Chapter 18
Lauren
I don’t know what’s real and what’s just another way for my mind to fuck with me.
My memories have never been a fluid thing.
I don’t know if my head made things up when I was younger to protect me from what was really going on around me, or if the things I “remember” actually happened.
It’s a weird thing to not be able to trust your own mind.
As I shower, I have no fucking clue if he made confessions last night or if I dreamed of him doing so.
I can’t ask. It opens the door for him to talk about my history, and that’s the very last thing I want happening.
I have no idea why I came back to him. I could easily argue that using his motel room saves me money, but I’ve banked nearly every check I’ve ever gotten while working for the Bureau.
You don’t need much when you’re always on assignment.
I stopped leasing apartments because you can’t exactly press the pause button while caged in South America because your lease is up.
Money isn’t an issue, and even if it was, it would be less concerning than why I’m right back where I said I never wanted to be.
Angel scares me and not just in the physical sense. There’s something about him that keeps drawing me in. No matter how much time I spend with him, no matter how many times he hurts me, I still want to be close to him.
He’s not safe. There’s not an ounce of security I feel around him. Yet, here I am, using the already opened bar of motel soap that he used before leaving the room like it’s my fucking right to do so.
I feel his presence in the room as I rinse soap from my hair, closing my eyes when the suds drift into them.
I expect him to be angry, to tell me to get the fuck out of his room.
What I don’t expect is for him to reach behind the flimsy shower curtain and drag me from under the stream by the hair.
If anyone with a lick of sense saw me right now, they’d question my insanity. They’d demand to know why, as my feet are flailing, trying to find purchase, there’s a smile on my face and a laugh threatening to bubble out of my throat.
I used to be that person.
I was once an FBI agent that would cry when others were being hurt. Seeing women, honest to God, getting abused used to make me cringe.
It made me so angry.
Then it made me wish I were them. I didn’t know their stories or how they ended up captured and sold into sexual slavery.
There’s no level of you should’ve seen how she was dressed or she was begging for it that could explain a man thinking he had the right to just snatch someone off the street and own her.
Deep inside of me, I knew I deserved it.
I wanted to take that pain from them. I wanted to swim in it, wanted it to leave marks on my skin.
The physical discomfort helped keep all the internal shit at bay.
It made living just a little easier, and if those men should cross that line, then all the pain would be gone forever.
It’s good to have end goals. The aches and pains leading up to it are just a bonus as far as I’m concerned.
“I’d tell you you’re a fucking lunatic, but I think you already know,” he growls as he drags me toward the bed.
I fight him because that’s my role in this, but my nails on his skin are ineffective, the water preventing me from gaining any real purchase.
“I just wanted a shower,” I snap, trying to hit him in the face, but he’s just too damn big.
“And you think you can get those things off of me?” He pulls me by the hair until his lips are right at my ear. “You think I fucking owe you something?”
I’m trembling, the ancient heater in the room unable to keep up with the winter weather outside.
I’m not shaking from fear, and that thought allows a level of disappointment to settle inside of me.
The first time he did this, I was terrified. The second time on the side of the road still managed to hold that level of what-if to it.
Right now? He’s proven more than once that he has boundaries, but then I think maybe I haven’t pushed him as far as he can go.
That thought makes unease swim inside of me.
Would pushing him work? Or would I regret it? Would he hurt me too badly?
Isn’t that what I want?
Wasn’t I shocked to even wake up this morning? It was too late to make a different decision when I realized the man has the ability to seriously hurt or kill me, but instead of even fucking me while unconscious, he put me in the fucking bed, so I could sleep more comfortably.
Just as I’m thinking he’s nothing like I expected, nothing like I needed, he shakes my entire body with the force of his hand tangled in my hair.
I yell as my scalp screams like it’s on fire, each tug and shake making me ache from head to toe.
“Answer me, Lauren.”
“I’m-I-I just wanted to shower,” I say, because I’m not capable of even recalling what he asked.
“Why do you keep coming back when all I do is hurt you?”
I still. I stop fighting him, looking up at his face to give him my answer. “I like it.”
A slow, sinister smile spreads across his face.
“And if I take it too far?”
I swallow, wondering if my next confession will be taking it all too far. “I’ll like that, too.”
