Total pages in book: 41
Estimated words: 37896 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37896 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
“What the hell are you doing?” I croaked.
“The only thing I know how to do, Scar,” he replied, his voice raw. “I fucked up, and you paid the price for it. You’ll never know how sorry I am, but I won’t let you do this. You will not blame yourself.” His voice was carefully restrained, but I had a feeling he’d be shouting at me if I didn’t look so pitiful at the moment. “And you will not delude yourself into thinking those sick fucks could get anywhere close to your soul. Got it?”
“He didn’t get close to it. I fucking threw it down at his feet!” I screamed. It was a mistake. I knew it the moment the words were out.
I struggled to get free despite the pain in my ribs. Pain was something I’d grown well-accustomed to over the past couple of months. He didn’t stop me this time, but I almost wished he had when I surged to my feet and the room spun wildly around me. I reached for the wall to stay upright. He was on his feet in a flash, but I swerved out of his reach when he stretched his arms toward me.
“Don’t touch me. You can’t want to touch me,” I croaked.
Pain flashed through his eyes, and it tore through my heart. I didn’t want to hurt him. I loved him. But that’s why he had to stop this. I wasn’t the girl he cared about. That girl had died in hell, and a depraved whore had taken her place.
So, I took a deep breath and told the biggest lie of my life, “I want you to leave.”
He jolted as if I’d struck him, god damn it.
“No.”
Why did everyone else get to say no? Why was I the only one who had absolutely no fucking say? “No? What I want doesn’t matter? Should I get down on my knees like a good, little slave now? Is that what my master wants?”
He paled, but he didn’t budge. “If I thought me leaving is what you really wanted, Scar, I’d be gone. Maybe it’s even what you should want, but you don’t. You’re hurting and you’re confused.”
He’d known me so well, right from the very beginning, but he was wrong this time. I wasn’t confused. I knew what I was, what I’d become in that dungeon, and I knew he deserved better. But it looked like the only way to convince him of that was to lay it out for him. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see the disgusted look on his face when he knew the truth. It was all I had left—his belief that I was inherently good, but life was going to take that from me too.
I crumpled to the ground. It suddenly took too much effort to stand. At least down here on the shower floor, I wouldn’t have to see his face.
“I’m a whore, Derek. That’s why I want you to leave.”
“You’re not a whore, Scar,” he said, crouching down in front of me.
“Sometimes he hurt me, but other times, he’d touch me and my body would respond. I couldn’t stop it. God knows I tried, but it didn’t matter. Do you understand now? Are you satisfied?”
“He made you orgasm, and you think it’s your fault,” he said matter-of-factly, though I could see the way his hands were clenched so tight his knuckles had turned white.
“Of course it’s my fault! What respectable woman would have…”
“Every one of them, Scar,” he cut me off with vehemence. He ran a hand through his wet hair. “To turn your body against you, it’s the most powerful tool in a trainer’s arsenal. It wasn’t your fault, and there’s nothing wrong with you.”
He spoke with so much conviction, I wanted to believe him. He knew what he was talking about. How many girls had he…oh god, I couldn’t think about that. Yet, I couldn’t not. “How many times…”
“It wasn’t the same. The girls I…trained, most of them had chosen it or been talked into it. To provide for their families, to escape poverty. You were the first girl I’d ever taken completely against her will. I’m sorry, Scar. If I’d never done that, none of this would ever have happened to you. This is my fault. Not yours.”
I didn’t struggle out of his embrace this time when he wrapped his arms around me. He may have been the one holding me, but it seemed he needed it, maybe as much as I did.
But now I was even more confused than I’d been before, and the pain medicine was making it impossible to sort through my fuzzy head. Was he right? Would any woman’s body betray them like mine had? Would Derek say anything to overcome my resistance or was it the truth? Maybe he was repulsed by me even now but felt guilty and needed to see me recovered before he made a beeline for the exit. Oh hell, there were no answers in my cotton-filled head.