There’s no answer but a moment later, there’s pain.
Searing at my scalp, crunching along my vertebrae as my head is wrenched up, fingers speared in my hair, pulling at the roots. There’s a shadow in my periphery as I open my mouth to scream, my fingernails uselessly clawing at a floor I can’t press away from. But just like in my dream, I cannot make a sound, and a second later, a cold blade is pressed to my throat.
I know it for what it is as a knee comes to my spine, crushing my hip bones to the marble. What else would be cold, metallic, held by a hand snarled so viciously inside my hair?
I want to believe I’m still dreaming. But everything feels shockingly real without the distorted, wavy quality of sleep.
The blade slices into my flesh, but not in a quick swipe. It’s a cut of force, pressing deeper into my skin and not simplyvertically across, like I’ve seen in movies. I do not know if this is good or bad, for my survival.
I try to move my limbs. Push upwards into my palms. But everything is clumsy and messy and sluggish from some sort of sedation and I cannot fight back.
Sullen? Where are you?
A horrible thought chokes inside my brain.
What if this is him?
He is always threatening to kill me. Maybe I got it wrong. Perhaps he was never going to let me survive long, after he had a true taste of me.
But we didn’t even get that.
What we did at Dreary Inn, that was child’s play. I could show him more. Take him higher.I could fuck him harder.
I open my mouth to tell him just that, but I am still not certain he would hold me this savagely.
I am stupid, for thinking so.
Fucking. Stupid.Just like he said. Just like everyone believes me to be. I should have been more obedient. I should have let Cosmo take him, back at the hotel chain. I should have?—
The blade digs in deeper. I feel wetness curl down my throat.
I have no sense of what I’m wearing, and with the knife where it is, I cannot look down to see, but the warmth of my own blood snakes over my sternum, lower still, rolling over my belly.
I gag, making a wretched sound. It is humiliating that it is the only audible noise I can force out.
The bodily reaction forces the knife the smallest measure deeper into my skin.
Will he decapitate me? Am I another animal to add into his jars?
“Sullen.” I say it aloud this time, and my voice is hoarse and thin and pathetic but at least it comes out as I claw my nails against the marble floor.“Why?”
The knee pressed to my spine deepens and a whimper leaves my lips. I am bent in the most painful way, my head wrenched up, my body prone, back curved.
A voice whispers in my ear,“Why not?”
It is not Sullen.
Relief blooms in my chest.
A ragged cry chokes from my mouth, and I do not care anymore if this person kills me. At least it wasn’thim.At least he did not betray me.
Warm breath caresses my lobe.
I close my eyes.
I don’t know if this is real, but I force Sullen Bram Rule into my head.
In my mind, I hear the noises he made last night—was it last night?—the way he looked at me as ifIwas god.
