Page 67 of Bought By Sin

As time dragged on and my body ached from the hits, I clung to this defiance. Refusing to reveal anything, I stayed true to the fact that my word was the only semblance of power I could ever have. Something that no one could ever take from me.

But as they kept tormenting me and threatening me with worse, I endured the wait.

The wait for death.

No!

I hung my head from them slapping me so hard, I saw stars.

No.

I will not die.

I will survive.

So many times before, I’d silently begged to be free of this misery, knowing that in death, I’d be free from pain. I’d be free from people owning me to do their dirty work.

Now, though, as I closed my eyes and willed my lungs to fill again despite the aching pain in my ribs, I couldn’t repeat that wish.

I didn’t want to die.

I couldn’t die.

Not while I knew that Lev was out there somewhere.

I couldn’t deceive myself into praying he’d save me. That he could pull a repeat of whisking me out of danger like he had in the desert when I was stuck in the middle of that standoff.

As I blinked and lifted my head, silent and refusing to say a word, I realized that this burning need to live and survive wasn’t just a force borne within me.

It was him.

I needed to live to see him again. Because it mattered. He mattered as more than the man who held the contract to my life. Through the blissful moments he gave me and the treasured chance of someone wanting to know what I wanted, I knew what that was now. What I wanted more than anything.

Him.

I truly cared whether I saw him again. I seriously coveted the connection that we’d started, the one that intimidated me into defining him as a man I wanted to belong to in every way that a woman could.

Please.

I never begged. Not even in my darkest moments. No one ever listened, no deity or grace in the universe. I’d always had to rely on myself to make anything happen.

Please let me see him again.

I need you, Lev.

I can’t let this be the end…

I closed my eyes and prayed for the stinging pain to calm on my flesh from all the hits. I willed my mind to stop buzzing with the impact of all this violence I was receiving.

In the darkness behind my closed lids, I refused to see any other future than that one.

One where Lev would be with me.

Because in this dark moment of captivity and pain, I couldn’t imagine having a future worthy of enduring without him in it.

As my owner.

As the man I wanted.