Beyond The Lies

by Abbi Cook

  From there, I can’t stop myself from wondering what happened when he went back to his boss’s office afterward. Did they all congratulate him for being a big man who could force a terrified woman to give him a blow job? I imagine them all slapping him on the back for his grand achievement as he stood there grinning with pride.

  Big man on campus.

  My hate surges inside me, making my stomach feel like it’s going to purge my hamburger and fries. No, don’t do that. I don’t want to be hungry again, and I don’t know when or if I’ll have the chance to eat.

  “I fucking hate him,” I mumble to myself before pushing away the plate with the remaining handful of fries still left.

  My belly full, at least I can be happy about one thing. While I’m still being held hostage by a monster, I’m not hungry anymore.

  That attempt at seeing the brighter side of the worst thing that’s ever happened to me succeeds for about thirty seconds before I go back to feeling nothing but pure hate. Closing my eyes, I let myself fantasize about killing him. If I thought I could break a glass without him hearing it, I’d wait until he’s asleep and sneak into his room to slit his throat. No, I don’t have a way to escape this place, but at least he’d be dead.

  After today, I’ll take not being hungry and him paying for what he did, even if it means I suffer the consequences. I’ve never killed anyone or anything, though. I don’t know if I’m even capable of that.

  I read somewhere that hate makes everything impossible. Whoever said that was wrong. Hate makes one thing possible.

  Hurting the one who hurt you.

  Hate makes that more than possible. It makes it necessary.

  Chapter Ten

  King

  A stupid show about cops or some group of special agents plays on the TV in front of me, but try as I might, I can’t get into it. The one character talks like some kind of fucking teenage punk ass, making me want to throw my beer bottle at the screen.

  I know it’s nothing to do with him or any of the other characters that’s making me hate everything tonight. My problem sits a room away. Fucking woman! I should have just left her in the hands of that asshole that first night. Instead, I had to pull the whole white knight act and when I don’t have a choice but to do something like what I had to this morning, suddenly I’m the bad guy equal to the likes of Tap.

  Fuck all of them. I should have known she wouldn’t understand why I did what I did. Maybe she would prefer to be holed up with Tap in his place. I doubt she’d get to sleep on his couch or have the chance to eat dinner he made her. She’d be lucky if she didn’t get tied to the fucking wall in his filthy bathroom with the added bonus of being forced to sit in her own shit and piss.

  She has no idea how bad it would be for her if Tap had gotten his hands on her. I’ve seen that guy beat a girl so badly we had to rush her to the hospital so she didn’t die. The motherfucker basically caved her skull in. He gets off on hurting women and likes to brag about how many he’s raped. Sophie wouldn’t fare any better with him.

  My mind snaps out of its haze about Sophie as the teenage asshole on the TV says something ridiculous to make himself sound like a badass. Stupid show.

  While I search the blanket and sheets for the remote, I can’t help but wonder why she can’t see that I did that this morning to protect her. As if anyone would want to put on his own personal sex show for a bunch of guys. Like I’m some goddamned porn star.

  The look of complete disgust on her face when she said she’d been sick all morning after what happened refuses to leave my brain. After I came in her mouth, she puked. I made her physically sick.

  I run my hand through my hair and wince as my stomach churns. I’ll be lucky if I don’t puke up that whole hamburger from dinner if I don’t stop thinking about this.

  A noise from the living room catches my attention, and I hear her footsteps as she walks across the floor before closing the door to the bathroom. Is she taking a shower? I listen for the sound of water running but hear nothing.

  Why the fuck do I care what the hell she’s doing?

  A few minutes pass as I stew over how much I hate this whole goddamned situation, and suddenly, I sit up in bed. Can she use anything in the bathroom to hurt herself or come at me to hurt me? I mentally run through everything I can remember I have in there. No razor blades since I ran out a few days ago. No scissors. No glass. All the glasses are in the kitchen.

  Then I look over on the nightstand for the painkillers for my leg. Fuck! They’re gone.

  I race through the apartment to the bathroom and grab the doorknob. She locked it.

  “Sophie! Open this door!”

  She doesn’t answer. I press my ear to the door to hear what she’s doing, but there’s nothing. Silence.

  Did she escape out of the window? We’re on the second floor. She’d break her neck climbing down to the ground.

  I bang my fist against the door as my mind races about what she’s up to in there. Did she OD on the painkillers?

  “Sophie, open this fucking door! Now!” I bellow.

  But still she doesn’t answer.

  Fuck! Dreading I’m going to find her lifeless body in God knows what shape, I kick the door down and stumble in, crashing onto the floor. Stunned, I look up and see her sitting in the bathtub. She’s hunched over clutching her knees to her chest and staring at me with pure hate in her eyes.

  My heart struggles to stop racing, but the way she looks at me makes it skip a beat. Never before has anyone glared at me like that.

  “Sophie.”

  She doesn’t answer and turns her head, dismissing me.

  “Are you okay? Did you take something?”

  I impatiently wait for her to answer, trying to see if she’s breathing normally by watching her body. Finally, after so long I wonder if she ever intends on answering me, she turns to look at me again. Now the hate in her eyes is gone, replaced by sadness that makes my chest ache.

