Chapter Thirteen
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Ily
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I RAN BLIND AND DEAF.
Water poured from the sky; thunder did its best to puncture my eardrums.
My ass ached from the bruises Henri decorated me with, and the cuts from a few days ago reached the itchy stage of healing, twinging as I galloped barefoot over soft, springy grass.
The lacy crystal-studded bra offered no support, and the G-string was as wet as the world around me, thanks to the orgasm still echoing in my blood.
I came.
He didn’t—
God, don’t think about it.
I balled my hands and ran harder, desperate to flee from what I’d done.
But I couldn’t outrun the truth, no matter how fast my feet flew.
The truth that every moment I spent with Henri, the deeper into infernal damnation I fell.
I’d hoped taking back what these men tried to claim would be self-empowering, enlightening.
And it was...
In an awful, horrible kind of way.
It showed me truths about myself I never wanted to face.
Truths of darkness and wrongness and sin.
Everything was black inside me.
Tangled inside me.
I cringed as I kept running.
All my life, I thought I was normal. Normal when it came to sex and love.
I enjoyed a kiss and a cuddle.
Sex in a bed and the occasional experience in the back seat of a car.
I rarely self-pleasured, and if I did...my fantasies stuck to nice men, nice touches, nice—
I’m nice.
I am.
But if I liked nice things and swore I was a nice girl, then how the hell could I be so sensitive, so wet, so violently thirsty for more.
Stop it.
You’re confused.
You’re hurting and lost and desperate.
Yes.
Desperate.
I was desperate.
So, so desperate.
To leave.
To run.
To go home.
Yet somehow that desperation had twisted into something sick. A sickness that turned me...how did Victor put it? Sweet but psychotic?
God, am I the crazy one?
Would I destroy myself before I stood a chance at destroying him?
God, him.
Damn him.
Smite him.
I hated that my soul shivered whenever Henri spoke.
I despised that my body turned molten the moment he touched me.
Soft or hard. Gentle or abusive.
It didn’t damn well matter.
And it mattered.
It mattered so, so much because how could I betray myself in that way?
How could I twitch with the undying rage to kill every Master in here? How could I say such nasty things, even if they were true? How could I do such nasty things...especially with a man I hated.
I-I put his finger inside me.
My stomach flipped, remembering the way he’d swiped his dinner to the floor and made me his main meal instead. The show of possession. The rage of someone equally unhinged.
I’d practically started coming the moment he’d entered me.
Stop it, Il.
Just...no more.
You’re fighting with anything and everything you have. That’s all. Your body is a weapon. Your heart is a knife. Use them. Use them until they’re dead.
My toes dug deeper.
I hurtled forward.
Swiping rain from my eyes, I did my best to see where I was going.
Uplights twinkled on manicured animal hedges. Fountains babbled and fairy lights swayed in the wild wind.
Despite the churning clouds above, the horizon glowed a faint pearl as if the moon did its best to slip beneath the wet violence, beckoning me to climb the stronghold walls, swim through the moat, and hurl myself off the cliff.
Masculine laughter came from my left, followed by a feminine scream.
My feet immediately switched directions, running away from them despite my heart breaking for the poor jewel who’d just been caught.
Lightning forked above me like a morbid, murderous firework.
I hunched, waiting.
BOOM.
The answering thunder threatened to stop my breaking heart as I darted over the sweeping lawns and toward a part of the estate housing fruit trees and a giant maze.
No way in hell would I go in the maze.
I wasn’t stupid enough to get lost and molested, but I did race into the grove of leaves, searching for a place to hide.
An hour.
The game would only last an hour.
If I could hide for that long, then I could ask Henri—as nicely as I could with my newly venom-coated tongue—if I could spend the night with the jewels.
Spending the afternoon alone hadn’t been my plan.
I’d hoped at least Peter would’ve been in the showers or dorm. I needed to talk to someone. To ask if this was normal. To purge myself with confession so these awful, sickening secrets didn’t eat me alive.
Instead, I’d spent the precious couple of hours I had in the vault, doing my best to distract myself with necklaces and gemstones because each time I brushed my body, all I could think about was him.
Him.
God, not this again.
Get out, get out, get out!
I needed him.
Needed him to be the cop I believed.
Needed him to be good.
Needed him to save both of us because if he didn’t...I had a horrible feeling there’d be nothing left to save.
A few men ran past in the shadows.
I ducked behind a tree laden with apples.
So I’m in the orchard.
Perhaps there were sheds nearby I could hide in. Storage rooms for fruit and other fragile things.
