Chapter Thirty Three
PAIGE
My head ached so badly that I didn’t want to open my eyes. Dimly, I struggled to remember what had happened, why my head hurt. The unfamiliar scent of lavender and something sharp, like cleaning fluid, stung my nose, sending a spike of pain through my head. I took a breath, and then another, and finally forced my eyes open.
A white ceiling, papered with that old fashioned wallpaper… woodchip it was called. I was confused. They guys didn’t have woodchip in the student house. I blinked stupidly at it, still struggling to form coherent thoughts. I dragged my eyes down, noting the faded, floral wallpaper, the pale pink dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back of the door next to a blue velvet jacket that seemed out of place. Something sparked in my memory telling me the jacket was important, but I couldn’t place it.
The room was chintsy—lace doilies, porcelain figurines, a vase with faded plastic roses. It was an old lady’s house, but a strange one obsessed with preservation. Everything gleamed under plastic sheeting; even the lampshade beside me was cloaked in it, the light beneath it muffled and sickly. Outside, it was still dark.
I shifted, and a cold shiver raced down my spine. Naked. I was naked and... My wrists pulled tight, clinking metal sounds piercing the heavy silence. Handcuffs. Attached to what felt like a wrought iron headboard. My heart skipped as I turned my head, finally taking in the dark figure who sat next to me on the bed and I screamed.
The skull face just looked at me, making no move to silence me or reassure me. My senses started to return and I felt the pressure of his hand against my bare pussy.
Realisation dawned with a sick twist in my stomach. His finger curled inside me and I cringed away from him.
“Welcome home, Paige,” he whispered. There was something familiar about his voice, but I couldn’t place it. He was a Reaper, maybe I’d seen him at the club.
“Stop,” I begged. “Please.”
I twisted, a futile attempt to escape his touch, but the cuffs held me fast. He continued to touch me, slowly sliding his finger in and out and I felt sick.
“Get off me!”
He pulled away this time, standing up and moving away and I took a deep breath, trying to stop shaking. I wasn’t sure whether it was from the cold or the fear, but it was making my head hurt worse, and I just couldn’t think clearly.
I watched him cross the room, bending down to pick up a bucket and carry it back over to the bed. Dread curled in my stomach.
“Where am I?”
“You’re home, Paige. You’re with me.”
He kept whispering, and I wondered whether it was because he was trying to disguise his voice. He’d kept the mask on, so maybe he was going to let me go.
“This isn’t my home,” I said carefully, trying to stay calm. “I want to leave.”
He shook his head. “No. Not after what I did to get you here.”
I shivered at his words. “What did you do?”
He stared at me, the blank mask chilling me. “She tried to hurt you, Paige. I couldn’t let her hurt you.”
My mind started to clear and then I remembered. My mother in the kitchen, the horrific story she’d told me about Bast’s mother, her lunging at me with the knife… and then him. He’d been there, watching. He’d picked up the knife… My blood ran cold as I remembered how he stabbed her brutally over and over again, the sound of the knife thudding into her flesh, her screams and then her moans….
“You killed her,” I whispered, terror crawling up my spine.
He shook his head, dismissing my words. “She was hurting you. Only I get to hurt you.”
I was shaking hard now, the chains of the cuffs clinking against the metal headboard.
“Please let me go,” I begged. “Please.”
He sat down on the bed, setting the bucket by his feet. I couldn”t see what was inside it, and I didn’t think I wanted to.
“Please,” I tried again. “I want to go home.”
“You are home,” he said, reaching out to twist a lock of my hair round his fingers. “You don’t understand how much I’ve done for you.”
Blood drained from my face. “You’re the one who’s been following me, sending me notes. You trashed my room.”
He nodded. “I tried to get to you first, but they keep manipulating you, worming their way in, corrupting you.”
“Who… oh… no, they weren’t, they-”
“You are mine!” he screamed, and I shrank back as he leaned forward. “They ruined you and you were mine!”
“I’m sorry,” I pleaded. “Please…”
“You don’t know… what I did for you when he came back…”
I froze. “When who came back?”
