Chapter 18
BIANCA
“I saw your birthday was a week ago, so I brought you this cupcake.” The lady with the clipboard was smiling wide, standing with her shoulders back in her pretty blue dress. They all wore dresses or regular outfits rather than scrubs.
I knew one or two of them were psychiatrists. They asked how I felt every single time they walked in the room.
Everyone was overly happy, overly caring, overly accommodating. Did everyone really think walking on eggshells was helpful? That I needed brightness and joy at every damn turn?
It was straight out of a horror movie, I swear.
I took the cupcake from her and set it on the metal table in the library room.
Or at least that’s what they called it. Libraries had all sorts of books, but this one only had rom-coms. No dark romances.
No demons in hell coming to screw the heroines in the fantasies.
They wanted to give me rainbows and butterflies when I wanted demons and hell.
“Did you have any wishes for your birthday?” she asked, so full of life I wondered if she was really drained on the inside.
I decided to ignore her until she left. I didn’t have time for the pretend niceties.
I wanted out of this hellhole.
Everything was sterile with white bookshelves and metal tables but there were no other patients around.
I’d sat in this facility for a whole week now and hadn’t seen anyone else dressed like me or being catered to like me.
Instead, nurses milled about, checking my vitals, cooking meals, making sure I had everything I asked for.
Everything except leaving.
I didn’t consider this care or comfort. It was just another form of torture. The walls were supposed to look normal in my room but they were definitely padded, I was all alone, and there was no sound but my own thoughts all day long.
I didn’t thank her for the birthday treat but instead pushed it away with a dead stare.
“Oh, it’s not so bad here, right?”
Wrong. This place was creepy and everyone knew it. The way their smiles never dropped, their faces never changed, their perfect makeup and hair all done exactly the same—even if I wanted a tutorial on how to do it that way, it made me wonder if they were going to kill me in my sleep.
“If it is, how can we make it better?”
“Ha,” I grumbled more to myself than her. If this was Bane’s way of keeping me sane after my trying to escape the hellhole that was my life, he’d gotten it completely backwards. I was going to spiral even worse here.
I needed something real. Give me the punishment I deserved. I’d caused the mess of a lifetime, and Bane hadn’t even come to rip my head off.
And, let’s be honest, the primary reason I’d lost it on my birthday was because I’d been alone and he hadn’t come.
No one had come. I walked around the resort holding my phone like I might get a birthday call. I didn’t.
I at least fed the Koi and they crowded the pond right next to me, their bright colors moving under the water to get an extra orange or two.
Ugh. I was going to have to apologize for trying to leave them behind. Maybe there was a really good treat I could order them.
Neglecting them was the last thing I wanted to do.
Neglect had gotten me here. That terrible feeling could eat away at a heart worse than any other emotion. Love and heartbreak could break you too. It was a hard moment to realize I meant nothing. Loneliness infected my bones and bled darkness into every part of my light.
So I’d made a choice to succumb to it. But Bane was faster than the life bleeding out of me. He somehow got to me in time, and I woke with bandages on my wrists, my phone gone, and in new attire.
Looking back, it was clear I was depressed and suicidal.
I didn’t get therapy or help for the abuse my father inflicted on me, nor did I ever talk about the night I was taken advantage of or about how I lost the baby from that night.
I didn’t accept my life within the resort.
And I didn’t talk to anyone or even write in the diary I’d had before for fear Bane would somehow find it.
Instead, I read books as an escape and then talked to Oracle. And I treated it like it was my confidant and psychiatrist all in one. That AI-generated app provided me with positive feedback for everything I wanted, and when I slit my wrists, I knew, according to AI, I’d done it right.
Now I’d lost that too. I didn’t have a phone or communication with the outside world. It was worse than the resort. Here I got locked into a pastel-bombed room and told I could read some books or record a journal entry into a machine.
I found they wouldn’t give me pens or anything sharp. I was denied access to the tub, and there was nothing jagged in my room to impale myself on.
I also couldn’t leave the room.
I’d jiggle the knob, and it wouldn’t budge.
Fucking Bane had trapped me again.
And every day, his ass would come to talk. Like he hadn’t already had a whole year to do that already.
