CHAPTER 7 CADEN
CADEN
What the fuck will I do if someone’s hurt her? The nightdress she was wearing when I picked her up was ankle length and long-sleeved. How was I supposed to know she was hurt?
What the fuck will I do if it’s from being fucked by someone?
My stomach coils itself up into a sickeningly tight knot. I’m not sure why I care.
Because it’ll confirm the rumours are true and I’m really marrying a slut that everyone’s railed. The rumours about her are quite graphic, injuries from them wouldn’t be far-fetched.
I’m berating myself on the way to my bedroom, knowing Fiz got in my head. If the rumours aren’t true, if she was hurt unwillingly… I have a reputation to uphold. I have a point to make. No one hurts my fiancé.
I burst through the door and don’t see her. Then a head pops up from the other side of the bed. I slam the door behind me.
“Get on the bed,” I order with a tone that tells her there’s no room for argument here.
She still does though. “No.” She shoots to her feet and backs away.
She’s redressed in the pair of my shorts and tee, exposing some of that mottled skin I haven’t seen yet. She looks tiny in my clothes. They drown her. Black suits her. It’s kind of a pretty contrast to her skin. She even –
I’m hit with the first visual of her arms, clearing those ridiculous thoughts before they transpire into something ludicrous.
I close the distance and grab her arm, yanking her over to the bed. She fights me every step, screaming and scratching at my arm, but it makes no difference. I throw her onto the mattress and mount her, trapping her legs between mine, pinning her arms above her head.
I examine the patches of skin visible to me. They’re grotesque. Bone deep. I trail up to her face, she’s got a scowl fixed there, attempting to look vicious, but I see beneath it. I see a vulnerability there that usually turns me on, but with her it just irks me.
“Who hurt you?”
She presses her lips into a thin line. Refusal.
“Dammit, Elodie, tell me.”
“Why?” she spits, disdain dripping from her. “Why does it matter?”
“Because it does.”
She stares into my eyes, debating something. Finally, she says, “My father.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a fucked-up prick. Why the fuck else?”
I lick my teeth. Then I remember what the boys said.
“I want to see the rest of it.” I lift up, releasing her arms and she instantly bats at my body.
It doesn’t take much effort to get the shirt off.
She’s got no strength in her, it’s kind of taking the piss that I’m doing this now, when she hasn’t got the slimmest chance of overpowering me.
Of course, with no bras in the house to lend her, she’s bare-chested.
Usually, it might be distracting, if it weren’t for the mass of blacks, blues, and purples all over her torso.
She swears at me, throws her arms over her tits but it’s fine.
I’ve seen what I needed to see there. Shuffling down to her knees, I start to shimmy the shorts off.
She struggles against me, releasing her chest to claw at my hands and protest. The erratic movements and sharp scratches really test my patience as I keep losing my grip on the waistband.
I go up to her face and claw at her chin.
“I’m just going to fucking look, okay? If you’re difficult about it, I’ll ram something up you and it won’t be any part of me. ”
She immediately falls still, frozen with a fresh bout of fear. I see it sparkling there in the ocean of her eyes, ice-cold, petrified.
Huffing, I push her legs up from under me, remove the shorts, grip her knees and spread them apart. Her head swings to the side, eyes flying shut as she tries to disappear into her mind.
Instantly, I see Alfie didn’t give her a pair of boxers to wear, so I’m now staring at her pussy.
Shit. I’ve suddenly forgotten what I was meant to be doing. Despite the hair that’s grown wild from lack of maintenance, I hate to admit Fiz was right. It’s a pretty fucking pussy. Cute, delicate, beckoning.
Goddammit.
My mouth fills with saliva, my cock fills with blood.
She squirms, knocking me from my stupor. I blink several times, and everything else comes back into focus.
There’re bruises all around her thighs, especially along the insides, obvious finger impressions around the groin. My hand involuntarily comes up, fingertips trailing some of them, grazing with a feather-light brush. Her breath snags. “Your father did this too?” I pull my eyes away to look at her.
She’s still got her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Silence.
My heart speeds up. I crawl back up to hover above her. “Or was it someone else? Are the rumours true?”
Silence.
My patience frays. “Fucking speak to me.”
“It’s none of your business,” she spits.
I exhale an unamused laugh. “Newsflash, sweetheart,” I say, flattening my body onto hers, letting her feel my weight crushing her, feeling my hardened cock against her.