“Blackwood. He saw your mother and thought it was you. He went down pretty easily though.”
“No,” I whispered. “You’re lying…”
“I lost my temper. He thought you were theirs and you’re mine. So much blood…” he murmured.
Tears fell down the sides of my face. Oh God, Tristan…
“You didn’t…” I said. “Please… is he alive?”
He didn’t answer, but he reached down and took something from the bucket. I felt a damp cloth moved across my stomach and down each thigh. A cold, sticky substance dripped down between my legs as he brought the cloth up and over my breasts. The smell hit me, and I looked down at his hand. His fingers were red, covered in blood from the cloth he was holding and I cried out. He dropped the cloth back into the bucket, leaning down to pick up a second, saturated. He brought it down between my breasts, pushing it between my legs.
“What the fuck? What is that? Stop, please!”
He ignored me, dragging the cloth over every explored inch of my skin, painting me red.
“You let him inside you,” he murmured. “Now his insides are all over you.”
I retched, turning my head to the side. He held my hair back, but there was barely anything in my stomach, and my muscles began to hurt as my body convulsed.
“I was disappointed when the poison didn’t work,” he said, almost conversationally. “But taking him out this way was more enjoyable, and now I get to paint you like this.” He sighed, looking down at me. “You look so beautiful covered in his blood, Paige.”
I let out a sob that turned into a scream. I lost it, yanking on the cuffs as I rocked from side to side, kicking out at him, trying to pull free even though I knew it was pointless. Tristan’s blood was drying, clinging to my skin, and the thought that he was gone filled me with so much pain and rage I wanted to kill this man myself. I wanted to tear him apart with my bare hands.
His laugh echoed through the room, sending shivers of dread rocketing down my spine. It was a sound akin to ice cracking on a frozen lake, dangerous and unhinged.
“So much fight in you,” he murmured, admiringly. “Doesn”t it feel good to let it out?”
I didn”t answer, my only focus was ripping my wrists free from the cold steel that bound me. But the more I struggled, the tighter they seemed to hold. Blood began to trickle down my wrists as the metal cuffs cut into my skin.
He watched closely as beads of crimson dripped onto the bedspread, fascination sparking in his eyes behind his skull mask. He reached out and delicately traced a droplet with his finger before lifting it to his face and sliding it under the mask to his mouth.
“Delicious,” he murmured.
“You’re a monster.”
“Yes.” The word was soft and carried an odd note of satisfaction. “And you’re mine.”
He climbed up on the bed, straddling one of my thighs, pinning my leg to the bed. I sobbed helplessly beneath him. My world had been torn apart in an instant. Tristan was gone. My funny, caring man with his sexy smile and his huge heart. I’d never see him again.
“Paige, stop.”
Hatred burned in my chest like a molten ball of fire. Gasping for breath, I glared up at him, my eyes promising revenge.
For a moment he was silent, just observing me with a twisted smile on his face that made my stomach roil with dread. Then he began to unbutton his trousers.
“No,” I whimpered. “Please don’t…”
“You did it for them, now you do it for me, whore.”
I closed my eyes, feeling the light and the hope drain out of me as he continued his vicious onslaught. He talked the whole time, telling me how special I was, how much he loved me, but I knew he was insane. This wasn’t love. Maybe once I could have confused abuse with love, but not any more. Bast, and Tristan and Nate, they loved me and they had taught me what love was. This wasn’t it.
“Remember this feeling, Paige. This is your life now,” he said softly. “Every scream you let out, every tear you shed… they belong to me.”
My skin crawled and I felt sick to my stomach.
“Please...” I whispered, the fight draining out of me. He leaned down over me, his warm breath ghosting over my cheek.
“You”re going to learn,” he murmured into my ear. “You”re going to learn to love this.”
I turned my face away, and pain seared through every inch of my body as I gritted my teeth together.
“Scream for me,” he whispered, his voice almost an echo in the room.
I clenched my jaw tighter. I would not give him that satisfaction. He reached down, picking up the knife again, and I gasped as he dragged the blade down my arm, drawing blood.