Once every single day.
It was more than I saw him before but less than I wanted.
He’d ask me one question, and when I didn’t answer, he would stare at me with that look of fake acceptance on his face.
The fucker deserved my silence, but I was getting sicker and sicker of his cordial attitude.
Bane walking on thin ice like I might fall back into another episode had me wanting to break him myself.
Today, he came in with a stupid pen and paper and asked softly if I wanted to write down my answers to him because his ass knew I wasn’t going to respond out loud.
I wrote fuck you on it real big in bubble letters and smiled at him.
“For the love of all that’s holy.” He cracked his knuckles like he was trying to dispel irritation.
“That what you want? Will that get you to talk?” His tone was sweet and consoling.
Bane didn’t console. This was bullshit.
No, I wrote, just to piss him off more. I saw now how his jaw was working like he was hanging onto his control by a thread and then he ran one of his hands through his hair, “If you want, Bianca, I’ll tell the nurses and guards to leave and give us some alone time.”
I shrugged, and he narrowed his eyes like maybe he thought it would work.
“Just talk to me, Bianca.”
I wrote, No. Fuck you.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, adapting a posture like he’d given into the idea. “Truly, if that’s what you really want…” He shrugged and then waved away his security and told the nurses to leave the house.
We waited five minutes as people scurried around us and then Bane looked at his phone. “Everyone’s gone now. You feel better?”
Then he spread his legs and beckoned me forward. “You want to fuck, we can fuck, or we can talk about what the hell you did a week ago so we can get to the bottom of it.”
Option 1 then, I wrote.
He snatched the paper and crinkled it up like he’d finally had enough. “Cut the shit. You don’t need to write anything down when I know you can use your voice.”
“Fine.” My voice cracked through the room, dry and scratchy from being quiet for a week.
“If my only two options are fucking or talking, I choose fucking, but we all know you won’t do that with me.
” I lifted my chin. “Even so, I have nothing to say to you. Just like you’ve had nothing to say to me for months. ”
“Jesus Christ, baby girl. I’m staying away from you because it’s best for both of us. What else is there to say?”
“It’s been months, Bane. You let me fuck you and slept in my bed—”
“To be fair, I was high as a kite.”
“Yeah, always something between us when we screw, right?”
“There always will be because you’re not mine … Because you chose not to be mine before and I’m living with that the best way I know how.”
He was still on that shit. Shit I didn’t want to discuss or use as an excuse anymore.
“That’s bull, Bane. I may have made a mistake with Rafe, but it was never the final choice.
” That’s all I could say, all I could get out because the rest was too shameful.
The rest he didn’t know and the rest I didn’t talk about.
I let all of it fester inside me, destroying me from within.
He held my gaze and said, “It was for me, Bianca.” He was so damn serious in his truth that I immediately wanted to prove him wrong.
I needed to.
I sucked on my teeth before standing up and glaring at him. “If it’s final, why are you still here worrying about me?” I took my time walking over to him and then kicked both of his feet so his legs parted even more for me to walk between.
“I can worry without wanting. It's for the best.”
“If it’s for the best …” I slowly dragged my hands up my thighs and looped my thumbs into my panties to pull down. Then I grabbed one of his hands and pushed it between my legs. “Why do I feel like this every time I’m around you.”
“Pretty pink poison,” he practically groaned, but he didn’t stop me. Instead, he licked his lips, staring at me with those piercing blue eyes and said, “You know I really didn’t come here to fuck you.”
He may not have, but his hand still cupped me just right as I rocked into it, and he didn’t take it away.
I spread my legs and let his fingers dance over my slit, gasping as I felt the touch against my clit and then my moan took over as he slid two fingers easily into me.
My arousal was dripping down my thighs already for him.
“You’re on another level tonight, aren’t you?” He shook his head at me as if in disgust, but his hand worked me like he was as mesmerized as I was, like he was lost in the sea of our connection, like he couldn’t come up for air just like I couldn’t.
I was about to find my high in a makeshift home that wasn’t mine with a man who wouldn’t really have me, so I stopped myself by dragging his hand up the front of me to my mouth. I swirled my tongue around the fingers I knew had my arousal on them. I moaned and he hissed as I sucked him in deep.
