Strange.
Numbness settled over me where I expected horror. He felt foreign, but meaningless. As his cock moved in and out with a monotony no one liked, as he grunted and slapped his hips to mine, I wasn’t scared anymore. I wasn’t afraid of him or mortified by what he was doing. Something new washed over me.
He was pathetic. Not me. Not me and Theo and all we shared. What Rafael was doing to my body now meant nothing. It burned my pussy, my skin and bones, but not my mind, not anymore. I almost laughed.
I braced myself on all fours like a dog and took it. Cleared my throat. Showed him out unaffected I was. I stopped fighting it and waited him out. There would be an after this; I just had to make it through the now.
Hi anger was evident in the way the slap of his hips changed. He was striving to hurt me, to get a rise out of me.
“You fucking bitch, you need to suffer,” he growled, trying to shove me back down to my belly. I resisted a little, but he was so much stronger, so I was down in seconds. “I want your tears, your fear, your nightmares,” he said, punctuating each desire with a slam of his hips against mine.
But I just didn’t… feel anything.
“Cry for me, bitch!” he shouted, his fingers dug deeper into the wound on my thigh, so deep I felt them wriggling around under my skin. He slapped the back of my skull, and I held in the agony. “Cry! Scream! Beg, you little whore!”
He punched my head, my vision whitening. I gasped, but only a tiny one, then I attempted to get back on all fours, present my body for the torture he craved. He punched the back of my head again, so hard this time my skull whipped forward and my neck pranged in sharp pain. Black spots crowded my vision, but I tried to blink them away. I wasn’t caving in. Not this time.
He wasn’t having my mind again. It wasn’t his to claim. Not my soul. No matter what he did to my body, he didn’t have me anymore.
Rafael groaned, “Yes, baby, you stupid fucking slut of a wife, barren bitch, clench with fear like I need.” This time when he hit me, his fist landed on the side of my face, making my ear ring and my vision wobble again. The next time he punched me on the side of my face, it sent me to unconsciousness.
As the world swam back into focus, I tried to adjust my body, rub at the throbbing pain on my forehead. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t see a damned thing. There was only smell and touch. My nose wrinkled when bitter metal flooded it.
I sighed. I was so fed up with waking up somewhere unsafe, somewhere I didn’t recognize, that it made me scream out in anger. In the impotence of not having control of my body, my world. My cry was hoarse, my throat sore and rough, the sound petering out slow and raspy.
Wherever I was, it was tight, like an upright coffin, the walls surrounding so close to me I could only shuffle a little in any direction. A cupboard maybe, or something like it, with only enough space for my body to remain stuck still. I tried to move, to stand. I had my knees tucked up under my chin and my arms limp at my side. It was impossible.
The most hideous stench filled the space too, perhaps from me, I didn’t know how long I’d been left in here, covered in dried blood from various sources. Probably Rafe’s sweat and cum, too. But it was worse than an unwashed body; it smelled like iron and rot. I tested the boundaries of how far my hand would reach out. My right one didn’t make it past my shoulder; the wall was inches away. My left however, when I moved it, hit something soft and wet. Cold. Clammy.
I screamed and jumped, my shoulder slamming into the wood, making whatever I was in rattle and shake. My shriek reverberated around the small space, ringing in my head. It was… something was in here with me. Something alive. Or something that was once alive. I gulped. Not Theo, please not Theo…
A light shone. So bright and harsh and sudden, it made me wince, see only white after the black.
“It’s Les,” Rafe said, looking down at me through a row of bars. The relief that rocketed through me was immense, flooding adrenaline and emotion to make me shake.
I glared up. I wasn’t completely enclosed; bars lined the top of the space — a box, by the looks of it, made for this exact purpose. My heart was in my throat, trying to shove away the hopelessness of this.
I refused to look to my left and see what was in here with me. Rafe smiled. “He’s going to rot in here with you. I hope you like it. Gabe told me you took a few chunks out of him with your teeth.” He moved the torch around so it flashed over my eyes. “I don’t think he’ll be edible for much longer.”
“Fuck you,” I said, my voice weaker than I wanted, thin and raspy.
Rafe laughed again. “No, wife. You’re going to die in here, and then I’m claiming a different Lewis sister. I haven’t decided which one yet, though.” He leaned on the bars with his forearms, looking way too casual, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn away. If I looked away from him, I’d see Les’s eyeless sockets staring at me, or the blackness of the wall that would only show my future. Nothing.
“Do I claim the one who’s so desperate to take your place?” Rafe mused. “Or the one who doesn’t want it? The fight was so fuckingfun.”He made a hideous groaning noise, like he was reminiscing and getting aroused. “But very fucking irritating at times. Who would you choose?”
I shook my head, bile stinging the back of my throat.
Then he shrugged and straightened up, falling into shadow. “I guess we’ll find out together. Or maybe you’ll never know.”
I heard his footsteps leave as the light blinked out, then I was alone in the pitch black. The body beside me held no heat, no life at all.
When I breathed in, I could smell it. When I moved, my limbs brushed against cold, clammy skin. It was with the deepest despair that I let myself sink away.
This was beyond me.
Rafe won.
Twenty-Nine
