CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
ROSA
“Trent?”I say and I hate how timid my voice sounds. “Trent!” Better but he’s not responding. Except for his body. His body tells me many things in the loudest of voices.
He props himself on one hand, the other lightly resting on my shoulder. His cock keeps growing but that must be my imagination. I already know he’s big, enough to be painful without force. But the monster curling along my spine feels larger than last time. Like even then he was holding something back.
“Please untie me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” His voice is a soft growl, teasing the hairs on the back of my neck, sending a cascade of tingles racing across my skin, tightening the muscles in my pussy until they’re pulsing with need. “But I also really, really do.”
A soft exhalation keeps growing longer, like I’m trying to escape on my own outward breath, escape to safety, to a place before all of this began.
His hand touches against the plastic tie, already taut around my neck. He takes hold of the end and gives a soft tug, pulling it through one click further.
I want to dissolve into begging. If I thought it would help, I would already have begun.
My mind frantically combs through every encounter, searching for a weapon, a solution, a magic word. Certain there must be some combination to unlock the man who wants to hurt me, kill me, from the boy who I’ve been growing closer to, the one with whom I think I could fall in love.
But every turn leads me back to the same place.
He was here all along. He warned me. He even showed me this creature once before, tumbling away from me, pushing himself into a corner to save me from his claws, from his bite.
I know it won’t work now. Whatever self-control he had was at straining point in the chair. To watch his keenest fantasy play out before him must have been excruciating.
He saved me. Saved me when he could just as easily have watched before making a move.
He saved me but only because he was saving me for himself.
“My uncle,” I blurt, needing to say something because if these are my last fucking words then I’m going to make them count. “He raped me in front of the camera and sold the videos. That’s why…”
Trent pulls my hair back, dropping a kiss on my shoulder and it feels so tender, so sweet, compared to the menace of the situation that I gasp, losing the thread of what I wanted to say.
“I like you in restraints,” he growls, his lips buzzing against my skin. “You don’t need to explain why you couldn’t—”
“That’s not why!” I shout, then swallow, feeling the pressure of the plastic against the edge of my jaw.
Did I just pull it tighter? Will my next movement cut it in further, deeper? Will it cut off my air?
“It’s not… I’m telling you because I’m scared. Trent, I’m terrified right now. Could you… could you…?”
But I can’t ask. That’s my last resort. If I beg him to cut the tie from around my neck—reallybeg him—and he doesn’t, I don’t have anywhere left to go.
Better to die with my last gamble still up my sleeve than play it now and find out exactly how little it gets me.
“My uncle got released from prison. You heard Andy say he was working with him. Can you find him for me?”
“Shh.” Trent scrapes all my hair together, holding it in one hand while the other caresses my cheek. “You don’t need to say anything now. It’ll all be over soon.”
And I want to believe he means the sex. I want to believe that, but his finger rubs against the end of the plastic tie again and I know—I know—that he means everything.
When he says it’ll soon be over, he means my life.
“You said you’d kill the man responsible for planting the camera and sending the cards and I’m holding you to that. Find him. Kill him. Promise me.”
“Your uncle.”
“Not my real one… my mother will know more. She’s in palliative care so you have to ask her quickly. Ask her, get the police file, track Andy’s movements. Find him. Kill him. Promise me.”
