by Kyle Autumn
Adam. My boss. The man who wants this woman to pay for what she supposedly did. The man who’s never once mentioned a wife. He did this to her.
Which means he lied to me.
And that means he’s never getting her back.
6
Willow
My honesty surprises me. So much so that I shrink back, waiting for it to bite me in my ass somehow. Will this man beat me for it too? Will my scars make him regret sleeping with me? Will he take that out on me?
What I can’t comprehend is why he’s so shocked now. I was naked from head to toe last night while he fucked me until he was out cold. The lights were on, and he had to have seen me. All of me. All of these shameful, ugly scars in the places I could easily cover with clothes in case Adam actually took me out in public or let his company see me.
But I couldn’t cover them last night when this man fucked me from behind.
And I don’t want to deal with whatever shit he’s going to pull because he can see them now.
“Just take me back to the motel,” I murmur, hoping he hears me. It’s the loudest I could speak in his shadow.
He lets me go with a sharp movement, thrusting my hand away like he can’t get rid of it fast enough. Then he forces his own hand through his hair, which is long on the top but buzzed close on the sides. I didn’t notice before, but I didn’t have to. This man meant one thing to me last night. Now, I’m not sure what he means.
Does he mean to harm me?
Does he mean something more to me?
No. The answer is no. At least to the second question—if only because no one can mean anything to me anymore. Adam made sure of that. But I don’t know about the first question.
I swear I see murder in his eyes. My murder? Possibly. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m like a magnet for that kind of thing these days. A magnet for murder—just not my own yet. One day. It’s hiding right beneath the surface, a whisper away from reach. When Adam catches up with me, that’ll be my fate.
Until then…
Until then, I want to keep running. Pretending that I’m getting somewhere. Putting up the appearance that my life means something to me. That’s enough for now.
“You’re not going anywhere,” the man grits out between his teeth.
Someone else might have been scared. Someone other than me. I’m not scared of those words. They’re comforting in a way. They’re like a second skin, something I’m used to.
“Adam used to tell me that all the time,” I tell him in a monotonous tone. Then I laugh, but it’s mirthless. Hitting him with a cold gaze, I manage to say, “And look how that turned out.”
“Good.” He spits the word at me, but I don’t think I’m the target. Something about the way he said it makes me think that word was meant for Adam himself.
That’s silly though. No one in their right mind would stand up for me—not if it meant standing up to Adam. The things he could do, the reach he has… This man would be foolish to do that. So I wait for him to ask what I did to deserve these scars.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a different route.
“Are there more?”
The question makes me recoil, but only inside. Of course there are, I want to say. You think a man like him would leave just a few around my wrist? If you’d been able to use your eyes last night and not just your cock, you’d know. For various reasons, like self-preservation, I don’t say those things. I just nod once.
“Show me,” he demands.
It’s as if I can’t control my own body. Like I can’t say no to him. He wanted to strip me naked; I let him. He wanted to fuck me from behind; I let him. He wants to see all of my scars; I guess I’ll show him. So I start to take my shirt up over my stomach, ready to strip bare before him yet again, more willingly this time. I don’t make it that far though.
When he touches my wrist this time, the contact is less punishing. Less gripping. Less…terrifying. It’s almost gentle, and I don’t recognize it until the foreign word finally flits across my brain. No one’s been gentle with me in so long that I barely remember how to respond to that kind of behavior. So I freeze and wait for further instruction.
“Stop,” he quietly groans. “Let me look.”
God, I don’t want to. I don’t want this man to see. But with his soft touch on me, I have no willpower. I want to give in to receive more of the same kind. I want to show him so I can get more kindness, more gentleness. Less abuse.
I stand here like a statue and wait for him to undress me.
And right here in his kitchen, with the sunlight streaming in through the partially curtained windows and the unobstructed glass of the back door, he does.
Carefully.
Slowly.
Gently.
As if he’s peeling delicate skin, he cautiously lifts my sweatshirt away from my hips and up toward my breasts. When he reaches them, he bunches it up and urges me to lift my arms. I do, and then he slips it over my head, careful not to catch it on my nose.
The crisp air hits my skin and causes goose bumps to pebble my arms, my shoulders, and my stomach. My nipples firm as he eyes my torso and takes in all of the silvery paths of flesh. I lost count after a while, especially when Adam moved to different places I could still cover with clothing. Between my toes, the backs of my knees, the bottoms of my feet… He left no skin uncovered save for my hands, my neck, and my face.
By some miracle, he wanted me to be presentable. So that’s all I got to keep.
I keep my eyes off this man, but I don’t need to see his face to know how hard he’s gazing at me. It burns new scars into my skin with the heat of his fury. Rage builds just below the surface of his skin if his clenching fists are anything to go by. But I’m not sure why. This wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do this to me. So why should he care?
“Are there more?” His voice grates like sandpaper the way his fingers do. In the exact same way: a kind of comforting but terrifying manner.
When I finally manage to lift my gaze to his, that rage is plain as day. The murder shining in them before blazes at me like the sun. My skin is on fire, and it burns hotter the longer he stares at me. And when I nod, I’m afraid I’ll sear and char.
