Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
She paused, stared at her finger drawing, then began again.
“I told her I was. I mean, the excited part. And she said that just proved the whole thing and I had to try it. So I’d know. So I could figure it out from there. She helped me raise the money, ’cause it costs a lot, and we got online, and we did the whole thing. I think, you know, it took so long for it to happen, I thought they just took our money, and it was all bullshit.”
Another pause.
More drawing.
The next, she was whispering.
“And then, it happened.”
This pause lasted so long, Rus had to say, “What happened, Shannon?”
Keeping her head lowered, she lifted only her eyes to him, and said, “I paid for them to rape me.”
Rus’s stomach turned over, and he immediately felt sick.
Stranger danger.
She looked back at her finger, which never stopped moving.
“It wasn’t what I paid for,” she said. “I had a safe word, but he taped my mouth so I couldn’t say it, which I would have, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t pay for that tape, no way, because I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, and I wanted to be able to tell him to stop. So…so…”
She went silent and it was Polly who said, “Take your time, Shannon.”
Shannon moved in her chair, side to side, like it was a cushion she could get deeper into.
Then she said, “And I didn’t want two of them there. And not a woman. No offense to lesbians, but I’m not gay.”
Two of them.
Fucking hell, two of them.
“Are you reporting a crime, Shannon?” Rus asked, and he was pissed with himself because he wasn’t able to take the strain out of his voice.
Again with the looking under her brow at him.
“No. I paid for it. I just, you know, heard you were looking for a guy named Ezra, and she didn’t touch me. He did. But she called the shots. She told him what to do. And he touched me. And it was worse than what those boys did. Rougher. Mean. I paid to be raped because I would, they would…they’d rub me and put their mouths on me and make me, you know.”
“We know,” Rus said quietly.
“So I paid to be raped because my friend thought maybe that was how I’d like it now, and she was right. When he showed, I got excited. But then she pushed him to hurt me, and he was into it, so he hurt me. She pushed him more, and I could hear her doing things to him if he didn’t do it fast enough or hard enough or whatever. I heard, you know, like a fly swatter. And he’d jump. And moan or shit. And he took me like…back there, and those boys never did that, and like, regular too, and she kept pushing him to do it harder and smack me around. And…”
She dropped her head further, stopped drawing with her finger, put her hand in her lap, and finished it.
“And then it was done. I was fucked up when they left. Bleeding and shit. So no, you know, I’ll never pay someone to do that to me again. But I did pay. I consented. I just thought you should know, she called him Ezra.”
Rus stopped himself from getting up and throwing his chair across the room, but only barely.
He then kicked Moran’s boot under the table when he saw his face reflecting that same need.
When he had control, he asked Shannon, “Did you see her?”
Shannon shook her head. “No. It was dark. I was instructed to keep my window unlocked so they could get in, if that’s what they decided to do when they came for me. They came in while I was sleeping. He was on me before I knew they were in my place. It was dark. I heard her, never saw her.”
“Okay, can you give us the website where you found them?”
A mini-shrug and, “Sure.”
“It was important you came to talk to us,” he assured her. “I know that was hard, but it’s been very helpful.”
She lifted her chin to look right at him and asked outright, “With that girl, in the motel, they went too far, didn’t they?”
“We don’t know,” Rus told her. “But maybe.”
“He got off on it,” she bit out. “Like big time. It was sick.”
Yes, he got off on it.
Because the thing that was missing with Thea was the thing she’d never think to try with him or refer him out to someone else to do.
What he needed was to be told to hurt someone else.
That was his kink.
That was what he was missing.
He wasn’t big on the pain, but he was big on inflicting it, and bigger on being ordered to do it.
That was what they did in the motel room.