Chapter Twenty-One
Scarlett
I’m an idiot.
I let my anger get the best of me. I let my hatred of Cain make me open my mouth and speak… and the monster who’s destroyed parts of me, who shattered my already-broken soul, just offered to give his life up for me. Not to save my life, but to spare me the pain.
My heart thuds a rapid tap-tap-tap against my ribcage, like a hummingbird. Anxiety courses through my veins, mixing with adrenaline, sheer horror, and another, stranger emotion.
The man who stabbed me, waterboarded me, dumped me in a cell before claiming me and doing unspeakable things to my body… just risked his life to spare me pain.
I won’t hurt you.
I’ll never hurt you again.
I’ll never let anyone else hurt you.
He’s standing behind what I previously assumed to be empty words. He’s not going to hurt me—in fact, he’ll get himself killed to spare me.
No one has ever made that sort of sacrifice for me before. No one has stood behind me—or, in this case, before me—and offered up their life to save mine, let alone to spare me a whipping. Not my own mother, and not even my brother.
“Monster—Greyson,” I whisper. “I’m… I’m—”
“I know, Flower,” he murmurs, turning around to face me. When he sees the tears swelling in my eyes, he pulls me into his arms.
For once, they don’t feel like a cruel cage. Right now, they feel like support… even though I should be supporting him.
“You should let me take it,” I say. “I… I spoke back. He might… he might kill you.” I shouldn’t care that Monster might die; it would mean my freedom.
I should be praying that Cain kills Monster.
But I can’t… not when Monster’s doing for me what no one else has done.
Not now that I realize that he was telling the truth from the moment he took me out of my torture chamber.
He won’t hurt me.
He will protect me from everyone but himself… and, since the moment he made his promises to me, the worst he’s done is sexually punish me. It’s been agony, yes, but… he hasn’t hurt me.
“Don’t even think it.” Monster cups my cheeks. “Scarlett, don’t even fucking think it. If I die, you’re free. It’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?” His tone is light, but the weight behind his words cuts deep.
I don’t know how to tell him that now, I’m not so sure I want to leave…
I can’t conjure the words—I don’t even know if they’re true. But, on impulse, I do the one thing I swore I’d never do. The one thing that I never would’ve done, if not for this very moment.
Heart pounding, I lean up on my tiptoes and press my lips to Monster’s. Time is suspended for a single, breathless moment as the softness of his lips comes into contact with my own, and my heart skips a beat. It feels… alarmingly right.
It startles me so much I try to pull back, but Greyson doesn’t let me.
He slides one hand into my hair, lowers the other to my neck—right over the thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds he put there—and kisses me.
Deeply, passionately, with no restraint.
His tongue probes at my lips, and I allow it entry.
It strokes against mine, a soft, soothing caress, and my entire body lights up—as if that’s the trigger my sex drive was waiting for before kicking into gear.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders, leaning into the kiss, marveling at the sensations it inspires inside me. Lust, I think, and arousal. Two things I assumed I’d never feel—I’ve been too broken.
But maybe the man who broke me is the only one who could unlock that side of me.
Greyson pulls back only when we’ve both been deprived of oxygen for so long that we’re at risk of passing out. He stares at me, eyes foggy, and shakes his head.
“Fuck, Scarlett,” he whispers. “I’d burn countries to the ground for a kiss like that. I’d give my life a thousand times for it.” He shakes his head. “If I survive this, I expect another kiss like that.”
“Okay,” I whisper, nodding.
“As touching as this is,” Cain says flatly, “I have a punishment to administer. Greyson, get your insolent ass to the annex.” He pauses. “We’ll see just how strong your love is—if it creates a will to survive what I’m about to do to you.”
My heart stutters. Cold flashes over my body.
“Monster…” I whisper. “Please don’t die.”
Monster gives me a grim smile. “I’ll do my fucking best, Flower.”
The annex is as cold, dark, and damp as I remember it. Each step into the building makes goosebumps break out across my skin, and a bone-deep chill of terror creates a fine tremble in my limbs.
“I think this should end where it all began, don’t you?
” Cain asks, stopping in front of a cell.
He punches in a code to unlock it, and when I glimpse the interior, it feels like the ground drops from beneath me.
My breaths shorten into pants, sweat beads the back of my neck, and a scream rises in my throat.
“N-no…”
It’s the cell.
My torture cell.
The place I see in my nightmares, when I dream of what Cain did to me here.
I tug at my hand, trying to dislodge it from Greyson’s. “Not here,” I say. “Anywhere but here—”
“It’s amusing that you think you have a choice,” Cain snaps. “Like either of you have a say. As far as I’m concerned, Greyson, you deserve a punishment for changing my course of action as much as you do for Scarlett’s sins.”
“Scarlett, it’ll be over soon,” Greyson says, gazing down at me with a strange softness in his gaze. “I promise, Flower, it’ll be over soon. Either way, the matter will be closed.”
“Yes, it will,” Cain mutters darkly. “Now get in the fucking cell. Scarlett, sit your ass at the table. If you move even an inch, you’re getting the fifteen lashes you’re owed. Greyson…” Cain chuckles. “You won’t be able to move.”