“You know, back in the tenth century in China, there was a form of torture called lingchi.” He made another slice, and I winced.
“It’s also known as death by a thousand cuts.” He cut again and again, moving down my body each time, the blade slicing over my breast and I cried out.
“How many cuts will it take you to die, Paige?”
He traced his fingers over my opened wounds, smearing the blood over my body like grotesque artwork. His laugh echoed through the room as he watched me squirm, drinking in my pain and terror with sickening satisfaction.
Each time his blade pierced my skin, I tasted bile rise at the back of my throat. But I refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing me beg for mercy again. The pain was unbearable, but I couldn”t let him win.
“Why are you doing this?” I managed to choke out. Not that I expected an answer that would make any sense or justification for his sadistic pleasure.
“Because it makes me so fucking hard,” he said. He was fucking me slowly, each thrust hammering into me as he sliced my skin. His hands were careful and precise, each slash expertly executed to inflict maximum pain without hitting any vital organs.
Hours passed, or maybe it was minutes. Time lost all meaning in the shadowed room as the agonising rhythm continued. My mind retreated to a dark corner, far away from the torment.
He fucked me slowly, taking himself to the edge, then pulling back, making it last longer. Each cut, each stream of blood got him hard, and he would plunge back into me with a guttural groan. He revelled in the power he held over me, the fear that flickered in my eyes, the helplessness of my situation.
I was a plaything, an object to satisfy his perverse lust. His moans filled the room, growing louder with each thrust until he finally came inside me. Exhausted, spent, he collapsed on top of me, pressing me into the mattress. His sweat mixed with the blood coating my body.
I lay there underneath him, bloody and broken as I felt him slowly withdraw from me. The room was silent save for our heavy breathing. The sticky mixture of blood and semen lined my thighs. My body felt raw and violated. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and I swallowed hard against the nausea that rose in my throat. The sensation was too much - the searing pain, the humiliation - another tear slid down my cheek. He looked down at me, the skull face grinning in mockery.
“Shhh…” he cooed mockingly, tracing a line down my tear-stained face with a blood-soaked finger. “This is only the beginning. We have all the time in the world, Paige.”
I closed my eyes.
“You”re mine now,” he whispered, his voice echoing in my head as I drifted in and out of consciousness. “I won’t be gone long.”
I heard the door slam shut and then there was silence. I focused on the steady drip of blood dripping from my wounds onto the plastic on the floor beneath the bed. Each drop was a reminder of the hell I had endured. The room spun and my stomach churned. Darkness threatened to consume me as pain radiated through every inch of my body.
I fought against it, fear gripping me. If I succumbed to unconsciousness now, would I ever wake up? The thought terrified me more than anything else that had occurred so far.
A low whimper slipped past my lips and hot tears trickled down the sides of my face. Every little movement sent fresh waves of pain crashing over me.
The struggle to survive was suddenly all too overwhelming. Tristan was gone. His loss felt like someone had ripped my heart from my chest, and pain overwhelmed me. Nate and Bast would get home and find Tris dead and me gone. They’d lost their friend, their brother and it was my fault. I’d brought this psycho right to their door. This was all my fault.
Nate’s image slipped into my head, the memory of him sitting in his fathers room, his arms wrapped around his knees, afraid and vulnerable. I thought about what he’d gone through at the hands of his father, how I’d tried to make him see that it wasn’t his fault, and somewhere deep inside, a spark flickered. A spark fuelled by anger and a deep-seated need for revenge against the monster who had reduced me to nothing more than a helpless victim.
No, I wouldn”t let him win. Bast and Nate would come for me. Somehow, they’d find me, they wouldn’t give up on me. I knew it deep in my soul. They were coming. I just had to stay alive long enough to watch them tear this psycho apart.
The hatred surged through my veins like acid, burning away the despair and replacing it with a fierce determination to survive. The psycho had underestimated me; he assumed I was weak, but I wasn’t weak. I was the Queen of the fucking Underworld, and if I was going down, I was taking this fucker with me.
“It”s not over,” I whispered. “I won’t let you destroy me. Tristan would never forgive me if I let you win.”