Chapter 2
In the safety of her apartment, Kara falls into an uneasy slumber, filled with nightmares. Only, the nightmares aren’t just dreams.
These nightmares are memories.
“I bet you miss him, don’t you?” Her mother’s voice is dark. Smokey. The kind of voice Kara always wished she had. In this moment though, her mother’s tone is unkind, accusing. “Even after all he’s done to us, you probably want him back.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I’ve watched you for years, little dove. You love him because he never gives you what you want. Round and round you go, trying to make him love you. He never does, does he? He never loved me. You’ve always known the truth though, Kara. You’re not stupid. He’s not wired that way.”
The dream shifts, light shining into her mother’s kitchen. The sun is falling in the background, an orange in the fall sky.
Plates clatter loudly into the sink and Kara glowers over her shoulder. “I never thought I was stupid. I just figured it was natural to want your father to…I don’t know…”
Her mother flicks her dark auburn hair over one shoulder, looking at Kara from under heavily lidded eyes. She’s got this certain pout to her lips, unkind, the sort that says she’s going to be blunt without reservation.
“It always made me feel like a terrible mother. Watching my little girl play out her self-fulfilling prophecy with every boy she ever ran around with. It was like you wanted to reenact every horrible moment of your childhood. Like you never wanted to be happy. You would chase the boys in hopes that they would love you, only when they did, you suddenly didn’t want them anymore.” Her mother sneers, hazel eyes glittering with bitterness. “You resented them for ruining the illusion .”
It touches close to home. Kara’s dark eyes flash as she storms out of her mother’s kitchen. “Why do I even bother visiting you? You always have to bring this up and I’m tired of it.”
Razorblades and blood. Funeral flowers. A boat load of guilt.
A flash of darkness in the dream. A coffin. The smell of dirt is so clear, freshly broken. A sob sticks in Kara’s chest, but the dream moves on.
It’s dark and her feet hurt. She shouldn’t have worn the three and a half inch stilettos. Why did she dance all night in these? Oh, because the heels are rocket-red and it reminds her of blood and pain and angry passion.
“Hey sweetie, new girls go across the street. Move your tight ass on down,” someone calls out to her, voice raspy with cigarettes and alcohol.
The words don’t make sense, she isn’t a new girl, she doesn’t even know what that means. She waves the voice off with irritation, slurring that she just wants to get home.
Uh. It’s so dark and everything is so blurry.
A few more paces and a large stretch limo is beside her, slowing down, keeping pace. The window rolls down slightly, but Kara ignores it, keeps stumbling forward. Her feet are probably going to bleed. Crap. What will she wear to work on Monday that won’t hurt the back of her feet?
Why is it so exhausting to move?
“Hey doll. Want to rest your feet?” Male laughter. Small female sounds. The smell of vape sticks, sickly sweet.
Blankly, Kara looks up, rests her hand on the side of the black limo. Convenient for them to arrive for her to lean upon. She leans and balances on one heel while reaching to take off the other. Screw getting filthy feet. The fire in her toes will not be denied any further. “No shit. What does it look like,” she slurs under her breath, not really paying attention.
She’s mad at herself. She’s always mad at herself.
She doesn’t expect the limo door to open. She doesn’t expect the world to spin and shift wildly as she’s pulled inside.
Someone is grabbing at her face, inspecting her like livestock or something equally insulting. “Aw, look at her. She’s like an angel with a sweet face,” a man says, running his hand through her dark locks, exposing her visage.
There’s another hand, now around her neck, pulling towards someone else. He makes a noise deep in his chest, an unimpressed sort of sound. Like he doesn’t like what he sees. “She’s a baby. Send her back.”
She’s not that young. Is twenty-eight young?
“Hey, you’re the one who pointed her out.”
“Yeah. From behind,” the one holding her snaps with disdain.
Irritated, drunk, drugged, and tired, Kara yanks her head away, baring her teeth in a snarl. “No one asked your opinion, asshole.”
Her voice is probably too slurred to be totally clear, but her intent is obvious. The hand on her neck tightens suddenly, so suddenly that she chokes on the violent lack of air that she’s been hit with. She’s so tired and wants to go home, why is this asshat making her life difficult?
Red alarms are distant sounds in her head.
All the faces in the dream are a blur. She sees suits, men with legs spread wide. Brightly colored socks. Four men? The limo is large, easily seats eight. There’s even two women, but they are behind her. Their hands are busy on the laps of the men they are by, up and down, up and down. Kara glowers upwards, unable to focus, but can still feel the fire in her gaze.
“Mouthy little bitch, huh?” He’s saying it thickly, low, like he’s aroused. “You like to fight, is that it? Fine.”