He watches my face for a brief second, and it’s as if time stands still. He knows what I want, but he’s struggling. Giving it to me is the very last thing he wants, despite the thickness of his cock, the proof that this turns him on just as much.
“I’m going to hurt you,” he promises.
“Please,” I beg, tears already welling in my eyes.
It’s pain and relief and need.
“Suck my cock,” he demands, releasing me so abruptly that I crash to the floor on my knees.
I don’t just give in, however. That isn’t part of the game.
He has to take it. That’s his role in all of this. As he unzips his pants and pins me with his thighs against my shoulders to the bed, I realize this comes so natural to him.
He doesn’t have to stop and think. He doesn’t have to do calculations and wonder if what he plans is going to work.
With his fingers back to fisting my hair, he drags my head back until I can hardly breathe with the angle he has my neck at, then he presses forward.
There’s no warning, no waiting a second to see if I’m ready, if my mouth is wet enough to take his dick. He wants it, so he takes it.
I keep my eyes open in challenge, the only thing I can control with the way he’s manhandling me. His eyes are half-lidded, filled with so much hatred and anger that I feel like the victor in this situation.
He’s not fucking my throat because he wants to, he’s doing it because he has to.
He’s unable to resist, but I don’t know if it’s me he can’t seem to cut loose or what he’s doing to me that he enjoys so much.
I feel nearly bereft in thinking that I’m just a series of holes for him to stick his dick in, that I’m interchangeable with any other woman he might encounter.
Anger roars through my blood, and along with digging my fingernails into his thighs, I clamp my mouth down on him. I’m not biting hard enough to draw blood because I know that’s something I might not survive, but I can tell by the flare in his eyes that it’s not comfortable either.
With a clenched jaw, Angel bends in the middle, that same evil smile on his face. He doesn’t try to pull free, and surprisingly, he doesn’t hit me across the face.
Instead, he wraps his hands around my throat until I have no other choice but to release him in an attempt to breathe.
Then the real fight begins because he doesn’t release me as he drags me back to standing. My vision begins to tunnel, my temples throbbing as my body fights for air.
“You think teeth are a good idea?”
I can’t formulate an answer before he sinks his own teeth into my shoulder, and I know he only releases my throat so he can hear me scream in pain.
In the next second, I’m thrown onto the bed, the thin blanket sticking to my still-wet skin.
He doesn’t care that one leg is straight, and the other is bent in an effort to crawl away. He sinks his dick inside of me, chuckling villainously at finding me ready for him.
My body betrays me often, but nothing like I get when this man is around.
It feels dirty, his invasion, his fingers digging painfully into my hips, the brush of his chest hair on my back when he bends over to get more leverage.
“Get the fuck off of me!” I scream, uncaring if someone hears our interaction and calls the cops.
It would serve him right, getting arrested for what he does to my body.
He finds the end of me with every fucking stroke, the mix of pleasure and pain so close together I lose the ability to tell the difference.
“Scream and I won’t let you breathe,” he threatens, his hand coming back around and clasping my neck.
I can’t control the way my body responds, and when I scream the next time, he presses my face so deep into the lumpy mattress, breathing actually becomes a challenge.
“Fucking hate you,” he growls. “Hate every fucking thing about you. This tight cunt, the way your skin colors under my abuse, the way you tighten with pain. Fucking hate all of it. You stupid fucking addictive bitch. I’m going to kill you one day, and then I’ll fuck your corpse, come into your lifeless eyes. Ah, fuck. The way you take a dick.”
I want to moan, and at this second I’m glad he’s stuffing my face into the bedspread. My body tells him everything he wants to know. I’ll be damned if I want him to hear the truths with my sounds.
“Please,” I beg when he goes back to gripping both hips instead of pinning my face to the bed.
I’m not able to fool him. His chuckle tells me he knows exactly what I’m begging for.
“Don’t stop!” I roar when he slows down, his hips churning more than ramming.
I scramble away from him, knowing I won’t be able to get far but needing to at least try.
Somehow this is more emotional than physical for me, and I fucking hate it.
He hates me? Well, same fucking goes, asshole.
I don’t get far, but when he attempts to grab my throat again, I bite his fucking hand, the tanginess of iron hitting my tongue when he bleeds.