“Show me,” he barely manages to get out. The words are thick in his throat, but I hear them.
And they spur me into action, if only to get this over with.
I slip my fingers inside my yoga pants. This time, I leave my ripped panties on though. This is humiliating enough—I’m not doing it completely naked. Except, when my pants hit the floor and I find his eyes, the way he’s looking at me makes me change my mind. I put my hands at my hips and hook my thumbs into the sides of my underwear. His voice stops me before I get them too far down.
“Enough.” He clears the knot from his throat with a cough and then repeats himself. “Enough.”
He’s seen as much as he needs to. The disgust wins out and he can’t be bothered to see more. He doesn’t want to face my past in the same way that I wish it hadn’t happened. But we’re here. We’ve come this far. And I’m not stopping now. Not when I can take control of this moment.
This one’s mine.
So I tug my panties down to my ankles and step out of them, leaving my clothes in a heap to my left. Then I open my arms so he can take a good, hard look before I spin and shock him some more.
He can’t even keep his gasp inside.
More goose bumps rise on my skin, so I know he’s shut his eyes. With his burning gaze no longer on me, the room has become frigid. I desperately want to put my clothes back on and run from this place, but there’s nowhere to go. It’s not until the heat from his eyes hits me again that I stop squirming and shaking. I let go and feel free.
The first sign of his movement is a rustle near my feet. Then my clothes are pressing against my back, his knuckles blazing holes where Adam scratched his ownership into my skin.
“Get dressed,” he says, his voice sounding far away, like he’s turned away from me.
When I face him again, I see that he has. I grab my clothes, but I don’t make another move. Not until he looks at me again. I wait, breathing through my nose as though I have any right to the air in his house. Then, when he finally hits me with his gaze, what I see there takes all of that air right out of my lungs.
There’s murder in his eyes, all right. But it’s not aimed at me.
I know with a certainty that if he ever got his hands on Adam, he’d kill him.
And it makes me rethink my plan to run entirely.
7
Zane
I’ve always thought I’m a monster.
I’m a special brand of fucked up. I’ve been one for a long time. But it got worse all thanks to a woman in my past. She made me the insane piece of shit I am today. Her special brand of fucked up did just what it needed to in order to turn me into the asshole I’ve become. The man who hunts other men for the men who can’t do it themselves. The man who’s killed, tortured, and turned over more men than he can count for answers and retribution. The man who was actively planning the torture of the woman in front of him. But it looks like someone beat me to it.
What. The. Fuck.
No spot below her shoulders has been left unturned. No stretch of skin can fit another slice, dice, or scar save for her face, her hands, and her neck. This woman has been mutilated in more ways than I have ever dreamed of doing to anyone I’ve ever met. The level of hatred poured all over her like gasoline is enough. It stops here. Because even I have some kind of moral compass. There’s a line that just can’t be crossed. And that’s the line into the sadistic torture for sport. For fun. For evil.
Someone took their own special brand of fucked up too far on this woman.
And that someone is paying me to bring her back to him.
But there’s zero chance he’ll ever get his hands on this woman again.
Enough is enough.
“Get your shit together,” I tell her, unable to even look her in the eye again. Not out of shame or pity. Just because, if I do, I’ll tell her shit she shouldn’t know. “We’re leaving.”
She doesn’t ask where we’re going. She probably assumes the truth: that I’m taking her back to her motel room. Because that’s what I’m doing.
But that’s not where she’s staying.
She hurries to put her clothes back on. She isn’t careful as she redresses, which surprises me. Her face looks like it hurts, and some of those cuts on her body haven’t completely scarred over yet. They can’t be more than a week old. Probably less. Which adds up—that’s when she stole from him and left.
But if she simply stole from him and left, he couldn’t have marked her this way that quickly. No, some of her scars look much older than that.
Now, she could be lying to me. Maybe it wasn’t Adam. But someone did this to her, and it wasn’t me.
When she pulls her sweatshirt back over her head, she hisses in pain. Then she clutches her arm. My fingers twitch to help her, but I fight the urge. There’s a difference between actively helping someone and actively not hurting someone. I’ll stay in the latter category if I know what’s good for me. Because nothing good comes from helping a woman.
And I’m not confused. Making sure she doesn’t get hurt by my boss again isn’t helping her. It’s stopping him. There’s a difference in that too. And I’d do well to remember that so I don’t get even more fucked up.
As soon as she’s ready with her bag over her shoulder, I snatch my keys up and we go back to the car. It’s a cloudy, overcast day in my neck of the woods, which makes sense for the mood. Even the sky doesn’t want to let the sun shine down on her scars today. No, it all needs to stay hidden for a while.
Even though I know exactly where she’s staying, I ask for directions. When she has zero clue, she gives me the name of the place and I nod. I don’t have to have a reason for knowing how to get there. We both know that this town is tiny as fuck. That’s why she chose it.
