Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
I’ll never voice that, however. A punishment seems more fitting where she’s concerned.
My shower is quick, and I do my best to ignore the swirl in my stomach when I walk out of the bathroom and she isn’t taking up space in my motel room.
Dinner is up next, and because I refuse to use any form of credit, it means I have to leave the room to find something to eat. After being sequestered to the truck all day, I walk the handful of blocks to the nearest fast-food chain.
I keep my head down but eyes open. I may be in the city that I live, but it would be foolish to think I’m safe here. With the Mexican border less than twenty miles away, everyone in town has to be aware of their surroundings. I’m less likely to end up victimized by anyone than, say, a woman would be, but there are always idiots who want to press their luck.
It takes ten minutes longer than it should to get my food, but letting teenagers run businesses seem to be the norm these days.
I know she’s back before I even step inside the motel room.
This woman left the door cracked, uncaring if someone other than me stepped inside with her.
I have no idea why I want to shake her until her brain gets back online when I step inside to discover she’s not only inside, but in the shower and completely vulnerable to any person with the hint of evil inside of them.
Chapter 18
Lauren
I don’t know what’s real and what’s just another way for my mind to fuck with me.
My memories have never been a fluid thing.
I don’t know if my head made things up when I was younger to protect me from what was really going on around me, or if the things I “remember” actually happened.
It’s a weird thing to not be able to trust your own mind.
As I shower, I have no fucking clue if he made confessions last night or if I dreamed of him doing so.
I can’t ask. It opens the door for him to talk about my history, and that’s the very last thing I want happening.
I have no idea why I came back to him. I could easily argue that using his motel room saves me money, but I’ve banked nearly every check I’ve ever gotten while working for the Bureau. You don’t need much when you’re always on assignment. I stopped leasing apartments because you can’t exactly press the pause button while caged in South America because your lease is up.
Money isn’t an issue, and even if it was, it would be less concerning than why I’m right back where I said I never wanted to be.
Angel scares me and not just in the physical sense. There’s something about him that keeps drawing me in. No matter how much time I spend with him, no matter how many times he hurts me, I still want to be close to him.
He’s not safe. There’s not an ounce of security I feel around him. Yet, here I am, using the already opened bar of motel soap that he used before leaving the room like it’s my fucking right to do so.
I feel his presence in the room as I rinse soap from my hair, closing my eyes when the suds drift into them.
I expect him to be angry, to tell me to get the fuck out of his room.
What I don’t expect is for him to reach behind the flimsy shower curtain and drag me from under the stream by the hair.
If anyone with a lick of sense saw me right now, they’d question my insanity. They’d demand to know why, as my feet are flailing, trying to find purchase, there’s a smile on my face and a laugh threatening to bubble out of my throat.
I used to be that person.
I was once an FBI agent that would cry when others were being hurt. Seeing women, honest to God, getting abused used to make me cringe.
It made me so angry.
Then it made me wish I were them. I didn’t know their stories or how they ended up captured and sold into sexual slavery. There’s no level of you should’ve seen how she was dressed or she was begging for it that could explain a man thinking he had the right to just snatch someone off the street and own her.
Deep inside of me, I knew I deserved it. I wanted to take that pain from them. I wanted to swim in it, wanted it to leave marks on my skin. The physical discomfort helped keep all the internal shit at bay. It made living just a little easier, and if those men should cross that line, then all the pain would be gone forever. It’s good to have end goals. The aches and pains leading up to it are just a bonus as far as I’m concerned.