid beating against his warm chest.
He’s rubbing my punished ass, and his touch is soft, so opposite of the violence of moments ago. But this is him, isn’t it? The dichotomy of Lev.
Violence and tenderness, they’re interchangeable.
He is capable of both to an extreme.
He sits on the floor beside me, pulls my underwear and jeans up, then tugs me into his lap. I rub my face and wipe my nose with my sleeve.
I look up at him, and he’s watching me with sad eyes, not angry ones, not anymore.
Without a word, he wipes my face, pushes the hair that’s sticking to my face back and he kisses my forehead, kisses the lids of my eyes when I close them. Kisses my cheeks, then my mouth and I hate myself for not fighting him. For not wanting him to stop.
16
Lev
“What are you doing?” she whispers as I assault her throat with my lips.
“I’m taking back what’s mine,” I murmur against her. “Get used to it.”
“You hurt me.” She sniffs.
“Did I?” I mock her. “What did you suppose would happen when you pulled that trigger, Katya? Were you prepared to watch my blood splatter across your bedroom floor?”
“I didn’t want to do it.” She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “You forced my hand.”
“And now you’ve forced mine,” I echo.
“You repeatedly told me you were bad for me,” she reminds me. “You warned me away. And now you’re here holding me hostage like this is exactly what you wanted all along.”
“This is the last thing I wanted for you,” I tell her. “And I meant everything I said before. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want it. You were supposed to forget me and have a normal life. And maybe I would have actually let you, who the fuck knows. Regardless of that, we have a kid now. Whatever intentions I may have had in the past are irrelevant in the face of that. Like it or not, Kat, you’ve chained yourself to me for life now.”
Her body quakes in silent grief as she curls into herself, accepting the facts she can’t deny. She may not like the truth, but I’m done handling her with kid gloves.
“You don’t get to kill me,” I murmur against her. “You don’t get to leave me again.”
She doesn’t respond. All of her fight has abandoned her, and she will remember this day every time she sits down for the next week. Still, when I take the opportunity to reacquaint myself with her body, she doesn’t protest. Touching her curves, breathing her in, tasting the salt of her skin. And this time, when I slip my fingers between her thighs and rub her through her jeans, she whimpers.
“Did you miss this?” I ask her roughly. “Did you miss my hands on your body?”
She doesn’t answer, but her body is doing enough talking. Her nipples are so hard they are scraping against the thin fabric of her shirt. And between her legs, her jeans are damp with want.
“Tell me you hate it.” I bite at her collarbone as my other hand palms her breast. “But only if you mean it.”
Again, she doesn’t answer. And this time, when I unzip her jeans and slip my fingers between her thighs, there’s no denying she’s soaked for me.
“I can’t tell you what this does to me.” I bury two fingers into her wetness, and she jerks against the intrusion.
“Lev…” She closes her eyes and bites her lip as she tries to come up with another protest. But her thought goes unfinished as I torture her slowly, grinding my cock against her ass as my fingers thrust into her pussy. She’s trying not to make a sound, not to show how much she needs this right now, but I can feel it in her every breath.
“Kiss me,” I demand as my lips settle over hers.
She tries not to, but for one split second, she caves, and her lips part, allowing me access to her mouth. I slide my tongue against hers, and she lets out the softest of sounds as her hips buck against my hand. I’m fingering her now. Assaulting her with my lips and teeth and thumb. She closes her eyes as every muscle in her body tenses. She doesn’t want to give in, but it’s a foolish notion.
“Quit fighting it,” I growl, yanking my fingers from her pussy and bringing them to her lips.
Her eyes widen in shock when I force them into her mouth.
“Taste your want for me.” I smirk. “Tell me how much you don’t like it.”
“Fuck you,” she hisses, turning away and smearing her arousal across her cheek.
Darkness overtakes my features as I look down on her.
“Fuck me?” I slowly unzip my jeans, and she squirms beneath me. “All you had to do was ask.”
“Lev.” Her voice betrays her nerves as I reach for her hand and bring it to my throbbing cock.
“Stroke me.” My fingers return to her pussy as she stares up at me, eyes ablaze with equal fire and hatred.
When she squeezes my cock in her grasp, she means to hurt me, but it only makes me harder.
“Remember the rules.” I glare at her as I thrust my fingers back inside her. “You hurt me, I hurt you.”
“I d
on’t like your rules,” she protests weakly.
“But you like my fingers inside you.” I observe pointedly. “Now be good and stroke my cock.”
It takes her some time, but when the tension starts to build again in her body, she’s gripping me with an iron fist, dragging her palm up and down my shaft like her life depends on it. I’m not delusional enough to believe she’s doing it out of her goodwill. She just doesn’t want me to stop making her feel good.
“Don’t come,” I warn her when she squeezes around my fingers. “Not yet.”
She shakes her head, panting, jerking her body against me. “I…I can’t—”
When she reaches the edge of the cliff, I withdraw from her body, and she stares up at me in horror. I want to hear her beg, but her pride won’t allow it. Not just yet.
“You want to come?” I ask her.
She glares at me as I shove my jeans down to my knees and roll on top of her.
“Answer me.” I squeeze her face in my grasp. “Do you want to come?”
“You started this.” She hurls the words out like a brat.
“And now I’m going to finish it.” I drag the fat head of my cock against her slickness, and her nails curl into my biceps. Thrusting my hips forward, I bury myself inside her until she can’t take any more of my length.
“Fuuuuck.” I groan into her neck as I roll my hips and slam into her again. She is so goddamn tight. It’s been four long years, and I’m not going to last.
“Now you can come.” I fist a handful of her hair and force her to look up at me. “But only if you come around my cock.”
She whimpers as I fuck her into the floor. Her nails claw at my back. My eyes roll back in my head. I can’t fucking concentrate. I just need to fuck her.
When Kat finally lets herself go, an agonized groan escapes between her lips. I swallow it whole, and then drink from her until she’s breathless and her lips are swollen from my kiss. Then she fucking bites me, tearing at my lip until I taste my own blood. When I rear back, she adds insult to injury by slapping me as hard as she can manage.
“I hate you!” she screams.