Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 101988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 510(@200wpm)___ 408(@250wpm)___ 340(@300wpm)
Ily stiffened and eased her way around the table.
“Four.”
His countdown reminded me of a previous one where he got me drunk and held a gun to her head.
“Three.”
I’d snapped then.
Ily snapped now.
With a shaky breath, she bolted.
“Two.” Victor watched her go.
“One.” He fired a round into the storm, the bullet chasing after Ily as the wind swallowed her up and thunder boomed.
Chapter Thirteen
………………………….
Ily
I RAN BLIND AND DEAF.
Water poured from the sky; thunder did its best to puncture my eardrums.
My ass ached from the bruises Henri decorated me with, and the cuts from a few days ago reached the itchy stage of healing, twinging as I galloped barefoot over soft, springy grass.
The lacy crystal-studded bra offered no support, and the G-string was as wet as the world around me, thanks to the orgasm still echoing in my blood.
I came.
He didn’t—
God, don’t think about it.
I balled my hands and ran harder, desperate to flee from what I’d done.
But I couldn’t outrun the truth, no matter how fast my feet flew.
The truth that every moment I spent with Henri, the deeper into infernal damnation I fell.
I’d hoped taking back what these men tried to claim would be self-empowering, enlightening.
And it was…
In an awful, horrible kind of way.
It showed me truths about myself I never wanted to face.
Truths of darkness and wrongness and sin.
Everything was black inside me.
Tangled inside me.
I cringed as I kept running.
All my life, I thought I was normal. Normal when it came to sex and love.
I enjoyed a kiss and a cuddle.
Sex in a bed and the occasional experience in the back seat of a car.
I rarely self-pleasured, and if I did…my fantasies stuck to nice men, nice touches, nice—
I’m nice.
I am.
But if I liked nice things and swore I was a nice girl, then how the hell could I be so sensitive, so wet, so violently thirsty for more.
Stop it.
You’re confused.
You’re hurting and lost and desperate.
Yes.
Desperate.
I was desperate.
So, so desperate.
To leave.
To run.
To go home.
Yet somehow that desperation had twisted into something sick. A sickness that turned me…how did Victor put it? Sweet but psychotic?
God, am I the crazy one?
Would I destroy myself before I stood a chance at destroying him?
God, him.
Damn him.
Smite him.
I hated that my soul shivered whenever Henri spoke.
I despised that my body turned molten the moment he touched me.
Soft or hard. Gentle or abusive.
It didn’t damn well matter.
And it mattered.
It mattered so, so much because how could I betray myself in that way?
How could I twitch with the undying rage to kill every Master in here? How could I say such nasty things, even if they were true? How could I do such nasty things…especially with a man I hated.
I-I put his finger inside me.
My stomach flipped, remembering the way he’d swiped his dinner to the floor and made me his main meal instead. The show of possession. The rage of someone equally unhinged.
I’d practically started coming the moment he’d entered me.
Stop it, Il.
Just…no more.
You’re fighting with anything and everything you have. That’s all. Your body is a weapon. Your heart is a knife. Use them. Use them until they’re dead.
My toes dug deeper.
I hurtled forward.
Swiping rain from my eyes, I did my best to see where I was going.
Uplights twinkled on manicured animal hedges. Fountains babbled and fairy lights swayed in the wild wind.
Despite the churning clouds above, the horizon glowed a faint pearl as if the moon did its best to slip beneath the wet violence, beckoning me to climb the stronghold walls, swim through the moat, and hurl myself off the cliff.
Masculine laughter came from my left, followed by a feminine scream.
My feet immediately switched directions, running away from them despite my heart breaking for the poor jewel who’d just been caught.
Lightning forked above me like a morbid, murderous firework.
I hunched, waiting.
BOOM.
The answering thunder threatened to stop my breaking heart as I darted over the sweeping lawns and toward a part of the estate housing fruit trees and a giant maze.
No way in hell would I go in the maze.
I wasn’t stupid enough to get lost and molested, but I did race into the grove of leaves, searching for a place to hide.
An hour.
The game would only last an hour.
If I could hide for that long, then I could ask Henri—as nicely as I could with my newly venom-coated tongue—if I could spend the night with the jewels.
Spending the afternoon alone hadn’t been my plan.
I’d hoped at least Peter would’ve been in the showers or dorm. I needed to talk to someone. To ask if this was normal. To purge myself with confession so these awful, sickening secrets didn’t eat me alive.
Instead, I’d spent the precious couple of hours I had in the vault, doing my best to distract myself with necklaces and gemstones because each time I brushed my body, all I could think about was him.