Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 105065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 525(@200wpm)___ 420(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 525(@200wpm)___ 420(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)
I shake my head and mumble around the cloth in my mouth. This only pisses him off more. His hand comes down and presses my face flat against the countertop while he pulls my wrists back with his other arm. The position is uncomfortable, as it’s meant to be, but I don’t care.
I yield to him. This is a punishment fuck. He’s coming at me hard and fast now, yanking me around like a sex toy for his pleasure. I’ll take it. He has unconditional power over me. I deserve whatever he gives me. More than that, I want it. I want him so fucking much it hurts.
I manage to twist my neck a little under the weight of his bruising grip and peek up at him. I make eye contact and he uses his palm to shove my hair into my face, darkening my world again.
“I can’t even look at you,” he roars. “Fuck! Mack. What have ye done?”
He keeps fucking me, but he’s not enjoying himself. I can tell. He’s squeezing my waist with both hands now, barreling into me. His chest collapses against my back and he buries his face in my hair, inhaling.
“You’ve wrecked me, Mack,” he says. “You’ve fucking wrecked me.”
More tears spill over my eyes, and I try to apologize. It’s too muffled for him to understand. He releases my mouth, and I spit the cloth out.
“Goddammit.” He pulls out of me and spins me around, lifting me up so that my ass is hanging off the counter and I’m facing him. “I have to look at ye,” he grunts as he slides back into me. “I don’t want to. But I have to. You lying fucking…”
I reach up and yank his face to mine. For a second, he kisses me back, as if he’s forgotten. And then he bites me and pulls away. My lip is bleeding, and so is my throat. He smears the blood with his fingers before he wraps his hand around my neck.
“I should just do it now,” he says. “It was all an act to you. A fucking game.”
“No,” I protest weakly.
He slams into me at my denial. “Every word ye told me was a lie.”
“It wasn’t.”
He thrusts harder. So hard the counter creaks beneath me, threatening to snap from the force of his anger.
“Every goddamn word,” he yells.
I feel like I’m going to snap too. It isn’t the rough fuck. It’s his words. He keeps saying them over and over. I’m a liar. It meant nothing. I did this to him. I betrayed him. And it sends me over the mental edge.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I sob. “It wasn’t a fucking act! I’m in love with you Lachlan!”
He freezes mid-thrust, his eyes brutally cold as they examine me. I can’t look at him when he’s like this, so I bury my face against his chest. It doesn’t matter if he believes me. I told him. And I haven’t said those words to anybody in a very long time.
The world around us goes silent and still. He doesn’t move. I don’t either. I won’t look at him. After a while, he cups the back of my head and starts to move inside of me again. It’s nothing like before. This time he isn’t trying to hurt me, he’s trying to finish. The sounds that I love spill from his throat as he pulls me as close as he can get me.
He whispers something so low I can’t make it out, and then he comes with an agonized sigh. One last time. A sob wrenches from my throat when the realization washes over me.
When I open my eyes, he’s still inside of me. His eyes are plastered to my face, torn. I know what I should do. I should just ask him to do it. I want him to be the one to do it. I know he’ll be good to me. He won’t draw it out or torture me. He’d make it quick. But I also know it’d kill him to do it.
Maybe I could run. I could just leave and go somewhere else, far away. But I know there’s no chance of that happening.
In my heart, I already know it’s going to be him or me.
My eyes dart to the knife laying on the counter within reach, and before I can give it any thought, he grabs it and hands it to me. There’s nothing on his face. No anger. No emotion. Nothing. Because of me and what I did to him.
“Go on,” he says. “That’s probably the best solution, Mack. Because I sure as hell don’t want to use it on you.”
My lip quivers, and my hand starts to shake. Jesus, I’m really losing the plot here. There was never any question about it, I can’t hurt him. I’ve done enough of that already.
I pull the knife away and throw it across the room with a sob, and Lachlan crushes me against his chest.
“Goddamn you, Mack. I knew I should have avoided ye.”
“I know,” I whisper back. “Why didn’t you?”
His eyes grow dark, and instinctively I know I’m not going to like the next words out of his mouth.
“I had no choice in the matter. The Russians wanted to trade you for their rat. They want ye dead.”
“What?” I choke out. “Why do they want me dead?”
“Think about it, Mack.”
I swallow down nine years of pain and guilt as I reach into his eyes and pull out the answers for myself.
“You were going to give me to them, weren’t you?”
Lachlan scrubs his hands over his face and looks away. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck I was going to do with ye, Mack. It doesn’t matter now though, does it?”
My hands fall away from his shirt as I nod. It would have hurt less if he had stabbed me.
“Do you know who killed my father?” I ask quietly.
“Aye.”
I force my eyes to his even though it’s the last place I want to look. “You have to tell me.”