  In a small voice, she answers me. “I didn’t take your pills, if that’s what you mean. Leave me alone.”

  “I didn’t see the bottle on the nightstand and thought…”

  Her eyes narrow as I let my words fall silent. “You thought I’d swallowed the rest of them. I put the bottle in your drawer when you fell asleep last night because I kept knocking it off the nightstand and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  She doesn’t say it, but in her eyes I see she’s thinking, “And a lot of good being nice to you did for me, you fucker.”

  I don’t know what to say. I stand there staring at her sitting in the tub and want to make her understand why I did what I did, but nothing I think to say sounds right.

  Avoiding meeting her gaze, I finally mumble, “I wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt.”

  My concern falls flat, and she doesn’t answer, so I walk out, leaving the door ajar, and head back to my room. The problem is even knowing she didn’t OD can’t make me stop thinking about how sad she looked and how I felt inside when I saw her sitting there in the tub looking so pathetic.

  For a half hour, I listen to hear her footsteps as she walks back to the couch, but she doesn’t leave the bathroom. I should just let her stay there, but I can’t.

  I don’t know why. I just can’t.

  When I return to the bathroom, she’s still sitting in the tub, so I reach in to lift her out and I’m startled at how ice cold the water is. Hooking my arm under her legs and my other arm around her back, I pick her up as she protests.

  “Put me down. I don’t want you touching me. I hate you,” she says in a sad voice.

  I ignore her and brace myself for her hand to connect with my face while I carry her through the living room. “You can hate me out here. You can’t spend the night in the bathtub.”

  She looks at me in confusion as I march past the couch on my way to my room. I place her on the bed and then open the nightstand drawer to take out the bottle of painkillers.

  “I don’t want to kill myself,” she
growls as she scrambles to cover herself with the sheet.

  “Then this won’t be a problem then.” As I stuff the bottle into my pocket, I add, “You can sleep in the bed tonight.”

  “No. I don’t want to. I don’t want to be anywhere near you,” she snaps, glaring up at me again.

  “Well, then you’re in luck because I’ll be on the couch.”

  “This bed smells like you,” she says, practically spitting the words out in disgust.

  “Then change the sheets,” I answer sharply and point over toward my left. “Bottom drawer of the dresser the TV’s on.”

  She mumbles something as I’m leaving the room, but I don’t hear it and don’t ask her to repeat it. I’m tired of fighting with her.

  A few minutes later, I settle in on the couch and wish I had decided when I moved into this place to put the TV out here. Sitting alone in the darkness isn’t exactly my thing. Leaning back, I stretch out and close my eyes as all the objects in the apartment Sophie can use to attack me run through my mind.

  Knives in the kitchen drawer. Cast iron pots in the cabinets. Those scissors I worried about before that I keep near the silverware.

  Thank God I’m a light sleeper.

  Memories of how she looked this morning on her knees in front of me with my cock in her mouth swim around in my brain, making sleep impossible. I had to do that. There was no other choice. If I didn’t make my claim irrevocable like that, Tap would spend every minute of the time she’s here challenging me for her.

  How can she not see that?

  My cock gets hard as the memory loops through my head, the most pleasure I’ve let myself enjoy in ages. In truth, thinking about it gives me more than the actual act, which was nothing more than one man enforcing his power over another. Nothing about that came anywhere near sexy.

  I had no choice. Even if she never understands, it doesn’t change that.

  After nearly an hour of thinking about her, I begin to drift off, exhausted from the events of this entire day. Just as I’m about to fall into sleep, I sense her next to me.

  My eyes fly open, and there she is standing next to the couch, staring at me with that look of defeat that made my chest hurt before in the bathroom. The dim light coming from the bedroom glints off the edge of the knife hanging by her side.

  “I prayed for my uncle and his men to come here today and kill all of you,” she says softly.

  “Maybe it will happen tomorrow. I don’t believe in God, but you never know.”

  All the while, I watch for her hand to move upwards and aim the knife at my heart. But she stands almost perfectly still just staring at me with the purest hurt I’ve ever seen in someone’s eyes.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she asks after a long silence.

  I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly, hoping with each second that the air from inside my lungs takes everything else from me and I can feel hollow instead of feeling like I’m swallowing all the hurt in her dark eyes. I can’t afford to let these emotions she brings out in me take me over.

  “I’m going to let you sleep in my bed and make sure Tap and the rest of them don’t get their hands on you.”

  My answer doesn’t change anything. She still has nothing but hurt in her eyes, and I still can’t get my emotions under control when it comes to her.

  “Why? Why are you doing any of that? You obviously think nothing more of me than they do after what you did this morning.”

  For the first time, I have an answer to her question. It makes no sense, but it’s the only answer I have. “Because you’re mine.”

  She screws her face into a look of confusion. “Yours? I’ll never forgive you for what you did, King.”

  “Then you’ll be unhappy, but you’ll still be mine.”

  I wait for her to respond to me, but she only glares at me for a moment longer before storming back to the bedroom. The door slams closed, leaving me alone in the dark with my thoughts about her once more.