There are a few sounds of amusement in the limo and they echo in her head like a freakish laugh track.
Clink. The sound of a belt buckle being undone. Somehow it sounds so loud, despite all the noise around her. Like she’s suddenly focused on this one point, this one small act. This small noise that makes her even more uncomfortable and angry.
She’s hauled towards his lap, chest connecting with his crotch. He tells her to just ‘get it done’.
There’s a moment of disbelief. What sort of men are these? They just…pick up chicks on the street and get sexual favors from them? And this is allowed? What world do they live in? Her stomach turns, alcohol crawling back up her throat at the very concept.
“Do it yourself,” she mutters, struggling in his tight grasp.
A new voice from the far end of the party limo chimes in with annoyance. “Look. We’re giving you time off your feet. Just do your job, you’ll get paid, like these other fine…ladies of the night here.”
There’s some female giggling.
Ladies of the night…?
In her effort to get away from the man holding her, Kara’s hand lands on his crotch. She almost crows with laughter. He’s soft, harmless. Ugliness creeps into her voice, because rancor is her specialty. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
She can’t see his face. It’s a blur, her dream is all a fog of war. She can smell him though, lord almighty that part is burned into her mind. He smells good, rich. Above her paygrade. Like, far above. Sweet tobacco. Coffee. Rum. Spicy. She’d lick his neck and eat him alive for that cologne alone if he weren’t such a prick, telling her that he’s going to pay her for…for what?
Like she’s a whore? Indignant rage spikes in her veins again.
Kara can’t breathe again, his hand going stiff around her throat. Oh, he didn’t like her pointing out his soft cock, did he? “Are you nervous?” She grits it out, mocks him. “Do I scare you?”
She always loves a fight.
The dream goes dark, then there’s a flash of red and a splash of pain.
He’s…hit her? In the face? Ah. The split lip. She can taste blood on her tongue and she spits it at him. With a disorientated swing, she lashes out at him, but he grabs both of her wrists and slams her to her knees hard enough to jar her kneecaps.
She groans in muted pain; it isn’t fair how strong he is.
He holds her neck until she sees stars and finally a hint of anxiety creeps into her blurred mind. “Let me go, just let me go home,” she whines, fighting weakly with his grasp when it returns to her wrists.
The harder she fights, the rougher he gets.
He brings her face to his crotch, his fingertips roughly pressing into her jaw, because she swore to bite it off otherwise.
He’s hard now. The violence, the acts of aggression towards her turned him on. She sags in his grip and realizes the mistake she’s made.
This is what he wanted all along.
Kara is going to have the last word, even around his damn fingers. “Is this why a guy like you needs to pay for sex?”
His fingers tighten on her jaw and he moves her face down into his lap.
It’s like suffocating, but worse.
With a violent jolt, Kara wakes up, hand clutched to her chest as she pants heavily. Large sobs that wrack her lungs threaten to crawl up her esophagus. An emotion that feels vaguely like horror is carousing through her. It’s like her body is a carnival and ridiculously, she feels like crying.
Oh, wait. Perhaps she’s already crying.
With a groan, she rubs her eyes, dismissing the wetness that she feels there. She rarely has dreams that affect her so deeply. She breathes in and tells herself that it isn’t real. “Just a dream. Just a bad dream.”
Which, of course, is a lie, but she’s always been good at denial.
What’s worse is her stomach is in knots and her core is heated. Her nether regions feel swollen and she refuses to put a hand near the source of that ache. She mutters darkly, “ How sick in the head am I?”
With a mutinous glance, she cranes her stiff neck to look at her clock. Seven in the morning. Early enough to get up and make coffee. To sit and read notes to prep for Monday. Something to get her mind off the past.
And to get her mind off that effed up dream.
It didn’t happen. You are letting your imagination run away with you. This is your way of gaining control of something you don’t have control of.
With furious intent, Kara grabs her work tote, filled with her laptop and folders for her latest assignment. This will keep her busy. This will keep her mind off of the weekend until tomorrow. Her nerves are already on edge; she’s got court in the morning and this time she is going to be assisting one of the named partners at the firm; Derrick Benson.
She’d begun working at Benson how could she have ever imagined that Bianca could be trusted to watch her back in a club? Bianca had been too far in her own cup to think clearly. Not that she can be blamed for it, considering Bianca usually has Kara to keep an eye on her.
Kara usually never needs Bianca to take care of her and Bianca has settled into that routine. Kara is the alpha watchdog female; Bianca is her wayward pup. It’s because Kara doesn’t drink much, not anymore. Drinking leads to bad things, where she’s concerned.
Despite all this, she feels disappointment. If there’s one thing Kara does trust in, it’s that she can always trust in people to disappoint her.