A short celebration from someone who found a prize quickly smothered into pain as a Master found them.
The grunts of sex sounded to my left, followed by the rhythmic growls of someone who didn’t believe in restraint.
Monsters.
All around me.
Everywhere.
I ran again.
My toes found painful twigs and crunchy leaves, slowing my speed.
I aimed for the soft grass. I could cover more distance that way. I could perhaps run to the battlement and find an archer’s nook.
Darting onto the storm-drowning lawn, I put my head down and raced.
I almost ran over it.
A large plastic gemstone looked as if it’d been dropped by the raging thunder. It sat dull and cloudy as fat raindrops rolled down its fake yellow facets.
It beckoned me forward.
Memories of playing a similar treasure hunt with Krish when we were younger filled my head.
Back then, our parents had hidden large plastic Easter eggs in the garden, holding small toys and chocolates. There hadn’t been repercussions for finding them or rape waiting in the foliage.
My chest ached for innocence.
My body reminded me I’d fallen so far from grace.
I bent down to grab the gem...
...just as a man hurtled from the darkness.
He bowled into me, snatched my wrist, ducked and grabbed the large plastic stone, then hauled me into speed.
“Peter?” I gasped, licking at droplets cascading down my face. The wind pinched my bare skin, making my nipples as hard as the diamonds on my bra.
“Run.” He put his head down and dragged me. I ran as fast as I could beside him, but he was faster, hauling me to speeds I’d never reached before.
“W-Where are we going?” I panted over the wind.
“I have to find the gemstone with the Diamond Kiss in it. I deliberately didn’t put it out. I put it back in the cupboard where all his sick prizes wait, but...he noticed.” Sucking in a tattered breath, he ran faster. “I don’t know where he hid it, but I have to find it before a Master does.”
“Why?”
A crack of lightning lit up his body. Brown hair sopping wet, white tight boxers turning transparent between his legs. His back held a crisscross of swollen ligatures.
I tripped. “Oh my God, your back.”
He winced. “Ignore it. Keep running.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I have to find that gemstone!”
I couldn’t take my eyes off his fresh lacerations as he ran as fast as he could, dragging me like I weighed nothing.
Someone had whipped him.
Recently.
A horrible Master had chained him up, punished him with a whip, and then—
I stopped my thoughts before I could picture him being abused any further.
My teeth ground together; the fury that’d manifested in my heart grew sharper claws.
This place had changed me.
It’d rewired my pieces, and I hated that I couldn’t afford to care or cry or be nice anymore. The storm couldn’t wash away the filth in my blood, but it did drown the old me.
It choked me and suffocated me and my rage chose that moment to spill over.
“Enough!” I yanked on his hand.
Our rain-slippery skin broke apart.
He shot forward; I reeled back.
I rubbed at my knuckles where his nails caught me. “I’ve had enough, Peter. We need to get out of this place. Now. Tonight. Immediately.”
Breathing hard, he locked his knees and stopped his trajectory. With shaking hands, he opened the large gemstone he’d scooped from the grass and angled the piece of paper toward an uplight aimed at a hedgerow of a squirrel.
Instantly, my mind shot back to Henri, thanks to one of the Masters calling him a hibernating squirrel.
God!
Grabbing my dripping hair, I tried to yank him out of my head.
Enough.
Enough.
Enough!
Screaming under my breath, I stomped toward Peter and balled my hands.
“We have to do something. I can’t stay here.
You can’t stay here. No one can stay here.
” I shoved him in the chest. “I heard jewels being hurt out there. Someone is having sex in the orchard. Someone screamed. They’re monsters, Peter, and they’re turning me into one.
We can’t stay here! A-Are you listening to me?
We need to fight. There are thirty of us, and I only saw fifteen or so of them at dinner.
We can...” I shrugged as the hopelessness of everything sat like a rusty anchor in my chest. “We have to try.”
Ignoring my outburst, Peter skimmed the prize. Baring his teeth, he shoved the damp paper into his equally damp boxers and tossed the cracked-open fake gem to the ground. “Fuck.”
“Are you deliberately ignoring me?”
“I have bigger things on my mind right now.”
“Bigger than escape?”
“Yes, actually.” His fury matched mine, both of us raging and taking it out on each other instead of those who deserved it. “If I don’t find that gem then someone is going to die. And right now, all I’ve fucking found is a goddamn cheeseburger chit!”
“Wait, what?”
He huffed with a morose slouch. “Someone will die, Ily. Someone is going to die if I don’t find that Diamond Kiss.” Shooting forward, he snagged my hand. “Come on. He might have hidden it in the maze.”