She winces at my weight. “Everything about you is my business now. I can find out anything I want about you, but I’m giving you the option to save me the trouble.
I will find out either way. I’ll find out who and when, how, what fucking positions.
I’ll find out your worst fears, your favourite foods, what keeps you up at night.
I’ll learn your worst habits, your darkest thoughts.
Your brightest ambitions. All of it. But right now, I want to know who’s been inside your pussy.
I want to know if you’re really the dirty whore I’ve heard you to be. ”
“Why?” She turns her head, eyes landing on mine, glower on full power. “Why do you even care?”
I can’t tell her that if she says they’re not true, it’ll change everything for me. My entire perception of her will change. And I’ll have some people to kill.
“Because you’ll be my wife soon. I deserve to know who’s been inside you.”
She grimaces. “Tell me who you’ve been inside then.”
I scoff. “I haven’t got that time to list them all off to you. Just spit it out.”
She does. In the literal sense.
This disobedient little brat spits in my face. “Go to Hell,” she says, “along with your fucked-up family.”
There’s an eruption of rage inside my chest when her saliva hits my cheek. It’s almost as palpable as the rage that hits when she cusses out my family. Did Alfie not warn her of anything today?
It jolts my body into action. I grab both her wrists and hold them above her head in one of mine, then I claw her jaw with the other.
“You disrespectful little whore,” I sneer, blood roaring in my ears.
“I could snap you like a glow stick, you know that? I can bruise you worse than the ones you’ve already got.
You think you know pain? You know nothing. ”
I drop my hand to her neck, wrap it around and squeeze. She splutters and gasps before my tightening cuts it off, her shining blue eyes growing wide with panic.
“You feel that, sweetheart?” I drop my voice to almost a whisper. “You feel how easy it would be for me to rip the life out of your lungs with a simple squeeze?”
She doesn’t answer, obviously. Her legs jerk beneath my weight, flail madly, but get her nowhere.
“Pathetic,” I spit. “You want to be a problem for me? The fleas on my dog are a bigger problem for me than you’d be.
You step out of line, you’ll get disciplined.
Simple. Welcome to the Blackwoods.” As her eyes start rolling to the back of her head, I loosen my grip and let her suck in a lungful of air.
“Now answer my question. Are the rumours true?”
She chokes out, “No.”
I twist my lips, thinking, then I take a shot in the dark. “Are you a virgin?”
Tears leak from her eyes as she gasps around my hand. “No.”
My whole mood crashes. Worth a shot. I let go of her neck and let her splutter while I collect my thoughts.
“So, where are the injuries from? Your father, or someone else?”
She gurgles a little, coughs even more. I try to wait patiently.
I scan her naked body again, soaking it in now my head’s clearer.
I’m usually the one to mark a girl like this.
If this is from another man, another man who’s been inside her…
I fight back the shiver. I don’t know how I’ll handle that.
Despite the odd twisting sensation in my chest at the prospect, the longer I scan her body, the more blood returns to my cock.
Then I realise she still hasn’t responded. I look back up at her. “Well?”
Elodie’s still slightly gasping, throat bobbing up and down. “Well, what?”
I slam my fist down on the mattress beside her head. Her infuriating evasion snapping the last thread of my patience. “Fuck, Elodie!” Her flinch makes me pause.
Pull yourself together, Cade.
I take a second to gather my composure. Then try a different tack. “Is this what you’re into?” I nudge my head down between us. “Is that why you won’t answer? You’re afraid to confirm the rumours are true, confirm that you are a dirty masochist whore?”
Her upper lip curls up into a snarl. “No.”
I see a flash of something in her eyes. A phantom pain dwelling there. The flashbacks of terrible memories.
Fuck. I have to kill some people. “Who did this to you?”
She scoffs. “I’m not telling you.”
Why the hell would I kill for this girl? Ungrateful, stubborn brat.
Because I have a reputation to uphold. Imagine I see the guy walking down the street. Imagine he sees us together. The humiliation. Unfathomable.
“I’m going to need a name,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Caden. What’s done is done. Can you please get off me, I’m naked and it’s cold.”
The reminder has my eyes flickering back down her body. The pebbled nipples on the peaks of those perfectly round tits. The mound of her pussy just an inch from my cock.
“You know,” I whisper, “if you told me this is what you’re into, I’d have said we were more compatible than I thought.”
She doesn’t respond. My mind continues to drift. “The way I’d ruin this body. You’d be surprised how I can make pain feel so good.”