She found out at a young age that if she always expected the worst in people, she could never be hurt. Nothing could touch her. She built a wall around her heart that no one could penetrate and it kept her safe.
With a sigh, Kara realizes that she should probably check her phone to see if Bianca even texted her to make sure she got home alright. Then again, Bianca would probably say, “You’re twenty-eight, you don’t need me to baby you.”
Or something to that note.
Sipping her coffee, inhaling the soft scent, Kara opens up the large folder that Derrick had sent her home with to study. The case is…well, it isn’t clean cut. Apparently, there’s a private sex club for the rich and for the freaky in one of the financial district skyscrapers. The Dark Mirage takes up two floors, the fortieth and the forty-first in the building. A special passcode is required to enter.
From there, apparently any fetish can be met. Swingers. BDSM. Whatever.
Months ago, a woman had gone to the hospital with bruising and cuts, along with visible signs of sexual assault. Which, of course could be attributed to rough sex, but the anal tearing in addition to the vaginal trauma made that seem a little less likely. She’d been a member of the club, which she had been reluctant to mention, given the nature of the situation.
The woman had been going to the club for a few months and had been seeing one of the professional Doms there. Apparently, she’d been looking to live on the edge for a while. She admitted to being interested in extreme pain and submission.
This woman, Debra Mills, had told her Dom to stop when he’d decided to suspend her from the ceiling with…an anal hook. Kara had squirmed in her seat when Debra Mills had told the story, piece by piece. Because, what the fuck?
The act had started on the ground with Debra’s arms bound up behind her back, a cord from the inserted hook connecting to her bound wrists. Apparently, Debra had been fine with this until the Dom connected her bound hands to a chain, hoisting her into the air, putting extreme pressure on her arms and...delicate bits.
Debra adamantly claims she told him to stop. As it were, the Dom hadn’t listened. Then, while Debra fell into what she called ‘subspace’ due to the chemicals in her body kicking into overdrive, he’d tied her down onto a table and had sex with her when Debra was in no position to say ‘no’ anymore.
Ah, the legalities of it all. The whole affair is a twisted slope and Debra wants justice against the club owner as well, claiming the club is aware that they employ less than savory characters. It’s a two-front battle.
Kara and Derrick are the counsel of the woman.
These cases are always miserable. It’s always a ‘he said, she said’ situation. One can never actually see the facts. No one ever knows the truth behind locked doors.
The opposing counsel, representing both the Dom and the club, will no doubt say the woman had paid to be there, thus she knew what she was getting into as a consenting adult. It’s Kara’s job to prove that just because Debra is a member of the club, it doesn’t mean she wants to be hung from a ceiling like a sack of meat, then forced into a sexual encounter while she’s injured.
Derrick had warned her that this case wouldn’t be cut and dry. It wouldn’t be easy. “The opposing counsel is experienced with this sort of case,” he’d said in a serious tone. “If we aren’t careful, they will swing this story however it best benefits their clients.”
For a moment, Kara drifts, her stomach feeling sick again.
There’s something that just won’t let her go as she sits there sipping her coffee, staring blankly at page after page of documentation.
How easy it must be, to assault defenseless young women. How easy it must be; especially if you’re the type that gets off on it. Kara presses the heated coffee mug to her forehead, trying to burn the ache of her head away.
Spice, coffee, and rum. God, he’d smelled so good. The idea of sweet tobacco smoke makes her mouth water.
With anger, Kara shuts the thought down quickly. Nothing happened to her; she won’t be another girl on the stand saying how weak she’d been. How she’d allowed herself to be taken advantage of. Her pride will not allow it, her furious angry pride.
None of that matters though, because it didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen because he isn’t real. He’s a figment of your imagination, Kara. This case freaks you out and now you’re having nightmares about weird, twisted things.
Even if he’s only a dream, a nightmare, she remembers how relaxed his voice had been when he was done. The way his hand had gone soft in her hair, as he pet her like a cat. “Good girl, sweetpea,” he’d said in that slight rasp of his. “Off you go.”
He’d placed something in her hand. Something she’d fiddled with and he’d helped her stuff into her purse before pushing her out into the night.
Kara freezes, suddenly going cold. She stares at the opposite wall, eyes wide with a certain moment of panic. Without another thought, she dashes from the kitchen table and goes looking for her purse, tearing into it with a maddened fervor.
No.
With weak limbs, she sinks to the ground with her purse, staring down at it with shaking hands. Buried in the bottom of the purse is a large wad of cash that she knows is not hers. Five hundred dollars, five hundred damning pieces of paper lie at the bottom of the purse, laughing at her denial.