Brielle
“You thoughtyou could get away with this?” Anthony shouts as he holds my hands down. “This body was supposed to be mine!”
“Brielle, baby, wake up.”
My eyes pop open, and I suck in a harsh breath, taking in my surroundings.
I’m in Kane’s home—safe.
“Fuck, Bri.” Kane pulls my trembling body into his arms. “Please talk to me. There’s no way these are random nightmares.”
He strokes my sweaty hair back, and my heart rate starts to slow.
I’ve been having this same nightmare every night for the past week, ever since I was taken and almost raped, and every night, Kane gently wakes me up and holds me, telling me that I’m okay, and comforts me until I’m calm enough to go back to sleep.
“If you won’t talk to me, maybe you could talk to someone else, like a therapist.”
His eyes meet mine, filled with concern, and I shock myself when my first thought is that I want to let him in.
“I was raped,” I admit softly.
His brows tighten. “At the port … I thought you said?—”
“No. Years ago. But the attack at the port brought back the memories and nightmares. My senior year of college, I was in myapartment, studying, and …” I take a deep breath and then say the words that never get any easier to say. “I was raped.”
“Fuck,” Kane breathes out, holding me tighter. “What do you need from me? How the hell do I make this better? Is he still alive? I’ll fucking kill him.”
My heart squeezes in my chest at how easily my husband would take someone’s life for me. But that’s not what I need. I’ve actually been doing a lot of research about rape victims since the nightmares returned, and something someone mentioned in a forum for sexual assault victims caught my eye.
“He’s gone,” I tell him. “But there is something you could do for me …”
“Anything.”
“I want you to try to rape me.”
When Kane flinches, I realize how bad that sounded.
“What I mean is, I read that many abuse victims will try to re-enact their abuse in order to try and gain control over the damage and pain they feel with someone they trust …” I lock eyes with him. “And I trust you.”
I wait to regret my words.
To feel the need to take them back.
But I don’t because it’s the truth.
My relationship with Kane might’ve started unconventionally, but what I feel for him is real.
“Princess,” Kane drawls, “you have no idea what that means to me, but what you’re asking …” He shakes his head. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
“You wouldn’t,” I choke out. “I’ve read about this. You would attack me, and I would finally get to fight back and be in control. The night I was raped, I fought back, but I couldn’t stop him. And when those assholes kidnapped me last week, again, I fought back, but you saved me. I think the loss of control is what eats away at me. But maybe if we re-create it and it ends differently, that’s what I’ll think about instead.”
Kane nods and continues to stroke my hair, and after a while, I prepare for him to tell me he can’t do it or that he doesn’t think it’ll work.
But once again, he shocks me when he says, “Okay, I’ll think about it. But you need to tell me what happened. I can’t re-create it if I don’t know what you went through.”
“Really?” I breathe out. “You’ll do it?”
“I don’t think you get it,” he says, looking into my eyes. “I’d do anything for you, Princess.”