Once we get to the motel, she barely waits for my truck to come to a stop. When we’re close enough to the building, she opens the door and hops out. I slam on the brakes and throw my truck into park. If she thinks I’m leaving her here, she’s out of her mind. Once Adam figures out that I’m not handing her over to him for more torture, he’ll come after her. He’ll send someone else. He won’t stop until he gets her. I’ve seen him do that in the past.
I’ve been that person for him in the past.
So I wait for her to get whatever she left at this place and then come back to my truck.
Which she does.
In a total fucking panic.
“Go,” she tells me when she jumps back into my truck with a duffel bag. Cradling her arm, she winces. But when I don’t make a move, she yells it again. “Go!” No direction, no clue as to where she wants me to take her. Just a shout to get out of here.
So I do.
But we don’t get far before I ask questions.
“What was that about?” I keep my gaze on the road. Looking at her is dangerous. I already feel bad enough about her past, and I’m putting some responsibility on myself for her future.
But her present—that’s not on me. I can’t hold myself accountable for her current state. That’s not my job.
My body disagrees when she lets out a quiet sob though. It wholeheartedly fucking disagrees with that.
Fuck.
She pulls herself together, sucking in a deep breath that makes her whole body tremble. “Someone was in my room.”
The tires squeal on the pavement as I hit the brakes and we skid to a stop in the middle of the country road. “Someone was in your room?” I repeat.
She nods, so I wrench the steering wheel to the left to make a U-turn. If someone was in there—and it wasn’t me—then someone else is after her. I have to find out who it was. The more clues I have to this weird-ass mystery, the better. The more I can figure out, the clearer my plan will be. Then I’ll know what the fuck I should do with this woman.
“Not right now,” she tells me, a newfound strength to her voice.
But it makes me furrow my brow. Totally confused, I pull off to the side of the road and slow to a stop, no tire tracks on the road this time. “What do you mean then?”
“Someone had been in there, and they didn’t bother covering their tracks.”
I narrow my eyes some more, twisting in my seat once the truck is in park. “Explain.”
She takes a deep breath, clasping her hands in her lap. “I put a piece of tape on the door to see if anyone broke in. It was sliced through when I went up to it just now. Like it was cut when they used a knife to get the door open or something.”
At that, I have to raise an eyebrow. A proud one.
I knew that this woman had to be smart. She managed to steal from Adam and get away. I’m not sure what happened in between those two things, but somehow, this woman makes it through what she has to endure and then bounces. You have to be smart to outmaneuver a man like Adam. Which is why I’m confident I can do it. But this woman’s doing it too.
“Then I’m taking you back to my place,” I tell her, my voice gravelly.
“I don’t know.” She reaches careful fingers up to touch her bruised eye. “Maybe I should just go to the police.”
I scoff at her. “You think that’ll help?”
Exhaustion seeps out of her as she sighs, her head falling back against the headrest. “At this point, I’m too tired to care.”
“Well, I can tell you right now that it won’t help.”
She straightens her head on her neck, hitting me with a glazed-over glare. “And why’s that?”
I can’t tell her the full truth. That the man she’s running away from has cops on his payroll. That I know the man she’s running away from because I’m working for him too. That I’m supposed to be the one taking her back to him right now—so who the fuck else is looking for her?
No, I can’t do all of that. So I settle for what I can tell her. What
I know to be true, even if I don’t want to admit it. It has to be said so I can control this situation. Of course that’s not the only reason, but it’s the one that’ll make me sleep better at night.
I tell her, “Because you’re better off with me.”
8
Willow
I’m not sure how much I believe those words, but they’re all I have. I literally have nothing else to go on anymore, but someone is after me. I’ve known it all along, but the proof of it staring me in the face is more than I can take.
So I agree with him.
He has no idea what he’s in for with me, but two heads are better than one in my situation. And this man has more brutal strength than I do. I’ve experienced it, and I wouldn’t want to be on that same end of it if it got any worse.
Though a tingling in my belly at the thought of it disagrees.
I huff out a breath as I get out of the car at this man’s home. I didn’t pay attention on the way back to the motel, but it looks different during the day. Cute, almost. That doesn’t fit this guy at all, but I like the contrast. How normal it feels. Safe, even. We’re so far from civilization that we’ll see anything coming before it gets here. That’s assuming whoever Adam sent finds me. They found my hideout easily enough, but did they trace me back here?
Time will tell.
Inside, he closes the door and engages the lock. He didn’t do that last night when we got here, but he probably didn’t think trouble was going to follow us home.
“Come on,” he says, heading for the wooden stairs. “We’ll put your stuff up here.”
But my feet are frozen at the bottom step.
When he’s halfway up, he pauses and turns his upper body. With his hand on the rail, he gestures with his head. “Are you coming?”
Well, no. It seems I’m not. Then a small voice in the back of my head says, Did you last night? in response to his question. Like that’s what I need to be thinking about. I should be focusing on the fact that the last time I trusted a man, I ended up mutilated and on the run. Trusting yet another one shouldn’t be high on my priority list, but it seems I have no other choice. I’ve been trusting myself to get away for the last few days, yet someone almost caught me.