I know I don’t have a choice, not really. I could try to run, but I wouldn’t get far. Besides, leaving Greyson right now would make me the worst sort of human.
I opened my big mouth, and it led us here. The very least I can do is stay by his side and help him heal from whatever terror Cain intends to inflict on him.
If he survives…
“I’ll let the two of you get situated,” Cain says. “I just need to grab my implements.”
He disappears down the hall. Greyson stares at me. “I’m sorry it has to be here, Flower, but that’s Cain.” His lips thin. “Cruelest motherfucker on this earth.”
“Please don’t die,” I emphasize. “Please.”
“I won’t, Flower,” Grey says, leading me into the cell by my hand. “Nothing can take me from you. Not after that kiss.”
We pause in front of the table. I gaze at it, fear and something else warring inside of me.
Fear takes precedence, but I can’t deny that other feeling.
The one that comes from the time Monster lifted me up on a replica of this table, strapped me to it, and did unspeakable things to me.
He gave me unprecedented pleasure, even when I didn’t want it…
“Flower,” Monster breathes. “Think of the most recent experiences you had at a table like this. Not the ones that came before.”
I inhale several deep breaths, trying to temper my urge to run the fuck out of here. Monster is risking his life just to spare me pain—I can’t ignore that. I can’t run from that. I don’t know that I can run from us, whatever we are.
I force my knees to bend, lowering myself into this cursed chair. Memories flash through my mind—the stabbing that happened right here. The waterboarding. The constant feeling of impending doom. The surety that my only purpose in life had been reduced to suffering and dying an early death.
The agony that transcended any physical sensation and morphed into something profoundly, deeply emotional.
“Flower,” Monster says quietly, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I’m a different man, and you’re a different woman.”
He’s right. Monster—Greyson—went from the man who ignored my pleas of innocence to the man who will sacrifice himself for me, even when my life isn’t at stake. Who’s willing to die for my wellbeing…
Footsteps precede Cain’s return. My stomach churns at the items he’s holding—a horrific whip that looks like it has spikes built into the long, braided leather tassel… and a knife. A somewhat familiar knife.
Dear God, is that—
I don’t get to finish the thought before Cain stabs the knife into Greyson’s thigh.
A scream escapes my lips, and I lunge forward as Greyson falls to the ground, but Cain moves faster, pressing the blade—wet with Monster’s blood—against my neck.
He shoves me back into my seat, and I release a cry muffled by my trembling hand.
“You don’t move from this place,” Cain says flatly. “You did this, Scarlett. You decided that talking back to me was the best course of action, and here’s where it’s gotten you.” He glares at me. “If you move, I will forget any promise I made to Greyson. Do you understand me?”
As Monster releases a low, muffled groan of pain, I whimper, aching to go to him.
“Do you understand me?” Cain repeats.
A tear falls down my cheek as I force myself to nod.
“Stay right the fuck there.”
Cain kneels on the floor beside Monster, and uses his bloodied knife to cut open Monster’s shirt from the back, revealing a finely-toned, well-muscled back. My breath shudders as I inhale and exhale, dreading what comes next.
Cain stands to his full height and cracks the whip against the floor.
I jerk and squeal, tears streaming freely down my face and joining Greyson’s blood smeared on my neck.
God, how has my life come to this? I’m fearing for my captor’s life and wellbeing, when my captor’s the one who destroyed me in ways I’ll never recover from…
And the one who promised to fix me. The one who tells me I’m beautiful and means it. The one who decorated me with diamonds and showed me things about my body I never knew were possible. Who maneuvers me like he owns me, but holds me like he adores me.
Precious flower…
The next time Cain cracks the whip, it isn’t for the sake of scaring either of us.
A piercing scream escapes me as the unbelievably cruel whip drags against Monster’s skin in a lightning-quick gesture and leaves an open wound, which instantly begins seeping blood.
I cover my mouth with my hand as Monster breathes heavily, writhing on the ground.
Cain doesn’t give him a chance to recover; a second, harder strike comes down, forming an X across the first. I don’t even try to stop the tears as they fall down my cheeks. My very soul wrenches and twists, the scattered, fragmented pieces each wailing in agony with every strike of Cain’s whip.
I count every single one. On the tenth, blood starts splattering me, and I nearly throw up at the moist, sticky feeling of it covering my cheek.
On the twentieth, Greyson can no longer hold back grunts, which turn to shouts on the thirtieth.
Those devolve into low, broken moans by the fortieth, and on the fiftieth lash, he doesn’t make any noise at all.
I can’t stay in place any longer. He’s barely fucking breathing. I scramble out of my chair and drop to my knees beside him, hands shaking as they hover over his completely raw, torn-up back.
It’s going to take him weeks to heal from this—not to mention the stab wound on his thigh. My tears fall all the harder at the irony of this situation; I’m frantic to help him with his wounds when he was the one to inflict mine. My thoughts are a mess of confusion, so instinct takes over.
“The doctor will be in shortly,” Cain says, breathing hard. “You got so fucking lucky, Sharpe, and I don’t suggest you test your luck again. Or I’ll administer a punishment to both of you that makes this look like fucking child’s play.”