Chapter Nine
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Ily
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WE SLEPT FOR THREE DAYS.
Exhaustion came for both of us and shoved us down, down into its cloying, clinging grip.
I tried to fight it off. Tried to summon enough strength to slink out of bed and return to the jewel quarters, but the moment Henri placed me like spun glass on his mattress, handed me another black t-shirt from his wardrobe, and held back the covers for me to clamber beneath, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
He didn’t march to the bathroom to hide.
Didn’t touch me or hurt me.
He merely unbuttoned his jeans, undressed to his boxers, then crawled into bed beside me.
He plummeted into sleep quicker than I did.
I had a few seconds where I could’ve slit his throat with...something. Maybe a shard of glass from breaking the vanity mirror or even the sharp little pins from his cufflinks abandoned on the bedside table.
But then everything went black.
And I slept.
* * * * *
We slept through lunch and dinner.
We stumbled blurry-eyed and silent to the bathroom to relieve ourselves and drink some water.
We tried to stay awake, but the emotional and physical burnout wasn’t done.
I slept beside my enemy and didn’t give a damn.
By the end of the second night, we roused ourselves just enough to order room service.
We ate in caustic silence, devouring the most heavenly mushroom and pumpkin risotto.
The fresh cheesy bread filled my stomach with carbs, and before I knew it, we were fast asleep again, completely unconscious, side by side, until another dawn shone, and the sun slowly cured our debilitating fatigue.
* * * * *
I treated myself to Henri’s shower.
His back had been turned to me as I woke and noticed the clock next to the unicorn-murdering goblin hinted noon wasn’t so far away.
I’d never slept so long or so deeply.
I didn’t know if it was the fact I hadn’t slept for a few days previously or my terror and heartache had wrung me dry, but as I stood beneath steamy, burning droplets, I felt more myself than I had since I went to the train station with Samuel and headed through the tunnel to Paris.
A lifetime ago.
A world past.
Tipping my face into the heavy stream, I sighed.
Did that Q guy hear me clearly enough? Had he found my father and told him what’d happened? Was he on his way to find me and the other slaves?
Three days was a long time.
Three days could be the difference between sexual servitude and freedom.
My skin prickled with awareness.
I jumped as I looked to my left and spotted Henri watching me. His grey eyes sharp and savage, no longer hazy with sleep.
Instinct made me raise my arms and cup my breasts, turning my hips so he couldn’t see. But then remembrance made me flinch, and I let my hands fall.
He’d seen everything. Touched everything.
The fact that I’d fallen for his falsehoods—lies that left me with a horrible aftertaste—didn’t change the fact that he’d kept me from the grasp of others and I’d been given a blessed honeymoon in this place.
Unlike wedded couples who went at it like deviants and consummated their marriage with love and joy, this wedding had been cemented without a single touch. Three nights of nothing but sleep. In our dreams, I’d become his. In our nightmares, he’d bought me.
I hate him.
Ignore him.
Running my fingers under my awful collar, I choked down claustrophobia as I rinsed away any dirt beneath. Repeating the process with my cuffs, I managed to ignore him during my entire wash.
Only once I’d sluiced off the soap and had nothing else to do but get out did I gather my courage and face him.
I froze.
Ever so slowly, he stripped off his underwear, kicked them into the corner, and entered the shower. The large, black-tiled space with its massive rain head and bench seat had seemed cavernous with just me inside.
Now, it felt like the tiniest prison.
My skin prickled as he reached around me and gathered a handful of soap from the dispenser.
A whiff of honeysuckle and jojoba fragranced the steamy hot air as he ran his hands under his arms, over the scant hair on his sculptured chest, and down, down to his hardening cock.
Look away, Ily.
Look away now.
I tried.
I really did.
But my eyes glued themselves to his fist. My breath turned thin as he worked himself. My heart floundered like a dying thing as any sign of flaccidity turned into velvet-wrapped steel.
Nudging me out of the way, he stepped under the stream, hissed at the hot temperature, then turned it down until icicles dripped from the showerhead.
I gasped and dashed to the glass door.
Only, his hand lashed out, snapping around my cuffed wrist.
