Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
I guess it gave me a little bit more boldness than it should have. Should have ever had. But I needed it. Needed the boldness.
I needed it for my sister.
“Please, sir,” I said, and his eyes burned mine, flashing with instinct. Like he knew what was coming.
Maybe he did know.
Maybe he’d known it all the time.
Maybe he’d been waiting. Poised for the time it would head in his direction. Poised for the time he could tear me down all over again.
I didn’t stop talking. I couldn’t stop talking.
“Please, sir, I know I shouldn’t mention it. I know I shouldn’t. But my sister. Please. If there is anything I can offer in exchange for making sure my sister is ok… to you, I mean… not offer for the viewers, because I’m already due to give everything to them…” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t face it. “What I mean is… for you, sir. Please. If I can offer anything to you in exchange for making sure my sister is ok… I’ll do anything.”
I wasn’t ready for the pounce. I’d never have been ready for the pounce. Not then. Not ever.
He was so strong as his body landed on mine. I squeaked like a scared little mouse as his hand pinned my wrists to the headboard and the other took my throat and pressed tight.
“What I demand is fucking obedience, little girl. You have nothing to offer me but fucking obedience. I take what I want, for sixty days. And what I want is a decent fucking fuck slut for my clients. A filthy fucking slut who does what she’s told in front of the cameras and realises she’s absolutely nothing to me when she’s not.”
He was angry. Really angry.
Scary and horrible and everything that made me shiver.
My heart pounded like a freight train. My breaths came out hissing.
It hurt.
Everything hurt.
Bruises. Tender skin. My head. My heart.
My fears were screaming for Phoebe. Screaming out to please a man who was a demon and nothing else.
I didn’t realise I was crying until his body rose enough that his knee pressed hard between my legs. That hurt too.
“You think you have any leverage over me?” he snarled. “You think you have anything worth shit to offer a man like me that’s seen fucking everything? Been offered fucking everything? Taken fucking everything?”
I couldn’t shake my head. His grip was too tight.
“The world is a dark place,” he continued. “It’s a shit hole of sin and pain and greed. People are cunts. Those who get furthest in this world are the biggest cunts of all. I’m one of the biggest cunts of all. I didn’t get to this position in life by fawning over slutty little offers in fucking bed at night.”
He was right. Right about greed. Right about the world. Right about those at the top of it.
I hated how right he was.
The angel on my shoulder was dead to me in that moment. My optimism for life come good shrivelled and faded as my eyes met his.
And then I saw it.
The pain.
Underneath the rage, and the spite, and the sadism. Underneath the control and the disgust. Underneath the power.
Pain.
He was hurting too. Deep.
Deep enough that it was nothing more than a shadow. A hint. A metallic taste under the beautiful musk of him.
The monster pulled away from my throat and I rasped in a breath. He kept his grip on my wrists but raised himself from my chest, his knee still tight between my legs as I gulped in air.
I should hate him. Part of me wanted to fight and lash out, telling him I was done with this sixty day filth and needed my sister, fuck whatever the consequences on the outside world because love is love and we’d make it through together. That somehow we’d make it through together.
But I didn’t say a word.
The tears kept coming as I looked up at him, and they weren’t just for me and Phoebe. They were for him too. They were for the vileness of the world that had made a man such a dark god as this one.
It was sad. Sad that he had the potential to be so much, since he was so strong and powerful. He’d been such a beacon of light to me in that alleyway of scum when I’d needed a saviour. He’d been a greater saviour than anyone I’d ever known.
He could have been whatever he wanted to be in this world. So much good to so many people. So much good to himself.
Yet here he was. And here I was. Both of us playing in the depths of seedy cash to pick up whatever rewards we could.
I blinked a fresh round of tears as he glared down at me, and that’s when I knew it. When I felt it for the first time in the heart of me.