  Closing my eyes, I let my memories of this morning come alive again, the vivid image of her staring up at me as I fed her my cock making me hard again. The feel of her soft lips against my skin as she took all of me into her mouth stirs something in me that’s lay dormant ever since I came to this place.

  That won’t be the last time her mouth is on me. Willing or not, I’ll have her as mine. Completely.

  Lost in the ecstasy of my memories, I glide my hand over my stomach to my cock and grip it in my hand. I don’t know why Sophie affects me like she does, and at this moment, I don’t fucking care. I want to feel something other than the usual emptiness that rules my days filled with hurting others for Duke and the need that’s become nearly constant since Sophie came into my world.

  A creaking noise from the floor tears me out of my fantasy, and a second later, I open my eyes and see the flash of her knife in front of me as she takes her first swipe at me. She doesn’t know how to wield a weapon, even a kitchen knife, and misses me completely.

  I won’t give her another chance to hit her mark.

  Grabbing her wrists, I squeeze her right arm tightly and she cries out in agony. The knife falls, and the blade hits with a clank off the wood floor. Left without her weapon, she tries to pull her arms from my hold, but it’s no use.

  Now she’s pissed me off.

  “You wanted to play, little girl. Let’s play.”

  “Let go of me! You’re hurting me!”

  I pull her down on top of me so her pussy is pressing against my still-hard cock. She squirms in an attempt to get away from me, but it only makes me more excited.

  “Feel that? You keep struggling, you’re going to make me come for a second time today,” I say with a chuckle.

  “Fuck you!” she screams before spitting in my face.

  It drips down my cheek as I stare up at her in surprise. I knew she was feisty, but I didn’t expect that kind of bravery. Good. I like strong women.

  “Little girl, I’m in the mood for playing, but if you want it rough, I can oblige you that too.”

  Her eyes flash rage as she shakes her head above me and tries to yank her hands free from mine. “You’re a pig! I hate you!”

  Lifting my hips, I press my cock to the front of her shorts and feel she’s wet. So she doesn’t hate me as much as she claims. Good.

  “Your mouth says you hate me, but I can feel how wet this has made you. You can’t wait to feel those sterling silver studs on my cock when I fuck you, can you?”

  She tugs her arms, but she can’t get away just yet. Frustrated, she whines, “I do hate you! I want nothing to do with you.”

  I look down my body and see her breasts pressed to my chest. I can feel how hard her nipples are, another clue that she’s lying.

  “You don’t hate me, but that’s okay. I’m not against a hate fuck from time to time. I bet you’ll be a scratcher, raking those fingernails down my back, while I pound into you.”

  Sophie spits at me again and tries to maneuver her hand so she can scratch my face, but even though she has the better position, she’s no match for me, even in her supposed rage.

  “I won’t let you do that to me. We’re not surrounded by those all those bastards with guns now. It’s just you and me here, and I’ll fight you until either you die or I do,” she snaps.

  Her threat only serves to arouse me more, and I flip her over onto her back, taking away the last shred of any advantage she may have had. Pressing her hands above her head, I watch as she struggles against my hold, enjoying the fire in her.

  My hard cock juts out of my shorts, the only remnant from those moments a few minutes before when I fantasized about how good she felt sucking me off. Looking down into her eyes, I smile.

  “You caught me in a compromising position, little one. I normally wouldn’t be whipping my cock out right before a woman comes at me to slit my throat. Not that you could. You’re not very good with knives.”

  Something about what I say takes all the fight out of her, and
I feel her resistance against my hold ebb away. I doubt she’s willing to give in, so I stay on alert for whatever she plans to spring on me next. She may not be much of a fighter, but she’s brave and smart.

  “I’m never going to stop trying to kill you,” she says softly, her gaze fixed on my face with an intensity that surprises me.

  “You can try, but I’m the least of your concerns in this place. Someday, you’ll see that.”

  Sophia shakes her head, and with a frown, says, “I’ll never see you as anyone but the person you are. You’re a villain just like all those scumbags who watched you act like a big man this morning. I bet they were proud of you, weren’t they? Did they make you King Dick for today?”

  I know she’s serious, but the way she phrases that makes me laugh in her face. “I think I’m always able to claim that name. Or at least part of me is.”

  My amusement at something so serious to her upsets her, and she catches me off guard, yanking her wrist from my hold. A split second later, she slaps her hand against my cheek hard, stinging my skin. Instinctively, I pull my arm back and curl my fingers into a tight fist.

  But the threat of my hitting her doesn’t upset Sophie. She’s tougher than that.

  “Nice. You start the morning off forcing a woman to suck your cock and then you end your day by punching her,” she says with as much disgust as she can muster. “You’re a real Prince Charming, King.”

  My arm shakes as I hold my fist back, ready to let it fly. I don’t want to hit this woman. Why does she insist on pushing her luck?

  Chapter Eleven

  Sophie

  Even as I wait for the inevitable pain that will come from King’s fist slamming into my face, I can’t stop myself from wishing this morning hadn’t happened between us. Being in a place filled with people who terrify me, I liked believing at least he might protect me.

  How can I think that now?