I flinched as his fingers tightened, pressing against my pounding pulse.
Yet he didn’t say a word.
Not a single one.
He held me and rinsed in snow, then flipped the water back to hot and yanked me under it.
I spluttered as he pressed me against the chilly tiles and dropped his hand between my legs.
I shot onto my tiptoes as a single finger found me, slipped through my shower-wet folds, then penetrated.
Good God—
The invasion.
The intrusion.
I gritted my teeth as he stroked me.
I didn’t fight back as he hooked his finger and found that disloyal, deluded spot.
My tummy clenched as he continued to touch with all the arrogance of a man who knew I had nowhere else to go.
The stagnant silence and heavy weight of cursed synergy between us only made my heart thunder harder.
Bending his neck, he pressed his mouth to the vein in my throat.
I didn’t know if he meant to kiss me or bite me, but all my senses shot to where his lips caressed, scrambling as his one finger became two, and he still didn’t speak.
He rocked his hand between my legs all while his cock hung heavy and hungry between his.
Billowing steam thickened, obscuring his face as he pulled away from my neck and ensnared me with his silver stare.
Every urge and self-preservation ordered me to look down. To bow or kneel or do any number of things to get him off me and far, far away.
But a guttural groan fell from him as his fingers feathered inside me, and my body finally answered.
Against my will.
Against the very fabric of right and wrong.
I grew wet from his skilled touch.
I had no power over the tingles and tugging.
My cheeks blazed as he worked me deeper, harder, his hand pumping in that perfect rhythm, his thumb finding my clit and forcing me deeper, deeper into a vortex that promised sublime shattering.
I grabbed his wrist and tried to stop him.
His tendons flexed beneath my hold, but he never ceased.
His fingers withdrawing and thrusting, in and out of me.
Our gazes locked as he forced me higher on my tiptoes, knowing I couldn’t run. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t stop this.
He might’ve been speaking the truth that our previous couplings hadn’t been rape, but now I knew who he truly was.
And this...this wasn’t wanted.
I opened my mouth to tell him no. To see if that word held any power.
But his hand clamped over my lips, and he shook his head.
The first communication in three days.
With the stealth of a terrifying beast, he pressed his cheek to mine and breathed, “On your hands and knees, little nightmare.”
My eyes flared as he removed his fingers and reached out of the shower for one of the many towels on the rack. I scowled as he brought it beneath the spray and hot droplets instantly drowned it, making the plush white cotton go soggy.
Slapping it onto the floor, he pointed at it.
He didn’t speak again.
Didn’t have to.
We both knew who the Master was, and I cursed him all over again as he clamped a hand on my shoulder and pushed me down.
And down.
And down.
He didn’t stop pushing me until I kneeled on the towel.
The moment I kneeled, he twisted me away, then pressed on my nape, urging me forward.
I deliberated fighting.
I imagined so many scenarios of kicking his legs out from under him and killing him with a heavy fall. I pictured grabbing the showerhead and ramming it down his throat. I entertained myself with visions of strangling him with the towel or bludgeoning him to death with the soap dispenser.
But all of that took strength and speed.
And he already had me on my knees.
And, out there, lurked a hundred more like him.
And every single one of them would gladly trade places to hurt me.
What was worse?
Being fucked by a man who’d already been inside me or fucked by someone new?
What would break me less?
Being taken by a man who’d never lied or the one who made me hope?
With a despairing sigh, I stopped straining against his hand and tipped forward.
I gripped the slippery tile. My knees grateful for the towel’s cushioning.
Heavy water pummelled between my shoulder blades, slightly too hot, prickles of heated pain.
My dripping hair hung around my face, and I refused to look behind me.
Refused to see how hard he was.
How desperate he was to fuck me.
Grabbing another towel, the wet slap of it sent a flush of goosebumps and terror.
The shudder of him falling to his knees behind me made me beg to be anywhere else.
His fingers found me again, testing my readiness, granting me at least some consideration to prepare me.
That’s for him, you idiot.
Fucking something wet and hot was one thing.
Fucking something dry and frigid was entirely another.
I choked on a sudden sob.
Frigid.
Sam had used that word.
