“Is that what you want, Kash? To know how pathetic I was?”
“You were never pathetic,” he growls. “You were trying to survive.”
“Survive?” I snort. “I wanted to die, Kash.”
He glares at me, and I step into him.
“My first week at Dollhouse, a guard came into my cell at night, and I knew what he wanted.” I lick my lips. “What every man I had ever met wanted from me—my body.” I wrap my arms around myself. “When I didn’t willingly give him what he wanted, he took it.”
He runs a hand down his face.
“The next night he came back.” I sniff. “I refused to let it happen again, so I did the only thing I thought would stop him.” My voice cracks.
Kashton reaches out and brushes his tatted knuckles along my tear-streaked cheek. “What did you do, Eve?”
“I pissed and shit myself,” I answer, ashamed, and he tilts his head to the side. “It’s all I could think to do to make myself be unattractive to him. To make him disgusted by me.” My body shakes with anger. “But he didn’t care.” Fresh tears fall from my eyes, and Kashton wipes them away too. I wish he could do the same with my memory. “He rubbed my face in it like a dog. Then he beat me, but not before he got off.” I give a rough laugh. “Because God forbid a man not get to have what he wants. He ended up making me despise myself.”
“Eve—”
I step back from him, and his hand drops to his side. “What else do you want to know, Kash? Want to know about the time they pierced my nose like I was cattle?”
He looks away, and his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.
My chest tightens. “You know about that too? How?”
He doesn’t answer.
I slam my hands into his chest. “How many videos have you watched?”
“Five,” he answers, looking back at me.
Five videos? I know about the day I was dropped off at Dollhouse and this one, now my nose piercing. What did the other one show? One was humiliating enough. I give him my back, spinning around.
“Eve, wait.” He grabs my upper arm and turns me to face him.
I swing. My hand slapping him across the face. “Don’t touch me,” I scream and then shove him back, but he doesn’t budge.
“Stop, Eve,” he orders, but I hit him again.
“Fucking bastard!” I shout at the top of my lungs. This man is supposed to be my husband. The man I spend the rest of my life with, and now I can never look him in the eyes again.
He’s different from Evan, Adam, or Bill. They know I’m broken. Kashton is supposed to see me differently. Evan is ruining that.
“Let go of me,” I demand, trying to yank my arms free of his iron grip.
“Fucking stop, Eve,” he growls. Then my legs are kicked out from underneath me, and I’m on my back. Kashton’s on top of me, his hands gripping my wrists and shoving them above my head.
“Get off me,” I say through gritted teeth.
The door opens to the owner’s suite, and I stop fighting. Our heavy breathing fills the room.
“I heard screaming. Need some assistance, sir?” the man asks my husband.
It instantly makes my blood boil. What about me? Why not ask if I need help? I’m naked on my back, and he’s on top of me, pinning me down. What if I wasn’t willingly here with Kashton?
“Leave,” Kash orders.
The guy quickly looks from me to my husband. “Hooke keeps sedatives?—”