I climbed onto his lap so I could feel how hard he was.
The length of his cock pushed up against the fabric of his slacks right into the apex.
Maybe we were each other’s life rafts, and we just had to find a way to stay afloat for one another.
“Don’t you see I’m on another level because I choose us every time, but you aren’t doing the same, Bane. ”
My words killed the fire in his eyes. I saw immediately how he worked to close himself down before he gripped my hips and lifted me from his lap to set me on the metal table in front of him instead. I felt his rejection deep down in my bones.
But I’d let the pain out seven days ago in that bathroom.
I’d watched my sorrows bleed out on the floor, and I didn’t want to let them creep back in and hold them there again.
I shook my head at him and hardened my heart.
“I’m sick of this and you, Bane. You don’t want me, then let me go.
I can take care of myself until Rafe has me. ”
“We need you safe.”
“Safe for who?”
“The family.”
“Oh, please. No one cares about—”
“You’re wanted around the world, Pink. You’re part of the syndicate and your father is a slippery mother fucker who pisses off every fucking partner he’s ever tried to have. Not only that, you’re tied to us now.”
“I’ve never been threatened.”
“Because you live with me!” He shouted. “Because I protect you and your ungrateful ass.”
“Protect me?” I couldn’t believe he wanted to claim that. I growled in rage and grabbed that pen behind me so fast that I wasn’t even aware of my own actions as I used all the leverage I had to swing it around and jam it straight down into his thigh.
Bane. Fucking Bane Black.
He didn’t even flinch.
A slow, knowing smile tipped his mouth up at me. “Good. You’re feeling something again. You done with your tantrum now, Pink?”
Narrowing my eyes, I twisted the pen into his flesh, and I saw his jaw work a little before his hand fisted over mine to yank the pen back out.
There was only about a half of an inch of blood that coated the tip of the pen, but it was enough to know I’d broken skin.
He sighed and brought the pen to my face, wiping the blood of him on either side of my cheek.
“This is what I want to see. My blood, not yours, on this pretty face.” He was deranged.
“I fucking hate you,” I said as I shook his hand away and set the pen down before I went over to scoop my panties up and step into them. Then, I went to stand between his legs again. This time I pointed my finger down at his face in menace. “Get me the hell out of here. Right. Now.”
He rolled his eyes and grabbed my ass to pull me onto his lap so I was straddling him again, his rock-solid cock felt like it was throbbing now underneath me. “If I do, will you promise me you won’t hurt yourself again?”
I whined, so annoyed with his question. Every day he asked me nicely to promise it.
Nicely when Bane wasn’t nice. He didn’t ask.
He took. And I wanted the real him, not some watered-down version.
“Don’t you get that I’ll do whatever it takes to feel something real now.
That I’m so sick of being nothing in there and being lonely and having everyone feel nothing for me that I just needed to feel something myself.
I wanted to feel all of it. I wanted it all out on that fucking bathroom floor instead of inside me, Bane.
I love the pain. I still do. I want to feel something, and if it’s that pain then—”
His hand snapped out to grip my neck, cutting me off. “The only one who gets to inflict pain on you is me!” His voice ricocheted around the tiny room, snapping all the control he’d had a moment ago.
There he was.
The monster. My monster.
And he wanted to fight through hell with me tonight.
“Do you understand?” The beautiful thing was Bane meant it. He was just as unhinged as I was. Maybe even more so.
“I’m not promising you shit,” I choked out.
He yanked me closer to him. “Then I’ll keep you locked in here forever,” he said through clenched teeth. “You think I wouldn’t mind a fucking pet?” he said and thrust his cock up near my pussy.
Instead of clawing at his tatted wrist to get him away from me, I was gripping his shirt, pulling him closer.
I was already soaking his trousers as I ground into him.
“I won’t hurt myself if you promise to deliver the pain, Bane.
You know that. Give me what I want and then I’ll give you what you want. ”
His forehead fell to mine and his hand loosened its grip. “How about I give you your real birthday present tonight and let you deliver the punishment to someone else for once?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me show you.”