I’d thought his accusation was the worst thing to ever happen to me.
Now, I’d give anything to go back to that nightclub and thank my stupid ex.
Thank him for name-calling and setting me free.
Thank him for showing me that it wasn’t the end of the world to be told your sexual prowess was worse than a blow-up doll because I would’ve given anything, literally anything, to never have sex again.
Henri’s fingers withdrew and landed slippery on my hip.
He caressed me like he had in the past.
Before, I’d stupidly associated those little swirls with our own version of Morse code.
A silent little message just for me.
His fingers said...stay calm.
I’ve got you.
We’ll survive...together.
But now?
What a mockery.
What a goddamn lie.
My head dropped as deeper sorrow twisted my heart.
But I didn’t cry.
I would never cry again.
Not for him.
Not for them.
And definitely not for me.
I shivered as he ran his thumbs over my hipbones one last time, then reared up and pressed his thighs to the back of mine.
My ears strained for his voice.
For him to tell me to obey and play along and it will all be over soon.
Poisonous words sat on my tongue to reply.
To tell him to jump off a cliff and die, only...
He stayed quiet.
Just a breathy little groan as he notched his crown inside me and paused.
His fingers gripped my hips, his knees spread mine a little more.
The broadness of his cock sent messages of conquest throughout my entire body.
He hadn’t even filled me, yet he’d conquered me just by holding me in place, knotting us together like animals, dragging out the moment of suspense.
Not giving me peace, not penetrating or pleasuring or putting me out of my tangled, terrible misery.
I waited.
I waited just like I’d waited for help to come.
And when I didn’t think I could wait any longer, he pressed a kiss to the beads of my spine and—
Thrust.
All the way in.
Thick and hard, long and dominating.
I cried out.
I gagged on a scream.
He growled as he seated himself ever so deep inside me.
He folded over my back, wrapped his arm around my chest, and palmed my swinging breasts. His hand clutched far, far too tight.
His teeth sank into my shoulder as if to scar me with ownership, and then...he rode me.
He didn’t have sex with me.
He rutted.
He turned off his humanity and mated me like a monster.
And all I could do was brace.
Brace against his pounding. His punishment. His pulsing, maddening thrusts.
I hated that the small fire he’d kindled grew brighter and brighter flames.
I hated that my hips started matching his, slapping us together with wet sucks from the shower and loud claps from our skin.
I hated that his teeth started to feel good.
The way he pinched my nipples felt good.
The way he drove again and again felt oh so fucking good.
And I had a choice.
A single choice in that single sinful moment.
Come and claim this forced sex as mine.
Or let him come and think he ruled me.
As darkness wisped over my sanity and despair cancelled out my dignity, I made that choice.
I changed beneath him.
I felt the sick mutation as I became someone I didn’t recognise.
No way out.
No way free.
So...I had to find my own freedom.
Peter was right.
The trick to existing in this place was embracing the very thing used to shackle us.
Sex.
Sex was for them.
Sex was theirs, and we were the vessels to take it.
But what if I made it mine?
The moment the thought unfurled, the darkness stopped wisping and pounced. It clouded my head, clotted my heart, and my body decided it’d had enough of being taken and took instead.
A vicious, vanquishing orgasm sliced deep, deep inside me.
Pleasured by Henri’s rampant fucking, stabbed again and again by his conquering cock, I gave in to heat and fire and magic.
And when that magic burst, I let loose all the agony inside me.
I came.
I came hard.
I came from my G-spot—a mythical place but now fully real.
The power of it awakened and corrupted me.
The clenches felt fiercer, deeper, stronger than any other; I lost myself to pinwheels and light sparks.
I’d never come this way before.
Never felt my body gush or grasp so greedily for harder, faster, more, more, more.
In one ripple, I was addicted.
I clamped down on his invasion and demanded he give me everything.
And from behind me came the most animalistic roar.
Henri had no choice but to give in to me.
I ruled him.
Commanded him.
I made him break.
He came.
As he spurted rhythmically and ruthlessly inside me, I finally knew how I would survive.
Not together.
Not with him.
But alone.
By myself.
In this cesspit of sex and sedition.
Until one day, I was free again.