Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“No.”
And because she didn’t quite know what to do in such a situation, Marcia simply acceded to her grandson’s wish. If she were to be honest, she was relieved that it was so. What could one say when it was her own son who had abused her grandson?
Years passed. The boy became a man, and memories of that night gradually blurred until they had been reduced into a distant fragment. By the time Marcus Ravelli was sixteen years old, he had already convinced himself he had made it all up – a childish attempt to get his parents to take notice of him.
But nothing happened.
Nothing.
Nothing.
And yet, there were instances when the sixteen-year-old Marcus would feel a vile sense of darkness swelling inside of him.
When he lost his virginity—-
When he discovered the pleasure of holding a whip in his hands—-
When he realized he was attracted to a certain type of woman, one who thrived on pain—-
It was like a stain on his soul, but try as he might, Marcus couldn’t understand where it was coming from. He only knew that more and more of its essence was leaking into his blood, changing and tearing him into so many pieces that there were times he could no longer recognize himself.
He was a stranger to his own body, an unnamed monster under his own skin.
And he didn’t understand why it was so.
Every time he attempted to figure out why he felt so different, his head would hurt so damn hard it was like his skull was about to split open, and all he could remember was his father—-
Don’t you see you’re exactly like me?
It terrified him so that he would push the memory away, telling himself that he had only made it up.
Because nothing happened.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Time continued to march on. When Marcia asked her grandson if he was bothered about his parents’ continued lack of interest in his life, Marcus had only said, “No.”
And then they had looked at each other, both of them realizing that Marcus had spoken the truth – even when it wasn’t the answer he should have said. He was sent back to the therapy after that, and it was like walking back into a nightmare.
What do you think about your mother being in a relationship with different men since her divorce from your father?
Do you care about who your mother dates?
What do you think about your father’s current lifestyle?
Do you think it’s vulgar?
Do you aspire for the same thing?
Marcus had answered mechanically, all the while feeling his mind starting to break. Something about being in therapy made him want to remember—-
But it also made him want to forget...to keep forgetting.
It was like having his soul torn into two, and it was excruciating, so much so that Marcus found himself lying.
“Yes,” Marcus told his therapist. “It hurts me that my parents don’t care about me.” But this was a lie, and so would be the other things he’d say.
Yes, I want to reconnect with them.
Yes, I miss them.
Yes, I still love them.
He kept lying and lying, and it worked. The therapist promised he no longer needed to come back as long as he answered this one last question correctly.
“Are you attracted to the kind of lifestyle your father leads?”
Marcus didn’t even think about it. “No.” It was the obviously right thing to say, but it was also at that moment he realized he was lying.
And this was the second turning point in his life.
Since then, Marcus began carefully picking his partners, dating only girls whose darkness matched his. In their eyes, he saw their need for pain, and in his eyes, he knew they saw the need to dispense it.
He didn’t know why it was so.
He only knew it was that stain in his soul which was to blame.
More time passed, and Marcus never felt the temptation to stray beyond the lines he had drawn for himself. In his world, only two types of women existed: those he could hurt, and those he couldn’t.
But then Anneke came.
Anneke with her dark hair, blue eyes, and curves that he would die to run his hands over—-
The first time he had seen her, he had known two things:
He wanted to fuck her.
But he also couldn’t, because she was clearly the kind of girl he could never hurt.
And this became even more obvious when he heard Jaak mention her name, and he realized that this was the sister the de Konigh brothers had been telling him about every year. Not Fleur the mischief-maker, but Anneke the paragon—-
And he had wanted to fuck her even more after that.
THAT SUMMER WITH THE de Konighs turned out to be Marcus’ greatest challenge, with every second of his day an exercise of self-control and discipline. Everything about Anneke seemed frustratingly designed to conquer his every weakness, an angel who only turned into a temptress when she was with him.