I felt the slight loosening of his fingers around my arms, and something broke loose inside me. I took full advantage, pulling back one hand, and with every piece of my bitter, empty soul, I screamed. My fingers curled into talons and I clawed at him, opening up three bloody, angry streaks in his chiseled face.
He didn’t flinch.
"Things are gonna change, and you’re gonna fall in line. I promise you, on your brother's grave, I will take care of you. I will give you a better life. But you have to trust me and do shitmyfucking way. No more punk ass shit like you pulled last night. That’s not the Kat I know. That’s not the Kat I've loved.”
He took a deep breath, but that word was spinning around and around in my head.
Loved.
He said loved.
Surely he meant it like a brother loves his little sister. Surely it didn't mean what my heart desperately wanted it to mean.
“Why the fuck do you think I hang around this shithole?" he went on, as if my world hadn't just exploded. "I got eight other businesses, and I spend 95% of my time here. Why do you think that is?”
His dark eyes narrowed, and heat began to rise up and off my body as I stared at the welts I'd ripped open in his face. Why had I done that? Why would anyone love me after that?
“I... don’t know.” I was still trying to figure out what he'd meant. Still trying to decide whether this was real or I was in some drink-fueled dreamland. My head was still screaming, and my hands were beginning to shake and sweat.
Bile danced at the back of my throat and the dark fingers of the black pit where I lived my life began to tug at me and pull me toward the bottom.
“You!God damn it. You drive me crazy.” The furrows in his brow deepened, and for the first time in as long as I could remember I saw genuine emotion from this emotionless former Green Beret.
Anger. Sorrow. Frustration.
At least I'd brought something out.
The thick, broad muscles in his chest raised and lowered with his restrained breaths. The voice in my head was bellowing,incessant and beyond demanding. I needed my oldest and worst friend.
“Just let me get a drink..." I turned, grabbing the door handle. "I need--"
All 6’6” and 250 pounds of iron muscle and ferocious determination leaned forward, bracing his foot against the bottom of the door. Then he scooped me up around the waist, bouncing me on his hip for a few steps like a bag of helpless potatoes before he flipped me over, dropping himself with me in tow down onto the sofa.
“Jesus, Jesse—”
Whatever else I was planning on saying evaporated as he ripped my jeans down over my rear end without so much as unbuttoning them, something I would not have thought possible, especially with all the junk I keep packed in my trunk, if you know what I mean.
I wiggled and strained as he grunted and tugged, rehoming my pants around my knees as I screamed and kicked with whatever power my sick, weakened body could muster.
“Stopit!"I screamed. " What the fuck are you doing?"
I couldn’t see his face, only the walls and the floor and those sexy black boots he was wearing. But his hands moved like a fury, the cool air of the room washing across my naked ass as he ripped my panties off.
The wisp of white fabric flew through my visual field, landing in a soft flutter near the door as the weight of his broad palm in the center of my back pushed me hard onto his thighs. My disheveled hair stuck to my face as I hung at an odd, uncomfortable angle over his lap, vile words streaming from my mouth.
The first blow exploded in a fiery dance across my flesh, lighting me up with white light from the inside out.
Smack.
Smack smack.
I just got spanked.
Chapter Four
I’ve had two other moments in my life where time seemed to alter itself. Where it became flexible and stretched itself out before me.
The first was when the police showed up at my house and took me from my parents.
