Page 239 of Safe Word

I felt his nose skim along my collarbone like a dog scenting blood.

My stomach lurched. A memory crashed through – drugs, pressure on my mouth, a strong smell like sweet plastic. Chloroform.

He’d done it before.

And what usually followed…

My God.

I couldn’t speak. My lips parted, but nothing except a shaky breath left them.

But my mind was waking faster now, rage churning beneath the nausea. I wasn’t as scared as I used to be – not even of the inevitable that came after he did things like this.

Cain had broken that fear in me, had reshaped it. He’d taught me how to wear the chains instead of cowering from them.

I looked up at where they met the wall – rusted bolts biting into the concrete, the metal links trembling each time I breathed.

Not like this. I couldn’t wear them like this.

When my gaze dropped, it collided with the manic blue of my ex-fiancé’s. His smirk spread slow, like oil on water. He looked more vicious than I remembered; skin leathered, stretched thin from too much sun. The symbols scrawled across his face in tiny, uneven scripts, turning his skin into a map of obsession.

‘Hello, wife,’ he purred.

‘I’m not your fucking wife,’ I hissed, the words snapping out before I could stop them. A reflex. The old me, however – the conditioned me – recoiled somewhere deep down, waiting for the price that always accompanied disrespect: slap, punch, kick…

His grin faltered. Something darker came over him.

‘I was wondering if I’d ever see you again,’ he murmured, tilting close enough that I caught the rancid cocktail of tobacco and decay in his breath. ‘But thankfully, you have a knack for making enemies wherever you go.’

I frowned at that, unsure what that meant. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

‘Oh?’ His tattooed brows wrinkled like cracked paint, and then – he snapped his head forward.

The impact burst white behind my eyes when his forehead slammed into my mouth with a dull, meaty crack. Pain tore through my lip, hot, metallic blood filled my mouth.

‘You were always hard to school,’ he said, smiling through my silence. ‘Luckily, I enjoy disciplining you.’

‘What the fuck do you want, Travis?’ I spat, spraying flecks of crimson across his cheek.

He didn’t even blink. He liked it. Sick bastard.

He glanced sideways and I followed his gaze.

And as each of the items on the table tucked into a dark room came into view…

Syringes, knives, ice-pick-looking things… I don’t know what else was on there—

I shuddered.

‘I didn’t think I’d ever get to talk to you about what you did.’ His voice turned conversational. ‘The ground swallowed you after you put me in prison.’

‘You put yourself there,’ I croaked, my gaze still stuck on the arsenal on that goddamn surface.

His snarl came before the roar as he lunged forward. ‘You—’

He fisted a handful of my hair, jerking my head back so hard my neck screamed. His face hovered inches from mine, eyes bulging, veins rising at his temples. ‘—you put me there, you fucking bitch!’

I whimpered, more out of instinct than fear, biting back the urge to scream – because I knew he fed on it.