Only when he stopped massaging my head, combing my hair with his fingers, did I realize how much I enjoyed it. It had been the only thing keeping me sane. As soon as he stopped, my thoughts jumbled again.I want my family. Please. I want to know if they’re okay.I’ll do anything you want as long as you can tell me that they weren’t hurt. Ashton went back in for me and Ember. What happened to her? Did you take her too? Is she here? She’s just a girl. What have you done to my family? Dad, where did you go? Were they here?”Had I said all that or just thought it? I had to find a way to search for them.
I could no longer hear or sense him. It was as if I had dreamed him.Was he still in the room?Did he leave?Being in the dark without a sound other than my breathing and my drumming heart dragged my mind into the pit of hell. And to think I used to love listening to my own heartbeat.This is all my fault!I remembered the house on fire. Mael throwing me off the balcony.No. No, it wasn’t him. Or was it? Maybe I never left this place. Maybe Cambridge was a dream, and I’ve been here all along. No, that’s impossible. Ember and Ashton grew, they were older.Each thought melted into the next, then every bad thing that had ever haunted me rose from the shadows.I’m losing my mind!I planted my feet and scooted back to the wall, hugging my calves.Mommmmmyyyyyyy!
“Shut the fuck up!” The yelling startled me into taking a long gasp. It’d woken me from a living nightmare, and now I had to deal with his displeasure. I could hear his frustrated, fast breathing.
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t know I had been speaking. Sir.” Not only had I been saying all of those things out loud, but I was blubbering. “I’m sorry. S-sorry. Sorry.”
His steps became distant, and I wondered where he was going. Was he leaving me here alone?
A light turned on, and all my thoughts vanished. His shadow loomed from a tiny bathroom. I could see the toilet and tub from where I sat. Could he see my relief at realizing he was still there?
I didn’t dare say a word when he started unbuttoning his shirt and walking toward me, but I couldn’t help holding myself tighter. It was hypnotizing, the way he stared at me while undressing, revealing his fit body to me, sculpted muscles with slashes everywhere. So, his other hobby, besides training women to be okay with getting raped, was to work out.
He lowered his pants and underwear, then stepped out of them. Even in the dim lighting, I could see his penis, hanging. As it stiffened, it elongated with a slight curve. I didn’t know if it had been that big that night, but the size of it scared me. All I knew was that whatever he’d do to me would hurt like hell. I didn’t want any of it. I wanted to be left alone so I could go home.
I found myself clenching, remembering the excruciating pain that night despite not being a virgin. The memory threatened to take over the room. “No. No. No.” Although I tried to calm myself, to run away from the memory, I could feel the episode taking over my world. I shook my head, fighting it, but within seconds, I was in the forest again. The trees swaying above me with the night sky behind them would almost be a comfort, if I didn’t already know what was coming. “No,” I repeated, and slapped myself. But it was too late. I wasn’t in the cell with him.
Mael was on top of me, terrifying me, stopping my breathing with his weight but also making me claustrophobic. His cock plundered into me, breaking me, overstretching me. He didn’t fit, and as it slid inside, it tore and burned me. The scream stuck to my throat. It hurt so bad. It was happening again. I didn’t want to be there. “Please stop! Stop!”
Why did he have to hurt me if he loved me? What kind of love was that? Mael groaned while raping me, restraining me, splitting me apart, then got more aggressive.
“No-no-no.” My chin was trembling violently as fat tears slid down my cheek to my lips. They’d electrocuted me so much, I could hardly talk or move.
“You’re hurting me. Please stop.”
Mael grunted and moaned, sounding more and more helpless as he pounded into me.
“No!”
His chest heaved, his eyes rolling back as his hips swung into me again and again and again. It took forever. I needed it to stop.
I didn’t realize I wasn’t there with Mael, or that I was completely curled up in a corner on top of the dingy bed, trying to melt into the wall, trying to scratch at it with the tip of my fingers to get out of the episode, reopening the wounds where my nails had once rested. I didn’t realize he’d been watching me the whole time and had called my name. Only when my throbbing bleeding fingers woke me from it did I realize seeing him naked had triggered me into another PTSD episode.
Thank God. Thank God I wasn’t still there on that grass being destroyed.
“It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It was a long time ago,” I whispered to myself repeatedly, soothing and grounding myself. My forehead was flat against the wall. I was trying to calm my breathing to stay present. I didn’t want to look at him and go back there, to that forest.
“Little One.” Surprisingly, he was calm and patient. I was so hesitant, but in the end, I knew I’d have to look at him, so I slowly turned my neck. He was standing next to the bed, completely naked. I didn’t look down at it.
“Are you a virgin, Little One?” Why would he ask me that? He knew I wasn’t.
“No… Sir.” I stared at the sheets under my feet, focusing on anything else but that thing hanging from him. Despite knowing that virginity was a lie invented by the disgusting patriarchy and its stupid, weak, pearl-clutching, pick-me whores, that truth still shamed and stabbed me. The pain oozed so generously from the two syllables I’d spoken.No… Sir.A part of me would have liked to have been a virgin ’til my honeymoon with Killian. It would have been amazing and beautiful. Killian would have made me feel beautiful and would have found a way not to hurt me. Instead, it had been the most disgusting terrible thing I’d ever endured.
If only I’d never changed schools. Maybe I would have met Killian in London or on a trip to Ireland. Then we would have been old enough and he would have been my first. I wouldn’t have ever met Mael, and I would be happily married.Mael took all of that from me. He took everything. “Ireland. Cuba. Puerto Rico. India. Bhutan. Vietnam. Madagascar. Oh, and Iceland. I still remember, Killian. I haven’t forgotten,” I whispered, trying to hang on to that sweet memory when we made the list together so close to the only wedding I would ever have in my life.
It was one of the many reasons I never moved on, never dated, rejected every single compliment or flicker of attention from all the men I’d encountered. I was too dirty, and broken now that I knew what men really wanted from me. Once I started Cambridge, it took me a long time to stop believing people could tell what Mael and his pals had made me.
Part of me sometimes hesitated searching for Killian because what did I have to offer him? What would I have told him?Fuck. Why was I thinking of Killian?My breath caught in my chest, and I swallowed deep as the bed creeked when Sir’s kneeddug into the matress. Like a panther, hunting me, he closed the distance between us.
“Come, Little One… Don’t be afraid.” He shook his head.
How did he know I was upset? I thought I was doing a good job at keeping the wailing building in my chest and rising to my throat from whooshing out of me.
Sir cupped my jaw and caressed my cheeks, forcing me to look at his face.“Shhh. I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.
Up this close to me, he was even more handsome than when I met him that night. Maybe in another lifetime I would have had a crush on him if he wasn’t a rapist and human trafficker. In this lifetime, I was wishing so hard for a knife to magically appear in my fist so I could stab his throat and be showered by his blood. I stared at his Adam’s apple, not understanding if it was my craving for blood or the crackling magnetism pulling me to him that made me whimper.The energy between us swore I belonged to him, and I fought it. Only one man owned me, and he wasn’t in that cell.
“Hush…” he commanded gently. “It’s okay.” His smile held no malice. He was trying to seem friendly, calming me. “I don’t mind if you’ve been with other men.” Plural. He left room for multiple interpretations, other men besides himself, other men besides Mael and everyone he’d shared me with. I shook my head of the thunderstorm gathering in my mind. I couldn’t control the horrible memories waiting to jump out of the shadows. My breathing was so off-kilter that I hiccuped a few times.
